Comic Book Fever!

The Bronze Age of Comics gets short shrift in the histories, especially the later years of the late 70's and early 80's when comics were down in newsstand sales. The Golden Age saw the birth of the iconic heroes, the Silver Age saw the rise of the Marvel heroes, but what did the Bronze Age give us. Well quite a lot actually, during the years of the 70's comics left the alcoves of their specific tropes and entered the real world in new ways.

Not only were the heroes confronting real issues in fresh ways, but the breadth of genres was still pretty vibrant with martial arts and sword and sorcery joining superheroes, war, and horror and even westerns as viable kinds of books. Only romance fell to the wayside, though gothic romance did have a moment or two. The book Comic Book Fever by  George Khoury purports to capture not just the broad spectrum of the comics of the time, but the ephemera which was buzzing in the imaginations of readers couched in the other pages of a typical comic, the ads from entities like Heroes World and others.

In the book's favor is the broad spectrum of things which it covers (Big Jim, Fireside books, Grit, Treasury editions, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Secret Wars, Mile High Comics, Elfquest, Love and Rockets and more) and the artists it showcases (John Romita, Dave Cockrum, John Buscema, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez among others). The weakness in the volume is the lack of depth on some of these items. But overall it's a diverting overview of a time not often remarked upon.The cover by Alex Ross says it all as it shows us one of the ubiquitous figures of the age, Snyderman.

Here he is in one of Kubert's lush original images of Snyderman. This kind of vibrant capitalism infuses the concept of the comic both in its fact and its lore. Comics are about sales and making money and finding success. While the heroes are emblems of do-gooding, the creators were men and women just chirping away trying to make a buck and create a little art along the way.

Rip Off