I ran out to do some errands after work yesterday and when I turned the car on, the radio was in the middle of NPR broadcasting a piece about Marjane Satrapi's passing. (If you're reading this blog, it's news you've almost certainly already come across.) It wasn't a particularly long or detailed piece, much the same as they'd offer up for a movie director or professional sportsball player. They of course made express mention of Persepolis, both the book and the movie, and spoke a bit to her advocacy.

This was, as I said, after I got off from work, so I had already seen/heard the news from a dozen or so different outlets. Mostly comics and pop culture related sites. Although the first place I read about it was Le Monde, the French newspaper. Which makes sense, given that Satrapi had been living in France for decades and they're several hours ahead of any US-based outlets.

What struck me about the NPR report, though, was they used a few snippets from interviews they previously had with her. One from 2007, and another from 2024. Not just clips they found with her speaking, these were interviews from their own archives. The idea that a graphic novelist's death might even get mentioned on a mainstream news outlet was unheard of when I was growing up. But here we have them not only providing a respectable obituary, but an obituary for a graphic novelist who they had held in respectable enough esteem to have done previous pieces about her for two decades!

I went back through NPR's archives. They did indeed have an obituary for Will Eisner back in 2005, but they didn't have audio clips of him. I can't find an NPR obituary at all for Jack Kirby, who died in 1994.

When I was school, I was pushed into lockers and generally bullied for liking comic books. Much has been written over the last couple decades about how that's changed and comics are now an accepted part of mainstream culture. With the primary evidence often being the string of superhero movies in the 21st century, many of which have individually grossed over $100 million each. But I think Satrapi's obituary here is a better, more significant, reflection of the change. Not that NPR is the epitome of mainstream culture and not that her passing was higlighted, but that they had twenty year old interviews from their own archives to draw on. She had been given serious thought and consideration for decades that goes well beyond the marketing hype around the also-from-2007 Spider-Man 3 and Rise of the Silver Surfer.

I expect many comic fans, if they're familiar with The Electric Company, are most familiar with the regular appearances of Spider-Man. As a Gen Xer, I grew up on the show and watched it regularly; while I still recall bits besides the Spider-Man sequences, those are definitely the ones that are most prominent in my memories.

I happened across the first episode where Spider-Man appears (full video here) and I was surprised to see it wasn't actually until Season 4, meaning he appeared in at most half of the shows. And, if you watch that clip I just linked to, you'll see that it's actually a Spider-Man comic that actually appears before Spidey himself. Unlike the custom-made comics often used for the Spidey intros, this was a published issue -- Amazing Spider-Man #132. The specific comic has nothing to do with the episode, so they probably just grabbed the latest one off the newsstand shortly before filming.

Which got me to thinking about timing.

Amazing Spider-Man #132 has a cover date of May 1974, and was on the stands a few months before that, as was the standard practice at the time. In fact, the Library of Congress has record of the issue shipping out on January 8, 1974 and Comic Reader #103 lists an on-sale date of February 8. So the opening sequence was likely filmed in February/March of that year. The episode then aired later in the year -- specifically on October 21. No major surprises there.

But here's the interesting bit. As you might know, Marvel published a Spidey Super Stories comic to coordinate with the show. You'll note The Electric Company logo featured prominently in the upper right corner of every cover. Spidey Super Stories #1 has a cover date of October 1974 and was so successful in its own right that it continued to be published for several years after the show itself was canceled!

But recall what I said about cover dates tending to be a couple months after the issue was actually available? Again, we can look at Library of Congress records to see the issue was shipped on June 18 and Comic Reader #108 lists a July 16 on-sale date. By the time Spider-Man was actually appearing on The Electric Company, there were already three issues of Spidey Super Stories out, with a fourth coming out literally days later.

So from an audience's perspective, J. Arthur Crank's disbelief at Spidey's appearance on The Electric Company is three months out of date! He'd already been seen in conjunction with the show -- via the brand new comic -- since the summer!

It shouldn't surprise you to learn that comic legend Jack Kirby has an IMDB page listing a slew of credits. He of course worked directly for Hanna-Barbera, and helped create and/or develop a number of cartoons for them. And he's been given on-screen credit for creating many of the characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not to mention that he's shown up in a number of comic book documentaries, talking about himself and his craft.

Less well known is that he has a few acting creits to his name. He notably appeared as a police sketch artist in the 1970s The Incredible Hulk show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, and later had an actual speaking role as himself in the 1990s sitcom Bob.

But the credit that has me curious is from a 1976 episode of Starsky & Hutch in which he apparently plays the part of an "Officer Day." So I sat down to watch the episode and while there is a credit at the end for an Officer Day played by Jack Kirby, there's no character named as such on screen and I don't see anyone who clearly seems to be Jack. The closest I can see is there's a uniformed officer seen helping another cop who was just shot; it looks like it could be Jack but we never get a good look at his face...

I don't see any other names in the credits that I know to be linked with Jack in any way, and the show itself doesn't really have any comic book themes to it. There is one character shown reading a copy of Werewolf by Night #34 but that's entirely incidental to the entire episode.

So I'm wondering first if that is indeed Jack Kirby in that uniform and, if so, how did he find himself in it? Or are we talking about an entirely different guy who happens have the name "Jack Kirby"? There is another unnamed, uniformed police officer in the episode who actually has speaking lines -- is that the "Jack Kirby" in question?

It's an obscure, barely-even-comics-related question, but does anyone have any knowledge or insights about what the deal is here?

When is it relevant to dig deeper into comics history? At what point are we able to take accepted wisdom as fact? When is it pertinent to scrounge up original sources?

One of the goals of comics historians is to set the record straight. To quote Indiana Jones, they're on "the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." The study of comics is an interesting one for a few reasons. One, it's about things that were published and distributed en masse. Unlike traditional history or archaeology where you're looking at individually produced items. Two, it largely came into existence late enough in human history that there was at least some prescient notion that comics would be interesting and valuable to someone, whether that was intended for government use (in the way of financial records) or personal use. Third, it was also late enough in human history that a sufficient number of people had sufficient free time to be able to study comics while earning a living doing something else.

Compared to many other aspects of history, comics has an incredible stockpile of original source information. We have original production artwork from Windsor McCay's "Little Nemo." We have the original check National paid Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster for their first Superman story. We have Harry Peter's original design sketch for Wonder Woman with hand-written notes from William Marston. We have recorded testimony of Will Eisner from the copyright lawsuit against Victor Fox.

But most of that has only come back into the light sort-of-recently after having been presumed lost for decades. People hunting through old file folders and cabinets and trunks and such.

But, to my original question, though, at what point do you stop digging? How much Siegel and Shuster got paid for Superman has long been known to comic fans, but we only had their word on the matter. Does having the actual check make a difference? It adds credence to their story, of course, but otherwise, no.

The Eisner testimony, when read in its complete form, paints a slightly different picture of Eisner than the story he'd always told. He didn't lie, to my knowledge, but his after-the-fact version makes him out to be more virtuous and noble than what his actual testimony suggests. It's probably indeed how he remembered the event and, while the two versions don't line up perfectly, they're close enough than here too the overall story doesn't really change a whole lot.

So should we just accept what we've "known" when it comes to comics history?

The obvious answer is "no". If it weren't for people NOT accepting "known" comics history, we likely wouldn't know who Bill Finger was at all. We might still believe Jack Liebowitz was playing golf with Martin Goodman when he let slip how well Justice League was selling.

But at some point, though, you experience diminishing returns. You can do more and more and more research, and only come across smaller and smaller tidbits of information. For example, if you read a biography of Stan Lee, you'll learn a lot about him. If you read another biography about Lee, much of the same material will be repeated. You'd spend as much time reading the second biography as the first, but learn fewer things. A third biography would yield even less. So at what point do you stop reading because you're not learning anything new?

When is it okay to stop looking for primary source material? If ever? How much effort is enough and how much is too much?

Questions I don't have answers for, but something to keep in mind as you're reading people (including myself!) who talk about comics history. How much of what they say is something they actually researched and how much is something they heard from some guy at a comic shop once?

