"You'll believe a man can fly."

That was the tag line of the 1978 Superman movie. It actually held multiple meanings that I think are largely lost on audiences who didn't see it at the time. The practical meaning referred to the special effects. One of the reasons that there were no "serious" comic book movies prior to Superman is because of the limitations of technology showing a person flying. You'd have Kirk Alyn leaping off a trampoline and a paper mâché dummy on wires dressed up to look like Tom Tyler and George Reeves laying on a platform in front of a rear screen projector. It all worked well enough to get the point across to audiences, but there was definitely some suspension of disbelief required on their part. With Superman, the technology had advanced enough that your average viewer could just take the character's flight as real. They didn't have to ignore the hallmarks of special effects trickery because they simply weren't there. "You'll believe a man can fly" meant that viewers were going to see a special effects marvel they had never seen before.

The other angle to the tag line, though, was a more emotive one. The 1970s were a pretty dark decade for the United States. The US entered the '70s already embroiled in the Vietnam War, which had already proved very costly in terms of both lives and money, and the public were very tired of it. The office of the Presidency was dragged through the mud thanks to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, causing people to question the federal government en masse. There was a massive, near-global recession from 1973-1975 combined with heightened inflation, hitting everyone with both rising prices and falling income simultaneously. The unemployment rate almost doubled between 1969 and 1970, and it remained that way for the entire decade. Not to mention all the harder-to-define social problems that were getting worse -- you couldn't see city skylines for all the smog and pollution, which also covered the surfaces of everything with an ugly grit and grime. All of this, to no surprise, generated a lot of cynicism and left a lot of people feeling dejected and hopeless. But in telling them, "you'll believe a man can fly," Superman was saying that there was still something magical and bright to believe in. That there was still hope, something that was in very short supply by that point.

Because that's a lot of what Superman is about, right? He brings light and hope to people. He's a magical, nearly all-powerful being -- a mortal -- who just wants things to be better for people, and he has both the ability and the will to do what's right because it's what's right. Superman's first line as a public hero in the movie is, "Easy, miss. I've got you." And that's his entire character. "Don't worry. I'll take care of everything for you." That is what everyone in the country wanted -- needed -- to hear in 1978. They'd spent a decade or more struggling with every aspect of life, and they wanted someone they could believe in to tell them that everything was going to be okay.

In 1978, Superman set box office records.

Here's the thing. Superman is, when he's done correctly, about hope. It's right there in Jor-El's speech from the movie: "They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way." And that's what made Superman popular in the first place back in 1938. The US had been in The Great Depression for nearly a decade by then. Companies were laying off employees right and left. A tariff war made things worse. So when Superman came in to start taking care of things -- proving framed people's innocence, capturing mobsters, exposing corrupt politicians... -- readers lapped it up. The character proved popular enough to warrant a newspaper comic strip within the first year, a second comic book a few months after that, a radio show the year after that, animated theatrical shorts and a third comic book the year after that... Audiences were desperate for a hero to save them, even if he were entirely fictional. But he offered hope in a way they hadn't had for years.

Now, while Superman has been around pretty continuously since 1938, his popularity has obviously waxed and waned. Some of that has to do, of course, with the quality of storytellers that are telling his exploits. But I think it's noteworthy that the character's broad popularity closely follows (in reverse) the mood of the nation. When things are going well, he's set to the side because he's not needed. People already have hope and don't need his light. It's primarily when that hope fades and people's own light no longer shines very brightly that they turn back to Superman. He becomes the beacon people need when they can no longer see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's not uncommon to compare Superman to Jesus, and I think this is certainly part of that since people look to religion in much the same way.

I haven't seen the new Superman movie that debuted earlier this month, but from all the accounts I've heard, it is done well in many of the same ways that 1978 film was. Some of that, to give credit where it's due, is because of writer/director James Gunn. But I think a large part of that, too, comes from nearly a decade of darkness the US has been enveloped in with people no longer seeing a way out. Unfortunately, that's no guarantee the fictional Superman will lead us out of the real world disassters we're facing, but it totally makes sense why people are clamoring for a good Superman movie right now.

