What was the last comic book you’ve read? Okay . . . How about this one. What was the last graphic novel you’ve read? Hm. Okay, I got it. What was the last superhero movie you’ve seen? If you had a quick answer (and perhaps it was the only question you answered) for question three, then you’re not alone. And chances are you’ve never picked up a comic book in your life. There’s a reason for that.
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When most of us envision a superhero, we get flashes of those we’ve encountered on the Silver Screen. Perhaps you’re a diehard Tobey Maguire fan in his lovely spidey suit. Or maybe you had a thing for George Clooney and his nipple-busting Batman ensemble. Or perhaps you prefer the more recent fare – the well-sculpted Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern. Whatever your preference is, these characters first budded from the mind of creators who wanted to shape and mold a world both visually stimulating and with a storyline that would (hopefully)continue on for years to come.
In Hollywood and around the world, 2011 into 2012 will become the year of the Superhero. According to Screenrant.com, no less than nine superhero films will be released (and that’s not counting other geek-tastic fare such as Cowboys and Aliens, Mission Impossible IV, or Star Trek 2) during this time frame. That’s a lot of studio money being poured into Marvel and DC comics. But is there an audience for such films?
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In order to answer that question, one first needs to look at the roots of the comic book and graphics novel industry. Unless you’re a diehard fan, most won’t recognize the first author of comic books, nor the first comic. In 1827 (Yes. 1827!), a Swiss named RudolpheTöpffer created the first known comic strip. His earliest known comic book, “The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck,” was released in 1837. Töpffer’s comic book was the first comic book to be published in the United States in 1842. He went on to publish seven graphic novels in his lifetime.
And the craze escalated from there!
Here are a few firsts:
• 1895 – Richard Outcault – first to use balloons, an outlined space on the page where the author writes what the character speaks, in a comic strip.
• 1896 – First Funny Book, “The Yellow Kid,” was printed into pulp magazine.
• 1900 – The terms “comics” and “comic strips” came into common use in the U.S.
• 1940 – “Brenda Star” – first cartoon strip written by a woman.
• New Fun – First comic book to have advertisements.
That’s all well and good, you might be thinking, but what about the SUPERHEROES!
The first mysterious character to be created by the minds of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster was Dr. Occult /Dr. Mystic, which came out in The Comic Magazine in 1936. And the first worldwide costumed hero? Why, The Phantom, that’s who! The Phantom debuted on February 17, 1936 and is still going strong today under writer and creator Lee Falk. I don’t know about you, but that takes one heck of a creative mind to keep a world swirling around the edges of darkness and light for 85 years. I think any author out there would envy the longevity of Falk’s career.
But which superhero finally broke the mold and became the superhero of all superheroes? Flash Gordon? Batman? The Shadow? None of the above. In June 1938, Action Comics #1 came out with the only hero who could lift cars and throw them, leap tall buildings, bounce bullets off his chest and, yet, he had his kryptonite – Superman. Many were soon to follow. Batman debuted in 1939, along with Wonderman (who eventually fell off the map due to copyright infringements on Superman’s character). Marvel Comics debuted in 1939 with characters such as the Human Torch, The Angel, and The Masked Raider. And the list goes on and on.
In retrospect, one could say that 1939 was actually the year of the superhero. The year art and a fascinating storyline came together to create a phenomenon. Comics in the United States have been going strong for well over 100 years, and there still exists a voracious appetite for new installments. At least for the films. Prices for the written art form have skyrocketed from $0.10 in 1962 to $3.99 in 2010, and they’ve been relegated to the fateful “collectors” status (meaning, hard to find unless you’re a true reader, and overly expensive, to boot). Sure the characters of today are edgier and might cause a bit of controversy (just take a look at the newly unveiled half-black, half-Hispanic Spider-Man, Miles Morales, or the tightly-clad reboot to Superwoman), but in order to keep a genre fresh and an audience on the edge of their seats there needs to be a change-up from time to time.
And that’s how everything circles back around to 2011. The edgier superheroes are coming out of hiding. Batman has a darkness to him when once those films seemed like a crass joke with the Joker and his outlandish make-up lording it over cotton candy sets filled with ridiculously dressed characters (Poison Ivy anyone?). Even the newest Spider-Man installment (set to release in July 2012) fades to black around the edges with a new director (Marc Webb) and new star (Andrew Garfield) in the lead. That’s fine by me. I was never a big fan of Tobey Maguire to begin with.
And there’s still money to be made. When the top five grossing superhero movies of all time (The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, and Iron Man) have been released in the last ten years, then you know that if the comic books themselves aren’t selling well today then at least the movies still are! Again, what was the last comic book you’ve read?
The Year of the Superhero
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