The Phantom Frew 1079 - Election in Bengali
The Phantom Frew 1261 - Spear of Destiny Part Two
The Phantom Frew 1415 - Diana Disappears
Scanned by "san2710&Rado46-BDS Team" & contributed by "Delboj".
3 Frew #: 1079, 1261, 1415
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Bảy, 4 tháng 4, 2009
The Phantom Frew 1079 - Election in Bengali
The Phantom Frew 1261 - Spear of Destiny Part Two
The Phantom Frew 1415 - Diana Disappears
Scanned by "san2710&Rado46-BDS Team" & contributed by "Delboj".
Did the Birth Control Pill End the Silver Age?
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Sáu, 3 tháng 4, 2009
To me, the key aspect of the Silver Age of Comics is that it was the only era in which comic books were seen as and intended to be juvenile entertainment. Certainly during the Golden Age, there were many comics that were aimed at older readers, and after the Silver Age it became quite common to explore more adult themes and concepts.
But during the Silver Age, comics were intentionally kept at a level where the stories would be acceptable to a mother of an eight-year-old boy. The violence was toned down, romance never got more hot and heavy than a chaste kiss, and real-world issues like race relations were seldom discussed.
Obviously the Comics Code Authority had a lot to do with that. But in the late 1960s the CCA began to be seen as a hindrance to comics moving to a more mature fare. Stan Lee famously dedicated Spiderman #96-98 (May-July 1971) to a series of stories involving drug abuse, and the CCA refused to issue their seal of approval. The comics went out any way, and were sold in stores. The CCA, exposed as a paper tiger, relented and a few months later gave their approval to a much more nuanced anti-drug story which featured the stunning cover of Speedy (Roy Harper) injecting himself with heroin.
Why the sudden push for more relevance, more violence and more (semi) nudity? When I have thought about this question in the past I just assumed that it was the famed Baby Boomers; that there were a lot of children born from about 1946 to 1956, that after that it declined fairly rapidly and regularly, and thus the comic companies were forced to chase the larger market.
Congratulations if you didn't buy it, because it's wrong. My first clue that it was wrong was when got live birth statistics for every year starting in 1952. I reasoned that probably the prime comic-buying years for a kid back then were from age 7 to age 12, a six-year span, so I looked at the number of kids who would have been that age in the following years:
1964 24,586,000
1965 24,928,000
1966 25,258,000
1967 25,437,850
1968 25,602,176
1969 25,551,538
1970 25,341,558
1971 25,114,048
1972 24,579,406
As you can see, there is a bulge in the market around 1968, and a steady decline after that to 1972, but it's nothing dramatic, and 1972's market is still very close to 1964's, even if it's off about 4% from the peak. There's nothing in those figures to show why the comics companies were pressing to offer fare that would appeal to teenagers.
But this is one of those rare cases where the rolling average is hiding what was really going on. Here are the live births in the US by year from 1952-1964:
1952 3,913,000
1953 3,965,000
1954 4,078,000
1955 4,104,000
1956 4,218,000
1957 4,308,000
1958 4,255,000
1959 4,295,000
1960 4,257,850
1961 4,268,326
1962 4,167,362
1963 4,098,020
1964 4,027,490
The story looks the same there; a peak in 1957, but still holding pretty steady as late as 1961, then some minor dropoffs in 1962, 1963 and 1964. Ah but look what came next:
1965 3,760,358
1966 3,606,274
1967 3,520,959
1968 3,501,564
Steep and sudden drops indeed; about 6.6% down in 1965, another 4% off in 1966 and and a 2.5% decline in 1967.
And the Birth Control Pill is the most likely cause. Although it was approved by the FDA as a contraceptive in 1960, it first became widely available in 1964-1965, following a series of court challenges to state bans on contraception. After the Supreme Court's ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut married women everywhere in the US were guaranteed access to contraception; the ruling was later extended to all women, married or unmarried.
