C
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1980-1989
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by KEITH DALLAS
Table of Contents Introduction and Acknowledgements............................................... 4 Introductory Note about the Chronological Structure of American Comic Book Chronicles................................... 6 Note on Comics Book Sales and Circulation Data............................ 7
Chapter One: 1980 Dark Phoenix and the Darkness Before The Direct Market by Keith Dallas . ...................................... 8
Chapter Two: 1981 The Roy Thomas Renaissance, Royalties, and The Return Of The King by Keith Dallas......................................... 24
Chapter Three: 1982 New Publishers, New Formats, New Talent, and New Mutants by Keith Dallas.................................................... 46
Chapter Four: 1983 Controversy Over A Proposed New Comics Code by Keith Dallas......................................................................................... 72
Chapter Five: 1984 Teenage Turtle Takeover by Keith Dallas.................................... 104
Chapter Six: 1985 Crisis and Creation by Jason Sacks......................................................... 128
Chapter Seven: 1986 Watchmen and the Watchers of the Comics Industry by Jason Sacks........................ 152
Chapter Eight: 1987 Bubbles Burst, Back to Basics by Jim Beard.......................................................................................... 186
Chapter Nine: 1988 Killing Jokes and Killing Calls by Dave Dykema.................................................................................. 216
Chapter Ten: 1989 The Year of the Billionaire, the Bat, and the Brits by Paul Brian McCoy........................................................................... 246 Works Cited........................................................................................... 279 Index....................................................................................................... 286
Ask comic book aficionados about the 1980s and many will immediately reference such seminal publications as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Others will mention such crowd-pleasing series as Marvel Comics’ Uncanny X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, or Secret Wars. Even others will point to the decade’s plethora of new creator-owned titles, like Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus, Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, or Los Bros. Hernandez’s Love and Rockets. This book’s most prevalent message is that none of these publications would have been printed if not for the proliferation and ascension of a new sales venue for comic books: the specialty comic book stores known as The Direct Market. As the 1980s dawned, the comic book industry was in critical condition due to the dwindling sales supplied by newsstand outlets. By the time the 1980s ended, however, the industry’s fortunes had reversed as the Direct Market had fully replaced the newsstand as the principal pointof-sale for comic books.
INTRODUCTION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Times they were a’
Changin’
Unquestionably for the comic book industry, the 1980s were boom years, both financially and creatively. For the first time in their histories, the two biggest publishers, DC Comics and Marvel Comics, offered royalties to writers and artists working on their best-selling titles. The lure of royalty payments incentivized professionals to be imaginative and strive for excellence. And then there were the many writers and artists who released their own creations exclusively to the Direct Market and found themselves financially and critically rewarded for doing so. Their success encouraged many more professionals (and publishers) to take the Direct Market plunge. In turn, because the Direct Market wasn’t beholden to the restrictive standards of the newsstand’s regulatory Comics Code Authority, contents of comic books became more explicit. Along with that, the norms of the medium changed. Narrative techniques became more sophisticated, and embracing it all was a comic book readership that was more mature than it had ever been before. But the decade had its share of misfortunes too. A glut of product in the mid-1980s threatened to undermine the Direct Market just as it was flourishing. There was also a pervading fear that if the comic book industry didn’t police itself, outside watchdog groups would find the explicit content produced in comic books unacceptable and demand censorship. By the end of the 1980s, some grew concerned the comic book industry was becoming too reliant on the Direct Market for its success, and it was a concern that turned prophetic… But that’s a tale to be told in a different volume of American Comic Book Chronicles and by a different author. As far as this volume goes, I cannot emphasize enough that it was as much a collaborative project as an individual one. This book was produced through the efforts and assistance of many, many people. Foremost among them are four writers who were called upon to help me finish this volume in a timely manner: Jim Beard, Dave Dykema, Paul Brian McCoy and Jason Sacks. I designate them my “cavalry” because they rode in and saved the day. 4
NOTES
Note on Comics Book Sales and Circulation Data certain east coast warehouses that illegally sold 'affidavit returns' comic books (“Tales from the Database” 99).
Determining the exact number of copies a comic book title sold is problematic, regardless if the sales outlet under consideration is the newsstand or the Direct Market. The best one can hope to learn is a close approximation of a comic book’s total sales. This is because the methods used to report sales figures were (and still are) fundamentally flawed.
It’s perhaps even more understandable then why comic book publishers in the early 1980s looked to the Direct Market as a replacement sales venue. However, the fact that Direct Market retailers couldn’t return comic books sent to them doesn’t necessarily make determining exactly how copies a comic book title sold less problematical. That’s because Direct Market distributors didn’t require their retailers to keep track of how many comic books were purchased by their consumers and how many comic books became unsold inventory. Famously, Direct Market retailers ordered 428,000 copies of Marvel’s first Direct Market exclusive comic book, Dazzler #1 (cover date March 1981). The ongoing historical inquiry though is how many copies of Dazzler #1 did retailers order to satisfy consumer demand and how many copies did they order as a speculative investment for themselves. This inquiry can be transferred to any comic book sold exclusively to the Direct Market.
