Comics ads have been around for a while.

“Hey Skinny!  . . . Yer ribs are showing!” “How a 97-lb. weakling became the ‘world’s most perfectly developed man.’” “Tired of being picked on?” “The insult that turned a ‘Chump’ into a ‘Champ.’” “The insult that made a Man out of ‘Mac.’”

Not all the ads for Charles Atlas’s “Dynamic Tension” training were in comics form—but the comics panels that showed a bully kicking sand in the face of a guy at the beach were so well known that they formed the basis of a wide variety of pop culture responses.

Whether it came in “I Can Make You a Man” from the 1973–1975 Rocky Horror Picture Show musical or in Jack Kent’s delightful The Once-Upon-a-Time Dragon (1982) children’s book, audiences knew the reference. (Admittedly, in the case of Jack Kent’s book, it’d be the adult reading to the child who would understand the reference. But I digress.)

Among the reasons for its resonance are that (a) the ads seemed to be everywhere and (b) their pictures were clear and made the saga memorable.

The campaign was a prime example of the power of comic art to convey a message.

Hey, what the heck? In order to sell its Twinkies, Hostess took this Marvel characters ad in Gold Key’s Uncle Scrooge #149 (February 1978). © 2021 Marvel

Comics Ads Grab Customers

According to Wiki, it was in 1929 that Charles Atlas (1892– 1972) involved his Charles Atlas Ltd. with ad man Charles P. Roman. Roman produced those catchy strips that promoted the Atlas bodybuilding course. And Roman wasn’t alone, as an increasing number of advertising designers reached customers via comics. Distinctive comics characters were invented to introduce compelling stories about products for sale.

When media planners decide where and how to place their ad dollars, comics have been part of the mix for quite a while. Those planners have to figure out how to best send their message, and it looks as if comics have paid off for many years.

It’s time for a tip of the Thompson Topper to Woody Gelman (1915– 1978). If you’re not familiar with his name, it may be because you weren’t beginning to get into comics in the 1960s. As Wiki notes, his Nostalgia Press “pioneered the reprinting of vintage comic strips in quality hardcovers and trade paperbacks.” I don’t think most of us knew that his earlier connection to comics included that he’d co-created DC’s “The Dodo and the Frog.”

In any case, Gelman had joined artist Ben Solomon to set up a company that developed ad campaigns that included comics. Comic books packed with their own characters soon contained full-page stories featuring Popsicle Pete. A gum company beckoned, and Solomon became art director and Gelman became creative director of Topps. And Bazooka gum (which began in 1947) soon contained little comic strips themselves, eventually featuring Bazooka Joe. (Heck, eventually Gelman also came up with more, including Mars Attacks! Just saying.)

Comics to Ads

Sometimes, though, it was pre-existing comics characters that became identified by ad agencies as friendly partisans that could spread their messages.

Marjorie Henderson Buell’s Little Lulu first appeared as the concluding cartoon panel every week in The Saturday Evening Post. Not only did she get a translation into full-length story adventures in comic books and animated cartoons—but she also became the spokesgirl for Kleenex tissues.

Popeye promoted spinach and then Instant Quaker Oatmeal.

The animated stars of The Flintstones appeared for both vitamins and (yes, “a Winston break!”) cigarettes.

Hostess hired both DC and Marvel super-characters to let readers know that they’d get “a big delight in every bite” of its treats.

Advertising took to animation eagerly, sometimes with bonus comics. Quisp, Quake, Cap’n Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Trix  . . . You can come up with many more.

And what the heck? Every once in a rare while, a commercial product would get its own comic book!

John Stanley, for example, wrote Choo-Choo Charlie, a one-issue Gold Key title (December 1969) that featured the TV-ad character known for recommending Good & Plenty candy.

And, of course, there were ads for comics—in comics.

Heck, this ad in EC’s Two-Fisted Tales #30 (November–December 1952) not only promoted a promising new series, it also clearly identified some staffers (and taught readers to look for signatures). © 2021 EC Publications, Inc.

Ads Subsidized Comics

The topics of comics economics and distribution can be complex. (As in: Dell was a distribution company that handled its own racking in the 1940s and 1950s, so its costs differed from those of companies that hired other firms to maintain stock in newsstands.) But comic book prices stayed relatively low for years, thanks in part to support from the advertisers that filled many comic book pages.

DC’s Action Comics #1 (June 1938) was made up of 68 pages of which more than 65 (including the cover) were filled with editorial content. It was just getting started, and most of the ads promoted company material, though the back-cover ad was devoted to the ever-intriguing Johnson Smith & Co. catalog.

Eventually, Action Comics settled down to a pretty normal page count of 36 (including the cover), and, dipping in now and then, we find that ads filled a substantial number of them. In 1971, issue 402 was priced at 15¢ for 36 pages, of which roughly a third were ads. In 1976, #456 (25¢) had 44 percent of its 36 pages as ads. And so it went. In 1999, #760 ($1.95) had 36 pages, of which about 30 percent were ads.

Well, Heck . . .

Come to think of it, if you grab The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, you’ll find an entire section labeled “Promotional”—meaning that it contains information on giveaway comics that were used to, well, promote things. Which is to say they were ads. Among the long-running comics in the section are Adventures of Big Boy, Buster Brown Comics, Gulf Funny Weekly, and the champ: Western’s March of Comics.

Come to think of yet something else, Maggie’s World #50 was a pretty deep dive into the topic—which involved comics that were ads for themselves—and brought up the matter of Free Comic Book Day. Remember: Every Free Comic Book Day, some releases have functioned as their own giveaway ads for comics soon to be on sale. (Tip: The 20th anniversary of Free Comic Book Day will be in 2022!)

Because even comics ads can be a treat.

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the second Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

There I was in Barnes & Noble in August 2021, checking out what comics-adjacent publications might be lurking on the shelves for non-comics-obsessed children. In the newsstand area I saw Highlights and Jack and Jill—but not comics magazines.

It occurred to me that there might be comics in the “Humor” section and—yes!

Then, I saw a kid who looked to be about 5 years old. He was calling the attention of the adult he was with to that “Humor” area. And she said, “No, those are for big people.”

I took another look at what was shelved there, and it was a mix—a mix that, by the way, did include a number of collections of comic books aimed at young readers. Those were collections that the kid had just been told to avoid.

