superheroes in gotham, feb. 5, 2016

7/25/2019 Superheroes in Gotham, Feb. 5, 2016

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INDEXES ON

PAGES 36 & 37

February 5, 2016

Published by The Bee Publishing Company, Newtown, ConnecticutNewsstand Rate $2.00

B Y J AMES D. B ALESTRIERI

NEW YORK CITY — Disclosure: I still have my comicbook collection, books from the early 1970s for the mostpart, from what is referred to as the Silver Age of Com-ics, silver calling to mind the silver bullets that plaguedthe Werewolf By Night, calling to mind the Silver Surfer,that most cerebral and cosmic of the superheroes, callingto mind the Fantastic Four and the silver temples of theirleader, Reed Richards (mine are silver, too, though my abil-ity to stretch, as opposed to his, seems to be on the wane).My children marvel at my Marvel Comics and ClassicsIllustrated — now bagged and boarded in acid-free Mylar.

Full disclosure: you may well see, somewhere in this es -say, a photo of attendees at the 2012 Comic Con in New York. I was there, with my family, and was in a kind of

makeshift getup as the Shadow, that 1930s pulp hero —“Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…” —who was the inspiration for Batman.

Deep disclosure: the brief bio that closes my writing in Antiques and The Arts Weekly alludes to the plays, screen-plays and stories I write. It doesn’t mention the graphicnovel I’ve been composing for the past three years.

So I come at “Superheroes in Gotham,” the exhibitionof comic book New York… Gotham City… Metropolis…at the New-York Historical Society, with little of the arthistorian’s scholarly detachment. I’m more of a cele-brant and aspirant, which doesn’t mean I don’t thinkdeeply about sequential art and its place in contempo-rary culture. “‘Nuff said,” as the letters to and from thecreators and editors used to end at the back of Silver

Age Marvel comics like Killraven and Kull.Sequential art dominates modern visual culture across the

globe. A bold statement? Consider this. In film, and increas-ingly in television, superheroes, the original creatures of se-quential art — the comic strip, comic book, graphic novel— not only conquer, but proliferate. In open-ended sequelsand prequels, in standalone movies and spin-offs, larger-than-life heroes make and keep the world safe — and setbox office records. Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, these are thereal Avengers. DC tastes the rare air they breathe, whileDark Horse, Valiant, IDW, Fantagraphics, First Second andother publishers work the edges and depths of pulp, politics,history and the vicissitudes of growing up and growing old

“Superman” by Philip Pearlstein, 1952, oil on canvas. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Image ©SCALA / Art Resource and Betty Cuningham Gallery

Superheroes In Gotham

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6C — Antiques and The Arts Weekly — February 5, 2016

into the form. Critics and scholars devote careers to themeaning and function of sequential art. At first, the daily comic strip and monthly comic

book were disposable diversions consumed by kidsand adults in idle moments. Andrew Herman’s Bowery Restaurant, 1940, bears this out. This wonderful blackand white photograph is a study in escapism. The smileon the boy’s face as he delves into this month’s Cham- pion Comics, in contrast to the squalor around him,speaks volumes as it takes him away from the Depres-sion and grinding urban poverty.

Later, in the 1950s, after the rise of horror titles, psy-chiatrist Fredric Wertham wrote the book Seduction ofthe Innocent, warning that comic books were degener-ate and were liable to inspire children to violence. Con-gress held hearings and publishers created a code topolice themselves. But comics that pushed the boundsof “good taste” merely went underground.

In recent years, the humble comic book has reincar-

nated, like some hero out of Marvel’s Thor, ascendingto the Asgard of high art and culture as the graphicnovel. Elsewhere, anime in Japan, martial arts films,Bollywood musicals, all these have strong affinitieswith sequential art. The ground rules? Good defeatsevil. Spectacle is the aesthetic. Protagonists possess ev-ery imaginable sort of extraordinary power. Villains areinteresting, but their egos are their own undoing.

Sequential art permeates our own lives. ConsiderFacebook and other social media platforms. What isFacebook, after all, but a curated sequence of words andimages that present us, not as we are, but as we want to

be seen and thought of? Snip the loops that are our real

lives, stretch them out, snip out any unmediated bore-dom, dullness, despair and anger. What are the themesof the sequences that remain? Teamwork among fam-ily and friends, triumph over adversity, extraordinary,profound and inspirational moments. We are all super-heroes on our Facebook Walls (wasn’t it Bertolt Brechtwho said, “Make your life your work of art?” But I betit wasn’t Facebook he was imagining when he said it).

Graphic novels, the exceptions to these rules, rise tothe level of art precisely because they don’t shy awayfrom the loop, restoring the darkness that contendswith light in the core of our being and in our everydaylives. Richard McGuire’s masterful Here, for example,spans hundreds of thousands of years of human andnatural experience from the vantage of the corner of asingle room in a house.

Sequential art is also business. Big business. In 2011,a mint copy of Action Comics #1, published in 1938 andfeaturing the debut of Superman, brought $2.16 mil-lion at auction. Original comic book art, especially cover

art, is widely collected and brings hefty sums. For usmere mortals, a walk down the Artists’ Alleys at any ofthe many Cons will allow the faithful to meet artists,purchase sketches and have our favorite issues signed. As we have done with film, we now revere certain

names in the comic arts: Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, StanLee, Frank Frazetta, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, BobKane. These are the auteurs of the form.

But a look at the original comic art in the “Superhe-roes in Gotham” exhibition tells another story, an ori-gin story, if you will. Look at the 1941 Wonder Woman drawing, the ink for the first issue of Iron Man in 1968

Batmobile No. 3, 1966, by George Barris Kustom City. The Morris Family Collection.

