FRED Entertainment

When I left off last week, I was being dazzled by the vast array of vintage comic books on display at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum (http://www.geppismuseum.com/), which opened last fall at the former Camden Station building in Baltimore, Maryland. Hundreds and hundreds of comic books from the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s to nearly the present day lined the walls of the gallery titled “A Story in Four Colors,” as you can see in this photo of just a sampling. There were also an enormous array of Big Little Books and a selection of pulp magazines, including The Shadow and The Spider.

But there was even more than just the actual comics and pulps on display beneath glass. For example, on a video monitor a documentary about the history of EC Comics was playing, presumably the same one that was a subject of a panel at the 2005 San Diego Con (see “Comics in Context” #95). Nearby were original copies of the legendary ECs themselves, and beyond them, high on a wall, the original artwork for various EC covers, including a stunning comics cover by Harvey Kurtzman.

At one end of the hall were a series of screens on which the very first Superman story from Action Comics #1 (1938) was projected, a few pages at a time. In front of the screens were two kiosks with touch screens, which enable the visitor to electronically page through this story, or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four #1 (1961), or Lee and Ditko’s first Spider-Man story from Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962), or Carl Barks’s “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold,” from Four Color #9 (1942). First one touches the screen to select one of the comics, and then, through additional touching, cause the onscreen book to open and its pages to turn, through simple, appealing animation. This was entertaining, and I found myself wishing that there were a lot more selections in the kiosks, and, probably impracticably, that the museum people had scanned the backup stories for these comics as well. (Fantastic Four #1, which had no backups, was the only complete issue, but, of course, most visitors would probably not care about, say, the other features in Action #1.) While I was playing with the kiosks, the first Batman story, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate” from Detective Comics #27 (1939) and the first Spider-Man story appeared on the big screens behind them.

As much fun as I had with these electronic toys, afterwards I wondered how much the museum visitor with little knowledge of comics history would get out of them. He or she might figure out that the stories on the screens are the debuts of Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, and the latter two have credits for Lee, Kirby and Ditko. But no information is supplied about who these men are, or what made these stories so revolutionary in their time. Nor is there any information about Superman’s co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster and their struggle to get their innovative strip published, or about Bob Kane and his long unacknowledged co-creator of Batman, Bill Finger (see “Comics in Context” #94).

In the case of Barks’s “Pirate Gold,” I recalled that this was one of his earliest comics stories, but it wasn’t until after returning home and researching it on the Net, that I discovered that (1) this was the first Donald Duck comics story produced by American publication, (2) it was Barks’s first work in Disney comics, following his stint as a story man for Disney animation, (3) the story was not written by Barks, but adapted by a writer named Bob Karp from a script for an animated cartoon that was never made, and (4) Barks only drew half the story, while his former Disney writing partner Jack Hannah drew the rest. Now, I’m pretty knowledgeable about comics, but all this came as news to me.

But of course I already knew who Carl Barks was, and his importance to Donald Duck’s history, and, indeed, to the comics medium (see “Comics in Context” #114). How many typical visitors to this museum have even heard of Carl Barks, whose comics work went uncredited for decades?

Furthermore, although the “Four Colors” room’s introductory wall text asserts the significance of comics as an artform, what the visitor principally sees in this gallery are the outside of comic books: their covers. Each cover is a single image, however iconic it may be, whereas the essence of comics is a succession of images that tell a story. Apart from some original artwork near the room’s entrance, only the screens and kiosks provide examples of comics storytelling in operation.

But all one need do is to step out into the main hall of the museum to find some brilliant examples of classic newspaper comic strips. To enter this splendid hallway with its high ceiling is like stepping back in time to the Victorian period when Camden Station was built. Artworks have been hung from waist level right up almost to the ceiling, in the fashion of art galleries and museums in the 19th century. But here the objects d’art range from an Alex Ross color print of the Justice League, with his trademark combination of realism and idealization, to a huge Joe Shuster drawing of Superman signed by Siegel and Shuster. There are an enormous 1933 RKO King Kong poster (in German, I think) and an original 1956 “half-sheet” for the movie Forbidden Planet, as well as lobby cards going all the way back to one featuring Mary Pickford from the silent movie era. Here is a page of Bob Kane’s 1930s funny animal series Peter Pupp, as well as a Joe Kubert page from the Viking Prince tale “Curse of the Dragon’s Moon” (from Brave and the Bold #24, 1959). There’s a genuinely amazing piece by Wally Wood entitled “Comic Strip Christmas Party,” with a multitude of interacting famous comic strip characters, drawn of the styles of their creators (apparently from MAD #68 in 1962). And down at one end of the hallway, instead of the Greek or Roman heroic statue one might expect in a Victorian museum, stands instead a statue of a modern hero, Superman.

Then there’s animation art from the Golden Age of the Hollywood Cartoon. Amazingly, there’s a whole series of cels over backgrounds from the Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon Let’s You and Him Fight (1934): Popeye gets kicked in the chin by a mule, Popeye eats spinach, and the setting of his latest boxing match, “Yank’Em Stadium“. Here is the Wicked Queen from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), holding the box in which Snow White’s heart is to be placed, and her alter ego, the Old Witch, holding her own trademark, the poisoned apple. Nearby an underwater Jiminy Cricket tips his hat to a passing fish in a cel and background from Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), while another pairs the evil puppeteer Stromboli with Foulfellow, the con artist fox. Two other cel-and-background combinations aren’t properly identified, but this Mickey Mouse in bandleader’s uniform and long-billed Donald with a flute are obviously from the classic 1935 cartoon The Band Concert (see “Comics in Context” #110).

