By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 1/25/2016
In addition to popularizing “Sterankoing,” artist Jim Steranko is quite a tweeter. Every Sunday night he holds a regular talk, and last night he started identifying The Ages of Comics. Steranko, best known for his innovative comics work of the 60s, and his current painting, also has a history as a publisher—Prevue Magazine was an […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 3/22/2013
Photocomix are strange creatures. They look like a hybrid of a photography medium and a comics format, and when you spot them in the wild you’re never sure whether they arose as some part of a natural evolutionary process in art or if they were the result of some kind of misguided experiment, maybe even one gone wrong. That reaction’s been shaped by encountering low-quality work with vague pretensions at humor, or perhaps offering some behind the scenes reveals about the comics making process. Frozen, melodramatic poses and cheesy dialogue are par for the course. And so, if a reader spots photocomix roaming free online or in a shop, they approach with caution and refuse to get their hopes up regarding quality.
Then there’s FORCEFIELD FOTOCOMIX, which makes you feel guilty for all of that instinctual caution and pre-emptive wariness. It gives you what no one really dares expect or demand from photocomix, a team of seriously talented individuals on a mission to exploit the full potential of the medium. To do this, they decide to spin this collection of comics into a number of genres, covering all the bases and it’s as if they are illustrating future directions for photocomix.
The man behind the camera, someone whose work has defined “serious” photography of the cultural zeitgeist in the past decade and then some, is Seth Kushner, the co-creator of the celebration of comics tradition LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS with Christopher Irving. Kushner’s photo portraits of comics creators in LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS have garnered so much attention that they’ve been scavenged by internet sites repeatedly and Neil Gaiman even chose to use Kushner’s portrait of him as his new dust-jacket image. He’s been working on photocomix for some time now, creating a CulturePOP series for the digital arts salon TRIP CITY, profiling real lives in comics format from author Jonathan Ames to adult film star Stoya, but FORCEFIELD is a departure into the realm of total composition in fictional realities.
During an informal conversation at Hang Dai Studios, where Kushner keeps a tidy computer work station flanked by a few vinyl and action figures, he revealed some of the process behind his striking cover to FORCE FIELD. He staged a full-on photo-shoot to capture the images in his mind by engaging actress Zoe Sloan, as well as a costume designer and a makeup artist, to create a Barbarella homage fused with a direct design reference to a Jim Steranko cover of BLADE RUNNER from Marvel Comics. The Steranko cover, which uses multiple color reduplications of the hero pointing a gun, inspired Kushner to pose Sloan holding, instead, a Super 8 camera in retro style. The metaphor’s impressive: Kushner’s camera is a loaded weapon at the center of the strange narratives contained in FORCEFIELD, capable of directing the reader’s experience, and by using a Super 8 video camera rather than simply a camera, he’s suggesting the role of storytelling.
Kushner’s increasingly open these days to revealing the process behind his work to generate enthusiasm for the forms themselves and encourage others to experiment, as evinced by his recent contribution to TRIP CITY, a blow-by-blow narrative of the steps by which the first comic in the collection, “The Hall of Just Us”, called “Anatomy of a Photocomic”. The story, co-scripted by Emmy Award winning artist Dean Haspiel, led to its own formal photoshoot at the recently hurricane decimated by increasingly resilient Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook. Kushner and Haspiel set about “casting the roles, as we would for a film”, says Kushner, and the co-creators drafted full layouts for the comic before shooting, giving them a “map to follow”.
They created the comic shot for shot, a tale of three “miscreants”, superheroes in a bar chasing a super-powered lady’s attentions, “The Tarot”. After the shoot, time-consuming photo-shopping and comics construction added text, word balloons, and special effects. But all of this description only hints at the visual impact of “The Hall of Just Us”. It’s all about mood, created from strongly color-themed lighting (the pink, blue, and yellow of the cover’s design), and about the off-beat simple hero costumes straight off of Mego action figures or the BATMAN television show of the ‘60’s.
While the heroes posture and ratchet up the bombast, The Tarot figure, portrayed by model and artist Katelan Foisy, brings an eerie presence and substance to the narrative. She can see the future “sometimes” and sees the other heroes as Tarot figures, commenting “There’s the path you can take or the road you can make”, but she’s really calmly waiting for her “date” known as Señor Amore, portrayed by Haspiel. This is certainly the “romance” genre promised by the cover as one narrative alternative, but it leaves room for reader-interpretation. Superheroes with super powers are still hanging out in a bar, looking for love, for one thing.