During the 1980s, most comic books sold on the newsstand would print an annual “Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation” in one of their issues as was required by the United States Post Office for all periodicals. These statements divulged—among other information—a comic book title’s average print run, average paid circulation, and average returns from the newsstand. The data in these statements were as accurate as the publishers could provide. The publishers certainly knew how many copies they printed, but they relied on the distributors to inform them of how many copies were sold on the newsstand and how many unsold copies were being “returned” for a refund. Most distributors actually didn’t return unsold copies—or even stripped covers of the unsold copies— back to the publishers; instead they sent to the publishers affidavits of the number of unsold copies they destroyed. In essence, an “honor system” was in place that relied on the newsstand distributors to be truthful about the number of copies bought by consumers and the number of unsold copies being destroyed. And perhaps unsurprisingly, once the publishers couldn’t dispute what the distributors were reporting in their affidavits, the whole system became corrupted.
American Comic Book Chronicles then recognizes the flawed nature of newsstand and Direct Market circulation data but is resigned to the fact that it is also the only data available and will consider it a close approximation of a comic book’s total sales numbers. Nexus TM and © Mike Baron and Steve Rude.
In an interview conducted for American Comic Book Chronicles, Jim Shooter detailed a scenario that he described as emblematic of the newsstand system’s corruption: Let’s say a distributor orders 1000 copies of a comic book. So the publisher sends him 1000 copies. But because the distributor doesn’t really care about comic books, he maybe only sends 300 copies to his newsstand dealers. Of those 300, maybe 200 are bought by the consumer. That’s a 66% sellthrough. That’s pretty good. But that’s really only 200 out of the 1000 that was ordered. Now because affidavit returns are the industry standard, the local wholesaler will skew the sale numbers in his favor. So he’ll report total sales of 125 copies. Even though he really sold 200 copies, he’s only paying the publisher for 125 copies. Then the remaining 800 copies he received from the publisher—which he’s supposed to destroy—he puts into bricks and sells to the local Costco OR throws them into the paper wolf and sells the pulp OR sells them for a nickel apiece through the black market. Left: Zot is crazy for comics on the cover of Amazing Heroes Preview Special #1. Above: Nexus and friend enjoy some indie comics favorites in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #2.
Indeed, in his milehighcomics.com column, comic book retailer Chuck Rozanski relates how he became aware of 7
1980
Dark Phoenix,
and the Darkness Before the
Direct Market
On January 23, 1980, President Jimmy Carter opened the first State of the Union address of the new decade with a despondent acknowledgment: “This last few months has not been an easy time for any of us.” The President was specifically alluding to the 52 American diplomats being held hostage in Iran since November 4, 1979 as well as the Soviet Union’s invasion of its neighboring nation of Afghanistan beginning in December 1979. But the United States was facing other considerable challenges, including a skyrocketing inflation rate that reached 13.9% by January 1980, a seemingly unshakeable dependence on foreign oil that weakened the national economy, and an omnipresent possibility of a global nuclear war. In the face of America’s adverse circumstances, President Carter concluded his address with a rally call, “Together let us make of this time of challenge and danger a decade of national resolve and of brave achievement.” As the 1980s dawned, the comic book industry faced considerable challenges of its own as the last few years had not been an easy time. As comic book historian Mike Benton notes, “Distribution problems and inflation… were undermining efforts of the comic-book companies as they struggled out of the 1970s. Many of the traditional comicbook outlets were vanishing, and comics were being displayed less frequently on magazine racks” (81). The grim reality was that since 1977 monthly comic book sales had been significantly declining. In 1980, the average number of comic books sold per month was 5.4 million for Marvel Comics and 2.8 million for DC Comics. Just three years earlier, Marvel and DC were respectively selling on average 7 million and 4.2 million comic books per month (Tolworthy). It was evident to all interested parties that the comic book industry had seen better times, but many fans and professionals didn’t expect a recovery. Instead they foretold aloud that the industry’s death knell was about to ring and that the comic book medium would soon expire from its many wounds. One person who didn’t share the pessimistic outlook though was Jim Shooter, Marvel Comics’ Editor-in-Chief since 1978. In an interview with The Comics Journal’s Gary Groth in September 1980, Shooter declared: I keep seeing letters from people, and I keep hearing people at conventions and so forth talking about the imminent demise of the comic book industry… I don’t know what I have to do to correct this erroneous information. We’re not going out of business. We’re making good money. We’re not setting the world on fire, but at this point, in this country, very few people are. We’re doing well. Marvel is a healthy company… It’s not a bad year, or even a mediocre year. It’s a good year. (60)
CHAPTER ONE
While Shooter could assure readers that Marvel was prospering, the fact of the matter was that by 1980 the comic
by Keith Dallas 8
CHRONICLES FLASHBACK: 1980
