As I've mentioned a few times here before, I've recently started using ComicBase to catalog my comics collection. The previous option I'd been using was shut down at the end of 2019 and, despite experimenting with a few (considerably lesser IMO) alternatives for a year or so, I essentially put aside the endeavor of even trying to keep cataloging my collection until recently. In getting back to it, I've chosen to effectively start my cataloging over from scratch instead of attempting to utitlize the export I had done back in 2019. In no small part because the various attempts I made to merge that export into other existing systems resulted almost as much as starting over in the first place.


With a collection that's in the tens of thousands of individual issues, it should suffice to say that it's taking a while to get my entire collection cataloged. It's easy enough to just tick off long runs of something popular like Uncanny X-Men but any books that are not already in the system can take a while to log in. Things like a ten-year-old, photocopied mini-comic with a print run of less than 100 copies by creator who stopped doing comics entirely shortly after that mini-comic was printed for example. Zero surprise that's not already in the system. I touched on this about a month ago, but mostly just as a bit of surprise in some of what's not included.

My collection is a bit of an odd mix, at this point. Much of it obviously revolves around things I am personally interested in. (Or, at least, I was interested in them when I bought them!) But my collection also includes that of a friend of mine who passed away a few years ago. Part of it came from a cousin who stopped collecting. Part of it from my father who was just trying to clear out the basement. Part of it came from someone up the street who literally just dropped a couple dozen long boxes on the curb for garbage pickup! So I have a lot of books I know little to nothing about.

I have titles I've never heard of, from publishers I've never heard of. I don't know if I'm not finding an issue in the database because it's genuinely not listed, or because it's filed under a 'stealth' title that's not immediately obvious. (As a more famous example, The Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel -- what everybody knows the story as, and what's printed on the cover -- is officially listed as Marvel Graphic Novel #1. It went back to print over a dozen times under that title, until it was reprinted in 2010 when they formally switched it to Captain Marvel: The Death of Captain Marvel. So where it shows up in the database depends on what version you have and, even then, it's never listed under "D.") I have hundreds of Transformers comics, but I have never read any of the issues or even sat down to watch any Transformers cartoon, so I have no real sense of how that license bounced around through different publishers over the years and what's original versus just a reprint. What about variant covers? Now some issues comes with literally dozens of variant covers -- how do I know if I've got Variant G or Variant Q? I don't mention this to complain, only to offer a bit of context to say that just ticking a box next to Detective Comics #36 is often not as simple as one might expect!

But -- and here I get to my actual point with this blog post -- I've become accutely aware of what has/has not been given attention by the broader comic book community. (Or, at least, the comic book community that utilizes some version of the ComicBase software. While you might think that since it's paid software, the user base is exclusively people a little higher up in income brackets, they offer a surprisingly good free version as well. To be fair, it probably does still skew the demographic metrics a bit but it's not explicitly exclusionary.) One interesting thing I've found is that very little in the way of "alternative" comics are represented. While that's no surprise when it comes to something like that theoretical mini-comic I mentioned earlier, I am surprised to see so little from significant publishers like Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly. Fantagraphics has been around since 1976 and D&Q since 1990. They've both published numerous award-winning books. These are not obscure publishers producing small print runs; these are long-standing publishers with solid histories of well-known and respected works. And yet I find they have minimal representation in the database; I'm constantly having to add new entries with almost every title either of them have put out.

By contrast, I have yet to add any entries for anything that might be considered porn. I mean, sure, I expected "adult" comics like Heavy Metal to show up in the database, but even the most poorly drawn, let's-just-depict-as-many-overt-sexual-acts-as-possible comics that I'd never heard of before are included as well. Manara? Sure, expected. Serpieri? Expected. But some random comic that's barely distinguishable from an unsigned Tiajuana Bible? Honestly, I'm kind of surprised some of this stuff has even made it into my collection in the first place (with a few exceptions, I honestly couldn't say for sure which of the collections I absorbed any of these came from) but regardless of how widely distributed they were or what size of print runs they had, they have all been consistently more likely to have already been included in this database than any random title from Fantagraphics.