Now let's go back to our look at the market. It's true that it held up fairly well until 1972, but then things really turned downwards:
1972 24,579,406
1973 23,927,830
1974 23,180,463
1975 22,514,665
1976 22,016,851
1977 21,720,747
So the companies were virtually guaranteed to be losing sales throughout the 1970s unless they could expand their market by appealing to a slightly older demographic. Hence the vastly different comic book world of the 1970s.
Incidentally, there is also a visible "Roe" effect as well when we look at the live births:
1968 3,501,564
1969 3,600,206
1970 3,731,386
1971 3,555,970
1972 3,258,411
1973 3,136,965
As you can see, births held fairly steady between 1968 and 1971, but then as abortion became more widely available there were swift and steep drops.
Note that I make no judgment here about the morality of birth control or abortion; I am just demonstrating that their effect on society was profound in ways that many of us may not have noticed at the time. And until someone convinces me otherwise, I'm going to say that the Birth Control Pill ended the Silver Age.
More about →
But during the Silver Age, comics were intentionally kept at a level where the stories would be acceptable to a mother of an eight-year-old boy. The violence was toned down, romance never got more hot and heavy than a chaste kiss, and real-world issues like race relations were seldom discussed.
Obviously the Comics Code Authority had a lot to do with that. But in the late 1960s the CCA began to be seen as a hindrance to comics moving to a more mature fare. Stan Lee famously dedicated Spiderman #96-98 (May-July 1971) to a series of stories involving drug abuse, and the CCA refused to issue their seal of approval. The comics went out any way, and were sold in stores. The CCA, exposed as a paper tiger, relented and a few months later gave their approval to a much more nuanced anti-drug story which featured the stunning cover of Speedy (Roy Harper) injecting himself with heroin.
Why the sudden push for more relevance, more violence and more (semi) nudity? When I have thought about this question in the past I just assumed that it was the famed Baby Boomers; that there were a lot of children born from about 1946 to 1956, that after that it declined fairly rapidly and regularly, and thus the comic companies were forced to chase the larger market.
Congratulations if you didn't buy it, because it's wrong. My first clue that it was wrong was when got live birth statistics for every year starting in 1952. I reasoned that probably the prime comic-buying years for a kid back then were from age 7 to age 12, a six-year span, so I looked at the number of kids who would have been that age in the following years:
1964 24,586,000
1965 24,928,000
1966 25,258,000
1967 25,437,850
1968 25,602,176
1969 25,551,538
1970 25,341,558
1971 25,114,048
1972 24,579,406
As you can see, there is a bulge in the market around 1968, and a steady decline after that to 1972, but it's nothing dramatic, and 1972's market is still very close to 1964's, even if it's off about 4% from the peak. There's nothing in those figures to show why the comics companies were pressing to offer fare that would appeal to teenagers.
But this is one of those rare cases where the rolling average is hiding what was really going on. Here are the live births in the US by year from 1952-1964:
1952 3,913,000
1953 3,965,000
1954 4,078,000
1955 4,104,000
1956 4,218,000
1957 4,308,000
1958 4,255,000
1959 4,295,000
1960 4,257,850
1961 4,268,326
1962 4,167,362
1963 4,098,020
1964 4,027,490
The story looks the same there; a peak in 1957, but still holding pretty steady as late as 1961, then some minor dropoffs in 1962, 1963 and 1964. Ah but look what came next:
1965 3,760,358
1966 3,606,274
1967 3,520,959
1968 3,501,564
Steep and sudden drops indeed; about 6.6% down in 1965, another 4% off in 1966 and and a 2.5% decline in 1967.
And the Birth Control Pill is the most likely cause. Although it was approved by the FDA as a contraceptive in 1960, it first became widely available in 1964-1965, following a series of court challenges to state bans on contraception. After the Supreme Court's ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut married women everywhere in the US were guaranteed access to contraception; the ruling was later extended to all women, married or unmarried.
Now let's go back to our look at the market. It's true that it held up fairly well until 1972, but then things really turned downwards:
1972 24,579,406
1973 23,927,830
1974 23,180,463
1975 22,514,665
1976 22,016,851
1977 21,720,747
So the companies were virtually guaranteed to be losing sales throughout the 1970s unless they could expand their market by appealing to a slightly older demographic. Hence the vastly different comic book world of the 1970s.
