Beyond DC and Marvel: Entertainment Alternatives in the Nineteen-Sixties / Randall Hugh Crawford

They were also all over the place in keeping various comics genres alive, filling the racks with westerns, war comics, romance, horror/suspense, hot-rod comics, funny animals and, of course, super-heroes. It was in this last category that they produced their most enduring titles. Frustrated by working with Stan Lee at Marvel, Dr. Strange creator Steve Ditko moved to Charlton, trading off a cut in pay for greater artistic freedom, to create a new version of Blue Beetle and his own characters Captain Atom and The Question. Other ’60s Charlton hero comics included Son of Vulcan, Peacemaker, Judomaster and Peter Cannon — Thunderbolt.

Tower. Without delving too heavily into the business ends of the industry, apparently DC (National Periodical Publications) had an “in” with the comic book distribution chain. The distributors kept racks filled with DC, Archie, Harvey and Charlton titles while trying to choke out upstart Marvel. Even in the period when Marvel only had about nine super-hero titles (plus their war, western and “model” humor books), in order to get all the Marvel titles I collected, I had to hike to four different pharmacies and a couple of corner Mom-and-Pop-type markets, plus scan the supermarket magazine racks.

I offer this digression here because Tower Comics was a company founded by the legendary Wallace Wood. It hopped on the “spy craze” with a group of super-hero titles all connected to an organization known as T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Wood had left Marvel after working on Daredevil, soon after Steve Ditko walked away from Amazing Spider-Man. Tower published comics by Wood, Ditko, Gil Kane and other phenomenal talents. The stories and characters were solid and the artwork was first class.

THUNDER Agents ran 20 issues, published between 1965 and 1969; the final issue being all reprints. Spin-offs include six issues of Undersea Agent and four of Dynamo.

I probably would have bought them if I’d ever seen them on the stands. Legend has it they were very popular, developing a cult following, and sold respectfully during the four years they were in business; but eventually poor distribution made them close up shop.

Part Two: Publications

Publications, even those intended for young people, are obviously not limited to comic books. There are many other formats aimed at both young readers and their parents.

Newspaper comic strips. I began reading by asking my mother to explain the word balloons in the comic strip Nancy, and, eventually, just asking her to explain the few words I hadn’t yet learned. In the early ’60s, the Grand Rapids Press featured a full page with two columns of comic strips topped with a few single-panel cartoons and a small crossword puzzle. Perennials like Beetle Bailey and Blondie and Peanuts, classics like Li’l Abner and Buz Sawyer, the boring soaps like Rex Morgan and Mary Worth, old-fashioned looking things like Our Boarding House and Hatlo’s They’ll Do It Every Time, and long-forgotten strips like Freckles and His Friends and Grandma and Penny — within a year of learning what Nancy and Sluggo were talking about, I was devouring the entire page, Rip Kirby and all.

Little Golden Books. My mother was in the kitchen ironing and I read her a book. A Little Golden Book — squarish, stiff-board-covered and relating a tale about Felix the Cat going to spend the day at a farm. That was the first “book” I read all the way through without missing a word or asking to have one explained.

Simon & Shuster began publishing Little Golden Books in 1942. Eventually the rights were acquired by Western Printing, who later sold them to Random House. Over 1.5 billion Little Golden Books have been sold, with their best seller being 15 million copies of The Poky Little Puppy. I had a few of these: Felix, something with tall tales of Davy Crockett and, good lord [choke], Little Black Sambo.

Big Little Books. When the nostalgia craze in the mid ’60s took off — largely due to the reminiscences of Jean Shepherd and Bill Cosby — there was a lot of talk about adults seeking out the Big Little Books of their childhood. I guess these were still being made in the ’60s, since someone once gave me one featuring The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Over 1,300 Big Little Books were published, starting in 1932 by Whitman and at least five other publishers, using the same format, which was about 4" x 4.5" and 200-430 pages, or around 1.5" thick.

As a kid I had exactly one of these: something involving Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig taking a trip in a hot-air balloon. I read it multiple times.

