I knew I wanted this one when I first clapped my eyeballs on it. Twomorrow's Hero-A-Go-Go explores the zany stuff that was rolling around on the spinner racks when I was a wee fan first snapping up comics. My notion of what a superhero is has always been pretty broad, because the heroes of this era span quite a broad spectrum. We have fully outlandish and absolutely absurd and brazenly bizarrely strange, but also exceedingly cool. The book takes a lovingly nostalgic look at some of my favorite comics, many dubbed by the "critics" as really really bad. But to my thinking these are comics which are so bad (in some instances) that they pop out the other side of the continuum of criticism and pop out the other end as in fact good. Normally Michael Eury digs into the Bronze Age, that period after Kirby left Marvel and many of the publishers of the 60's had pulled back if not completely disappeared, but here it's the Silver Age which gets his full and undivided attention. Your mileage will greatly vary greatly depending on tastes, but to give you a notion of the wildness and utter weirdness contained in this hefty tome, check out the covers below.
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I had quite a few of the oddball superhero comics at one time. There was an insane explosion going on in pop culture during this period. The Batman TV show, James Bond, the Beatles, the sex revolution, recreational psychotropics, and the new fashions being modeled on Carnaby Street all cross-pollinated to create television,movies, stage musicals, posters, exploitation magazines and comics that were lively and seemingly fresh expressions of the zeitgeist. A lot of the stuff out of DC, middle-aged comic book writers trying to be cool, was pretty lame, but even that was a recognition that something new had arrived.
ReplyDeleteI was a little kid, but I was really interested by the changing landscape. I looked into Jean Paul Sartre, psychedelic posters, scripts for political satires like MacBird! and weird comic book style novels like John Keel's "Fickle Finger of Fate" illustrated by Mad's Al Jaffee. Featuring Satyrman! It was an amazing era.
It was a vivid period, at least in my degrading memory. The campy nature of much of the stuff limited the way people saw comics for a long time, but those who penetrated the surface they found it just a fascinating way to present what at its core is mythology.
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Michael Eury is the founder and editor of Back Issue Magazine. I'm in the Back Issue Magazine group on facebook where he is an admin.
ReplyDeleteHe was diagnosed with otosclerosis in 1994, and wears dual hearing aids.
I knew he ran Back Issue, but I didn't know about his illness. You almost make me want to get on Facebook...almost.
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DeleteFacebook is a one stop shop for me. Posting pictures of my kids for Family and friends, talking politics and the news of the day with people, comic groups, science fiction book club, I use it for promoting my library where I'm the Director. If it ever starts getting less popular, I don't know what I'll do with me time ;)
ReplyDeleteWow! What a great collection of comic books. Most of the books I heard of while there were a few surprises. Dell's take on the Frankenstein, Dracula etc. was very interesting. Reminds me of a story I read from Lou Scheimer's book where Filmation Studios tried to create a animated series titled "Dracula in Outer Space.
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