The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories

WORD BALLOONS

Classic tales of Santa Claus, his reindeer, friendly elves and helpful snowmen populate “The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories,” edited and designed by Craig Yoe.

Yoe, who previously edited and designed “The Golden Collection of Krazy Kool Klassic Kids’ Komics,” has collated another collection that should delight young and old alike. Artists represented in the collection include John Stanley (“Little Lulu”), Walt Kelly (“Pogo”) and Richard Scarry (Little Golden Books).

The stories, primarily from the 1950s and 1960s, have a charm and innocence and are compelling holiday-season tales that deserve the new audience.

“When I was a little kid, as opposed to the big kid I am now, one of the best parts of Christmas was the comic books that Santa Claus always, without fail, brought me — he knew what I liked!” Yoe writes in the introduction to the book. “Christmas comic stories have some of the best art and most fun stories of any comic books. That’s because some of the greatest artists and writers did some of their finest work on these tales.”

Stanley, perhaps the best children’s cartoonist of all time, provides five stories in this collection.

“Santa’s Return Trip” follows the plight of a sleepy elf that gets wrapped in a child’s Christmas gift.

Among the four Walt Kelly tales included in the book is “How Santa Got His Red Suit.” Kelly explains how Santa Claus got his famous suit in a whimsical tale as a group of elves — and one giant — help create Santa’s iconic costume. Kelly also writes and draws the heartwarming story of Ticky Tack, the littlest reindeer.

Scarry illustrates “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” which adds a Christmas twist to the Brothers Grimm fable.

Mike Sekowsky, best-known for his work on DC Comics’ “Justice League of America,” provides an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” that is abbreviated but still moving.

Another classic adapted is “The Night Before Christmas,” adapted in a sprightly, kinetic manner by artist Dan Gormley.

The collection wraps up with an adaptation of the Christmas story from the Gospel of St. Matthew. Alberto Giolitti, known for Gold Key’s “Star Trek” comics and Dell series including “Turok” and “Cisco Kid,” creates a beautifully illustrated adaptation that first appeared in 1954′s “A Christmas Treasury” from Dell Publishing.

Published by IDW, “The Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories” is a fine collection for any time of year but is especially resonant during the Christmas season.

- By Matthew Price
From Friday’s The Oklahoman

Comic book collector Mike Wheat poses with a book showing the cover of Batman No. 1 in front of boxes containing tens of thousands of comic books at his Fairbanks, Alaska home. Wheat has put his copy of the 1940 Batman No. 1 on the auction block through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, where it's expected to fetch more than $40,000. (AP Photo/Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, John Wagner)

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — A longtime Alaska comic book buff is selling one of the gems in his vast collection, a rare copy of Batman No. 1 published 70 years ago.

Mike Wheat of Fairbanks has put the 1940 comic book on the auction block through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, where it’s expected to fetch more than $40,000. Online bids already have climbed to $35,000 for the book, believed to be one of fewer than 300 still in existence.

Online bids will compete with a live auction set for Thursday.

The second and fourth Batman issues also will be part of Thursday’s auction. They are expected to bring more than $5,000 combined.

Wheat, a retired city wastewater treatment plant operator, said he considers the Batman comics an investment. He said it feels like the right time to sell.

“I just decided it’s time for someone else to have it,” he said.

The Batman No. 1 comic book was discovered after local businessman Ron Jaeger bought an old dresser at a garage sale in the early 1970s, then kept it in storage for a few years. When Jaeger finally brought it out, he noticed one of the drawers didn’t slide easily.

Three comic books and a few old issues of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner were tucked beneath the drawer and a quarter-inch piece of plywood. The haul included a copy of Batman No. 1, Superman No. 17 and an old issue of a Red Ryder Western comic.

Wheat already had a reputation as an avid comic collector in 1974, and Jaeger sold him the comic books for $300.

The auction house has handled many copies of Batman No. 1, but Wheat’s copy is notable because the low humidity and cool temperatures in Fairbanks have kept the paper in excellent condition, said Barry Sandoval, director of comic auctions and operations at Heritage. Old comics were printed on cheap newsprint, but the pages in Wheat’s copy remain white and crisp.

