History of Graphic Novels: 1960's

Definition

During the 1960’s, a period typically considered to fall within the Silver Age of comics, publishers adjusted to cultural changes and introduced a number of major characters and concepts that would greatly shape the industry. Long-form comics continued to develop, becoming more similar to the graphic novels of later decades.

Introduction

The Silver Age of comics usually evokes images of brightly colored costumes, wisecracking adolescent sidekicks, heavy-handed morality, and a monochromatic divide between good and evil. Some remember these comics with nostalgic fondness for their innocence and optimism. Others are critical of their naïveté, limited character development, and juvenile nature.

Love them or hate them, these early stories have an important place in the history of the medium as precursors of graphic novels. Many of the conventions of the modern comics medium were established and built upon during the 1960’s, and many writers and artists who were raised on these stories went on to steer the comics medium toward the legitimacy enjoyed by the graphic novel form.

Comics as a medium cannot be condensed into a singular form for the 1960’s. While the decade certainly opened with simplistic story lines and two-dimensional characters, a number of developments within the comic book industry had a lasting effect, updating the comics for an ever-maturing readership and cultivating a loyal fan base that would ensure the survival of the medium.

The Comics Code and Its Aftermath

The comic book medium began the 1960’s in the wake of a moral backlash that had left the industry with little choice but to regulate itself in accordance with mainstream conservative values. While this self-regulation stifled creativity, it also was the catalyst for a number of innovations that would have a lasting effect on the industry, paving the way for experimentation during the late 1960’s and 1970’s and allowing for newfound acceptance of the graphic novel as a literary form during the 1980’s.

As the comic book industry entered the 1960’s, it was still recovering from the devastating effects of the publication of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s anticomics book Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and the subsequent Senate subcommittee hearings on connections between comics and juvenile delinquency. The Comics Code Authority, which had been voluntarily established by publishing companies in order to avoid government regulation, placed considerable restrictions on the content of comic books. The establishment of the Comics Code had effectively obliterated horror and violent crime comics, leaving superhero comics with relatively little competition.

With the Comics Code forbidding depictions of the supernatural, violent crime, and corrupt or inept authority figures and demanding that good triumph over evil without exception, realism had essentially been eliminated from the superhero subgenre. These restrictions left writers with limited avenues of storytelling and led to a series of story lines about romantic mishaps, sidekicks and superpets, grandiose supervillains with giant novelty traps, and fantastic excursions into outer space.

The characters (as well as the creative teams behind them) were trapped in a perpetual loop of simplistic storytelling in which heroes always prevailed, all loose ends were resolved at the end of each adventure, and the status quo was preserved at all costs. Story arcs rarely extended beyond a monthly issue, and characters remained relatively unchanged over time. This left comic books in a somewhat static form, allowing casual readers to come and go as they pleased but effectively limiting the readership to the preteen and young-adult market.

Heroes for a New Age

With the advent of television, coupled with a loss of interest in the new style of comics among older readers, sales steadily declined as the 1960’s approached. DC Comics set about revamping some of its original Golden Age characters in the hope of capturing a new generation of readers. The company had already enjoyed some success in 1956 with a new incarnation of the Flash. Now the secret identity of Barry Allen, this new version of the hero was given a sleek red costume and a scientific edge. As the 1950’s drew to a close, Golden Age favorites such as Green Lantern and Hawkman were also reinvented, redrawn to be more modern and scientific and less supernatural in origin.

While these new characters enjoyed varied levels of success, it was not until 1960, when DC combined its superhero lineup under the banner of the Justice League of America, that the characters became more widely known. Drawing on the original concept of the Justice Society of America as well as on the military and science team stories of the 1950’s, the superhero team was extremely popular. The team had a lasting impact on the comics world, necessitating the creation of the DC Multiverse and prompting struggling rival Marvel Comics to launch its own superpowered team in 1961.

Birth of the Multiverse

While the Justice League of America was a commercial success, it also generated continuity issues for DC Comics. The new Flash, Barry Allen, had already been established in 1956 as an avid comic book reader who had based his superhero identity on his favorite comic book character, Jay Garrick, the Flash of the Golden Age. While characters such as the Flash and Green Lantern had been reinvented for the new scientific age, more popular characters such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman had remained relatively unchanged. In previous adventures these characters had interacted with the Golden Age version of the Flash, Jay Garrick, who was now being portrayed as a fictional character.

This and a number of other continuity issues were addressed in “Flash of Two Worlds,” in The Flash, issue 123 (1961), a story in which Barry Allen punctures an interdimensional barrier and finds himself on Earth 2, the parallel-universe home of the Golden Age incarnations of the DC superheroes, including the original Flash. Jay Garrick’s comic book appearance in Barry Allen’s universe is explained as the product of subconscious extrasensory perception on the part of writer Gardner Fox, a real-life writer for DC Comics. The Multiverse yielded an abundance of Silver Age story lines in the DC Comics Universe and was used as the proving ground for experimental characters and alternate time line tales known as “Imaginary Stories.”