Among them was a paperback I think could be fun for new readers as well as for longtime collectors: The Best of Archie Comics vol. 1, with a cover proclaiming it to be “80th Anniversary Edition.” (Mind you, a closer look made it clear that this was the 70th Anniversary Edition sporting a new cover and copyright page. Nevertheless, it was keen, and I bet the boy would have enjoyed it.)

A Way In

In olden times (which is to say, “When I was a kid”—otherwise known as the late 1940s), I had a weekly allowance of 10¢. With that loot, I could go to the neighborhood newsstand and pick out one comic book: any dime comic book I wanted. I had the power. That comic book was mine to choose, mine to buy, mine to peruse, mine to own.

Ownership conferred proprietary interest and more. I owned the contents and the characters. Because of that, I knew I needed to learn to read to get the full benefit of the contents and characters. That, then, made me care even more about the stories and the characters—and the ability to read.

Learn to read with comic books is just what I did—and, yes, Mom helped with that. Then, seeing what I liked, Mom and Dad enabled that reading even more, buying me subscriptions to some of my favorites. Today’s collectors object to the subscription crease on such issues. As a kid, though, I was thrilled when a comic book came to me—me, personally—in the mail.

As time went on, I continued to look for work by my favorite creators. (The anonymous Carl Barks! The anonymous John Stanley!) And then I came across material aimed at older readers. (Hey! EC artists sign their work! Now I can recognize styles!)

Prices Changed

When comic books were a part of shopping routines (in grocery stores, as well as newsstands), the contents tended to stand on their own. Anthology titles carried a variety of complete short stories. An introductory caption might establish the setup, and the free-standing tale would wrap up within the issue. So that dime gave me a variety of complete adventures and gags. And I savored the beginning, middle, and end of each episode I owned.

DC’s Action Comics was an anthology comic book. It can provide a timeline of the investments involved over the years. (Yes, there were occasional bounces for special editions and oddball page counts. Nevertheless.)

• 1938 10¢
• 1961 12¢
• 1969 15¢
• 1971 25¢
• 1976 30¢
• 1977 35¢
• 1978 40¢
• 1980 50¢
• 1981 60¢
• 1983 75¢
• 1991 $1.00
• 1992 $1.25
• 1993 $1.50
• 1995 $1.95
• 2000 $1.99
• 2000 $2.25
• 2004 $2.50
• 2006 $2.99
• 2011 $3.99
• 2016 $2.99
• 2019 $3.99
• 2021 $4.99

By the way, according to the Internet, 10¢ in 1938 would have inflated to about $1.81 in 2021. So there have clearly been more factors involved in price changes than simple inflation. Advertising support did help keep prices low for some publishers—including DC. Someday, we can consider that (and the difference in what the ads-free Western Printing produced). For the time being, though, consider that, in the midst of all this, the direct market took form, starting with Phil Seuling’s November 1977 announcement of his Sea Gate direct-distribution project.

Phil’s goal was to get all published comic books into individual comics shops (via nonreturnable advance orders). That way, comics collectors could do one-stop shopping, not possible until then. And it worked, though comics collectors tended to focus on established favorites, rather than on entry-level introductions to comic book stories. These favorites became the focus of many comics shops. Which brings us to today.

Now . . .

Let’s consider another memory. Don and I were in a newsstand in 1966 not long after the Adam West Batman series had begun to air. We heard a little boy exclaim with delight, “I didn’t know they had a book about Batman!”

Spread the word. They have books about favorite characters: comics that kids today can own. To make that fact clear to folks who didn’t know, the comics industry itself began to make comics outreach into an event. In August 2001, retailer Joe Field suggested a Free Comic Book Day to introduce folks to comics shops—and the variety of comics they carry. And the next May 4, the idea became a reality.

When I recently paid a bill with a check, the staffer admired the Looney Tunes characters that were in the check design—but then said sadly, “Kids today wouldn’t know who that is.” It was Bugs Bunny.

But there is a Looney Tunes comic book, as well as theatrical and streaming content. There are even some comic-book subscriptions available today. For example, there’s at least one website via which customers can subscribe to such ongoing series as Justice League, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, Suicide Squad, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

But would kids even know about all those titles these days? How can we get comics to kids and kids to comics?

We’re back to that Barnes & Noble moment. Where can kids go these days to find comic books? A couple of opportunities come immediately to mind. Some public libraries—most?—offer books of comics. Some have trained librarians ready to suggest comics choices for young readers. Those readers can develop their interests by borrowing samples of the variety of comics offerings on library shelves.

There’s a bonus for kids lucky enough to have a comic book shop in their neighborhood. August 2021 brought Free Comic Book Day to such shops again. The choices among those treats made it simultaneously clear that not all comic books are for kids and that not all comic books these days carry “Done in One” stories. There’s a wide variety of comics out there, and the quantity can be confusing.

The happy situation, though, is that even kids who didn’t visit a shop in that event will find that comics shop staffers can help them find the fun they will most enjoy.

Because there are still comic books that kids can own. And that’s pretty great.

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the second Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

I was 13. Mom used to buy Woman’s Day magazine (7 cents! cheaper than a comic book!) at the grocery store, and at some point I’d read her copy. The June 1956 issue cover-featured Danny Kaye—but there was also a cover notice about a serial starting in the issue: “Part 1 of a new novel: The GREAT DOG ROBBERY.”

I enjoyed the heck out of that first part—and the three that followed. However, when the novel was later published in book form, I noticed that the pictures I’d loved were missing and that the copyright page had this notice: “The Hundred and One Dalmatians appeared in serial form, with different illustrations, as ‘The Great Dog Robbery’ in Woman’s Day.”

What I didn’t know was who that original artist had been or why the art wasn’t in the book.

But when the movie version—One Hundred and One Dalmatians—came out four and a half years later, I realized that the villain’s design was the one I’d seen in the magazine in 1956.

And I’d wondered about the identity of that original artist ever since.

Now …

My curiosity finally demanded satisfaction. I tracked down a copy of that 65-year-old magazine for sale online—and was stunned.

Because, although I’d admired that artist’s work for decades, I’d never seen him credited for this specific pop culture contribution.

William Pène du Bois (May 9, 1916–February 5, 1993) had won the 1948 Newbery Medal (as author of the most distinguished contribution of the year to American literature for children) for The Twenty-One Balloons and was a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal (as artist of the most distinguished American picture book of the year for children) for Bear Party in 1952 and for Lion in 1957. But I don’t think there are many these days who are familiar with the art he had provided for that original four-part serial.

