CHAPTER 4
After World War II ended, America enjoyed the last of the Golden Age of comics before moving into what is known as the Silver Age of comics. Romance comics became popular, daily newspaper comic strips provided readers with the entertainment they wanted, and the photocopier was born during this era.
ROMANCE IN THE AIR
Americans grew tired of reading about heroes and villains after the war. Comic book publishers saw their sales falling and knew they needed to publish different work. Most created westerns or adventures, but a few publishers took a risk with romance.
WORDS TO KNOW
Silver Age: the era of comics between the introduction of the Comics Code in 1956 and the late 1970s.
Comics Code: a set of guidelines created by comics publishers to help regulate the content of comics.
The first successful romance comic was Archie. Published by MLJ Magazines, the series was roughly based on the popular teenage movies of Mickey Rooney, and told the tale of the love life of Archie Andrews. Bob Montana was the cartoonist who brought Archie to life. The comic is still popular today and can be found in the magazine rack of almost any supermarket in the country!
ARCHIE EVENTUALLY BECAME SO POPULAR THAT MLJ MAGAZINES RENAMED ITS COMIC COMPANY
Inspired by the success of Archie, other publishers quickly adopted the idea of romance comics. A very popular one called Young Romance came from an unlikely team—Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain America.
WORDS TO KNOW
romance comic: a comic about characters who are trying to find love.
Romance comics turned around the classic ideas of romance. Many of the stories put the female main character in charge of finding a boyfriend. She’d discover that the ugly duckling was the best boyfriend of all. The comic books challenged some of the long-held ideas Americans had about finding love and romance, that looks weren’t everything and money didn’t equal happiness.
DAILY COMICS
Meanwhile, the daily comic strips in newspapers were the envy of the comics world. The founders of the modern newspaper comic industry, Hearst and Pulitzer, developed a system called syndication that allowed comic strips to be sold to a variety of newspapers. King Features Syndicate, founded by Hearst, is still one of the leading comic strip syndicates in America. The syndicates were the business people between the cartoonists and the newspapers that published them.
WORDS TO KNOW
syndication: when the rights to print or broadcast a creative work are sold.
CARTOONISTS COULD FOCUS ON THEIR ART AND LET THE SYNDICATE HANDLE ALL THE BUSINESS.
Daily cartoonists had to work within the specific structure and size of each comic, unlike early cartoon masters who had whole pages. But in art, restrictions can lead to great creativity.
Al Capp created Li’l Abner, one of the most popular daily comic characters of the 1940s and ’50s. The character of Li’l Abner was a strong, slow-witted, backwoods man who was accompanied by lots of different characters in the small Southern town of Dogpatch. One of those characters was the Shmoo.
The Shmoo were small, white, bowling pin–shaped creatures that quickly reproduced and were said to be the “tastiest critter” in the world. They were cute, lovable, laid eggs, and were easy to catch and cook. America loved the idea of the perfect animal and bought lots of Shmoo merchandise.
IN 1947, SHMOO PRODUCTS SOLD $25 MILLION WORTH OF STUFF—THAT’S EQUAL TO $257 MILLION TODAY!
Chester Gould created Dick Tracy. The main character was a detective who wore a bright yellow trench coat, used ultramodern gadgets, and had plenty of helpers in his fight against organized crime.
Dick Tracy was drawn in a weird, stylized form with a range of bad guys whose names were associated with the way they looked. PruneFace was drawn as a face with so many wrinkles you couldn’t make out his expression. Mumbles had an extremely small mouth. The strips always ended with a cliffhanger.
WORDS TO KNOW
stylize: to draw comics in a specific way.
cliffhanger: an exciting moment that makes you wonder what happens next.
Ohio cartoonist Milton “Milt” Caniff created two of the most popular adventure strips of the day: Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Caniff is famous for his realistic drawing style, and he loved to show as much action as he could get away with.
Terry and the Pirates used cliffhangers to tease its audience into reading the next day’s strip. Sometimes the stories in Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon were serialized over entire months! Can you think of a modern television series that uses cliffhangers to keep people watching week after week?
Blondie, created in 1933 by Murat “Chic” Young, was a daily comic about home, work, and relationships. The comic usually ended on a punch line. Blondie and her husband, Dagwood Bumstead, are still fixtures in the comics, though they’re written and drawn by different cartoonists. Blondie was the most widely syndicated comic of its time, and it inspired many other daily comics, such as Hi and Lois, For Better or For Worse, and The Family Circle.
