CBR: Permanent Damage - Oct 22, 2008

[CBR News]

Steven Grant looks at the books that make up the 20 most significant comics in American comics history and states his case for each. Some of his choices just might surprise you.


Full article here.

[tridon]

While I agree with most of these, I find it very strange to see all these comics from the 1930s and not see Captain America Comics #1 or Marvel Comics #1. I`m very happy to NOT see Watchmen on here. I`ll never understand what`s so spectacular about that book. I was bored to death while reading it.

[dancj]

Steven - The Epic run of Akira did finish. It just went on a hiatus for a few years before doing so.

[brewahh]

His briefness about L&R is amusing- further solidifying that nobody's actually read it. What a shame.

[Imaginos666]

About "Heroes" — that's Robert Forster, not Fred Ward. An easy mistake to make. Both are Bogart-esque character actors who deserve more work.

[Steven Grant]

About "Heroes" — that's Robert Forster, not Fred Ward. An easy mistake to make. Both are Bogart-esque character actors who deserve more work.

Hell, you're right. Could've sworn by the ads it was Fred Ward.

- Grant

[Michael Hoskin]

>Again, bear in mind this list is a result of observation, not taste

Are you sure? Picking Amazing Spider-Man#1 over Amazing Fantasy#15 and X-Men#129 over Giant-Size X-Men#1 seem to be matters of taste. X-Men#129 feels like it's straight out of left field; at the very least, if your thesis is that Claremont-Byrne were the team that made the series significant, shouldn't the pick have gone to X-Men#108?

Also: not even one "new trend" EC book? Blackmark over His Name is Savage and It Rhymes with Lust? Were the non-code approved Spider-Man issues shunted to the top thirty? Superman#75 for signalling the peak and subsequent downfall of the speculator craze?

[Steven Grant]

While I agree with most of these, I find it very strange to see all these comics from the 1930s and not see Captain America Comics #1 or Marvel Comics #1. I`m very happy to NOT see Watchmen on here. I`ll never understand what`s so spectacular about that book. I was bored to death while reading it.

I like WATCHMEN fine, and I do see what's so spectacular, but I wasn't making a list of the 20 most spectacular comics. That would be a completely different list. As I said, WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT are subsumed under AMERICAN FLAGG!, which was really the book that burst that particular dam. The other two are more a culmination of something AMERICAN FLAGG! started.

As for MARVEL COMICS and CAPTAIN AMERICA, really, they're just more superhero books. They're only really significant in the long run because of AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1. MARVEL COMICS #1 would be little more than a blip in comics history, and while CAPTAIN AMERICA has a little more specific historical significance in comics, hell, he wasn't even the first patriotic motif superhero. I'm not saying they weren't important, but they, especially MARVEL COMICS, weren't scene-changing.

Nat: agreed that YOUNGBLOOD isn't especially significant in itself, but you're wrong that it wasn't a big deal at the time. I was in a tiny comics shop in Podunk Washington the day it came out and the place was packed with people waiting for it, which was pretty much the case in comics shops across the country. Image was pretty much hot out of the box, due to the publicity of the big break from Marvel. For better or worse, YOUNGBLOOD did usher in the "Image Age," the repercussions of which we're still feeling. So I say it deserves the status I give it, even if it's figurehead status.

- Grant

[Steven Grant]

Picking Amazing Spider-Man#1 over Amazing Fantasy#15 and X-Men#129 over Giant-Size X-Men#1 seem to be matters of taste. X-Men#129 feels like it's straight out of left field; at the very least, if your thesis is that Claremont-Byrne were the team that made the series significant, shouldn't the pick have gone to X-Men#108?

I actually like AMAZING FANTASY #15 better than AS-M #1, but it's the latter than signified Marvel was here to stay. Likewise, yes, Claremont & Byrne debuted with X-MEN #108, but if that's your standard we might as well skip the series altogether and list whatever issue of IRON FIST they began their collaboration on. Not that I think they're bad, but both the Wein-Cockrum and Claremont-Byrne issues pre-129 are fairly standard superhero comics; it wouldn't be especially difficult to translate them into issues of THE AVENGERS or LEGION OF SUPERHEROES. But with 129 they kick into all the stuff everyone remembers their X-MEN for, and which triggered a flood of imitators. It's not the earlier issues everyone tries to recapture, it's those issues: the Dark Phoenix and Days Of Future Past sagas.

Also: not even one "new trend" EC book? Blackmark over His Name is Savage and It Rhymes with Lust? Were the non-code approved Spider-Man issues shunted to the top thirty? Superman#75 for signalling the peak and subsequent downfall of the speculator craze?

SUPERMAN #75 probably was the apotheosis of the speculator craze, but that was already covered by YOUNGBLOOD, Image being the main beneficiary of the craze. The downfall didn't really come until some time after #75... unless you count when people started trying to sell their copies. As for the New Trend titles, there I did go for the apotheosis of EC: MAD. (Wasn't that a New Trend title?)

- Grant

[Morgan Wick]

Felt moved to comment:

Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson: savvy visionary or a desperate businessman? In any case, eager to get in on the new comic book market, the major-come-lately made the disheartening discovery that all the comic strips worth publishing had already been bought up by other publishers, so he pursued the next best option, and solicited new material to publish, creating the first all-new comic book.

