The Weird, the Shocking, and The Suspenceful: an alternate comics story

:eek: Never a fan. (Tho it does explain the leaping.:p)

:eek::eek::eek::eek: I had no clue.:eek::eek: And I thought Doc Doom's history was complicated.:eek::p

I still have to wonder, tho, if the fact the writers didn't really expect their readers to care about continuity had a lot to do with it. Who in the '30s & '40s (or even '60s) really expected anybody to keep track of it all? Plus the fact they were making it up as they went along, which is (at least part of) the reason it got so c*cked up. No, I don't mean to excuse it, but it is explicable. (And yes, "Dead Yet Alive" is shades of creepy--shades of sick.
:eek:)

Actually there were writers that did expect readers to care about continuity in '30s & '40s (or even '60s): the writers of the daily (or weekly) comics.

In many respects they had a harder time of it because they were generally limited to four and later three panels a day. So it could take months to tell one major story. For example, The Blank from Dick Tracy ran from 1937-1938 taking a little over 13 weeks to tell.

Little Orphan Annie (1924), Dick Tracy (1931), The Phantom (1936), and Prince Valiant (1936) are all examples.

Sticking just to the daily Dick Tracy AFAIK has only one major blatant continuity snafu: Mumbles. There was a 1994 story story that ignored the three previous appearances of Mumbles one of which had only been 4 years previously.

Superman's problem was too much material and unlike the daily strips had more then one writer. The "Flash of Two Worlds" in Flash #123 (Sept. 1961) along with reprints made continuity an issue.

As far making up as they went along Gould did that in spades in the 50s and 60s. he wrote himself into a corner with Dick Tracy in a caisson with a bolder just above him slowly coming down. Gould considered breaking the 4th wall and having Tracy ask Gould himself to fix things. Joseph Patterson, the publisher, vetoed the idea and Gould had to get Tracy out of the death trap by having the top of a conveniently placed underground tunnel at the bottom of the caisson.

Given the dark undercurrent in many Superman comics of the Flux and Silver Age (1955-1973) without a code I think they would have one dark real fast. I suspect the first appearance of the Crime Syndicate of America would have been less "playful" and more like what we got with JLA: Earth 2 and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths their TV portrayals would likely have been just as bad as they were in "Universe of Evil"
 
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Maximara said:
Actually there were writers that did expect readers to care about continuity in '30s & '40s (or even '60s): the writers of the daily (or weekly) comics.
That's an entirely different medium, & mostly controlled by a single writer-cartoonist--whose name is on it. Most of the comic books in this era were anonymous--&, as you correctly note, often written by more than one person over a period of time. Besides which, the publishers generally didn't care, so long as the book sold. (AFAICT, they still really don't care.:rolleyes:)

When you add to that trying just to find new things to do...
Maximara said:
Given the dark undercurrent in many Superman comics of the Flux and Silver Age (1955-1973) without a code I think they would have one dark real fast. I suspect the first appearance of the Crime Syndicate of America would have been less "playful" and more like what we got with JLA: Earth 2 and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths their TV portrayals would likely have been just as bad as they were in "Universe of Evil"
I haven't read any of it (or not for so long I might as well never have), I couldn't say--but I don't doubt it.

Even without the Code, tho, I have to wonder--do you get really dark material, when your target audience is ten year olds?:eek: Or is there any sense the darker stories in this era were a reaction to WW2 & the threat of nuclear Armageddon that pervaded the whole society? I don't think that can be excluded as at least part of the reason for the darker stories: Jewish writers & artists recalling the Holocaust & fearing a repeat, if not extinction.:eek: While Hollywood fed the public pablum...:rolleyes:
 
That's an entirely different medium, & mostly controlled by a single writer-cartoonist--whose name is on it. Most of the comic books in this era were anonymous--&, as you correctly note, often written by more than one person over a period of time. Besides which, the publishers generally didn't care, so long as the book sold. (AFAICT, they still really don't care.:rolleyes:)

I would not say entirely different medium because the very first comic books were little more then compilations of newspaper dailies (such as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck of 1842 and The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats or 1897) and is a tradition continued to this day with such things as the Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy and the imported Manga.

