Losing the Smash! Blamm! Bang!
JACOBSON, SID
Losing the Smash! Blamm! Bang! Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America By Bradford W. Wright Johns Hopkins. 336 pp. $34.95. Reviewed by Sid Jacobson Former...
...What Wright does not seem to realize, or simply neglects to say, is that none of this was unique...
...It was a wise tactic...
...It was this culture, he believed, that subverted the morality of children for the sake of profit...
...The faulty logic of the entrepreneurs is matched by Wright's premise...
...Anti-Nazism could be found, too, in pulps, novels, comic strips, movie serials, and other types of fiction of the day...
...So it was all a Communist plot...
...The comic books based on novels, TV characters and movies...
...There is a publisher, any number of editors, a laundry list of writers and artists, and a lead character that must be treated with some consistency...
...In other words, the comic books that were made for the original readers—boys and girls from six to 13 years old who, in the medium's golden age, bought 800 to 900 million copies annually...
...Some even have a new name, "graphic novel," and are sold largely in socalled "comic stores," alongside trading cards, expensive action figures and various sorts of pornographic material...
...the character with the greatest number of issues ever amassed (Richie Rich...
...The latest answer—to the author's satisfaction, it seems —has been to change the audience...
...Another film, The Mortal Storm, released in 1940, was a powerful antiNazi vehicle that was typical of its time...
...The fact is that comic books have never reflected the political philosophy of a single individual...
...There can be no doubt about the overabundance of sex and violence in comic books, then and now...
...Radar also underscored the importance of free trade for peace in the postwar world...
...His attempt to make a case for its having brought about the "transformation of American youth culture" is laughable...
...The primary purpose of these people, however, is to sell comic books and maintain their title's popularity—albeit not always by very virtuous means...
...But then, that begins to sound dangerously like Wright himself, who places far too much faith in the ability of comic books to affect the culture that created them...
...In 1940, a superhero known as the Sub-Mariner "pledges to aid the Allies in their struggle against the Germans in the Atlantic—a remarkable declaration coming a full year before the United States had even commenced lend-lease aid...
...And, of course, it would appear in comic books, which always used current events as fodder for their stories...
...What to do, short of censorship, has always been the big question...
...they mostly cater to, for want of a better description, young adults...
...rooted in a general, almost Marxist, critique of American commercial culture...
...THE AUTHOR deems those titles irrelevant to demonstrating a comic book-inspired cultural transformation...
...The author thus immediately dismisses one of the biggest sellers of all time (Donald Duck...
...The Tarzans and Flash Gordons...
...Not until the 1938 debut of Superman in the first issue of Action Comics, though, did the medium become an independent industry...
...For many reasons, that was not a good thing...
...Here are some examples of his thesis: • "Reference to the War appeared very early in comic books...
...Various attempts at self-restraint or policing by a code authority have failed...
...His description of a "comic book nation" is at best incomplete...
...As for Radar, the character was a secondary feature in Master Comics that didnotrun very long, was not commercially successful, and could hardly be seen as representative of many other comic books, let alone the emerging worldview of American youth...
...Within weeks of Superman's appearance in candy store windows, virtually every boy in America knew about the all-powerful hero in the red cape and blue tights and was ready to plunk down his dime for the next installment of unbridled entertainment...
...A very substantial part of the market indeed, and a part certainly aimed at the older (and much older) reader...
...Previously, comic books were mostly collections of famous daily newspaper comic strips—Dick Tracy, Joe Palooka, Blondie, Li 'lAbner, Alley Oop and the like—each strung together to create stories...
...But Superman, and the hundreds of copy capes and near copy capes that followed, changed a mostly reprint operation into an original art form for kids...
...Comic books have grown up, or, if you prefer, grown down...
...Initially they viewed direct market comic stores as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, because they buy books without the right of return...
...The Disney, Wamer Brothers and Hanna-Barbera characters...
...The movie Confessions of a Nazi Spy, released in 1939, convincingly cautioned against the Nazi Fifth Column already at work in the United States...
...Several organizations used them to deal with literacy problems...
...and a series begun in 1942 that is still the most popular line sold on newsstands today (Archie...
...Far from transforming our culture, the comic book instead destroyed itself by becoming more violent, sexually explicit and offensive...
...While titles like Donald Duck, Richie Rich and Archie have enjoyed very large preteen audiences," they are "relatively unhelpful for the purposes of a cultural history...
...But where are the Westerns and the detectives...
...The Man of Steel's appearance had an impact comparable to that of Elvis Presley in the realm of rock'n'roll...
...In comic bookjargon, it was nothing less than a "Smash...
...The disappearance of the candy store and the corner newsstand had much to do with this turn of events...
...Different ideas are offered and, at different times, one or another will prevail...
...Today, comic book publishing is a shadow of its former self...
...Many educators believe they helped youngsters acquire andimprove their reading skills...
...At a time when fears of spreading Communism became a pervasive concern in the West, [the comic book character] Radar warned that Right-wing extremism remained the chief threat to world peace...
...That is sheer nonsense...
...They also were seen as teaching kids the importance of friendship, tolerance, going to school, and family...
...On a number of occasions in its 60odd year history, the medium has come under the gun of Congressional committees, distributors, newspapers, magazines, and educators for its graphic violence, highly sexual material and immoral themes...
...Will Eisner's 'Espionage,' published in Smash Comics, was the first comic book series to focus on the War in Europe, doing so even before there was a war...
...Alas, the pot had a leak in it, like the publishers' thinking, and circulation plummeted...
...He shouldn't...
...These glaring omissions reduce his comic book nation to a mere city...
...Their absence now, some would argue, may help explain the decline of these values...
...I do not consider all types of comic books," Wright confesses in his Introduction...
...Wright covers these episodes well, though one is not sure from what point of view...
...In discussing psychiatrist Frederic Wertham's famous condemnation of comic books in 1948, he writes: "Wertham's private writings reveal that his assault on comic books was...
...Bradford W. Wright, an adjunct professor of history at the University of Maryland's European College Division, claims to do this in Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America...
...Today's publications are no longer geared toward children...
...Wright is mainly interested in a handful of genres: superhero, crime, horror, war, and romance...
...Reviewed by Sid Jacobson Former editor, Harvey, Marvel, Archie Comics The earliest comic books can be traced to the 1920s—and perhaps, in their most primitive form, to the cave drawings of the Stone Age...
...it is dismally devoted to attracting a mainly male audience aged 18 to whatever...
...The teenagers and Little Lulus, Audreys and Dots...
...He rarely let the Leftist angle of his critique emerge in his public arguments, however...
...There is a history here, however, that is worth examining— especially given our present semi-literate society...
...But so did the greed of the publishers...
Vol. 84 • May 2001 • No. 3