Where other comics anthologies were catch-all affairs — a humor strip, a pirate strip, a science fiction strip, a historical drama, etc., all between the same covers — Wheeler-Nicholson's other innovation was to adopt the pulp magazine format of the comic comprised of a single type of material.

Wrong (predating even Gaines' efforts at FAMOUS FUNNIES) and wrong (DETECTIVE PICTURE STORIES from what became Centaur predates DETECTIVE COMICS by a few months). I can't believe you, of all people, would drink the DC Comics Kool-Aid on this topic.

8) MAD COMICS #1 (EC Comics, 1952)

Arguably the other most influential American comic of all time. In collaboration with one of the greatest assemblages of comics artists in history, Harvey Kurtzman not only tapped into the satirical irreverence and cynicism bubbling up all over Korea-era American culture and spawned dozens of imitators, he generated the best selling comics magazine ever, and taught whole generations of Americans to distrust convention and view the world through skeptical eyes. (Is it coincidence that American gullibility has been on the rise since MAD went into cultural decline in the '70s?)

If you're going to do things like pick UNCANNY X-MEN #129 instead of GIANT-SIZE #1 or X-MEN #108, or pick AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 instead of AMAZING FANTASY #15, I would have picked MAD #24, when it became a "magazine" in response to the Comics Code, the real beginning of MAD's "golden age".

[Imaginos666]

The image of Blackmark in your column this week is the first time I've ever seen the cover ... I had always heard it was packed as a "paperback" but my only exposure to the story was when it was serialized in Savage Sword of Conan.

On a side note: I've always wondered how Gil Kane and John Jakes hooked up. They co-authored at least one book together called Excalibur. It seems like a weird blip in both of their careers.

EDIT: Just realized I wrote Blackhawk instead of Blackmark. Corrected.

[NatGertler]

Nat: agreed that YOUNGBLOOD isn't especially significant in itself, but you're wrong that it wasn't a big deal at the time.

I'm not saying that it wasn't a big deal at the time. I was in the shops at that time as well, and yes, the reception was huge. I only disagree with it "starting the land rush to "superhero universes" among new and old comics publishers large and small". With the Valiant Universe already launched, and CGW already in development, that ball was already rolling. If memory serves (and I cannot find quick reference to back this up), the five original Milestone founders were already working on their plans before Youngblood came out, although had not yet made the DC deal (their first books would launch in February '93.)

[Michael Hoskin]

I actually like AMAZING FANTASY #15 better than AS-M #1, but it's the latter than signified Marvel was here to stay.

I don't know if I agree that "Marvel is here to stay" is significant in and of itself. You might as well replace Pep Comics#22 with Archie Comics#1 on the grounds that it proved Archie was here to stay, or replace Action Comics#1 with Superman#1.

I don't think the token 60s Marvel slot should go to either AF#15 or ASM#1 - I think Fantastic Four#1 should receive the nod simply for getting the ball rolling, the same way Showcase#4 received the DC Silver Age slot.

Likewise, yes, Claremont & Byrne debuted with X-MEN #108, but if that's your standard we might as well skip the series altogether and list whatever issue of IRON FIST they began their collaboration on. Not that I think they're bad, but both the Wein-Cockrum and Claremont-Byrne issues pre-129 are fairly standard superhero comics; it wouldn't be especially difficult to translate them into issues of THE AVENGERS or LEGION OF SUPERHEROES. But with 129 they kick into all the stuff everyone remembers their X-MEN for, and which triggered a flood of imitators. It's not the earlier issues everyone tries to recapture, it's those issues: the Dark Phoenix and Days Of Future Past sagas.

I agree that two storylines are the most significant X-Men stories, but if you're placing a value judgment on the stories themselves (rather than the concepts or creators) then you might as well replace ASM#1 with the Death of Gwen Stacy or the Final Chapter as the most frequently-homaged Spider-Man stories. The concept of reworking the X-Men into an all-new, adult, international cast had something to do with the book's success, so I feel G-S X-Men#1 deserves the nod as a symbol of the "all-new, all-different" days which encompasses the Claremont-Byrne years - just as your inclusion of American Flagg encompassed Watchmen and its brethren.

[Steven Grant]

Wrong (predating even Gaines' efforts at FAMOUS FUNNIES) and wrong (DETECTIVE PICTURE STORIES from what became Centaur predates DETECTIVE COMICS by a few months). I can't believe you, of all people, would drink the DC Comics Kool-Aid on this topic.

Point taken. I will correct that next week. Thanks.

If you're going to do things like pick UNCANNY X-MEN #129 instead of GIANT-SIZE #1 or X-MEN #108, or pick AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #1 instead of AMAZING FANTASY #15, I would have picked MAD #24, when it became a "magazine" in response to the Comics Code, the real beginning of MAD's "golden age".

There's an argument to be made for that. It's sort of another chicken and egg thing; I'd suggest that it follows out of the creation of MAD comics, whence its anarchic humor, but the question becomes what's more significant: the creation of MAD or its transition to magazine form. Whereas with X-MEN I'd make the argument that #129 is the demarcation between basically a very good, fairly standard superhero comic and a considerably more freeform affair that sets the new standard for superhero books.

I'd be interested to hear how John and Chris would weigh in on this.

- Grant

[Steven Grant]

On a side note: I've always wondered how Gil Kane and John Jakes hooked up. They co-authored at least one book together called Excalibur. It seems like a weird blip in both of their careers.

Not exactly certain on this, but I believe Gil and John shared an agent in the early '70s.

- Grant