Joe Kubert – Wis[s]e Words

Showcase Sunday: Hawkman (and Hawkgirl)

Published on May 24, 2015Leave a comment

cover of Showcase Presents: Hawkman Volume One

Showcase Presents: Hawkman, Volume 1
Gardner Fox, Joe Kubert, Murphy Anderson and friends
Reprints The Brave and the Bold #34-36, #42-44, 51, The Atom #7, Mystery in Space #87-90, Hawkman #1-11
Get this for: Great Kubert art, followed by somewhat bland Murphy Anderson art

This was a lot harder to get through than the Atom or The Flash volumes, because unlike them, this is much more of a grab bag of Hawkman appearances. Whereas the previous two heroes had a relatively straightforward path towards their own title, Hawkman went from several appearances in The Brave and the Bold, DC’s other tryout book, to a guest appearance in The Atom, a backup spot in Mystery in Space, as well as a teamup story with Aquaman back in The Brave and the Bold again and then only got his own title. Through all this save his Aquaman teamup his adventures were guided by Gardner Fox, also the Atom’s writer of course. He is his usual dependable self, though some of the later stories are on the formulaic side.

The real problem is in the art, which starts off very strong in his Brave and the Bold appearances. Joe Kubert had handled the Golden Age Hawkman and his expressive, scratchy, Noel Sickles/Alex Toth influenced art style is perfectly suited to the new series. It grounds the series, more so than the slicker, more sci-fi inspired artwork of Gil Kane or Carmine Infantino would’ve done. But he only does the art in Hawkman’s first six appearances. Once Hawkman gets his first series in Mystery in Space the art is handled by Murphy Anderson, whose art is both sleeker and blander than Kubert’s. Especially his characters are much less interesting than Kubert’s, who could do a lot with a simple look or expression.

Joe Kubert draws the Hawks

The Golden Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl were reincarnations of an Egyptian prince and his lover and were solid second string heroes. They never had their own magazine, but had long runs in varius anthology series. As with other Silver Age heroes, Gardner Fox upgraded their origins to being alien police officers from the planet Thanagar, come to Earth to study our policing methods, choosing the USA’s Midway City to settle. I like the way in which they casually reveal themselves to the local police commissioner, who just as casually accepts their story and gets them cover identities working in Midway City’s museum, taking over from his brother who handily is going with retirement. Sometimes nepotism works. The museum also helps to inspire them to take up “the weapons of yesterday to fight the crimes of today”.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl: an equal team

Those first six appearances, which I’ve read before, are the best stories in the volume and what I like the best about them is how equal Hawkman and Hawkgirl are as a team. There’s some unconscious sexist nonsense in there of course, starting with Hawkgirl’s name, not to mention the romantic triangle subplot with her, Hawkman and Mavis Trent, but on the whole Fox allows Hawkgirl to do her part even if Hawkman always has to be slightly better. As with other SA DC heroes, they have to use their heads as much as their fists, figuring out the gimmick of each story’s villain.

What’s new in these stories is the larger soap opera/continuity element compared to the first volumes I read. There’s Mavis Trent as a repeated foil, but there are also more appearances from other DC heroes: the teamups with Aquaman and the Atom, the crossover with Adam Strange, who also provides the origin for one recurring Hawkman villain, in general a greater awareness that there’s a larger universe outside their own stories. It’s nowhere near the Marvel level of course, but it’s welcome.

Hawkman and Hawkgirl by Murphy Anderson

Less welcome is the change in artists. Murphy Anderson, though better known as an inker than a penciler, is certainly not a bad artist, is no match for Kubert. His figures are stiffer, his characters more bland, it’s closer to DC’s unofficial house style as seen in the Superman titles. It made the last half of the book much less interesting to read. I’m not sure why Kubert left the Hawks, but I wish he had stayed on.