“Spiders Everywhere” provides the “horror” also promised by the cover, and again homage to genre comics and films is evident. The narrative and premises are simple- horrific waves of spiders taking over the world, but Kushner plays to the strengths of the photocomix medium by conveying frantic movements and moments of psychological realization in cinematic style.
“Understanding Photocomix”, a visual walk through Kushner’s history with photography and photocomix, which first appeared in American Photo Magazine, supplies the metadata on the very form in which its composed. It also forms a clever narrative bridge between the first chapters of FORCEFIELD and its follow up chapter COMPLEX, by explaining Kushner’s increasing drive to push the boundaries of photocomix in a “full fictionalized graphic novel” that he’d “direct like a movie using actors and locations”. In many ways, FORCEFIELD is the herald of that process, and it’s Volume number “.01” suggests that it’s a forerunner of bigger things to come.
The story COMPLEX: “Luv_Underscores_U”, kicking off Kushner’s work on his dream project of the COMPLEX graphic novel, first appeared in Jimmy Palmiotti’s CREATOR OWNED HEROES #7 alongside Kushner and Irving’s ongoing profiles of indie comics creators (a follow-up project to LEAPING TALL BUILDINGS). It’s a lavishly shot and designed comic which plunges into science-fiction BLADE RUNNER style, another link to FORCEFIELD’s cover image. It constructs multiple virtual realities visually with ethereal attention to detail and emphasizes a governing psychological perspective, a central character keeping all these virtual worlds in motion for the reader. This isn’t far from the role of the camera itself seeming to direct the reader, perhaps FORCEFIELD’s hypothetical Super 8 on the cover itself.
The final chapter of FORCEFIELD, a never before published noir tale, “The Perfect Woman” appears in uncharacteristic emphasis on black and white tones, with hints of color. Kushner’s photography is known for its psychedelic presentation of color through light effects, but also for his more sepulchral, moody hues in portraiture. Here he does with black what he often does with a solid color, making it a rich compositional basis into which he incises featured characters and settings. Like a compelling dime store novel rich with noir tropes, the story pursues an elusive lady in a cityscape from the visual perspective of a narrator. Kushner’s locations for this shoot were clearly exacting, capturing a city of the 1930’s complete with architectural detail. But the reader should have expected that this is a collection of stories with an expicit BLADE RUNNER homage and technology and perception may play as strong a role as the romance of pursuit.This is the “mystery” genre, completing the triad of color themes and pulp homage.
To add to the total design package that is FORCEFIELD FOTOCOMIX, it’s also presented in slick prestige magazine format with card covers, suggesting that photocomix can find their own effective dimensions for publication, in this case somewhere between a traditional comic and a traditional large-format photobook. But the format also speaks to Kushner’s consistent, passionate attention to detail throughout the collection which seems to constantly remind the reader of his fundamental belief in the art behind the form. The photocomix in FORCEFIELD are visually riveting, one might even say mind-altering, but the stories are also expansive, creating strange pocket universes with their own sets of rules and assumptions. Exploring them is part of the intrigue. Seeing FORCEFIELD in the wild is bound to make an impact on our assumptions about what photocomix have been, and more importantly, what they can be as a narrative medium in their own right. Kushner was inspired by comics, photography, and films to launch this project. In the future, creators might well be saying that they were inspired by FORCEFIELD to take photocomix in equally surprising and mesmerizing directions.
[Kushner answers, "What's the coolest item in your collection?" for Hanzarai.com]
FORCEFIELD FOTOCOMIX Vol.01 will be available for physical sale for the first time at the upcoming Asbury Park Comic Con March 30th, but the limited edition is already available for order through Kushner’s etsy shop.
Title: Seth Kushner’s FORCEFIELD FOTOCOMIX Vol.01/Publisher: Self-Published/Creative Team: Photographer, Seth Kushner/ Design, Seth Kushner and Dean Haspiel/ Writers, Seth Kushner, Dean Haspiel, Chris Miskiewicz/ Edits by Dean Haspiel
Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.
By: Marc Tyler,
on 4/20/2008
This past Friday, which happened to be the 70th anniversary of the public debut of Superman, I attended my first comic convention.
