intricate lore and narrative completeness was a hallmark of the great “Superman-family” books ( Adventure, Jimmy Olsen, Superboy ) under the editorship of Mort Weisinger.
3) Let’s cultivate an unflagging readiness as storytellers to retell the same stories with endless embellishment. Anybody who thinks that kids get bored by hearing the same story over and over again has never spent time telling stories to kids. The key, as in baroque music, is repetition with variation. Again the Mort Weisinger-edited Superman books, written by unflagging storytellers like Edmond Hamilton and Otto Binder, were exemplary in this regard. The proliferation of theme and variation there verges, at times, on sheer, splendid madness.
4) Let’s blow their little minds. A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are all good things; but a mind is blown when somethingthat you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.
So much for my principles: here is my concrete suggestion. If it seems a little obvious, or has already been tried and failed, then I apologize. But I cannot help noticing that in the world of children’s literature, an overwhelming preponderance of stories are stories about children. The same is true of films for children: the central characters are nearly always a child, or a pair or group of children. Comic books, however, even those theoretically aimed at children, are almost always about adults or teenagers. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I suggest that a publisher should try putting out a truly thrilling, honestly observed and remembered, richly imagined, involved and yet narratively straight-forward comic book for children, about children.
My oldest son is ten now, and he likes comic books. In 1943, if you were a ten-year-old, you probably knew a dozen other kids your age who were into Captain Marvel and the Submariner and the Blue Beetle. When I was ten, in 1973, I knew three or four. But in his class, in his world, my son is all but unique; he’s the only one he knows who reads them, studies them, seeks to master and be worthy of all the rapture and strangeness they still contain. Now, comic books are so important to me—I have thought, talked, and written about them so much—that if my son did not in fact like them, I think he would be obliged to loathe them. I have pretty much forced comics on my children. But those of us who grew up loving comic books can’t afford to take this handcrafted, one-kid-at-a-time approach anymore. Wehave to sweep them up and carry them off on the flying carpets of story and pictures on which we ourselves, in entire generations, were borne aloft, on carpets woven by Curt Swan and Edmond Hamilton, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Those artists did it for us; we who make comics today have a solemn debt to pass it on, to weave bright carpets of our own. It’s our duty, it’s our opportunity, and I really do believe it will be our pleasure.
* See, for example, www.comichron.com .
THE KILLER HOOK
HOWARD CHAYKIN’S AMERICAN FLAGG!
1.
I N A POPULAR MEDIUM that needs to label everyone a journeyman hack or a flaming genius god—like the world of comic-book art—Howard Chaykin is something else: a craftsman, an artisan of pop.
I don’t mean that Chaykin works harder on or takes greater pains with his drawing, though his panels and his layouts bear witness to the pains he takes (like many craftsmen he actually works rather fast). Nor do I mean merely that he brings deeper technical prowess to the comics page (though when it
3) Let’s cultivate an unflagging readiness as storytellers to retell the same stories with endless embellishment. Anybody who thinks that kids get bored by hearing the same story over and over again has never spent time telling stories to kids. The key, as in baroque music, is repetition with variation. Again the Mort Weisinger-edited Superman books, written by unflagging storytellers like Edmond Hamilton and Otto Binder, were exemplary in this regard. The proliferation of theme and variation there verges, at times, on sheer, splendid madness.
4) Let’s blow their little minds. A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are all good things; but a mind is blown when somethingthat you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.
So much for my principles: here is my concrete suggestion. If it seems a little obvious, or has already been tried and failed, then I apologize. But I cannot help noticing that in the world of children’s literature, an overwhelming preponderance of stories are stories about children. The same is true of films for children: the central characters are nearly always a child, or a pair or group of children. Comic books, however, even those theoretically aimed at children, are almost always about adults or teenagers. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? I suggest that a publisher should try putting out a truly thrilling, honestly observed and remembered, richly imagined, involved and yet narratively straight-forward comic book for children, about children.
My oldest son is ten now, and he likes comic books. In 1943, if you were a ten-year-old, you probably knew a dozen other kids your age who were into Captain Marvel and the Submariner and the Blue Beetle. When I was ten, in 1973, I knew three or four. But in his class, in his world, my son is all but unique; he’s the only one he knows who reads them, studies them, seeks to master and be worthy of all the rapture and strangeness they still contain. Now, comic books are so important to me—I have thought, talked, and written about them so much—that if my son did not in fact like them, I think he would be obliged to loathe them. I have pretty much forced comics on my children. But those of us who grew up loving comic books can’t afford to take this handcrafted, one-kid-at-a-time approach anymore. Wehave to sweep them up and carry them off on the flying carpets of story and pictures on which we ourselves, in entire generations, were borne aloft, on carpets woven by Curt Swan and Edmond Hamilton, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Those artists did it for us; we who make comics today have a solemn debt to pass it on, to weave bright carpets of our own. It’s our duty, it’s our opportunity, and I really do believe it will be our pleasure.
* See, for example, www.comichron.com .
THE KILLER HOOK
HOWARD CHAYKIN’S AMERICAN FLAGG!
1.
I N A POPULAR MEDIUM that needs to label everyone a journeyman hack or a flaming genius god—like the world of comic-book art—Howard Chaykin is something else: a craftsman, an artisan of pop.
I don’t mean that Chaykin works harder on or takes greater pains with his drawing, though his panels and his layouts bear witness to the pains he takes (like many craftsmen he actually works rather fast). Nor do I mean merely that he brings deeper technical prowess to the comics page (though when it
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