Magazines. Parents and friends and aunts and uncles and, well, everyone had magazines. The Saturday Evening Post was a great source of cartoons, including the recurring feature about the maid Hazel, that was made into a TV sit-com starring Shirley Booth. I vaguely recall Molly McCall from my mom’s McCall’s Magazine, and from something the neighbor kids had, some sort of star-shaped character. I never saw The New Yorker as a kid, but I imagine much of their wry humor would have left me befuddled.

Mad, Cracked, etc. For comics fans, though, the goldmine was Mad Magazine and its various imitations (the long-running Cracked, the shorter lasted Sick, etc.). Mad’s “usual gang of idiots” often featured the great Wally Wood and the maddest madness of Don Martin. The first issue my dad bought for me at the supermarket had President Kennedy on the cover — I never missed another issue for at least a dozen years or so (until the early ’70s heyday of the National Lampoon.) I was already a Mad reader when Prohias and Aragones first showed up.

CAR-Toons. The early part of the ’6os was a high point for hot-rodding. AMT (and later MPC) sold 1/24th-scale model cars; the bands that had been playing surf music switched en masse to hot rod songs; slot cars were popular (1/32nd-scale at public slot-car parlors, HO-scale at home); Charlton published a number of hot-rod and drag-racing-themed comic books... and up on the magazine rack were black and white cartoon magazines similar in format to Mad, but with all the features automotively themed. Russ Manning, Alex Toth and Monte Wolverton all did work for CARtoons. Reportedly, a number of the cartoonists who went on to form the backbone of the underground comix movement (Robert Williams, William Stout) got their start drawing for CARtoons and their ilk: CYCLEtoons, SURFtoons and Hot Rod Cartoons. The first professional (non-college magazine) publication of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Warthog superhero parody character was in Drag Cartoons magazine, which also featured non-Warthog Shelton art in issues 43-46.

Playboy. Clearly labeled “Entertainment for MEN” — not boys, I was around ten when I first saw the pages of a Playboy calendar hanging in my brother-in-law’s basement. A year later, I found most of a torn and mud-soaked issue on the side of a hill at John Ball Park. When I was around twelve and a half, and all the drugstore employees were in the back of the pharmacy (and the magazine stands were up front near the door), I placed my seventy five cents on the counter, slipped the July 1965 Playboy under my shirt, and ran all the way home and straight up to the privacy of my bedroom. It took me until October of ’66 to work up the nerve to do that again (orange cover, Mel Brooks interview).

Yes, I read the interview and the articles and fiction. And Playboy was a goldmine of cartoons: Hefner was a frustrated cartoonist himself and supported the art form. He published Shel Silverstein, Gahan Wilson, Jules Feiffer and, of course, the greatest comic feature of all time, Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder’s beautifully painted Little Annie Fanny — which was also occasionally aided and abetted by the likes of Jack Davis and Frank Frazetta.

Paperback Books. Never far from the comic book rack at most pharmacies was a paperback-book spinner. Of course, “real books” had always been an option, especially for a kid with a library card. One of my earliest prized possessions was a paperback volume of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books with the great Tenniel illustrations. Among the first paperbacks I bought (or asked to have bought for me) were the early Mad paperbacks reprinting Kurtzman’s Mad Comics material: Wood, Elder, Davis, Severin... I read and reread those until they fell apart, and I still have the loose pages bundled together with rubber bands.

Then there was science-fiction, a very popular genre on the paperback racks. Silver Age comics were all about the sci-fi. Green Lantern’s editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox were sci-fi veterans. It was not a big leap from Flash and Fantastic Four to the works of Heinlein, Asimov, Silverberg, Bradbury and others.

