superheroes! - excerpt - by laurence maslon and michael kantor

7/28/2019 SUPERHEROES! - Excerpt - by Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor

1/14


2/14
http://crownpublishing.com/http://www.randomhouse.com/book/225185/superheroes-by-laurence-maslon/9780385348584/http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0385348584http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=Superheroes!-EL--Scribd.com-9780385348591&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780385348591%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30http://play.google.com/http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?EAN=9780385348584&cm_mmc=Random%20House-_-Superheroes!-HC--Scribd.com-9780385348584-_-Superheroes!-HC--Scribd.com-9780385348584-_-Superheroes!http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385348584?ie=UTF8&tag=randohouseinc5629-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0385348584


3/14

SUPERHEROESC A P E S , C O W L S , A N D T H E C R E A T I O N O F C O M I C B O O K C U L T U

Laurence Maslon

Based on a documentary lm by

Michael Kantor

A production o Ghost Light Films


4/14

Copyright 2013 by Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint o the

Crown Publishing Group, a division o Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark o Random House, Inc.

Library o Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-385-34858-4

eISBN 978-0-385-34859-1

Printed in the United States o America

Book design by Roger Gorman

Jacket design by TK

Jacket art: TK

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Introduction 7

PART ONE:

TRUTH,JUSTICE,AND THE AMERICAN WAY (1938 1954)

CHAPTER ONENext Week: Into the Jaws of Death! Evolution o the Superhero 12

CHAPTER TWO64 Pages of Thrill-Packed Action! Explosion o an Industry 36

CHAPTER THREEOkay, Axis, Here We Come! Comic Books at War 76

PART TWO:

GREAT POWER,GREAT RESPONSIBILITY (1955 1987)

CHAPTER FOURThe Superhero Who Could BeYou! Superheroes Come to Earth 116

CHAPTER FIVEWorlds Will Live, Worlds Will Die! The Expansion o a Universe 180

PART THREE:

A HERO CAN BE ANYONE (1988 2013)

CHAPTER SIX

Creatures of the Night Reign o the Dark Superhero 220

CHAPTER SEVENHeroes We Can Believe in Again Champions o the New Millennium 260

Selected Bibliography 296

Image and Film Credits 298

Acknowledgments 299

Index 300

CONTENTS

To Miles,

My boy wonder.

LM

To Kat,

Who has saved me.

MK

Captions for pages i-vii:

ii: Titans of an industry: the back cover of Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man (1976); art by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano.

iv: An interior page illustration from the Doc Savage pulp, Resurrection Day(1936).

vi: Holy triple threat, its the Candy Man! Sammy Davis, Jr., shares a laugh with Burt Ward (Robin) and Adam West (Batman) on the set of Batman(1967).


5/14

Everyone has a avorite superhero, whether you rst ell

in love with Tobey Maguires Peter Parker or Steve Ditkos

original versionno matter how you got there, its a good

bet that your rst encounter with a superhero made your

heart soar a little higher, your lie a little more colorul, your

dreams a little bolder. It could be that you were still in your

p.j.s one Saturday morning and glimpsed your rst super-

hero on TV, or maybe he burst orth in ull Dolby Surround

sound in the darkened hush o a multiplex. Or it could be

that youre one o those young upstarts who are digging

your superheroes on those new-angled devices, zooming

rom panel to panel by swiping your ngers across a screen.

But i youve picked up a copy o this book, the odds are

good that youve also picked up a comic book at some point

in your lie. And you probably remember the rst time a

our-color superhero comic book caught your eye. Maybe

it was on a spinning rack on the counter o your riendly

neighborhood candy store; maybe it was lent to you by a

pal in the bunk above yours at summer camp. Perhaps your

mom bought it or you in the supermarket or perhaps you

stumbled into a local comic book shop and gasped at the

wide array o do-gooders and crime-ghters spread out on

shelves against the wall. Stillits hard to believe that su-

perheroes have only been a part o the American culture or

three-quarters o a century.

This companion volume complements our three-hour

PBS documentary series, Superheroes: A Never-Ending

Battle. Most o the time, that battle is between the orces o

good and the purveyors o evil. But the battle extends intothe conict between art vs. commerce, expression vs. re-

pression, tradition vs. progress. This book allows us a little

more room to investigate and explore the legends o the su-

perheroes and their astonishing cultural impact.

