Little Book of Super Heroes E-Book

Michael Heatley

• Herausgeber: G2 Rights
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Superheroes - fictional characters fighting evil with superhuman powers, gadgets and way-out weapons - have fascinated us ever since Superman first donned his cape and tights back in 1938. This fantastic 128-page hardback book charts the growth of the genre, profiling the most notable superheroes and giving us insight into their creation. It's topped off by quotes - every superhero had a catchprase - trivia and a guide to collectibles, from Marvel Comics to Corgi Batmobiles, that fetch the highest prices on the collectors market.

Leseprobe

Contents

Chapter 1: The History of Superhero

Chapter 2: The Heroes

Chapter 3: The Supervillians

Chapter 4: The Creators

Chapter 5: Superheroes on Screen

Chapter 6: Quotes and Catchphrases

Chapter 7: Superhero Trivia

Chapter 8: Superhero Collectibles

Publishing Rights

Chapter 1: The History of Superhero

Superheroes - fictional characters fighting evil with superhuman powers, gadgets and way-out weapons - have fascinated us ever since Superman first donned his cape and tights back in 1938. This is their story.

If a superhero can be defined as a benevolent being with extraordinary abilities, then its origins can be traced back to ancient myths and legends, particularly those of Hercules from the Greek and Roman eras. Edwardian fiction gave the world its first hero with a secret identity in the Scarlet Pimpernel, while Edgar Rice Burroughs’ characters Tarzan and John Carter of Mars were further prototypes. Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator influenced the creation of Superman in that its protagonist was a biologically enhanced superhuman. Pulp magazines of the Thirties were the forerunners of comic books where Doc Savage, trained to near-superhuman status, and masked vigilantes the Spider and the Shadow anticipated the superhero.

*Heroic Tarzan in a rescue to save a drowning female.

Lee Falk’s newspaper strip character the Phantom had the distinction of being the first masked comic character. The rather more obscure the Clock was the first masked hero created specifically for comic books, but it was the coming of Superman in 1938 which marked the true start of the genre. All the defining elements – superhuman abilities, colourful costume and secret identity – were in place for the first time and it’s no coincidence that the genre took its name from him.

American comics had their origins in promotional giveaways reprinting newspaper strips in the mid-Thirties. Sold separately, the comics still relied on reprints. DC was amongst the first to feature original material, generally a mix of funnies, Westerns, detective stories and other fiction genres.

It took a year for Superman to attract the attention of other publishers and to generate imitations; DC were quick to sue to protect their main asset. The superhero began to acquire more weird and wonderful powers and, by 1940, was dominating the comic book. DC also published Batman, initially at least, a darker variation on the theme, and the first successful superheroine, Wonder Woman.

Pitting superheroes against supervillains seems obvious, in retrospect, but the idea took a while to evolve. In his early adventures Superman was a champion of the oppressed taking on crooked cops, corrupt politicians and shady businessmen before increasingly fantastic foes began to appear. The first supervillain appeared a year after his debut, in the shape of the Ultra-Humanite, a mad, wheelchair-bound scientist who could transplant his brain into other bodies. By 1940, the supervillain was gaining ground with another mad scienttist, Lex Luthor, encountering Superman for the first time. Around the same time, Batman had his first run-in with the Joker, the most imaginative and chilling supervillain to date.

The period from the first appearance of Superman until the end of the Second World War is known as the Golden Age of Comics and represents the heyday of the superhero. Sales of a million copies were not uncommon for the most popular titles and American newsstands bulged with the cheaply-produced, colourful publications. The United States’ entry into the war had been pre-empted by Timely’s Captain America which featured Hitler and the Nazis as villains. Comics became part of the county’s war effort as superheroes took on the Axis powers, and their patriotic exploits were eagerly devoured by many GIs.

The superhero became indelibly identified in the mind of the American public with the war. So much so in fact, that peace brought a sharp decline in its popularity – by 1947, the genre was old news. By the early Fifties, the vast majority of superhero titles had been replaced by Westerns, crime, true romance and horror. The comic-book industry was decimated in the middle of the decade when psychiatrist Dr Fredric Wertham denounced comics in Seduction Of The Innocent, aimed mainly at horror and crime comics but notoriously inferring a homosexual relationship between Batman and Robin.

*Action Comics No. 1 featuring the first appearance of Superman.

When a Senate Investigation, complete with televised hearings, examined the medium’s alleged corrupting influence on the young, publishers responded by banding together to create a self-regulatory system in 1954. The simplistic ‘good must always triumph over evil’ precepts of the Comics Code inadvertently helped pave the way for the return of the superhero.

Since the horror-comics scandal, the comic-book field had shrunk drastically with many publishers going out of business. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were the only superheroes that had remained in continuous publication since the war. In September 1957, editor Julius Schwartz reached back into the Golden Age hero to resurrect the Flash in a new incarnation, ushering in the Silver Age of Comics. This success was followed by new versions of other DC characters and, in 1960, Schwartz revived the idea of a team of heroes pioneered in Justice Society of America. The Justice League of America was born.

*More war heroics in Marvel Comics.