WORDS TO KNOW
serialize: to create a series of stories.
punch line: the sentence, statement, or phrase that makes the point, as in a joke.
Compare a Blondie comic from 1933 with Blondie comics from today. Do they look different? Is the dialogue different? What are some of the reasons comics change over the decades? Cover up neighboring QR codes to make sure you’re scanning the right one.
WHERE'S THE MONEY?
Often, the creators of newspaper comic strips were financially better off than their comic book counterparts. Harold Gray, creator of Little Orphan Annie, retired as a millionaire. The creators of Superman, on the other hand, accidently gave most of their rights to their publisher, DC Comics. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were eventually replaced as the creative team for Superman and both lived the rest of their lives in near poverty.
Military humor was popular after the war. Mort Walker introduced the world to Beetle Bailey in 1950. The comic strip followed the Army life of a private at a military base and his run-ins with the overweight and often quick-tempered Sarge. Through the lens of humor, Beetle Bailey commented on social issues of the time, such as the war in Vietnam and the draft. Beetle Bailey is still enjoyed by daily newspaper readers today.
CHARLES SCHULZ AND PEANUTS
Have you ever read the Peanuts comic strip or seen one of the Peanuts television shows? You have Charles Schulz to thank. Schulz specialized in drawing children and came up with an idea for a daily comic strip called Li’l Folks. The syndicates he sent his Li’l Folks comics to didn’t know what to think of them.
More Peanuts!
CHARLES SCHULZ’S COMIC STRIP WAS THE FIRST TO FEATURE ALL CHILDREN!
Li’l Folks was populated entirely by children who often expressed very grown-up emotions. The star of the comic, Charlie Brown, constantly battled disappointment and depression. Finally, a syndicate agreed to give Li’l Folks a chance in 1950. They renamed it Peanuts, and it became one of the most famous comics in the world.
THE SIDEKICK CHARACTER IN PEANUTS, SNOOPY THE DOG, IS AS RECOGNIZABLE AS MICKEY MOUSE.
SCARY COMICS
As comic books in the late 1940s and early 1950s turned away from superheroes and toward romance, some comic publishers decided to tell darker stories. This may have seemed like a good idea, but those dark tales helped cause the end of the Golden Age. The covers often showed violent scenes to entice newsstand readers. Two comics were figureheads of this new trend in American comics—Crime Does Not Pay and EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
As an instructor in an art school, Charles Schulz was famous for holding contests to see who could draw the longest straight line without a ruler. Watch him draw Charlie Brown!
THE AMAZING XEROX MACHINE
Before the 1950s, making a copy of something took a lot of time and effort. If a business wanted to copy a document, it had to use carbon paper to make a carbon copy. Enter Chester Carlson, New York attorney and the inventor of the photocopier.
Tired of the long copying process, Carlson began to experiment in his kitchen with light-sensitive particles to print copies on paper. In 1938, he applied for a patent, but it wasn’t until 1947 that a small company in New York decided to take a chance on his invention. The company called the process xerography and became the Xerox Corporation.
The photocopier was very important to the future of comics because it made the creation of independent comics cheaper and easier. It also played a big role in the birth of the modern graphic novel, but more on that in a later chapter.
The comic book Crime Does Not Pay was inspired by old police gazettes of the nineteenth century, which were often highly illustrated. The comic took the most shocking true news stories and illustrated them in comic form. It was one of the first to feature a master of ceremonies, or emcee. This character, called Mr. Crime, helped narrate the stories. The emcee character was used in most crime and horror comics of the era.
WORDS TO KNOW
carbon copy: an exact copy of a document made using carbon paper between two or more pieces of paper.
patent: a document from the government that gives an inventor the exclusive right to make, use, or sell his or her invention.
xerography: a way of making a copy using light-sensitive chemicals and paper.
independent comic: a comic book published without the help of a large company.
emcee: a master of ceremonies who helps to lead a story or event.
Competing with Crime Does Not Pay, EC Comics became one of the most well-known publishers of crime, war, and horror comics in America. EC published Tales from the Crypt, which featured a rotating cast of emcees. The comic told graphic horror stories with twist endings and morals. The covers were gruesome and brightly colored, like the pulp magazines of the early part of the twentieth century.