“If we got a Batman No. 1 from Texas or Louisiana, if you opened it up after 70 years the pages would start to crumble,” Sandoval said.

The condition of comics is graded on a scale of one to 10. Wheat’s copy has been graded a 5.5. That’s a middling score for a newer comic, but impressive for a vintage copy.

“I see how most comics from that era look,” Sandoval said. “Most 70-year-old comics are in pretty rough shape.”

Batman No. 1 was the first solo spin-off for the character, who made his first appearance in 1939 as a character in Detective Comics No. 27. The debut includes the original appearances by two of Batman’s key foes, the Joker and Catwoman.

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Online:

http://www.ha.com

From Friday’s The Oklahoman: 

By Matthew Price
Assistant Features Editor

WORD BALLOONS

Many people thinking of comics from the 1940s would think of muscled supercharacters such as Superman and Batman. But writer Ron Goulart follows another trend, that’s continued from the early days of comic books until today.

“Good Girl Art,” the latest book by comics historian Goulart, traces the popularity of drawing pretty, often scantily-clad female characters back to the Phantom Lady, Torchy, and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

Comics originally were reprints of comic strips from newspapers. But after the success of Superman in “Action Comics,” more and more publishers began requesting original material.

By 1941, “some of the more crafty publishers realized it wasn’t just kids (reading comics), it was teenage boys, it was young men,” Goulart said in a phone interview.

“The thing about GIs in the Second World War, they were kids, 18 or so,” Goulart said.

Rather than look solely at Superman, these teens and young men “might want to see somebody in a bikini, like Sheena,” he said.

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, is described by Goulart as a “blonde, female Tarzan,” and was published in “Jumbo Comics,” from the shop of Jerry Iger and Will Eisner.

“What distinguished her from Tarzan, Ka-Zar and the other comic book jungle characters was that a great many readers found her a bit more interesting to look at,” Goulart writes in “Good Girl Art.”

“Her core audience was added to appreciably during World War II, when thousands of pin-up happy GIs joined the ‘Jumbo’ readership.”

The Good Girl style of art took a bit of a beating in the 1950s, as Dr. Frederic Wertham, senior psychiatrist of the New York Department of Hospitals, led a crusade against comics that caused the adoption of the Comics Code. This voluntary code slowed down Good Girl Art, but it came back in the 1960s and 1970s.

“By the 1970s, you have a college audience and an older audience,” Goulart said, that was drawn to characters like Vampirella and a revived Black Canary.

“Good Girl Art” also follows the career of Dave Stevens in the 1980s.

“We have two pieces of his work, the one where he did the Betty Page-type character for the Rocketeer, and then he did an unpublished Phantom Lady, which is one of the last ones in the book,” Goulart said. “He was one of the, in his period … one of the most popular guys doing that kind of thing. He certainly helped the revival of interest in Betty Page, as well. Betty Page also influenced the return of Phantom Lady in the ’40s.”

And Good Girl art continues to this day, with artists like Frank Cho, who provided the cover to “Good Girl Art,” and Adam Hughes.

But one thing that’s changed is the role the women play.

“In the old days, like the ’40s … when you saw women on comic book covers, about half of them would be victims,” Goulart said. “Now when there’s women on the cover of a comic book, I would say 95 (percent) or 99 percent of them are heroes. You don’t see the woman being saved anymore, you see the woman saving someone else.”

Goulart says comic books often reflect what’s going on in the world and in society.

“In the Second World War you had Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth and you had pin-up girls. This was what was going on. Comics were aimed mostly … (at) males. So they’re going to put pictures of pretty women,” he said. “I didn’t invent that, and I’m not justifying it, but that’s the way it is. You could say, well, this is a very sexist thing, but … the good girl art, for the most part (is) incredibly tame considering what you can see in the men’s magazines, or certainly on the Internet now. It’s a very sedate kind of sexiness.”