Discovery of the Golden Age of Comics
These were some of the panels (to the best of my recollection) that were reprinted in the Playboy article by Feiffer. It must have been promoting his book, since the copyright on the book was of that year. I bought the book the following summer, having dreamt about it until then. Have I told you what a dork I was?
This was the very first image I ever saw of golden age Superman, and the brightness of his colors compensated for the crudeness of his drawing. I came to love that simplified drawing style.
And this Batman panel sent me soaring. Not even the newly introduced 'New Look', courtesy of Carmine Infantino, was as serious and dramatic as this panel. I yearned for more.
I think by this time I was introduced to Jay Garrick as the Flash, thanks to the Silver Age Flash and Justice League, but it was exciting to see the original in action.
Golden age Green Lantern had a mystique and spookiness that the silver age GL couldn't touch.
And speaking of spooky, this Spectre panel is my favorite logo panel of any comic, anytime, anywhere. This is what comics was all about. Too bad the stories didn't always live up to the promise, or premise, but there were some that were pretty good. I'm grateful for the DC archives of Spectre stories (as well as all the other DC archives). Shame on you DC for not continuing the archive run for the mainstay golden age heroes. Even losing money, it should have been subsidized for posterity sake.
This was the very first image I ever saw of golden age Superman, and the brightness of his colors compensated for the crudeness of his drawing. I came to love that simplified drawing style.
And this Batman panel sent me soaring. Not even the newly introduced 'New Look', courtesy of Carmine Infantino, was as serious and dramatic as this panel. I yearned for more.
I think by this time I was introduced to Jay Garrick as the Flash, thanks to the Silver Age Flash and Justice League, but it was exciting to see the original in action.
Golden age Green Lantern had a mystique and spookiness that the silver age GL couldn't touch.
And speaking of spooky, this Spectre panel is my favorite logo panel of any comic, anytime, anywhere. This is what comics was all about. Too bad the stories didn't always live up to the promise, or premise, but there were some that were pretty good. I'm grateful for the DC archives of Spectre stories (as well as all the other DC archives). Shame on you DC for not continuing the archive run for the mainstay golden age heroes. Even losing money, it should have been subsidized for posterity sake.
I first encountered that image of the Batman in a paperback that came-out in the late-mid-'60s, as various parties were cashing-in on the television show.
ReplyDeleteMy next exposure to the very early Batman came with the thirtieth anniversary issue of Detective Comics. (I wish that I still had it, but my family was on Kwajalein from '68 into '70, and my comic books of that interval didn't come back to America with me.)
Finally, in the early '70s some time, my parents gave me a copy of Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, and some of the various other books on comic books that were being published at that time.