American adults loved their crime and horror comics. Unfortunately, newsstands mixed all of the comic books together. A kid who wanted to read the latest Scrooge McDuck comic might pick up an issue of Crime Does Not Pay out of curiosity.
WORDS TO KNOW
moral: a valuable lesson to help people know how to behave.
PARENTS WERE CONCERNED THAT THESE COMICS WERE BAD FOR KIDS, AND BEGAN TO PRESSURE PUBLISHERS AND THE GOVERNMENT FOR SOME RULES AND REGULATIONS.
THE END OF THE GOLDEN AGE
Have you ever heard people say that videogames containing violence can make kids violent? People used to say the same thing about comics!
Concern over comics kept growing in the early 1950s. People even burned comic books in protest. In 1954, a psychologist named Dr. Fredric Wertham published a book called Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that children who can’t tell fiction from reality get confused by comic books. He claimed that comic books lead to violent behavior.
Due to Wertham’s book and public pressure, the U.S. Senate decided to hold hearings on the negative effects of comics. The Senate called Bill Gaines, the publisher for EC Comics, to the stand.
Before he entered the Senate building, Gaines took some medication that his doctor had prescribed to help his nerves. That was a mistake! The drugs made him confused. By the end of his testimony, he had agreed that the comics he created were completely inappropriate.
WORDS TO KNOW
hearing: a special session of Congress or the Senate held to “hear” from witnesses and experts on a given issue.
THE AMERICAN PUBLIC WAS FURIOUS.
Comic publishers feared the government would censor their work. Gaines gathered the major comic publishers together to figure out a plan to get Americans to trust comic books again. They formed the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) and elected the publisher of Archie Comics as president. They created a set of rules called the Comics Code. All comics that followed these rules were given a special CMAA badge to print on the covers of their comics.
The Comics Code was the end of publishers such as EC Comics and Crime Does Not Pay. Superheroes couldn’t be shown fighting bad guys with guns, so action scenes and weapons became silly. Comics historians call this era the Silver Age.
As comics became more and more goofy in the 1960s and ’70s, adults moved away from reading comics. Comic creators needed superheroes for a younger audience. A young man named Steve Ditko joined the Marvel Comics team with the idea for a teenager with the powers of a spider. The result was The Amazing Spider-Man.
WORDS TO KNOW
censor: to examine books, movies, letters, etc., in order to remove things that are considered to be offensive or harmful to society.
TEAM SUPER
During the Senate hearings of 1954, many publishers had to sell their characters to keep from going out of business. DC Comics, publisher of Batman and Superman, bought several new heroes, and then faced the problem of mixing them in with its old heroes. In the early 1960s, DC Comics launched the solution—the superhero team.
The Justice League of America (JLA) joined up the heroes of DC Comics to overcome galactic bad guys. The JLA had memorable members such as Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, but also included newly bought heroes, such as The Flash, Green Lantern, and the Martian Manhunter.
Until the 1960s, Marvel Comics was known for copying the popular comics of the day, from romance to westerns to giant monster comics. When Jack Kirby returned from the war and from making romance comics, he and the editor-in-chief, Stan “Lee” Lieber, came up with the idea of a team of scientists who were changed into superheroes by cosmic rays. The team was called the Fantastic Four.
Fans immediately flocked to Marvel Comics. The good news was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were just getting started. In the following years, the duo created almost all of what would become known as the Marvel Superheroes. Together they introduced the Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men, Thor, and another super team that brought back a hero from the Golden Age—Captain America.
Jack Kirby had the idea of bringing Captain America, who had been lost in the North Sea after World War II, back from the 1940s. Stan Lee loved the idea, and together they came up with the Avengers. The comic was a hit.
THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF MARVEL COMICS, ALMOST ALL OF MARVEL’S HEROES HAD TURNS AT BEING AN AVENGER.
JAM COMICS
Supplies: pencils, paper, pens, friends
Comics don’t need to be a lonely art. Drawing a comic with friends can be a fun and funny time! Jam comics are a perfect way to have fun with a group.
1Sit in a circle. Give each person a sheet of paper and a pencil or pen. Have everyone write a title and draw a panel at the top of the page. The first panel should show a character or two and set up an action.
2Pass the page to the right. Don’t say anything about your drawing. All the information the person to your right needs will be in your title and first panel.