To be clear, I'm not against porn and I'm not about to judge anyone who buys/has bought it. I've kept all these books that have come into my collection, after all. But that it so consistently shows up in a comics database that has been in operation for decades while titles from folks like Fantagraphics and D&Q so consistently do not says something about comics fandom that doesn't get talked about much, I don't think. There are innumerable columns and videos and academic papers talking about Acme Novelty Library and Love and Rockets and Ducks and King-Cat, but virtually nothing on Penthouse Comix or Doctor! I'm Too Big! or The Spider Garden. Yeah, there's some level of apples and oranges there, but that porn isn't discussed at all despite apparently being more commonly owned is noteworthy.

Sure, some of the stories are flimsy excuses to draw naked people. But is the superhero genre all that much different? With the stereotypical body sock that most superheroes wear, they might as well be drawing naked people, and the stories not infrequently are just as flimsy as the ones in porn. Just focusing on violence instead of sex. And regardless of your subject matter, there's some level of craft that can be discussed if nothing else. Can the reader follow panel-to-panel or scene-to-scene transitions? Are characters drawn consistently? Does dialogue flow smoothly or does it feel stilted? These types of questions are still valid whether you've got 32 pages of Spandex-Man hitting President Supervillain, or 32 pages of Buck Nekkid getting his freak on with Boobs MacUnty.

I won't get into today all the social reasons WHY we have so much porn but refuse to talk about it. Because that's a much larger discussion that goes well beyond comics. But it's something that I don't think even gets acknowledged very often, and maybe it's worth taking a few moments to do at least that.

Qiana Whitted pointed me some time back to this interview with Don McGregor by Cliff Galbraith. McGregor is perhaps best known for his work on Jungle Action and Killraven, both featuring well-written, decidedly non-stereotypical Black characters pretty heavily. He also penned Sabre, which has been argued to be the first modern graphic novel, coincidentally featuring a Black lead character. Part One of Galbraith's interview focuses on Amazing Adventures #31, which featured Marvel's (and, for that matter, mainstream comics') first interracial kiss.

This was in 1973, five years after Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura kissed on Star Trek. But, while race relations weren't entirely taboo, 1973 was still only six years after Loving v. Virginia in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage. The closest modern parallel I can think of is that the first male gay kiss of primetime television was in 2001, although comics' preceded that by about five years. Here, though, the law lagged (and continues to lag) considerably behind as same-sex marriage was only ruled by the Supreme Court as constitutional -- though still at the discretion of individual states -- in 2006.

So the analogy is far from perfect, but think back to how homosexuality was perceived in the U.S. about 20 years ago, and you've got a reasonable approximation of how interracial couples were viewed in 1973. So it's not surprising that publisher Stan Lee was hesitant to print the thing. While he certainly wanted Marvel to be perceived as a progressive company, he also didn't want to upset more conservative readers. Or, more accurately, conservative guardians of younger readers.

And I think that's a key element here. Not that they would have offended readers, or even distributors, but a (potentially) vocal minority in a sub-section of the United States that don't actually read the comics themselves. And, it should be noted, that even when the book went to press, there was no reaction.

Kind of like how there was no reaction when DC showed two men in a post-intercourse embrace in Enigma in the early 1990s. But in both cases, the books in question weren't really "mainstream" in that their audiences were almost exclusively 20-somethings with fairly progressive leanings anyway.

Contrast that to the death threats Lynn Johnston received for having a character come out of the closet in a 1993 For Better or Worse strip. The difference here was the audience was made up of a decidedly older, more broadly conservative population with out-dated notions of who was reading the comics page. So Lee, as Marvel's publisher, was largely concerned because he was misreading his audience. Amazing Adventures wasn't a book for 10-year-olds, it was for those college students Lee had been providing graduation speeches to for the previous decade or so.

