So What Exactly Are We Talking About When We Talk About the Bronze Age? 2 2

[Prince Namor]

Here's a more typical month, May 1966 when he did 79 pages or covers.

Keep in mind he probably AVERAGED 70+ pages a MONTH for Marvel for over a DECADE, and over 40+ pages a MONTH for DECADES.

 

 

Avengers # 28 : Marvel - cover only (1)

Fantastic Four # 50 : Marvel - cover (1)

Fantastic Four # 50 : Marvel - "The Startling Saga of the Silver Surfer" (20)

Strange Tales # 144 : Marvel - cover (1)

Strange Tales # 144 : Marvel - "The Day of the Druid" (Nick Fury) (12)

Tales of Suspense # 77 : Marvel - "If a Hostage should Die" (Captain America) (10)

Tales to Astonish # 79 : Marvel - cover (1)

Tales to Astonish # 79 : Marvel - "The Titan and the Torment" (Hulk) (10)

Thor # 128 : Marvel - cover (1)

Thor # 128 : Marvel - "The Power of Pluto" (16)

Thor # 128 : Marvel - "Aftermath" (ToA) (5)

X-Men # 20 : Marvel - cover only (1)

 

So, me personally, I tend to cut Jack some slack, when I take into account that from 1939/40 until the end of 1979, roughly 40 years, he churned out over 50+ pages a month, many times doing over 100 in a month.

If by his 30th year doing this, his style wasn't as great as some people remember it, I like to think he can be forgiven.

 

 

[MisterX]

I don't know how I missed this thread the first time around, but good work, Zonker!

 

(thumbs u

 

A few thoughts:

 

I agree with many of your observations.

 

But, to me, the Bronze Age begins with Zap 1. I know, I know, it was published before 1970, so we will have to agree to disagree

 

The artistic freedom granted to the lunatics in the asylum was influenced by the early Underground movement and led to the Independent B&W Publishing market.

 

The Bronze Age definitely ends somewhere around 1983 and there is a Copper Age (although I'm not sure the CA really ends with the creation of Image). Think of all the BA genres that were dying or dead by the early 80s: war, western, funny animal, etc. Sales were down beause their was a shift in the attitudes of the readership and the "creatives."

 

I started collecting off-the-rack in 1982 and I can't quite put my finger on it, but there was a sense of some kind of new momentum that swept away the Bronze Age. Was it style over substance? Hyper-commercialisation? I'm not sure yet...

 

BTW: if you are a fan of Back Issue, the latest issue reprints a letter (circa '81) from Alex Toth to Jenette Kahn proposing a Wildcat series. As a big Toth fan, I find the letter almost...well, heart-breaking. Why? Because Toth is clearly struggling with an industry that has left his personal tastes far, far behind.

 

I also think that because 70s Kirby always elicits such love/hate responses that it must have done something right. Think of all the comics you've read where afterwards you go, "meh." I don't think I've ever done that with a 70s Kirby book.

 

 

Edited June 3, 2010 by MisterX

[Prince Namor]

I think it's also instructive to make the somewhat obvious point that comics were merely a (small) subset of the broader culture, wherein many of these same trends (more mature themes, leftist political content, more open sexuality, social relevance and protest, shifts in management philosophy, the rise of maverick "auteurism", etc.) had already made their way into popular entertainment via movies and music (and, to a lesser extent, television). What was happening at Marvel and DC in 1970 and 1971 would have been unthinkable without the cultural upheaval, on a wider scale, which transpired from 1967 to 1969. As they had done in past eras, comics in the '70s were reacting to, and emulating, existing trends in art and entertainment, not setting them.

 

The tendency in art, as in culture in general, is always towards greater and greater license. In that sense, the Bronze Age of comics is roughly analogous to Rock-and-Roll post Sgt. Pepper (with its newfound "seriousness" and artistic pretensions) and the birth of "independent" film and New Hollywood in the late '60s. That comics were lagging behind these trends isn't surprising; what's surprising is that they followed them at all, and did it successfully enough for us to still care...

 

Agreed.

At the same time, we might also say that the "Grim and Gritty" comics kicked off by the likes of Miracleman, Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns pre-date the "Grim and Gritty" sound of grunge and the ultra violent Tarantino cinema movement....

Edited June 4, 2010 by Chuck Gower

[Zonker]

Agreed.

