Reclaiming History: The Encyclopedia Americana Entry on Comics, 1958

Welcome to a new installment of Reclaiming History, an ongoing series where the Comics Cube! tries to balance out what the history books say and what actually happened! Click here for the archive!

A few months ago, I was at a friend's house, and he had a complete set of the 1958 edition of the Encyclopedia Americana. Out of curiosity, I picked up one volume and flipped through the "Comics" entry. And then I took pictures of it so I can share it with all of you!

This is written by Harvey Zorbaugh, who was then the chairman of the Department of Sociology of the School of Education in NYU.

Here are some notable bits.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the first paragraph, in which comics are defined: "As distinguished from the single cartoon, comics consist of a series of pictorial representations telling a story, developing a situation, or at least presenting the same character in varied circumstances." This predates Will Eisner's definition of "sequential art," as given by his book COMICS AND SEQUENTIAL ART, by 27 years, and the more famous definition by Scott McCloud from UNDERSTANDING COMICS — "Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the reader" — by 35 years.

Personally, I feel that the definition of comics as having at least two images is a device for convenience — it lets us leave out more things that are clearly not "comics" than include more things that may be considered as such. For example, I would call FAMILY CIRCUS a comic, even though it's only made up of one panel. However, the thing is, if we include single images, then something like the Mona Lisa could be called "a comic, " and it's not. It should be noted though, that Zorbaugh makes a provision for the "Family Circus"–type cartoons in his definition by saying "at least the same character in varied circumstances." It's the serialized nature of the publication that comes into play. (After all, if you placed two FAMILY CIRCUS comics together, you'd pretty much fit McCloud's definition.)

One more reason I think this is good to note is that a lot of comic book armchair scholars tend to treat McCloud as the be-all, end-all of comics debate — something he never intended — without acknowledging that Eisner preceded him (despite McCloud continually mentioning Eisner in his book). Turns out that comics have been defined as having at least two pictures in sequence since at least  1958. (I say at least because I'm sure this was written before 1955 — there's no mention of Fredric Wertham and the Senate hearings in the entry.)

In addition, it does state that comics don't need word balloons or narration boxes or words at all, so whoever is still arguing that point really ought to let that go.

More bits and the full article after the jump.

Read Alan Moore's JUDGE DREDD Script!

Back in 2003, when he turned 50 (so I guess he's turning 58 in 10 days), Alan Moore got two books devoted to him. They were full of tribute art and testimonials by fellow artists and writers. One of them, THE EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE, even printed two Moore scripts that were never illustrated.

One of those scripts is Moore's first-ever attempt at writing a comic book script (he had been doing comic strips prior). With guidance from his friend Steve Moore, Alan wrote 2000 AD's flagship character for the only recorded time in history. Editor Alan Grant never bought the script (presumably because they were doing fine with John Wagner's stories), and it's not as "stringent" as Moore's scripts would later come to be known (he doesn't even demarcate the page numbers here). It's an interesting look into the evolving process of one of comics' greatest writers, and is a true historical artifact.

And if you're one of the Filipino artists trying out for The David Hontiveros Project and don't have a script to work with yet, well, here's one for you.

This script is copyright Alan Moore.

Check out more Moore-related features in these two books!

Easter Eggs in Comics: Jeff Smax says Happy Halloween!

Welcome to another installment of Easter Eggs in Comics! Click here for the archive!

Today's aptly timed Easter Egg comes to us from Alan Moore and Zander Cannon's SMAX miniseries. Smax lives in a fantasy world — literally — and the entire comic is full of fantasy genre Easter Eggs. He has to go on a quest, so he has to get a permit to go on a quest. On the way to the bureau, he takes a shortcut through the alleyway of eerie children.

How many characters can you spot? There's Casper the Friendly Ghost, Wendy the Witch, a dead version of Harry Potter ("The Boy Who Lived" seems to now be "The Boy Who Died"), and a couple more. Can anyone name them?

