Comic Books Suck!

Recently the success of the Batman, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Avengers Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as well as DC's decision to 'reboot' all their titles, has led to articles about the resurgence in sales for comic books. Out of curiosity I looked up recent sales figures and found that the best selling comics are a little over 100,000 copies per month. Lower selling comicsfrom the major publishers (Marvel and DC) are in the 15,000 copy range. Furthermore these 'sales' figures are mainly from retailers that use direct distribution, meaning they can't return unsold copies the way a supermarket or book store can return unsold copies of People or Sports Illustrated. In other words, many of those 'sales' may well be sitting in the back issue box or the storage room. In comparison, I looked up sales figures from the late 1960s when I was using my paper route money (Thank you Ames Advertiser) to buy every comic book I could get my hands on. The best selling comic of the year 1967 wasBatman averaging 900,000 copies per month. The best selling comic books of 2012 would have a difficult time cracking the top 100 list for 1967.

I recognize that all print media has suffered in the previous four decades, but I believe that comic books have done a lot to hasten their own demise. When I was a kid (Yes, I know this makes me sound like a cranky old man. That's only because I am a cranky old man.) every supermarket, pharmacy, book store, or newsstand in the country carried comic books. Even in the 1980s comic books were available in convenience stores. Now a kid looking for a comic book has to make a trip to a specialty store, push his way past role-playing gamers rolling 19 sided dice while they argue about wizards and demonic powers, navigate through the action figures and other toys, and find the comic book shelf. Once the kid finds a comic book which doesn't picture a graphic decapitation or half naked woman on the cover, he makes his purchase and goes home to read it. If he can decipher the busy scratchy art obscured by layers of muddy computer colors, he'll be dismayed to discover that he has just purchased part five of a twelve part story which will unfold over the course of a year, and, by the way, there are a number of minor subplots that leak into about five or six other books. I don't particularly want to wait that long for the conclusion to a story, and I like to believe I have more patience than an eight year old.

Despite the efforts of comic book publishers to alienate them - kids still like comics. The success of comic strip collections, manga paperbacks, and children's books featuring Captain Underpants and The Diary of a Wimpy Kid are evidence of this. I am aware of Marvel Adventures and the DC books based on the animated tv shows, but these are too childlike. Parents might buy them for their toddlers, but no self respecting eight year old would buy it for himself or herself.

This is not to suggest that the comic book medium (I can't bring myself to type 'graphic novel') shouldn't feature continuing stories or adult themes, but if comic books continue to market themselves primarily to a rapidly shrinking audience of arrested adolescents and ignore children, it won't be long before they have no audience at all.
"The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads" - what kid would be able to resist this cover. I know I couldn't!

Usually I rant and rail about Pop culture, but I'm a middle school teacher and coach, so today I wanted to write about a group of athletes who are very important to me.

The Burbank Bulldogs' season came to an end last night, but not before they had a successful district season and made it out of the bi-district round of the playoffs. The seniors on this team were the last group of eighth grade students I taught at Harris Middle School, and I've always had a soft spot for them. Coach Herrera and I had those boys for seventh grade basketball. There were thirty boys on the team, and we didn't cut anyone. Coach Herrera knew the boys from football season, I had taught most of them when they were in sixth grade, and Coach Roden, their PE teacher, had told us what good athletes they were, so on the first day of practice, we knew they were capable of having a special season. We used the first few games to tinker with our line ups, figure out who was on the A Team and who was on the B Team, and establish discipline and rules. In the first game we benched two of the best A Team players for missing practice. After that we didn't have any problems getting the boys to listen to us. The truth is, we wouldn't have had much trouble anyway. This was a great group of kids. The boys were enthusiastic and cheerful, even at 6:30 AM practices. Most of them were excellent students in the classroom. A few of the boys could give their teachers headaches, but it was never mean-spirited behavior. These were just active middle school boys. Sometimes one of the seventh grade teachers would come to my classroom with a basketball player in tow. "Coach, you have to do something about this boy!" Herrera and I would mete out a punishment ranging from extra horses or time on the bench, and the problem would be solved (temporarily, at least). There were a few boys (who shall remain nameless) that got some special treatment on a couple of occasions. I would pick them up in the morning, and we'd go from class to class getting their books and their day's assignments from their teachers. Then they would spend that day in my room. Sitting in the famous "Desk of Discipline" they would complete their assignments with the understanding that they'd better not disturb my classes, and they'd better learn to control themselves in their regular classes. This was a technique I picked up from the legendary Coach Sapenter, and it worked. 

