Vintage Comic Books
Joking Aside, Rube Goldberg Got Tech Right
By Ben Marks — Every day, exciting new technologies and inventions designed to make our lives better make us crazy instead—if we’re lucky. A document you’ve been working on all day disappears from your computer, having been saved to an obscure folder you didn’t know existed; a social-media app secretly shares your personal information with Russian hackers, spawning a Constitutional crisis; a self-driving car kills a pedestrian, giving us yet another reason to fear the future. Indeed, it’s been quite a...
What Makes Cartoonist Roz Chast Laugh?
By Ben Marks — Right now, if Roz Chast were a cartoon character, smoke would be steaming out of her ears and lightning bolts would be shooting from her eyes. My bad: I’ve just asked the author of an unpleasant question. "I still have my stupid life and these stupid thoughts that go through my head." We’ve been talking in a gallery at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, where 250 of Chast’s drawings and watercolors, from "New Yorker" cartoons to illustrations for books authored by the...
Women Who Conquered the Comics World
By Lisa Hix — The day after she returns from the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con International, comics icon Trina Robbins sits down with me outside at a café just around the corner from her home in San Francisco’s Castro District. As we talk and eat, trains from the Muni Metro railway come thundering by. Robbins’ partner, Steve Leialoha, a comic artist for Marvel and an inker for the DC/Vertigo series “Fables,” arrives fresh from Comic Con with his bags and joins us at the table for half an hour or so. "When...
Return to 'The Crypt': Jack Davis Resurrects the Crypt-Keeper
By Lisa Hix — When iconic “Mad Magazine” illustrator Jack Davis launched his career in the early 1950s, he made a name for himself drawing nightmarish images for EC Comics titles such as “Tales From the Crypt.” Horror fans today still marvel at his towering and intricately detailed fiends—corrupt men with shadowy, crevassed faces; feral werewolves with saliva dripping from their fangs; hordes of slimy skeletal corpses that seem to reach out at you; and, of course, all those dismembered body parts strewn...
Sea-Monkeys and X-Ray Spex: Collecting the Bizarre Stuff Sold in the Back of Comic Books
By Lisa Hix — Amazing! Incredible! Unbelievable! Eyeglasses that let you see through clothes. The secrets to super-human strength. Scary seven-foot tall ghosts that do your bidding. All of this could be yours for a dollar or two. At least, that's what vintage comic-book ads would have you believe. Six years ago, artist and historian Kirk Demarais, who runs the brilliant Gen X nostalgia site, Secret Fun Blog, became determined to uncover the truth behind these comic-book ads published between the 1950s and...
Digging Up the Weirdest Old Books and Comics From the Thrift-Store Bargain Bins
By Lisa Hix — When we first encountered Alan Scherstuhl's "Studies in Crap" column over at the "SF Weekly," we knew he was one of us. Every week, he goes digging around thrift stores and flea markets looking for that special book that speaks to him. Sometimes its a Kool-Aid Man comic book where the oversize beverage pitcher busts into orbiting spacecrafts, or a comic wherein pseudo-Archies are raptured up to heaven in a psychedelic swirl. But when Scherstuhl finds the nearly inedible recipe for Rush...
Fightin’ Femmes: Unmasking Comic Book Superheroines
By Lisa Hix — When I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, reading comics wasn't as popular as it had been in the ’40s or ’50s. But my older sister had comics, including a big collection of “Betty and Veronica.” Our parents encouraged us to read everything, so at 6 years old I was just one of those kids that never stopped reading comics. At a certain point my sister started throwing her comics away. I snagged what was left, and I still have them. The first time I saw "Supergirl" I was amazed because I'd...
Harvey Pekar: The Splendor of Ordinary Life
By Lisa Hix — Harvey Pekar carried himself with a slouch. He had a disheveled comb-over and dark, haunted eyes. A file clerk at the Veterans Administration hospital in Cleveland, he spoke with a cantankerous rasp. If you sat next to him on the bus, you might not even notice him. Yet this ordinary man, who died this week at age 70, made his unremarkable day-to-day life in a typical city immortal, thanks to his comic, "American Splendor." Through these autobiographical comic books, Pekar found a...
When Superheroes Took Over Comic Books
By Maribeth Keane — I’ve been interested in comic books since I was very young. My two older brothers had Spider-Man and Fantastic Four comic books. I grew up watching cartoons and my favorite ones were always Spider-Man and Superman. In seventh grade, some friends of mine bought some comic books and were really excited about them. They showed them to me and I started getting into it. My first comic book was Avengers 276, and I was pretty much hooked from then on. At first, I read superhero comics pretty...
Stuck on Comic Character Pinbacks
By Maribeth Keane — I started off collecting comic books, and still do, but I’d been given a few early Disney pinbacks as a child and always thought they were interesting. In the early 1990s, I started getting Ted Hake’s excellent auction magazine, and I enjoyed browsing his pinbacks listings. [caption id="attachment_1767" align="alignleft" width="225"]