Underground Comix. Generally associated with the ’60s hippie era, ‘underground comix’ were not that easy to come by in the Summer of Love, except on the coasts. After a decade and a half of being emasculated as an art form, the undergrounds brought free speech back to the pages of comic books — and horror and sci-fi and, of course, crime, drugs, revolution and lots of sex. Presumably sales of undergrounds were limited to adults eighteen years of age or older, but the clerks at the head shops that carried them were not always that cautious about checking IDs. Or just glad to be making a sale of something other than a pack of papers. Most of them were fans of Crumb and the Freak Brothers themselves. As great as what Marvel was doing by the end of the ’60s was, the work of folks like Spain, S. Clay Wilson, Rick Griffin and Robert Williams somehow made what Neal Adams and Jim Steranko were doing seem just slightly less revolutionary.

The Counter-Culture. By the end of the decade, a cultural and political revolution was underway, and if you were an open-minded young liberal living in a conservative community serviced by a conservative-leaning newspaper, you had to expand your literary horizons to get an idea of what was happening in the country. One way to do this was to subscribe to publications such as The Village Voice, The LA Free Press, Avant Garde, Evergreen Review, The Realist and, of course, Playboy. Sales of some of these were supposedly limited to adults only, but if you signed your name or checked the box, they tended to cash your money order and send you your reading material.

Part Three: Other Media, Other Interests

Television. Comic books cost twelve cents — eight for a dollar with a few cents left over for gum or candy. You just had to make the rounds of a bunch of drug stores to find them. Considering what was being published at the time, an incredible bargain. Television, however, was free to anyone with an antenna; you just had to sit down in your living room and watch. Something to do while you did your homework. TV shows from the ’50s — Lucy, Beaver, Life of Riley — were still being syndicated in reruns. But the new shows were just... well, funnier, fresher, more imaginative and — oh, yeah — in color. Think of all the TV shows from the ’60s that have been made into movies; or all the shows — Bewitched, Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, Monkees, Star Trek — that continued to remain in syndication through the end of the century and beyond. Not all ’60s TV was classic or even memorable, but certainly a lot of it was, and that assessment is not purely based on nostalgia.

Film. There were also some classic movies made in the ’60s. Of course, maybe it seems like there were more since presumably all the films parodied by Mad and Cracked were classics in the making and not merely this month’s latest hit. Again, just consider how many movies from that period have been remade, sometimes repeatedly, and not always improved upon.

Models. No, not Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. I’m talking about plastic models (and the mildly dangerous aroma of plastic model glue). Monogram and Revell had the airplane and military vehicle market cornered. AMT and MPC kept youngsters apprised of which automobiles were hot. And Aurora had a line of the famous Universal monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and more — an entire line for ninety-cents each, until they released King Kong and Godzilla at $1.49. I had them all, hand painted with custom blended paint colors. Aurora was founded in 1950, released the first monster model, Frankenstein, in 1961, and survived until 1977. Since then a few companies, most notably Polar Lights, have reissued some of the old Aurora models.

Radio and Music. Perhaps the biggest thing at the center of Sixties culture were the Beatles; and with them, the entire British Invasion (The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, a hundred more). Preceded by the folk craze and protest music and surf and hot-rod music, the American response to the British Invasion bands — other than The Monkees — was a generation of kids with guitars and drum kits: garage bands, frat bands, the first generation of ‘punks’. Later in the decade, the “San Francisco Sound” with it's improvisational jams, fuzz tone guitars and droning Indian sitar influences drenched the airwaves with psychedelic sounds, the only logical response to which was poppy “bubblegum music”.

The introduction of compact Japanese transistor radios and car radios helped popularize the AM radio stations, but it was the Top-40 format that turned the music industry over to the whims of the baby boomer generation. We even had our own theme song: The Who’s “My Generation”. The amazing thing about Top 40 was that it was not genre-specific. If a novelty song, a country song, a movie theme or orchestral ballad was among the week’s forty best-selling records, it got played. Still, the “bubbling-under” new songs they introduced were usually rock ’n’ roll and soul records, so they were clearly catering to what they perceived to be the record-buying public.

If a kid had a record player or access to one, he had to have the new Beatles album or Dylan record or whatever current hit song that the constant radio exposure had made him or her crave to own. Records had to have been a major competition for teenagers’ expendable allowance money, even when a mono LP cost $2.49 (a buck more for stereo), or more than the price of twenty comics (or ten twenty-five cent “Annuals”).