Happy Halloween, folks!

Learn more about Smax and Top 10 here. 

This can be found in:

An ABC Retrospective, Day 6: A Final Word on America's Best Comics (In Which We Thank Alex and Todd)

Welcome to Day 6 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on America's Best Comics. You can read the intro to this series here. This is its conclusion.

Today, we give the final word on America's Best Comics, thanking two people in particular: Alex Ross and Todd Klein!

An ABC Retrospective, Day 5: PROMETHEA

Welcome to Day 5 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on America's Best Comics. You can read about this series here.

Today, we focus on PROMETHEA, by Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray, and Jose Villarubia!

An ABC Retrospective, Day 4: TOMORROW STORIES

Welcome to Day 4 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on America's Best Comics. You can read about this series here.

Today, we focus on TOMORROW STORIES, by Alan Moore, Kevin Nowlan, Melinda Gebbie, Jim Baikie, Hilary Barta, and Rick Veitch!

An ABC Retrospective, Day 3: LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN

Welcome to Day 3 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on America's Best Comics. You can read about this series here.

Today, we focus on THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill!

An ABC Retrospective, Day 2: TOP 10

Welcome to Day 2 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on America's Best Comics. You can read about this series here.

Today, we focus on TOP 10, by Alan Moore, Gene Ha, and Zander Cannon!

An ABC Retrospective, Day 1: TOM STRONG

Welcome to Day 1 of The Comics Cube!'s retrospective series on America's Best Comics. You can read about this series here.

Today, we focus on TOM STRONG, by Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse!

An ABC Retrospective

On July 4–9, 2011, I did a week-long retrospective series of America's Best Comics, known more casually as ABC.

In 1999, Alan Moore was working for Rob Liefeld's Awesome Entertainment, writing titles such as SUPREME ( a Superman homage) with Joe Bennett, Rick Veitch, and Chris Sprouse on art duties; GLORY (a Wonder Woman homage) with Brandon Peterson and Melinda Gebbie; and YOUNGBLOOD (not exactly a Teen Titans homage, but certainly based on that template) with Steve Skroce. With a couple of exceptions, that's a very elite group of artists, so when Awesome Entertainment folded, it didn't take long for Jim Lee to make Alan Moore an offer to start his own imprint under Wildstorm Productions.

Scott Dunbier, Jim Lee, and Alan Moore

Legend has it that Moore thought about it for a while, wandered around his house, looked through his work notebooks, and then saw a list of names that he'd just come up with one night. They were just names that had no ideas attached to them whatsoever, but they were the names that Moore pitched to Jim Lee when he accepted the offer. Moore brought the same stable of artists he had from Awesome, and when a Peterson, Skroce, and Bennett left, Jim Lee happily replaced them (with suggestions from Alex Ross) with  Kevin Nowlan, Kevin O'Neill, a young Gene Ha, Zander Cannon, and an unknown JH Williams III. When Jim Lee sold Wildstorm to DC Comics, Moore agreed to continue the imprint lest everyone lost their gigs, under the condition that DC would never tamper with his material, that Wildstorm would be the middleman, and that the DC bullet would never show up on the covers. It didn't quite work out that way, and that's partly why the ABC line didn't last more than seven years under Moore. But those seven years were a true marvel of writing, storytelling, and artwork. They were comics at their best.

The basic starting point of the ABC books was "What if Superman never showed up?", therefore changing the evolution of comics so that superheroes didn't have a monopoly on the market (although they would still be there on some level or another). None of the books were connected at first, and with the exception of one, they would all be connected at the end.