We had a great time. Practices were fun. With so many boys, we had to be organized, and keep everyone busy. We were very deep and wanted balance on both teams, so a couple of boys who were really talented enough to play on the A Team accepted their roles on the B Team. Somehow Coach Herrera and I found minutes for all the boys. We wanted everyone to contribute in some way. Once Zone Play began our A Team went undefeated, our B Team only lost one game, and we brought home a district championship. 

When the boys went to high school, I followed their progress. Since I was coaching basketball and track at Little Flower School now, I could only make it to the games that Burbank played during Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks and the playoffs. Of course not all thirty of the boys could make the team at the high school level, but I was glad to see how many of our Harris Hawks stuck it out every year. It was especially great to see some of our B Team boys move up to the varsity team, sometimes even getting a starting nod. A couple of Lowell Middle School boys were on the team, and there were three younger Harris Hawks, but the majority of the varsity was made up of that group I had such fond memories of. When I couldn't make it to games, I'd check out the results in the newspaper. It was fun to see how different players would step up each game. One night Juan would go off for twenty points. Another night it would be Moses. Even though it wasn't showing up in the box score, I knew that Jordan and Gabriel were running the press and taking care of the ball, and Matthew was playing tough defense every night.

Obviously a lot of credit for Burbank's success has to go to Coach Herbert Jackson. When I was at Harris I worked a couple of Jackson's summer camps, sat in on some of his practices, and scouted plenty of games for him. I liked his style and way of working with young athletes, and I learned a lot about coaching from him. He rarely has the kind of blue chip athletes that show up every season at the big north side schools, but his teams are always competitive. He and his staff have created a culture of success at Burbank, and although I'm sure he and his team are disappointed about the way the season ended, I hope they'll be able to look back at their accomplishments with pride. I'm really going to miss watching Moses, Jordan, Juan, Matthew, Gabriel, and Daniel, but I've enjoyed seeing those little boys mature into young men. I know that they will all have bright futures after graduation.

I was rereading the first appearance of one of Howard Chaykin's early creations - Dominic Fortune. He appeared as a back up story in the otherwise ridiculous Marvel Preview presents The Punisher from 1975. I bought this back in the day because it reminded me of Chaykin's earlier The Scorpion, a short-lived (weren't they all) series from Atlas Comics. The artwork is excellent, particularly Chaykin's use of wash.  The character sets the template for future Chaykin heroes. Fortune operates during the 1930s, a time period that Chaykin has a great fondness for as well as a great facility for rendering. He is a cynical, tongue-in-cheek mercenary whose pulpy adventures are like a cross between The Shadow and Doc Savage. Fortune's appearances were scattered throughout several magazine-sized comics. The first few stories were in gray wash and several later stories were in full color. Working with writers Len Wein and later Denny O'Neil, Chaykin created a nice little series that deserves a trade paperback collection.

"Outlaw life is hard, Dewey Crowe."

I never watch the Academy Awards. This surprises some of my friends because I'm such a movie nut, but I always quote Bill Murray from an old SNL skit, "The Oscars are always wrong, and when they're right, it's for the wrong reasons." These are wise words coming from the man who has never won an Academy Award despite great performances in such movies as Groundhog Day, Rushmore, and Lost in Translation.

There are plenty of times when the Academy choices are debatable. Did The Best Years of Our Lives deserve the 1947 Best Picture nod over It's a Wonderful Life? I happen to think they got it right that time, but I can certainly see merit in the opposing view. Other times there is no room for debate. There is no way that Shakespeare in Love was a better movie than Saving Private Ryan or Out of Sight. In 1976 Rocky won Best Picture. Rocky is a lot of fun. It's a rousing feel good story, and in 1976 there was no way of knowing that it would produce five sequels, each worse than the last.  Of course it was up against All the President's Men, Bound For Glory, Network, and Taxi Driver, all of which were more ambitious, more nuanced and more original. It seems impossible that John Ford's masterpiece The Searchers, consistently listed as one of the greatest films of all time, failed to receive a single Oscar nomination in 1956. Speaking of my all-time favorite moviemaker, one of my least favorite Ford films is How Green Was My Valley. It's a slow paced slog through sentiment and platitudes that somehow beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture.

My favorite movie last year was Boyhood. If Richard Linklater's bold journey through the life of a middle-class American family wins any awards, I'll be happy for him. If the big prize goes to American Sniper, Birdman, or Transformers vs Marky Mark, it won't change my opinion a bit.