Of course with the output these companies were doing with original material continuity wasn't that important. However there are exceptions such as Judge Dredd which despite going through many writers and artists has one of the tightest continuities around (it still stumbles but no where near other comics). Judge Dredd is also interesting in that there is no sliding time scale as in other comics; one year passes in our world one year passes in the world of Judge Dredd. And yes since the character has been around since 1977 this means the character in the comics is very old (70 years old minimum)


Even without the Code, tho, I have to wonder--do you get really dark material, when your target audience is ten year olds?:eek: Or is there any sense the darker stories in this era were a reaction to WW2 & the threat of nuclear Armageddon that pervaded the whole society? I don't think that can be excluded as at least part of the reason for the darker stories: Jewish writers & artists recalling the Holocaust & fearing a repeat, if not extinction.:eek: While Hollywood fed the public pablum...:rolleyes:

If you look at the dailies of Depression and WWII they were very dark. I have the Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy and gads were some of those stories grimdark. In the aforementioned The Black story we have two men gased by carbon monoxide, one man thrown to his death from a plane, Dick Tracy nearly killed by decompression chamber, and a face right out of Phantom of the Opera.

While they didn't reprint the Brow's death (impalement on a flag pole in a little park commemorating the men fighting WWII) we do get to see the Brow slowly impaled by his own spike machine, the Summer sisters slowly drown to death, and Tracy impaled in the shoulder by a lightning rod.

The stories in some of the dailies were already dark before WWII. Also while portrayed as being aimed at kids in reality comics just like the cartoons of the era were aimed at all ages. However, they were considered somewhat "low brow" entertainment for "unsophisticated" audiences and somewhere along the line that got read as 'for children'.

Heck, TV cartoons of the late 1950s to mid 1960s were aimed as much for adults as they were for kids. Look at how many originally ran in prime time:

The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (1959-1964)

The Flintstones (1960-1966)

Top Cat (1961-1962)

The Jetsons (1962–1963)

Jonny Quest (1963-1964)

The Flintstones was little more than an animated version of the Honeymooners and that sure wasn't aimed at kids.

Top Cat came from "The East Side Kids" which had been aimed more for the teenage audience of WWII.

The Jetsons was a typical situational comedy of the time.

Jonny Quest was canceled not because of any moral outcry but because it was so expensive.

During WWII comics became an escape and people generally don't read dark stories for escape. Once the war was over the tone shifted until the Congressional hearings.

Though rereading a copy of Superman #61 (1949) I can understand why the Science Council rejected Jor-El's claims: his science was crap.
"The core of our planet is uranium, which for untold ages has been building a cycle of chain reactions." Next panel "I warned them that soon ever atom on our planet would explode like one colossal atomic bomb"

First what Jor-El is describing is effectively a run away atomic pile and contrary to popular belief there is no way for those to explode like atomic bombs. The 1986 reboot had the resulting radiation slowly killing the people of Krypton and the pressure being built up (presumably from trapped superheaded lava) would be what caused the planet to explode.

Second, atomic reactions simply don't work that way. They have no way to induce stable atoms (like lead) to explode.

Finally, only something like the rapid contraction of the core (such as what happens to red giant stars) would result in the kind of explosion Jor-El is talking about. This is a supernova and is so powerful that it can vaporize the entire solar system.

I should mention a third way Krypton was destroyed: its sun expand and then it exploded. This appeared in "The Krypton Syndrome" (one of the "lost episode" Superfriends season of 1983–1984) and IIRC was used as the origin for Superboy of Earth-Prime.
 
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I would not say entirely different medium because the very first comic books were little more then compilations of newspaper dailies (such as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck of 1842 and The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats or 1897) and is a tradition continued to this day with such things as the Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy and the imported Manga.

Of course with the output these companies were doing with original material continuity wasn't that important. However there are exceptions such as Judge Dredd which despite going through many writers and artists has one of the tightest continuities around (it still stumbles but no where near other comics). Judge Dredd is also interesting in that there is no sliding time scale as in other comics; one year passes in our world one year passes in the world of Judge Dredd. And yes since the character has been around since 1977 this means the character in the comics is very old (70 years old minimum)


If you look at the dailies of Depression and WWII they were very dark. I have the Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy and gads were some of those stories grimdark. In the aforementioned The Black story we have two men gased by carbon monoxide, one man thrown to his death from a plane, Dick Tracy nearly killed by decompression chamber, and a face right out of Phantom of the Opera.

While they didn't reprint the Brow's death (impalement on a flag pole in a little park commemorating the men fighting WWII) we do get to see the Brow slowly impaled by his own spike machine, the Summer sisters slowly drown to death, and Tracy impaled in the shoulder by a lightning rod.