“Meanwhile, Back In The Caption Boxes...” Third-Person Omniscient Narrators and Thought Balloons While the norms of comic book narrative changed radically throughout the 1980s, two decades-old comic book story telling devices remained prevalent as the 1980s dawned: third-person omniscient narrators and thought balloons. As they had in the past, both devices often either described actions already clearly conveyed by the artwork or clarified actions that the artwork wasn’t conveying clearly. One page from XMen #139 (publication date August 1980) typifies both. Written by Chris Claremont with artwork by John Byrne and Terry Austin, the issue opens with a scene in the X-Men’s Danger Room. On page 4, Angel and Nightcrawler accidentally collide. In the second panel as Angel watches Nightcrawler fall toward plainly visible flames, he thinks, “Nightcrawler--! I knocked him off his trapeze— right towards that fire pit! He isn’t teleporting to safety; I must have stunned him!” While the artwork makes obvious that Nightcrawler was indeed knocked off his trapeze and is falling toward open flames, the thought balloon informs the reader that Nightcrawler is stunned (and that he has the ability to teleport himself for any new readers unfamiliar with the book’s characters). The next panel shows Wolverine using his claws to tear into the Danger Room’s metal wall, and the panel’s caption box reads, “With unbelievable speed, Wolverine lashes out with the retractable claws that extrude from the backs of his hands. The miracle metal slashes through the room’s omnium steel wall like it was made of paper.” All the information stated by the narrator can already be discerned from the artwork. These story telling devices may have been employed specifically for the principal consumers of comic books at the time: adolescents. Since adolescents aren’t experienced readers, many comic book writers may have felt it necessary to use omniscient
explanation on why comic book presentation had changed: “When guys like Frank Miller started doing some innovative things, they started a trend. As is always the case with the comic book business, when one guy does something differently, others see it and follow him. So when Frank Miller began writing in that terse, hard boiled style, other writers began to copy him. When Watchmen came out, everyone else began to write in that gritty style. More than anything, that’s why comic book writers stopped using third-person narrators and thought balloons: something else had caught on. “
Two-panel sequence from X-Men #139. The X-Men TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
narrators and thought balloons to point to aspects of the story that adolescent readers may overlook or not otherwise readily grasp. Essentially, the writers were making sure that their readers understood the story. However, in an interview conducted for this book, Len Wein disavowed that premise and instead stressed that these story telling devices “were traditional in the style of the comic book” and that comic book writers of the early 1980s used them primarily because of their familiarity with them growing up as comic book readers during the 1960s. As the 1980s progressed though, many comic book writers abandoned third-person narrators and thought balloons in favor of first-person narrative captions or a dialogue-only style. For American Comic Book Chronicles, Jim Shooter offered his 23
Len Wein offered a different explanation, “This is a total supposition on my part, but I think in the late 1980s the younger comic book writers were trying to emulate the narration styles they were seeing on television and in film. With few exceptions, television shows and movies do not have omniscient narrators. So these comic book writers were trying to make comics more like TV and less like comics, which I always thought was a mistake because if you want something that’s like TV, you watch TV. There is nothing like comics but comics. But if you try to make comics a different medium, you lose what’s special and unique to the comic book format.”
1981 The
Roy Thomas Renaissance,
Royalties,
and The
Return of the King
January 20, 1981 marked the end of a crisis as Iran released 52 Americans it had held hostage since November 4, 1979. It was the end of a 444-day ordeal that simultaneously dismayed and united the American people. It sparked a resurgence of American patriotism as well as partly contributed to Jimmy Carter’s defeat in the November 1980 Presidential election. January 20, 1981 also marked the beginning of a new American era as Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the 40th President of the United States. In his inaugural address, Reagan outlined his remedies for the economic maladies America was suffering. In doing so, he declared, “We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding—we are going to begin to act, beginning today.” By January 1981, DC and Marvel Comics had both already begun to act in order to preserve their tomorrows. Executives from both publishers recognized that the newsstand— comic books’ primary sales venue since the 1930s—could no longer sustain the comic book industry. An economically viable alternative was required, and scrutiny was turned to the Direct Market. But to embrace the Direct Market, the publishers needed proof that it could be relied upon to generate far more revenue than it had up to this point. For Marvel, that proof came in the form of the first book they sold exclusively through the Direct Market: Dazzler #1 (March 1981).
CHAPTER TWO
The Dazzler makes her debut in these panels from X-Men #130. Dazzler TM and © Marvel Characters, Inc.
by Keith Dallas 24
Above: Photo of Wally Wood near the end of his life. Below and right: Examples of Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents work. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents TM and © John Carbonaro estate.
