20th Century Art

                                                        by Rod Marsden

     There were a number of art movements in the 20th Century. One was art deco which influenced cars, trains, pulp magazines, comic books, comic papers and buildings, including the Empire State building. At the heart of art deco was the impression of speed. A car, for example, not only should be fast but look fast as well. From the 1920s onward, rockets and the potential for space travel dominated. 

     Flash Gordon in the comic strips and on radio was popular. In Australia it was Speed Gordon because flash sounded too much like flasher, someone who runs naked across a sports field. Art deco became even more the go when the race to the moon between the USA and the USSR got started.

     Art Deco was there during the age of the pulp magazines and the early science fiction comic strips.   Art deco did not end when the Americans won this race. It petered out after the Cold War ended and the threat of a nuclear holocaust had died down and people in the USA, the UK and Australia started buying smaller cars that were more petrol efficient.

     When did people first begin to draw for amusement and also to express political views? We know there was graffiti in Ancient Rome. There was also drawings expressing view points in France just before the French Revolution. Comic strips in newspapers in the USA were around, no doubt, earlier than the 1920s. I once saw a book titled The Yellow kid which was a collection of Australian comic strips put together in around 1901. It was a hardcover book, however, and not what I would regard as a comic book. By today's standards it might be regarded as racist though I don't believe that was the intent at the time. 

     For kids in Great Britain in the 1930s it was the comic paper that appeared in newsagents that were the dominant art form. The idea was the adults have their newspapers and the kids have their comic papers. These comic papers were cheap to produce and, because the characters within were juvenile and cheeky, they had more of a following than the Boys Own and Girls Own books of the 1950s and 1960s which were more serious and so less fun.

     By the 1970s comic papers became more edgy and radical, delving into more science fiction and less fantasy. Out of this came Judge Dredd, a well equipped character with the futuristic role of judge, jury and execution. Years ago I had a no smoking sign in which Judge Dredd forces a smoker to eat his cigarette. Eventually, Judge Dredd made it into American comic books and there have been at least two movies made about his adventures, one starring Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd.

     From the 1960s onward Doctor Who annuals came out. They were hard covers containing some comic strip material of varying quality. I did not like the use of colour in the interiors of most, if not all, of these annuals. The one colour only pages were a real drag. They would have been better off with no colour at all. Also Thunderbirds and other popular British science fiction made it into comic strips and  comic papers. 

           In 1934 the American comic book, as anyone who collects comics knows, was born. It was Fabulous Funnies and was a big hit. There had been earlier comic books but it is this one that really got the ball rolling. Popular comic strips were gathered up and printed in a format held together by stapples. As time went on, companies producing these comic books more and more went in for original material. There was also a diverging away from humour to costumed heroes, crime, westerns, war and horror though humour would remain the major draw for many readers in the 1930s and 1940s.

     The Phantom was one of the first of the costumed heroes to emerge. Before him there was Tarzan in the early pulps who would eventually make his way into the movies and comic books. The Phantom wasn't superhuman. He was fit and the men in his line had worn the mask for generations giving native Africans and seafaring criminals the believe that it was all one man, fighting crime over the centuries, the ghost who walks, the man who cannot die. Frew, an Australian company, first started reprinting the adventures of the Phantom in the late 1940s. 

     The first superpowered crime fighter was Superman. In the beginning his creators had given him limitations that wouldn't last. For example, in the early days he couldn't fly but he could leap over tall buildings and a fall from the top of  a tall building wouldn't kill him. He didn't have heat vision, that would also come later. 

     After the comics code authority, a form of self censorship, came into being in the 1950s, the adventures Superman was involved in became more and more surreal. Boosting interest in the character was the radio show and the movie serials. In the late 1950s the television show that went from black and white into colour also may have helped sales. 

It should be noted here that Metropolis where Superman set himself up as Clark Kent the reporter was always meant to be the city with its view to the future whereas Batman's Gotham was always the disreputable city mired in the past.     

     Of the costumed heroes DC artists and writers would produce, Batman proved most popular. He was in fact more popular than Superman. This may have been because he was physically an ordinary man deriving his abilities from the mastery of martial arts, clever gimmicks and fast cars and planes. 

     In the beginning Batman could use a gun and there was one strip in which Batman's plane had a machine gun mounted. Swiftly, however, guns were put away and Batman began to use the methods he is now more familiar with to take on criminals.

      In 1940 Batman got a sidekick named Robin. A kid who had also had his parents killed and so wanted to battle the criminal underworld. The success of Robin led to other sidekicks for popular characters. Captain America had Bucky and the android Human Torch had Toro.

