MORE COMMENT PRESERVATION

From a CBR thread this time:

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Well, I'd automatically put aside comparisons between entertainment and addictive substances. You can put alcohol and tobacco through the proper chemical analyses, and indicate pretty much what makes human beings want them. Thus far, no one's managed to do that with fiction,

The comparison between entertainment and domestic violence is wrong in a different way, Say that it's been statistically demonstrated that nine-tenths of all kids who witness domestic violence grow up to perpetrate domestic violence. But the kids of abusive families are not CHOOSING to see their parents batter one another; it's utterly outside their control. In contrast, patronizing violent entertainment is a CHOICE. The patrons may or may not be messed up by their personal circumstances, and they may or may not be employing what Adler called "negative compensation" to escape his problems. But we don't yet have proof that nine-tenths of, say, all horror-gorehounds become serial killers, perpetrators of road rage, or whatever.


I tend to think that entertainment has been violent since the dawn of humankind-- albeit with oscillations in tune with cultural priorities-- because fictional violence does serve as a stopgap. The contrasting view-- that violence ought to be rigidly controlled-- was once the province of pundits like Frederic Wertham and his fellow-traveler Gershon Legman. Given the effects of wild anti-comics claims, I might have thought that modern comics critics would shun that sort of extremism. Instead, I've seen both Wertham and Legman being represented as sober scholars rather than extremist cranks-- and I guess that too has much to do with current antipathies toward the very idea of representing violence, no matter how unreal it may be.


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A follow-up:

I'm not following. The anti-comics movement of the time may or may not have comprised a majority of the populace, but they had power because they appealed to a common belief among the majority, to the extent that that majority thought about comic books at all. That majority believed that comic books were for children, and so the majority of people did not oppose the minority that demanded some form of censorship. So, in effect, the vocal minority got their way by appealing to societal customs-- though the end game of Wertham was to get comics put off limits to children.

I can't see why you'd say Wertham lost. True, he didn't get the scenario he expressly said he wanted: because he didn't trust comic-book publishers to clean up their own houses, he wanted the magazines off limit to kids under 15-- which, I think we'll all agree, would have killed the medium if that scenario had been implemented. But in effect, Wertham won, because he got the U.S. government to intervene at all, regardless of what they actually did about the perceived problem. The Senate probably didn't want to be bothered with monitoring comics on a regular basis, and so they were probably satisfied with horror and crime comics were for the most part exiled from newsstands.

Yes, the comics publishers may have had less than honorable motives for their clean-up campaign, but it can be argued-- and I think John Goldwater did say something to this effect-- why should the guys who were providing clean entertainment be penalized by the ones who were promoting sex and violence?  Even though I myself favor a pluralistic marketplace, where "clean" and "dirty" both have their place, I can empathize with the logic of this statement; obviously the statement of someone who didn't want his own corner of the business destroyed.

"Comics won?" Well, specific comics companies did not win. We'll never know if EC Comics would've lasted much longer, but in effect they were driven off the stands, and Max Gaines only saved his bacon by converting MAD into a B&W magazine format. There's only one way in which I can see that comics benefitted. Because the majority audience didn't have the animus toward superheroes that Wertham did, the "cleaner" comics-atmosphere paved the way for superheroes to become relatively more sophisticated in the Silver Age, ranging from Julie Schwartz's love of SF-themed gimmicks and Stan Lee's emphasis upon dramatic moments. But in between 1955 and 1960, a lot of people were hassled by the Code or lost their jobs because of it.

THE MAYBE-THIRTY-PERCENT SOLUTION

The above title refers to the percentage to which I agree with Tony Isabella's choices in his new book, 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ.

I put in the "maybe" because of the "organizational problems" I mentioned having had with the book. Most of the time I can't tell whether or not Isabella is recommending particular comic books-- that is, the whole package as a collector would get it from a vendor-- or particular comic book stories. If Isabella had chosen one or the other, I could be surer of my percentage calculation, and thus I would've been able to satisfy the principal reason fans will have for buying the book: to check their lists, real or pending, against Isabella's.

I can't imagine any other reason for buying the book, as the sheer quantity of individual entries make the book pretty hermetic to someone not already acquainted with the history of comics. I can't see the book serving as an introduction of young readers to comics, despite the suggestion of same in Isabella's explanatory essay:

"...this book will introduce you to some of the best comic books ever published and the amazing writers and artists who created them."

