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Part One
The comic strip developed in America towards the end of the nineteenth century, originally created as a tool to draw customers to the Sunday edition of the local newspaper and becoming an icon of American culture. Though many contributed to it's format and existence, there are five people directly connected to it's birth. These five men, Richard Outcault, William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, James Swinnerton and Rudolph Dirks are responsible for popularizing what is now a major part of American culture. Richard Felton Outcault was a staff illustrator at Joseph Pulitzer's "The World" in 1895 when he created a one panel cartoon called "Down Hogan's Alley". Within the panel of the first Hogan's Alley is a homely, bald little boy dressed only in a frock.
Click the image for a biography of Yellow Kid creator R.F. Outcault.

Shortly after he first appeared, the World's engravers were experimenting with color inks and in a test yellow was added to his frock (the strip was at first only black & white) and the gap toothed urchin was named the "Yellow Kid" and would go down in history as the first comic strip. Not very long before the Yellow Kid made his first appearance, William Randolph Hearst's "Journal American" featured a large panel called the "Little Bears", drawn by the 25 year old James Swinnerton. Later on kids were added to the strip and later still tigers. Eventually Swinnerton would transpose his little tigers into the enormously popular "Mr. Jack" featuring a philandering tiger bachelor. Though both features were the direct progenitors of the American comic strip it would be another cartoonist who would create what is recognized as the first modern comic strip.

It was Rudolph Dirk's "Katzenjammer Kids", which appeared on December 12, 1897 in the Journal American. Previously, cartoon panels had no in-panel dialogue, but in the Katzenjammer Kids dialogue was directly applied within a "word balloon" indicating the speaker. Also, until then no strip had ever consisted of more than the one panel format of the editorial or political cartoon. The Katzenjammers combined both the aspect of internal dialogue and panelized continuity, and in the process designed and solidified the form of the modern visual narrative strip.

With these three innovative strips and the progress of the printed paper now able to print comic strips in four color (printing in black, red, yellow & blue) the seeds were sown, and newspapers across the country clamored for artists requesting creation of every kind of humor strip imaginable. Hearst & Pulitzer began the famous "Yellow Wars" hiring each others artists and editorial crew en-masse to gain circulation. Some artists were so imaginative they created numerous strips, some of which appeared in the same papers simultaneously to whet the voracious appetites of readers. George McManus, George Herriman, Frederick Burr Opper, James Swinnerton and Winsor McCay were some of them, but there are dozens of lesser known creators as well. Nor was there any shortage of artists and creators. By the early 1900's there were over 150 strips in syndication, in addition to many strips that never saw publication in more than a local paper. Throughout the childhood of the comics, the main ingredient was humor. Each daily or Sunday installment was a singular episode and no reference was ever made to yesterday's strip. The medium would remain relatively unchanged for almost thirty years. Winsor McCay deviated from that with his marvelous "Little Nemo in Slumberland" that appeared from 1905-1911 in the New York Herald and then as "In the Land of Wonderful Dreams" which ran from 1911-1914 in Hearst's Journal American. The strip was centered on the dreamt adventures of a small boy named Nemo and his friends. Wild concepts were a mainstay but another ingredient was introduced in this exquisitely illustrated offering. Frequently Nemo's adventures extended through several weeks, serialized into something of an adventurous fantasy and even sometimes mild soap opera. But serials did not otherwise take hold for almost two more decades. (Nemo was so popular that in 1908 it was made into a musical play with a score by the famed Victor Herbert.)

April 1924 would bring yet another wrinkle to comic strips. Roy Crane was just 22 years old when he created "Washington Tubbs II". The main character of the strip was a teenage boy named George Washington Tubbs II. Later shortened to Wash Tubbs, Crane's strip became enormously popular when on August 8, 1924 Wash embarked on a search for buried treasure. Readers were enthralled by the harrowing movie serial cliff hangers. The adventure strip was born. Continue to Chapter 2

A Pictorial History of Sequential Art from Cave painting to Spider-Man

The History of Comic Art

A Chronological History of Comic Art in America

This site created & maintained by Graffix Multimedia 1992-2006

This is the

th page view on this website since 1994. Thanks for stopping by!!