Some caveats: i youre a comic book an, we can guar-

antee right up ront that one o your avorite characters

or titles or storylines hasnt made it into the book. Unlike

INTRODUCTION

the comic book universe, space and scope are not innite

herebut i it makes you eel any better, a lot o our avor-

ites were cancelled, too. Also, the dating o actual comic

books is complicatedthe cover date on any given comic

book is not an accurate representation o when the comic

met the public. For bizarre reasons o distribution and ac-

counting, a cover date may register anywhere rom two to

our months ahead o when readers could buy the issue.

When it is important or historical context to explain when a

comic book hit the stands, we do so; at other times, we reer

to the ocial cover date.

The backbone o both the documentary series and the

companion volume are the more than ty interviews con-

ducted with the best and brightest pioneers in the eld o

the comic book industry. That said, we have to give an hon-

orary super-team membership card to our extraordinary

gentlemen: Joe Simon, Jerry Robinson, Joe Kubert, and

Carmine Inantino. Sad to say, they each passed away be-

tween the time o their interviews and the completion o this

project. It is doubtul that any one o them courted poster-

ity when they got into the embryonic comic book business,

but they have certainly earned the respect and admiration

o millions o American since.

So, turn the pageweve got thrills, chills, and spills

awaiting you! The world o superheroes is ull o constantly

shiting dynamics (and dynamic duos!), but heres one

thing we can promise you: Ater reading and watching Su-

perheroes: A Never-Ending Battle, no mom will ever dare to

throw out her kids comic book collection again!Onward and upward!

(Literate) Larry Maslon

(Movie-Man) Michael Kantor

WRITERS WROSTRUM

Hey there, apostles o adventure!


6/14

n the middle o the Great Depression, everything in America seemed rende

in black and white. It was a drab, colorless world, one with stark contraYou were either lucky to have a job or, like one-quarter o the workorce,

went begging or one. You were either one o the privileged ew, or you w

scrambling simply to survive.

Opportunity was also painted with a brush dipped in India ink. Your amily coul

ther aord to send you to college, or they couldnt. I you were sent to an inuentia

League school, you were one o the accepted crowd or you were an outsider, restric

rom the inner circle because o your background. I you were a woman, you staye

home or, i necessary, you got a job. I you were lucky enough to fnd one, you ear

hal o a mans salary. In the South, i you were white, you got to vote and move ree

society; i you were black, neither option was available to you.

193

8-19

54

JUSTICEeTRUTHAND

THEAMERICAN WAY

Part One


7/14

Harsh reality came in monochrome.Men wore dark suits and white shirts;women wore dresses in a narrow color range rom blue to brown. City apartments were painted in dark

green or dull cream, and crammed with heavy, dark mahogany urniture. Newspapers were printed inblack and white, and so were the interior pages o all books and magazines. Theater programs had none

o the spectacular hues to be seen on stage. Photographs were black and white. Movies, which had

only recently begun to speak, came in only one variety.There were exceptions, o course, little ashes o color to catch the eye. Postage stamps had the

aint tint o pink or green. Your mothers kitchen might have a red-and-blue canister o Calumet Baking

Powder, or a box o Quaker White Oats. I your dad sent you to the corner candy store or newsstand tobuy his pack o Lucky Strikes, with its red bulls-eye, you might be tempted by the colorul wrapper o

a Baby Ruth or the label on a Coca-Cola bottle. The magazine covers that peeked over the rackstheSaturday Evening Postor Modern Screenor, i you were an urban kid, TheNew Yorkerenticed the

buyer with splashes o color.

So, imagine going to th

corner drugstore or news

or your dads cigarettes o

own candy bar in the midd

April 1938. The dozen dife

black-and-white newspapelled with news about Germ

annexation o Austria and th

Chicago Blackhawks winnin

the Stanley Cup. Somewhe

on that drugstore counter is

spinning rack o ten-cent co

magazines; they were occas

ally diverting, but usually ll

with reprints rom the comic

pages. This week, there is so

thing diferent, the debut o a

title: Action Comics#1.

On its blazing ull-color cov

well-muscled man in blue leo

with a owing red cape is hoi

ing a green car over his head

entire green car! And when d

you ever see a green car? Thi

impossible strongman has an S on his chest, but otherw

completely unidentied on the coverand certainly there

warning that he was coming your way. On the bottom let

corner o the cover, a man is running toward you, eyes bu

out, head in hands, completely traumatized. This poor el

has never seen anything like this red-and-blue phenomen

beore.