One of Wood’s most fondly remembered creations was T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, a group of United Nations operatives equipped with fantastic gadgets that helped them combat would-be world conquerors and nefarious Chinese communists. The concept was part James Bond/part Justice League of America. Indeed, the original Justice League of America artist, Mike Sekowsky—along with other established artists like Dick Ayers, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Joe Orlando, and George Tuska— contributed to the series that Tower Comics published from 1965 to 1969. Despite all the talent that worked on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, it was truly Wally Wood’s brainchild as it was Wood who Tower contracted to create
and develop the concept. But in 1981, Tower licensed T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents to comic fan John Carbonaro who planned on both reprinting the 1960s Tower material and publishing new adventures through his newly formed JC Productions. In 1982, Carbonaro would go one step further. After Tower went bankrupt, rights to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ended up with Dorchester Publishing Co., who agreed to sell them to Carbonaro for $2,000 (Heintjes 9). As Carbonaro tried to come up with the money to 45
make the payment, he had a license from Dorchester to use the characters. Once he made the payment, he would own T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents outright. Or at least Carbonaro thought he would own them outright. Others argued differently. And the fight for control over T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents would be one of the most compelling conflicts of the comic book industry during the 1980s.
1982
New Publishers,
New Formats, New Talent, and
New Mutants
As 1981 came to an end, an editorial in The Comics Journal celebrated the year’s successes and foretold more great times for comic book readers: I’m so excited, I just don’t know where to begin! It’s no secret that these are thrilling times for comic book fans!... The fan market has grown so large that it’s now able to financially sustain individual titles and specialty magazines…. Pacific Comics is now publishing comics that are every bit as good as Marvel’s or DC’s…. And Marvel and DC are rising to the challenge of the alternative press that are calculated to appeal directly to this market— and what could be better than that? Alternative publishing efforts like Eclipse, The Justice Machine, Nexus, and Galaxia are providing true alternatives and giving the fans just what they want. Despite the whining of a few grumpy critics, we are, without any doubt—dare I say it?—entering into a renaissance of comics art. (Decker)
The editorial is actually a bit of a sham as TCJ’s new managing editor Dwight R. Decker decided to have some fun by masquerading as TCJ’s executive editor Gary Groth in order to write a gushing assessment of the comic book industry that flew in the face of Groth’s usual jaded negativity. Nonetheless, the editorial reflected many readers’ optimism that with the doldrums of the late 1970s behind them, happy comic book days were here again. And some comic book professionals even took the time to fan their fans’ enthusiasm even further. Take, for instance, Marv Wolfman’s remarks in the Green Lantern #154 letters page (July 1982): “For too long, DC [Comics] was a sleeping giant. Well, we’re awake and rarin’ to go ahead at full steam. In the next few months we’ll be coming out with all new comics and ideas…. DC’s on the move—so climb aboard the wagon. We think you’ll enjoy the ride!”
DC Comics: Where the Action Is! The wagon ride that Wolfman wanted readers to take equated to the biggest expansion in DC Comics’ line since the ill-fated “DC Explosion” of 1978. Clearing some room on its slate was necessary, so DC cancelled several longrunning titles that executives felt would no longer perform well as the industry became more reliant on the Direct Market for sales. In order, Secrets of the Haunted House, The Unexpected, and Ghosts all published their final issues between cover date February and May 1982. DC’s managing editor Dick Giordano had some qualms about the cancellation of these horror/mystery anthologies because for years they had been used as training grounds for promising, inexperienced artists hoping to break into the industry. After proving himself on a couple of short stories for one of the mystery titles, an artist could earn promotion
CHAPTER THREE by Keith Dallas
46
CHRONICLES FLASHBACK: 1983
“I Can’t Read Your Thoughts...” Dialogue and Absent Narrators By 1983, writers like Frank Miller and Howard Chaykin were producing a sea change in how mainstream comic books were narrated. They eschewed traditional storytelling devices to create more sophisticated comic book stories. Information was no longer being spoon-fed to the readers via thought balloons and third-person omniscient narrators. Frank Miller, in particular, challenged his readers to “participate” in a story’s comprehension. There’s no better example of this than his Ronin mini-series. Ronin is executed solely through dialogue. There are no thought balloons, and there are no captions, not even captions to mark time or location. This places the onus on the reader to process Miller’s sequence of visual images into an understandable story. In 1983, Miller explained his artistic intentions to Amazing Heroes’ Peter Sanderson: “I think Ronin is very likely to throw readers. I don’t think it’s going to make them particularly comfortable or be particularly relaxing. But I don’t know if readers necessarily want to be comfortable or relaxed… There’s no real life equivalent to a thought balloon. I can’t read your thoughts. In stories I like to imitate real life in this way. When I get to know someone, generally it takes a while. You learn who people are through their actions mostly, and sometimes through their speech” (50). Throughout Ronin then, characters’ facial expressions and actions are presented without explanatory commentary. This forces Ronin readers to make interpretations. Clearly, Miller and other like-minded creators, like Chaykin, were targeting a more mature readership with their stories. In doing so, they accurately anticipated a demographic trend: the average age of comic book readers increased as the 1980s progressed. Unlike previous decades—when comic book readership was expected to turn over every few years as new adoles-
Sequence from 1983’s Ronin #2. Ronin TM DC Comics and copyright Frank Miller.