Incidentally, there is also a visible "Roe" effect as well when we look at the live births:
1968 3,501,564
1969 3,600,206
1970 3,731,386
1971 3,555,970
1972 3,258,411
1973 3,136,965
As you can see, births held fairly steady between 1968 and 1971, but then as abortion became more widely available there were swift and steep drops.
Note that I make no judgment here about the morality of birth control or abortion; I am just demonstrating that their effect on society was profound in ways that many of us may not have noticed at the time. And until someone convinces me otherwise, I'm going to say that the Birth Control Pill ended the Silver Age.
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em
Number 499
Apache
The one-shot comic, Apache, was originally published by Fiction House in 1951. I found it as an IW reprint in 1958. IW was Israel Waldman. Waldman bought the printing plates of defunct comics from the publishers, and reprinted them with new ads, put them in a bag, and sold them three for 25¢.
Of the two covers, I prefer John Severin's really strong graphic composition. The Fiction House cover is a mess, and might have led to it being the only issue.
Somebody at Grand Comics Database thinks this story is by Lucas Orton, because that's the name on the splash panel. I hate to disillusion, but this is a Jerry Iger comic book shop job, with what I see as the strong presence of Robert Hayward Webb, who probably did most of the pencilling. Fiction House used a bunch of pen-names on their comics, and you can't take any of the bylines literally."Geronimo Red Wolf Of The Badlands" is a good story, mixing in historic characters with fiction, and the Native Americans are the main characters. In too many old comics, novels, movies, etc., if you had a story about Indians it would be told from a white perspective. The most sympathetic character in the story is a Navajo, Lance. Finally, someone should have told the colorist that U.S. Cavalry uniforms weren't scarlet red. We fought a war 100 years earlier with guys in red.
I'll not post Indrajal Comics publicly until ........
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Năm, 2 tháng 4, 2009
Dear visitors & contributors,
I’m stopping posting Indrajal Comics & ACK links publicly (only). We were at two hands distance to complete this 803 Comics series. Around 30 more were already scanned which were coming in various blogs. But a new problem has created by an avanturist who said himself “Peeyoush Mishra”. I think it’s fake name. As his short name P.M. , he is pretending to be his majesty the Prime Minister. It’s a limit of shamelessness, now people are openly started using current materials as their personal property. May be their parents forget to give some elementary human lessons or he’s sick since childhood.
These intensive posting were organized by our team, a lot of time & energy was given to collect this team to make you happier. I can’t make my team unhappy, they are really wonderful persons. I’m not going to stop, but majority can suffer.
You can say he is giving full credits to me & providing my original links. But this show is going on not only by me, there are many team members who are working hard. Many are sending scans me exclusively; even I requested to send particular comics to particular blogger. They wished to go with me (why, it is another question). Where are their interests? Whenever I posted a comics scanned by a blogger in my blogs, always asked about it before. If anyone’s material used in my blogs with permission and he would object later I would delete it. He’s without permission copying whole lot.
Information for those, who never participated in this process: Scanning, cleaning, uploading & posting 1 comics takes 2 hours minimum. I’m not talking about two most important parts searching & buying, it could be 1 day or several years. The shameless man “P.M.” is stealing and posting publicly in the same community our hours work in 2 sec. He says "thanks," although many bloggers & contributors are not interested in his self planned service.
We were taking the new blog as Ist April's joke, but see he decide to make a joke of all us including you. Two major (current) contributors Ajay & Venkit; many bloggers & visitors are already protested. I wrote him first privately, then publicly, no reactions on his crocodile skins.
One person is spoiling whole community. We, bloggers, contributors & old friends can share it privately with ourselves. So our protest is not for us, but for all visitors. We are against this bad example. I can invite 100 persons to download from a new private link blog, if your protest will be not effective.
The number of visits & download are sufficient information for me to guess the tendency. However, mostly of my friends (bloggers) like comments, through it measure pulse. My vote goes in favor of all friends, they feel they will not get proper feed back.