No one had.

It was the beginning o an explosion that would color Amer

culture or decades to come.

I I you wanted to indulge in a

rainbow explosion o color, however, you had only one optionthe

Sunday Funnies. I you pried the pages away rom your ather or

your older brother, you could dive headrst into the adventures o

various detectives, spacemen, errant children, hillbillies, strangely

proportioned sailors, and a host o other colorul characters. Every

major paper across the country had a Sunday section in color,

perhaps as a antastical reward or kids who had to be on their best

behavior in church that morning. Yet, the Funnies were meant to

be shared with the amily; they were never meant to be collected or

saved as a childs private property.

OVERLEAF: A breadline in New

City, 1932. OPPOSITE: A comic

brightens a Depression childho

the Bronx. LEFT: The milestone

started it all, Action Comics#1


8/14

In a universe o spectacularly and powerully endowed superbeings, Batmansmost endearing trait wasand ishis vulnerability.

As one o the Caped Crusaders greatest interpreters in the 1970s, artist Neal Adams, puts it:

The Batman is Sherlock Holmes and one o the greatest athletes on

earth all jammed together into one person, isnt he? He had no su-

per powers. He could do nothing. Nothing. Still probably the great-

est ctional super hero that has existed on earth since mankind has

been doing literature.

When Batman made his debut in a six-page story called The Case o the

Chemical Syndicate in spring 1939, what you saw with Batman was what you

got. His essential external elements were in that rst story: Young socialite

Bruce Wayne shares a jaw with his pal, Police Commissioner Gordon, who in-

vites Wayne to a crime scene. Two pages later, the Bat-Man appears to track

down the criminals and solve the crime. In the nal two panels, a door to Waynes

study opens, revealing the mysterious identity o the Bat-Man. While Superman

bounced around the East Coast in his debut, pulling of a hal-dozen eats in

thirteen pages, Batman solved one murder mystery, escaped the killers death

trap, and sent him to his doom in six pages. Superman had exploits; Batman

had adventures.

Over the next six months in Detective Comics, he gradually added to his bat-arsenal o bat-

paraphernaliaa utility belt (lited rom Doc Savage), a batarang, a Bat-Gyro (lited rom the

Shadow)and he carried a gun and knew how to use it. His adventures sent him to a mythical

country where he rescued the damsel-in-distress by shooting werewolves with silver bullets.

All o which was compelling to his young readership. All he was missing was his raisondtrean origin story. The editors insisted on one, and B ill Finger delivered or Detective

Comics#33. The resonance o Supermans roots was about external actorswhere he came

rom, what he could dobut Finger exploited Batmans internal resonance. In a two-pager

called The BatmanWho He Is and How He Came to Be!, we see young Bruce Wayne witness

the death o his parents during a botched stick-up and vow to use his inheritance to ght

crime. (The source o his athers wealth would evolve over the years.)

TOP:ArareinstanceoBatmanwieldingagunhewas

morepotentaterhereusedtotakea lieinhisbattle

againstcrime.RIGHT:YoungBruce Waynevowshis

revengeinDetectiveComics#33(1939);thatvowwould

driveBatmanorthenexteightdecades.

I shall become

a BAT!

I must be a creatureof the night, black, terrible


9/14

To avenge their deaths by spending the rest o my lie warring on all criminals. C rimi-

nals are a superstitious, cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into

their hearts. I must be a creature o the night, black, terrible . . . I shall become a BAT!

It would become one o the simplest and most ertile origin stories in pop culture.

Stan Lee, the cornerstone o the Marvel Comics Universe o the 1960s and beyond, and who

knows as much about creating heroic ction as anyone since Homer, put it this way: You try to

make an origin as dramatic as possible. Now, death has to do with vengeance Batmans parents

were killed, and he wanted to avenge their death. I somebody is killed, and you eel that should not

have happened, that was a terrible thing and Im gonna see that justice is done and make the killer

pay, thats a great motivation or a hero. What more do you need to knowhe saw his parents

killed, said Denny ONeil, Batmans most efective scribe in the 1970s. It was a choice he made,

he realizes that he has chosen to do this because it helps deal with the trauma o his parents, but

also because its worth doing, because its damned interesting. On some level, he enjoys doing it.

Certainly, Bill Finger enjoyed creating Batmans detective challenges. Everything he did was

based on athletics, on using his astute wits and acute observation, Finger said in a 1970s interview.