As for the original art for comic strips on view, here we see museum founder Steve Geppi’s collector’s eye at its best. My favorites in this main hall are two extraordinary Sunday pages by Hal Foster that persuaded me to rate this master even higher in my estimation. I usually think of Foster as creating formal, stately, handsomely drawn tableaus. But this 1933 Tarzan page, titled “The Woman and the Ape,” is a masterpiece of kinetic power, as Tarzan plunges and swoops among the tree trips, wresting a princess from the clutches of a great ape (probably it is no coincidence that this appeared the same year as the premiere of King Kong), only to confront a roaring lion in a climactic close-up.

Elsewhere along the hallway is a Prince Valiant page from August 2, 1953, in which Foster demonstrates his prowess at visual characterization. Here Valiant confronts Rory McColm, the king of Ireland. Foster communicates the king’s arrogance through a subtly imperious, condescending look. Then, with equal skill, Foster uses a different, more openly expressive approach to convey Valiant’s reaction: he bares his gritted teeth in anger, a surprising sight from this archetypically noble prince, alerting the reader as to just how evil Valiant considers his foe.

There are examples of Walt Kelly’s Pogo in different spots in the museum. I was especially pleased to find a 1960s Sunday page I remembered from my childhood: Albert the alligator, wearing a scoutmaster’s hat, and his troop of scouts, consisting of a single bug, are lost in the woods until in the final panel they see what Albert calls “Civilization!”: Beauregard Houn’Dog, moving to what seems to be a rock beat, with his transistor radio to one ear (the mid-20th century version of an iPod), as a commercial blares forth: “No ifs, no ands, no butts, no, no!/No cigarettes, no tobacco!” (This, children, is not just an example of Kelly as a master of nonsense poetry, but a cutting parody of contemporary cigarette commercials that attempted to delude the unwary into believing that some cigarettes were actually safe to smoke.)

There’s an unusual Peanuts strip from May 18, 1953, back in the early days before Charles Schulz had fully molded Charlie Brown’s personality into its now familiar form (see “Comics in Context” #66): after Charlie Brown typically blunders in a baseball game, Schroeder pointedly asks him if he’d mind going home, and Charlie Brown angrily roars back, “Yes, I would!”

A late example of Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie from the late 1960s features an intriguing character about whom I’d like to find out more; in one panel he seems to be a giant, but he has a philosophical bent, and calls himself Mr. Alpha Omega, after the Greek letters denoting the beginning and end: he tells Annie, “It’s what happens between these two terminals that’s important.” Considering that Gray died in 1968, Alpha Omega seems to be his response to facing mortality.

Examples of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner in display provide looks at two fabulous animal species he created. A 1948 strip showcases the Shmoo, the all-purpose animal that satisfies virtually all human needs (especially if it is killed and eaten): “There’s good Shmoos tonight,” the strip declares, burlesquing a 1940s catchphrase. A strip from the following year features the Kigmy, who relieves human tensions and aggressions by allowing itself to be kicked: in another parody of cigarettte commercials, the strip refers to “the kick that refreshes.” I wonder what contemporary animal rights activists would think about these two races of critters that exist to be humanity’s slaves.

And there are many more strips here of note. There’s one of Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy Sunday pages from 1943, in which a grotesquely disfigured woman shows the captive Tracy a locket bearing the visage of her deceased husband, one of his archfoes, and introduces herself as “Mrs. Pruneface.” (More original art from this storyline appeared in the “Masters of American Comics” show, as described in “Comics in Context” #153. And yes, I know, Max Allan Collins resurrected Pruneface decades later.) In a George Herriman’s Krazy Kat from Sunday, March 25, 1934, a solar eclipse seems to thwart Ignatz Mouse’s umpteenth effort to clobber Krazy with a brick, until the darkness is unexpectedly–and prettily–illuminated by a swarm of fireflies. In an E. C. Segar daily Thimble Theatre from 1936, Olive Oyl tests Eugene the Jeep’s oracular powers by repeatedly asking him if she is beautiful, to no response. Finally, exasperated, she demands, “Am I ugly?” and Eugene’s tail shoots straight up, his gesture denoting “yes,” as Popeye reacts with his barking laugh. And there is a gorgeous Sunday March 15, 1936 page by the great Alex Raymond, pairing his Jungle Jim strip, featuring a character called Bat-Woman (!), with a classic Flash Gordon featuring Flash, the archvillain Ming the Merciless, and leading lady Dale using MIng’s “paralyzo ray” against his underlings.

There are examples of Winsor McCay’s work in both the main hallway and the “Extra! Extra!” exhibit room. A 1906 Little Sammy Sneeze finds the little menace in the water at the seashore, as a nearby pair of adult swimmers dread his inevitable nasal assault. But the sneeze proves anticlimactic and disappointing; what’s remarkable here is McCay’s depiction of a wave which cascades over the swimmers yet is sufficiently transparent that we can still see them. Elsewhere, in a Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, another beachgoer wears a life preserver so large that he looks like an immense balloon; unsurprisingly, then, when a wave dashes him against the shore, it explodes. At the start of an astonishing 1909 Little Nemo, Doctor Pill already feels somewhat disoriented, having lost his hat. Matters quickly grow worse, as the characters find themselves standing on an immense face, with giant eyes. Then they are standing upon some enormous creature’s feet. Was McCay anticipating or commenting upon the movie close-up, which was developed around this period? Finally, McCay’s “camera” pulls back to a long shot, and we see that the eyes and feet belong to a creature resembling a flying dragon, which the various characters try to identify. (One calls it a “pusillanimous,” perhaps projecting his own reaction to the beast.)

However, my favorite McCay in the Geppi Museum is one of his editorial cartoons, hanging in the main hallway. A tremendous storm with billowing thunderclouds, lightning, and towering, crashing waves, rages about the Statue of Liberty. Yet the Statue stands firm, its torch alight, as if untouched by the storm, and looking somehow both melancholy and determined. McCay labeled the storm clouds “Futile Attacks,” and the Statue “Liberty of the Press”.