The titles are:

• TOM STRONG, ABC's flagship character, who takes his inspiration mainly from Doc Savage
• TOP 10, a police precinct of superpowered beings in a city full of superpowered beings
• THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, a tale set in the late 19th Century, where literary figures Mina Murray (Dracula), Alan Quatermain (King Solomon's Mines), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (uh, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), and, the Invisible Man (...The Invisible Man...) are brought together to carry out missions for the British government
• TOMORROW STORIES, an anthology that featured Greyshirt (an homage to The Spirit), Jack B. Quick (somewhat an homage to Herbie), Splash Brannigan (a tribute to Harvey Kurtzman), The First American (a tribute to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby), and Cobweb (an experimental strip about a woman who didn't wear underwear)
• PROMETHEA, a tale about myth, imagination, story, and magic. And also, the comic that means the most to me, personally.
• A final word about America's Best Comics (In Which We Thank Alex and Todd)

The ABC books were very personal to me, and I hope you'll join me for the ride. If you've never read any of them, I hope you have fun discovering them. If you have, come with me next week, for a trip down memory lane, and to wander around with some old friends.

Comic Book Glossary: The Masking Effect

Welcome to a new installment of Comic Book Glossary! One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics, and one thing everyone needs to know if they're interested are the terms.Click here for the index!.

One thing that I mention quite a bit here is "the masking effect," which I learned from Scott McCloud in his book, UNDERSTANDING COMICS. The basic idea is that there are multiple levels of realism to one image. The characters would be drawn in a cartoony, blank style, while the background and surrounding objects would be drawn in a more realistic style.

For example, in the John Celardo–drawn TARZAN comic strips, which you can find on Comics.com, the little boy Ito, the point of identification for the young reader, is drawn with very few details on his face and a lot of expressiveness, while things like the elephant, the background, and even Tarzan himself are drawn with more realism.

Note also that Tarzan is more realistically rendered than Ito, but less so than the elephant.

The technique's intention is counterintuitive. The idea is that detail makes you a spectator, while the lack of such makes you a participant. I mean, when you see this, you project yourself. Anyone would:

This and the next image are from xkcd.

But when you add even a tiny bit of detail to it, it becomes less universal. "Everyone" becomes "everyone with this kind of hat."

So there. The idea is very sound. Because you can relate to people, characters that are meant to be relatable get the cartoony treatment. You can't relate to an elephant (unless it's Dumbo), so the elephant gets more detail.

I see the masking technique used a lot. But it also applies to anthropomorphized animals, mainly because we can still project ourselves into them, as proven by Disney and Looney Tunes. Here's a Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge page. Cartoonyness with the characters draws us into the story as participants; detail in the background makes us appreciate the beauty.

And of course, the whole "the background has to be realistic" isn't a strict rule. The "masking" just comes from making the lead characters identifiable. This is why I've always preferred GOOD-BYE CHUNKY RICE to BLANKETS. One makes you a spectator, the other makes you a participant. (See a more detailed explanation here.)

BLANKETS. Very specific features. You're a spectator.
But notice that Craig's features are less specific than Raina's.
This makes it easier to relate to him.

GOOD-BYE CHUNKY RICE. A turtle and a mouse.
You can see yourself in them. You're a participant.

Perhaps the most potent example of the masking effect is in comics' only Pulitzer Prize winner: Art Spiegelman's MAUS.

For those not in the know, the whole concept of MAUS is that it's Spiegelman interviewing his father Vladek about his experiences in the Holocaust. The Jews are portrayed as mice, while the Nazis are portrayed as cats. In an essay entitled "Little Orphan Annie's Eyeballs," found on THE COMPLETE MAUS CD, Spiegelman states:

In MAUS, the mouse heads are masks, virtually blank... a white screen that the reader can project upon...I found myself drawing every panel, every figure ... so as to pare it down to an essence, as if each panel was an attempt to invent a new word.

In fact, the cartoon is an abstraction, similar to the word.  Words generalize and stereotype meanings, and Spiegelman’s cartooning techniques only generalize and stereotype the events.  The same sets of lines are used to express certain emotions.  A basic v-shaped arch in place of the eyebrows conveys anger, while a straight line in place of the eye, as opposed to a big black dot, conveys squinting, which signifies that the character is joking, or telling a cheerful tale.  The arrangement of repetitive sets of lines and dots can be used to classify the graphics in MAUS as well as language.  In effect, Spiegelman succeeds in creating a new language, specifically for the novel.  Each illustration was of the bare essence of what it tried to convey, and it made all the rest of the details up to the readers’ imaginations.

