Batman The War Years: 1939-1945, Edited by Roy Thomas

This stunning companion volume to Superman The War Years: 1938-1945 is equally satisfying to buffs of vintage comic books and antiquated super heroics.  Once again, comics historian Roy Thomas provides a thoughtful and provocative introduction, as well as overviews of each section, sharing historical context and insight into various editorial decisions taken at the time.

Batman The War Years: 1939-1945 shares the same powerful design (this is one beautiful book), and also contains about 20 original comics, covers and newspaper stories.  While much of this material has been reprinted elsewhere and more authoritatively, this volume provides an excellent overview of this period in Batman’s life.  It is also a delicious look at the world of comics during the War years -- if you are interested in the world of 1940s heroics, look no further.

While Superman could not obviously join the war effort because of his superpowers (how could writers, even in the realm of comics, maintain a fraction of plausibility when Superman could end the war in moments?), Batman and Robin were excluded by virtue of their secret identities.  Beneath the cowl and mask, Batman and Robin were mere mortals – their efficacy as crusaders would be lost.  Additionally, as masked vigilantes working largely at night, they were invaluable to the home front, tracking down spies, saboteurs and Fifth Columnists.  (One wonders what Robin discussed with his friends during recess…)

When not battling Nazis and “Japs,” Batman and Robin had more recherché adventures, such as preventing Atlantis from allying with the Nazis or appearing before the U.S. Senate to provide hardened criminals a chance to work on the war effort.  (Even the Joker contributed his own brand of twisted genius against the Axis Menace; your ideology is uniquely twisted if the Joker finds it objectionable.)  I must confess that I was delighted by the selection of stories, and charmed by the fearless storytelling.

Several writers and artists contributed to these tales, including Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang, George Roussos, Don Cameron and Jack and Ray Burnley.  And the stories and art have not been altered to appease our Politically Correct times, so if you like your vintage entertainment unadulterated, look no further.

Finally, a brief word on the Batman to be found in this volume.  Few figures loom larger on the pop cultural landscape than Batman.  But it’s important to remember that Batman, like Superman before him, are not fictional constructs created – and closely held – by an individual author.  Rather, these are corporate entities, fashioned to morph and change over time to remain culturally relevant.  There has been much hoo-haw over the years about which depiction of Batman is the truest or most correct, but such an idea is silly and pointless.  The Batman of the War Years is already dramatically different from the earlier Batman of the late 1930s, who will also be different from the Batman of the 1960s, and the 1980s.  There is no correct representation of Batman, as Batman is, more correctly, a representation of his times.

The Batman in this book is a smiling, scout master Batman who was friendly, capable and accessible.  If you are looking for the psychotic bully that is popular today, look elsewhere.  Despite a world war, global catastrophe and real challenges here on the home front, the America of the 1940s was a much more optimistic place than the America of 2016.  There’s a reason it’s called The Greatest Generation, and that optimism and can-do attitude in the face of extraordinary adversity may well be the reason.  Perhaps it’s time we got Bat to basics…

Superheroes in Gotham at the New York Historical Society

The oldest museum in New York City is also one of its finest: The New York Historical Society.  This terrific venue on the Upper West Side just across the street from Central Park routinely creates stunning exhibitions, all of them in some way connecting to New York.

The museum also regularly provides film shows (the life’s blood of any museum – there is nothing better for cultivating a crowd of ‘regulars’), free lectures, and special events and days for children; it is, in short, as much as a cultural center as an exhibition space.  The smartest museums have come to realize that even the finest exhibitions draw only so many people; it is continuing programs and attractions that drive membership and attendance, and the NYSH has managed this balance with a savvy mix of dignity and razzmatazz.

There is a terrific show at the NYHS right now that shouldn’t be missed.  Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx know of our interest in the history of comic strips and comic books, as well as our soft-spot for those Titans in long underwear, superheroes.  Deftly curated by Debra Schmidt Bach and Nina Nazionale, Superheroes in Gotham argues that superheroes and New York are inseparable.

