Yearly Archive: 2008

Something of a preamble, here, so sit tight and now dig this: The comics-censorship ruckus of the post-WWII years had begun to peter out, if only just, as the phobic 1950s gave way to the larger struggles – expression vs. repression, in the long wake of the Depression – of the presumably more free-wheeling 1960s. All were rooted in a popular urge to embrace the freedoms that the close of World War II was supposed to have heralded; a contrary urge to confine such freedoms to a privileged few was as intense, if not necessarily as popularly widespread.

Everybody wants freedom, but not everybody wants freedom for everybody: Hence the entrenchment of Oligarchy within Democracy, like that essential flaw in Green Lantern’s otherwise limitless Power Ring.

(Some handy background: Van Jensen’s ComicMix commentary, “Was Frederic Wertham a Villain?”)

The comic-book flap was an element of a larger insurgency-and-putdown cycle that pitted, for example, Cavalier Hollywood against a Roundhead Congress in the purges of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Within the microcosm of Hollywood itself, struggles erupted over whether individual films – such as Dore Schary’s production of a pacifist fable called The Boy with Green Hair (1948) at hawkish Howard Hughes’ RKO-Radio Pictures – should convey instead a war-preparedness message in those days when much of America was still looking for another Axis to whip. (more…)

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1955, Paul Kupperberg got his start in comic fandom. He and Paul Levitz produced the comics fanzine The Comic Reader from 1971 to 1973, and Etcetera from 1972 to 1973. In 1975 Kupperberg sold several short horror stories to Charlton Comics, and then a few months later sold a World of Krypton story to DC for their Superman Family comic. He has written for many other DC comics since then, including Superman, Doom Patrol, Green Lantern, Justice League of America. He created the series Arion: Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion.

Kupperberg has also written a variety of books, ranging from The Atlas to the DC Universe to the Spider-Man novel Crime Campaign to an array of young adult nonfiction books like Spy Satellites and The Tragedy of the Titanic. He served as assistant editor at Video Action Magazine from 1981-82, and from 1991-2006 he was a staff editor for DC Comics. In early 2006 he left DC to become Senior Editor at Weekly World News—he had been writing for them since the year before. Unfortunately, WWN ceased publication in August 2007. At the start of the following year Kupperberg was tapped as Senior Editor for World Wrestling Entertainment’s new WWE Kids magazine, but the magazine was restructured a few months later. He is currently enjoying the life of a freelance prose and comic book writer and editor.

One of my favorite superhero buddy teams is coming back — well, sort of. The recently resurrected Valiant Entertainment  has been busy publishing hardcover collected editions of their Shooter-era original titles (in other words, not the Gold Key licensed stuff like Doctor Solar and Turok), each with an original story.

Third up is Archer and Armstrong, created by Jim Shooter and Don Perlin with input from Valiant stalwarts such as Bob Layton and Barry Windsor-Smith. The first volume reprints issues #0 through #6 and includes an original origin story by Jim and artists Sal Velluto and Bob Almond – all under a new cover by Michael Golden.

Archer and Armstrong Volume One is expected to ship September 24, 2008.

This weekend, comic fans are trying to decide of the promise of a clean slate are true and if the stigma of that last movie can be wiped from their memory so they can enjoy The Incredible Hulk on the big screen. Actor Tim Roth, the film’s resident heavy, gives us his take why a ticket is a good investment and we also get a little “wish” from Marvel Studios on what might be a way cool comic to next get the Hollywood treatment, plus:

• Ultimate Origins #1 gone for good
• Vincent Price creeps into comics
• A new DC movie and not from Warner Brothers

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