Here’s the description that du Bois had been given: “. . . a tall woman came out onto the front steps. She was wearing a tight-fitting emerald satin dress, several ropes of rubies, and an absolutely simple white mink cloak, which reached to the high heels of her ruby-red shoes. She had a dark skin, black eyes with a tinge of red in them, and a very pointed nose. Her hair was parted severely down the middle, and one half of it was black and the other white—rather unusual.”

That’s it. Her hair could have been braided. Could have been in a bun—or two buns. Could have been in a pixie cut. Could have been in two ponytails. But du Bois chose his own “rather unusual” style: the style that was used—with one change—in the film.

Raggedys

Writer/artist Johnny Gruelle (December 24, 1880–January 9, 1938) introduced Raggedy Ann as an actual doll, which he patented in 1915. Her first book appearance came in his Raggedy Ann Stories in 1918, and Gruelle went on to expand his cast and output.

In comic books, Ann and her brother, Raggedy Andy, were the stars of Dell’s Four Color #5 (1942), which was ©1942 Johnny Gruelle Company. And the copyright was the same for #23 (1943), #45 (1944), and #72 (1945), before they got their own series.

Raggedy Ann + Andy #1 was dated June 1946, and it was an anthology comic book series that included the first installment of Walt Kelly’s “Animal Mother Goose” feature, which Kelly wrote, drew, and signed. Who didn’t sign? The one/s who wrote and drew the story credited to Gruelle, who had died eight years earlier. While that art has been pretty much agreed upon as being the work of George Kerr (March 13, 1870­–October 21, 1953)—and, some have suggested, Lea Bing—the scripts of the Raggedys stories have remained uncredited.

Since Gruelle was a cartoonist and children’s books author, my mother (who was supporting my comics obsession at the time) took it for granted in the 1940s that he had written and drawn the comics that bore his name. Over the years, she learned that the stories had been by other creators, and, when she began work in 1982 on an article about those comics, she tried to find out more about them. The Bobbs-Merrill Company was publishing Raggedys material by then, and she wrote to its Character Licensing Division. She outlined what she’d been able to find by that point (most specifically, a 1977 New York Times article) but added that even that “gave me no clues about who were ‘doing’ the ‘Raggedy’ strips in the 1940s, mentioning only ‘by then [mid 1920s] his son, Worth, and a brother, Justin, had joined Gruelle in writing and illustrating the books.’”

The Bobbs-Merrill marketing manager responded that the company needed to know more about her article and the magazine in which it was to appear, adding, “Any material for publication must be submitted for approval to our office prior to publication.” By then, the intended publication was no longer involved with the project, so Mom’s questions remained unanswered then—and now.

Secrets

On the other hand, there were a few sources of information about comic book credits for the lucky few who could find them.

Among those was Secrets behind the Comics by Stan Lee, which he produced in 1947. In the course of the booklet, he not only discussed the process of producing comic book content, but he also identified a few of the creators.

On the title page, Stan wrote, “Illustrated by Ken Bald” and “Lettered by M. Acquaviva.” Then, the credits began in the midst of samples: Managing Editor and Timely Comics Inc. Art Director was Stan Lee. Artists discussed (with their work) were Ed Winiarski, Vic Dowd, Frank Carin, Ken Bald, Syd Shores, Morris Weiss, and Basil Wolverton. Specified as pencillers were Kin Platt and Mike Sekowsky—and as an inker, Violet Barclay. Credited writers were Stan Lee, Ken Bald, Ed Jurist, Morris Weiss, and Basil Wolverton. There were entries for letterer Mario Acquaviva, writer and editor Alan Sulman, and publisher Martin Goodman.

On the other hand, according to his files, William Woolfolk (June 25, 1917–July 20, 2003) wrote stories for Marvel’s Blonde Phantom #19, dated only one year after Secrets behind the Comics (in which he hadn’t been one of the creators discussed). But there was no credit for him in that issue—or for any of the other contributors to #19.

So it was that many secrets remained secrets until fans became obsessed with trying to make them public.

By the way …

Did you spot the design change between Cruella in The Great Dog Robbery (1956) and Cruella in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)? You did—right? Or, putting it another way, the right side! (The du Bois art showed Cruella’s white hair on the same side as her right hand; the films showed it on the same side as her left.)

And now you know a secret behind some comic art, too.

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the second Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

A look at comic-book price guides provides vivid evidence of the importance to collectors of the preservation of four-color treasures. I keep an eye out for beat-up copies of items on my want list, because they can be the most economical way to read the originals. Why? Because the comics to which we used to refer as “Newsstand Mint” can come at a cost many times higher than the tattered versions of those same editions.

I long ago gave up the idea of buying even the most damaged copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, but, if I were looking for one, I would probably have to pay a twentieth of what a near-perfect copy might bring. (One of those near-perfects sold at Heritage Auctions last year for $795,000, so … As I say, I gave up that idea long ago.)

Memories

Look at photos of people young and old (but mostly young) reading comics in the Golden Age. [“Golden Age” is a term that some seem to be discarding now, but we know what I mean, right? Mind you, we used to say, “The Golden Age is 12”—which is to say that adults in the 1960s looked back at the comics they loved when they were 12 (in the 1940s and early 1950s) and deemed them precious.]

When I began to collect comics in the mid-1940s, I was 3 years old, and Mom and Dad encouraged me. But keeping those comics in good shape was tricky, because (as we know only too well) comics disintegrate on their own and are fragile. I don’t think most of us realized it then, though. We tended to treat them casually, not knowing that, for example, the paper had a high sulfur content. That meant that exposure to heat, moisture, and light led to chemical reactions that, in effect, made comic book newsprint burn itself. The best way to preserve a comic book was to keep it cold, dry, and in the dark. Oh—and, by the way, to avoid handling it as much as possible. Which—yeah.

I do have a few comics that I bought (for a dime!), when I was 5 or younger.

But “bag and board them”? Hardly.

But do consider this, before you judge the comics collectors of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s harshly:

When I was learning to read via my comic books in the 1940s, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have had plastic bags in the kitchen that I could have appropriated to protect my four-color treasures. (I’m still trying to nail down a definitive date for when the first food-storage bags hit grocery-store shelves, but I’m thinking they were Baggies in the late 1950s.)