The show opens, of course, with the first and greatest of them all, Superman.  Created by youngsters Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, Superman’s adopted base of operations, Metropolis, is clearly a stand-in for the Big Apple.  (In fact, some of the earliest stories are set in New York, rather than Metropolis.)  We move quickly onto Batman, where Gotham City is certainly New York’s seedier sections, at night.  (An old DC Comics editorial guide used to insist that writers think of Metropolis as New York around Rockefeller Plaza, and Gotham as New York, under 14^th Street.)

The show then charts the rise of heroes who are explicitly New Yorkers, including Brooklynite Captain America, Queens-boy Spider-Man and Iron Man, with his Manhattan home and Lone Island offices.

For a small show (three good-sized rooms), Bach and Nazionale have densely packed their treasures.  On hand is the original costume of George Reeves (1914-1959), worn during his run on television’s The Adventures of Superman (1952-1958), as well as Julie Newmar’s Catwoman suit from the series, Batman (1966-1968).  There is stunning production art created for the Batman series, original drawings of Superman by artist Schuster, pages of original Spider-Man art (by controversial artist Steve Ditko), as well as Jerry Siegel’s typewriter, incubator for the very first superhero stories.

Also on hand are original animation cells, film posters, schoolbooks featuring doodles and/or finished drawings by comic artists while still schoolkids themselves, and a host of other treasures, including the Batmobile used by Adam West (born 1928) in the television series. 

It’s not surprising that the genre was born here in Gotham.  This Metropolis was the home to many of its creators; in fact, of the first generation of creators, Will Eisner (1917-2005), Stan Lee (born 1922), Bob Kane (1915-1998) and Bill Finger (1914-1974) had all attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.

The exhibition underscores beautifully how essential to the overall myth of the superhero New York City has become.  Larger-than-life heroes need a suitably large background canvas, and New York has so often been shorthand for the grandiose, the dramatic and, sometimes, the absurd.

There is also a raw energy on hand here that comics (and superheroes) no longer seem to possess.  It is as if the cauldron of the Great Depression, a gleaming art deco city (home to the world’s tallest building), and a still-possible American dream galvanized a legion of First Generation Americans to actually create our myths for us.  These have since been corrupted into mere corporate commodities, made slick and unmemorable by loud, over-produced films and stridently-seeking-relevance comic books.  But that crude power found in the original works is astonishing to behold.

If comics and superheroes are both as exciting and oddly poignant to you as they are to us, then this is a show not to be missed.  It runs until February 21, and more information can be found here:  www.nyhistory.org.

NY Comics and Picture-Story Symposium at The New School

Regular readers of The Jade Sphinx are well aware of our love of both illustrated books and comics, one of the few, great indigenous American art forms.  So, we are eagerly anticipating a symposium slated for tonight, March 18 -- the 79^th meeting of the NY Comics and Picture-Story Symposium at Parsons, the New School.  The presentation is Picture Stories/Stories with Pictures, and it will be hosted by scholar Patricia Mainardi. 

Few fans of the comics medium seem to be aware of Rodolphe Töpffer (1799 – 1846).  Töpffer was a Swiss-born teacher, author, painter and cartoonist.  He illustrated many books which are considered to be among the earliest examples of the comic form.

However, while Töpffer was creating his first comic books in the 1830s, book illustration was also undergoing a transformation.  Where books once had a few, sparse illustrations, new printing techniques encouraged hundreds of illustrations.  Artists were now faced with new questions: What to draw? How to draw? How to integrate text and image?  The lecture will survey the parallel history of illustrated books and comic books, mirror images of each other in their first flower of development.

Patricia Mainardi is an art historian, professor emerita in the doctoral program in art history at the City University of New York. A specialist in 19^th Century art, she has published numerous books and articles on topics from painting to comics and is currently completing  a book on nineteenth-century illustrated print culture, including comics, caricature, and illustrated books and periodicals.

The above illustration is by French illustrator, engraver and painter Tony Johannot (1803-1852), and reads:  And so, in the guise of friendship, the villain managed to steal my brain, which he took for himself, for, as my head shrunk in volume, his grew larger, published in Travel Where You Will, Book Written with Pen and Crayon, with Vignettes, Legends, Episodes, Commentaries, Incidents, Notes and Poetry, 1843.

