Spending time with the King

 As chance would have it, I had no sooner finished writing about the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Origins of Marvel Comics than I came across Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics at my local Ollie's. Priced at $6.99, it was a steal—and an appropriate counterpoint to the Stan Lee-centric history presented in the former volume. 

Writer and artist Tom Scioli has compiled information from multiple sources, including The Jack Kirby Collector, the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, and various books, to tell the story of Kirby's life from birth to death. Along the way, he illuminates the King's formative years on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, his time in World War II, and, of course, his pivotal role in the creation of the comic book. 

Like many other early comic artists, Kirby spent much time trying to do something else. Specifically, he wanted to draw a syndicated comic strip, seen as a more distinguished job for cartoonists. Again and again, however, his attempts were rebuffed or stymied, sometimes by financial and legal considerations. Inky, "a comic strip artist who solves crimes" was a collaboration with Joe Simon that "went nowhere" (p. 73). Sky Masters, a syndicated collaboration with Wally Wood, cost Kirby money because he paid both Wood and a writer, Dave Wood (no relation to Wally), to assist. Dave, according to the book, was late with the scripts, so Kirby wrote the strip himself but continued to pay anyway. 

Readers with some modicum of knowledge about Kirby won't find much that's new, especially in the section about the birth of Marvel Comics and Kirby's eventual switch to DC and then back to Marvel. These are oft-told stories, but what gives them emotional heft is "hearing" them in the artist's voice, as Scioli chooses to have Kirby narrate his own story. The continual disappointment, the non-adherence to contracts, and the lack of payment as Kirby's work is reconstituted for animated cartoons, toys, and even Halloween costumes are reflected visually by Scioli's visual rendition of Kirby: He gets older and less vital, even as his work continues to define the aesthetic of mainstream comics. 

At one point—jarringly, in this reader's estimation—the point of view shifts to Stan Lee for several pages, demonstrating the famed editor/writer's perspective of the birth of Marvel. These pages cover Lee's time in the service, the death of artist Joe Maneely, and his reunion with Kirby (with whom he worked at Timely before the war) in the 1960s. Why Scioli thought a book about Kirby's life needed Lee's perspective is unknown. 

The book does a great job demonstrating how Kirby's view of writing is unique enough that both his and Lee's view of "who did what" during Marvel's formative years can be correct. Kirby equated writing with plotting (which it is, in part) and insisted that the notes he left in the margins of his pages were proof that he shaped much of what Lee took credit for. 

However, comparing this marginalia to the finished product indicates that Lee (or somebody else) expanded on these notes to create the finished dialogue and captions. Indeed, much of the charm of these early Marvel stories comes from the interplay among the characters—the playful banter, the differences in dialects, and the ruminating in thought balloons that gave the Kirby and Lee heroes feet of clay compared to DC's perfect deities. This takes nothing away from Kirby (or Steve Ditko, also mentioned in these pages), who undoubtedly choreographed the action, designed the visuals, and fleshed out the plots. Yet the finished work appears to owe something to Lee. 

Part of Scioli's brilliance here is that he makes us understand how Kirby could believe he was treated poorly by Lee and the various owners of Marvel (which he was) even as we recognize that Kirby's conclusions may not be entirely accurate. Few creative endeavors between two people are entirely fifty-fifty; one collaborator undoubtedly does more than the other. In Kirby's case, he was doing more, yet more shouldn't remove Lee entirely from the equation. 

Kirby was ahead of his time, and therein lies his genius and his tragedy. The genius is evident in his role in creating the visual language of comics. His tragedy is that he didn't live long enough to see his contributions honored fully. At least he experienced some of the recognition he so richly deserved via the return of his original art, convention appearances, and awards. Yet the full flowering of this appreciation would come after his passing in 1994, which Scioli effectively illustrates in the biography's final pages by having Kirby's voice go silent while the encomiums continue — media tributes, movie credits, and an out-of-court settlement between Marvel and Kirby's heirs. 

This panel encapsulates the advantages of comics over video games and movies. It's so appropriate that it comes from Kirby.

Fans of the Golden, Silver, and Bronze ages of comics will enjoy this book because it name-drops so many creators from these periods. Hardcore and even casual Kirby fans will love it, too. I paid a pittance for it, but it's worth much more. Scioli has made a significant contribution to comics scholarship. 

Auction action for Superman's first appearance

This column originally ran in April 2010, shortly after an issue of Action Comics #1 set a then-record price at auction. This figure was eclipsed by a private sale in 2021, which only cements my answer even more firmly.

Whenever a vintage comic book sells for big money – as Action Comics #1 did last week, netting a record-breaking $1.5 million – my non-comic friends will ask if I would ever pay that kind of money for a copy.

My answer is always the same: heavens no.

Actually, usually “heavens” is replaced with a stronger word, one that expresses my surprise that something that once sold for a dime can command the kind of prices usually reserved for real-estate deals and headline-making lottery wins.

Not that I don’t comprehend the historical significance of Action Comics #1. The book features the first appearance of Superman, that brainchild of Cleveland kids Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who sold their creation in its entirety to DC Comics (then National Publications) for the princely sum of $120, or about 0.008 percent of the cost that one rabid collector paid for that Action Comics issue recently.