A couple of decades later, Don and I attended Jerry Bails’ “Alley Tally” party in Detroit, where we were intrigued by Jerry’s device of storing comics in some sort of hanging plastic bag arrangement. Nope! I don’t remember more about it. But I do know we were still trying to figure out how best to keep our comics safe. We weren’t bagging them; we maintained our back issues in boxes and piles, and I think one challenge was identifying which of us had read which copies.

A bagging footnote: In 1970, Bob Overstreet’s first price guide had ads—but they weren’t for comics bags. By his second price guide (1972), though, there were two, one specifying “Marvel comic bags” and adding “larger bags for Golden Age comics also available at the same price.”

What could go wrong?

One way to identify the threats to the comics we owned is to consider a list of defects (and we always used to look for the best copy among those on sale).

Defects from the provider include off-register color, poor trim, subscription crease, arrival stamp, or other notations.

Defects from the owner include brittleness, stains, creases, missing parts (cover, contents, both), rounded corners, defaced covers and/or pages, water damage, rolled spine, split or ragged spine, missing staples, faded inks, and missing coupons or other portions.

But yikes!

An added acknowledged defect these days is one or more amateur attempts at repairs.

How many 1940s comic books do I have that had their staples augmented (or replaced) by staples applied in from the spine an eighth of an inch or so?How many split spines were “repaired” by tape? (The worst in that regard was the so-called “Magic Tape.” At least the non-“Magic” varieties tended to fall off with age.)

Did someone think a “color touch” would be an appropriate fix for a slight chip or tear?

Those are things to consider, if you only collect the best of the best. In which case, you may be one of those who will be most reassured by buying comics that have been graded by a third-party service that finds and reports the flaws. It lets buyers know what they’re buying. The advantage: These services began in the numismatic field, where both sides of coins and banknotes are visible and in which counterfeits are a real possibility. The services were then extended to varieties of trading cards, both sides of which are visible. The disadvantage: If you want to read a comic book that has been similarly encased, you’ll need to unencase it.

And one other, by the way: A plastic shell may not protect a printed item from eventual fading from too much sun exposure. Continue to care for what you have. We are only temporary custodians of our treasures.

An action plan!

In the Golden Age, some comic book owners resorted to binding what they had.

These days, it’s not as complicated as binding used to be, thanks to bags, although there are still tricks. If, like me, you enjoy the economies of looking for beat-up old comics, for example, don’t forget to check for a missing centerfold. Dealers used to note “CFO,” which meant “Center Fold Out.” It meant there were middle pages missing. If you don’t know how many pages should be in the issue, you can check the online Grand Comics Database for that issue. For example, consider Animal Comics #30. It’s clear from a look at the center spread that the story page on the right immediately follows the story page on the left. So whew! And the GCD says it has 52 pages. So you could simply count the pages—at which point you’ll realize that the GCD is counting the covers of the issue as four of the 52 pages.

And, once you’ve bought a back issue, you might want to bag it, when you can. (Note: you can actually use food-storage bags and protect several copies at a time, if necessary.)

Decades ago, I was involved in sending some Golden Age comics to a friend of a friend. I apologized for the condition—but the recipient responded that he thought the wear and tear had made the comics more precious. He said the repeated readings of which the damage was a symptom made it clear that the comics had been loved.

Aw.

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the second Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

It is with a heavy heart that we present the last blog post from Jesse Hamm. It is a testament to his talent and legacy that his passing was mourned by so many individuals and organizations in the industry of which he was such a valuable contributor.

–Comic-Con

On the first of this month, we lost cartoonist John Paul Leon, age 49. Social media quickly filled with praise and laments from comics fans and professionals alike. If there had been any question of his greatness, it was firmly answered by the outpouring of appreciations by many of comics’ top luminaries. Clearly, he was an Artists’ Artist, revered by the best in the field.

Unfortunately, tributes on Twitter aren’t the ideal place to explain an artist’s merits, and readers new to Leon’s work might not understand what sets it apart. Today’s comics industry is full of impressive talents—why is J. P. Leon held up as a rare exception? I’d like to explore a few of the reasons he’s so highly esteemed, even among artists who themselves are considered great.

One thing that’s immediately apparent in Leon’s artwork is how well-researched it is. The settings, props, clothing, vehicles—everything is brimming with authentic detail. Where another artist might toss in a generic end-table or throw-rug, Leon shows that he’s done his homework: the curves, ornamentation, and designs on every piece of furniture, every curtain or lampshade, every industrial machine look as though Leon was standing there on the day, recording it all.

Not only is every likely structure and appliance present, but so are the odds and ends that accumulate around them: puddles of grease, scraps of paper, pens, towels, snacks, tissues—Leon included them all, making his worlds look more believable and lived-in than virtually any you’ll visit in comics. Consider this pharmacy scene (1). Details like the bottle of hand lotion by the register, or the Spanish translation (recoja) below the “pick-up” sign, would only be included by a careful observer, and they help bring the environment to life.

It’s also notable that he excelled at ordinary settings, such as this pharmacy, or the occasional law office or hospital room (2). Many artists will bring their A-game when drawing hot cars or spacecraft or other “sexy” subjects, but then phone it in when drawing anything “boring.” Leon instead seemed to relish the challenge of drawing every subject he put his hand to, whether ordinary or fantastic.

Another of Leon’s merits was his ability to force black areas into a scene.

I once spoke with a martial artist who was learning to solicit moves from his opponents. He had earlier learned how to rebuff the attacks his opponents freely offered him, but now he was learning how to corner his opponents into offering only those attacks he felt like rebuffing. He said he was learning to control the fight, instead of merely reacting to it. Visual art offers similar opportunities. When you’re first learning to draw, you try to understand where shadows would likely appear in a scene, and then you add them accordingly. But after mastering this approach, you’re free to improvise. You find that shadows may be added in unlikely places, not because they would necessarily appear there, but because your understanding of how light works enables you to plausibly fit them where you wish.

J. P. Leon was an expert at this. His scenes are often drenched with shadow—not added haphazardly or without credibility, but with the authority of a life-long student of light, who knows how to fit shadows plausibly wherever he wills them. Armed with this skill, he used shadows to lend weight to objects, tie scenes together, create mood, direct the eye—whatever served his narrative.