The lecture will take place at 7:00 p.m. at Parsons The New School, 2 West 13th Street, in the Bark Room (off the lobby). It is free and open to the public.

We Go to a Comic Book Store

It is completely without shame that I confess I loved comic books as a boy.  (And have been known to read some of them in my adulthood with satisfaction.)  In the 1970s, I regularly read such comics (or black-and-white comic magazines, which were my preference) as The Shadow, Doc Savage, Planet of the Apes, Tomb of Dracula, House of Mystery, Sherlock Holmes (sadly, never lasting more than an issue or two), and even The Hulk.  And, to this day, I have a deep and abiding affection for Superman.  Even as a boy, I thought Superman was the great American success story.  An immigrant raised in America’s heartland, he took our national myth to heart and made himself into the embodiment of all that is good about us.  (I was also beglamoured by visions of his lost planet Krypton, which was often portrayed as a 1930s art deco-inspired wonderland.  If heaven exists and mirrors our expectations, for me it would resemble Krytpon to no little degree.)

Clearly, the argument that reading comics in one’s youth “ruins” one for adult literature doesn’t seem to be airtight.  I distinctly remember reading the Planet of the Apes comics and Balzac at the same time … in fact, I would heartily endorse anything that encourages young people to read at all.

When I was a boy, comic books were available in every corner newsstand, in drug and convenience stores, and sometimes in five-and-dime stores, such as Woolworth’s.  Comics were ubiquitous – read in school lunchrooms, in the park, and often found crumpled at the bottom of book bags or rolled in back pockets.

Then, something strange and terrible happened to the comics industry.  (WHAM!)  A new form of sales – comics direct marketing – changed the way comic books were bought and sold.  Instead of being available everywhere, comics were now sold primarily through comic book specialty stores.  (And today, it’s nearly impossible to find comics anywhere else.)  Where comics were once the common currency of kids everywhere, they became a specialized commodity of interest to only those in-the-know.

The effect of this decision was two-fold.  First, it saved comics when they probably would have disappeared completely in competition against laptops, video games, and other youthful time drains.  However, what it also meant is that the audience changed primarily from all children to a devoted (fanatical!) band of devotees.  And – more significantly – this audience has aged, taking comics with them.  By and large, comics are not for children anymore.

To my mind, saving comics also killed them.  Whereas comics reading amongst children once numbered in the many millions, it now numbers in the many thousands among adults.  In addition, it has perverted perfectly delightful adolescent fantasies – such as Batman or Superman – in the misguided struggle to make them “adult,” an aesthetic miscalculation and intellectual dead end.  If you treat much of this material in an “adult” manner, it often becomes even more risible.  What are the recent Batman films, really, other than Lethal Weapon in a shroud?

These thoughts came to mind as I stepped, on a whim, into a comic book store while visiting friends in Long Island.  There were very few young people on hand – though, I must confess, most were younger than I.  (Not all that difficult a proposition these days.)

The thing that struck me the most is that many (many, many, many!) things on the shelves were recreations of things I saw or had as a boy.  Aurora monster model kits; Sean Connery/James Bond model kits; hardcover collections of Superman from the 1970s; figures from the movie Mad Monster Party? (1967) at nearly $25 a figurine; action figures of characters from the sitcom The Munsters (1964-1966); bendable toys of Huckleberry Hound (1958); a Flintstones (1960-1966) watch …. I could go on, but you get the idea. No one under 50 would have any point of reference for most of the wares on parade.  And it dawned on me … comic book stores really don’t even sell comic books anymore --- they sell tired Baby Boomers the youth they so desperately miss.

If ever there was a recipe for extinction, it would be this.  While comic books still operate to a degree as the research and development arm for bloated, senseless “event movies,” the idea that they are a thriving and viable medium is, sadly, no longer correct.  It’s often amusing and even instructive to revisit the passions of one’s youth, but it’s an awful plan for building an ongoing artistic legacy.