History of Comics | Artist Biographies | Collecting How To Museum of Comic Art | Search this Site | Web Links About Comic-art.com | art_sale.htm Sale | Comics For Sale Comics On CDRom | Movie Posters | Pulps For Sale We Buy Collections | Contact Us |Home Page

Part Two

The next major development would coincide with a new interest of the twentieth century. After the industrial age came the scientific ag Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a science fiction novel that appeared i magazine entitled "Under the Moons of Mars". Later published as t Mars the story gave birth to scores of other stories of the fantastic a magazine arose to revolutionize American literature, called "Amaz Burroughs also created another character in 1912 that is another on twentieth century figures - Tarzan.

"Amazing Stories Magazine" from it's inception proved to be a pop the February 1928 issue appeared a story called "Armageddon 241 Phillip Nowlan. One reader, John Flint Dille, a comic strip syndica story so much he bought the rights and hired an artist named Richa illustrate a comic strip. And so the next major development of the c taken place.

On January 7, 1929 the story was renamed to Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D, and from the moment that Buck Rogers made his debut appearance as a comic strip he was an immediate hit and an unparalleled success! Buck was a war aviator trapped in a cave and overcome by a gas that puts him into suspended animation. Buck awakens 500 years in the future to a devastated America overcome by Mongolian armies, led by the morally bankrupt Killer Kane. Buck takes up with the rebels to fight the Mongols and with the beautiful Wilma and Dr.Huer begins a never ending battle to recapture the Americas. Also appearing for the first time on January 7, 1929 was the Tarzan comic strip illustrated by the enormously talented and now legendary Harold Foster who would later create Prince Valiant. Tarzan would be immensely popular in the strips, but Foster left the strip in late 1929 to pursue a career in illustration, and Tarzan would be illustrated by Rex Maxon until Foster returned as the Sunday strip artist while Maxon drew the daily strip.

It was not long before another innovation hit the strips. It was in the guise of a trench coated, square jawed police detective that became one of the most popular characters in the history of the strips would hit the scene. His name was "Dick Tracy" and he appeared for the first time in October 1931. The square jawed detective was the visage of the unimpeachable cop, and he always got his man. But a more interesting bent to this strip was apparent. The villains that populated Tracy's world were the largest collection of social misfits ever to appear in print. Flattop, the Brow, Mole, Pruneface, the Pouch and scores of others, they were Nazi spies, cruel sadists, mob hitmen and saboteurs. These villains were the direct ancestors of the super villain in comics.

By now the depression was in full swing, and these strips were one of the many ways that Americans made their "escape" from the drudgery of daily life. Also at this time the publishers and editors of America's newspapers could not have missed the popularity of serialized comic strips. The resulting influence of this factor was an explosion of adventure and sci-fi strips. In 1932 Roy Crane gave Wash Tubbs main character Captain Easy his own strip appearing on Sundays, the daily was still called Wash Tubbs for a short while longer and in 1934 another legendary character would make his historic debut.

Flash Gordon was just a soccer player returning home on an airplane whe knocked out of the sky by an errant fragment of a giant meteor flying thro towards the Earth. Crash landing in a field, Flash and another passenger, D only survivors?) find their way to a nearby laboratory where they are forc by the resident scientist Dr.Zarkov to accompany him in his experimental save the Earth by crashing the rocket into the meteor!

When Zarkov is overpowered by Flash, the rocket continues through spac Planet Mongo, where it is discovered that the meteor was sent toward the sadistic dictator Ming, ruler of Mongo and Flash becomes forever locked villain to save Earth from the despot leader of Planet Mongo.

At the same time that Flash Gordon is fighting on Mongo, another great s development of the comic medium is making it's birth back on Earth. It w entirely new format, and it would help to revolutionize the medium. They comic book.....

A Pictorial History of Sequential Art from Cave painting to Spider-Man

The History of Comic Art

A Chronological History of Comic Art in America

This site created & maintained by Graffix Multimedia 1992-2006

This is the

th page view on this website since 1994. Thanks for stopping by!! History of Comics | Artist Biographies | Collecting How To Museum of Comic Art | Search this Site | Web Links About Comic-art.com | art_sale.htm Sale | Comics For Sale Comics On CDRom | Movie Posters | Pulps For Sale We Buy Collections | Contact Us |Home Page

Part Three
In 1933, publishers at Eastern Color Press were trying to think of how to better use their printing equipment which frequently idle between jobs. Maxwell Gaines (father of William F. Gaines, EC & Mad publisher) came up with the idea of printing an 8 page comic section that could be folded down from the large broadsheet to a smaller 9 inch by 12 inch format. The result was the first modern comic book. Containing reprints of newspaper comic strips, this experimental "comic book called "Funnies on Parade" was given away for free and proved that there was a market for repackaged strips. The following year Eastern published "Famous Funnies" (series 1, the fifth comic book) and took the bold action of selling the comic for a whopping ten cents through chain stores. So successful was the book that Eastern began producing numerous reprints on a monthly basis and other publishers, eager to capture profits jumped on the bandwagon.