By depersonalizing the characters with simplistic depictions, it makes the message of the story matter more.  One reviewer on the back of the book states that “the very artificiality of its surface makes it possible to imagine the reality beneath.” This is Spiegelman’s way of trying to show a story that is too disturbing and “profane to show directly,”  and allows the reader to experience it from a safe distance.   The open-ended nature of the visuals leaves the characters open for interpretation.  Because of the lack of detail put into faces and figures, the readers are left to infer characters’ backgrounds, details, and personality, based only on the previous information given.  By forcing readers into an interactive role, Spiegelman manages to keep them engaged in the tale should the biographic content grow to be tiresome.

And that's how the masking effect works. Remember this one, guys, because I tend to reference it a lot.

Comic Book Glossary

Greetings, loyal Cubers, and welcome to the index for Comic Book Glossary. One of the aims of the Comics Cube! has always been to help out the newer readers who may be interested in, but aren't all that knowledgeable in comics. So here we are, providing definitions for some comics terms.

Art Spiegelman's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"
utilizes many techniques all in one page.

Although other indexes on the Cube place the items in chronological order, it's only right for me to do this in alphabetical order, since it is, after all, a glossary.

Bleed
Gutter
Masking Effect, The
Panel
Polyptych
Splash
Spread 
Transitions, Part 1 (action-to-action, subject-to-subject, scene-to-scene)
Transitions, Part 2 (moment-to-moment, aspect-to-aspect, non-sequitur)

Comics Techniques and Tricks: Jim Steranko

Welcome to another edition of Comics Techniques and Tricks, in which we showcase techniques that only comics can do! Click here for the archive!

I bought a copy of MARVEL VISIONARIES: JIM STERANKO over a month ago, and I could have very easily picked just about any page from this book for this feature because Jim Steranko is a master of comics tricks. (See here for more examples.)

However, the comic I'll be focusing on is TOWER OF SHADOWS #1, which has the short story "At the Stroke of Midnight."

All scans here are from this site.

In this story, Lou and Marie, a married couple who do not love each other, go into Shadow House, Lou's ancestral home, to find something belonging to his grandfather. Steranko uses variations of a grid, laying out each page in three tiers of panels, all of the same height, but changing the widths to suit the mood necessary for the story. Here's the first tier of page 3.

Note how the first five panels are very cramped together, causing a feeling of claustrophobia for both Lou and the reader. You know it's Lou feeling hemmed in, even without reading the dialogue, because Marie has a black background behind her. And also because of their body language. The panels get slightly wider when Marie gets angry, giving her the sole red panel in that otherwise very steady palette of blacks and oranges, showing that she's not feeling afraid.

Finally, note how the last two panels are a polyptych — two panels that really form one big panel, with the gutter in between showing the passage of a small moment in time. Additionally, it shows a symbolic separation between the two characters.

Here's the next tier.

Steranko pulls back for the first panel and widens it to give us a semi-establishing shot. The light held by Lou causes more shadows (and frankly, just look at how well-drawn that panel is), heightening the atmosphere.

But the real kicker is the second to fourth panels, which is another polyptych, this time of Lou's face. It slows down time and once again hems him (and us) in. It's a sharp contrast with the fifth panel, which is about as wide as those three panels put together, really underscoring the differences between the two characters.

Jim Steranko was a master of mood and atmosphere, taking these Eisnerian effects to the next level.

"At the Stroke of Midnight" won the 1969 Alley Award for Best Feature Story. Grantbridge Street &other misadventures has the entire story scanned and uploaded here. If you want to own a copy for yourself, you can find it in MARVEL VISIONARIES: JIM STERANKO.

