Science Fiction and Comic Books-Part 2

If you're looking for the first comic strip in the format we recognize today--a sequence of images in which words and pictures are integrated in the telling of a story--then comics probably date from the 1890s. Sorry, Rodolphe Töpffer. (1) The origins of modern day science fiction are less discrete. One argument might be just as good as another. But why don't we start with the 1890s and the publication of H.G. Wells' novels The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898)? In a period of four years, Wells produced a time travel story, a story of monsters and mutation, the tale of an invisible man, and--for all practical purposes--the first narrative of an invasion from outer space. All would be fodder for science fiction writers of the twentieth century. And we shouldn't forget that the first pulp magazine was published in 1896.

If science fiction and comics were born in 1895-1896, they didn't quite grow up together. Newspaper comics became enormously popular, and despite later claims to primacy made by European intellectuals, a truly and uniquely American art form. Book publishers cashed in on the popularity of newspaper comics by issuing bound collections of reprints. These were supposedly the first comic books and the mark of the so-called Platinum Age of Comic Books. (Comic book fans have shown themselves to be far more thorough systematizers than science fiction fans.) The first comic books in the format we recognize now were printed in 1933, but these, too, were reprints. The first comic books with original material didn't show up in print until 1935.

Science fiction on the other hand evolved in the pages of pulp magazines, from the early scientific romances, through planetary romance, "Scientifiction," and space opera, to the science fiction of the 1930s. Edgar Rice Burroughs was instrumental in popularizing science fiction. One Golden Age author after another attributed his or her interest in the genre to first reading Burroughs, especially the Martian novels, which began with the pulp serial "Under the Moons of Mars" (1912), published in book form as A Princess of Mars in 1917. The next two decades saw the first publication of an all-fantasy magazine (Weird Tales in 1923), the first all-science fiction magazine (Amazing Stories, 1926), the invention of the term science fiction (1929), the first science fiction fan clubs (ca. 1929), and the first science fiction fan magazine (The Comet, 1930). The first science fiction conventions followed in the 1930s. By the time the Golden Age of Science Fiction began in 1938 (or even 1933), the die was cast. Science fiction was more or less what we know today.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) The important point here is the integration of words and pictures. Rodolphe Töpffer and other European cartoonists even to this day separate their words, in the form of captions, from their pictures. Prince Valiant is a good example of the European approach. (It's the reason why I think that Prince Valiant may not be a true comic strip. It's worth noting that Hal Foster, the creator of Prince Valiant, was Canadian, hence closer in some ways to Britain than to America.) Some early American newspaper comics used the same approach, but most switched to using word balloons after the example of Richard F. Outcault in his drawings of the Yellow Kid. Although the Kid made his debut in 1895, it took about a year before Hogan's Alley (the name of the feature in which he appeared) evolved into what we would call a comic strip. Historians argue over the date of the first American newspaper comic strip. Some say 1895, some 1896. That's close enough.

Copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

Science Fiction and Comic Books-Part 1

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is said to have begun in 1938 when John W. Campbell, Jr., assumed full editorial control of Astounding Stories (thereafter renaming it Astounding Science-Fiction). The previous editor, F. Orlin Tremaine, asserted that the Golden Age, or at least a Golden Age, began in 1933 when he himself took over at Astounding. I won't quibble with Tremaine or with the science fiction authors and fans who claim 1938 as their beginning date. In either case, this year is an anniversary year for science fiction, a diamond jubilee if the year was 1938, an eightieth anniversary if the year was 1933.

Two thousand thirteen is an anniversary year for the beginning of another Golden Age. And again, there is disagreement as to when that Golden Age--the Golden Age of Comic Books--began. Some say 1938, and for good reason, for that was the year Superman made his debut in comic books. Others claim 1933 as the beginning, for in that year comic books in their present form first appeared. Again, this year is either the seventy-fifth or the eightieth anniversary of the beginning of a Golden Age. (1) Again, I won't quibble. I'll just say Happy Anniversary.