I had the semi-unusual experience of growing into comic books just as they were being re-defined. In the early- to mid-1980s, readers saw powerful new ideas in the medium that have gone on to become "must read" books for comic fans. Maus. Watchmen. The Dark Knight Returns. As I was just beginning to explore the medium of comics, though, these were curiously not as groundbreaking since they were (to me) just as new and innovative as what John Byrne was doing on Fantastic Four or what Steve Englehart and Al Milgrom were doing in West Coast Avengers. My lack of experience in comics meant that everything was new and exciting.

But Rick Veitch's The One stands out.

I'm fairly certain that I didn't read the book as it originally came out. In dragging my father to comic shops, he had begun picking up unusual titles which I would only read much later, after I had read and re-read my own superhero books dozens of times. The comics of Dad's that I would read were largely ones that were superficially, at least, known to me. Basically, superheroes and science fiction. And I largely read them in precisely that capacity. Watchmen was originally for me another superhero story. I distinctly recall that the only bit of that story that really struck me as innovative at the time was when Ozymandias revealed his secret plan after he had already implemented it, making some comment about not being a B-grade villain from an old serial. Most of the other commentary and sub-texts were lost on me.

Eventually, I got around to reading The One, it's covers making some fairly obvious commentary on the nature of commodity comics. I expect I was a little older than when I had read Watchmen and I was able to grasp things a little better. It was also more of a commentary on current events, as opposed to historical ones, so I was more aware of what was being commented on.

I haven't read the story in probably 30 years now, but as I recall, the gist of it was that the U.S. and Russian governments had created super-powered beings in their (then) ever-escalating Cold War. These superheroes were then manipulated by their respective governments to coerce them into waging war against each other, eventually wiping out nearly the whole of mankind, leaving the two super-powered beings to become the next Adam and Eve. (My apologies to Veitch if I'm mis-remembering things, or glossing over significant plot points. Like I said, it's been three decades since I've read it.)

At the time I read the book, I had a youthful outrage at anything resembling "The Man" and The One just provided more "evidence" that the government was wholly untrustworthy, and was clearly working against the best interests of mankind. There was also a sub-plot concerning religion, which ended in the book by suggesting that those who follow an organized religion were mindless leeches clamoring to become part of a giant monstrosity. My growing cynicism latched on to that aspect as well, reinforcing the distrust I had of organized religion.

The book was, by and large, was very cynical itself and it encouraged my own cynicism. (Not by itself, mind you. Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Heavy Metal, Shatter, and many other comics helped.) But The One was the first comic that really struck me as being more than what the superficial story was about. It was the first comic that, to me, read AS social commentary. It was the first comic that had a real impact on how I thought about the world.

Now, looking back on it, I can't speak to how elegantly Veitch did this. I'm actually tempted NOT to re-read it, because I suspect that it may have been a bit heavy-handed. (How else would a self-absorbed, ignorant teenager pick up on the sub-texts of a comic book about two super-powered agents beating the crap out of each other?) I rarely see mention of the book anywhere these days, so it certainly didn't cause a particularly notable stir in the industry. At least, not a long-lasting one.

But for me, personally, it opened my eyes to what a comic could be in a way that Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were unable to do. It was the right book at the right time for me. So, even if it's not mentioned in the same breath as those other highly-regarded books, it at least sits alongside of them for my 15-year-old self.

The Underground Abductor is the fifth book in the Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales series. It's also the third biography of Harriet Tubman I've reviewed here. The book was originally published in 2015, but I have here the "bigger and badder edition" from a couple years later which has about fifteen additional pages of back matter.

But even before that, the book is notably longer than the Show Me History story I looked at in 2021. Interestingly, though, I don't think the additional page count contributes to the level of detail Underground Abductor gets into relative to the Show Me History version; however, Underground Abductor does have more detail. What I mean is that, while Underground Abductor is indeed longer, it's not that much longer so the additional pages are not what contributes to the greater insights. Rather, it's Hale's efficient storytelling that allows him to go into more depth than Buckley and Esidene did later.

Space was the limitation of the Golden Legacy version; they only had 24 pages to work with, so there's lots that gets clossed over. On the flip side, the Show Me History story glossed over a lot of the violence and physical hardships that enslaved people -- including Tubman -- had to endure. Underground Abductor seems to split the difference; it does touch on those acts of violence but the illustration style is cartoony enough that the effect is somewhat muted. Honestly, I'd say it was a reasonable compromise, and it helps to make this book the best of the three Tubman biographies I have here. Coupled with the greater detail and contemporary comparisons.

