more comic book lore

The similarities between the comic books scare of the 50s and the violent videogame scare of today him are pretty expansive -- so profound that it's very easy to think a bit above are a manifestation of something more general, something I read about called "moral panics." Anyway putting that aside though, there are some interesting tales in this book I'm reading. Like, the freedom and the experimentation that was allowed in the early days of the medium. Jerry Robinson did ghostwriting for Bob Kane on the on the Batman comic book, and about this new mediums freedom he wrote, "basically we were kids ourselves, so we were riding what excited us, which are audience than related to. We were inventing the languages we went along, and some of us have an awareness of that. Every time we did something that we didn't think we had done before, it was exciting -- and recently like to hold first page of the splash page to introduce the story were breaking out of the panel format. Really, what we were trying to figure out how to do was give the perception of time, crosscutting and setting the scene, and establishing character, who had to break away from the conventions of newspaper comics to do that. "

You can definitely hear the voice of Scott McCloud in his excellent book understanding comics in a statement like that. The idea that comic book format, or what Will Eisner called sequential art, provides a unique ability to bend time and visually convey movement is unique to this medium. Many of the things we take for granted in this artform like a squiggly lines to show someone running are shaking had to be uncovered by these early writers and artists. Here's another interesting comment:

I was like a college class for me. All I do is walk around and see what other guards were doing. We all did that. We would catch some trick -- somebody was using Japanese brush for applying some different satellite like a scene, or different angles. Everybody had his strengths, and we rooted each other on and still everything we could from each other. I thought Nick Carty had the prettiest girls, Artie Saap was the best draftsman. I think Johnny Celardo had great compositions and degrading animals, and then there was Joe Doolan, who was a cover man, and he was as tight as you could possibly be, but the covers looked posed -- this galactic continuum of action and that he was so tight. We all took mental notes and rob each other blind."

That's Bob Lubbers talking who started drawing for the Centaur company in 1940 the age of 18.

I especially liked this quote from Nikki Spillane, the pulp writer who wrote cops and robbers stories for comic books. "A lot of guys look their noses down on comics -- that it was kid stuff. So it was kid stuff? It was work. You can call it kid stuff, comic books, garbage, you name it -- labels like that, guys put on things so they don't have to think about them. That's just the way I like it. Please me alone -- all go about my business and do what I want. If it's any good, somebody will pay for it, and a kids dime buys the same cup of coffee." (emphasis mine).