Now all in your hands, we can post as earlier if he would stop. My request to all friends including those who could be in invited list as they are checked persons (in worse case), to protest in his blog too. Some people choose such sick methods to be popular, but do not understand finally get not fame, but humiliation only.
I never asked anything before, if you have little respects for me, my team & my community, time to show your protests, not at my blog but at ........ (He blocked his comment section). You can save all friends interest. Hope at least he is not blind & deaf, can read & listen voice of majority.
Two more friends Bala ji (nick name Phantom And Mandrake Fan ) & Sameer are going to take similar steps. I think it just start.
With regards,
Prabhat
I’m stopping posting Indrajal Comics & ACK links publicly (only). We were at two hands distance to complete this 803 Comics series. Around 30 more were already scanned which were coming in various blogs. But a new problem has created by an avanturist who said himself “Peeyoush Mishra”. I think it’s fake name. As his short name P.M. , he is pretending to be his majesty the Prime Minister. It’s a limit of shamelessness, now people are openly started using current materials as their personal property. May be their parents forget to give some elementary human lessons or he’s sick since childhood.
These intensive posting were organized by our team, a lot of time & energy was given to collect this team to make you happier. I can’t make my team unhappy, they are really wonderful persons. I’m not going to stop, but majority can suffer.
You can say he is giving full credits to me & providing my original links. But this show is going on not only by me, there are many team members who are working hard. Many are sending scans me exclusively; even I requested to send particular comics to particular blogger. They wished to go with me (why, it is another question). Where are their interests? Whenever I posted a comics scanned by a blogger in my blogs, always asked about it before. If anyone’s material used in my blogs with permission and he would object later I would delete it. He’s without permission copying whole lot.
Information for those, who never participated in this process: Scanning, cleaning, uploading & posting 1 comics takes 2 hours minimum. I’m not talking about two most important parts searching & buying, it could be 1 day or several years. The shameless man “P.M.” is stealing and posting publicly in the same community our hours work in 2 sec. He says "thanks," although many bloggers & contributors are not interested in his self planned service.
We were taking the new blog as Ist April's joke, but see he decide to make a joke of all us including you. Two major (current) contributors Ajay & Venkit; many bloggers & visitors are already protested. I wrote him first privately, then publicly, no reactions on his crocodile skins.
One person is spoiling whole community. We, bloggers, contributors & old friends can share it privately with ourselves. So our protest is not for us, but for all visitors. We are against this bad example. I can invite 100 persons to download from a new private link blog, if your protest will be not effective.
The number of visits & download are sufficient information for me to guess the tendency. However, mostly of my friends (bloggers) like comments, through it measure pulse. My vote goes in favor of all friends, they feel they will not get proper feed back.
Now all in your hands, we can post as earlier if he would stop. My request to all friends including those who could be in invited list as they are checked persons (in worse case), to protest in his blog too. Some people choose such sick methods to be popular, but do not understand finally get not fame, but humiliation only.
I never asked anything before, if you have little respects for me, my team & my community, time to show your protests, not at my blog but at ........ (He blocked his comment section). You can save all friends interest. Hope at least he is not blind & deaf, can read & listen voice of majority.
Two more friends Bala ji (nick name Phantom And Mandrake Fan ) & Sameer are going to take similar steps. I think it just start.
With regards,
Prabhat
Fifty Years Ago Today: Gibraltar Man
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em
+001.jpg)
Unlike most DC characters of the Silver Age, Sgt. Rock did not spring to life full-blown and ready for an action figure set. For most of the 1950s, DC's war mags had bucked the trend towards continuing series in favor of one-shot stories. But things were changing; DC had placed a tiny squadron known as Gunner and Sarge as a regular feature in Our Fighting Forces in May 1959 (the squadron did expand a few years later with the addition of "Pooch", a German shepherd).