Sunday Showcase: The Flash

Published on May 3, 2015Leave a comment

cover of Showcase Presents: The Flash Volume One

Showcase Presents: The Flash, Volume 1
Carmine Infantino, John Broome, Robert Kanigher, Joe Giella, Murphy Anderson, Frank Gaicoia, Joe Kubert and friends
Reprints Flash Comics #104, Showcase #4, #8, #13, #14, The Flash #105-119
Get this for: The comic that kickstarted the Silver Age

Once upon a time, in the cultural wasteland men call the nineties, getting to read Silver Age comics was actually kind of hard. Not as hard as it had been in the seventies or eighties, when it was basically getting the back issues themselves or hope for a reprint series to come out, but still the only really comprehensive reprint programmes were the Marvel Masterworks and their counterpart at DC, the DC Archive Editions. These were expensive, library quality hardcovers, fifty bucks for ten issues of a key Silver Age series, not very accessible for the average reader. That all changed when Marvel came up with their Marvel Essentials line, big black and white trade paperback slabs of comics, anywhere from twenty to twentyfive or more issues of a series, or comics featuring a particular character, from all parts of their history. As an idea it was of course ripped off from the way Manga publishers in Japan published their collections, by way of the Cerebus phonebooks, but it was still a great step forward in making comics history available. Longtime readers may remember I did a fifty Essentials in Fifty Days review series back in 2010.

Now DC only started its comparable reprint series in 2005 and unlike Marvel, they mostly focus on Silver Age titles. And until recently, I only had a few Showcase titles myself, not having run across them much here in the Netherlands. Comics retailers seem to dislike them for the same reasons I like them: they’re big and relatively cheap, hence less attractive to stock. However, I recently discovered a new source of cheap comics online and splurged out on a job lot of Essentials and Showcases, so I thought why not do a regular series of Showcase reviews like those earlier Essential ones? Not at the same insane rate, but why not a weekly series? Hence Showcase Sunday.

And what better title to start with than the one that kickstarted the whole Silver Age in the first place? The Flash’s appearances in Showcase, followed by his own series, numbered from the original Golden Age Flash Comics (which in fact only ended seven years before the S.A. Flash’s first appearance), is what sparked the interest in resurrecting other old DC heroes, culminating in the Justice League of America, which in turn made Marvel start a copycat title to which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby put their own unique touches, The Fantastic Four. There are other candidates for first Silver Age superhero like the Martian Manhunter, but the Flash was the one that really lit the touchpaper. It took a couple of years though: his first appearance in Showcase was in October 1956, his last before he got his own title was in June 1958, with The Flash 105 coming out in February 1959. Guess things moved slower in those days.

Reading these stories more than sixty years after first publication it’s both easy to see why these strips were so successful back and realise they’ve aged badly, much more so than their Marvel equivalents. On the whole, these are simple stories: a criminal or supervillain causes havoc in Central City, has some gimmick that defeats Flash the first time they meet, but in the last two-three pages Flash has the upper hand and explains why. Inbetween the battles there’s some soap opera with Iris West, Barry Allen girlfriend, complaining that he’s never on time and comparing him unfavourably with his alter ego. Nothing really changes in these stories and reading them back to back in a day really shows that. It doesn’t help that each issue has two 11 to 12 page stories, rather than one story per issue, as in the early Marvel titles. There’s less room for characterisation and plotting in such a limited space, let alone proper continuity, though there is a rudimentary form of it here, with villains returning for a second shot at the Flash.

Mostly though these are standalone stories, reinforced by the fact that e.g. in this volume there are half a dozen or so stories in which Flash has to deal with undersea or subterrean invaders, that none of the villains know of each other yet, or the fact that many of them have roughly the same order: criminal with engineering bend tinkers his way into supervillainy by inventing some sort of superweapon. That’s Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Mr Element/Doctor Alchemy and Captain Cold. All already established criminals, all inventing their signature weapon in their first appearance.

Now these are actually enjoyable stories, for all their simplicity. None of the nonsense you’d associate with Silver Age DC like in the worst Superman/Superboy stories; they are actually remarkable modern save for their approach for continuity. And what I also found noticable is that Barry Allen and Iris West are clearly adults, with adult responsibilites even if those aren’t milked for soap opera like Marvel would do. John Broome has a knack both for creating villains and for creating scenarios in which to showcase their powers, without cheating.