The stories in some of the dailies were already dark before WWII. Also while portrayed as being aimed at kids in reality comics just like the cartoons of the era were aimed at all ages. However, they were considered somewhat "low brow" entertainment for "unsophisticated" audiences and somewhere along the line that got read as 'for children'.
I did not know most of that. Thx.:cool::cool::cool:

I had forgotten the "lowbrow but adult" angle.:eek:

However, I have to disagree with the conflation of comic books & strips. To begin with, I'd agree, but by the '30s-'40s, & certainly into the '60s, IMO, the audiences were distinct (in the main), with the books generally attracting a younger crowd. (If you've seen a source saying otherwise, quotable or not, I'll happily accept correction, but that's what I've seen from what {limited amount} I've read on the subject suggests.)
Maximara said:
Heck, TV cartoons of the late 1950s to mid 1960s were aimed as much for adults as they were for kids. Look at how many originally ran in prime time:

The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show (1959-1964)

The Flintstones (1960-1966)

Top Cat (1961-1962)

The Jetsons (1962–1963)

Jonny Quest (1963-1964)

The Flintstones was little more than an animated version of the Honeymooners and that sure wasn't aimed at kids.

Top Cat came from "The East Side Kids" which had been aimed more for the teenage audience of WWII.

The Jetsons was a typical situational comedy of the time.

Jonny Quest was canceled not because of any moral outcry but because it was so expensive.
Huh. This I did not know. (It's a trifle embarrassing I never noticed the "Honeymooners" connection, seeing I grew up on "Flintstones".:eek: Then again, I never saw "Honeymooners", even in repeats.:))
Maximara said:
Though rereading a copy of Superman #61 (1949) I can understand why the Science Council rejected Jor-El's claims: his science was crap. "The core of our planet is uranium, which for untold ages has been building a cycle of chain reactions." Next panel "I warned them that soon ever atom on our planet would explode like one colossal atomic bomb"

First what Jor-El is describing is effectively a run away atomic pile and contrary to popular belief there is no way for those to explode like atomic bombs. The 1986 reboot had the resulting radiation slowly killing the people of Krypton and the pressure being built up (presumably from trapped superheaded lava) would be what caused the planet to explode.

Second, atomic reactions simply don't work that way. They have no way to induce stable atoms (like lead) to explode.

Finally, only something like the rapid contraction of the core (such as what happens to red giant stars) would result in the kind of explosion Jor-El is talking about. This is a supernova and is so powerful that it can vaporize the entire solar system.

I should mention a third way Krypton was destroyed: its sun expand and then it exploded. This appeared in "The Krypton Syndrome" (one of the "lost episode" Superfriends season of 1983–1984) and IIRC was used as the origin for Superboy of Earth-Prime.
:p That's probably the earliest example of "writers didn't do the research".;) How many comic writers at that time really understood physics? Or bothered to learn the difference between a reactor & a bomb? (Now, there's less excuse...& even now...:rolleyes:)
 
I did not know most of that. Thx.:cool::cool::cool:

I had forgotten the "lowbrow but adult" angle.:eek:

However, I have to disagree with the conflation of comic books & strips. To begin with, I'd agree, but by the '30s-'40s, & certainly into the '60s, IMO, the audiences were distinct (in the main), with the books generally attracting a younger crowd. (If you've seen a source saying otherwise, quotable or not, I'll happily accept correction, but that's what I've seen from what {limited amount} I've read on the subject suggests.)

Some of the quotable sources IMHO doh't have clue one about what they are talking about:

"Comics have been aimed at children since the beginning of the genre..." (Bryan D. Fagan, ‎Jody Condit Fagan (2011) Comic Book Collections for Libraries - Page 55)

Anyone who thinks The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck of 1842 and The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats of 1897 were aimed at children is totally clueless. Few children of the 19th century could even afford such comics so logically they had to be aimed at adults.

Of course the time when original story comics came out was during the Great Depression and so were cheap escapist entertainment.

Another factor people don't realize is the way printing worked back then.

Color printing was expensive but it was far more expensive if the color in the printers dried out. So is was cheaper to run the color press then let them sit. This is why first two full stories of Dick Tracy in The Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy are in entirely in color even though they were daily strips; they were printed during the Great Depression. Comics were another way to keep the color presses running.


With most of the men off fighting WWII the only really viable markets were kids and women and since women were filling most of the jobs the men had to leave to fight it was a no brainer on who to focus the market on.

Of course when WWII ended that potential readership changed but the long connection with children during the war years had set the idea that comics still aimed primarily at children and so the return to its roots resulted in a backlash.

It was much the same thing that happened to cartoons in the mid 1960's. By the late 1960's cartoon were seen only as children fare even though as little as 5 years previously they had been aimed at all ages.
 