One of these publishers, National Periodicals chimed in with their first effort in February 1935. This title, New Fun Comics was just as it's name intimated - and entirely new content book, devoid of reprints and with original characters that appeared from one issue to the next. It was the first example of the modern day comic book. Often crudely drawn and badly written, the novelty of comic books did not tail off and more books were printed each month by a growing list of publishers. As a new medium, there had really been no pre-set boundaries for the style or story lines so there was constant experimentation, new genres were played with, and finally ideas began to gel for the comics. In 1938 Harry Donenfeld, the publisher of National Periodicals was looking for a new headline feature for his soon to be published Action Comics. Again Max Gaines was to be involved in another trend setting innovation.

Six years earlier two teenagers in Cleveland, avid readers of Amazing Stories, had read a Phillip Wylie novel titled "Gladiator" about a more than human man with super strength and other enhanced powers. Inspired by this story the two young men, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created and wrote a story called "the Superman of Metropolis" and published it in their own fanzine publication Science Fiction, which also featured such popular fan names as Ray Bradbury and Forrest J.Ackerman. Buoyed by a favorable response from other fans who read their story, the two boys wrote and drew an entire episode of daily strips which they submitted to syndicate after syndicate.

Editors scoffed at the idea of the central character, a superhuman being from another planet who could leap tall buildings, go faster than a speeding bullet and generally do things that no editor could possibly believe would sell newspapers. Could they have been so shortsighted? But Donenfeld was in the business of new ideas and when the two boys entered his office, he knew he had a gold mine, and it was called "Superman"...

Part Four
It was 1938. The comics were full of adventures for folks with imagination, and they had all kinds of freaky abilities. There was Flash Gordon, he was an Earthman stranded on Mars waging a battle against the tyrannical Ming the Merciless. Flash's ability - he had super strength because of Mars' lower gravity. There was Mandrake the Magician. He had the power to cast magic spells by talking backwards. There was Tarzan, the ape man. Raised by apes he could swing through trees and fight the strongest animals in the jungle. But that was about it for special powers. Dick Tracy and Prince Valiant were just regular guys. So were Captain Easy and Pat Ryan (of Terry & the Pirates). As a matter of fact, none of the comic characters really had any special or mutant powers as we knew them. That was about to change. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were just two Cleveland, Ohio teens when they created a hero with remarkable abilities. Fashioned after both Flash Gordon and the character in Philip Wylie's famous novel "Gladiator", this man was actually an alien from the planet Krypton. Put into a rocket aimed at the Earth, his parents had hoped to send him to another world because their's was about to be destroyed by an impending planetary explosion. They launched their son, Kal-El, into space just moments before the cataclysmic destruction of their planet. Hurtling through space, the capsule with it's infant cargo landed on earth, just in time to be discovered by Ma & Pa Kent, two farmers in America's middle country. It was soon apparent that this was no ordinary child. One day while repairing his truck, it fell on top of Pa Kent. Little Clark (as the baby had been named) saved Pa by lifting the truck with his tiny hands. When the child grew to adulthood, he moved to Metropolis where he became known as SUPERMAN.

This is the popularly told origin of the character, though the original version is slightly different. As a "super human" being the blue & red suited hero could "leap 1/8 of a mile, hurdle a twenty story building, raise tremendous weights and run faster than an express train" (quotes from Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman).