cent consumers replaced the teenagers who “outgrew” their comic book habit—comic book readers of the 1980s tended to stay with the medium as they aged. And the comic book market provided them with publications that suited their maturing tastes. Yet despite the impact of books like Ronin and American Flagg!, comic book narration wasn’t totally overhauled in the 1980s. Thought balloons and third-person omniscient narrators were put to good use for years to come. (One need only look at Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men or Paul Levitz’s Legion of Super-Heroes for proof.) But those devices would fall out of favor among comic book 103
creators, either because they became inspired by groundbreaking comic books and wanted to produce similar works or because they perceived an older comic book readership demanded a more unobtrusive narrative. Whatever the case, the comic book industry entered an era of bold narrative innovation, and some of the most nuanced comic book stories in the history of the medium would be produced by the end of the 1980s.
1984 The
Teenage Turtle
Takeover
From Jim Shooter’s point of view, Marvel Comics’ state of affairs had completely turned around from the time he became the company’s editor-in-chief in 1978. In the early 1980s, not only had Marvel become a more profitable publisher, its operations and staff morale improved considerably as well: We were in comfy new offices. We had gotten more or less on time, relieving, to some extent, the grinding oppression of the schedule. The books were selling like Popsicles in Death Valley. The business was expanding so there was plenty of work to go around. Rates had escalated dramatically. There were creator-owned opportunities, incentive plans, benefits and royalties. People were making money—some, a lot of money. Funny how when people are making good money, a lot of the stress drains away. (Shooter, “More Strange Tales: War at Marvel”)
Apparently, enough stress drained away that Shooter let Marvel’s cover date January 1984 slate go goofy for an event dubbed “Assistant Editors’ Month.” The pretense of Marvel’s “Assistant Editors’ Month” was that Shooter left the assistant editors in charge while he and the editors traveled west—attending San Diego Comic Con and then meetings in Los Angeles. With the bosses away, the assistant editors—led by Mike Carlin—ran amok. Aunt May became a herald of Galactus in Marvel Team-Up #137. Comics humorist Fred Hembeck drew Spectacular SpiderMan #86. In Avengers #239, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes appeared on the Late Night With David Letterman television show. The covers to Mike Carlin’s books displayed DC Comics’ 1960s-era “Go-Go checks” (with an “MC” bullet logo). Other covers paraphrased the U.S. Surgeon General’s warning about smoking: “Warning: Surgeons Have Generally Determined That Assistant Editors’ Month Is Dangerous to Your Health.” Across Marvel’s line, either in the stories or in the letter pages, hilarity ensued, all because without Jim Shooter keeping them in line, the assistant editors couldn’t help but indulge themselves. That was the pretense at least. The reality was something else as Danny Fingeroth—Marvel’s Spider-Man line editor at the time—explains, “it was the most carefully planned, plotted, and strategized stunt that we had probably ever done, up to that point” (Fingeroth 33). While the assistant editors did indeed take over Marvel’s helm for a month, they did so under the direct supervision of not only the senior editors but also Jim Shooter who brainstormed the stunt as an opportunity to give Marvel’s readers a change of pace. Since the cover date January 1984 books were conceived and approved—and in some cases completed—well in advance of the editors’ West Coast trip, the assistant editors had their bosses sitting right next to them as they worked on the comic books.
CHAPTER FIVE
by Keith Dallas 104
happened to the Justice League of America in 1984. Thanks to writer Gerry Conway, the JLA’s lineup was almost completely overhauled. Sales of Justice League had been steadily decreasing every year since the beginning of the decade and years later, Conway explained his dilemma, “There was pressure to make [Justice League] more like New Teen Titans. And since nobody quite knew what that meant except to say that Marv Wolfman knew what he was doing with New Teen Titans. So the question became, how do you accomplish that?” (Browning 51). Conway came to recognize that one of principal attractions of the New Teen Titans was its exclusive roster. The Teen Titans only appeared in New Teen Titans. That allowed Marv Wolfman to develop his characters’ personal lives and relationships to each other without having to worry about how another writer was handling them in a different DC comic book. By way of emulation then, Conway extracted from the Justice League all the super-heroes who had their own titles: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and the Green Lantern. This left Conway with Aquaman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Atom, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Zatanna, the Red Tornado, Elongated Man and Firestorm to serve as the “World’s Greatest Super-Heroes.” It was a group of characters no other DC writer was handling, giving Conway the freedom to do whatever he wanted with them. But Conway wanted to alter the roster further by skewing it younger (Browning 51). With that, a new course was set for the Justice League. To implement it, Conway first had the Earth-orbiting satellite the Justice League had been using as a headquarters since 1970 damaged beyond repair in JLA #230 (Sept. 1984). Then in Justice League of America Annual #2, Aquaman publicly disbands the team. “The old League is finished,” he declares. Aquaman then challenges his former teammates to make the commitment to help him form a new Justice League, one that can better serve the public by living and