From this grand corridor you can enter any of a series of rooms which trace the history of American pop culture collectibles, dividing it into a different set of “ages” than the history of comic books.

The first of these rooms, “Pioneer Spirit 1776-1894,” actually starts even earlier with the only privately owned copy of the May 9, 1754 Pennsylvania Gazette with Benjamin Franklin’s famous editorial cartoon “Join, or Die” (see “Comics in Context” #159). The room includes conventional playthings such as dolls and marbles. However, the stars of this gallery are the Brownies, created in illustrated children’s books by artist Palmer Cox (1840-1924). As a lengthy wall text satisfactorily explains to people like myself who knew nothing about them, the Brownies were the first cartoon characters to spin off commercially successful licensed products, such as these bowling pins.

The title of the next gallery, “Extra! Extra! 1895-1927″ refers to the competition between turn of the last century newspaper moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearts which led to the first flowering of the American newspaper comic strip. The McCay strips are here, as is an autographed photograph of comics pioneer Richard Outcault and an array of merchandise based on his comics characters the Yellow Kid and Buster Brown. There’s even a cartoon in which Buster Brown tells off Theodore Roosevelt (circa 1904).

But what particularly enchanted me was the merchandise on display that was based on a character most of you have never heard of: Uncle Wiggily, a rabbit who was a gentleman, but still a trickster (like the later Bugs Bunny), who starred in illustrated children’s books written by Howard Roger Garis (1873-1962) in the 1910s and 1920s. No, no, I’m not that old: when I was a child and I visited my grandmother, I used to read Uncle Wiggily books at her home. (It’s like how members of my generation show Bugs Bunny DVDs to their offspring.) And here in the museum were an Uncle Wiggily crayon box from 1923, an Uncle Wiggily mug from 1924, and all sorts of Wiggily memorabilia I had never known existed. My sole disappointment was that I was hoping for a look after all these years at his archvillain, the dreaded Skillery-Skallery Alligator, who, if memory serves, was determined to “nibble Uncle Wiggily’s ears!”

The title of the next gallery, “When Heroes Unite 1928-1945,” surely alludes both to American soldiers in World War II and to the birth of the superhero genre. To look around this room is to recognize that the period of the Great Depression and World War II gave rise to some of the most important and enduring iconic characters in American popular culture.

The centerpiece of this room is a display of Mickey Mouse merchandise from the 1930s, including plush dolls, a toy circus train, a radio, and even underwear. There are also charming Walt Disney studio Christmas cards featuring Mickey from 1930 (in which Mickey merrily plays the piano out in the snow, oblivious to a huge snowball looming above him) and 1931 (with Mickey caroling). Other characters are represented by toy figures as well, ranging from Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow to the “Dance of the Hours” cast from Fantasia (1940). My favorite was the matador from Ferdinand the Bull (1938), a caricature of the young Walt Disney himself.

To look at all the early Superman merchandise on display is to realize how rapidly after his 1938 debut that the Man of Steel became an American icon; here are Superman buttons from 1939 through 1945, a Superman belt from 1940, a Superman hair brush from the 40s, and more. Popeye was no slouch in licensing, either: the museum has Popeye soap, a Jeep doll, and even Popeye Sunshine biscuits (but not spinach!).

Collectibles featuring other pop icons of the period turn up as well, some that you definitely know, such as coloring books based on the 1939 films of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, and Little Orphan Annie decoder badges, and some that have been fading into obscurity, like statuettes of the radio characters Amos and Andy. There’s a toy of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy Charlie McCarthy sitting in his car, and a doll of Bergen’s other famed dummy, Mortimer Snerd. And again I wondered how many visitors would know who they were.

The next gallery, “America Tunes In 1946-1960,” brings us to the start of television and the childhood of most of the Baby Boomers. As soon as you enter the room, you’ll see Howdy Doody puppets atop a series of TV screens showing not only Howdy’s show, but also The Honeymooners‘ “Chef of the Future” episode (“Better Living through TV,” 1955), Lucille Ball’s drunken encounter with “vitameatavegemin” on I Love Lucy (“Lucy Does a TV Commercial,” 1952), Hopalong Cassidy, and comedian Milton Berle interacting with, of all people, Ronald Reagan.

The Sixties get their own room, “Revolution 1961-1970,” but it’s not politics, rock music or fashion that dominates this gallery. Instead, on entering, you will face an imposing statue of the Batman, flanked on one side by the bright red Batphone from the 1960s TV series, and on the other by the bust of Shakespeare that concealed the device for opening the study wall to the Batpoles.

It was “A New Heroic Age,” according to a wall text, the time of comics Silver Age, and there is Merry Marvel Marching Society memorabilia on exhibit, as well as the March 11, 1966 issue of Life magazine with Adam West as Batman on the cover. (Hey, I owned a copy of that myself! And remind me to tell you sometime how Jim Salicrup introduced me to Adam West last year.)

It was also the decade of the superspy, who was being marketed to both adults and kids: among the exhibits are a Get Smart lunch box from 1966 and Milton Bradley’s John Drake Secret Agent game featuring a good likeness of Patrick McGoohan. In contrast the rather repellent Honey West doll from 1965 on display comes nowhere close to the luminous looks of Anne Francis in the title role of this early feminist detective TV series.

Elsewhere in this gallery is another issue of Life, from August 28, 1964, featuring the Beatles on the cover. A copy of their Magical Mystery Tour album hangs on a wall above a toy version of the Yellow Submarine from the 1968 animated film of that same name. There are copies of The Monkees comics (and little did I know this was a prophetic sight, as you shall learn next week), along with a Woodstock festival poster from 1969.