Although there could not have been science fiction until there was such a thing as science, historians of the genre trace its origins back thousands of years. Likewise, historians of the comics look to ancient (or even prehistoric) sources for the origins of their medium. You can make a good case that science fiction predates comics. If you do, you might use Mary Shelley's romance Frankenstein (1818) as Exhibit A. (2) The earliest examples of what we might recognize as comic strips were the work of Rodolphe Töpffer (1799–1846) and date from 1827. (3) But what about science fiction and comics in their present form? When did they originate?

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) If 1938 was the year, and the first Campbell issue of Astounding and Action Comics #1 were the two periodicals that kicked off their respective Golden Ages, then we are, as I write this, in what you might call a two-month anniversary period: John W. Campbell became editor of Astounding with the May 1938 issue, while Action Comics #1 was dated June 1938.

(2) According to Wikipedia, Brian Aldiss has argued in Mary Shelley's favor.

(3) If Frankenstein was the first science fiction story and Rodolphe Töpffer the first comic strip artist, then maybe Switzerland should claim both science fiction and comics as its own: Frankenstein was conceived beside Lake Geneva; Töpffer was born in Geneva.

Copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

More Authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction-Damon Knight

Damon Knight
Author, Editor, Critic, Artist, Cartoonist, Science Fiction Fan
Born September 19, 1922, Baker, Oregon
Died April 15, 2002, Eugene, Oregon

Damon Knight was the youngest by far of my current batch of authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He may have been the most precocious among them as well, becoming as he did a science fiction fan at age eleven and publishing his own two-issue fanzine as a teenager. Born in 1922, Knight was only seventeen when his first cartoon was published in Amazing Stories in May 1940. That same year, Knight also had his first fiction ("The Itching Hour," Futuria Fantasia, Summer 1940) and his first non-fiction (one or more pieces in 1939 Yearbook of Science, Weird and Fantasy Fiction) published. The record of his career, which started off so auspiciously, is extraordinary.

Knight wrote reviews, essays, memoirs, editorial content, and of course fiction in his six decades in science fiction. I won't go into his accomplishments when you can read them in other sources. Being an artist myself, I would like to mention that Damon Knight drew illustrations for several science fiction and fantasy magazines. There aren't many writers of science fiction and fantasy who are also artists. Weird Tales may have had more than its share with C.L. Moore, Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, and Damon Knight. Also, I would like to point out that Knight was married to another science fiction writer, Kate Wilhelm (b. 1928).

According to Wikipedia, Damon Knight attributed the term "idiot plot" to James Blish but helped to popularize it in his own critical essays. We have all seen and suffered through movies and TV shows with idiot plots, although we may not have known there was a term for such a thing. An idiot plot, simply enough, is a story that depends on the stupidity of its characters: if they weren't so stupid, the story would come to an immediate end. I have complained for years that the people in a movie or TV show can't be and shouldn't be less intelligent than the people watching it. If they are, the show is in real trouble. Some examples of idiot plot devices: "There's a psycho killer on the loose--let's split up." Or, "There's a Tyrannosaurus rex trying to find us and eat us--let's draw attention to ourselves by shining a flashlight in his eyes." Or, "These aliens speak in metaphors instead of words, but we're too stupid to figure that out in the first five minutes of the show the way our viewers have." (That last example is from Star Trek: The Next Generation, an idiot plot champion if there ever was one.) Damon Knight seems to have been a crusader against bad writing. I'm glad he stood against the idiot plot and other sins.

Finally, Damon Knight wrote "To Serve Man" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Nov. 1950), a sort of idiot plot turned inside out. That story became one of the most memorable episodes from The Twilight Zone and a very fine in-joke from Naked Gun 2-1/2. It was also won a Retro-Hugo Award in 2001, a year before the author's death.