While there, I was treated to three other firsts:
1. It was the first time I saw Boys of Steel on display. It was not the finished book, since that doesn't yet exist in tangible form, but rather a galley—a prepublication, unbound version of the book. Random House sent me a stash of them in January, but it's a different feeling to see one in public. I was momentarily stunned when the hard workers at the Random House booth told me they were giving out a limited number of the galleys for promotion...now the book is really beyond my own head.
2. It was the first time I signed Boys of Steel for someone. Of course, it was a galley, but that didn't decrease the joy of the moment in the slightest.
3. It was the first time I was interviewed for television about Boys of Steel.
A fourth first: it was the first time I ate a vanilla-filled churro.
However, the highlight was a comment from Jim Steranko, comic book artist/writer/all-around legend. I'd consulted him during my Bill Finger research and his responses were consistently prompt and kind.
As he thumbed through the Boys of Steel galley, he said, "Jerry would've loved this."
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 1/9/2008
Having earned her chops on both the stage and the page, ariel robello represents a generation of poets as concerned with performance as they are with line breaks. ariel robello received a PEN West Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship in 2002 and published her first collection of poems, My Sweet Unconditional in 2005 with Tia Chucha Press. The inspiration for her poetry stems from her work as a poet-in-residence and mentor to teens, advocate for immigrants’ rights, and teacher of English in schools, sweatshops, juvenile detention centers, and most recently at the community college where she now lives with her hijito in Tampa, Florida.
“Effortlessly, swimmingly, yet every line a ‘florescent ember’, seething and praying, these poems mark the debut of a powerful woman of letters; young yet wise, weary yet hopeful. ariel robello is the revolution in verse we’ve been waiting for – the spoken unspoken, the dreaded effervescence of truth conspiring with our souls. Chicana voices have always pushed deeper into the emotional terrain of conscience and witness, ‘My Sweet Unconditional’ does what poetry collections should always do – pull us into a universe so familiar yet frighteningly unknown with poems that awaken us to the political and personal traumas of our times, yet sweetened by the beauty of word and verse.
—Luis J. Rodriguez is an award-winning poet, journalist, memoirist, children’s book writer, essayist and fiction writer. He is author of the critically acclaimed “Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A.”
"Poetry Lover, beware the fire-and-ice urban joys of Ariel Robello! These are brutally savvy and deliciously vicious paeans to life, relentless in their celebrations of love, sacrifice and sex--and once beheld by the eyeheart, humbles rescues redeems."
—Wanda Coleman, poet, Los Angeles
"Ariel Robello has crafted remarkable poems that demand no less than a pure appreciation of art from you, even as they break your heart. There is nothing easy here: the music is grafted from a painful if illuminating life, but they shimmer with a rage that is transformative.
A voice to watch for." —Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and Dog Woman.
Paper -1-882688-29-5 $13.95
Available for sale on www.amazon.com
Juan Manuel Sánchez was born and raised on the US side of the San Diego/Tijuana border. He holds an MA in Literature from UC San Diego and is currently in the final throes of his MFA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has worked as an assistant editor for Ninth Letter, has lectured at various universities and is now Lecturer of Spanish at the University of Chicago. His work is forthcoming in Pembroke and in the anthology Junta: Avant-Garde Latino/a Writing.
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 10/24/2007
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 10/10/2007
The big problem with ages is that the concept was first coined to differentiate the first round of superheroes from the first (successful) superhero revival that reworked Flash, Human Torch, Namor, etc. for the then-modern era.
This was a misstep from the very beginning because 1) it’s only relevant to superhero history and not comics as a whole, and 2) it suggests further ages should be determined based on the each time superheroes were reworked for a new generation of readers.
Personally, I think the best way to salvage it would be to create two separate sets of “ages”:
– A superhero-specific set of ages that give a simple overview of how the superhero has changed with the times, so we’re not destroying these original historical ages
– A general comics set of ages that gives an overview of how comics as a whole have changed.
The Silver Age of comics would likely start in either 1947 or 1954 with the advent of the ACMP or CMAA, with the book burnings, Senate hearings, and regulations that had a dramatic impact on content, demolishing entire genres. The events of those years set comics on a firmly for-children-only track that the film industry had narrowly managed to avoid by not boiling everything down to the equivalent of G-rating or no rating.
I think that’s just a tad more significant than Flash getting a new costume and identity.
The Manga Reprint age.
The Mercurial Age, when queer comics start getting decent distribution – I mean Fun Home on the NYT best seller list and adapted into a musical? That’s a thing.