The End (1985-2000)

Okay, I have been somewhat busy over the past few days, you know, doing other stuff, like graduating high school, that sort of stuff. I originally wanted to do three updates, but in the end, I think that maybe I should perhaps wrap this up soon. I have another idea for a TL, that I really want to get to (I need to do a lot of research for that, so...). After that one is wrapped up, this one will be rebooted. So, without further ado,....

"We are very saddened to inform you that our longtime editor Al Feldstein has announced his retirement. We appreciate his long service to this company, and wish him all the best...
- Letter pages, Fables and Other Strange Tales, July 1985
"A Mystery in Time", written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons, and published in the pages of Science Heroes, Sept-Nov. 1986, opens with the murder of Turok in the distant past. It then shifts a mysterious murder in the distant future, of "Professor Supermind," which Magnus Robot Fighter investigates. Eventually, he travels back to the past, where he encounters heroes including Nukla, Doctor Solar, and the Green Hornet. Eventually, they find out that the Sky-Gods (from Tragg and the Sky Gods) have been going through the ages, trying to weaken humanity. Known for its dark tone and its strong sexuality, the story became a staple of the so-called "Dark Age" of Comics.
- Summary, "A Mystery in Time, eccomics.com
Ultimate Comics grew respectably over its first few years, thanks primarily due to the help of the Schanes brothers, who were friends with Kirby, and helped him run Ulitmate, using their own distribution company "Pacific Comics." They also managed to acquire Eclipse Comics in 1985, and the small Illusion Studios from Eastman-Laird in 1986 (which gave them the popular TMNT series). However, the biggest coup for Ultimate was acquiring Extreme Comics in 1986. The company had declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and cancelled most of their titles. Ultimate bought most of the assets of Extreme decided to take one of their only titles left, Dark Magic , and revamped it as an urban fantasy imprint, focusing on fantasy based characters. The first was Sandman, by Neil Gaiman, who interacted with EC's other regular characters...
- Introduction, "Dark Fantasy: Omnibus," Ultimate Comics, 2000
"The End of the Dark Age is said to have started to end with the death of Batman in Detective Comics #500, and the brief retiring of Superman in Action Comics #615. This would be the indication that comics would become far more darker than they needed to be. 1988 also gave us Alan Moore's Twilight of the Gods, which helped further this image. Eventually, the dusk settled down, and the dawn emerged..."

- "The Dark Age, a brief history," article discussing the "Dark age of Comics", Comicvine, dated June, 6th, 2010.
"...And, with 300 electoral votes, the election is called for Senators Al Gore and John Glenn, over President Edward Brooke...
- TNN Newsroom, November 8th, 1988.
"I'm Back!
- The Crypt Keeper, Tales from the Crypt#1, 1990.
"The Decision to bring back Tales from the Crypt in 1990 was the result of sales from their older horror books increasing over the past few years, due to releases of several older issues by EC. They wanted to test the waters to bring it back. Sci-fi/Fantasy had been on the decline over the past decade, and the revival of horror in the mid-Eighties had increased interest in the genre. In the end, Tales had become very successful, and EC made steps to bring back its horror staple.
- "Horror as a Genre," a History and examination of the genre, 2014
The so-called "Platinum Age of Comics," was largely heralded by DC, who managed to avoid all the darkness they had garnered with the Death of Superman and Twilight of the Heroes, by bringing back Superman inTales of Superman, and also lightened the adventures of Dick Grayson, the new Batman. Atlas-Archie, which changed it's name to A-A (after rejecting other names including Marvel), also began to make lighter adventures, starting with their Crusaders arcs (which would be adapted into a popular film series in the mid-2000's), as well as the X-Force comics(which became a film by James Cameron in 1998) despite its occasional dark tendencies (such as the infamous Spider arc "The Clone Saga.") Meanwhile, after Jack Kirby's death in 1994, several new artists entered Ultimate, such as Todd MacFarlane and Rob Liefield, who would severely damage the company through their characters, and end up causing the company's bankruptcy in 1998.
And then there was EC. They were able to climb out the decade long stump, (culminating with the death of long-time owner, William Gaines in 1991, and by 1997, had revived most of their horror comics, and even introduce "True Crime," which was a description of real life crimes (with permission from the participants, of course.) They had managed to come out of the century a top participant, and were ready to enter the new one a champion...

- "Comic Books: a history," General history book, 2015
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So, that's it. And if you're said it's over. Don't worry. I will create a new version of this in the future, which will fix some of the errors I made during the early part, and go from there. For now though, I hoped you enjoyed reading it.
 
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