In this panel (3), the far wall is black, the ceiling is black, there’s heavy black on the nearest figures and equipment, and on the left wall—are all these heavy shadows justified by the lighting? Maybe, maybe not. But what’s important is that we believe they are, and that they serve the image.

Not only had Leon mastered the use of black areas, but he used white to good effect, as well. In each panel of this crowd scene (4), he draws our attention to the black-hatted main character by rendering all of the other figures without heavy shadow. Or in this shot (5), he drops out all of the interior foliage of the tree, rendering it only in silhouette. This allows the reader’s eye to fall directly onto the main figure without undue distraction. He adds and subtracts detail and white and dark areas at will, controlling the visuals to serve the narrative.

In the examples cited above, you may have noticed another element which distinguishes Leon’s work: the rough character of his lines. Many artists who take great pains to draw realistically will carefully finesse their lines, giving great attention to every curve and texture, and rendering every contour with smooth precision. Leon avoided that approach. His lines are brusque, blocky, laid down in a quick, no-nonsense fashion, as though he’s sketching road directions on a napkin. His preference for this method has been shared by many other great draftsmen, including Alex Toth, Austin Briggs, Noel Sickles, and Robert Fawcett. Its advantage is a bold immediacy which is lacking in more polished art.

Leon clearly understood that the length, location, and angle of a line gives readers all the information they need to understand the form the line portrays. If those three attributes are handled properly, it’s unnecessary to add careful nuances or inflections to the lines. The reader doesn’t need to see delicate feathering, or precise little curves, because the accurate summary offered by the more basic linework is sufficient. We quickly grasp the character of each drawn object and move on to the next.

Few artists have the courage to rely so heavily on such rough linework as Leon did. The temptation to “help” the drawing along with finer lines is unrelenting. When you don’t know exactly where a line should go, or the correct angle needed to portray the underlying form, it’s so comforting to hide behind some extra feathering and fancy inking. And even when you know your lines are correct, it’s hard to trust readers to know they are correct. What if readers won’t understand these simple, unadorned lines? Maybe they need to see more fussy nuance? Leon was not vexed by such questions—or, if he was, he chose to ignore them. He knew where to place each line, and he let it speak for itself: gruffly and frankly.

Leon rarely tied himself to an ongoing series, more often drawing sporadic single issues, so his work can be difficult to find. To those new to his art, I recommend the trade paperback Batman: Creature of the Night, collecting a recent four-issue series he drew for DC. There, you will find hundreds of pages of prime John Paul Leon to enjoy, well worth your careful attention.

Image credits:

1. Ex Machina Masquerade Special #3, copyright 2007 Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris
2. Batman Creature Of The Night book 4, copyright 2019 DC Comics
3. The Winter Men #4, copyright 2006 Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon
4. The Winter Men #1, copyright 2005 Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon
5. Batman Creature Of The Night book 4, copyright 2019 DC Comic

Among the flaws that most often mar the work of amateur cartoonists is poor cropping. That’s when the panel borders either hew too close to the subject, cutting valuable information out of the panel, or fall too far from the subject, leaving information in the panel that’s distracting or irrelevant. I often see in amateurs’ work panels that are cramped and unclear, or that include acres of dead space that do nothing to serve the story. The skilled cartoonist learns to crop a panel wisely, comfortably framing the elements that are important to the story and cutting out the rest.

Suppose your script says that a character in Panel 1 has arrived at a cafe to meet a friend. At your thumbnail stage (see my column on Thumbnails— Carousel 12), you’ve already chosen an angle of view from which to show the action: from over the friend’s shoulder, let’s say, as the arriving character enters through the front door. Precisely how much of each element should be visible? Crop in too closely, and readers won’t be able to tell where they are (a bar? a restaurant? Have I been here before?), or whether the seated character is important. But reveal too much of the surroundings, and the reader may be distracted by the setting and the other customers, failing to zero-in on your key characters. How can you quickly and smartly decide what to include and what to crop out?

Here are four questions that get to the heart of the matter:

1. How much must readers see to understand the action?
2. How much must readers see to understand the circumstance?
3. How much must readers see to understand the mood?
4. Is the crop aesthetically pleasing?

Let’s take these in turn.

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1. ACTION

This one is rather obvious: you should show enough of the characters’ behavior in a panel to ensure that the reader understands what’s happening. Still, many artists fail to do this! Is the character shooting? Show us her gun. Is he typing? Show us his keyboard! I suspect artists grow so preoccupied with drawing the character’s face or body that they forget to clearly include the character’s actions.

And by “action,” I also mean speech. If characters are speaking, the reader must see what they are saying. For this reason, I recommend adding lettering to the panel before deciding where to crop—even if only a rough pass of words sketched in, to estimate the space the lettering will need.

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2. CIRCUMSTANCE

This priority is even more overlooked than action. Artists often forget that in order to understand a scene, the reader needs to know the characters’ circumstances—namely, who else is present and where the scene takes place. As a reader, I often find myself wading through a scene where a character is yelling at someone—but it’s unclear whom! And are they outdoors or indoors? At home or elsewhere? Is it night or day? The artist should have left a broader margin around the key figure to include the answers to those questions: trees, furniture, a sunny sky, other characters, or whatever.

This is also a good time to consider the vertical crop: How much extra space should you leave on the top and bottom of the panel? Is it necessary to see the characters’ faces, the tops of their heads, or their feet? Must we see the ground beneath them, and/or the sky above? Sometimes these elements are needed; other times they may be cropped without losing relevant information. What’s important is that you make that choice deliberately, based on the needs of the scene, rather than letting habit make the choice for you.

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3. MOOD

This priority is perhaps the hardest to judge. Sometimes, even after leaving the perfect amount of space to reveal a character’s actions and circumstances, you find the panel isn’t giving readers everything they need for the scene to work. The problem here is that stories aren’t just about events; they’re also about moods. How should the reader feel about what’s happening? The spaces you leave (or don’t leave) around a panel’s key elements will help create the mood you intend.

Suppose you’ve drawn a character sitting thoughtfully at the edge of a meadow. The reader will probably feel that thoughtful mood more strongly if you pull back, revealing more of the pastoral surroundings. You may even strengthen the mood further by including a broad expanse of the starry sky above. Readers won’t need to see more of the sky or the meadow to understand the story’s events, but they may need to see more of those things to understand the character’s feelings.