I didnt want Batman to be a superman; I wanted Batman to be hurt. Batman was given a puzzle to

solve or a death trap to escape in every story, and readers got the eeling that warring on all crimi-

nals wasnt necessarily the easiest job in the world. With Superman we won; with Batman we held

our own, wrote Jules Feifer in 1965s The Great Comic Book Heroes. Individual preerences were

based on the ambitions and arrogance o ones antasies. I suspect the Batman school o having

healthier egos. The Caped Crusaders job was made somewhat harder in 1940 when, according to

Finger, DC Comics editor Whitney Ellsworth called him on the carpet or having Batman shoot down

a giant monster with a machine gun. Batman would never deploy a lethal weapon again; and i his

vow against killing made the vengeance game more dicult, it only armed his nobility by rejecting

the methods that made him Batman in the rst place.

Batmans driven naturewas submerged ater the appearance o his brightly colored chum,Robin the Boy Wonder, in Detective Comics#38, but it reared its cowled head again in an astonish-

ing story rom 1948 (written by Finger): in the course o solving a smuggling ring, Batman recognizes

the mastermind as the man who killed his parents. This is one job Im doing alone. I dont have to

explainyou can understand why, he tells Robin. Calling on the killer, Joe Chill, in an abandoned

warehouse, Batman reveals his own identity to Chill in order to prove he knows his oul deed and

threatens to hound him until he conesses. In a neat ironic note, Chill seeks help rom his ellow

criminals by admitting he killed Batmans atherbut beore he can reveal Batmans identity, he is

gunned down by his conederates, who blame Chill as responsible or creating their dread nemesis!

By adding a kid sidekick almost a year ater Batmans initial appearance, the creative team managed

to turn the character in a diferent, nearly perpendicular, direction. A ew months into Batmans run,Bob Kane and Bill Finger were joined by Jerry Robinson, a young artist who would wind up contrib-

uting pencils, inks, backgrounds, plots, and characters to the Batman storylines. Robinson was on

the ground oor in bringing the Boy Wonder into the books: Robin expanded the story potential

Batman would save Robin, Robin would save Batman. The younger readers could relate to Robin,

and the older readers with Batman. There was a lot o interplay between Batman and Robin, with

puns and whatnot. It did change the nature o the stripit became a little lighter. An understate-

ment, to say the least. The Boy Wonder, with his primary colors and relentlessly optimistic nature,

took Batman out o the shadows, literally and guratively.

FROMTOP:BatmaninhismostGothicmoment;thefrst

appearancesothebaterangandthebatgyro(all

romDetectiveComics#31,1939). OPPOSITE: Threeo

Batmansmostinsidiousenemies:TheJoker,Two-Face,

andCatwoman.


10/14


11/14

he term retcon has a mili-tary eel to itlike somethinCaptain America might havedone in some adventure:

Cap and Bucky retconned the im

etrable ortress o the endish Re

Skull! Retcon actually reers to retroactive continuity

term that bubbled up at a comic book convention in the ea

1980s, reerring to the need to go back into the past to alte

narrative or the present. Its only tting that Captain Am

was the rst retconned character o the 1960s.

Among his buddies rom the Timely days o the 1940s,

erstwhile partners the Human Torch and the Sub-Marin

had already appeared on the new Marvel scene, but th

Torch was a completely reinvented character, reconst

as teenager Johnny Storm. The Sub-Mariner, or his

hadnt really changed at all, swimming along in his u

antisocial manner. Captain America was the only m

character let unexamined as the ateul all o 1963

beckoned.

On August 28, 1963, as Martin Luther King, Jr., ad

dressed the throngs gathered at the Mall in Washin

DC, and by extension John F. Kennedy, who was

listening at the White House, Strange Tales#

hit the streets, with a cover story o young Joh

Storm ghtingout o the Golden Age o Comics!Captai

America. It was the rst time that Jack Kirby had drawn his

spangled creation in almost two decades. By the time the ta

concluded, readers were disappointed to learn that it wasnt

at all, but an impostor villain called the Acrobat. Still, Stan L

who had initiated and written the story, had used the Acroba

a stalking horsewould readers be interested in seeing the

Cap back in print? The answer was a resounding yes.

