One of the slides I show in my "History of American Comics" lecture (which begins, by the way, with Richard Outcault and ends with Darwyn Cooke) is this cover and interior page from Action Comics #8 (January 1939).I like the juxtaposition of these two images, because you can clearly see the contrast between the illustrative work of cover artist Fred Guardineer (who was, by the way, the creator of Zatara the magician) and the stiff but blunt penwork of Joe Shuster. If you enlarge the image by clicking on it, you'll see more interesting details, like the tiny panel numbers, indicating the comic strip origin of Superman. The first Superman story was a cut-up and rearranged comic strip that failed to find a syndicate, and Joe Shuster continued to number the individual panels even after Superman found a home in comic book form.
You'll also see the brutal thugishness of the Golden Age Superman as he literally throws some character named Gimpy out of town.
But the most striking detail is the complete absence of Superman's name from the cover of the issue. No image of the character, no "Thrilling Superman Tale Inside!" cover blurb, nothing to indicate that the "Action" indicated by the title is anything other than some James Fenimore Cooper frontier combat. Weird, huh? We always think of Superman being popular from his very first appearance, but DC didn't necessarily know what it had during those first couple of years.
Plus, it makes me think about all the frontier action we're missing in comics these days. Sure, we have Roy Thomas's adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans at Marvel, but once the current Viking fad plays out, can't you see the rise of the Leatherstocking genre? It's been a long wait for those of us who fondly remember Action Comics #8.
4 comments:
Is this the lecture from the Norman Rockwell Museum? I remember your post about it a while back and then I saw the ad in Wizard (Good God, does that look so dorky when it's typed out!) What kind of a trip is a guy from Queens looking at?
Sure, we have Roy Thomas's adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans at Marvel, but once the current Viking fad plays out, can't you see the rise of the Leatherstocking genre?
Check out Northwest Passage!
Yeah, I created the lecture to train the Rockwell volunteer guides a few weeks ago, but now I've decided that it's something I'll be able to use again--in my classroom, probably, and I might use it again to train teachers and librarians as well. The lecture was very well received at the Rockwell, so maybe I'll take it on the road!
It was advertised in Wizard!?!? That is SO not the right crowd for the stuff on display (no capes to speak of--which is why my lecture was heavily super-hero based--I wanted to show all the stuff that's missing from the exhibit to fill in the gaps).
There will be some kind of Comics Art Festival at the Rockwell next spring--you should come up!
I forgot about Northwest Passage! See, the trend is brewing!
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