Now here's another interesting comparison... When the verdict on Loving v. Virginia was rendered, only about 20% of Americans approved of interracial marriages. That climbed to 29% by 1972, but disapproval remained stronger than approval until 1991, over two decades later. In 2010, public support for gay marriage stood at around 45% (give or take, depending on the poll), and we hit the flipping point there in late 2011; today a clear majority approve of gay marriages.

Let me lay out the direct comparison here. Four years after the Supreme Court said interracial marriages were okay, public opinion polls said 29% of Americans approved. Four years after the Supreme Court said gay marriages were okay, public opinion polls said 45% of Americans approved.

It took a quarter century for a majority of Americans to approve of interracial marriage after the Supreme Court ruling. It took six years to for a majority of Americans to approve of gay marriage after the Supreme Court ruling.

Where I'm going with this is: popular opinion is increasingly moving faster than large organizations, like publishers and the government. With the increase of speed in communications, and the ongoing de-Caucasianing of the United States, those large organizations that aren't able to keep up are going to fail their audiences. If they continue acting as if society hasn't changed in the past 10, 20, 30, 40 years, they're going to fall increasingly out of step and eventually become irrelevant as new, more agile, organizations come in to fill the holes.

Mixed race marriages -- not just couples, but marriages -- numbered over 11 million in 2015. Seventeen percent -- nearly one-fifth! -- of newlyweds are part of an interracial marriage. So where, then, are the mixed race couples in comics? Where are the gay couples? Not only are there way too few "minorities" fairly represented in comics, but there are even fewer minority couplings.

For as much progress as we've made as society in the past few decades, it would seem as if mainstream comics are falling farther and farther behind.

I periodically do these "who was" posts about comparatively obscure cartoonists and folks in the comics industry, and most of the time, there are folks that a lot of people haven't heard of but there may be a few scholars who have. Today, though, I'd be genuinely surprised if anyone reading this was previously familiar with Carl Himmelman. You'll understand why in a bit.

Himmelman was born in 1892 in Akron, Ohio and eventually graduated from Glenville High School. (Yes, the same Glenville High School that was the alma mater of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. But that was about two decades later. As far as I'm aware, Himmelman never met either.) After graduating, he worked at a couple of ad agencies before eventually landing a job at The Plain Dealer newspaper in the back half of 1917. His obiturary said he was a "copywriter and layout artist" in their promotion department, which seems to be a step up for him. His draft card from earlier in the year when he was still at the Corday & Gross ad agency lists his occupation simply as "clerk."

When he returned from serving in the Navy during World War I, he moved into the advertising department of The Plain Dealer. He got married to Beatrice Sailer (eleven years his junior!) in 1926 and the couple had two children. Over the next twenty years, he worked his way up the chain at the newspaper to general promotion manager and, in 1959, was promoted to chief of the advertising art department. He retired in 1961 and died two years later from undisclosed causes.

Now, aside from that extremely tenuous connection to Siegel and Shuster, you'll note that there's no seeming connection to any comics work. He did work at a newspaper for much of his career, yes, but always in advertising and sales, never for the comics or even entertainment sections of the paper. That's why you haven't heard of him. But he also drew this...

It's an editorial cartoon from around 1907 that I happen to have the original art for. (Handed down in my family for at least 70 years now.) The two primary figures are caricatures of Daniel Tobin (on the left) and Cornelius Shea (on the right). Shea was the first Teamsters president, but spent much of his time trying to fight off criminal charges. While he wasn't convicted of any corruption related charges at that time, his proximity to so many questionable acts led Tobin to run against him in 1907 for the Teamsters president seat. Tobin did eventually win, but it was a fairly tight race with the final tally being 94 to 104. This cartoon Himmelman drew would've been done in the run-up to that election, depicting the two men fighting it out, with bystanders roughly equally split between them. "The Wranglers" title likely alludes to the idea that the competition was close and both men were trying to "wrangle" any votes they could.