When the two teenage creators attempted to "sell" Superman to the newspaper syndicates as early as 1933, they were rebuffed. After all, who would believe such extraordinary feats could be accomplished by a man, whatever planet he came from. Rejection after rejection followed for the next six years until finally the two wound up in New York City at the offices of Max Gaines (father of William Gaines, the late publisher of Mad Magazine). Max was then publisher of All American Comics Company, a part of DC Comics. Max looked at the pages Shuster had drawn from Siegel's script and said that even though he could not use them, he felt that Sheldon Mayer over at DC might as he was about to launch a new comic title and he needed a cover feature. Mayer looked at the pages and immediately gave the two teens a check (for $130, all rights included in sale!), had Joe draw a cover and Action Comics #1 was published. It appeared on the news stands in May 1938 and the rest is history. An immediate smash hit, Superman's success would not go unnoticed. This was a remarkable hero and each of the other comic companies quickly began creating other "super" heroes to cash in on the new phenomenon. Some were successful, others failed, but the proverbial "Pandora's Box" was opened, the floodgates sprung wide. By 1941 there were so many of these super characters that they could not be counted. Powered by anything imaginable, the comic books flourished by the creation of these heroes, and this is where the comic strips and the comic books diverged from each other. The strips were not a medium of super powered beings. In the strips, Tarzan and Flash Gordon were as super as it got. The comic books were on the other hand, the super hero's domain.

next chapter: Heroes flourish and die, and America is thrown into the pit of horror and crime.

Part Five

From 1938 on the superheroes enjoyed great popularity. So successful were some of them that they quite frequently outsold news stand magazines like Time and Newsweek. Captain Marvel reportedly sold over 2 million copies per month at it's peak and other titles commonly sold close to a half million or more copies making them extraordinarily ubiquitous in American society. When World War II began, all the comics chipped in to the war effort. All the comic characters fought the Nazi's and the Pacific fleets. One such hero even preceded our entrance into the war by several months. This super hero, was fighting the Nazis in February 1941 when Captain America blasted onto the scene, created by comic giants Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. The cover featured Captain America socking Hitler on the jaw!
(Please note: Comic books at the time were put onto the stands approximately one month to six weeks before cover date, which was the time an issue was to be removed from display. So the first issue of Captain America, dated March 1941, was on the stands in February)

But as the war ended, so did it seem the golden age of super heroes began to wane. But there were other formats for comic books. Funny animals were very popular as was evidenced by the tremendously successful Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which reportedly had very high sales. Science fiction had it's own niche in Fiction House's "Planet Comics" which started in January 1940. Even the teen idol "Archie" also had high sales figures. But the comic companies that had slowing sales figures needed something new, different and exciting to revitalize their net profits. So here it was, late 1946 and some publishers began to take note of small publisher Lev Gleason. Gleason had a almost unnoticeable section on the news racks because he only sold a hanincr=F|dful of titles. One was Daredevil Comics which sold very well, and another was titled "Crime Does Not Pay", which first came out in 1942. It was a highly successful title, depicting according to the blurb on the cover "ALL TRUE crime stories". The covers were real gruesome events. On one a maniac is forcing a woman's head onto a burning stove top, on the next three guys are blasting away with machine guns at a bloodied bank teller, the next cover had a bloodied man thrown from a speeding car and yet another had a guy about to hack a woman with a cleaver while there were five dead men "hanging" from a tree limb nearby. It is not difficult to understand why this title was so popular, but it is difficult to understand why comic publishers took so long, five years, to cash in on the crime title's success.

So here it was, 1946/47 and suddenly a whole assortment of crime comics were coming out. True Crime, True Western Crime, Women Outlaws, War Against Crime and Crimes By Women. EC publisher Bill Gaines was converting titles like International Comics into Crime Patrol, and crime comics were all over the place, and they were a smash, and the companies profits soared again.

Another genre that began to flourish was horror comics. In 1948, ACG had come out with Adventures into the Unknown, and the previous year Avon Publishing, a paperback publisher looking for new revenues, would jump in with the short lived Eerie Comics. But something that all comics enjoined was an artistic instead of literate contribution to comic books. It would later be called good girl art, and some of the main features of this art were the way the women were depicted. Large breasts called headlights were adopted. Women were dressed as scantily as the editors would allow showing as much cleavage as possible, and the rear view of a woman bent over was a very common sight. WOW I say! Unfortunately, though this could not have come at a better time for the comic companies, it also could not have come at a worse time.