It was actually that level of detail that really stood out to me. It offered a better context for her ncarcolepsy and explained more about her trips north and South. I was quite please with how Hale reguarly offered up why Tubman did what she did beyond the notion of being a general do-gooder. Her trips often had a specific purpose and she used the communications along the underground railroad to announce her coming to other enslaved people. It's a really solid biography and paints Tubman as a full person, beyond just her work on the unground railroad.

That's one of the things I liked most about this particular book: Hale provided both the details and the context that wasn't present in either of the other two books. Hale did a good job striking an excellenbt balance between edution and storytelling, without really negatively impacting either. I learned more about Tubman here than I did from either of the two other biographies I read of her. While his Harzardous Tales series is made of several volumes touching on different events in history, there are only two others that are biographies at all. That said, the topics he does cover seem interesting and I'm curious enough that I'll likely check out at least on of the others.

This "Bigger and Badder Edition" came out in 2022. According to Hale, the changes to the story itself from the original 2015 version are fairly minimal. (Perhaps most notably, changing how he references people from "slaves" to "enslaved people/person." Not that that isn't significant, but it doesn't change the flow of the narrative.) So I would say either version is worth picking up if you're able to get one or the other.

The books was published by Amulet Books. The original 2015 edition retailed for $15.99 US and the more recent edition for $19.99 US. I believe the 2022 version is still considered in print so you should be able to order it through most any bookstore, but the 2015 edition might be harder to come by and will likely be affected by after-market pricing fluctuations. Either one should be worth checking out, though!

I'm always amused when a cartoon throws in some comic book references, particularly when it's clear that the writers are trying not to step on anyone else's toes legally. In the Count Duckula episode "The Vampire Strikes Back", Duckula, Igor and Nanny find their castle tower blasted into outer space. Duckula then relies on what the wit and wisdom of comic book space hero Tremendous Terence for guidance in his predicament.

He evidently has three issues handy, though this can only be picked up by looking at the covers. One showcases the hero's face on the cover, another sports a large thunderbolt logo, and the third is a bit abstracted but looks vaguely like a spaceship blasting off from a planet. As inferred from the dialogue, the back cover of the second two issues sports an advertisement for Crunchy Munchies cereal.

I presume that it was only intended to be one issue, but the animators were given little direction to work with and three different groups came up with three different covers.

Here's another curious bit. An interior spread is showcased and referred to repeatedly in the episode.

Duckula actually reads much of this sequence aloud and several of these panels are focused on.

Clearly, this was a portion that was worked out in the script and laid out by one/some of the designers. So where, then, does this next image come from..?

It's got a similar layout and structure to the original spread, and even some of the panel interiors are the same. But it looks like someone drew a rough sketch of the original from memory. Why would that be necessary, though, since clearly there was copies of the original to work from?

What I always find fascinating about this type of examination is that it provides a view of what other people outside comicdom think of our favorite medium. Or, at least, thought at the time. They frequently use parody to amplify the stereotypes and distill what is seen as the essence of comics. In this particular case, we're looking at how the British saw comics in the late 1980s. Quite a different picture, I suspect, than if the episode had been written in America.

Oh, and in the cartoon, Duckula encounters the real Oids from Mars but is soon saved by the real Tremendous Terence. I know you were wondering how the particular plot thread ended.

I attended my first comic book "convention" in 1985. I use quotes because, while there were comic books and people did convene at one location to see them, the only similarity between that convention and the ones you're likely more familiar with was a dealer's room. There were no special guests, there were no panel discussions, there was no one doing cosplay... it was just one room rented out in a hotel with a bunch of dealers set up at tables selling whatever they had. You could see everything in an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half if you went through every single long box of back issues very meticulously. It would be another two years before I went to a "proper" convention with guests and panels and such.

I use that as a preface to say I was very much not going to comic book conventions in 1971 when Ron Kasman's The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks is set and, in fact, I was pretty well removed from that scene by over a decade before even mentioning whatever differences might be found between a convention in New York City versus one in Mansfield, Ohio. However! As I have done a fair amount of studying of comic book fandom and there weren't too many radical shifts in comic fan culture until the late '90s/early '00s, I think I can evaulate The Tower of the Comic Book Freaks reasonably as a piece of historical fiction.