At the same time, we might also say that the "Grim and Gritty" comics kicked off by the likes of Miracleman, Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns pre-date the "Grim and Gritty" sound of grunge and the ultra violent Tarantino cinema movement....

 

I'm not sure... those analogies might be taking it a bridge too far. Rock music seems to go through a periodic cycle... punk of the '70s reacted to the post-Sgt Peppers art-rock, then the so-called New Wave bands reacted to Disco, then grunge reacted to, well... the Hollywood music video style over-production of the 1980s?

 

And I like Tarantino's stuff, but if he can be credited with a "cinema movement" at all, it would probably better be described as one filled with homages to other movie genres, jokey nerd-culture in-references (as in Denzel Washington's Silver Surfer rant in Tarantino's Crimson Tide -script re-write), and rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue. Ultra-violent (though that's in the eye of the beholder) movies have been around since at least the 1970s. I'm thinking of something like DePalma's Scarface from the early 1980s as probably more of a bell-weather for movie violence than anything Tarantino has done.

[Prince Namor]

Agreed.

At the same time, we might also say that the "Grim and Gritty" comics kicked off by the likes of Miracleman, Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns pre-date the "Grim and Gritty" sound of grunge and the ultra violent Tarantino cinema movement....

 

I'm not sure... those analogies might be taking it a bridge too far. Rock music seems to go through a periodic cycle... punk of the '70s reacted to the post-Sgt Peppers art-rock, then the so-called New Wave bands reacted to Disco, then grunge reacted to, well... the Hollywood music video style over-production of the 1980s?

 

And I like Tarantino's stuff, but if he can be credited with a "cinema movement" at all, it would probably better be described as one filled with homages to other movie genres, jokey nerd-culture in-references (as in Denzel Washington's Silver Surfer rant in Tarantino's Crimson Tide -script re-write), and rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue. Ultra-violent (though that's in the eye of the beholder) movies have been around since at least the 1970s. I'm thinking of something like DePalma's Scarface from the early 1980s as probably more of a bell-weather for movie violence than anything Tarantino has done.

 

Yes, ultra violent movies had been around for a while, but had regressed to a slick comfortable style that was 'family friendly' in movies by Sly and Arnold.

Scarface was almost ten years old when Resevoir Dogs came out. So to me, it was a return to the 'Wild Bunch/Bonnie and Clyde' type of violence, that even when not directly shown on the screen....makes you uncomfortable.

It was grim.

I see your point though.

Okay, how about we call it the back-to-basics, independently-distributed film movement?

Edited June 4, 2010 by Chuck Gower

[seanfingh]

Agreed.

At the same time, we might also say that the "Grim and Gritty" comics kicked off by the likes of Miracleman, Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns pre-date the "Grim and Gritty" sound of grunge and the ultra violent Tarantino cinema movement....

 

I'm not sure... those analogies might be taking it a bridge too far. Rock music seems to go through a periodic cycle... punk of the '70s reacted to the post-Sgt Peppers art-rock, then the so-called New Wave bands reacted to Disco, then grunge reacted to, well... the Hollywood music video style over-production of the 1980s?

 

And I like Tarantino's stuff, but if he can be credited with a "cinema movement" at all, it would probably better be described as one filled with homages to other movie genres, jokey nerd-culture in-references (as in Denzel Washington's Silver Surfer rant in Tarantino's Crimson Tide -script re-write), and rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue. Ultra-violent (though that's in the eye of the beholder) movies have been around since at least the 1970s. I'm thinking of something like DePalma's Scarface from the early 1980s as probably more of a bell-weather for movie violence than anything Tarantino has done.

 

Yes, ultra violent movies had been around for a while, but had regressed to a slick comfortable style that was 'family friendly' in movies by Sly and Arnold.

 

Until Robocop was released in 1987. It might not seem like it now, but that movie, for the time, was disturbingly violent. It was also successful and even nominated for a couple of Oscars, I believe. Definitely a bell-weather for movie violence.

[chrisco37]

Agreed.

At the same time, we might also say that the "Grim and Gritty" comics kicked off by the likes of Miracleman, Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns pre-date the "Grim and Gritty" sound of grunge and the ultra violent Tarantino cinema movement....