1907, though. Himmelman would've been fifteen, still in high school. Knowing that a 15-year-old did this, probably with no formal art training, this is actually quite good. I'd have to guess that his father was in the Teamsters and, recognizing his son's talent, got him to do the piece for a local newsletter or something. (I can't find the cartoon in any of the national Teamsters magazines from 1907.) Why didn't Himmelman continue to pursue comics? He was clearly talented.

Well, I should think the notion of just trying to make a living would be a key factor. I mean, there were certainly cartoonists even back then who were doing well for themselves (Thomas Nast's entire career would've been before Himmelman drew this) but that still required a heavy lift as well as connections. And, hey, maybe that's why Himmelman pursued a career in the newspaper to begin with, hoping that would get his foot in the door and provide access to the paper's editors. But, as the saying goes, life happens when you're making other plans and he wound up having a career in advertising.

I'm speculating, of course. Maybe the newspaper was just what was available at the time. Maybe Himmelman didn't actually care for drawing all that much, and dropped when he could. Maybe the "Wranglers" cartoon was done on spec, but he was never paid and got fed up with the industry before he'd even started! But I bring his story up because there are no doubt any number of creators like Himmelman, who maybe did a few comics, but didn't/couldn't pursue a career in it for any of a zillion possible reasons and we're left with only a few shadows of their work today. How many cartoons ran in local newsletters, school papers, and other venues that only a handful of people ever saw, much less remember? What if Bill Watterson or Jeff Smith got jobs as accountants after college so they could pay the bills? Would the comics they did for their school newspapers be recognized AT ALL? They'd likely only be a minor comics footnote like Carl Himmelman.

The original King Kong was released on March 2, 1933 in New York City and to the full United States on April 7. It was immediately a massive hit, earning about $90,000 opening weekend. That's about $2.3 million in today's money. The studio executives wanted to capitalize on the film's success as quickly as possible and green-lit a sequel, demanding that it get into theaters before Christmas. And indeed, the same production team managed to pull together the hour-and-nine-minute Son of Kong in a matter of months, and they were able to release the sequel on December 22!

To no surprise, Song of Kong isn't as good as the original. But it's far better than it has any right to be -- the idea of a sequel wasn't even on the table when King Kong was first released and they managed to still complete the entire picture with some amazing special effects fast enough to get it released the very same year!

OK, but what does this have to do with comics?

Well, to help promote Song of Kong, they produced a comic strip to run in newspapers. (They had actually done the same with King Kong ealier in the year, but I want to focus on the sequel.) The story is, obviously, an abridged version of Ruth Rose's film script. The original artwork was handled by Glen Cravath, who had been a movie poster artist for several years at that point. The strip ran for six weeks, but it's unclear what markets it may have hit. As far as I can tell, none of the original survives. (Allan Holtz's American Newspaper Comics: An Encyclopedic Reference Guide doesn't even list it.)

However, it was translated and adapted in Spain to promote the movie there. Artist Tomás Porto reworked Cravath's originals, supplementing and expanding several sequences with his own art, making the entire thing over twice as long! This Spanish version does a better job representing the movie and argueably makes a more emotional ending, leaving the ape's saddened face visible as the water rises up instead of just his hand as is shown in the movie.

Porto had a fairly long career as a cartoonist after this, while Cravath only continued for about five or ten years, mostly working on Frank Buck (probably ghost-) written strips.

In any event, we do have Porto's Spanish-language version of the Son of Kong strip and I thought I'd run that here today...

I was saddenedly to hear of the passing of Will Murray over the weekend. He was a deeply influential writer/researcher of comics and comics history, and I delieberately patterned some of my work directly off his. I never had the chance to meet him in person, but we did chat via email a few times; he was kind and generous with his time and resources, going so far as to provide me with scans of some obscure articles he had written years earlier.

In light of his passing, I thought I'd re-run this appreciation post I wrote back in 2012. My condolences and best wishes to his surviving friends and family.

---

A co-worker and I were chatting this morning and, at some point, he asked what my next book was going to be about?