Alternatively, suppose it’s an action scene: Your hero is hemmed in by enemy forces. Here, it may serve the mood to crop closely on either side of the hero’s face, underscoring his claustrophobia. (To make this crop work, you may need to reposition some of the panel’s key elements, so they’ll remain clearly visible near the hero’s face instead of disappearing beyond the panel’s borders.)

In any case, it’s important to decide what mood you’re aiming for in each panel, and crop accordingly—without obscuring the characters’ actions or circumstances.

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4. AESTHETICS

Having considered the other three questions, we come finally to the panel’s composition (a subject I covered in more detail in Carousel 29). Even aside from narrative concerns, objects in the panel should be clearly seen and pleasing to look at.

Our main concern here is a problem known as tangencies, which often occur near a panel’s borders. Tangencies are when the nearness of certain lines in a drawing implies a false relationship between the objects those lines represent. For example, if the line I use to render the back of a character’s head happens to touch the line I use to render the panel’s border, it may accidentally look as though the character is leaning his head against the panel’s border. Or, if the bottom border of a panel passes across the character’s ankles, it may look as though he wading in a puddle, instead of merely being cropped at his ankles by the border.

Avoid tangencies by examining the edges of each panel before inking. Look to see if any odd relationships occur between the lines of your drawings and the panel’s borders. If you notice a tangency, adjust the drawing by pushing the drawn object further into the panel, or further out of it, until the tangency is no longer evident.

This may seem a lot to absorb, but once you grow used to answering these four questions, it will become second nature.  When placing their panel borders, most professional cartoonists probably answer these questions without even realizing it. But they are useful questions to ask yourself consciously at the outset, in order to build a strong habit of cropping thoughtfully.

Finally, here’s a drawing method that will make cropping easier: When I’m tackling a new panel and haven’t decided how it should be cropped, I sketch it large, on a new layer, separate from the rest of the page. At this stage, there are no borders; I’m just arranging the objects and figures and ensuring that they’re in proper perspective. Once I like the overall look of the sketch, I place borders at the edges, cropping the art in keeping with the four priorities listed above. Then I resize the panel and fit it into the page where it belongs, stretching or squashing it as needed. I draw the actual pencil art over this rough, adjusting the figures as necessary if I squashed or stretched them. This method allows me to draw freely and then crop freely without having to draw my art into a predetermined space, which can be inhibiting. (When working on paper instead of digitally, you can sketch the panel on a separate sheet, crop it, and then redraw the cropped rough into the actual panel on your comic page.)

Cropping is part of the grammar of comics, like choosing where to end a sentence in a novel, or how long to hold a musical note in a song. Choosing wisely where to crop each panel will strengthen your work and make it more uniquely yours. Embrace the challenge!

See you here next month!

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Carousel by Jesse Hamm appears the third Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

In this 90th “Maggie’s World,” it seems appropriate to look at milestones. And hey! April 2021 is a pop culture anniversary of sorts.

Thanks to Comic-Con’s archive of “Maggie’s World” columns, readers can visit my earlier comments on the history of the world of comics collecting. The #32 (September 2015) outing was titled “55 Years and Counting,” And #39 (April 2016) was “2016 Fanniversary 55.”

And now it’s April 2021: time to celebrate a milestone again—and remember more.

Six decades ago

In #32, I summed up some of what it had been like for comics lovers when comics fandom got under way. “What was the meaning of Billy Batson’s magic word? Didn’t Mary Marvel have a different meaning for the same magic word? … The public had forgotten. Just … Forgotten. … Although we’d been able to buy copies from newsstands less than a decade earlier, by September 1960, such treasures could be found only in second-hand shops.”

In #39, I paid tribute to the anniversary of the first comics fanzines (released in spring 1961) that were soon joined by many, many others: an environment that would grow into a continuing, influential world of publications focused on the artform. (And, by the way, the spring of 1961 itself was the 35th anniversary of Hugo Gernsback’s science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, in which were published names and full addresses of science fiction enthusiasts. That quickly united a national community of sf fans—including Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who would go on to co-create Superman.)

So consider the extent to how much we didn’t know in early 1961.

To begin with, we had had almost no reference material to consult for the facts. A few library books were available (if the local library collection happened to include them). I bet I’ve listed them before, and their primary focus was on comic strips, but in any case:

1942 Martin Sheridan, Comics and Their Creators (Ralph T. Hale): strips, one chapter on Superman, one chapter on animated cartoons

1943 Thomas Craven, Cartoon Cavalcade (Simon & Schuster): cartoons and strips

1947 Coulton Waugh, The Comics (Macmillan): strips, one chapter on comic books

1959 Stephen Becker, Comic Art in America (Simon & Schuster): strips, one chapter on comic books

Oh, there was one book that focused on comic books, but it was not in admiration:

1954 Fredric Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (Rinehart)

In fact, it was part of the reason that nostalgia played such a large part in activating comic book collectors a few years later. Because it changed the types of comic books that were on newsstands.

With that as a foundation …

In 1961, we had nostalgia and a few dealers specializing in back-issue books and magazines. That’s what Dick and Pat Lupoff had started with in 1960 in their science fiction fanzine Xero #1, which contained the first installment of the comics-focused series All in Color for a Dime.

What we had as reference material was what we’d hung onto through the years and what was currently on the nation’s newsstands.

Comics that were cover-dated April 1961 came from these publishers with roughly this many titles:

• 2 American Comics Group
• 2 Prize
• 9 Archie
• 11 Marvel
• 15 Harvey
• 27 Charlton
• 28 DC
• 28 Dell

Added to those were George A. Pflaum’s Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact and Gilberton’s releases of its Classics Illustrated and Classics Illustrated Junior titles with their own distribution channels.

Figuring that there were 124 or so titles out there—with the contributor credits on many (most?) hidden—there were a lot of questions to be answered and—with newsstand comic books having begun a little over a quarter-century earlier (in 1934)—a lot of history to be explored.