 

I'm not sure... those analogies might be taking it a bridge too far. Rock music seems to go through a periodic cycle... punk of the '70s reacted to the post-Sgt Peppers art-rock, then the so-called New Wave bands reacted to Disco, then grunge reacted to, well... the Hollywood music video style over-production of the 1980s?

 

And I like Tarantino's stuff, but if he can be credited with a "cinema movement" at all, it would probably better be described as one filled with homages to other movie genres, jokey nerd-culture in-references (as in Denzel Washington's Silver Surfer rant in Tarantino's Crimson Tide -script re-write), and rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue. Ultra-violent (though that's in the eye of the beholder) movies have been around since at least the 1970s. I'm thinking of something like DePalma's Scarface from the early 1980s as probably more of a bell-weather for movie violence than anything Tarantino has done.

 

Yes, ultra violent movies had been around for a while, but had regressed to a slick comfortable style that was 'family friendly' in movies by Sly and Arnold.

 

Until Robocop was released in 1987. It might not seem like it now, but that movie, for the time, was disturbingly violent. It was also successful and even nominated for a couple of Oscars, I believe. Definitely a bell-weather for movie violence.

 

Great call. When I read the other posts about violence, Robocop definitely came to my mind.

 

[Zonker]

Since the Silver to Bronze Age debate has been re-ignited upstairs in Comics General, I though I'd take this opportunity to post a great article from the New York Times Magazine from May 1971. Interesting to see how then-contemporary media treated early 1970s comic books. Thanks to board member dmgcsr for pointing this article out 6 years ago, and to the kirbymuseum.org web site for hosting the jpgs I've grabbed.

 

[Zonker]

[Zonker]

[Zonker]

[Zonker]

[Zonker]

[Zonker]

[HouseofComics.Com]

Wow, what an interesting read. Thanks for posting.

[Zonker]

 

1987 is post-Bronze Age, no matter how you measure it, but I thought this was an interesting look from 25 years ago back at the 1970s/early 1980s changes in the comics industry. Emphasis added below.

 

Grown-Ups Gather at the Comic Book Stand

By KURT EICHENWALD

Published: September 30, 1987Correction Appended

 

 

Spiderman married. Clark Kent, alias Superman, became a yuppie. And some caped marvels have aged, developing paunches and mid-life crises.

 

Such transformations might not interest American children who for decades devoured most of the comic books for sale. But they have attracted older readers in such numbers that many publishers say adults are rapidly replacing children as their major source of revenue.

 

''If we had to give up every customer below the age of 15, we would survive,'' said Buddy Saunders, president of Lone Star Comics, a retail chain in North Texas. ''If we had to give up everyone above the age of 17, we'd be out of business.''

 

The Adult Invasion

 

In a business known for creative spirits more than for market researchers, few figures have been collected to demonstrate the aging of the comic book audience. But everyone in the industry - from publishers to distributors to retailers - agrees that the future of comic books lies in the adult market.

 

Already, a survey commissioned by the publisher of Marvel Comics has found, the average comic book reader is about 20 years old, illustrating that baby boomers and those right behind them have entered the market in large numbers. The average reader spends more than $10 a week on comics, an amount many children could not afford, the survey reported. Indeed, many newly released comics are being issued in slick paperback and hard-cover versions and sell for $2.50 to $20 a copy, even if most newly released comics cost only 75 cents to $1.25.

 

Typical of the adult aficionado is Jason A. Kinchen, a 26-year-old engineer in Boston. ''I'm somebody who collects comic books for fun,'' he said of his collection of 3,000 comics. ''I tend to buy based on the characters that I like. A lot of other people follow writers and artists around to different comic books.''

 

Among the characters who appeal most to adult readers are old favorites with new looks. One of the most popular comics in the last year has been ''The Dark Knight,'' which portrays the caped crusader Batman as he would appear in middle age. The four issues sold out within days.

 

As another example, sales of Superman comics had been lagging for years as the plot became more complex and, even for a superhero, less believable. DC Comics, the publisher, took Superman off the newsstands, reintroducing him months later in a world where weapons fired at him could cause pain and not every problem could be solved.

 

The desire to reach an expanding audience also explains why there are many new kinds of comics alongside the usual superhero stories. One comic is a study of aggression, another makes fun of other comics, and there are even historical comics about the Vietnam War, the life of Pope John Paul II and the Holocaust.