Wikipedia notes the existence of a Sgt. Rock prototype in GI Combat #68 (January 1959). Our Army At War #81 and #82 both had characters that would clearly become Sgt. Rock; in the former he was referred to as Sgt. Rocky, and although they got his name right in the latter tale he was a subsidiary character to Walker (BAR) and Dugan (bazooka), who were the real stars of the story.
But with Our Army At War #83, the series was ready to kick into gear. Overstreet calls it the "first real Sgt. Rock". In The Rock and the Wall, we learn that the legend of Sgt. Rock and Easy Company is spreading throughout the armed forces:
+004.jpg)
But one guy isn't so impressed; Easy Company's new recruit, Joe Wall. Wall is no slouch as a fighting man himself as we see here:
+007.jpg)
Several days later, a flying fortress is shot down near Easy Company. Rock and Wall fight off some enemies attacking the plane, then (improbably) hop aboard to replace the injured gunners when the engine is quickly repaired. Joe's a skilled gunner and shoots down several enemy planes along the way, but when he's hit, the Rock coolly steps in an shoots down one enemy plane, then steadies the gun so Joe can kayo the last fighter. And in the end, Wall realizes:
+013.jpg)
Comments: Superb story by Kanigher, and dazzling artwork by Joe Kubert. There's another solid reason to consider this the first real Sgt. Rock story; the Sgt. Rocky tale in OAAW #81 was drawn by Andru & Esposito, while the OAAW #82 story was by Mort Drucker.
Rock was the most successful war comics character of all time; he outlasted all his competitors, even Marvel's Sgt. Fury. When DC decided to include a war comics annual in it's lineup, what did they title it? Sgt. Rock's Prize Battle Tales.
Although I won't discuss the other stories in OAAW, I did want to note this tremendous ad for an upcoming issue of Star Spangled War Stories and DC's war titles in general:
+015.jpg)
That is poetry.
A Look At the Batman Reprints
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Tư, 1 tháng 4, 2009
Let's suppose you had started collecting comics in the late Silver Age, and managed to get all the Detective Comics from 327-up. And you had also managed to snag all the Batman Annuals that DC printed up until the end of 1970 (and the reprint of the Detective #27 story in Detective #387). What would your collection of Batman stories in his first 300 appearances in Detective look like?
As you can see, you'd be making pretty good progress on the Batman Detective stories from 200-299 (37 issues) but outside of that you'd have a long way to go. I'd have to look at how much this changed in the next few years after 1970; I remember for example that the Two-Face stories in Detectives #66, 68 and 80 were reprinted as were the stories featuring the Monk from Tec #31 and 32. But I am pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of Batman Detective stories under 150 were never reprinted until the Archive Editions came along.
BTW, as a teenager I actually did track this stuff; I had a little box of index cards that I used to keep track of what stories had been reprinted from which issue. I remember that there were a couple of issues of Batman from the 1950s where all the stories in the issue ended up being reprinted (for example, Batman #125).
Update: Commenter Chris reminded me of DarkMark's tripod page where a whole slew of DC reprints have been catalogued.
More about →
As you can see, you'd be making pretty good progress on the Batman Detective stories from 200-299 (37 issues) but outside of that you'd have a long way to go. I'd have to look at how much this changed in the next few years after 1970; I remember for example that the Two-Face stories in Detectives #66, 68 and 80 were reprinted as were the stories featuring the Monk from Tec #31 and 32. But I am pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of Batman Detective stories under 150 were never reprinted until the Archive Editions came along.
BTW, as a teenager I actually did track this stuff; I had a little box of index cards that I used to keep track of what stories had been reprinted from which issue. I remember that there were a couple of issues of Batman from the 1950s where all the stories in the issue ended up being reprinted (for example, Batman #125).
Update: Commenter Chris reminded me of DarkMark's tripod page where a whole slew of DC reprints have been catalogued.
Người đăng: vanmai yeu em
Number 498
The April Fools
To honor this day, April 1: Now this is a horror comic! In the space of six pages everyone in this story dies a horrible, gruesome death. It's also a cautionary tale. Never scoff at old legends so what happened to these fools won't happen to you.
From Terror Tales #7 (actually #1), March 1969.