Reclaiming History: Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez

Welcome to a new installment of Reclaiming History, an ongoing series where the Comics Cube! tries to balance out what the history books say and what actually happened! Click here for the archive!

Today, we reclaim history in honor of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, the most important comic book artist that everyone hasn't heard of!

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, to more than just one whole generation of comic book readers, is DC Comics. He is the standard and the model by which everything is based.

But Duy, you ask, what works has he done that would give him that classification?

Well, you can see his stellar storytelling work on THE MANY WORLDS OF TESLA STRONG:

Click here for this installment of Comics Techniques and Tricks!

DEADMAN:

KAL, an Elseworlds story he did with Dave Gibbons, where Superman lands in medieval times:

THE METAL MEN segment of WEDNESDAY COMICS:

The SUPERMAN VERSUS WONDER WOMAN story he did back in the 70s:

Click here for this installment of Comics Techniques and Tricks!

But the work he is probably best known for is the original BATMAN VS. HULK crossover, which came out in 1981 and is available in CROSSOVER CLASSICS:

This one piece of work is an incredible showcase of layout, design, and figure work. For example, to this day, I believe that Batman can beat the Hulk by using sleeping gas and then kicking his stomach in. I know a lot of hardcore comics fans have problems with that notion, but Garcia-Lopez drew it so well and so convincingly.

This is from two separate pages, put together. I found it on Google.

Later on, the Joker gets ultimate power, and we get pages like this.

So Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is a very dynamic storyteller. But it doesn't really say why he's so important, does it? Well, we're getting to that. And the most amazing thing is, I don't even have to say a whole lot. This entire story can be told in pictures.

You might also be thinking that Garcia-Lopez's figures look very default. Like maybe they're the versions that you see on lunchboxes and everything. Well, that's because they are.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is the artist behind the model sheets for DC Comics. For much of the 80s into the early 90s, his drawings were the bases for the works of every. single. artist. working at DC Comics. He drew the style guide:

And he made sure that everyone knew how everyone was drawn. Check out these model sheets:

He also did a lot of promotional material. I know I've seen these images on lunchboxes, bags, and T-shirts before, and I'm sure you have too:

Plus, just look at the design work on those babies. Isn't that great?

In MODERN MASTERS #5, an issue devoted to Garcia-Lopez, Andrew Helfer makes it clear that Jose Luis was held for a long time as DC's secret weapon. Every editor in the business knew him, but few knew his name and much less his phone number. DC kept it abreast for so long because they were afraid that Marvel would snap him up with a better offer. They had every reason to fear that (if I were Marvel, I would have). And so, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez became the man who kept DC Comics consistent across all their books. The artists of DC Comics had it so much easier, because they had Garcia-Lopez to work off of.


Unfortunately, it's this "secret-keeping" that makes him a prime subject for Reclaiming History. In fact, in DC Comics' retrospective book, DC COMICS: SIXTY YEARS OF THE WORLD'S FAVORITE COMIC BOOK HEROES, he has all of three blurbs in captions accompanying photos, and only one mention in the body of an actual article. If you weren't familiar with him, you'd never have known he did the cover.

Garcia-Lopez's craftsmanship is unparalleled, and it's best illustrated by an anecdote told in MODERN MASTERS #5. Legendary European artist, Jean Giraud, also known as Moebius, was looking at Garcia-Lopez's work. He asked Helfer, "This Garcia-Lopez, he uses models, no?" When Helfer said, "No," with a smile, Moebius' only answer?

"SON OF A BITCH!"

This may be the highest compliment another artist can give to another artist, but as a fan, I can give this guy the highest compliment I can give anyone. When I think about pretty much any character from DC Comics, the versions that I see in my head — even with Neal Adams' Batman, George Perez's Wonder Woman, and Gary Frank's Superman — are those of Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez.

In my mind, he is DC Comics.

Some Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez works right here: