Robert Kirkman's Secret History of Comics

Product Information

Comics have taken over pop culture now, and Kirkman’s series really gets to the stories that are the heart of why that is. “The stories that are behind the scenes that go into the creation of these comics are just as interesting if not more so than the comics themselves. Once you see what people are behind these comics, and how much effort and love and passion has gone into them, you’ll see why this is a medium that drives all of pop culture right now. It’s great.” The Trials of Superman” episode examines the comic book origins of Superman and the legal aftermath that plagued its creators, Joe Shuster (Blaine Anderson) and Jerry Siegel (Brendan Taylor). For the FBI, Gleason presented a dual threat as a purveyor of sensational comic books who was also or had been a Red and who produced comic books that were often anti-capitalist in nature and theme. He was a problem for the State Department as well. “Thanks to the movement of Cold War plague carriers—soldiers, tourists, diplomats, and American corporations—Gleason’s crime comic books and their offspring mingled with cultures around the world,” Hirsch writes. Webcomics have grown in popularity since the mid-1990s. Since the inception of the World Wide Web, artists have been able to self-publish comics on the Internet for a low cost. Hosting providers specifically designed for webcomics, such as Keenspot and Modern Tales, allow for a type of syndication of webcomics. Scott McCloud described in 2000 how creators of online comics can revolutionize the medium by embracing the digital space and making use of techniques such as infinite canvas. Webcomics became more prolific in the early 2000s, as respected comics awards such as the Eagle and Eisner Awards started adding categories for digital comics. [30] See also [ edit ]

For you as a huge comic book fan, and a major part of the industry of years now, were there still things you learned in the process of making this series that was new to you? I’d like to first thank the artist co-creator Joe for his genius art and supreme professionalism in maintaining such a constant high standard throughout the original ten Titan volumes of the story. And now the three larger volumes from Rebellion. Especially for the humanity and humour Joe brought to the saga. And Joe’s family for their fantastic ongoing support. In particular his daughter Jane Colquhoun, who is also an artist. Who was Martin Goodman? The answer from a business point of view is quite fascinating, and the book effectively presents a man with a narrow sense of opportunity, a fairly good head for selling magazines, and a dogged determination to keep publishing. My grandfather John Mills, a policeman at the beginning of the Great War, who resigned and joined the army, serving in the trenches, rather than do the dirty work of the ruling classes by arresting deserters. When you consider that the Police Gazette was listening a thousand deserters a week, with another thousand not answering their call up, and the total number of deserters in the Great War was 146,000 (probably significantly more), it gives us an idea of just how big the problem really was. Our whole team got together and started pitching ideas. I think there was at some point, a list of maybe 12 or 15 different subjects that we could explore. We started looking at what kind of eye witness kinds of things that we could get, and what kind of first-hand accounts that we could get.

The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism

However, Goodman does not appear to have conceived of content as “intellectual property” in the sense that we now use that term. To him it was just words and art that he could print on paper again and sell again; it was still merely available content for print publication. In the 1960s he gave away the TV rights to Spider Man, thinking of it as free advertising for his comic book.

Somewhere along the line the emphasis changed from comedy to drama, like the Superman and Superboy comic books I so enjoyed as a teenager in the 1960s. I don't read comics anymore but I suppose few if any are meant to be funny nowadays. Although they probably all contain humor. Hirsch ends his history with the rise of Marvel. The saga has continued into the present day, however, with the superheroes invented by Marvel and its rival, DC Comics, dominating Hollywood, once again offering the world a questionable image of the United States and perhaps the way our culture views itself. Pulp Empire does not elaborate on this latest chapter. Rather, its alternately admiring and adversarial—not to mention obsessive—comic book history documents, with passion and disappointment, one fan’s discovery that his idol has two faces and feet of clay.Writer Robert Kirkman has become one of the comic book industry’s most important creators over the past decade and a half, and not just because of the massive success of his creation, The Walking Dead, but also his work on books like Invincible for Image Comics , and for Marvel Comics, several years of Ultimate X-Men. Now Kirkman and AMC have teamed up once again, this time producing the six part documentary series Robert Kirkman’s The Secret History of Comics. The bottom line is that all of these illustrators were commercial artists, taking whatever paying work came their way, and turning out art accordingly. Dennis Gifford (2013). Peter Hunt (ed.). International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. Routledge. pp.239–241. ISBN 9781134879946. Robert Crawford (2013). On Glasgow and Edinburgh. Harvard University Press. p.258. ISBN 9780674067271.