Rise of Marvel Comics

In 1961, a struggling company that had been known as Timely Comics during the 1930’s and Atlas Comics during the 1950’s rebranded itself as Marvel Comics. Tasked with creating a superhero team to compete with DC’s Justice League, writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby devised a new take on the superhero that secured Marvel Comics’ place as a serious contender in the industry. The Fantastic Four debuted in November, 1961, and was an immediate success. Modeled after the nuclear family, the team was composed of four heroes who fought and bickered with one another and displayed human character flaws such as ego, jealousy, and impatience. This injection of realism resonated with comics readers, who could easily identify with the characters.

With the success of The Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby went on to create a multitude of new Marvel Comics superheroes and stories that were based on societal interest and anxiety about atomic power, scientists and the military, male identity, and the growing civil rights and counterculture movements. The creative team at Marvel Comics soon realized that their core readers were college students who were inspired by the realism of the characters and the social relevance of the stories. Lee and artist Steve Ditko further challenged the conventions of the superhero subgenre by reinventing the adolescent sidekick as the teen protagonist. Spider-Man debuted in 1962 in Amazing Fantasy, issue15, and was an instant success, with the character going on to become the “mascot” character for Marvel Comics.

Comics Go Underground

In the late 1960’s, a number of artists who were disillusioned with the restrictions of working in the mainstream arena began to write, draw, and independently publish their own comic books. Sold in record stores and head shops, these publications did not need to abide by the Comics Code and gained the moniker “comix” because of the “X-rated” nature of their content. The comix firmly placed the comic book medium within the realm of mature-adult entertainment, exploring sex, drugs, and political taboos such as opposition to the Vietnam War. With less emphasis on artistic finishing and more on substance and satire, the comix have been likened to a return to the newspaper cartoon origins of mainstream comics. Many underground comics were based on autobiographical accounts of the artists’ childhoods, the drudgeries and difficulties of daily life, and experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD.

The importance of the underground comics movement to the development of the graphic novel cannot be overlooked. The movement was led by artists such as Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, and, later, Harvey Pekar and Art Spiegelman. These artists challenged the perception of comics as a child’s medium and sought to explore and experiment with the comic book form well into the 1970’s. Pekar and Spiegelman in particular became major forces in the legitimization of the graphic novel medium and the introduction of comics into mainstream literature.

Impact

The progression of the comic book medium during the 1960’s can be held as a cultural mirror to the tumultuous nature of the decade. While it may be tempting to dismiss the comic books of the early 1960’s as childish and formulaic, they were the springboard for a series of creative leaps that led to the modern graphic novel. The subgenre of superhero fiction is often decried as being less legitimate than its more “literary” peers, but it was the adaptability of the subgenre, and the creativity of its writers and artists, that helped the comic book medium survive the stagnation of the early 1960’s.

Inventions of necessity such as character reboots and the parallel universes of the DC Multiverse have become staples of the medium, and they eventually provided a platform for two of the most famous graphic novels in publishing history: Frank Miller’s Batman:The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986-1987), reinterpretations of the “imaginary tales” of the 1960’s and reinventions of existing characters in alternative realities. The popularity of the Justice League of America can be linked to the rise of Marvel Comics and with it a greater emphasis on character realism and social commentary. By creating characters and story lines that tapped into the interests and anxieties of a maturing readership, Marvel Comics was instrumental in the creation of a loyal fan base that helped the medium survive the introduction of television and reach a wider, more mature audience.

As the counterculture movement gained strength in colleges around the United States and the rest of the Western world, the phenomenon of underground comics provided an avenue for experimentation with the form and inspired a new generation of mainstream writers and artists in the early 1970’s to see the value of the medium as a tool for social commentary. Ironically, one of the more prominent artists of the underground movement, Spiegelman, brought mainstream legitimacy to the graphic novel with the publication of Maus in 1986.

Accordingly it can be said that the 1960’s represent the formative years of the graphic novel. Although the graphic novel form did not officially appear until the following decade, many of the developments that led to its creation, such as experimentation with the comic book form, social realism, and autobiographical narrative, can be traced to the innovations of the 1960’s.

Bibliography

Genter, Robert. “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Cold War Culture and the Birth of Marvel Comics.” The Journal of Popular Culture 40, no. 6 (2007): 957-978. Provides an outline of the rise of Marvel Comics, with a particular focus on the transition from conservatism to counterculture and the development of Marvel’s adult fan base.

Jenkins, Henry. “Just Men in Tights: Rewriting Silver Age Comics in an Era of Multiplicity.” In The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero, edited by Angela Ndalianis. New York: Routledge, 2009. Examines the comics ages in the context of wider genre theory and explores the enduring popularity of the Silver Age incarnations of superheroes and their adaptation to modern publications.

Lopes, Paul Douglas. Demanding Respect: The Evolution of the American Comic Book. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Discusses the moral panic over comics during the 1950’s as well as the aftermath during the 1960’s and the subsequent evolution of fan culture.