     The Young Allies was the Timely effort in capitalizing on the sidekicks. Bucky was the leader with Toro pushing for leadership. The argument that children should not be battling Nazis or Imperialist Japanese even with machine guns never arose until the 1960s when Captain America had misgivings about Bucky's fate.           

     After the comics code authority came into being, Batman and Robin were weakened to the point where readers began to lose interest in them. 

     The Batman television series had a lot of intended silly moments especially between Batman and Cat-woman. The costumes were bright and the fight scenes well staged. Gotham was shown to be a city in need of the caped crusader because of an incompetent police force. In the final season Bat-girl makes an appearance on a motorbike. She was added in hopes, no doubt, of saving the show but by the time she appeared the show had already run its course with viewers. One thing that got me as a viewer was the impossibility of the bat shield coming out of Batman's utility belt. Also I gathered by the time the shield had been assembled it would no longer be needed because Batman would already be drilled full of holes. It was only in anticipating gun play that this shield had any effectiveness at all. Also, I had to wonder why Robin in the show didn't also have his own shield.

      In the late 1960s going into the 1970s, Batman's adventures in the comics took on a darker tone as the comics code authority's grip on the industry lessened. The death of one of the lads who played Robin at the hands of the Joker did two things. It elevated the status of the Joker as top villain and made it obvious to readers that now bad things could happen to relatively good people. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns combined both the silliness of earlier Batman stories with was the chaos and violence of the more modern Batman adventures. The story begins with an aging Bruce Wayne coming out of retirement and once more donning the Batman costume in order to save what could be saved of the city of Gotham. This trend of a dark, seedy Gotham with Batman fighting foes of the past as well as the present, secret organizations and rife corruption has continued to the present.

     During the Second World War, American comic book heroes emerged to take on both the imperial Japanese and the Nazi Germans. Some, such as Batman and Robin, mostly took care of the home front,  urging readers to buy war stamps and government bonds.

      One of the better artist teams working for Timely, a young comic book company that would eventually become Marvel, was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby with their creation of Captain America, the star spangled avenger. The first issue cover of Captain America had the good captain punching Hitler in the nose. Since America was yet to enter the war and not long ago there was a Nazi bund meeting in New York not far from the offices of Timely, this was a brave thing to do. No doubt the reason for this was the fact that many artists and writers in the comic book industry were second and third generation Americans with ties to Europe. Many being too young to join up, this was their way of getting into the fight early. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bill Everett, Carl Burgos and others did, in fact, after reaching the appropriate age, become part of the military. 

     Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner warred against Carl Burgos's android Human Torch a number of times in the early years of Timely. It can be said that while Bill was away doing military service, his Sub-Mariner was not always handled well by other artists and writers. When he resumed work on the Sub-Mariner the art and stories improved. The Sub-Mariner continued into the 1950s with the possibility of a television series that never reached fruition. He was brought back for Marvel in the 1960s with Gene Colan (art) and Stan Lee (scribe). They did a commendable job. Just before his death, Bill had a final and successful stint on his creation for Marvel. The movie recently made with the wrong actor playing Namor, the Sub-Mariner, for bizarre woke reasons, is such a sad reflection on our times.  

     Timely, this fledgling company also had, as its mainstays, the original Human Torch and the Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner. Stan Lee's The Destroyer was a costumed spy working in Germany and other countries as part of the resistance against Nazi tyranny. It should be noted that Timely, and other comic book companies of the time, differentiated between Nazi Germans and those Germans not in favour of the Nazi cause. This, as far as I know, was not done when it came to the Japanese. It appears that the Japanese were shown to all be imperialist out to conquer the world.

     Depictions of Japanese soldiers, during this period by Timely artists as well as others, may appear racist by today's standards. What is made clear in these comics is the emotions conjured up by the seemingly unprovoked attack upon Pearl Harbour by Japanese forces and also the horrific deeds done to the Chinese by the Japanese in the 1930s. It should be noted that Japanese Americans were put into camps and that there were Japanese Americans who fought against the Germans during this war. All this came out in the 1970s in Marvel issues of The Invaders. How badly American Japanese civilians were treated during the war was also in a 1970s television episode of Wonder Woman. 

     Of the hundreds of costumed characters churned out by numerous comic book companies in the early years of the industry very few would stand the test of time. Timely had a couple of try out comic books in which new characters and their creators were given a chance. There were those that lasted a couple of issues and were gone forever. There were those, however, like Bill Everett's The Finn, that would be revived in the 1970s. Comic book companies would look at what was successful with the competition and come up with their own version. DC had the Flash. Timely has the Whizzer.