For Weird Tales

"Ghouls Feeding" (poem, Mar. 1944)

Illustrations for Weird Tales

"Herbert West: Reanimator: The Scream of the Dead" by H.P. Lovecraft (Nov. 1942)

"The Dead World" by Clarence Edwin Flynn (poem, Nov. 1942)

"Seventh Sister" by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (Jan. 1943)

"Quest Unhallowed" by Page Cooper (poem, Mar. 1945)

"The Haunted Stairs" by Yetza Gillespie (poem, May 1946)

Damon Knight became a member of the Futurian Society, based in New York City, in 1941. Among the group's other members were Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, James Blish, Judith Merril, and Donald A. Wollheim. "Seven marriages and five divorces took place within this group," Knight remembered. "Like the members of any other large family, the Futurians sometimes found they couldn't stand each other: there were quarrels, feuds, factions, even a few more or less serious murder threats." Knight wrote about the group in his memoir from 1977, The Futurians. Despite the occasional or frequent enmity among the members, I have a feeling they looked back on their days in the Futurians as a kind of golden age.

Damon Knight had just turned twenty when this illustration for "Herbert West: Reanimator" was published in Weird Tales in November 1942. The model for West was Knight's friend, Jean Michel (1917-1969).

Text and captions copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

More Authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction-Fredric Brown

Fredric Brown
Author, Journalist, Television and Movie Scriptwriter
Born October 29, 1906, Cincinnati, Ohio
Died March 11, 1972, Tucson, Arizona

Like Anthony Boucher, Fredric Brown was a writer of science fiction and mystery stories. Both also used a good deal of humor in their work. One difference is that Brown was supposedly an atheist, while Boucher was a devout Catholic. Boucher was a great admirer of Fredric Brown, as were Philip K. Dick and Mickey Spillane among others. Brown's story "Arena" was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame by the Science Fiction Writers of America. It was also adapted to television in an episode of Star Trek.

Also like Anthony Boucher, Fredric Brown died at a relatively young age (sixty-five for Brown vs. sixty-six for Boucher). The two were rough contemporaries. Though born in Cincinnati, Brown worked in Milwaukee for many years as a newspaperman. Brown joined the Milwaukee Fictioneers Club. Robert Bloch was also a member, as were--at various times--Stanley G. Weinbaum, Ralph Milne Farley, and Raymond A. Palmer. I haven't found a complete source of information on the Milwaukee Fictioneers Club. I suspect other well known authors were involved or connected in some way, including Jim Kjelgaard. Fredric Brown was also associated with the science fiction fans, writers, and artists of Los Angeles.

According to the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Brown's first published science fiction story was "Not Yet the End" from Captain Future, Winter 1941. (He had published mystery or detective stories before that.) He would go on to write many more science fiction and mystery stories during his thirty-year career. Brown wrote three stories for Weird Tales published between 1943 and 1950. The first is called "The Geezenstacks." The last is called--fittingly--"The Last Train."

You can read about Fredric Brown on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Wikipedia, and other sources. For the full story you will--as always--have to turn to a book.

For Weird Tales

"The Geezenstacks" (Sept. 1943)

"Come and Go Mad" (July 1949)

"The Last Train" (Jan. 1950)

Despite the fact that this is one of the most iconic images in American science fiction, Frank Kelly Freas' cover for Astounding Science Fiction, illustrating Fredric Brown's story "Martians, Go Home," can be hard to find on the Internet. The original was published in September 1954. I've had to resort to the British version from February 1955. This may be a hairless self-portrait. Mr. Spock (who early on had green-tinged skin) may have been an offspring of Freas' Martian. Even by 1955, the image of the Little Green Man was a cliché. The Little Gray Man is a newer incarnation of this very old type.

Text and captions copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

Before the Golden Age-Anthony Boucher

Anthony Boucher
Pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White
Aka William A. P. White, Herman Mudgett, Herman W. Mudgett, H. H. Holmes
Editor, Reviewer, Critic, Translator, Radio and Television Scriptwriter, Author, Poet
Born August 21, 1911, Oakland, California
Died April 29, 1968, Oakland, California

William A.P. White was just fifteen years old when his story "Ye Goode Olde Ghoste Storie" was published in Weird Tales in January 1927. That must make him among the youngest authors to have contributed to "The Unique Magazine." A generation later, he contributed two more stories to Weird Tales under his pseudonym Anthony Boucher. That's the name by which most readers knew him during his short life and by which they know him today.