Amazing Fantasy (No. 15, September 1962). Published by Atlas Magazines, Inc. Serial and Government Publica-tions Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Batman (No.1, Spring 1940), Bob Kaneand Bill Finger. Published by Detec-tive Comics, Inc, New York. Serial andGovernment Publications Division, Li-brary of Congress, Washington D.C.

O r ig inal ar t f or the fir st appear ance of S pider man in Ama zi n g F ant as y ( N o. 15 , A ug ust 19 6 2 ) by S tev e D itk o. S er ial and G ov er nment P ublications D iv ision, L ibr ar y of Cong r ess, W ashing ton D .C.

( continued from page 1C )

Action Comics (No. 1, June 1938), Jerry Siegel(writer) and Joe Shuster (artist). Published byDetective Comics, Inc, New York. Courtesy of Me-tropoliscomics.com.

Jerry Siegel with his typewriter, circa 1943. Col-lection of Steve Soboroff.

Superheroes In Gotham



February 5, 2016 — Antiques and The Arts Weekly — 7C

“Bowery Restaurant” by Andrew Herman, 1940,Federal Art Project. The Museum of the City ofNew York.

DMC graphic novel by Darryl McDaniels (cre-ator) and Bob Wiacek (illustrator). ©2014 DarrylMakes Comics, LLC

Drawing of Wonder Woman in cos-tume, circa 1941, by H.G. Peter.Courtesy of Metropoliscomics.com.

M s . M a g a zi ne ( N o. 1, 19 7 2 ). N ew -Y or k H istor ical Society .

© M s . M a g a zi ne

NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY

New York Comic Con Poster, 2011. Courtesy ofNew York Comic Con / ReedPOP.

Attendees at New York Comic Con. Courtesy ofNew York Comic Con / ReedPOP.

or the 1966 storyboard conception, Submarine with the Joker. Look at the marks, editors’ marks, notes on col-or and placement, hand lettering, titles. Far from thebrainchildren of auteurs, comic books — like films, when

you really think about them — are the products of andindustrial division of labor, of collaboration, of workers:artists, writers and editors (not to speak of printers) whospecialize in story, penciling, inking, coloring, lettering,manufacturing new issues every month, balancing read-ers’ expectations while trying to keep the material fresh.

In my day job, I represent one of the old-time illustra-tors (he recently revealed, offhand, that he did severalissues of Sub-Mariner for Marvel in the late 1950s) whomade the leap to easel painting decades ago. To this day,he refers to his paintings as “jobs,” and is always open tothe kinds of ideas and revisions that filled his days in aworld of paperbacks, magazines and comics.

In an art form as popular, in the sense of “of the peo-ple,” and art form as close to daily life as the comic book,the zeitgeist is bound to seep in. A big reason for thecontinued popularity of superheroes is that each gen-eration projects its preoccupations onto them and theyseem to evolve to suit their times, becoming societal bell-wethers and barometers. Batman, for example, begins

in the 1940s as a gritty, urban Lone Ranger, mysteriousbut ultimately ethical, a helpmeet for law and order. Bythe 1960s, especially in the television show, Batman is acamp, square character in a psychedelic world, spoutingmoral bromides between onscreen projections of “Oof,”“Pow,” and “Zowie.” Yet this Batman was, and is, cher-ished and beloved, and “Superheroes” scores quite a coupwith the Batmobile from the series.

Then, in the late 1980s, Frank Miller’s Dark Knight takes the stage, moves through the three most recentfilms and into the prequel television series Gotham, tell-ing morality tales of hard choices necessitated by theharsh cynicism of the world; their dystopic dis-ease re-flects American and global un-ease.

In “Superheroes in Gotham,” Wonder Woman, brought

to life and marshaled in the propaganda war in WorldWar II — as Captain America, Superman, the Sub-Mar-iner and so many others were — splashes across thecover of Ms. Magazine in 1972 as a feminist entry into

the male-dominated race for president. Artist PhilipPearlstein’s bulging, perhaps clumsy Superman seemsto crush Metropolis rather than save it and the hip-hophero in DMC rides the roof of a subway car, avenging thepoor, the downtrodden, the forgotten.

In the history of the comic book, New York is the city,the stage on which good battles evil, whatever name ithides behind. The architecture on the pages is New York’swrit large, Art Deco Modernism morphing into futuristic visions, all of it slashed with sharp triangles of shadow.

My son, walking past the Chrysler Building after atrip to Midtown Comics, articulated a coded visual hi-erarchy in comic books that determines which super-heroes can brood on which of the building’s Art Decoeagles that jut out from the corners. Only the big guys,he says — Spider-Man, Batman, guys like that — cansit on the highest eagles. Lesser heroes, like Nightwing(who is, I think, Batman’s Robin all grown up and onhis own), have to sit on the lower carvings. It’s a mas-ter’s thesis in embryo. It’s funny and smart. I have to

post that on my Facebook Wall. But I need a picture ofa superhero brooding on one of the Chrysler Building’seagles to post with it. I’ll Google it.

"Superheros in Gotham" runs until February 21at the New-York Historical Society Museum and Li-brary, 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way(77th Street). For information, www.nyhistory.org or212-873-3400. Jim Balestrieri is the director of J.N. Bartfield

Galleries in New York City. A playwright and au-thor, he frequently writes about the arts.

Iron Man (No. 1, May 1968), Gene Colan andJohnny Craig, original cover art. Collection ofDavid Mandel.

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