 

The fascination with comic books seems to be spreading to other segments of the entertainment industry. While the television and movie industries have long made millions of dollars from shows based on comic book characters such as Superman and Batman, they are now are buying rights to produce films based on even relatively unknown comic book characters.

 

For example, officials from First Comics Inc. said ABC was negotiating with them for the television rights to one of their titles, Jon Sable Freelance, the story of a soldier of fortune. Thousands of Dealers

 

About 4,000 stores in the United States are dedicated principally to selling comic books, up from fewer than 100 in the mid-1970's. Retail sales of comic books are expected to reach $350 million this year, up from less than $200 million four years ago. And these figures do not include the used-comic market.

 

Most adults who buy comics see them just as entertainment. But for others, they are an investment. Prices often soar in months or even weeks.

 

With three-year-old comics like Albedo, a science fiction adventure, commanding as much as $500 a copy, it is not surprising that the jargon of the comic book trade has begun to sound like that of Wall Street.

 

Buyers can be speculators or long-term investors. Tips about the potential value of yet-unpublished issues can create a huge demand for a comic. Then there are market adjustments, such as when the values of comics published in black and white plunged.

 

A Reversal from the 70's

 

The industry's prosperity represents a dramatic turnaround from the 1970's, when sales of comic books faltered. But as it turned out, a major reason for the industry's problems was the way comics were distributed and not a lack of appeal. For decades, comic books had been treated as if they were magazines. Publishers sold them to independent magazine distributors, which in turn sold them to newsstands and grocery stores at 20 percent below the cover price. Retailers and distributors could return any unsold comic books to the publisher.

 

But because comic books lacked a stable readership, publishers found that sales of a given line could swing dramatically from week to week. With comics a relatively small part of their business, independent distributors increasingly gave them short shrift. Unable to count on delivery, retailers also became increasingly disenchanted with comic books.

 

Then came Phil Seuling, a former New York schoolteacher and a comic book fan with a better idea for selling comics.

 

In the 1970's he negotiated an agreement with retailers and publishers to become the first specialty distributor of comic books. Under his arrangement, retail stores got a 50 percent discount for the comic books they purchased on a nonreturnable basis, and the stores were guaranteed delivery.

 

In 1980 several entrepreneurs copied Mr. Seuling's approach, and the competition among specialty distributors to supply comic book shops intensified. This encouraged publishers to become more creative.

 

''Before the presses start to roll, they know what their profits will be,'' said Maggie C. Thompson, co-editor of the Comic Buyers Guide, an industry publication based in Iola, Wis.

 

Once dominated by Marvel and DC, the industry now has about a dozen major new publishers and many smaller ones.

 

But if the industry is more stable now, it is still a tough business. The movement in and out of the market by speculators has made future demand difficult to gauge. And forecasting is hardly the strong suit of many of the relatively unsophisticated retailers who entered the business because they loved comics.

 

Speculators, each of whom often buys dozens or even hundreds of a new comic issue, have caused some disruptions in the market, severely affecting the business of the distributors and retailers. Not knowing which comics the speculators would snap up, retailers bought everything offered by distributors for many years.

 

Then came Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles.

 

A black-and-white comic, the Turtles in 1984 became a huge success even though black-and-white comics have traditionally been poor sellers. Speculators began demanding copies, and the price for the first issue soared as high as $150, 100 times its cover price. Retailers, thinking a fad in black-and-white comics was beginning, wanted their distributors to provide them with every one printed.

 

But the fad collapsed last fall. Retailers found themselves drowning in stacks of unsold black-and-white comics. It turned out that the success of Teen-Age Mutant Ninja Turtles lay not in the fact that the comic was in black and white. Readers just liked the story line.

 

Many retailers and small publishers have since gone out of business, leaving distributors stuck with unpaid bills.

 

Many in the industry see this setback as only temporary. ''The slump in the industry is a natural maturation process,'' said Milton Griepp, president of Capital City Distribution in Madison, Wis. ''There's going to be a constant shakeout until things are stable, but there are no signs that the growth rate is slowing.''

 

[Zonker]

Howard Chaykin (in his intro to the Best of Walt Simonson TPB) remembers with paper shortages being hyped in the early 1970s, that “most of us with half a brain figured comics were due for oblivion by the early eighties.”