If you're reading this, you're at least like me enough to feel like everything is pretty horrifically awful right now. And however much you're engaged or not at the moment -- and, trust me, I totally get why you might feel like checking out and generally ignoring the world in favor of reading about some superheroes or something -- you're likely doing what you can just to get through each day. You're dealing with rapidly increasing food and fuel prices, and job insecurity at a minimum; possibly active threats of governmental violence and/or the possible 'disappearance' of yourself or loved ones. So what good is looking at a book filled with protest art and comics?

I'll defer to editor Tony Wolf. In his introduction to Times Like These, he writes...

I believe that all art -- even protest art -- is an exuberant expression of one's mind and heart. History has shown us fascism can steamroll everything (and quickly) if there is no pushback. Our current leaders have continually been shattering norms and 'flooding the zone' with lies, as they move the goalposts ever closer to dictatorship and pushing oppressed communities out of society. When a President campiagns on the fear of immigrans "poisoning the blood of our country," you know things have taken a turn. The years go on, and still we say "No" to this dehumanizing rhetoric.

In organizing this book, I thought about how we now look back at protest art from the Vietnam era, the Civil Rights era, World War II, McCarthyism. Surely even my more cynical peers will acknowledge that dissent efforts (of all kinds) mattered during these periods. If we make it through these years with our democracy somewhat intact, this collection can be seen as one among many snapshots of resistance art. If nothing else, protest art and nationwide protests like No Kings show that Americans didn't let go of democracy without a fight...

We are, of course, but a small portion of Americans around the nation making our voices heard, still believing there is a chance for a better tomorrow.

The art on display in here runs the gamut from satire to commentary to, in some cases, just portraits of those who've been murdered by ICE agents. Likewise, the artistic styles range from cartoony to realistic to interperative. Normally, I'd say with a collection like this that there's something for everybody to like, but given the subject matter, I don't know that "like" is the operative word. Suffice it to say that the book includes work by Bill Sienkiewicz, Emil Ferris, Peter Kuper, Rick Parker, J.T. Yost, Dean Haspiel, Alex Hernandez, and many others. There is no shortage of talented people saying variations of "Trump and his ilk are shitstains who are murdering thousands of people, destroying lives of hundreds of thousands, and tearing the country down to nothing."

Once the printing costs of the book are covered, all the proceeds will be donated to the ACLU, who has obviously been exceptionally busy trying to legally halt pretty much every awful thing this administration is doing. And since "every awful thing" is, in this case, literally everything, they've got their hands full and could use all the help they can get. Is the ACLU better off if you just send them $20 directly, rather than buy a book which has to take at least some of that $20 to cover printing costs? Technically, yeah, probably. But there's more than a little to be said about seeing others' perspectives on what's most important to them, and getting some measure of catharsis by seeing that you're not the only one who thinks this whole administration and everyone who supports it are on some bullshit.

Time Like These is available now through Comic Lion Productions for $20 US. Check out some of their other comics while you're there too.

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

Kleefeld on Comics: Memorial Day
https://ift.tt/ZP1rsCY

Kleefeld on Comics: Of Cataloging and Digital Comics
https://ift.tt/iXPSTH8

Kleefeld on Comics: Which Details Are Worth It?
https://ift.tt/98hCkLW

Kleefeld on Comics: Thundarr Review
https://ift.tt/wJsmYg5

Kleefeld on Comics: What Happened to Fumetti Ads?
https://ift.tt/kciKV5X

I expect many of you will be familiar with print ads that use comic style storytelling. Probably the two most classic examples are the Charles Atlas "98 pount weakling" and Hostess treats ads that were both famous in comic books. But the style/format of emulating a comic -- often with photographs! -- was almost common up through the 1970s or so. Even through the "juvenile deliquency" scare of the 1950s, they continued appearing in magazines, seemingly completely disassociated from the comics medium. Here's a few examples, ranging from 1951 up through 1976...

Although I'm certainly no purveyor of vintage advertising, I don't think I've seen any like this since the late 1970s. I find myself wondering both when and why the fell out of favor. Did they last into the 1980s and I just haven't seen them? What would've caused their decline -- the usual suspects like television had been around for years by that point. Anyone have any thoughts or ideas on the subject?