One information source for fannish researchers was the Statement of Ownership that periodicals circulated via second-class mail were required to post. For 1961, we could eventually see such figures for average paid circulation per issue as:

• Forbidden Worlds 178,600
• Richie Rich 220,000
• Showcase 240,000
• The Brave and the Bold 245,000
• Archie 458,039
• Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan 509,355

And (though new to the game) we could guess at which companies were approximating their figures. And which titles were doing well. And, yes, analyses could be tricky. For example, Uncle Scrooge #33 [March-May] had an average circulation that topped the field at 853,928 per issue, according to today’s Comichron website. Comichron (from which I grabbed this data) points out that Uncle Scrooge’s circulation was highest—but it was a quarterly. More time on the newsstand meant more time to find and buy a copy.

Also of note regarding sales that year: Comichron’s John Jackson Miller says, “The average [mean] circulation of all titles publishing Statements was above 300,000 copies for the last time in 1961.”

Mind you, the Silver Age is generally considered to have begun years before, with DC’s Showcase #4 (September-October 1956). But—look at its name—it just provided trial balloons. Happily for superhero comics fans, though, that experimental balloon lifted the industry to new levels of reader involvement.

In the June-July 1961 issue of DC’s The Brave and the Bold (#36), Editor Julius Schwartz involved fans directly, printing names and addresses of letter writers—and including contributor credits (Gardner Fox and Joe Kubert) for the stories in the issue. The curtain hiding information and history was being pulled back.

By the autumn of 1961, DC editors were reaching out even more to nostalgic fans, with “Flash of Two Worlds” combining Silver and Golden Age Flashes in The Flash #123, Showcase #34 introducing the Silver Age version of The Atom, and Marvel joining in, with Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) kicking off Silver Age versions of Plastic Man, Invisible Girl, and Human Torch. What a year!

Details, details

Mind you, we were still figuring out how to build and care for our collections.

We’d piled our comics in stacks, put them in drawers, whatever. Had we figured out plastic bags at that point? And why were old comics pages turning brown? And was “Magic Tape” really a good idea?

I think we’d figured that one out at the time, actually. And we’ve learned quite a bit more in the last 60 years.

It seems to be a pretty good time for long-time fans and new readers alike to celebrate this 60th Anniversary together.

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the second Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

Artists are often given the following advice: “Draw what you see, not what you THINK you see.” This may sound profound, but what does it mean? How are we supposed to distinguish between what we think we see and what we actually see? Truthfully, there is merit to the advice, but we need to unpack it further before it will do us much good.

When people look at the world around them, they must sort through all sorts of visual information to make sense of things. That black rhombus to my lower left is my phone; the field of tan surrounding it is my desk; the white region above the tan field is the far wall. As I move about the room, other colored shapes enter my eyes, demanding interpretation. The grey below me is the carpet, the white above is the ceiling, and there are books and furniture besides. To complicate matters, shapes shrink and grow as I move closer or farther, and they seem to change shape as I examine them from different angles. How do I identify everything I’m seeing?

To interpret the visual information we collect, we form fixed ideas of what objects look like under ideal circumstances. So, when I think of my phone, I picture a black rectangle, as though I’m looking at it straight-on. Then, when I see a black rhombus on what I know to be my desk, I know it’s my phone, though viewed from an angle. The same is true of most other objects, too: we tend to imagine them in an ideal state, uniformly lit and facing the viewer in a way that best reveals the objects’ overall shape. (Try picturing a man, a hand, or a fish. You’ll tend to picture the man standing and facing you, the hand palm-out with fingers splayed, and the fish lying horizontally, with head and tail both visible. You likely won’t picture the man from above, the fish from the front, or the hand with fingers curled, even though you may see these sights in nature.) I call this flat-packing: we grant each object a simple shape in our minds so that we can later identify the object, by comparing the colored shapes we see in nature to their “flat-packed” counterparts in our minds. This also aids in thought: It’s easier for me to think about an object if I picture it in its simplest form, rather than picturing that object from every possible angle and distance, and in every possible light.

Unfortunately, though this method of mentally simplifying objects makes it easier to see and think about them, it also makes drawing them more difficult. Our drawings suffer when we attempt to draw objects that are angled or lighted in ways that don’t match our flat-packed ideas of how they appear. The brain doesn’t want a rectangular phone to be shaped as a rhombus, even when the phone lies at an angle that makes it appear as a rhombus. The brain doesn’t want fingers to shorten as they point toward the viewer, or pale objects to darken as they fall into shadow. To a great extent, drawing is a struggle to ignore the brain’s shorthand summaries and instead record the shadows and shapes our eyes actually perceive.

This is what’s meant by the advice to draw what you see, and not what you think you see.

Even when we draw from our heads, rather than from life, the challenge persists. My mental version of how long a finger should be will block my attempts to draw a foreshortened finger, such that I’ll keep lengthening the fingers as I refine my sketch, even if I intend them to point directly at the viewer. I may understand, from memory, that fingers shorten into a circle as they angle toward the viewer … but part of me still wants those drawn fingers to resemble the splayed fingers of the flat-packed hand my brain has filed under “HAND.”

How do we overcome this tendency, and draw objects as they truly appear? Here are several techniques:

• DRAW UPSIDE-DOWN — Instead of drawing from a photo that is right-side-up, turn the photo 180 degrees, and draw that. This encourages your brain to see only shapes and edges, rather than identifiable objects. By reducing the depicted objects to unfamiliar shapes, you can prevent your brain from pushing you toward the flat-packed images that it typically favors.
• DRAW NEGATIVE SPACES — Instead of drawing an object, focus on the empty spaces around or within the object, and draw those. In other words, don’t draw the donut itself; draw the hole, and then the outer circumference. Drawing the edges around the object and its parts helps you see only lines and abstract shapes, rather than the symbol your brain typically substitutes for the object.
• COMPARING LOCATIONS — When deciding the placement of any feature in your drawing, compare the feature’s location in the reference photo to the locations of the object’s other features. For example, does the upper edge of Lady Liberty’s sleeve align with her eyebrows, or is it lower, or higher? Do any of her fingers touch each other; if so, which ones? Specific questions about the features’ relative locations will ensure your drawing’s accuracy better than merely asking,”Does it look right?”
• MATCHING ANGLES — When drawing a diagonal line or edge you see in a photo, try to determine the precise angle of the edge. Do this by holding up the thumb or forefinger of your nondominant hand and matching its angle with that of the edge in the photo. Then, without tilting your hand, lower it near your drawing for reference, and sketch the desired line at the same angle. (It helps to do all of this with one eye closed, so that your angle of view remains consistent.) This comparison method will eventually train you to judge angles without using it. Just by looking, you will be able to see whether the edges in your drawing match the angles of edges in your subject—a skill crucial to accurate drawing. 