3Read the comic you got from the person on your left. Draw a new panel and add your spin on the story.
4Repeat steps two and three until everyone has drawn a panel on each comic. Pass the comics back to their original creators and read the stories everyone created. Are they different from what the first person intended? Are they funny?
TRY THIS! Some cartoonists like to create pages and pages of jam comics around a theme or story. How could you make a jam comic book with your friends? What themes or ideas would you use?
MAKE A DAILY COMIC STRIP
Supplies: notebook with un-ruled paper (a new manga sketchbook would work well), scratch paper, pencil, pen, small ruler
A daily comic is a fun, quick way to practice making comics. They don’t need to be funny and they could even be about your own life! A lot of cartoonists do a daily comic strip, even if they never publish them.
1Choose a theme. What will your daily strip be about? Do you want it to be funny or dramatic? About your daily life? Will it have a changing cast of characters? What about the title?
2Choose a daily design. If you choose to make a one-panel gag comic, what shape is your single panel going to be? If you do a strip, how many panels will you use each day?
3Creating a daily comic can be a lot of work. It might be helpful to brainstorm a bunch of comic ideas ahead and map them on a calendar.
4Now it’s time to put all your new cartooning skills to work. First, make thumbnail sketches, then pencil, ink, and color your comic strip. Create a new one every day!
USE THE “MARVEL METHOD”
Supplies: friends who each take one job (writer, penciler, inker, colorist), art supplies for each job
Inspired by Henry Ford’s assembly line system of manufacturing, Marvel Comics decided to try a new way of making comics that would streamline the process. This became known as the Marvel Method. Get together with your friends and follow the Marvel Method to create a comic!
1WRITER: First, the writer comes up with a plot for the story. For example, Super Mole saves his family from the clutches of Grumpy Gardener with his powers of super digging. The writer also gives information about other characters, how the story should be told, and anything else he or she thinks the penciler should know.
2PENCILER: The penciler uses the plot and character notes from the writer and makes thumbnails to visually tell the story. He or she then carefully pencils the action for each panel. The penciler doesn’t write out any words, but leaves room for the writer to add them in the next step.
3WRITER: The writer adds narration blocks, word balloons, and thought clouds to match the action and panels.
WORDS TO KNOW
Marvel Method: a way of creating comics that relies on an assembly-line format.
4 INKER: The inker traces over the important lines from the penciler and the writer. The inker might also make slight changes to the art, such as adding sound effects, defining shadows, and drawing dark lines to add complexity to each panel. Once finished, the inker erases any pencil lines and the comic goes to the colorist.
5 COLORIST: The colorist chooses colors for the comic and makes the comic come alive.
TRY THIS! How could you use the Marvel Method with only two people? Can you work on several comics at once while different people are doing different parts? For example, the writer might start plotting the next comic while the penciler is still working on the first.
THE MARVEL METHOD
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby came up with the Marvel Method for their first Fantastic Four comic. Here’s how it worked. Stan came up with a plot for the comic and gave the idea to an artist, who drew the whole comic out, telling the story visually. Then Stan added narration and dialogue to the pages. The Marvel Method allowed for a freer visual style, and the artists were able to tell the stories how they envisioned them. Before the Marvel Method, writers completely scripted out the whole comic, including what the panels would look like.
MAKE A SUPERHERO TEAM
Supplies: pencils, paper, colored pencils
Marvel and DC realized the popularity of superhero teams in the 1950s. What makes these teams so much fun?
1Brainstorm some ideas on a piece of paper. What would a superhero team’s job be? Why are they a team? What sort of name would fit the team? How are they related to each other? What brought them together?
2Draw your team, give each member of the team a name, and show his or her power. What makes a good team? If they all had the same type of powers, they wouldn’t be very interesting. What kind of abilities do you want on your team? What powers should they have?
3Try designing costumes that are unique to each character, but still make them look like they belong to a team.
4Lastly, design a secret home base for your team. For example, the Justice League of America meets in an orbiting space station. What and where will your superhero team call home base?
The 1960s saw the start of a popular television show based on the comic book hero Batman. It came out shortly after the invention of color television and featured extremely bright colors, crazy costumes, and silly language. The star of the show, Adam West, played Batman and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, in a deliberately silly way. Watch the introduction credits to the 1960s Batman television show. Does the theme song sound familiar? How are the graphics different from television shows today?