As for the art, if there’s one artist who is synonymous with the Silver Age Flash, the penciler on all of the stories in this volume, it’s Carmine Infantino. Now I first encountered his artwork on a much later title of his, the Marvel Star Wars series, where his elongated, rubbery characters and blocky space machinery where actually the perfect match for the movies’ aesthetic. His version of Star Wars is still the one in my head when I think about it. Here however his style is much more realistic, missing the trademark elongations and perspectives he’d become infamous for. It is gorgeous though and you can see it evolve through the stories, as well as the influence his various inkers: Joe Kubert, Frank Gaicoia, Joe Giella and Murphy Anderson have on the finished art. Joe Giella especially seems to have a positive influence on his faces, much more expressive even than with Murphy Anderson inking, no slouch himself. The black and white printing shows up the line work beautifully. Though straitjacketed in a fairly conservative page layout there’s plenty of gorgeous work to keep your interest.

What did you expect from Joe Kubert?

Published on August 14, 20124 Comments

Last Sunday American comics legend Joe Kubert died. He had started his career in the socalled Golden Age of the 1940ties, was a huge part of DC’s Silver Age 1960ties revival, founded the most important school for cartoonists in America, did an incredible amount of war comics for DC not to mention kept working, until, well, the moment he died. He wasn’t the kind of creative genius that a Kirby was (but who is), but perhaps the best example of a passionate craftsman, who’d put his best effort in any assignment, whether a six page backup in Weird War Tales or a personal project like Fax from Sarajevo. He was the old fashioned consumate professional, with habits formed in the tough times of the forties and fifties.

The passing of such an artist, such a fundamental part of American comics history, is of course reason for an outpouring of obituaries and retrospectives, but not all responses are equally well considered. Alan David Doane put his foot in it, when he called Kubert a “scab artist” in his obituary:

Unfortunately, and because of his own choice, I’ll always also remember Joe Kubert as a scab artist who chose a paycheck over decency in signing on to DC’s egregious Before Watchmen project. The disgust I felt when people like Brian Azzarello or J. Michael Straczynski signed on board was nothing compared to the enormous confusion and disappointment I felt when people like Kubert, or Len Wein, or Darwyn Cooke agreed to be a part of Before Watchmen, against the clearly stated wishes of the writer of Watchmen, Alan Moore. Most of the creators on the scab list were known hacks, if popular ones. Kubert was a legend in comics, Wein a stalwart with decades of experience, and Cooke was fastly becoming a favourite creator for thousands of readers who enjoyed his witty, engaging retropop style on titles as varied as DC: The New Frontier to IDW’s lush hardcover adaptations of Donald Westlake’s Parker novels.

Which of course didn’t pass unnoticed. I’m not going to take part in the inevitable pile-on, I just wanted to know why he expected anything else from Kubert, or even Wein? Both men throughout their careers have been happy to work within the guidelines set out by the big commercial publishers, occasionally switching from DC to Marvel or Marvel to DC if business was better there, but neither has ever been a crusader for creator rights or been all that critical of the whole work for hire system. Kubert has always been well rewarded for his work for DC over the decades, he has always had the attitude of a commercial artist that a job’s a job, with only the occasional more personal project to interfere with that. How can you expect a man like that to understand or agree with the idea that he shouldn’t work on Before Watchmen, just because one of its creators disliked the idea?

As far as Kubert was concerned, it was probably just another job, just another creation to work on long after the original creators have (been) moved on, no better or no worse than work on Hawkman. I can understand why Alan David Doane felt the way he does, but I would suggest that we shouldn’t let this one assignment colour our impressions of the man too much.

Somebody like Darwyn Cooke, who owes much more to Alan Moore and that generation of cartoonists than Kubert ever did, is much more culpable and morally dubious. Here’s somebody who’s been able to make a pretty good living out of the comics industry Moore helped created, who didn’t need to do this project at all, but is not only happy to so, but allows himself to be a little cog in DC’s hype machine, defending the indefensible. There’s somebody who you need to be angry about.