Last night's History Channel special, "Comic Book Superheroes Unmasked", was a pretty thorough and well-done survey of the history of superhero comics. Good selection of guests--Steranko, Lee, Gaiman, Miller, Eisner, etc. (Could have done with less Bradford Wright, author of Comic Book Nation, though, who seemed to be flogging an agenda.)
Since it was explicitly superhero, it neglected the non-superhero history of the market, mostly in the crime/horror period of the late 40s/early 50s and the indies of the 80s and beyond.
Small errors of sort-of-fact; it claims that Batman, Superman, and WW were the only superheroes continuously puplished from the GA to the SA, which is true, but only if the criterion is their own titles; Aquaman and Green Arrow also made the transition IIRC.
The only significant omission was no mention of Alan Moore outside of Watchmen, especially no mention of Swamp Thing.
Basically, thumbs up.
Posted by Greg at June 24, 2003 3:40 PM
There are, strangely, people who don't consider Moore's Swamp Thing to have been a superhero comic. These people are wrong, wrong, wrong, but they exist.
If you exclude Swamp Thing as a "horror" comic, the only major superhero comic Moore did for the American market was Watchmen. (Well, much later, WildCATs, but, good as that was, it had almost no impact on the field.) Captain Britain, V for Vendetta, and Miracleman--his other major superhero works--were all British comics, even though major parts of the latter two first appeared in the US, and all have appeared in the American market.
Kevin's right, exposing my provinciality in the process. The show was definitely focused on American comics, with no mention of manga at all and the only mention of Europe their supposed derision of the medium, somehow managing to ignore b.d.
The show did go up to the bust in the early 90s, which almost put it late enough to mention Supreme. "For the Man Who Has Everything" is important, but only a one-shot. Neglecting Swamp Thing when mentioning Sandman is a major omission (though, perhaps caused by the availability of Gaiman for commentary and not Moore).
Although I enjoy Moore's Supreme, I think of it as more of a light nostalgia romp than a serious work--very much like 1963. And his abortive works for Awesome are a disappointing fragment.
Of course, if the documentary really goes up to 2000 or beyond, the ABC line is worth mentioning--Promethea and Top 10 are superb comics.
Hi, guys --
I'm the writer/producer of the History Channel show and -- you're sort of right.
No money in the budget to go to England to talk to Alan Moore, so that was a good guess. I would never argue the importance of SWAMP THING, but in terms of the social history angle we were (primarily) going for, WATCHMEN was the work to grapple with. I also think that WATCHMEN has had a far wider effect on mainstream super-heroes than SWAMP THING. That said, if I'd had another half-hour...(The failure of Captain Marvel in the 70s was just one storyline that ended up on the cutting room floor.) No room for V FOR VENDETTA and it was, as noted, a really British work. MARVELMAN/MIRACLEMAN...Oy. I would have felt it necessary to get into the 1950s origin of the character (see the cutting of Captain Marvel, above) and there would probably have been legal hassles anyway. You have no idea of the legal hoops we had to jump through just to use what we had.
If we had focused more on the industry itself, we would have gotten into manga. Maybe another time.
The omission of Green Arrow and Aquaman ...I knew someone would spot that. But it would have been highly unwieldy to include them. I still don't know how I would have explained their survival to The History Channel producers (who knew NOTHING about comics)but maybe the line should have been changed to reflect the fact that only a few heroes survived into the 50s, INCLUDING DC's big three. That way we could have ignored Green Arrow and Aquaman in a sneakier way? (I also had to ignore the 1953-55 failure of the revival of Captain America, Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch, which was actually quite interesting from a social context. Time, gentlemen, time.)
But thanks for watching.
I have been unable to see that show, as I have not got cable. As someone who was a student of Brad Wright's a few terms ago, I'm curious as to what particular agenda he seemed to be flogging, because I'm wondering if it related to the bias I felt I found in his course.
Marie:
I'm not sure I could characterize Wright's agenda properly. He seemed to have a single-explanation sociological theory about superhero comics in the GA and related everything to it. I don't believe there's a single-explanation theory for anything humans do, so I didn't pay much attention.
Fair enough. When I was taking his pop culture course about six months ago, it did seem as if his thrust was "This was an alternative art/counterculture, and then it got co-opted by the mainstream". With his discussion of music, movies, comics, television--yes, everything seemed to be "If it wasn't pushing my point of view, it didn't matter". Which, you know, is ok. But that's the sort of bias I was referring to. His ideas are actually pretty good, when talking one on one, but his lecture mode....well.... I think that he and I LOST quite a few of my classmates when we would start debating.