The Spy Craze. Finally, no discussion of what was hot and commercial in the sixties can avoid a mention of the “spy craze”. British author Ian Fleming had been writing his James Bond novels since 1953, and licensing a comic-strip version that adapted his books. But when JFK listed From Russia With Love as the only fiction title on his list of ten favorite books, America took notice. And when the film versions of From Russia With Love, Dr. No and especially Goldfinger came out, the world took notice. The book racks, best-seller lists, movie theaters and television networks were filled with spies — the hot new genre that replaced war and westerns. Comic books responded as well. Every comic company had a spy or two on the payroll, the best known and most widely acclaimed of these being Marvel’s Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

One rather amusing (if possibly apocryphal) anecdote has it that when DC acquired the rights to reprint a British Classics Illustrated (Issue 158A) adaptation of Dr. No to run in issue #43 of Showcase, they failed to examine the contract and didn’t realize that they had acquired the rights to publish a James Bond comic book series. They sat on the hottest property around until the contract expired without realizing they had it.

Oddly enough, Gold Key had a real corner of the market, with licensed adaptations of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (22 issues with photo covers), Get Smart (8 issues, photo covers, Steve Ditko art in #2), I Spy (6 issues, photo covers, Alden McWilliams art in #4) and Mission Impossible (5 issues, photo covers on 1 through 3). They also published an issue of John Steed and Emma Peel (November 1968, photo cover), because Marvel had claimed the title Avengers for their super-hero team book.

Conclusion

Being a lifelong comics fan, I have heard stories about rich kids who could afford to buy all the comics they wanted. I have heard stories about employees of stores or of magazine distributors who made a point to take home a copy or two of every comic published, either for their offspring or their own personal collections.

That was not my story. I was a kid who was told we were middle class, and never realized how near the poverty level we were living. I had a weekly allowance of a buck or two, so I was better off than some of my friends.

I learned to read from that bushel basket of used comics my mom got me. I remember having my half-brother Sonny buy me an issue of Flash. Since DC relaunched the series, continuing the numbering from the ’40s with issue 105, I had no idea how close to the dawn of the Silver Age it was. Infantino’s Flash and Gil Kane’s Green Lantern got me interested in drawing.

I also recall my Aunt Marie offering to buy me a candy bar, and I asked for a Batman comic instead. She was so impressed that I wanted something to read over something to eat that she agreed, not realizing that I’d talked her up an extra two cents.

Out at the Meijer Supermarket in Standale, my dad bought me that issue of Mad with Kennedy on the cover. Same store, different time, he also sprang for Fantastic Four #6, introducing me to Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Thing, Human Torch, Dr. Doom and Sub-Mariner all at once — along with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. From that point on, I was a confirmed Marvelite. When Marvel launched a fan club, I was Merry Marvel Marching Society member #471.

At the time, there was FF, Spider-Man, Astonish, Suspense, Journey Into Mystery, X-Men, Avengers, Daredevil and Strange Tales. Oh, and there was Sgt Fury, Millie the Model and several western heroes all named Kid. But amazingly, around 1966, Marvel had nine super-hero titles. You could buy them all for $1.06.

If that was all the comics you needed in a month, then even a buck-per-week allowance left you with change in your pocket in an era when a candy bar or a can of pop cost a dime, and a paperback sci-fi or spy novel was 60 cents (and an issue of Playboy was 75 cents). A record album ran two and a half bucks, but the hit single went for 69 cents.

I think the price of a movie was around $1.75, but going to the theater on Sunday afternoon or a drive-in on a Saturday night was one way for my dad and I to do that parent-child bonding thing without needing to talk to each other too much, other than a discussion of the film on the drive home.

The Sixties was a heck of a time to be alive. The baby boomers will never tire of reminding everyone that it may have been the best period in history, at least for rock music and Marvel Comics. And that’s an argument that I can’t really refute.