I recently picked up and began reading America's Greatest Comics Facsimile Edition #1 from PS Artbooks. Like many other facsimile edition comics, it tries to reprint the original comic as faithfully as possible, digitally restoring the art from weathered and yellowing copies. This one, like the other PS Artbooks reprints I've seen, does a good job of balancing the art clean-up with representing what an actual comic would've looked like new. That is, the artifacts in the comic that came about because of time or wear and tear (color fading, tears, etc.) are erased, but many of the issues present when it was printed (misregistration, inconsistent coverage over large areas, etc.) are left in place.
But this specific reprint isn't what I want to talk about.
The issue has taken me over a week to get through, despite being only 100 pages of pretty simple stories, none of which are longer than 20 pages. The plots are not complex, there's not a whole lot of characterization; I don't think any single story took more than (conservatively) ten minutes to get through. If I sat down and read the entire book cover-to-cover in one sitting, it wouldn't take me much longer than an hour. But, see, here's the thing: I can't read this entire thing cover-to-cover in one sitting.
It's something I've run into not infrequently before with Golden Age comics. Whether it's a facsimilie edition like this or part of a larger trade paperback or something on microfiche or an actual, honest-to-goodness original issue, it's hard for me to read through them for any length of time because... well, the polite thing to say is that they're all very much of their time. It'd probably be more accurate to say that they're bad.
Don't misunderstand -- I'm not slagging off on any of the creators who were working on comics back then. Comic books, as an industry, was brand new. Despite the broad form of comics (i.e. sequential art) having been around for centuries, the notion of comic books as both an art form and an industry unto itself only really started in the mid-1930s. When Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and a lot of those other early characters debuted, things were very much still in a "well, let's just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" stage. Publishers were hiring anyone who could string a couple words together to write, and anyone who could draw something vaguely more nuanced than a stick figure to draw. And while there were indeed talented individuals who came to the medium, it was a medium that no one had quite figured out yet. And it didn't help that everyone who was getting hired had virtually no experience. Jack Kirby was only twenty years old when he started working at the Eisner-Iger shop. Will Eisner was only a few months older himself. The "old man" of that group was Lou Fine -- he was all of twenty-two.
All of which meant that no one knew what worked or didn't work in comic books yet, and even the most talented people had almost no experience yet. So the comics back then were... bad. Overly simplistic plots "written" by the artists who were just making up the story as they went along. (Air quotes on "written" because none of it was planned, not because the artists weren't developing the stories. The stories were "written" in much the same way improve theater is.) Not to mention that everyone was working on obscene deadlines, often using crap materials. That anything at all memorable got published was nothing short of miraculous.
But those gems, while held up in high regard today, were rare. Creators were churning out a LOT of crap to get to those gems. I mean, sure, Action Comics #1 had the debut of Superman but the Tex Thomson story is garbage. "The Adventures of Marco Polo" story is surprisingly dull. Chuck Dawson, Scoop Scanlon, and Pep Morgan are entirely forgettable. There's a reason why kids in 1938 were asking for the comic with Superman in it when they scanned the new issues' covers and Action Comics #2 didn't show anything noteworthy.
Which is why it's taken me over a week to get through a single comic book. I'd get through the Captain Marvel story and with its lack of characterization and plot holes big enough to drive a tank through, I had to set the book aside for a bit. I tackled the Spy Smasher story the next night; that one was worse. The Minute Man story; worse still. Don't even get me started on the Bulletman story! Sprinkle in some blatant sexism throughout the whole thing, add in a few painfully racist caricatures, and you've got something that I really can't deal with for more than 10-15 minute bursts. Even trying to force myself through it strictly as an intellectual exercise.
That's a large part of why I don't do more Golden Age research than I do. I definitely want to learn about the foundations of the medium so I can better understand how/why it developed the way it did, but I don't have a thesis paper or anything riding on it, so I have no problem setting these types of comics aside frequently to cleanse my comics palette.
But this specific reprint isn't what I want to talk about.
The issue has taken me over a week to get through, despite being only 100 pages of pretty simple stories, none of which are longer than 20 pages. The plots are not complex, there's not a whole lot of characterization; I don't think any single story took more than (conservatively) ten minutes to get through. If I sat down and read the entire book cover-to-cover in one sitting, it wouldn't take me much longer than an hour. But, see, here's the thing: I can't read this entire thing cover-to-cover in one sitting.
It's something I've run into not infrequently before with Golden Age comics. Whether it's a facsimilie edition like this or part of a larger trade paperback or something on microfiche or an actual, honest-to-goodness original issue, it's hard for me to read through them for any length of time because... well, the polite thing to say is that they're all very much of their time. It'd probably be more accurate to say that they're bad.
Don't misunderstand -- I'm not slagging off on any of the creators who were working on comics back then. Comic books, as an industry, was brand new. Despite the broad form of comics (i.e. sequential art) having been around for centuries, the notion of comic books as both an art form and an industry unto itself only really started in the mid-1930s. When Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and a lot of those other early characters debuted, things were very much still in a "well, let's just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" stage. Publishers were hiring anyone who could string a couple words together to write, and anyone who could draw something vaguely more nuanced than a stick figure to draw. And while there were indeed talented individuals who came to the medium, it was a medium that no one had quite figured out yet. And it didn't help that everyone who was getting hired had virtually no experience. Jack Kirby was only twenty years old when he started working at the Eisner-Iger shop. Will Eisner was only a few months older himself. The "old man" of that group was Lou Fine -- he was all of twenty-two.
All of which meant that no one knew what worked or didn't work in comic books yet, and even the most talented people had almost no experience yet. So the comics back then were... bad. Overly simplistic plots "written" by the artists who were just making up the story as they went along. (Air quotes on "written" because none of it was planned, not because the artists weren't developing the stories. The stories were "written" in much the same way improve theater is.) Not to mention that everyone was working on obscene deadlines, often using crap materials. That anything at all memorable got published was nothing short of miraculous.
But those gems, while held up in high regard today, were rare. Creators were churning out a LOT of crap to get to those gems. I mean, sure, Action Comics #1 had the debut of Superman but the Tex Thomson story is garbage. "The Adventures of Marco Polo" story is surprisingly dull. Chuck Dawson, Scoop Scanlon, and Pep Morgan are entirely forgettable. There's a reason why kids in 1938 were asking for the comic with Superman in it when they scanned the new issues' covers and Action Comics #2 didn't show anything noteworthy.
Which is why it's taken me over a week to get through a single comic book. I'd get through the Captain Marvel story and with its lack of characterization and plot holes big enough to drive a tank through, I had to set the book aside for a bit. I tackled the Spy Smasher story the next night; that one was worse. The Minute Man story; worse still. Don't even get me started on the Bulletman story! Sprinkle in some blatant sexism throughout the whole thing, add in a few painfully racist caricatures, and you've got something that I really can't deal with for more than 10-15 minute bursts. Even trying to force myself through it strictly as an intellectual exercise.
That's a large part of why I don't do more Golden Age research than I do. I definitely want to learn about the foundations of the medium so I can better understand how/why it developed the way it did, but I don't have a thesis paper or anything riding on it, so I have no problem setting these types of comics aside frequently to cleanse my comics palette.