 

 

Here's another rememberance from inside the industry in those years:

1968-1971: sales flatten and start to decline

 

"Comics had always been a cyclical business, and almost everybody in 1971 thought that super heroes must inevitably be on their way out again. That's why there was such a gold rush on to find the next big genre--sword-and-sorcery looked like it might be a contender, and there were a lot of new mystery (watered-down horror comics without much horror), war and western comics being churned out in this period. But the classic Marvel, Stan's Marvel, was still seen as something of a fad (even by Stan himself), and the common wisdom was that everybody was going to be doing something else very soon (possibly in another field entirely.)" - Tom Brevoort

 

 

Source

[jools&jim]

 

"Permanence is the illusion of every age..."

 

Or, if you like, from Catch 22:

 

"Rome was destroyed. Greece was destroyed. Persia was destroyed. Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours...?"

 

 

Substitute "eras" for "countries" in the above passage, and we arrive at an obvious and pedestrian--but also useful, I think--answer to our somewhat more limited question.

 

What are we talking about when we talk about the Bronze Age? Something that is...over. And, like our childhood, it ain't coming back.

 

Bummer...

 

 

[Zonker]

Here's a NY Times Book Review of Kirby's 4th World Omnibus I hadn't seen previously:

 

Comics

By JOHN HODGMAN

Published: June 1, 2008

In 1970, Superman went down a rabbit hole: a secret tunnel on the outskirts of Metropolis leading to a bizarre underground world inhabited by hippies, drop-outs and mutant creatures.

 

“Welcome to the wild area, brother,” announces the first person he encounters, a bearded young man meditating atop a giant mushroom that spits poison gas. “You are now free to do your own thing!”

 

This was issue No. 133 of “Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen” — the first to be written and drawn by the comics legend Jack Kirby. And so, without knowing it, Superman (and the reader) had wandered into what would come to be known as Kirby’s “Fourth World” — a weird saga of warring gods that for a brief moment hijacked the normally staid line of DC Comics and plunged it into bracing, beautiful oddness, and which is now fully and lovingly collected in the four-volume Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus (DC Comics, $49.99 each).

 

Besides the psychedelic jump-start he gave to Jimmy Olsen, Kirby started three new titles — “The Forever People,” “The New Gods” and “Mister Miracle.” All chart the conflict between two families of the New Gods: those on the peace-loving planet of New Genesis, and those living in the warlike world of Apokolips. Apokolips is ruled by the evil Darkseid, who seeks the “anti-life equation” that will erase all free will in the universe but his own. Pitted against him is his son, the monstrous yet noble Orion, raised on New Genesis to love peace but ultimately doomed by his addiction to war.

 

It was a cosmic “epic for our times,” with one foot in ancient myth and the other in the wildest science fiction. And unusually for a comic book story, it was designed to be told slowly, over many years, and to come to an end.

 

...

 

The results were startling. Kirby fans already knew that his art was muscular and kinetic, and in this collection, he’s at the height of his powers. His characters are always in motion, leaping and punching at impossible angles, straining at the panels that try to contain them. Kirby’s writing was the same way. His stories were linear — even primitive. But there is something powerful and melancholy and personal that weeps in Orion’s epic, city-smashing rages.

 

At other times, though, the pages cannot seem to keep up with Kirby’s astonishing imagination. Concepts, characters, subplots and themes are wildly thrown into the mix like drunken punches and then abandoned, never to be seen again: A whole city “hewn from the giant trees of a great forest”! Space giants lashed to asteroids! Werewolves and vampires living on a miniature planet in a scientist’s basement (a planet with horns on it)!

 

In the biography Kirby: King of Comics (Abrams, $40), the King’s longtime confidant and assistant Mark Evanier writes of Kirby that “when a new idea came to him, he jotted it down on a scrap of paper and, usually, lost it. Once, he got careless with a cigar, started a small fire in his workplace and lost over 50 concepts” — or, as his wife, Roz, put it, “‘a whole day’s work for Kirby.’”

 

Some of Kirby’s concepts were beguiling. Mister Miracle, a warrior of Apokolips who flees to Earth to become a “super escape artist,” keeps a “Mother Box” up his sleeve — a small, living computer that can enable its user to do almost anything, so long as it is sufficiently loved. In Kirby’s world, all machines are totems: weapons and strange vehicles fuse technology and magic, and the Mother Box in particular uncannily anticipates the gadget fetishism that infects our lives today. (The Bluetooth headset may as well be a Kirby creation.)