Sometime around this same time, as the story is related to me by noted comic author an historian Greg Theakston, comic publisher and publisher of the popular Betty pages magazine; at a family outing a mother who was looking for her son found him hiding and reading a comic book. The irritated mother looked at the comic and saw..half naked women, large breasts and who knows what else and went to her husband with the offending publication. It was a fretful moment, the woman's husband was a United States Senator. The comic book was reportedly Lil Abner. I guess she had never seen Daisy May before. After the party, the senator spoke with his fellow senators and before long a panel had been convened to study the effects of comic books on American society, in particular the effects they had on children. Still, comics were selling faster than ever and in 1950 new changes were coming to the field. The emblem of that change was EC. next: EC and the horror explosion.

Part Six

In 1950 comic publisher William Gaines was experiencing an anxiety attack. It was in the form of a malaise in sales of his comic books. The books he was marketing just weren't money makers anymore, if they ever were, and he needed a new formula. It didn't take long for he and editor/artist Al Feldstein to figure it out. In the next to last issue of his Crime Patrol title, he had introduced a particular story "from the Crypt of Terror" in a blurb on the cover. The issue sold better than any issue before it. On the next cover there was an obvious horror content, and it sold better than the previous issue. They had found what they were looking for. By the middle of 1950, EC had three horror titles on the stands. Crypt of Terror (later Tales from the Crypt), Haunt of Fear and Vault of Horror. But they weren't ordinary horror books. They were horror with a bent. Each story had a strange twist ending as if it were written by O.Henry with help from Kurt Vonnegut. This simple addition catapulted horror comics to the fore.

Publishers were scurrying to get horror titles on the stands. Some were good, most were not, but that didn't matter. It was similar to the turn of the century when, as comic strips were being established, cartoonists were putting together any idea they could muster and the public ate it all up because they couldn't get enough! Another genre that exploded was science fiction comics, but not with just EC's help. Avon and other publishers also put forth many science fiction titles that were of fairly high quality. But the early fifties however the war on comics was about to go all out in an attempt to eradicate comic books if possible. By this time the public outcry was almost a roar. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency had released a report very critical of comics, and it was widely circulated. But nobody was prepared for what came next.

Readers Digest had published a scathing article by a paranoid psychologist who all but claimed outright that comic books and other media were responsible for the degradation of the American youth. It was comics that made teenage boys rob and rape. It made adolescent's grades drop. It made them use drugs. Comic books made every child a thief, a bully - a killer! These were the claims of this paranoid. His name was Frederic Wertham.

American mothers could not believe what they were reading. Then it got worse, Wertham published a book that contained purported examples of sex and violence in comics. The book, entitled "Seduction of the Innocent" fanned anti-comic sentiment all over America. It was a death knell for the field. The resulting hysteria caused many schools and PTA groups to hold (shades of Nazi Germany) public comic book burnings. Comics were banned in many cities and even store owners would refuse to put out for display anything else but Bugs Bunny, Archie and Walt Disney's Comics. Even Superman's super strength couldn't get shelf space in some places. The backlash sent comics into a tailspin from which most would never recover. By 1955, all comic publishers had sharply curtailed their output. Many had totally phased out comic publishing, if they remained in business at all. Bill Gaines had left comic publishing for Mad magazine. DC had only a couple dozen titles and Atlas (which later became Marvel) was almost out of business. It was comic's darkest hour

coming soon: From the ashes, rejuvenation & revitalization.

Part Seven
By the end of 1955, the comics industry as a whole was in a downward spiral that seemed as if it had just about finished the comics for good. The Comics Code Authority and it's rules and regulations forbade many things. Only a few publishers would not be affected by the changes. The two piece bathing suit would not be seen in comics for more than ten years. Criminals must pay for their crimes, no blood, no gore, words like weird, horror and terror could not be published on the covers (not just in the titles) and on and on. Read the Rules & Regulations of the Comics Code Authority Dozens of smaller publishers went out of business, unable to overcome the difficulties caused by the regulations, or just their own inventiveness. EC discovered that by publishing Mad magazine they could make more money than they ever had publishing comic books and closed down with the exception of Mad, which went on to become one of the most influential and popular humor magazines in the decades since. Atlas (aka Marvel) would almost go out of business. DC would only be affected by the lower circulations of titles during this time. Their homogenized approach to comics helped them to avoid the disasters heaped on publishers like EC. Not a DC title needed to be changed because of code regulations, they were in good shape.