The name of the next section, “Expanding Universe 1971-1990,” suggests to me how science fiction and fantasy grew from niche cults to genres with mass audiences over these years. My favorite piece in this room was an original “3-sheet” poster for Star Wars (1977), which was both memorably iconic and blatantly deceptive. There’s Luke baring part of his chest, while Princess Leia stands seductively, hand on hip, displaying both cleavage and long, bare legs: the poster was way sexier than the movie! I also wonder about the horizontal ray of light that intersects Luke’s raised lightsaber, creating a luminescent cross, suggesting Christian imagery.

The chronological survey ends with a section called “Going Global & Special Edition.” Here in a room at the end of the hallway was a small exhibit on African-Americans in comics, ranging from the usual suspects (Jack Kirby’s Black Panther, Will Eisner’s Ebony) to the unexpected (a Gasoline Alley Big Little Book called Skeezix in Africa, about which I’d like to know more).

I should think that the main problem with providing more information about the exhibits at the Geppi Museum is that there are so many of them. There is only room for the brief descriptions in the labels.

This reminds me of the newly opened Roman galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I mentioned in critiquing the 300 movie (see “Comics in Context” #175). On a mezzanine level above the sculpture court is a long gallery containing “The Greek and Roman Study Collection,” an enormous assemblage of roughly 3500 numbered but otherwise unlabeled artworks. But the Metropolitan has installed several touch screen kiosks in the gallery that enable the visitor to access information about each item on display. This is the sort of system that the Geppi Museum could use, but it may be prohibitively expensive. Why pay for something that, at this point, not many people would use?

If you get the impression that I pretty much had the museum all to myself during my visit, well, I pretty much did. There were as many staff members present as visitors when I was there. Of course it was a Wednesday afternoon in April, when most potential visitors are at work or school, although Baltimore’s magnificent National Aquarium (www.aqua.org), which I visited later that afternoon, was far from deserted.

Reportedly, attendance levels for the Geppi Museum have been well below initial estimates. My initial reaction to this was that there isn’t sufficiently widespread interest in the museum’s niche subjects, the histories of comics and pop culture collectibles. But the Sports Legends museum on the first floor likewise suffers from low attendance.

The problem is blamed on the two museums’ location in Camden Station, next to the Baltimore Orioles’ stadium at Camden Yards. It is said that the Orioles’ attendance has been declining recently, and that few people pass through the stadium are outside the baseball season. Moreover, Camden Station is across the street from the Baltimore Convention Center, a number of hotels are being built nearby, and pedestrians allegedly avoid walking by the construction sites.

On my visit, however, there was no construction blocking my path. More importantly, my overwhelming impression was how close so many of Baltimore’s major attractions were to each other. One might think that museums that were directly across the street from a major convention center, and within short walking distance from the nearby major hotels, would attract plenty of tourists. When I left the Geppi Museum, it took me only ten to fifteen minutes to walk roughly six blocks from Camden Station to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the center of the city’s tourist activity. Walking from the Geppi Museum to the Inner Harbor’s National Aquarium was no different from going from one museum to another on the Mall in Washington, D. C.. And there’s a light rail stop directly across the street from Camden Station!

I just don’t understand why the Geppi Museum is so allegedly inaccessible. Is it that New York is a walking city, and I’m simply more used to foot travel?

The more knowledge about pop culture history that you bring to the Geppi Museum, the more you will get out of it. But even if you don’t know who, say, Uncle Wiggily is, the Geppi Museum covers so many subjects–superheroes, dolls, Disney cartoons, Star Wars, the Beatles, classic television shows–that you are bound to find something here that will not only interest but fascinate you. For anyone who grew up in the 20th century, no matter what your age, it is a treasure trove of memories. As for the subjects the museum covers that you are unfamiliar with, perhaps the toys and memorabilia on display will whet your interest so you’ll want to go home, get online, and look up their background. And then you can go back to the Geppi Museum and take another look.

I traversed parts of five different states over two and a half hours to get to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, and not only did I have no trouble finding it, but I felt my visit was well worth the time and expense. I advise any of you with a serious interest in the history of American comics, who can get down to Baltimore and back within a day, to make the trip to Geppi’s; you won’t regret it. In fact, you should make it an overnight trip and see much more of this historic city while you’re at it.

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–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson

Longtime readers know that I typically celebrate my birthday by going to see a Broadway show, including Monty Python’s Spamalot in 2005 (see “Comics in Context” #82) and Disney’s Tarzan in 2006. They may also recall that I spent the Friday after Thanksgiving last year making a day trip to see the “Cartoon America” at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. (see “Comics in Context” #157 and 159).

That went so well that instead of seeing a play, this year I decided to go down to Baltimore on my birthday, a city I’d visited once before, in 1996. (The round trip train fare costs less than a pair of Broadway orchestra seats these days.) The principal reason for making the trip was to see Geppi’s Entertainment Museum, a showcase for pop culture collectibles, including comics, founded by Steve Geppi, the owner of Diamond Comics Distributors, the last significant English language comics distribution company standing. I hadn’t been one of the lucky people who were invited to the grand opening last fall, but I’d been waiting for the right opportunity to go ever since. And here it was, on a pleasantly warm and sunny day in the Northeast, following a few days in the 80s (highly unusual for April), and, before that, weeks of lingering winter cold.

I find train travel relaxing, and it spares me the hassles of dealing with taxi drivers and airport security. It proved remarkably easy to get from New York City down to Geppi’s Museum. After a two and a half hour journey from New York’s Penn Station, Amtrak train pulled into Baltimore’s own Penn Station, whose waiting room, with its beautiful stained glass skylights, was the first of many striking examples of local architecture I would see on this whirlwind trip. At this Penn Station I got aboard a light rail shuttle to a transfer point, where I chatted with a fellow passenger. (This, by the way, was a reminder of Baltimore’s friendly atmosphere. On my previous trip there, I was startled that total strangers would say hello to me on the street. This never happens in New York City, or Boston or Washington or even San Diego, for that matter.) Then I boarded the main light rail train and got off at the Convention Center stop, which is directly across the street from the Geppi Museum. I keep reading that the Geppi Museum is out of the way, but quite clearly it isn’t.