training together. Only Zatanna, Elongated Man and the Martian Manhunter accept Aquaman’s challenge. They are soon joined by two Conwaycreated characters, Vixen and Steel. DC intended on introducing Vixen in her own title in 1978, but the infamous “DC Implosion” caused the cancellation of her series before it could even be published. She ended up debuting in a 1981 issue of Action Comics and then reappearing in DC
I hadn’t seen at DC, which was a ground-level superhero team that was rooted in a neighborhood…. I wanted to make these superheroes feel like they were part of the neighborhood, and my thought was to plunk them down in the middle of a city that was in deep, deep crap, a city that needs heroes” (Browning 50). Once in Detroit, the JLA finds its final two new members: Vibe, a Puerto Rican gang member fond of break dancing (continuing the long established comic book tradition of characters being linked to pop culture fads that wouldn’t last; see Dazzler), and Gypsy, a young girl with a mysterious past. “Justice League Detroit”—as readers would soon call the team—was less powerful than previous JLA incarnations. As such, they dealt with more down-to-earth villains. Both were deliberate moves on Conway’s part to make this Justice League different from previous versions. But unfortunately for Conway, “different” didn’t mean “more popular.” The new direction didn’t rekindle reader interest in Justice League of America as sales of the title didn’t improve. In fact, they only got worse. As a result, “Justice League Detroit” had a relatively short publishing life and would be remembered as one of the most ignominious versions of the JLA.
Justice League of America Annual #2 presented a radical change to the team roster. This incarnation would soon become known as “Justice League Detroit.” Justice League of America TM and © DC Comics.
Comics Presents #68 (April 1984). Steel, on the other hand, is the grandson of the super-hero of the same name whose 1978 series only lasted five issues (another victim of the DC Implosion). The teen-aged Steel offers the use of his Detroit warehouse-bunker as the new JLA training facility and headquarters. Conway explains his decision to relocate the Justice League to Detroit: “I wanted to do something 127
Ultimately though, all the changes made to individual titles during the year were trumped by what DC was about to do in 1985. Its entire fictional universe was about to reformatted, and that would impact every DC comic book. Writer-editor Cary Bates learned firsthand what was in store when he was told his poorly-selling Flash title was being cleared from DC’s lineup. In reaction, Bates decided to extend his “Trial of the Flash” story arc to the end of the series. In his mind, there was no point in starting a new story arc right before the comic book’s cancellation (Scott 80). Bates learned something else about DC’s plan for the Flash: The “Fastest Man Alive” wasn’t going to be alive for much longer.
1985
Crisis and Creation DC Comics celebrated its 50th Anniversary in 1985 with the release of a special publication titled Fifty Who Made DC Great. The comic-sized, 58-page book profiled fifty individuals and companies who contributed to DC Comics’ success. This included company co-founders M.C. Gaines and Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Batman co-creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, actors who portrayed DC Comics’ characters in television and film (George Reeves, Adam West, Burt Ward, Christopher Reeve, Lynda Carter, Helen Slater) as well as such contemporaneous comic book creators as Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Frank Miller. The book also featured short comments by a diverse group of prominent men and woman like United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, science fiction author Ray Bradbury, horror novelist Stephen King, musician Gene Simmons, Marvel Comics publisher Stan Lee, actress Whoopi Goldberg and social activist Gloria Steinem. As DC’s anniversary began, though, not everything at the venerable company was festive. While profitable, DC still dealt with a troubling status quo: despite possessing some of comic books’ most recognizable characters, DC’s sales were much lower than Marvel’s, particularly in the burgeoning Direct Market. Thanks to Marvel’s blockbuster Secret Wars, the sales gap between the two publishers had widened even further. Comic book fans in 1984 were buzzing about Spider-Man’s black costume and the presence of She-Hulk on the Fantastic Four rather than about the latest adventures of Superman or Infinity Inc. According to one Phoenix, Arizona-area dealer, Marvel outsold DC ten-toone in the Direct Market in 1984 (Webb 17). Fueling this sales disparity was the widespread reader perception that much of the DC Universe was too stodgy. DC’s most famous characters were in titles that were written and illustrated by veterans who no longer commanded fan devotion (like Curt Swan on Superman, Carmine Infantino on The Flash, and Don Heck on Wonder Woman). Parts of DC’s line were truly moribund. Sales on The Flash, for instance, had dropped from a monthly average of 102,297 copies in 1980 to 67,881 copies in 1985, a disastrous 33% decline in five years, and a shocking 80% drop from the title’s late 1960s high (Webb 14). Add to this the concern that the DC Universe had grown too complex over the years. The idea of multiple parallel dimensions had been intriguing and exciting when Infantino and Gardner Fox collaborated on 1961’s classic “Flash of Two Worlds!” in Flash #123. But over twenty years later, DC had created so many alternate universes that it became near impossible for the casual fan to keep them all straight. Each major DC character had two (or more) iterations. One Superman was married, one Wonder Woman had a daughter, and one Batman was dead!