But beore Captain America could be launched in a new

orm, the vibrant young president who had become the new

o America was assassinated in Dallas that November. At th

Marvel Comics oces on Madison Avenue, all work stopped

the staf listened to the sad news on the radio. Within week

REPORTING FOR DUTY

Captain America Lives Again!

OPPOSITE: Comic books avorite patriot rallies the country once again in the pages o

The Avengers#4 (1964). ABOVE: Out-o-town tryout: Lee and Kirby foat a revival o

Captain America in the pages o the Human Torch omnibus Strange Tales#114 (1963).


12/14

Stan Lee would begin to re-create Captain America or a nation in

mourning, a nation that had lost a symbol o aspiration and youth,

devoid o cynicism. I there were any doubts about the power o

resurrection, they were dispelled in early 1964 on the cover o

Avengers#4, which proudly displayed: Captain America Lives

Again! And there, rocketing toward the reader, was Captain

America as only Jack Kirby could render him, a powerhouse o

patriotic passion.

The mighty Marvel Comics Group is proud to an-nounce that Jack Kirby drew the original Captain

America during the Golden Age o Comics . . . and

now he draws it again! Also, Stan Lees rst script

during those abled days was Captain America

and now he authors it again! Thus, the chronicle o

comicdom turns ull circle, reaching a new pinnacle

o greatness!

Ater that ennobling epigraph, the story spun into action:

Avengers, hot in pursuit o the Sub-Mariner up near the Arct

Circle, discover the submerged gure o a man, oating in th

sea, encrusted in ice. When Giant-Man pulls the man inside

ship, they notice that his shield and mask could only belong

one person: Cap tain America. When he awakes, Cap thinks

Avengers are Nazi agents, but is eventually subdued and reco

his story: the last thing he remembers is ghting in World Wa

side-by-side with his comrade, Bucky. Against Caps wishes, B

decides to deuse a bomber as a last-ditch efort and is, efect

blown to smithereens. Captain America alls into the sea, whe

drits to the Arctic, and is rozen in a state o suspended anima

tion. Completely disoriented ater his retrieval by the Avenger

lashes out at them, but by the issues conclusion, he accepts t

as worthy comrades and joins the team, eventually bec

ing their leader, of-and-on, or the next ve decades. T

new narrative allowed Lee to redact the awkward Capta

America adventures rom the mid-1950s, when hed gra

unconvincingly with Communists.

For Lee and Kirby, Caps resurrection was raug

with both possibilities and obstacles. K irby would, inde

get the chance to tackle his creation again, this time wit

ormidable storytelling skills he had rened over two dec

imagine Michelangelo, who sculpted his Davidwhile still

his twenties, getting the chance to return to the same sub

ater having completed the Sistine Chapela wiser, sadd

man. Lee who conveniently airbrushed Joe Simon out o

narrativewould also be returning to a character whom h

could now imbue with irony and tragic dimension. The pos

1964 appearances o Captain America, in both The Avenge

his own exploits published simultaneously in Tales of Suspe

ocused on spectacular adventure, to be sure, but usually h

some scene where an older cop, moved by the sight o his c

hood hero, brushes away a tear, or where some World War II

vetnow in his ortiestrades combat stories with the seem

immortal Captain America. For two World War II army vetera

recall that Kirby and Lee had to go into suspended animation

working on Captain America in the mid-1940s so they could

TOP: A brilliant Kirby juxtaposition o past, presentand uturerom The Avenger

BOTTOM: A socko Captain America splash page rom 1941, reimagined by Jack Kirby

quarter-century later in Tales of Suspense#65.


13/14


14/14
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/225185/superheroes-by-laurence-maslon/9780385348584/http://www.indiebound.org/product/info.jsp?affiliateId=randomhouse1&isbn=0385348584http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/stat?id=VD9*lkiWNd8&offerid=146261&type=3&subid=0&tmpid=1826&u1=Superheroes!-EL--Scribd.com-9780385348591&RD_PARM1=http%253A%252F%252Fitunes.apple.com%252Fus%252Fbook%252Fisbn9780385348591%253Fmt%253D11%2526uo%253D4%2526partnerId%253D30http://play.google.com/http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?EAN=9780385348584&cm_mmc=Random%20House-_-Superheroes!-HC--Scribd.com-9780385348584-_-Superheroes!-HC--Scribd.com-9780385348584-_-Superheroes!http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385348584?ie=UTF8&tag=randohouseinc5629-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0385348584

superheroes! - excerpt - by laurence maslon and michael kantor

Documents