Dell also did not need to make any changes as they most certainly always published "family oriented" products. Dell did not even need to ascribe to the Comics Code as they always enforced their own code so to speak. For years Dell would be the only company to not carry the code seal on the covers of their comics. Comics almost were dead, and they needed a boost. American culture has always followed a course or "fad" for short periods to keep up with the tastes of hundreds of millions of people. When the comic strip was first published, they were all universally humorous in content. There were many reasons for this, the main reason no doubt being the rather experimental nature of the medium and another that it takes awhile for adventurous individuals to make small changes that allow other individuals to make more changes. Swinnerton, Dirks and Outcault may have birthed the American comic strip but Winsor McCay injected sci-fi fantasy into it as well as a week to week continuity. Harold Gray, Roy Crane and Sidney Smith gave it adventure, and then Edgar Rice Burroughs and Phillip Nowlan contributed the first true adventure characters to the comic strip, and on the same historic day as both Tarzan's first daily strip and Buck Roger's appeared on January 7, 1929. Of course Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, Chester Gould and Hal Foster would make some of the largest contributions to the comics before a new creation was introduced to comics by two teenagers. Siegel and Shuster revolutionized the industry and created the "super" hero, "Superman" who influenced the entire industry. These heroes reigned supreme over the industry for ten years before the end of the second world war reduced the number of villains left for them to fight and crime comics then became very popular, followed by injections of teenage humor, jungle themes, mystery, science fiction and horror. Super heroes had taken a back seat. As a matter of fact, with the exception of DC, no company had published a super hero comic book continually throughout this period. Most super hero comics published by other companies lasted a few short issues. Timely published very few superhero titles from 1949 until Fantastic Four #1 in 1961.
illustration:the splash page to the origin story of the Flash from Showcase #4, drawn by Joe Kubert & Carmine Infantino

But with the reduction of themes now available to publishers because of the with hunt shake-out, companies still in business had to find some new ideas. Sometimes, new ideas are really just old ideas, and making new ideas out of them are as easy as pie. So it was when DC editor Julius Schwartz decided the new comic title he was editing needed something. Showcase Comics had premiered in January 1956 (cover date for #1 is 3-4/56) and was similar to DC's "Brave & the Bold" in introducing new stuff to the DC universe. The stories were all adventure of some sort, Firefighters, scuba divers and the like. The title needed some spice. That spice would move..... in a FLASH.....

Part Eight
Julius Schwartz was born in New York City on June 19, 1915. As a boy he was a big fan of science fiction which was the burgeoning literary genre of the day. In 1932, he and Mort Weisinger (who would also work at DC) published "The Time Traveler", a sci-fi fanzine. The two later formed the Solar Sales Service, as agents for such popular sci-fi authors as H.P.Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury and Robert Bloch. photo: Julius Schwartz, Jim Steranko & Murphy Anderson He went to work for DC in 1944 after an introduction by Alfred Bester, editing All Star Comics, Green Lantern, Flash and Sensation Comics. Because of his connection science fiction (and the fact that many sci-fi authors who were friends of Schwartz were working at DC), when DC began Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space he was the natural candidate for editor. More and more work led him to editing a new title for DC, Showcase Comics, which premiered on the stands in January 1956. But the title's sales figures were dismal at best and it was on the verge of existential extinction by the third issue when Schwartz decide to take a chance on something new, which was in reality just a rehashing of something old, and on the cover of the title's fourth issue was this something. He was called "the Flash"! Sporting a red leotard outfit with a head mask and a yellow lightning bolt on his chest, the Flash made his debut on the stands with the Sept-Oct 1956 issue, written by Robert Kannigher and illustrated by the great Carmine Infantino. His origin story was a hit! Sales figures on the title jumped, but the editor wasn't going to get the figures before scheduling two more issues. Showcase #5 had the stories that were presumably really scheduled for issue four, issue six however, was the introduction of another super type hero with the "Challengers of the Unknown". Not really super, these heroes were just four guys who survived a plane crash who were just the best in their respective fields. A scientist, a pilot, a wrestler and a circus performer. But their adventures were entirely science fiction, illustrated by the great Jack Kirby.

They again appeared in issue seven, but by this time Schwartz had seen the sales figures for issue 4, and the Flash made his second appearance in Showcase #8, and thanks to Julius Schwartz's inventiveness and foresight, the "second age of super heroes" was born.