CHAPTER SIX
Long established was the idea that the super-heroes that DC introduced during the late 1950s/early 1960s “Silver Age” inhabited Earth-1 while their Golden Age predecessors
by Jason Sacks 128
indeed in public domain, as far as the court was concerned (Heintjes 13). After the verdict was handed down, Singer immediately ran a full-page ad in CBG promoting Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3. The ad had a big lettered banner that read, “WE WON!” The issue was published in November 1985 and featured stories by Dave Cockrum, Keith Giffen, and Steve Ditko. But if David Singer thought his legal woes were finally behind him, he was in for a big surprise. Carbonaro appealed the court’s decision, and the fight for control of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents carried on.
Direct Market Livelihood/ Newsstand Fatality The Direct Market’s relentless expansion continued in 1985, as more new publishers rushed into the field. They included Strawberry Jam Comics, Fishwrap, Independent Comics, and Blackthorne Comics, which emerged from the ashes of Pacific’s liquidation. Steve Schanes explains: After we closed down Pacific and laid everyone off, it took Bill and me about six or eight months to work everything out with the bankruptcy attorneys, the liquidators, and all the grueling stuff that entailed. That takes a lot out of you, but one has to make a living. I decided that with what I now knew about publishing, and since I still had a lot of creator contacts, and since I now needed a job, my wife and I would form our own comic-book company. We needed to create a corporation quickly, so we set up a company headquarters in our two-story house and took the name of the street that we lived on, Blackthorne Avenue, and called it Blackthorne Publishing. (Sanford) Blackthorne focused on the new rage in the industry: black-and-white comic books. Blackthorne’s first publication was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, a one-shot of reprinted material with a new cover by Dave Stevens. The company gradually expanded, first with more reprints (such as Dick Tracy) and later with a small line of
1985 house ads promoting Blackthorne Publishing’s Sheena 3-D Special and Continuity Comics’ Armor. Armor and Continuity Comics TM and © Neal Adams
creator-owned and licensed titles. The black-and-white comic book boom arose from the unparalleled success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was so successful that it assured the emergence of a slew of other single creator publishers, all of whom released their publications solely to the Direct Sales market. There was perhaps no better indicator of the comic book industry’s shift away from the newsstand and toward specialty comic book stores than the news that one longtime newsstand comic book company closed its doors in 1985. The Connecticut-based Charlton Comics, which had been in business since 1946, released its final comic book, Professor Coffin #21, in October 1985. Over the years, the venerable company had published comics by such industry greats as Neal Adams, John Buscema, Steve Ditko, Dick Giordano, Joe Staton, John Byrne, Tom Sutton, and dozens of other creators. But since 1982, Charlton released only reprinted material and unpublished backstock, and it was all out of step with the times. While comic book readers embraced such independent comics as American Flagg! and Nexus, the Charlton-produced Timmy the Timid Ghost, Dr. Graves, The Private War of Willy Schultz, and Atomic Mouse failed to find an 151
audience. The Charlton line averaged abysmal sales of 22,900 copies per comic issue, but the company had to sell an average of 24,000 copies to break even financially. In Charlton’s final months, its owners negotiated with both the holders of the Harvey Comics properties and with Marvel. The initial plan to license characters such as Richie Rich and Casper the Friendly Ghost from Harvey went nowhere, so Charlton’s owners then turned to Marvel as a friendly partner. The two publishers negotiated for a time, with Charlton proposing that its line of comics be renamed Whiz-Bang Comics in order to differentiate itself from its old corporate name. However, a deal was never struck between the two companies (Heintjes 10-11). With that, Charlton’s demise was assured. Going forward, if a comic book publisher didn’t have a strong Direct Market presence, it had no chance of survival, never mind success.
1986
Watchmen and
the Watchers of the
Comics Industry
By 1986, Marvel was beginning to be seen by the showbiz industry as a major entertainment company rather than just a comic book publisher. The September 17, 1986 issue of Variety ran a story headlined “Marvel Now $100-Million A Year Hulk.” In that story, writer Dan Gilroy reported that “Marvel publishes some 350 comic book titles per year, selling roughly 7,000,000 copies per month. Rounding out Marvel’s publishing line are limited-run books and special editions, which have been tied in with the release of feature films” (81). The article emphasized the diversity of Marvel’s titles, quoting Marvel President James Galton as he discussed how the comics group had progressed over the years: “Marvel was a one-product company in 1975. It published comic books, for boys primarily, and had a very narrow demographic. I decided to take the core business and build from that.” The article notes that Marvel had expanded to an adult line, Epic Comics; a children’s line, Star Comics; into graphic novels, into coloring books, and into licensing and animation, which, according to Galton, was “all part of an ongoing process, and that is to keep Marvel characters in the forefront of the American consciousness” (Gilroy 92).