The Geppi Museum is housed in Camden Station, a magnificent Italianate brick building with a soaring tower, which stands next to Baltimore’s famous baseball stadium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The central section of Camden Station was opened in 1852, and Abraham Lincoln visited the building on four occasions; the rest of the original building, including the tower, was completed in 1867. This was the terminal for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which continued to use Camden Station until 1971, by which time it was the oldest train terminal still in operation in a major American city. In the 1990s the building was restored to look as it had in 1867. In 2005 Sports Legends, a museum about the history of sports in Baltimore (the birthplace of Babe Ruth), opened on the first floor; Geppi’s Entertainment Museum opened the following year.

Entering through what I took to be the front of the building, I asked the folks at the Sports Legends admission desk where the Geppi Museum was, and was informed that its entrance is actually on the opposite side of the building. (Well, that seems appropriate: jocks and comics fans have separate entrances.) So I crossed to the other side of the lobby and ascended a staircase, past a handsome collection of vintage posters.

Then I found myself in the entrance hall for the Museum proper, whose walls were covered with even more impressive posters, my favorite being an enormous one for a Charlie Chaplin silent feature. Alongside one wall is a flatscreen TV monitor continuously running an introductory video narrated by Mr. Geppi himself, welcoming guests.

Here I was greeted by the museum’s curator, Dr. Arnold Blumberg. We had talked by phone in the past, but had never actually met until this year’s New york Comic Con. Knowing exactly what I most wanted to see, Dr. Blumberg escorted me into the museum’s largest gallery, the room titled “A Story in Four Colors.” He can doubtless attest to my reaction on entering this room, which must have involved bulging eyes and a dropping jaw.

Right in front of the room’s entrance stood a vitrine, a case with a glass top, holding beautifully preserved copies of Action Comics #1 (1938), the debut of Superman, complete with co-creator Joe Shuster’s iconic cover drawing of the Man of Steel lifting an automobile; Action Comics #2, which, though it now seems odd, does not have Superman on the cover; Adventure Comics #40 (1938), with the first appearance of DC’s original version of the Sandman, drawn on the cover by Creig Flessel; Adventure Comics #48 (1940), with the debut of the original Hourman; All-American Comics #16 (1940), in which the original Green Lantern first appeared; All-Star Comics #3 (1940), the initial saga of the Justice Society of America, the leading superhero team of the Golden Age of Comics of the 1940s; and two first issues that need no further description, Batman #1 (1940) and Captain America Comics #1 (1941).

I have seen Golden Age comic books before, and even own a few, and I have even seen copies of some of these particular landmark issues before. But to see them all together, all at once, is astonishing. And beyond the vitrine, there was a long wall lined with shelves, each filled with still more landmark issues of vintage comics. It was a treasure house! I was peering into the comics collector’s equivalent of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, at the mother lode of this artform’s history, preserved within a single room!

Dr. Blumberg and I conversed for a while, comparing notes on our experiences teaching courses in comic books as literature, and discussing the obstacles and opportunities in persuading the culture at large that they should study comics just as people do with novels, plays and films. Eventually Dr. Blumberg had to leave for a scheduled meting, and as I faced the door to bid him goodbye, my eye was caught by a comic exhibited along another wall: Detective Comics #1 (1937), whose cover, drawn by Vin Sullivan, featured the face of the villainous Chin Lung, a ripoff of Dr. Fu Manchu! I ended up spending probably an entire hour in this room.

A wall text begins by quoting one of the Founding Fathers of modern comics, Will Eisner: “In the beginning, God made comics. . . .” Eisner was joking, but the quotation wittily sets the stage for the wall text’s version of the argument, familiar to comics scholars, that the comics artform has forebears going back to the prehistoric paintings on cave walls.

My friend and former comics editor Meloney Crawford Chadwick once pointed out to me a major reason why the mainstream culture still regarded comics with disdain. (This may seem a long time ago, but it was only in the 1990s that she told me this.) She observed that small children are considered to have grown more mature when they turn from reading illustrated storybooks to reading books with no pictures. Hence, comics enthusiasts are suspected of suffering from arrested intellectual development. The Geppi Museum wall text makes a similar point–“Although many people believe that reading words alone–prose lit–is a sign of intellectual maturity, the fact is that humans are a visual species. . . .”–and cites such early examples of sequential art (communication through a series of pictures) as the medieval Bayeux Tapestry.

The wall texts also explain Dr. Blumberg’s and the Overstreet Price Guide‘s division of comics history into nine different “ages,” expanding upon comics fandom’s traditional concepts of the “Golden Age” of the late 1930s and 1940s, in which the superhero genre was created, and the “Silver Age” of the late 1950s and 1960s, in which superhero comics were resurrected (see “Comics in Context” #58). First there is the “Pioneer Age” (1500-1828), during which many of the elements of comics–word balloons, stories told in sequential panels–were being developed. It was during the “Victorian Age” (1828-1883) that Switzerland’s Rodophe Topffer created the earliest graphic novels. Next comes the “Platinum Age” (1883-1938) when the history of the American newspaper comic strip begins with such pioneers as Richard Outcault (The Yellow Kid, Buster Brown), many strips are reprinted in comic book format, and by the end of the period American comic books begin to feature original material. The “Golden Age” begins with the debut of Superman in 1938, leading to the explosive creation of scores of classic superheroes over the next several years. Superheroes faded from popularity in the second half of the 1940s and the Overstreet Guide characterizes 1946-1955 as the “Atom Age”: this appropriately gives the heyday of EC’s horror, science fiction, war and humor comics their own “age” in between the first and second superhero-dominated “ages.” The superhero genre was reborn in the “Silver Age” (1956-1970) starting with the introduction of a reconceived Flash in Showcase #4 (1956), followed by Stan Lee’s Marvel revolution of the 1960s. This is followed by the “Bronze Age” (1970-1984), the “Copper Age” (1984-1992, my own period of activity at the Big Two comics companies of DC and Marvel), and the current “Modern Age,” specified as beginning in 1992.