The Treadmill Age, when superhero comics keep endlessly “rebooting” to try and make 70-year-old corporate-owned characters relevant to a new audience. Possibly AKA the Silver Chromide Age, when the superhero comics get a bunch of big-budget movies dominating the box office.
While they still make up the majority of sales, it seems as though the Superhero age may be starting to relinquish it’s role. Seems like the big two are last ones to have fortune with this (a monopoly, some would say), metahuman mythology is certainly showing cracks in it’s armor. Quality wise, though, there’s no doubt that they have been surpassed.
As Kate said, the “ages” discussed by fans always begin and end with superheroes:
Golden Age: Begins in 1938 with Superman’s debut; ends in 1949 with Marvel and DC cancelling most of their superhero titles.
Silver Age: Begins in 1956 when the new Flash debuts and kicks off a superhero revival; ends in 1970 when Kirby leaves Marvel.
Bronze Age: Begins in 1975, when the “new” X-Men spell doom for those weird, quirky comics of the early ’70s, much as Star Wars and Jaws swept away the weird, quirky movies of the early ‘7os.
I’m not sure when the Bronze Age supposedly ended. Maybe with Marvel’s bankruptcy in the mid-1990s?
These “ages” ignore times when non-superhero genres caused the most excitement, namely the early ’50s and the early ’70s. And maybe today as well.
I’ve always believed “ages” should be defined by comic book distribution. Mainly because the distribution method (and major changes) affect what gets published in both format and content. A promo comic is different from a news stand comic, the same goes for underground comics and a current day direct market comic. All of these differences has to do with how and where the comics are sold. What works in those markets shape the contents of the books.
Also, using metals is starting to get ridiculous and while we joke about Tin Foil age, we may one day have to actually use it if monthly comic books are still being published many, many years from now. I also don’t like that we’ve decided to define our comic book history by the rise and fall of one genre – Superheroes.
This defining our history by Superhero comic pretends that other genres like Crime (Crime Does Not Pay), Romance (Young Romance), Kids comics (Carl Barks duck books & the Harvey line), Horror (EC and Warren), Humor (Archie & MAD), War (St. Rock), Kids (Harvey Comics), Fantasy (Conan, Cerebus, Elfquest, Heavy Metal) and other genre books don’t matter. These are clearly some important and influential books and also some of the best selling as well. While I enjoy superhero comics and recognize it’s been a long popular genre, it does us a disservice to define our history by them alone.
My ages would be:
Pre Newsstand Age (possibly called Mail Order) 1842 – 1921. Starting with The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck and ending with the first newsstand comic. My understanding is many of these were sold via mail order and some by bookstores. I don’t know enough about the market place back then to definitively call it one way or another.
.
Newsstand Age 1: 1922:- 1955. The Comics Monthly is the first newsstand comic (and monthly to boot). In 1955 we saw the reduction of American News Distribution to a regional distributor. This had a huge effect on the comics industry as they were distributing half of all comic book titles and the change was in large part the reason many Golden Age publishers went out of business.
Newsstand Age 2: 1956 – 1984. GI Joe #1. is the last important newsstand comic that I know of. Comics were advertised on TV within GI Joe and it was a major starting point for a lot of comic readers. I don’t recall there being a significant newsstand comic after that. Also in 1984 Charlton and Goldkey/Whitman ceased publishing on the newsstands & Harvey stopped a couple of years prior. I think 1984 is a good ending point for ending the Newsstand Age, while comics were still published on them the bulk of the American comic book industry were making the majority of their money in another market or at minimum had tailored their content for another market seeing the future was inevitable.
Underground Age 1: 1920s to 1960s – This is for the Tijuana Bibles, which we often forget about when talking about comic book history.
Underground Age 2: 1964 – 1973. We would start with the God Nose by Jack Jackson (Jaxon) and The Adventures of Jesus by Frank Stack which are considered to be the first underground comix’s and were published in 1964. This ends when the courts rule Zap Comix #4 to be obscene and many head shops are put out of business by local obscenity laws.
Direct Market Age: 1974 – Present. The Underground Market morphed into the direct market with comic book stores and dealers picking up the slack. Slowly but surely Direct Market only publishers (both self and independent) began to fill the void of the undergrounds. It’s possible that this Age could be split into 2 like the newsstands. The split would be when Diamond became a monopoly.but I’m no so sure that it had a large enough impact to warrant a split age, especially considering all the other issues happening prior to that (speculator market crashing, Marvel buying Heroes World and distributing exclusively though them, etc..).
