Tag: History

David Brothers is blogging Black History Month, spotlighting great cartoonists George Herriman and Jackie Ormes, thus far.

Tarpé Mills is a name well known to comics historians, not only as one of the best of the female cartoonists of the war years, but as the creator and artist of Miss Fury, one of the first successful superheroine characters, which ran for nearly a decade as a sunday newspaper strip. It was a lively blend of outre characters, adventure and naughtiness. This April Dean Mullaney's Library of American Comics is reprinting the best of the strips in a deluxe volume complete with an introduction by comics historian Trina Robbins. Mullaney provided a desception of the volume and this preview for our Anniversary week:

While we're spotlighting creators issues and outlooks here at Anniversary Week at The Beat, here's an oldie but a goodie: The (Sad) Saga of Black Lightning’s Creation by Daniel Best which presents documents and drawings from writer Tony Isabella and artist Trevor von Eeden, the team known to have created Black Lightning's first appearance. There's some dispute over how the two should be credited -- Isabella claims sole creative credit due to having come up with the character all on his own and described the costume and so on -- but von Eeden has drawings but...we'll we won't get into that here. von Eeden doesn't want the creator's credit--or the royalties that come with it -- but has his own opinions. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. As is well known, Isabella had the foresight to keep a piece of the character he had created independently of DC editorial -- a move he thinks backfired…

A couple of interviews out now clarify controversial comics news stories of the past and more recent past; both are a reminder that what you read on CBR or Newsarama is rarely the whole truth -- and that's it's not always our business to know the whole truth.

With the Comics Code all but buried, what ever happened to the CMAA's priceless archives of historical documents?

While the industry reacted with equal parts nostalgia and disdain to yesterday's announcement of the end of Wizard nagazine (see next post), and quite rightly pointed out all the harmful, childish attitudes it enshrined, we'd like to dwell for a moment, if we may, on the magazine's one very positive legacy: all the great people who worked there.

Of late, Tumblr has become quite a hotbed of discussion over perennial issues of women in comics, and the Ladies Making Comics run by Alexa D. has been in the forefront of the talk. Now LWA has started something incredibly cool and much needed: a wiki for all the unsung women of Golden Age comics. And it's a lot more than you probably thought.

After yesterday's news that DC Comics was dropping the Comics Code, leaving Archie the last surviving member of the Comics Code Authority...comes word that...

§ In the never-ending discourse over gender and comics, one of those classic anecdotes -- this one told by a man:

The late Joel Beck was a pioneer of the Bay Area Underground comics revolution, illustrating Lenny of Laredo, a satirical bio of Lenny Bruce, and a naughty poster of Daisy Duck among other things. The SF Chronicle reports that he's also part of a family mystery his survivors are trying to crack:

Taschen's Creed Poulsen forwarded this account of the recent book party in Los Angeles for 75 Years of 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, Paul Levitz's amazing history of DC Comics. The pictures make it.

As teased at San Diego and mentioned in passing here and there, Marvel is bringing back some CrossGen titles this march: Mark Waid's RUSE,...