In our conversation Dr. Blumberg and I agreed that these divisions into “ages” are subject to critical reevaluation, and that it is difficult to perceive which “age” is currently going on around us. Thinking further about the subject, I suspect that Overstreet’s “Modern Age” should be broken in two, and that various factors, such as the ascension of Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada at Marvel, the great expansion of the graphic novel and comics trade paperback market, accelerated mainstream acceptance, the manga revolution, and the increasing importance of alternative comics make the early 21st century landscape of American comics very different from that of the 1990s.

Overstreet’s division of “ages” applies to American comic books, not to comics worldwide, or even to American comic strips, and the “Golden,” “Silver,” “Bronze” and “Copper” Age titles traditionally apply to superhero comic books. (It is an appealing idea that the “Silver Age” was also the first age of underground comix.) The dominance of manga in the American comics market, and the high profile that alternative graphic novels now have in the culture surely show that superhero comics can no longer be the primary standard for defining American comics history.

So the Geppi Museum’s system of Nine Ages of comics may require modification, but it is still quite useful. Moreover, it is striking that this division into nine ages has moved from the pages of a collector’s price guide into the context of a museum. Just as Dr. Peter Coogan’s book Superhero: The Secret History of a Genre, serves as a first major attempt at defining the superhero genre, the Nine Ages provide a helpful tool for academic analysis of the history of American comics.

It’s also striking to see that nearly a hundred percent of the objets d’art in this room are actual comic books. There is original comic book art, too: the cover artwork for various EC comics, as well as the original art for covers of the Overstreet Price Guides, by such notables as Alex Ross and Joe Kubert. In the case of the latter, the covers portray comics characters, but the guides, of course, are not actual comics. The vast majority of what is displayed in this room are actual printed copies of comic books. I was surprised that last year’s “Masters of American Comics” show at the Jewish and Newark Museums, which mostly displayed original artwork, included so many printed copies of comic books and newspaper comics pages. But of course this was a means of exhibiting work for which the originals are unavailable, such as Lyonel Feininger’s comic strips and Jack Kirby’s “Galactus trilogy.” When Ken Wong and I co-curated “Stan Lee: A Retrospective” at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, we similarly used photocopies of original artwork and even pages from reprint editions of 1960s comics when we could not obtain an actual original art page we would have liked to include. But in the case of both these museum shows, the main drawing card is the original art. At the Geppi, the printed comic book, the collectible, is the center of attention.

This reminds me of the question that New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman asked about “Masters of American Comics”: “The show includes one of Mr. [Will] Eisner’s drawings for a “˜splash,’ or title, page of his Spirit strip, and the printed version of it, each of which has its own aura, and raises the issue central to comic art: What is an original?”. After all, it was the printed version that Eisner meant for his audience to see; the original drawing was arguably just a tool in the creation of that printed page.

Back during the infamous comics speculator “boom” of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the conventional “wisdom,” and I use that term ironically, was that various collectible comics would be worth big money someday. Now we begin to see that vintage comic books are potential museum pieces. Once I got to the Silver Age section of the “Story in Four Colors” gallery, I saw comic books on display that I have copies of in my own collection. It is now conceivable that I could exhibit forty-year-old comics that I own in a gallery at some point. Art museums court fine art collectors in the hope they will bequeath their paintings to them. I foresee the day when museum curators and librarians court comics aficionados with massive collections, like, say, Fred Hembeck, to donate them to their institutions. Imagine: the Fred Hembeck Collection at the New York Public Library. You may think I’m kidding. The New York Public Library holds an enormous collection of Charles Addams’ original cartoons (see “Comics in Context” #72) and has recently begun collecting comic books. Isn’t it possible that in decades to come they would be happy to acquire a major collection of comic books from the last half of the twentieth century?

Around the corner from the introductory wall text for the “Four Colors” room are examples of comics from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including Buster Brown, leading up to the aforementioned Detective Comics #1 from the close of the Platinum Age.

The vitrine with Action Comics #1 which I saw when I first entered the room marks the beginning of the Golden Age. Walking to the opposite side of the vitrine, I found even more landmark issues of that period: Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (1941); Detective Comics #27 (1939), with the first appearance of the Batman; Detective Comics #28 (1939), which, like Action #2, fails to feature its new star on the cover; Detective Comics #38 (1940), with the debut of Robin the Boy Wonder; Famous Funnies #1 (1934), said to be the first “true” comic book, published in the format that became standard for the industry; Flash Comics #1 (1940), and (if I remember correctly) Dell Comics’ Four Color (second series) #9 (1942) featuring “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold,” with artwork by Carl Barks, launching his long career in Disney comics, and his writing partner at the Disney studio, Jack Hannah.

To my right was a walk with shelves packed with Big Little Books, tiny (3″ by 4 1/2″) but thick illustrated books, published starting in 1932, many of which featured popular comic strip and animated cartoon characters of their time.

There were still more Golden Age comics in a case, including Marvel Comics #1 (1939), introducing the original Human Torch and featuring the Sub-Mariner, the first comic book from the company, Timely Comics, that would evolve into modern day Marvel; More Fun Comics #53 (1940) with the debut of the Spectre; and New York World’s Fair Comics #2 (1940), featuring Superman, Batman and Robin on its cover (the first time Superman and Batman were shown together) standing in front of the architectural symbols of the 1939-1940 World’s Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere.