There is obviously a book store age(s) with Graphic Novels, but generally these ‘age’ debates are about the monthly comics by and large. How to define/divvy up the whole bookstore/graphic novel timeline is a whole other topic. The same goes for digital comics.
I know these ages overlap, but that’s a more accurate method of describing comic book history. Our industry did not flow in one straight line and we shouldn’t pretend that it did.
Jamie Coville said: “While I enjoy superhero comics and recognize it’s been a long popular genre, it does us a disservice to define our history by them alone.”
I agree. One reason for this is that comics fandom was started by Golden Age superhero fans (Roy Thomas, Jerry Bails, Maggie and Don Thompson, a few others). Their tastes dictated what was considered valuable and collectible. Guess what? They saw superhero comics as the most valuable and collectible. And generations of fans followed their lead.
If fandom had been started by EC fans, or Donald Duck fans, we might have different touchstones. And eras might be defined differently.
I’ve had debates with fans who regard the ’50s and ’70s as the worst decades for comics, for one reason: superheroes were in decline in those decades. For these fans, the only good years are the years when superhero sales are booming. Because superheroes are all that really matters to them. For them, superheroes ARE comics. I haven’t felt that way since I was about 12.
Note that these are just ideas and I’m just tossing them out to help, not necessarily saying these are what I think they should be…. but here goes…
I would also propose that there was an era from 1984/1985 to 1992 or so that correlated with DC’s Crisis reboot and Marvel’s cross-overs beginning with Secret Wars, and the expansion of X-Men into a franchise with New Mutants, Alpha Flight, X-Factor and Excalibur and ended with the demise of virtually all of DC’s Post-Crisis directions in 1992 (notably the end of Perez’s Wonder Woman and JLI), the failed Impact imprint and the artist exodus from Marvel to Image.
Then the next age would possibly begin with the Death of Superman, Knightfall, Image’s launch, Dark Horse’s growth with Legends and World’s Greatest Heroes , the launch of Vertigo, the increased speculator presence ushered in by Hero Illustrated and Wizard Magazine and the shift away from the newstands into the Direct Market.
Then possible starting points for the current age could be one or any of the following-
Marvel abandoning the Comics Code in 2001, followed by DC in 2011 (after publishing Identity Crisis in 2004)
The launch of the Walking Dead comic in 2003.
The Iron Man movie in 2008.
The Walking Dead show premieres in 2010.
DC’s reboot in 2011.
DC and Marvel Comics going same day digital in 2011.
Wizard Magazine publishing its last print issue in 2011.
Karen Berger leaving Vertigo in 2012.
Anyone who has purchased more than one size of archival plastic bag and backing board can tell you quite plainly that it is all about the size of the book. The ages of comics are Golden, Silver and Current.
I’d say there are three ages:
The Mass-Market Age (1935-1965): This is the period when comics were just another sector of the periodical publishing business, with titles geared towards attracting readerships in the 100,000+ range. The creative community (cartoonists, scriptwriters, etc.) saw themselves as publishing professionals whose jobs were to maximize the publications’ appeal. The publication formats were cheap and disposable; the work was not produced with an eye towards being of lasting interest.
The Fandom Age (1965-1985): This is the period when comics became increasingly geared towards a subcultural fan readership. The creative people, who began to see themselves as authors rather than periodical contributors,, developed a more idiosyncratic bent–visionary at best, and hopelessly self-indulgent at worst. For all the talent and readership’s pretensions, though, the work was still being done in disposable formats, and few outside the subculture took the material seriously
The Graphic-Novel Age (1985 to present); This is the present period, which builds on the fandom period in a way respects some of the thinking of the mass-market era. The creative people are more mature than their fandom-era counterparts. They see themselves as authors, but they and their publishers also take their work seriously enough to package it for audiences outside the fandom subculture. The most valued success is success in the book trade. The disposable periodical format becomes increasingly irrelevant as both the creative people and readerships abandon it.
There is a transition period of roughly a decade between eras. I wouldn’t say the fandom period had fully taken over from the mass-market period until the mid-1970s, and the graphic-novel period hadn’t taken over from the fandom period until the mid-90s. But the mid-1960s is when the fandom period gets going, and the mid-80s is when the graphic-novel period begins its ascent.
So….Underground Comix, Alternative Comics, mini-comics/zines, literary comics and art comics don’t count?