Showcase would continue to introduce new heroes from Adam Strange to Space Ranger and eventually Green Lantern, another "revived" hero from DC's past in issue 22. Challengers of the Unknown would be the first to get their own title, with the publication of the first issue in April 1958. The Flash would get his own title, continuing the numbering from the defunct series, in 1959. Green Lantern got his own title in 1960. But what really solidified the return of the superhero appeared in another title now edited by Julie Schwartz. Brave & the Bold #28, cover dated 2-3/60, took another leap backward to achieve something new again. By teaming up the leading super characters of the DC universe and like they had in 1941 with All Star Comics, they had truly signaled that the superhero was here to stay. illo: From Challengers of the Unknown , illustrated by Jack Kirby & inked by Wally Wood. The Justice League of America was formed by the Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and Aquaman made up the core of this team, joined by even Batman and Superman at some point. their popularity was so great that DC gave the group their own title a scant six months after they first appeared in Brave & Bold #28. (read my article on why Martian Manhunter is NOT important to the silver age revival) The superhero in comics had cemented his presence, and a new age was coming. They called it... THE MARVEL AGE OF COMICS, and it would change comics forever..

Part Nine
Jack Kirby had helped DC to revitalize the superhero in 1957 with the Challengers of the Unknown. He helped to write and draw 4 issues of Showcase, and then 8 issues of their own title before leaving DC in 1959 and returning to Atlas Comics, which was about to change it's name to Marvel Comics.

Marvel had not yet gotten back into publishing superheroes however and Jack drew scifi, mystery and western comics for the next year and a half. Then one day in 1961 Jack arrived at the Marvel offices finding editor Stan Lee sobbing and movers taking the furniture out of Marvel's offices. Marvel, the company that Stan's uncle Martin Goodman founded in 1939 with Marvel Comics #1 was about to go out of business. Stan may have been sobbing, but Jack on the other hand wasn't about to lay down. He had been making a living from the comics industry since the thirties and had seen the best of it and then in the fifties, the worst of it, and he had nowhere else to go! photo: Jack "the King" Kirby Jack convinced Stan to let him try something new for Marvel. Jack after all was right there when DC brought back super heroes and he was going to do the same for Marvel, but one better! In September 1961, the Fantastic Four debuted in their own title (cover dated November), and they were not just a hit, they were an absolute smash!! Marvel followed this with the introduction of a most unlikely superhero with the Incredible Hulk #1 (cover dated May 1962), followed by most likely the second most famous comic book superhero of all time with Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 (cover dated August 1962). A nerdish teenager with real teenage troubles had been bitten by a radioactive spider, transforming him into a freak able to climb walls by sticking his fingers to it and with the strength of fifty men. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko had helped jump start Marvel. The company which had almost gone the way of the Studebaker was on the verge of becoming one of the most profitable, influential and popular comic companies ever in just a few short months, and Kirby was just getting warmed up . photo: Stan Lee

In the next two years Jack Kirby and Stan Lee would introduce scores of heroes from the Giant Man and the Mighty Thor to taking a note from DC and reintroducing the Sub-Mariner and the legendary Captain America. But what really propelled Marvel was an entirely new ingredient. When Superman donned his cape, he never intimated that he didn't want to be a superhero. As a matter of fact he was intended to be a superhero was your impression of him. Batman only didn't want to be a superhero because he only became a hero after his parents were murdered. These heroes weren't beset by the troubles real people had in general. I always looked at superheroes as being entertainers. But the Marvel heroes were different. they were beset by all nature of human malady. The thing didn't want to be an ugly monster, Bruce Banner didn't want to change into the Hulk and poor Peter Parker was always looking out for his Aunt May's health. Spider-Man may be the most obvious example of the soap operatic comic continuity. He was at first in high school, then college over the years and grew from a bespectacled teenager to a mature man (shades of Gasoline Alley), which is in itself unlike any superhero before him. This new style of comic story resulted in a revolution in comics. Today's comic heroes are so bogged down by the human condition that to many, the entertaining factor that made fans read comics thirty years ago is mostly gone, having given way to the X-Generation's (in Marvel's case particularly) popular comic interests.

illo: Amazing Fantasy #15 with the origin & first appearance of Spider-Man

Next to come...Generation X-Men....