Horror in the Nursery

I recently found a copy of the March 27, 1948 issue of Collier's, which includes an article written by Judith Crist on Dr. Fredric Wertham's crusade against crime comics. The complete article (along with the original accompanying photos of child models re-enacting the testimonies of children quoted in the article) is included below.

For many years comic-book fans have had a very simplistic and somewhat inaccurate version of the history behind Dr. Wertham and the creation of the Comics Code (some of the most common myths: "Dr. Wertham found that all juvenile delinquents read comics and therefore claimed that comics were the sole reason for juvenile delinquency", or "The Comics Code was created to put EC Comics out of business"). Recent scholarship has given us a more balanced view of Dr. Wertham, suggesting that his research wasn't as shoddy as most fans believe, and that there were strong reasons for regulating the horror and crime comics cranked out by opportunistic publishers.

The article below is still mildly sensationalistic at times (and that's not counting the staged photos), but it's worth reading in its entirety for the chance to read Wertham in his own words, a few years before the publication of Seduction of the Innocent.

Skizz

I recently bought a copy of DC/Rebellion's edition of Alan Moore's and Jim Baikie's SKIZZ, a minor work from the period in which the "British Invasion" at DC was just starting.

It's a competent work with some touches of the usual Moore wit. The main characters, Skizz (the alien) and Roxy (the teenager who finds him), are convincingly handled, but the remaining characters aren't very fleshed out. I had read the work some years ago, and therefore wasn't very disappointed by this re-reading, I already knew that this wasn't as good as THE BALLAD OF HALO JONES or the work Moore was doing for "Warrior" magazine at the time.

One thing I noticed this time, and which I don't know if it's a problem exclusive to this edition or if it's something carried from the previous collection published by Titan Books in the 1980's, is that the book omits a page from the original serialization in "2000 AD". I noticed that one chapter was noticeably longer than the other chapters, went to look at my library of "2000 AD" scans (kept, ahem, strictly for research purposes), and found that yes, one splash page from issue #329 of "2000 AD" was left out. This page should go between pages 88 and 89 of the DC/Rebellion edition. Page 89 in this edition also alters some of the dialog in the first panel. As a public service, the first two pages of the "Skizz" chapter in 2000 AD #329 are included here.

Marvel and DC take legal action against comics torrent site

Marvel Comics recently announced its intentions to sell their comics online. In an interview posted at CBR, Marvel publisher Dan Buckley is asked about the existence of illegal comics downloading, and he answers as follows:

One of the benefits of this launch is that it provides many of our fans with the opportunity to "legally" read our comics. We sincerely hope that this service offering will curb these "illegal" downloading activities. The music industry's reactions to the illegal downloading did help us with us the formation of our business strategy, but it was not the driving factor behind our business model.

It turns out that Marvel (along with DC) is doing more than "hoping". In the same interview, Buckley says that Marvel will be evaluating illegal download sites on a case by case basis. The following announcement was posted a couple of days ago at Z-Cult FM, a torrent site for downloading comics.

We got legal letters from both Marvel and DC Comics who have been working together to send us these legal threats. We are currently dealing with the legal issues and they have given us 3 days before they are forced to take anymore action.

Z-Cult FM website was put offline [...] after I got the email while in work and issued a code red alert (we have drills also 5 times a year). We decide [sic] putting the site offline was best course of action to analyse the situation and decide our best course of action. We have confirmed one of the legal letters is 100% from DC Comics when a phone call was made to DC Comics who confirmed the email and its contents. As of today we was unable to contact Marvel and we are trying again tomorrow just to 100% confirm it.

Today we decided it was time to bring site back online but without the torrent and download sections. One of Marvels demands was we take down Z-Cult FM for good but we will never let the main Z-Cult FM site die even if that means torrent free.

We are currently deciding our future and working on it as we speak. We will do our best to keep everyone happy but our future decissions might cause some of our users to think we have given in, but this isn't the case, we are just currently working through this situation and taking the best course of action to keep the site up and our staff safe.

Z-Cult FM is a site that has operated for a few years, with the bigger publishers being aware of its existence for some time. The site usually contained links for downloading (via bit torrent) scans of comics of all genres, publishers, and decades; including the biggest publishers' latest releases.

The scanning and pirating of comics will continue in the near future (there are still many other sites in which these comics are available for free), but Marvel and DC taking joint action against the best-known sites surely will have some effect. My guess is that new sites will pop up to fill the void left by Z-Cult FM and the also recently-shut down Demonoid, but that some of these new sites may end up having more restricted memberships (an "only by invitation" system).

