Nouvelle Génération: Modern Mythology, Yours for a Dime

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Modern Mythology, Yours for a Dime

With today’s multiplexes muscle-bound from too many superheroes, and TV frantic with the antic shuffle of tiny zombie feet, S.H.I.E.L.D. spymasters and more, it’s easy to forget there was a time when mainstream comic books were in genuine conversation with the broader culture, instead of being meekly strip-mined for profit by other media.

From its birth in the 1930s, the comic book, that bastard child of lurid pulps and newspaper strips, has become a kinetic and crowd-pleasing part of the give and take in a cultural stew that includes film and TV, pop music and bubble gum cards, radio and the news of the day. On the cover of Captain America No. 1, for example, which thumped onto newsstands in December 1940, Jack Kirby’s dynamic, star-spangled Cap is shown clocking a cartoonish Hitler — one full year before the United States entered World War II.

Those conversations are apparent in a new, generously illustrated book from Taschen, “75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen,” written by Roy Thomas, a former Marvel editor and writer, and edited by Josh Baker.

Mr. Thomas, who also edits the comics history magazine Alter Ego, misses the days when funny books were more than livestock on the Hollywood farm. “There is a sense of loss because the tail is now wagging the dog,” he said in a recent telephone interview.

Still, he added: “Comic book characters were always franchises. But nobody cared about them.”

Here are a few multimedia yarns from the days when comic books were more than just fodder.

OPEN THE FLOODGATES Marvel’s founding publisher, Martin Goodman, never met a genre he couldn’t imitate and then inundate. In the 1950s, when Marvel was called Atlas, westerns and war sagas were Hollywood staples. So out on the dusty plains, his herd of titles included Kid Colt Outlaw and Two-Gun Kid, Ringo Kid and Rawhide Kid — and, oh, Black Rider and Gunsmoke Western. On the war front there was Navy Action, Navy Tales and Navy Combat, Combat, Battlefield and Battle Action, and on the all-alliteration squadron Combat Casey and Devil-Dog Dugan.

OOOH, SURFER BOY Comics have always been open to youth trends, and surf culture was one of the most popular of the 1960s — in music, in movies, and as a sports lifestyle. So it was no big shock when the Silver Surfer zipped and zoomed out of the pages of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s “Fantastic Four” in 1965. But instead of catching a wave, Marvel’s Surfer mastered the breakers and swells of the cosmos.