The healthy sales the title enjoyed prompted rival publisher Martin Goodman to follow suit. His company, formerly known as Timely and Atlas, had almost closed after a distribution crisis in 1957. Rather than imitating DC or reviving the company’s Golden Age heroes, Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four. In contrast to DC’s straightforward, plot-driven approach where Justice League members were virtually interchangeable, Marvel’s heroes had human problems and weaknesses, even disabilities. Their adventures were set in real-world locations like New York, not fictional cities like Gotham or Metropolis.

*Superman, Batman and Robin selling US War Bonds to sink the “Japanazis” in the Second World War.

Reviving an old trademark, the company became Marvel Comics and a remarkable burst of creativity from 1961 to 1964 saw the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Avengers, X-Men, Iron Man and Daredevil hit the newsstands in quick succession. These enduring characters laid the foundations for Marvel’s growth and ensured they matured into DC’s major competitor in the superhero field. By the mid-Sixties comics were again dominated by the superhero and the two had become synonymous in the eyes of the American public.

*Superheroes came in all shapes and sizes.

Marvel’s approach was very different to that of DC. Its heroes often had feet of clay and were bedevilled by money worries and problems in their love lives. The Amazing Spider-Man, a combination of superheroics and soap opera, became the publisher’s flagship title. Marvel’s other great asset was Jack Kirby whose dynamic art became the house style. Together with Lee, he set the template for successive superheroes creators to follow.

Towards the end of the Sixties, Marvel was freed from the restrictive terms of the agreement with its distributor, a company owned by DC, allowing it to expand and eventually overtake DC in the marketplace. Although there were occasional spikes, such as the one inspired by the Batman television series, comic-book sales were in decline and this situation was to continue through the Seventies. Comics were selling to the hardcore superhero fan rather than the general public.

*Spider-Man Comics Weekly.

Fashions began to change in the early Seventies with a tendency towards increased realism and social consciousness; the issue of drugs was tackled in two issues of Spider-Man and in DC’s Green Lantern/Green Arrow. As the decade drew to a close, the antihero was gaining popularity, with Batman returning to his roots as a vigilante and the new X-Men’s Wolverine becoming one of Marvel’s leading characters. The Seventies also saw the creation of the Punisher, a vengeance-obsessed killer; this would turn out to be a sleeper hit whose time came in the Nineties. The darker trend continued into the Eighties with Frank Miller’s reworking of Daredevil.

The first challenge to the domination of Marvel and DC arrived in the early Eighties when independent publishers like Pacific and Eclipse pioneered the direct-sales market. Their comics were sold only in specialist shops on a non-returnable basis, rather than the traditional sale or return practice enjoyed by the newsstands. This was hailed as both the saviour of the comics industry and the final nail in its coffin as a mass medium. Direct sales allowed publishers greater freedom to experiment with formats like limited series, as they were no longer tied to the traditional open-ended runs of titles. Most of the material was still broadly within the superhero field.

*Spider-Man, the hero from ‘Marvel Comics’.

Deconstruction became the buzzword for the mid-Eighties. The concept was highlighted in two of the most celebrated superhero series of all, neither of which would have been possible before direct sales. The British pairing of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons examined the effects of superheroes in the real world in Watchmen for DC whilst, for the same company, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns provided a visceral tale of an alternate-future Batman.

DC simplified its convoluted parallel-world continuity in their pioneering 1985 ‘event’ series Crisis On Infinite Earths which allowed their major heroes, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and Green Lantern, to be ‘rebooted’ and modernised.

*From the Silver Age of Comics.

Many of the independent publishers of the Eighties had fallen by the wayside by the end of the decade. Their other innovation, the principle of creator ownership, was taken up by a group of high-profile mainly Marvel artists who were dissatisfied with working for hire at a time when sales were booming. Marvel’s 1991 X-Men 1 was the highest-selling comic book of all time at six million copies, although much of this was due to astute marketing – the comic came in five different interlocking covers.

A group of popular young artists including Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld left Marvel to form their own venture, Image, and introduced a slew of new superhero comics, amongst them Spawn, WildCATS, and Youngblood. These sold in great numbers by riding the crest of the wave, but their impact was not lasting.

Boom was followed by bust as the Nineties progressed, and comic sales took a downward turn again. DC made major changes to their flagship heroes, ‘killing’ Superman and replacing Bruce Wayne as Batman after he suffered a broken back, although both superheroes returned to the status quo. The profusion of grim and gritty stories was eventually countered by a new trend towards ‘reconstruction’. Alan Moore paid homage to early Marvel in his 1963 series for Image and then created his own line of comics under the ABC banner.

Superhero comics are today driven by ‘event’ storylines which run across multiple titles involving all the company’s major characters in a gigantic story, usually involving an apocalyptic threat. The tendency to reboot and relaunch is still prevalent. In tandem with its regular line, Marvel created the Ultimate Universe featuring updated versions of their signature characters, beginning with Spider-Man in 2000.

*’Marvel Comics’ Human Torch.

The superhero remains a quintessentially American creation. Japanese manga has been a growing influence but, since the Eighties, it has been British creators who have mounted an invasion of the comic-book world. Some of the most sought-after and inventive writers and artists of the current century hail from the UK.

*’Akira’, one of the pioneering Japanese manga style comics.