I suppose that the book *could* introduce new readers to certain comics that they'd never heard of, but I think operatively speaking, only hardcore enthusiasts are likely to give it a shot. I think Isabella would have to look long and hard to find young readers to whom his book was a thoroughgoing "introduction."

In the same paragraph as the above quote, Isabella addresses his real audience:

"I won't include every milestone or even the best of the best. I'll most likely omit some of your favorites due to that pesky limit inherent in our title."

See what I mean? What do newbies know about milestones? How often do they have their own lists of "favorites?" Only hardcore fans are going to care about a project this detailed and time-consuming.

It's also a project which I often felt should have been titled 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU SHOULD READ AT LEAST PART OF.

For instance, whenever Isabella recommends a collection of stories, such as the ENEMY ACE tales of the Silver Age, I think it's implied that Isabella thinks that everything in it is worth reading, and that satisfies the implications of his title.

Yet he also says of some entries, "Due to space limitations, I generally focus on just one story in any given issue [of an anthology title]. Those same limitations are why I also list just one or two writers or artists per issue, even though many more individuals contributed to these issues."

Thus, for instance, ACTION COMICS #1 is Isabella's first selection, and its only credits listed are for the first Superman story, implying that in this case that's the main "part" that Isabella's readers should be concerned with.

OTOH, for choice #12 Isabella recommends PLANET COMICS #1 not for any particular story, but for the whole package, because it "was the first comic book devoted entirely to science fiction."

I don't doubt that this kind of herky-jerky organization is exactly what Isabella wanted. And I can't say it will bother any of the fans who are its main audience, though I would think the whole point of making a list is so that others could easily check it twice or more.

I think Isabella's book would have been a more solid concept had it focused purely on spotlighting comics in one of two ways:

(1) Comics considered as whole packages-- which includes everything from a single issue's cover, which sells the book, to interior hype-tools like letercols and editorial soapboxes-- as well as collections of whole runs:

Or,

(2) Particular outstanding comic-book stories, whether they were stand-alone tales or continued arcs.

Since Isabella is a writer, and since he does have an encyclopedic knowledge of particular stories, I think he'd have done better to go with the latter.

Admittedly, I'm prejudiced in that I've often contemplated a list of outstanding stories that would combine the best of genre-comics and artcomix.

Also, had Isabella been more consistent, he also would not have tripped himself up as much. In the opening he writes:

"I will cheat our title at every opportunity, often counting collections, runs of issues, and story arcs as if they were merely single issues."

I don't have a problem with this. But once Isabella gets to the Silver Age, he's conferring two separate spots to separate parts of two-part stories, like JLA #21-22 (see pages 117-18) and FF #25-26 (pp. 121-22).

See what I mean about the difficulty of comparing one's own pending list with Isabella's? How can you trust someone who tells you he's going to cheat but doesn't cheat in the precise way he's said he will?

The other major failing of 1000 COMIC BOOKS is that Isabella, despite his warning about landmarks, all too often selects a given comic just because it launched a particular character or group of characters.

Sometimes this is appropriate. While it's true that the first BATMAN tale is nothing special as a story, one can see the beginnings of the Batman mythos in it, and this qualifies it as "exemplary" (which specialized term I'll explore more in THE EXEMPLARY AND THE EXCEPTIONAL PART 2).

In contrast, though, Isabella also selects AMAZING ADVENTURES #21, apparently for no reason than because it was the debut issue of writer Don McGregor on the book's main feature KILLRAVEN. It's true that McGregor was the most important writer who contributed to the opus of the character, though I've pointed out in BACK ISSUE #14 the importance of contributions by earlier writers as well. But the artist on AA #21 was Herb Trimpe, whose work there was some of his worst ever. Had KILLRAVEN struggled on with his art or something of similar quality, had the feature never enjoyed the creative visuals of Craig Russell, fans probably would not remember the series any better than SKULL THE SLAYER. McGregor was an important factor in the series' critical reception, but not, as Isabella's entry implies, the most important factor.

There are many other points on which I could carp (DARK KNIGHT RETURNS didn't make the cut, but an issue of TEEN TEMPTATIONS did?) But by and large the volume does at least communicate how much Tony Isabella loves comics, and even if I can't use his list for comparison purposes, it's hard to fault him too much.