The world’s first super hero, Superman went on to spawn a merchandising empire that includes movies, toys, games, and television shows, in addition to serving as the template for virtually every costumed hero that followed. For $120, National Publications bought, for a fire-sale price, a property that netted it (and later Time Warner) billions.

That first issue is scarce, with experts estimating about 100 in existence, making it the Holy Grail of comic-book collecting.

But as I tell my friends who wonder if I dream of adding a copy to my own collection, I am a comic-book reader, not a collector or speculator.

A reader buys titles he enjoys, perhaps because he likes the character, writer, artist, or some component of the story. Readers may keep their books in pristine condition so that they can reread them later, or they may dog-ear their edges and spill pizza sauce all over their four-color contents. (I aim to be the former, but occasionally am the latter.)

Sometimes, a reader will morph into a collector, aspiring to own every appearance of, say, Superman (may good fortune and a fat bank account be yours), or every comic book illustrated by a favorite artist. Sometimes they will collect particular genres – for instance, titles with giant apes on the cover (there are more of these than the layman might imagine) – or the output of one particular company (all Marvel Comics).

Only rarely does a collector devolve into that most odious specimen, a speculator, who buys titles based solely on their perceived market value. I once met such a slug outside a comic-book store, where he clandestinely ushered me over to the trunk of his car, as if it contained an illegal substance. Instead, it was overflowing with copies of the current issue of Batman. His scheme was to buy up all local copies of the issue and then sell them at vastly inflated prices.

There has to be an easier way to make a buck.

As a reader, I already own a copy of Action Comics #1. Before you check my work schedule and jimmy open my door, know that my edition is a reprint from ten years ago with a value of about $5. But it contains the same material as the original, and I get the same joy of experiencing the birth of a genre as I would from reading the $1.5-million original.

Maybe more, because if I spill a bowl of cereal and milk all over the Man of Steel’s first appearance, it won’t be the end of the world. Or the demise of a million-plus-dollar investment.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com 

The Ten-Cent Plague

This column was originally published in 2009. 

In 1954, Operation Book Swap was in full swing in Canton, Ohio.

A project of a committee formed by Mayor Carl F. Wise, the program encouraged Canton-area kids to trade comic books for books. Nearly 30,000 comics were collected, exchanged for hardcover copies of novels like “Heidi” and “Swiss Family Robinson.” City leaders unceremoniously hauled the brightly colored comics to the dump.

Operation Book Swap was northeast Ohio’s response to a national mania, the alleged filth being poured into kids’ minds by supposedly unscrupulous comic-book publishers, one chronicled in David Hajdu’s new book, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America.”

Hajdu believes the comic-book purge of the early 1950s – in many communities, comics weren’t taken to the dump, they were burned publicly – was a forerunner of the generation gap popularized years later by parental dismay over rock and roll. The precursor of Elvis’s shaking pelvis was a four-color world held together by two staples, with an admission price of one dime.

In the 1950s, superhero comics were on the decline and crime and horror comics were coming into their own. Publisher Lev Gleason was selling around a million copies a month of a comic book that introduced wide-eyed youngsters to violent bad guys plying their trade against the innocent, supposedly to reinforce the title of the comic, “Crime Does Not Pay.”

But as John Milton learned while writing “Paradise Lost” a few centuries earlier, it’s a lot easier to dramatize evil than goodness. Hajdu notes that the word “Crime” on the magazine’s cover was much larger than the rest of the title, an accurate representation of the emphasis inside between crime and punishment.

Similarly, the EC Comics company struck it rich by selling revenge stories with O. Henry-style twists in magazines like “Crime SuspenStories” and “Tales from the Crypt.” At a Senate hearing on comic books (the very existence of which proves government always has found topics besides the important ones to occupy its time), publisher Bill Gaines defended an EC cover that showed a woman’s severed head held aloft by her killer. He said it would be in bad taste only if the killer were “holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood.”

Psychologist Frederic Wertham spearheaded the jihad against comics. His 1954 book “Seduction of the Innocent” branded Batman and Robin as homosexuals, Superman a fascist, and Wonder Woman a sadomasochist. He claimed that comic books caused juvenile delinquency because all the juvenile delinquents he had worked with read comic books. His findings ignored that almost (ital.) all (end ital.) kids read comics, and that many grew up to be perfectly normal and well adjusted.

By reaching back to the early years of the twentieth century, Hajdu shows how disapproval over comics was cyclical. As early as 1909, Ladies’ Home Journal was concerned about the content of the Sunday newspaper funnies, calling them “inane and vulgar” and “nothing short of a national crime against our children.” Similar concern was voiced decades later with the introduction of the comic book, a reaction that reached full flowering in the 1950s with the passage of laws in many communities that made it illegal to sell certain “prohibited” comics titles to minors.

Ultimately, the comic-book industry formed a self-censorship agency, the Comics Magazine Association of America, and created a code banning almost everything that had made comics so appealing to kids. Readership declined (the rise of television was also responsible) and comic books were never again the cultural force they had been.

The final pages of “The Ten-Cent Plague” are a roll call of writers and artists who never worked in comics again after the mid-’50s purge, creators whose stories were burned by over-zealous parents and politicians who, only a decade earlier, had successfully won a war against a regime that also found it necessary to incinerate books.

It is an irony that does not go unnoticed by Hajdu, who has written the definitive account of the mass-market censorship of an art form that nobody cared too much about because it was the exclusive province of the young.