Tag Archives: 1950s

Shock Treatment: EC’s Opposite Direction Comics

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Unlike many previous reprints of EC Comics, Fantagraphics organized its “Artists’ Library” not by title but generally by artist. Better still, a black and white format highlights beautifully the line and ink work by legends like Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Graham Ingels, Johnny Craig, etc. And it shows these masters rendering some of the most suspenseful, violent, ghastly and otherworldly material across a range of stories so lurid and weird they attracted censorious government scrutiny. In other words, the Artists’ Library showcases the best cartoonists at the height of their powers and working on content that editor Al Feldstein deliberately matched to each one’s specific strengths. The project has been magnificent, especially in showing Davis, Wood, Kurtzman, Craig, Kamen and others evolve over time and respond to different material. It has been a thoughtfully designed series that makes even aficionados of EC think differently about what is in my mind the greatest run of comic book art ever. But the 40th volume in the Library, Shock Treatment, is unusual in many respects.

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Paging Dr. Perfect: Rex Morgan Wants a Word

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This just in from 1948… . Let’s give it up for doctors, expertise, institutional authority and the principles of science they represent. Nothing speaks to the post-WWII shift in American culture and comics as starkly as this Christmas 1948 message from Rex Morgan, M.D. The rise of the institutional hero was clear.

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Badly MAD: Snafu and Misreading Kurtzman

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Harvey Kurtzman and Hugh Hefner were the two towering figures of 1950s culture who showed how idiosyncratic personal vision innovate even in an era of corporatized modern mass media. The best evidence of this is the abject failure of other publishers to imitate their success, at least in their first decade. Kurtzman’s MAD and Hef’s Playboy were singular efforts that made the many knock-offs seem like crude and exploitive misunderstandings of what these geniuses had wrought.

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Exploring Pre-Code Comfort Comics: Atlas’ Weird Worlds and Bill Everett

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Reviewing Atlas Comics Library No. 9: Adventures Into Weird Worlds and Atlas Creator Collection, No. 3: Bill Everett

The Fantagraphics project of reprinting extended runs and top creators from 1950s Atlas comics continues at a breakneck pace. I won’t bother arguing whether such a completist approach to non-EC pre-code comics is worthwhile. Clearly the effort found a hardcore market of fans for exceptionally well restored, presented and contextualized output from the pre-Marvel days of Marvel. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo provides dense intros that both situate the title at hand as well as add to his ongoing history of Atlas. In this case we get the first 10 issues of Adventures Into Weird Worlds (1952), one of the better efforts to cash in on the peaking horror/weird comics craze. Some of the greats of the pre-code genres are here: Russ Heath, Joe Maneely, Bill Everett, George Roussos, and even a Bernie Krigstein effort (albeit underwhelming). While all of these artists clearly are hacking it out here and working generally in second gear, there are joys to be found nevertheless.  

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Scoundrels, Cons and Dupes: 20 Favorite Comic Strip Villains – Part 4

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We round out our survey of comic strip baddies steeped in post-WWII American culture. As are our choices for standout villains. The funny papers followed popular culture into new Cold War mythologies around both heroism and its counterparts. Main currents of a rapidly changing social, economic, and political environment are imprinted unmistakably on all of these villains.

For the first 15 members of our rogues’ gallery, click into Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. And once again, credit also goes to the the comics hibbyists of Facebook who contributed many ideas that made this review of villainy broader.

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Li’l Abner’s Epic Gender Bender (1953)

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Alert the gender police! Recruit the culture warriors. Al Capp’s Li’l Abner strip was bending gender norms more than 70 years ago. In fact, this 1953 story arc weirdly foreshadowed current skirmishes over cross-dressing, drag performance, legal gender reassignment and even “men” playing in women’s sports.

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Penny Parties: Cartoon Sociology Meets the ‘Bobby-Soxers’

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Like all American mass media of the last century, demographics and market forces provide the frame within which trends in comic strip content lived. Harry Haenigsen’s Penny launched in 1943 directly out of the intersection of two new social realities – gal power and the “invention of the teenager.” It is not surprising, then, that Haenigsen took an almost sociological approach to portraying two things he certainly was not – young nor a girl. Like any good cartoon anthropologist, he decided to go native. The Oct. 6 1946 Philadelphia Inquirer reports how the New Hope artist researched Penny by eavesdropping on soda shop conversations and even hosting cookouts for the local high schoolers.

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