Marvel’s New Universe Is a Big Bang June 1986 marked 25 years since Fantastic Four #1 appeared on the newsstands, and hence the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the “Marvel Age” of comics. This was to be a big event, and the planning began early for it. Jim Shooter reports, “Eighteen months or so before Marvel’s 25th anniversary, there was a meeting called by Galton to discuss how to ‘celebrate’ the anniversary – that is, how to capitalize on it and make money on it” (Johnson 21). At that meeting, Shooter proposed a radical break from the past: “I proposed that we do a Big Bang – that is, bring the Marvel Universe to an end, with every single title concluding – forever – in dramatic fashion in May of 1986 and in June begin relaunching the entire universe. We’d start each title again from #1” (Johnson 21). It was the same kind of reboot of Marvel’s fictional universe that Doug Moench claims Shooter wanted to do back in 1982. Shooter now had the political capital inside Marvel to execute the idea as part of the discussion of the company’s 25th Anniversary celebration. Marvel’s executives at the time, however, feared loss of the company’s market share—nearly 70% of the entire American comics market in 1986—and so shot down Shooter’s grand idea. In doing so, they might have been considering the declining sales of Marvel’s “Distinguished Competition.” After DC Comics rebooted its line in the wake of the historic Crisis on Infinite Earths, its group-wide sales dropped by over 20% between 1985 and ’86, and its
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Grayson to Jason Todd. Meanwhile, reaction to the earlier story in Batman #424 earned a flurry of anti-Jason letters that serendipitously ran in issue #428, the very issue in which Robin died. Pulling a quote from one’s fan’s missive, The Chicago Tribune described Jason as a “vindictive, vengeful little brat” in an October 27 article and declared that “readers [had] protested” his existence ever since Dick Grayson “quit the biz” in 1984. The Tribune also quoted an unnamed DC spokesman who when asked who killed Robin answered that “readers did it.” That much, at least, was true, but the margin calls into question whether there was really as much anti-Jason sentiment as later accounts would claim. After all, nearly as many readers voted for him to live as to die. As was becoming the industry norm, DC quickly collected the “Death in the Family” issues into a trade paperback to be sold in bookstores. On the trade’s back cover, placed below several testimonials from various newspapers, is a declaration from Denny O’Neil. As if to reassure readers as to the finality of Robin’s death, O’Neil wrote, “It would be a really sleazy stunt to bring him back.” That would become a declaration that O’Neil would regret making. And soon.
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1989 The
Year of the Billionaire, the
Bat and the Brits
As the 1980s sped to a close, Marvel Comics kept building larger and larger crossovers while DC Comics pulled on the reins. One of the largest independent publishers, Comico, struggled to pay its bills, and a couple of young writers from the UK were poised for superstardom. It was a year marked by controversy both legal and social, as Revolutionary Comics pushed the boundaries of free speech and everyone was put on alert to all the sex and violence in the pages of America’s most popular comics. Marvel, as had been the case for the previous five years, reinforced its hold on the marketplace by producing event comics that coerced readers to pick up titles they might not have normally purchased in order to be able to read the event’s entire story. At the same time, Marvel spun out popular characters into two or three separate titles each. DC Comics, on the other hand, mainly focused on two things: expanding its new, Post-Crisis Universe with reimaginations of classic (and not-so classic) characters and, to put it simply, the Batman. For DC, it was all Batman all the time in 1989 as not only was the publisher gearing up for the 50th anniversary of Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27, parent company Warner Brothers began to build the marketing juggernaut that would lead to the June release of Tim Burton’s big-budget Batman film. Fandom didn’t just raise their collective eyebrows at the announcement that Michael Keaton would be playing Batman; they lost their collective mind. Many fans accused Warner Brothers of planning a secret sendup of Batman rather than a serious attempt to present the character on-screen (Hughes). Batman’s creator, Bob Kane (who also served as a consultant on the film) even had to speak out in an attempt to calm fan anxiety, saying, “The movie isn’t a comedy at all. It’s going to be heavy melodrama… [and the Joker] is a psychotic murderer, a maniacal killer. It’s all very evil” (Hughes). But even that didn’t settle things down, and Don Thompson, co-editor of Comics Buyer’s Guide observed, “No one seems to have taken [Kane] seriously.” He added that CBG had received over 500 protest letters decrying the film—all before anyone had seen any footage (Hughes).
Code? What Code? The final revision to the Comics Code went into effect in 1989, and it was the most dramatic revision yet. Of course, by this point, the Comics Code Seal meant very little, thanks to the rise of the Direct Market. Newsstands and other sources of comic book distribution may have continued to pay attention, but the publishers didn’t seem to worry. Given the coming summertime fuss that would be made over sex and violence in comics, there were very few real repercussions to violating the code, and comics were more violent and sexual than ever.
CHAPTER TEN
The 1989 revision was no longer concerned with things like what types of monsters could be used (thanks to the
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