More upcoming strip collections

The Scorchy Smith collection mentioned in the previous post is now available for pre-order. Meanwhile, Dean Mullaney writes over at the Comic Strip Classics yahoogroup that "my old friend Denis Kitchen is now onboard as a Contributing Editor for the Scorchy book."

Another great comic strip, Floyd Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse is apparently also being reprinted. However, unlike other recent comic strip projects, this doesn't seem to be a complete reprint of the strip, but rather a "Best of" collection, probably due in part to racial sensivity issues. For a look at a previous attempt to reprint some of the strips that probably won't be included in this new collection, see Jim Korkis' article about "The Uncensored Mouse".

Rumors have been flying for some time about an upcoming Complete Beetle Bailey collection, reprinting Mort Walker's humor strip (I first saw this mentioned in a R. C. Harvey article in The Comics Journal some months ago). Checker Publishing seems to be the likeliest candidate for the American edition, but in the meantime you can see the European edition here.

The project is apparently being done thanks to European interest in the series (where Walker's strips are quite popular). I've been coincidentally reading the Mort Walker: Conversations book recently which (while not one of the best books of the "Conversations" series) shows that Walker did Beetle Bailey all by himself for several years before it became a produced-by-committee strip. The early volumes of this new reprint series then, while not as historically important as the Peanuts or Popeye reprints, should still allow us a welcome look into a lesser-known period of this strip, in which there was still a single creative force in charge of it. (While the current Beetle Bailey strip isn't particularly noteworthy, I still have fond memories of older strips I've read in paperback collections.)

Finally, we have news of another comic strip-related project, this time the 5 issues of the Shmoo comic book, based on the character created by Al Capp in the Li'l Abner strip. Dark Horse has already done some Al Capp collections in the past (four volumes of Sundays done while Frank Frazetta worked as an assistant/ghost artist). While I've read those previous volumes (and most of the compilations published by Kitchen Sink), I know very little about these particular comic books. They're apparently credited to the "Al Capp Studio" rather than to Capp himself, probably indicating that this may be a diluted version of Capp's usual acerbic humor.

Scorchy Smith

Over at the Comic Strip Classics yahoogroup, Dean Mullaney has announced his latest reprint project:

On the subject of future projects, since we've already sent the solicitation info to our book distributor, I can announce that in June 2008, I will release an oversized, 11" x 11" hardcover: SCORCHY SMITH AND THE ART OF NOEL SICKLES through IDW. It will contain the complete Sickles Scorchy for the first time ever, plus about 60 pages of Sickles's magazine and other illustrations.

It was fantastic to have the Woody Gelman books at the time, but they were obviously incomplete. And now they sell for $60-75 for each book! The collection I'm editing will retail for $49.99. So you might want to get a head start and put your paperbacks on eBay!

And to all the Europeans(!): all dailies are being scanned at 1200 dpibitmap.

Dale Crain, who most of you know from his years at Fantagraphics and particularly DC doing their archive editions, will be co-designing the book with me. Dale was going to design the Scorchy collection Denis Kitchen had hoped to do many years ago, but that never came about. Needless to say, he's thrilled to have a second chance!

Robert E. Howard comics news

Scott Allie talks about his plans for the new Solomon Kane from Dark Horse. A bit that caught our attention:

Scott, let's talk story — what can you tell us about your plans for Solomon Kane?

I don't want to say the name of the first arc just yet, because lately every time we announce something with Conan or Buffy, some other publisher immediately tries to publish or register a trademark using that name.

Now who could he be referring to? (See botttom of entry.)

(For those too lazy to click: Dynamite Entertainment announced their own Savage Tales magazine, registering the trademark in their name, some time after Dark Horse announced its plans to do an anthology named Robert E. Howard's Savage Tales. We've previously mentioned Dynamite's current efforts to register the trademarks of several public domain Golden Age heroes.)

In other Robert E. Howard-related news, Michael Moorcock announced a month and a half ago that he's "supposed to be doing a Conan comic for Dark Horse."

More about Eisner

More information about the previous post can be found in an article posted today at icv2.com: the Will Eisner and PS Magazine book will be published by Hermes Press. Hermes Press has previously published books on Gil Kane and the Ross Andru/Mike Esposito team.

Other comics-related projects from Hermes Press, according to ICV2, are a Walt Kelly Career Retrospective (see a review of the recent Our Gang Volume 2 here) and The Unknown Carl Barks, focusing on Barks' animation work.