"Blackstone, the comic magician detective," I answered.

At which point he laughed, amused at the consistency with which I can find topics so obscure and esoteric that no one else is writing about it. He continued to point out that I also tend to go into great detail on these topics, probably much moreso than anyone else cares about. I agreed, saying that was more or less deliberate on my part.

He then proceeded to tell me about how he was a Doc Savage fan growing up, and he had 100-some of the novels. And how he was recently reading a book about the history of Lester Dent and his famous creation, and noted how the author of that piece also went into great detail about this character that no one today was all that familiar with, much like I do.

I asked if he was talking about Will Murray. After a split-second of surprise that I would know that name, he affirmed that he was indeed talking about Murray, a noted Doc Savage fan who's actually gone on to write several Doc Savage novels as well.

I'm not a big Doc Savage fan myself, but I've been familiar with Murray's work for many years now. I don't recall exactly when I first read something by him, or even when/where I started seeing his name with any regularity, but I do know that I've read any number of articles and such by him that have delved into the depths of comic book and pulp histories. I pointed out to my co-worker that I had actually used Murray as a sort of template for my own authorship.

But he wasn't the only one. As much as he knew about the medium, comics weren't his forte. Two other authors whose work was influential to me, in terms of how I've approached what passes for my writing "career", are Peter Sanderson and Greg Theakston. Sanderson is perhaps best known as one of the primary writers for The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe and Marvel Saga. Theakston is best known as an illustrator, and is one of the go-to guys for prepping for reprint Golden Age comics for which usable art is no longer available.

I recall being in awe of Sanderson because, when I first heard of him, his title was Marvel Comics Archivist. That sounded liked an incredible job, and one which I hoped I could land one day. (Sanderson turned out to be the first and only person to hold that position. I believe he was let go during the Marvel's bankruptcy in the 1990s and the position was never filled again.)

I actually wasn't aware that Theakston did any artwork at all until 1999 when I saw his cover for The Golden Age of Marvel Comics. Prior to that I had only read research articles by him, primarily about Jack Kirby. I tell a lie; I did some of his art in his self-published Pure Images series, but those were largely text pieces with only a few pages of his original art. Regardless, I knew him more as a comics historian than anything else.

Murray, Sanderson and Theakston were/are three writers who would dig deep into the annals of comic history and cover their subjects with a depth and precision that I wasn't seeing anywhere else. Other writers who were trying to do the same type of thing came across as fanboys who wrote a little better than average. These guys, though, researched and wrote almost as if they were writing for academic journals. They wrote with a love of their subject, of course, but they also wrote intelligently and covered territory no one else seemed to be covering. These were the guys who had the most direct impact on my sense of what writing ABOUT comics should be. Much of my writing -- for Jack Kirby Collector, MTV Geek, Drawn Word and my own work -- is modeled off theirs.

Will, Peter, Greg -- if you happen across this, thanks very much. One of my goals in writing about comics is to have the same impact that you had on me. I'm quite confident that I'm not there yet, but that's part of why I keep coming back day after day.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Kirby's Comic Strips
https://ift.tt/wI3E1fC

Kleefeld on Comics: Jack Kirby's Blue Beetle
https://ift.tt/JSmnAVv

Kleefeld on Comics: The Storytelling Brilliance in Sky Masters
https://ift.tt/RqNwfZA

Kleefeld on Comics: When Did Jacob Kurtzberg Become Jack Kirby?
https://www.kleefeldoncomics.com/2026/08/when-did-jacob-kurtzberg-become-jack.html

Kleefeld on Comics: My Favorite Kirby Covers
https://ift.tt/rs6KaZq

In honor of Jack Kirby's birthday today...
What kills me is that it's not like there were bad Kirby covers, just some that were more stellar than your a run-of-the-mill, just-plain-amazing Kirby cover. Not to mention that Kirby was a storyteller -- the covers for his books were, by and large, afterthoughts!

This is why Kirby is still the King!