Harper College - Halcyon Yearbook (Palatine, IL)

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By: Steve Francos The way a culture acts on its members reachs varied levels of individual life. Re- cent surveys have shown 90W to 9901: of all American children read comics. Which is more than TV, Movies, or 'good' books. Some comic book titles have achieved cir- culation in excess of one million per month. ln fact a sales figure of less than six figures is grounds for discontinuing the title. Comics with this kind of readership and circulation figures strongly impart not only entertainment but state cultural ideals and myth heroes on a simply level. Simply in the sense of presentation not content. For here the child sees possibly his first example of socially stated right and wrong he enjoys while he is exposed to it. This is basically the position of Mike Uslan at Indiana University. Mike is a 20 year old junior who is teaching an experi- mental course in comic books. One aspect considered in the course which l'd like to go into some lenght here on my own is comic world history. Comics as we know them today just didn't pop up in the 1930's and evolve from there. The four color, 25 cent, 48 page comics we've become accustom to reading have ancestors, the old newspaper strips jfrom all the way back to the l890'sj and pulp magazines. While the newspaper strips had and still do effect comics most of the story lines and 'flavor' early comics recieved came from pulp magazines. lt was in 1937 with the advent of Detec- tive Comics fMar. l937j where we can begin to trace the influence of pulps. Comics had by this time jl937j a standardized size UM: x l0M1j but were without a unifying concept, a consistent theme. The March issue of Detective Comics changed all that by becoming a crime pulp with pictures: a comic concerned with the universal con- flict between law and order, between good and evil. From this point comics slowly started to gain the colorful appearance we're use too. Still even with a new perspective comics lacked something. The readership of the l930's wanted something more pulps filled this need. Pulps measured 9M x 7M and had ll4 to l62 pages between full enamel stock covers. Most had l28 pages which usually featured a lead novel of some 50,000 to 60,000 words and a half dozen short stories total- ing an additional 20,000 words. Some books featured more stories of shorter lenght, about 80,000. Pulps were untrimmed magazines named after the soft paper they were printed on. Publishers used pulp paper because there was nothing cheaper. Costs always figured into the publishers profit margin. This was because they had to work with the idea of quantity always in mind. The competition between companies for the available market was incredible. Some pulps were issued weekly, some monthly, bi-monthly, or quar- terly but the usual number of pulps appear- ing onthe stands at one time was 250. Every kind of story imaginable was told, nothing was too fantasic or absurd. A par- tial list will indicate just how well every kind of subject was covered. There was The Shadow, Flying Aces, Fire Fighters, Dargnet, Weird Tales, jungle Tales, Doc Savage, Prison Stories, Ghost Stories, Twice-a-Month Love Book, Quick-Trigger Western, Mobs, Front Page Stories, and Secret Agent X , the Man of a Thousand Faces. The pulps were cheaply printed, with flashy illustrations, sensationally written and they only cost a dime. They were aimed at the masses the vast lower and middle class buyers, who needed a cheap medium of entertainment. The stories found in the pulps were all plot. Characterizations was almost non- existant. lt would have slowed down the quick paced scripts. Chapters were swiftly paced paragraphs never more than a few sentences and sentences were ckipped and concise. Every single word had to keep the story moving. Pulp writers were paid according to the number of words in their stories. The pay scale ran from W cent low to a high of 3 cents. Some of the top name people in the field like Walter Gibson author of the 325 Shadow novel lwhich happens to be the all 45

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x x M . Q! I I Nz if C N l l..J S I .. t 4, A ss. -A+ K Z3 f' .... Then, to his after satisfaction, he realized that blood was cozing from a roand hole in Clarita 's forehead. Neither Vic nor The Shadow had fired that second shot. lts roar was covered by fhe en ho ol Vic's own gan. Soineone at the doorway behind them had leilled Clarits, by frying Io lcill the Shadow. The Shadow whirled. The intruder was revealed lilee a shape of ghastly horror in the living-room doorway. lt was Naniber One! His niainniy face aleanied yellow with hate above the starched ruff of his black satin Harlequin sail, The Shadow Fired!! The Shadow Magazine

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time record he turned out one Shadow novel every two weeks for eight yearsl or Lester Dent author of 165 of the 181 Doc Savage novels got paid S750 a novel. Both the Shadow and Doc Savage were monthly magazines. A list of some of the better know authors will give an idea of the different types of people that worked in the field. The early work of Tennessee Williams, MacKinlay Kantor, and Paul Gallico, and the regular appearance of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Da- shiell Hammett, Louis l.'Amour, Max Brand H. P. Louecraft, Ray Bradbury, Robert Block, and Robert E. Howard. The pulp magazines were not without their critics. The New York Times lfrom a letter sent by a Connecticut school teacherl based a campaign against the pulps. The school teacher claimed lThe NY Times backing the statement in editorialslthat The mater of pulps constitutes a menace to pupil's morals, English and Mind. More editorials followed and succeeded in little more than stirring up a storm of contro- versy. But the pulps were to decline due to their changing readership. The times were changing, living in American had acceler- ated considerably since the advent of pulps. Pulp publishers looked for new ways to sell their material and meet the times. They discovered the comic book. So the industry had come full circle from Detective Comics into pulp magazines back to changing a number of their pulps into comic titles. The pulp heroes had maintaineda vast readership, had filled an entertainment need in America but their day was over. Still the fact remains that these characters both pulp and comic have become part of our nations- myth-structure. The effect of the comic world on TV, the movies lnotabily Federico Fellinil, slang, mustic, and to a degree the way Americans look at themselves can be seen if one only looks around today. For those of you who have been interested in some aspect of the comic world but never knew where to look or find add- itional information here's place to start. Nostalga material is good business and has stores devoted solely to supplying the ever expanding market. Unlike New York and Los Angeles which abound with these 46 types of stores Chicago has only one: The Acme Book Store located at 414 North Clark Street. Within the last two years one publishing company has appeared with lists of nothing but nostaligic oriented books. Quite amply named! Nostalgia Press. To get a catolog send name and address to Nostalgia Press, Box 293, Franklin Square, N.Y. 11010. Since fantasy and sword 84 sorcery have gained such popularity in recent years a list of this sort would be incomplete without mentioning a good buyingfinfo source on the topic. The Fantasy Collector P.O. Box 550 Evergreen, Colo. 80439 Although Nostaligia Press offers reprints of entire newspaper strips llike Flash Gor- don, Popeye, Terry 84 The Pirates etc.l there is one other place to get old newspaper re- prints. The Comic World published by Memory Lane located at 594 Markham street, Toronto, Ontario. Comic World is a combination of exact reprints and writ- ten history of the earliest newspaper strips. Probably the three best books covering both Comic book impact and history are: The Great Comic Book Heroes by jules Feiffer The Sterciko 4 History of Comics. Vol. 7 by james Sterako All ln Color For A Dime edited by Dick Lupoff 84 Don Thompson The following is the only monthly adver- tisement catalogfmagazine of its sort pub- lished. With an average of eighty pages, every nostalgic item one could imagine is listed. Anything from old radio shows on cassette tapes or listings of old comic books - pulps - SF books for sale to Lone Ranger club pins can be found. Rocieefs Blast Comicolfecror order from: The SFCA 9875 SW 212 Street Miami, Florida 33157 Single copy 65 cents 3rd class Subscription rates iaccording to RBCC No. 671 3rd class 4 issues 52.00 lst 4 53.00 Air Mail 4 H 55.25