The Golden Age collection continued in a bank of shelves along the wall, including Four Color (first series) #16 (1941), in which “Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot,” his supervillain nemesis, as drawn by Floyd Gottfredson; Patsy Walker #1 (1945) with its delightful cover portrait of its heroine, seated with her legs in the air, and Daredevil Battles Hitler (1941), starring the first costumed superhero to bear that name (DD, not Adolf!). I was especially pleased to see Superman #14 (1942), with its artist Fred Ray’s iconic patriotic cover image of Superman standing with an American bald eagle on his arm: I had seen the original art for this cover at “Superheroes: Good and Evil in American Comics,” an exhibit curated by Jerry Robinson at the Jewish Museum last fall.

In the case of long rows of shelves such as these, I can only mention a handful of the comics I saw on display. There were many, many more, each bearing significance in the history of comics.

Next came an enormous set of shelves showcasing comics from the Silver Age, including Showcase #4 (1956) which inaugurated that period by successfully introducing a reconceived version of the Flash, one of DC’s leading Golden Age superheroes.

Mort Weisinger’s editorial reign over the Silver Age Superman family of comics was represented by such examples as Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #1 (1958) with its pre-feminist title; Adventure Comics #247 (1958), which introduced the Legion of Super-Heroes; and Action Comics #252 (1959), featuring the debut of Supergirl.

Here too were the Superman comics in which President John F. Kennedy played a significant role: Action Comics #309, which was cover-dated 1964, but, by an ominous coincidence, went on sale the month of his assassination, and Superman #170 (1964), with the tribute story “Superman’s Mission for President Kennedy,” written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger and E. Nelson Bridwell. But the reason I remember issue #170 is its cover story, one of the weirdest of the Weisinger era, “If Lex Luthor Were Superman’s Father,” written by the Man of Steel’s co-creator Jerry Siegel, in which Luthor travels back in time to Krypton and nearly marries Superman’s future mother Lara!

DC’s most important and innovative Silver Age editor was the late Julius Schwartz (see “Comics in Context” #32), the man who started the Silver Age going with the new Flash. Among the comics on exhibit that represent his contributions are Brave and the Bold #28 (1960), the first appearance of the Justice League., memorably pitting them against the gargantuan alien starfish Starro the Conqueror, and Justice League of America #1 (1960). Here too was one of the first comics in the exhibit that I also own a copy of: Justice League of America #21 (1963), titled “Crisis on Earth-One,” inaugurating the celebrated team-ups of the Justice League with their forebears, the Justice Society. Similarly, the collection included Green Lantern #1 (1960), starring Schwartz’s Silver Age version of the character, and Green Lantern #40 (1965) in which the Golden Age and Silver Age Green Lanterns first teamed up. There too was Detective Comics #359 (1966), in which Schwartz introduced the new version of Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, who would go on to co-star in the 1960s TV series. Also on display were two comics in which Schwartz revived two Golden Age Batman villains: the Riddler in Batman #171 (1965) and the Scarecrow in issue 189 (1967). I was pleased to find Hawkman #1 (1964) and one of the 1966 Showcase issues in which Schwartz resurrected the Spectre, all with extraordinary cover art by Murphy Anderson.

Speaking of Showcase, it was fun to find here unexpectedly Showcase #43 (1963), DC Comics’ adaptation of the first James Bond movie, Doctor No. It now seems strange that DC never did another Bond adaptation or an ongoing James Bond comics series, though certainly back then they would have had to clean it up considerably for young readers.

There were plenty of landmark Silver Age Marvel comics on exhibit as well. Among them was Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) the first appearance and origin of Spider-Man, by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; Lee and Jack Kirby’s The Incredible Hulk #1 (1962), with old Greenskin in his original gray color; Lee and Kirby’s X-Men #1 (1963), the initial appearance of Thor in Journey into Mystery #83 (1962), Iron Man’s debut in his clunky gray armor in Tales of Suspense #39 (1963) and his sleek red and gold battle armor in Iron Man #1 (1968), testifying to how rapidly Marvel’s look evolved in the 1960s; plus Jim Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #1 (1968). Here too was the return of Golden Age great Captain America in Lee and Kirby’s Avengers #4 (1964).

The great comics of the 1960s inspired a new wave of young comics writers and artists who sought to build on the Silver Age’s foundation and push the creative envelope in new directions. Thus began the Bronze Age, and among the scores of comics on display in this section is Green Lantern #76 (1970), in which writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams, under Julius Schwartz’s editorial aegis, shook up the superhero genre by introducing realistic social and issues. In another comic on exhibit from the same year, Conan the Barbarian #1, writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith expand mainstream comics’ reach into the realm of sword and sorcery, a genre that is decidedly not for the small children who were once comic books’ principal audience. Another sign that the audience was becoming older was the debut of that ruthless vigilante, the Punisher in Amazing Spider-Man #129 (1974), also on display.

With a relaxation of the Comics Code, DC and Marvel ventured into the horror genre, as the museum shows with Marvel’s Ghost Rider #1 (1973) and DC’s The Demon #1 (1972), one of the 1970s projects with which Golden and Silver Age veteran Jack Kirby became an innovator in yet a third age of comics. Nearby is DC’s House of Secrets #92 (1971), in which Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson introduced Swamp Thing, and Wrightson immortalized the young Louise Simonson by portraying her on the cover as the story’s heroine.

Here too is the cult classic from Charlton Comics, E-Man #1 (1973), blending humor and superheroics. Elsewhere in this section, you can see the following classic issues. Artist Mike Kaluta unveiled his definitive visual take on the title character of The Shadow #1 (1973). Julius Schwartz turned his prowess at updating classic superheroes to Superman himself with the famous “Kryptonite No More!” story in Superman #233 (1971). Schwartz turned to co-creator C. C. Beck to help revive the long dormant original Captain Marvel in Shazam #1 (1973), with the right touch of whimsy that no one has recaptured until Jeff Smith’s current series. Stan Lee briefly returned to comic books with the origin story in The Savage She-Hulk #1 (1980).

