The Red Planet on the Four-Color Page: Mars in Comics
John Carter of Mars
The Red Planet on the Four-Color Page: Mars in Comics by Jerry Whitworth
Recently, NASA landed the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars providing a vast resource of information on the “red planet” that we never before had access toward. Man has told tales of the fourth planet from the sun for many years, a medium frequently employed in this way is the comic book. One of the earliest stories applied to the four-color page was from a source predating comic books by several decades. The Barsoom series written by Edgar Rice Burroughs describes Earthman John Carter as he is transported to Mars where he becomes that world’s champion and weds its princess. Created for pulp magazine (one of the chief progenitors to the comic book), Carter’s story would be applied to a comic strip for the Chicago Sun in 1941 but would be published for comic books in 1952 for Dell Comics, 1972 for DC Comics, 1977 (and again in 2012) for Marvel Comics, 1996 for Dark Horse, and 2010 for Dynamite Entertainment.
Read MoreThrough the Ages: Transition in Comics – Part Three
Through the Ages: Transition in Comics – Part Three
by Jerry Whitworth
(see Part One and Part Two here if you haven’t already)
DARK AGE
X-Men #1
During the Bronze Age, comic books began to make the transition from being sold at newsstands, convenience stores, and supermarkets to a direct market in comic book shops. As people began to stumble upon these stores, they would also discover that comics could be worth quite a profit as some books could be found selling for thousands of dollars. Word would spread and people began seeing comic books as savings bonds, buying and storing them like rare collectibles. Unfortunately, they failed to realize that those books going for thousands got that way because of managing to survive fifty years of being treated as disposable entertainment that was often thrown away or burned (with issues that survived generally being horribly mangled). Still, the industry took advantage, printing issues with multiple covers, sometimes with different cover art, other times with gimmicks like hologram stickers, glow-in-the-dark images, 3-D plastic pop-out items, foldout covers, and more. People were compelled to form “complete sets”, one book notorious for this was Chris Claremont and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 (1991) which to this day remains the highest grossing single comic of all time making nearly seven million dollars and selling over 8.1 million units (and printed with five unique covers four of which had different versions such as newsstand and direct market editions). The phenomenon was a boon for the industry, with new publishers popping up all over the place and comic companies in many ways couldn’t print enough books. However, as with roller coasters, this success was bound to crash when the people who became collectors realized not only were the conditions not right to make the huge payoff for their investment they believed they would get, but with so much product overproduced, the books they did buy were virtually useless as a collectible because everyone had it. To this day, you can still find comic shops with dozens of copies of X-Men #1 they can’t give away. The comic book industry nearly went out of business again roughly four decades after Wertham and Congress left it crippled.
Read MoreJustice League: Origins of Doom
Justice League: Origins of Doom
by Jerry Whitworth
Click for larger image
The DC Universe animated film Justice League: Doom bears a rather significant distinction: it is the final work in the field of animation for writer Dwayne McDuffie. A visionary that was instrumental in the creation of Milestone Media and story editor for Justice League Unlimited (among many other accolades), McDuffie was a no-nonsense visionary, a brilliant mind in the fields of character development, plot, and script, and a kind and forthright human being. McDuffie died February 2011 due to complications from heart surgery. The film was his third such piece in the series of original animated features from DC Comics having previously written the adaptation of All-Star Superman and Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths.
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