The methods I’ve outlined here are designed to be used when you draw from observation, such as from life or from a photo. However, after you develop your objectivity that way, you can bring the same objectivity to drawings you make from memory. You will recall what it feels like to ignore the flat-packed images your brain assigns to objects, and you’ll remember how you isolated the shapes and edges in your observational drawing, in order to draw those, instead of the symbols upon which your brain often relies. Your remembered experience of drawing objectively from photos will help you accurately depict images you’ve dreamed up yourself. In essence, you’ll draw what you’ve actually seen in your mind’s eye, not what you think you’ve seen there.

See you here next month!

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Carousel by Jesse Hamm appears the third Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!

One of our favorite forms of entertainment has been called “comics” for a long time, emerging from the 1700s usage that meant “funny.”

Standing Alone

Frequently, as the comics artform developed, one of its most popular—and challenging—formats was the single-panel gag.

It may have survived to greatest effect in stand-alone political cartoons, but such ongoing syndicated panels as Dennis the Menace and The Far Side have, of course, been popular enough to merit book collections over the years.

Among the challenges is that the background of the stand-alone gag often has to be understood without elaboration. Whether the reader sees it as a stereotype or a meme, there’s a commonality to the setup: Do you see a cannibal pot? Two people on a desert island? Or behind bars? Is there a St. Bernard? Someone emerging from Asia via a deep hole? Someone pounding on the wall to complain about noise from another apartment? A thought balloon? You get the idea. (The wonderful collection paying tribute to cartoonist Sam Cobean, The Cartoons of Cobean, featured a combination of these on the jacket: A man and woman stand on a traffic island in the city, surrounded by cars. The man’s wistful thought balloon, as he admires the woman, is of them stranded alone on a desert island.)

Magazines and newspapers featured countless gag cartoons over the decades, and the evolution to ongoing serial adventures of humorous characters really took off with newspaper syndication. Then, newsstand-distributed comic books emerged in the 1930s, initially supplied with content collected from what had been syndicated.

(Note: While a hefty percentage of comic book material was funny, a lot of it was not—and wasn’t intended to be. There quickly emerged discussions in which some griped that “funnybooks aren’t funny,” “comic books aren’t comic,” and the like. But, even as action-adventure became a major genre of comics in newspapers and on magazine racks, gags and imaginative humor still maintained their presence.)

The Golden Age

A look at the evolution of comic book magazines (as opposed to reprint collections of earlier gags in book form) shows that early outings were filled with reprints of what had already appeared in newspapers. Eastman Color’s Famous Funnies #2 (July 1934) was the first second issue of any U.S. comic book, and it had a mix of action and humorous content. New Fun Comics (February 1935) from what would become DC contained original content and included funny animals. Dell kicked off Popular Comics in February 1936, and by the time of comic books dated January 1937 (on sale at the end of 1936), the comic book racks were beginning to fill. Centaur had Detective Picture Stories #2 and Funny Picture Stories #3. David McKay had King Comics #10. DC had More Fun #17, New Book of Comics #1, and New Comics #12. Dell had Funnies #4 and Popular Comics #12. Eastern Color had Famous Funnies #30. And United Features had Tip Top Comics #9. Most of the gag content seemed to come from strip reprints at that point; there weren’t a lot of new laughs.

A decade after the scant pickings dated January 1937, there were a few more titles on the newsstand (about 105). And a number of those were aimed at readers young and old in search of a laugh. Many of those comics were licensed and had fresh material, often created by people working anonymously (Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, New Funnies, Our Gang Comics, Disney titles, and much of the content of Animal Comics, for example).

While the Golden Age was often termed such in retrospect by fans of costumed heroes, it was also a Golden Age of humor. Such creators as Carl Barks, George Carlson, Walt Kelly, and John Stanley produced classics, even when some of them couldn’t sign their names to their work, thanks to licensing restrictions. The humor in early comic books can be generalized as farce. But there are other forms of humor, and a detour into parody even emerged in the Golden Age. Will Eisner’s action-adventure feature The Spirit was often satiric—and some installments even made fun of Will Eisner’s own storytelling. (I call your attention to last month’s Maggie’s World installment.)

Writer-artist-editor Harvey Kurtzman took such material to the next level in MAD (the first issue dated October-November 1952), mocking horror, crime, and western comics. In less than three years, there were a dozen such series on newsstands. (In fact, one of the earliest comics fan groups comprised people devoted to that sort of publication.)

But, of course, those weren’t the only humorous avenues for gags in comic books. So-called “funny animals” had become commonplace for creators who looked for slapstick at a slight remove from human hilarities. And the humorous comics did well.

Silver Age Silliness

In fact, if the Silver Age is agreed upon as having begun with DC’s Showcase #4 (September-October 1956, featuring The Flash), it’s easy to forget that—whereas many superheroic titles had been languishing until then—the funny comics had been chugging right along. That month’s newsstand series featured more than 50 gag-oriented releases, including Abbott and Costello #40, Archie #82, Casper the Friendly Ghost #48, Dagwood #69, Dennis the Menace #18, Fox and the Crow #35, Fritzi Ritz #46, Katy Keene #30, Leave It to Binky #56, Little Lulu #99, Nancy and Sluggo #136, Sad Sack #62, Three Mouseketeers #4, Tweety and Sylvester #14, Uncle Scrooge #15, and Wilbur #68.

As superheroes began to take increasing space on comics racks, that didn’t mean the fun had left the field.

These Days …

What’s old and funny can be current and funny (or even hit close to home), thanks to reprint accessibility. Moreover, our existing collections on bookshelves and in comics boxes can bring us laughs—and so can delights from current newspapers and comics shops. Even the satire of times past turns out to have things to say about today, including such nods to our field as the behavior of The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy.

A look at Stephen Becker’s history of comics in Comic Art in America (1959) demonstrated that what was old can be new again. A random page turns up a 1959 George Lichty panel cartoon of Civil Defense Headquarters: “… and it’s gratifying to note that public cooperation in the test evacuation of this city was 100% … They had traffic hopelessly snarled within minutes!”

Yep. And ouch.

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Maggie’s World by Maggie Thompson appears the second Tuesday of every month here on Toucan!