    At the close of the Second World War, costumed heroes went out of favour. Batman and Superman survived. Sub-Mariner went on for a while but was eventually cancelled to be brought back in the early 1960s. Captain America Commie Basher didn't connect that well with the public and so was cancelled. Timely in the 1950s became Atlas and did quite well with a series of war comics with a realistic flavour. EC did well with horror and Crime up until the arrival of the comics code authority. 

     Timely now Atlas went in for Romance comics. There was Venus, a goddess come to earth to live among mortals with her beauty and charm and Namora, the sexy female cousin of Namor, the Submariner. It has been said that Jack Kirby started up the Romance comic books. Other than Romance there was Humour and Science Fiction. I have been told Westerns became popular but have found little evidence of this. The Phantom Rider in the 1950s combined Western with costumed hero with some success. The Lone Ranger, possibly because of the radio show, was also well received in the world of comic books.    

     After the Second World War, GIs coming home still wanted to read comic books but they were an older audience. Comics strictly for kids were still being produced but comics that were more adult in nature were also being put out. In countries such as Japan, comics had always been divided up with some for junior, some for teenager and some for adults. For too long in the USA, the UK and Australia, comic books were regarded as only for children hence the desire for certain adults to censor comic book material they felt unsuited to children and teenagers. The popular Australian comic book, The Scorpion, was cancelled because of new restrictions on comic book material.

     The revival of the superhero it has been said took place in the DC universe1ate in the 1950s with the new, improved Flash. For my money it was either the first issue of Marvel's Fantastic Four (1961) with fantastic art by Jack Kirby or the first appearance of Spider-Man. The Hulk, first up, was not a great success but that was to change. The company that was Timely and became Atlas was now Marvel and so the Marvel age had arrived. The costumed heroes of this new age were not perfect and had lives outside of their heroics. Sometimes their ordinary existence clashed with what they needed to do in costume. What's more, the stories were longer and there were story arcs. It can be said that it was Stan Lee who put the soap into the comics. Spider-Man had money problems. Iron Man had heart issues throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Captain America, when he came back from being frozen in ice, was haunted by his World War Two experiences. In the DC universe the new Green Lantern had his problems holding down his job. 

     Live action television superhero shows in the 1970s were incredibly bad. The best of the lot were Wonder Woman and the Hulk. The worst of the lot were Spider-Man and Captain America. There was one Doctor Strange movie made on the cheap that was hard to watch. The first of the Superman movies made in 1978 was a revelation in cinematography and story telling. The Batman movie made in 1989 was also a cut above what had come before. The Batman movie serials are watchable and so is the Batman movie created from the television series but this 1989 movie contained the more serious Batman viewers were waiting for. The superhero movies made in the late 1990s and early 21st Century were also a great improvement on what had come before with Spider-Man leading the way. 

     Over time the comics code authority began to lose its grip on the industry. It may have begun with a Spider-Man issue that delt with the very real problem of drug abuse among people in the late teen and early twenties. It is the only Marvel issue I am aware of that wasn't approved by the comics code authority and so does not carry their stamp. Without their stamp it no doubt didn't get much distribution in the USA when it first came out. There is a Green Arrow/Green Lantern mini-series for DC that also tackles the issue of teenage drug addition.

      In the 1970s it was okay once more to have werewolves and vampires in the comics. The Tomb of Dracula came out and, thanks to Gene Colan's art, it was a great success, lasting many issues. There was also Werewolf by Night. In the DC camp, Jonah Hex took the western into dark places. Larger black and white comic magazines with more adult material eventuated. Many of the changes may well have come about by the creation of comic book shops specializing in comics. Also there were underground comics such as Slow Death sold earlier on is record bars and campuses and later comic book shops. Comics such as Slow Death differentiated themselves from the mainstream by referring to themselves as comix rather than comics.

     Japanese manga in the 1960s wasn't a threat to the comic book industry it would become in the 21st Century. On television there was Astro Boy and Gigantor. There was also live action shows such as Shintaro and The Phantom Agents. By the 1980s more and more manga style comic books made their way to the USA, the UK and Australia. Presently, manga comics out sells both DC and Marvel.        

     Today the comic book industry faces new challenges from within as well as without. Woke agendas have done damage to both Marvel and DC. Frew in Australia have produced some comics in colour but cost factors mean they mainly publish in black and white. I really don't care for some of the action art produced by Australians in the 1940s and 1950s. When, in the 1960s, American comic books and British comic papers made their appearance on Australian newsstands, there was no way the local product could compete. It was as if the local artists were trapped in the past with no understanding on how the art had progressed in both the USA and the UK. In the 1980s, efforts were made to revive the Australian comic book industry. At the head of this push was Steve Carter who, to this day, continues to produce horror comic books with his companion Antoinette Rydyr.