Comments on: Supermen! The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes 1936-1941

By: Jim Perreault

Jim Perreault — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:20:36 +0000

Even judging them by very loose standards, I find to enjoy most Golden Age comics. I do find the better ones entertaining, and those are the ones that have stood the test of time.

Of course, I would say the same for today’s comics.

Jim

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:09:35 +0000

I’m afraid that I, and many of my readers, weren’t alive back then, so we don’t have any other points of reference than today.

By: kenny

kenny — Fri, 22 May 2009 06:02:04 +0000

weren’t superhero comics relatively new back in the 30s and 40s so judging them by the same standards as today would be wrong.

By: Jim Perreault

Jim Perreault — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:52:35 +0000

Long, I started being very choosy about what Golden Age stories I read for precisely that reason. Most of the obscure stuff was forgotten for good reason, they were very, very bad. A lot of it is very derivative of other works, from comic books, comic strips, movies, or radio.

If I put some effort into it, I can enjoy them in small doses. But it order to do so, I really have to get into the mindset of an 8 year old boy.

Jim

By: Johanna

Johanna — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 13:22:10 +0000

True enough. I might have appreciated that aspect of the work more with more guidance. Just reprinting the works leaves a lot to opinion — more context and elaboration would have been welcome to me.

I’m thinking of, for comparison, the work of Kirby, which often takes readers some time and assistance to appreciate.

I feel like I can’t really comment in depth on the reasons behind the selection of stories because I don’t have a good grasp of why particular pieces were picked.

By: The Fortress Keeper

The Fortress Keeper — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:40:07 +0000

I haven’t seen the book and don’t know which stories were chosen and, yes, there’s a lot of Golden Age stuff that’s mind-bendingly bad.

I root through a lot of it myself.

But, that said, the primitive aspect of Golden Age stories often provide a jolt that is akin to listening to the New York Dolls for the first time.

(Or … if you want to find a more time-appropriate comparison, old 78 recordings of bluesman Skip James)

The work may not be mature, but maturity doesn’t always equal fun and more often than not is simply self-important.

So, to sum up, I hope you’re criticizing the book more for what may be a poor selection of stories than simply its primitive aspect because, to turn your sentence around, just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s bad either.

By: Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » Feb. 24, 2009: Love is in the air

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:10:42 +0000

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