See, the story is about a group of teenagers who drive down from Toronto to New York to attend the 1971 New York Comic Book Convention. They're all headed down for different reasons: Stevey wants to get his portfolio reviewed and enter an art contest for a spot working for a comics publisher, Joel is looking for rare back issues for his collection, Gilbert isn't even really all that interested in the convention and is mostly acting as a scout for his father's business trying to distribute American porn magazines up in Canada... The story, though, mostly centers on Harold. By a couple of coincidences, he almost immediately and accidentally ingratiates himself with a Golden Age horror artist who's been experience something of a career resurgence. Almost before he knows it, Harold is queued up to become the man's assistant and do the pencils on his next comic.

He then proceeds to spend the rest of the weekend running menial errands for the artist, talking with publishers, and learning about the personalities of the people he just got sucked in to working with. And it's that last part that becomes the most enlightening for him. When the teens eventually leave to go back to Toronto, none of them leave empty-handed, though most of them not with what they expected.

What struck me most about the book was the atmosphere. Every bit of this feels like a big comic book convention in the early 1970s. If you never attended a convention prior to, say, 1995, a lot of this will likely look unfamiliar. You might be wondering why there's no mention of a big publisher presence or how there are under-the-table type deals that can get a kid like Harold a professional gig without even a portfolio review. You might question how casually everyone dismisses obvious and gratuitous exploitation. You might wonder about that weird description of a dealer table with the comics laid out flat with a large sheet of plexiglass on top of them. All of that was how conventions operated back in the day. There was a very different vibe back then, and Kasman captures it very well. Even better, he reports on how it was, not how nostalgia has tricked him into believing it was. (After reading the book myself, I came across Scott Edelman's review in which he says it was exactly how he remembered the show -- himself being a 17-year-old attendee at that specific con -- with the exception of some of the names being changed.)

The story moves well and, while we focus on Harold, like I said, it does give a character arc for everyone to some degree or another. If I might offer up a criticism of any sort, it would be that some of the characters aren't always drawn super consistently, so there were a few instances where I wouldn't recognize someone until they were expressly called out by name. That typically only happened with unusual facial expressions or with an extreme close-up where suddenly a lot more details are visible. It didn't happen a lot, but enough that it did interrupt the story flow as I tried to suss out who I was talking to whom.

I think this book would be great if you want to check out what comic fandom looked like in the 1970s. I enjoyed it as it helped to offer some additional color to the fandom research I've already done. I expect, if you're more like Edelman, you'll be more interested in the nostalgia that it might unintentionally invoke. And if any of you are newer fans and just want to get a sense of what cons were like before you started going yourself, this is definitely a good vehicle for that. The book did come out back in 2016, so it might be a little harder to come by these days. The book originally retailed for $18.99 US but I don't believe it's still in print, so you're a little more subject to market forces; as of this writing, I'm seeing copies available from online retailers ranging from $3.48 to $28.72 without doing too much searching. (For the record, I found my copy in a physical comic shop and paid cover price.) It's a solid story and a good reflection of what comics looked like back in the day; worth picking up if you come across a decent copy.

Here are this week's links to what I've had published recently...

Kleefeld on Comics: Space Dave!
https://ift.tt/EafIyhD

Kleefeld on Comics: Do You Cull Your Collection?
https://ift.tt/UDE2kxM

Kleefeld on Comics: New Comics Day — Its Origin and Demise
https://ift.tt/n0ATe4c

Kleefeld on Comics: The Funny Pages, 1949
https://ift.tt/RK6Ims3

Kleefeld on Comics: Dodge News 1953
https://ift.tt/OlHAR6x

Here's the cover of Dodge News volume 18, number 7 circa 1953...

It's one of those "kids reading comics in the 1950s" photos that are always neat to look at. You can spot Superman, Captain Marvel, Popeye, Donald Duck and others on the covers pretty readily. Rip Jagger went through and tracked down most of the covers several years ago if you don't want to hunt them all down yourself.

But the reason why I'm pulling this image out and calling attention to it is something that I haven't seen anyone comment on. Namely, the "PLEASE DO NOT HANDLE" sign hanging right over the boys' shoulders as they're sitting there reading the comics they're apparently not supposed to handle.

I suppose this is the type of rampant insubordinate behavior that parents were so upset about back then that led to the comic book burnings and the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings and eventually the creation of the Comics Code.