 

But sometimes, his inventions were merely bizarre, driven by some opaque, unknown part of his brain. At one point, one of the Forever People, Kirby’s band of

dimension-hopping flower children, gives a small boy named Donnie one of his “cosmic cartridges” — a device at once resembling a bullet and a large, mysterious pill.

 

“I — it feels warm — like it was alive!” Donnie says as his features blur into the cosmos. “I — I’m everywhere at once — I — I see — everything — and everything moves — and makes a kind of beautiful noise!”

 

It’s hard to know what a teenager would make of this. But Kirby was writing just as much for himself. He was 53 when he undertook the Fourth World, and a veteran of World War II. But as Evanier points out, and as is evident throughout this book, Kirby was deeply inspired by the young generation that was renouncing war around him. His understanding of the youth movement was perhaps idiosyncratic (in Kirby’s world, the “Hairies” built their perfect society in a giant missile carrier they called “The Mountain of Judgment”). But they too were forging a new world; and the pleasure he clearly took in their efforts seems to have balanced the bouts of Orion-like rage. In one moment, Highfather of New Genesis turns to one of the young boys in his care. “Esak,” he asks, “what is it that makes the very young — so very wise?”

 

“Tee hee!!” Esak replies. “It’s our defense, Highfather — against the very old!!”

 

This is probably the only passage in the English language containing the words “tee hee” that has actually moved me.

 

This optimism pervades the first two volumes of the “Fourth World Omnibus,” and it helps the reader forgive its occasional excesses. It also lends poignancy to the failings of the second two volumes. For these are the books that document the premature death of the New Gods. By the 11th issue, as sales flagged, DC withdrew its Kirby mandate and the story ended, long before it was finished. Kirby was forced to wrap up as much of his saga as he could, in one rushed issue of Mr. Miracle, and then the wild area was closed.

 

{discussion of Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze and Brian K Vaughan's Y the Last Man deleted}

 

Kirby imagined a different future for comics, one in which creators would own their own work. One in which they could tell ambitious personal stories with beginnings, middles and ends. And one in which the individual issues would be collected into books, which would be sold in bookstores, and kept forever. Indeed, that is exactly the success that both “Age of Bronze” and “Y: The Last Man” have enjoyed.

 

But before you conclude that Kirby, who died in 1994, was nothing but a doomed prophet, there is more to his epic. As recounted by Evanier in his biography and annotations to the “Fourth World Omnibus,” by the end of his life, Kirby was rightly lionized by the fan community. He would eventually win back a great deal of his original art from Marvel, and so he profited from it as a kind of retirement fund. And while the New Gods died, they nonetheless achieved a sort of Achilles-like immortality. Because Kirby did not own the rights to his creations, his characters were rediscovered and reinterpreted by new generations of DC artists. (Indeed, Jim Starlin is currently killing them off once more in his miniseries “Death of the New Gods.”)

 

Finally, in the early ’80s, Kirby was given the chance to finish the story he had begun so long before. The graphic novel “The Hunger Dogs” provides the bittersweet coda to the “Fourth World Omnibus.” Given Kirby’s age at the time, it’s a remarkably accomplished, if uneven, work. But it is also surprisingly somber. Kirby’s faith in youth’s and technology’s ability to change the world has evaporated somewhat. Esak, the smiling, tee-heeing child, has grown into a deformed monster, creator of a doomsday device of such unrelenting magnitude that it even makes Darkseid nostalgic. “Old age is snapping at our heels — reaching for the hunter and the hunted,” he confesses to an old foe. “Perhaps I shall miss you when you’ve finally perished.”

 

While many believe this final chapter is something of a rushed failure, it contains elements that are bravely, authentically tragic. And as Evanier points out, the very fact that it is being reprinted now, alongside successful works like “Age of Bronze” and “Y: The Last Man,” makes it a strangely happy ending.

 

 

John Hodgman is the resident expert on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and the author of “The Areas of My Expertise.” His next book of fake trivia will be titled “More Information Than You Require.”

 

 

[Maccai3]

my understanding was that it was the beginning of real world issues, GL 76 being the start (and the whole run of Adams/O'Neil) of subjects about race and drugs and really making people believe that the world the characters exist in is the one that we too exist in.