In the early 1970s I was just about ready to give up on comic books. My favorite series were either cancelled or being written and drawn by creative teams I wasn't interested in. Artists like Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith were channeling their energies into other more lucrative endeavors and only showed up sporadically in mainstream comic books. Fortunately for me a new wave of comic book creators was arriving on the scene. Artists like Jim Starlin, Howard Chaykin, and Paul Gulacy appeared full of energy and new ideas. Writers like Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, and Don McGregor were given unprecedented freedom at Marvel to take chances.

This was the atmosphere that produced Don McGregor's magnum opus - "Panther's Rage", a thirteen issue story that took McGregor and his collaborators (artists Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, Billy Graham, and inker Klaus Janson) over two years to tell. It was a pretty bold move on Marvel's part. Black Panther was an African prince, and this story was set in his homeland, the fictional Wakonda. The entire cast of the story was black, no Tarzans or Ka-Zars to be found. McGregor's writing dealt with revolution, petty tribal bigotries, and inequality and was filled with beautiful prose, passionate dialogue, and complex characterizations. The pencillers used cinematic techniques (prompted at times by McGregor's detailed plots) and then newcomer Janson's inks show his now trademark heavy spotting of blacks and zipatone.

I still own the original comics bought off the newsstands over forty years ago, and I bought the recent reprint collection. It is well worth a look.

http://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Masterworks-The-Black-Panther/dp/0785141987

Steve Ditko is one of my favorite comic book artists. I discovered his work when he was drawing for DC comics during the late 1960s. His creations The Creeper and Hawk and Dove were must buys for me. Then I came across his Charlton work of this time period - The Blue Beetle and The Question. I loved his attention to detail, his wild action scenes, and the imaginative gadgets and back stories he gave his characters. Finally I discovered Marvel Tales and the reprints of his early Spider-Man work. Before this I had thought John Romita was Spidey's only artist. I've stuck with Ditko through the years, following him back to Charlton for various mystery comics, to DC for crazy stuff like Shade, the Changing Man, and back to Marvel for Machine Man and Rom. Along the way, there were also his Ayn Rand inspired self-published tales of Mr. A.

Today Steve Ditko is 87 years old, and he still goes into his Manhattan studio every day to draw comics. His friend and publisher Robin Snyder finances Ditko's comics through Kickstarter campaigns, and a new 32 page comic book comes out every two to three months. In all honesty, Ditko's art is not as strong as it once was, and his scripts are little more than Libertarian screeds populated by straw men, but this diehard liberal still contributes to every Kickstarter and reads every new issue. I do this because Ditko had such a profound influence on the history of comic books, and regardless of what I may think of his politics, I genuinely admire the way he lives his philosophy and writes and draws just what he wants to.

This link provides information about Steve Ditko's current work.

http://ditko.blogspot.com

As a blogger focusing on comic books I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast. You can call it a graphic novel, an illustrated memoir, or whatever you'd like, but make no mistake, it is a comic book, and a pretty good one at that. Roz Chast is a cartoonist for the New Yorker magazine. In this book she tells the story of her elderly parents slow deterioration and her struggle to deal with it and help them. The subject matter could easily slide into maudlin sentiment, but Chast is uncompromising in her examination of the complicated relationship she has with her mother and father and the relationships they have with each other. Chast never portrays herself as a noble caregiver, but instead shows all the selfish thoughts that many of us try to hide during similar situations. The book is alternately hilarious, terrifying, and tragic - sometimes all on the same page. At times I was laughing uncontrollably at Chast's storytelling and cartooning abilities, but at one point near the end I literally had tears in my eyes. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is a brilliant work of art, and its choice as a finalist for the National Book Award was well-deserved.

This is the cover for DC Comics' Showcase # 74 featuring "Anthro" by Howie Post. Post was much more prolific in the newspaper comic strip format, but this short-lived (this issue of Showcase plus six issues of his own comic) series was a gem. Post's art was not typical for DC or Marvel comics at that time, but his scratchy cartoony style was both eye pleasing and appropriate to the subject matter. I was nine years old when this came out in 1968, and I enjoyed it for what it was at face value - cavemen. Rereading it years later, I realized that Post was using the genre to give his own take on issues of the day such as the Generation Gap and Women's Liberation. I still find it amazing that major comic book publishers took chances on offbeat series like this. Now it's spandex clad heroes or nothing from DC and Marvel.

Sometimes it's fun to just draw a big ol' green super hero.