Through several Bronze Age comics on exhibit, you can follow the radical shift turn in fortune for the X-Men series, which had been canceled at the close of the Silver Age. First, you’ll see Wolverine’s debut as a guest star in The Incredible Hulk #181 (1974). The following year, Wolverine joined Storm, Nightcrawler and other new mutant heroes in Len Wein and Dave Cockrum’s relaunch of the series in Giant-Size X-Men #1. Keep looking through the Bronze Age section and you’ll find Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s classic Uncanny X-Men #137 (1980), with the death of Phoenix.

You’ll also find Daredevil #168 (1981), in which Frank Miller not only began writing the series as well as drawing it, but also introduced Elektra to the world. The Bronze Age concluded as Walter Simonson launched his run on Thor, the best since Lee and Kirby, with the creation of Beta Ray Bill in Thor #337 (1983), also on display.

When I look over my notes on particular issues I singled out from the Bronze Age displays, I am struck by how many of them contain the seeds of the major changes we are currently witnessing in the comics artform, and business. There are few graphic novels on exhibit at the Geppi Museum, but the Bronze Age section holds three of major historical importance. There’s Will Eisner’s A Contract with God (1978), the first modern graphic novel, the forebear of all that followed. Here too is the pioneering independent comics company Eclipse’s first graphic novel, Sabre (also in 1978!), by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy, and Marvel’s first venture into the new format, Jim Starlin’s memorable and gratifyingly adult 1982 Death of Captain Marvel (about Marvel’s version of the character, not to be confused with the Golden Age original in Shazam). The Big Two were clearly watching and adopting innovations from the new alternative comics companies that were popping up. Also on exhibit are Dave Sim’s pioneering indie comic Cerebus the Aardvark #1 (1977), Howard Chaykin’s political and sexual satire American Flagg #1 (1983) from First Comics, and the first issue of DC’s first limited series produced specifically for the new, growing direct sales comics market, Mike W. Barr and Brian Bolland’s Arthurian science fiction epic Camelot 3000 (1982).

At the far right end of the long wall with the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age displays are the issues in exhibit from the Copper Age. Among them are Jim Shooter’s Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (1984), which launched the reign of the company-wide crossover blockbuster limited series, which still plagues us today with the likes of Infinite Crisis and Civil War. In retrospect Marvel’s flagship series may have jumped the shark with Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (1987), also on display. (Good heavens, Peter Parker and Mary Jane have been married for twenty years!) The Copper Age is also the age of the Grim and the Gritty, as evidenced by the exhibited copies of Batman #428 (1988), with the brutal murder of the second Robin, Jason Todd, and the even more ghastly demise of Supergirl in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (1985). (Both deaths have recently been undone, but they were real enough for nearly two decades.) But among the Copper Age comics on the shelves are enduring classics, including Alan Moore’s Miracleman (1985), Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1 (1986), John Byrne’s The Man of Steel #1 (1986), Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen #1 (1986), Moore and Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke (1988). From the vantage point of 2007, the mid-1980s now look to me like the high point of the evolution of the superhero genre in comics, which has subsequently slid into a dead end of Grim and Gritty shock effects and shark jumping.

There ae two doors leading from the museum’s main hallway. I entered through one, near the copy of Detective Comics #1, and I exited through the other, near the wall display of representative first issues of the Modern Age. I am surprised that the museum devotes little attention to graphic novels, underground comix and alternative comics, but Dan Clowes’ Ghost World #1 (2002) was on display in this section. I also found first issues of some recent favorites of mine: Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’s Marvels #1 (1994), Mark Waid and Ross’s Kingdom Come #1 (1996), Buffy the Vampire Slayer #1 (1998), and Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #1 (1999).

So, to modify one of British comedienne Catherine Tate’s catchphrases: “Was I dazzled?” Oh, yes, indeed. It was as if the whole history of American mainstream comics had taken concrete form around me, flooding me with memories.

But, of course, I’m already an authority on comics history: I could put all these comics in context. Beneath each of the comics in these immense cases there is a line on the shelf explaining its significance, such as the first appearance of the Legion of Super Heroes. But what if you are like that young comics fan I encountered in San Diego last summer who had never heard of the Legion, whose most classic period, after all, was forty years ago? What if you are a casual visitor to the Geppi Museum, who may have seen some of the recent superhero movies, but knows little about comic books themselves? What would you then make of these hundreds upon hundreds of comics exhibited in this comprehensive gallery? These are questions I will explore further in my next installment.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

You can read Dr. Arnold Blumberg’s erudite report on our recent encounter and conversation in his column at the Geppi’s Entertainment Museum website.

ADVERTISEMENTS FOR OTHER PEOPLE

In the course of the new documentary Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist, Mr. Eisner discusses what he calls his “favorite story” from The Spirit, “The Story of Gerhard Shnobble” (see “Comics in Context” #68), about a little man who had the talent to fly, although he died without anyone ever seeing him doing it. Eisner observes that this is about “people who go through life, do great things, have moments of glory no one knows about.”

Watching the documentary I realized, of course, “Gerhard Shnobble” is a parable about the creative artist whose talents go unrecognized by the world at large. Surely Eisner must have identified with Shnobble, back in the days not so long ago when comics were still regarded as a “gutter” medium.

Lately I’ve been writing about comics artists who made a great impact on the medium in the 1970s, but who had unjustly fallen from popularity by the time of their recent deaths. What is even sadder is the case of a creative artist of remarkable talent who, for one reason or another, never received the career or the level of recognition that he deserved. Such a man is Tom Artis, a comics artist whom I only met once, but whose work I admired, and who passed away this week. I recommend that you read his friend and collaborator Peter Gillis’s tribute to him, and then take a look at Artis’s work for yourself by doing a search on the Internet. Not enough people paid attention, but Tom Artis flew.

–Copyright 2007 Peter Sanderson