William Anthony Parker White was born on August 21, 1911, in Oakland, California. He graduated from the University of Southern California and with a masters degree from the University of California, Berkeley. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, White, using the name Anthony Boucher, composed a poem called "Sonnet of the Unsleeping Dead," dated 1935. The database doesn't give a date of publication before 1947 however. Instead, Boucher's earliest credit is given as the mystery novel The Case of the Crumpled Dead from 1939. (The Case of the Seven of Calvary, from 1937, preceded it.) His first science fiction story was apparently "Snulbug" from Unknown Worlds from December 1941. The editor of that magazine was John W. Campbell, Jr.

If you would like to read more about Anthony Boucher you might start with the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and the sites to which it is linked, and from there to Wikipedia and the sites to which it is linked. Suffice it to say that he was an indispensable editor, reviewer, critic, author, scriptwriter, and friend. Boucher contributed to a number of science fiction and fantasy magazines and founded one of his own, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, with J. Francis McComas, in 1949. The magazine is still in print after sixty-four years.

Boucher died of cancer on April 29, 1968, in Oakland. In a remembrance published the following year, McComas wrote:

Anthony Boucher died last April. He has been gone over a year now, and as James Reach wrote in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, "How shall we manage without him?" The answer is that we haven't managed too well.

In his remembrance, McComas mentioned Boucher's devout Catholicism. Wikipedia skips over that part, either out of negligence (likely) or that curious squeamishness or outright contempt people have these days towards religion. It seems to me that mention of Boucher's religion is essential in any discussion of the man and his work. For example, Boucher wrote two stories for Weird Tales under his pseudonym, "Mr. Lepescu" (Sept. 1945) and "The Scrawny One" (May 1949). "The Scrawny One" is a truly (and literally) diabolical story. I wonder if a casual believer or a non-believer could have imagined a character as evil, tricky, and--in Marvin Kaye's words--"nasty" as the title character. If you're looking for an equal to Screwtape, you might begin with Boucher's "scrawny one."

One last note: William A.P. White also used the pseudonyms H.H. Holmes and Herman W. Mudgett. That was a fiendish joke, for Holmes was the pseudonym of Mudgett, a monstrous serial killer of the nineteenth century, a man who should be as notorious today as Jack the Ripper.

And a bibliographical note: Anthony Boucher's papers are located at the Lilly Library at Indiana University.

For Weird Tales

"Ye Olde Ghoste Storie" (as by William A.P. White, Jan. 1927)

"Mr. Lepescu" (as by Anthony Boucher, Sept. 1945)

"The Scrawny One" (as by Anthony Boucher, May 1949)

The Magazine of Fantasy (retitled The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction with the second issue) made its debut in Fall 1949. The co-editor was Anthony Boucher, who also contributed a story under another pseudonym, H.H. Holmes. In my introduction to the current series of authors, I quoted Isaac Asimov, who stated that the Golden Age of Science Fiction came to an end in 1950 when Astounding was no longer the only science fiction magazine (or the only one worth reading I suppose). The implication is that The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction brought the Golden Age to its end. I'm not sure Asimov meant to say things in just that way. F. Orlin Tremaine claimed that the Golden Age began before 1938. Admirers of Anthony Boucher and of science fiction of the 1950s might request that its ending be extended to a later date, perhaps 1958, when Boucher left The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and the old pulp magazines were breathing their last.

Bill Stone is credited as the cover artist, but that's a photo cover. Was Stone the photographer, the technician who created the montage, the designer, or all three?

Beginning in 1952, Boucher and McComas edited an annual collection of the best stories from their magazine. This is the cover of that first collection with art by the greatest of space artists, Chesley Bonestell. By the way, Boucher and Bonestell both bore names with tricky pronunciations. Boucher is pronounced to rhyme with voucher. Bonestell is pronounced Bonn-es-stell.

Text and captions copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

A New Magazine?

I am considering publishing a magazine, a story magazine roughly in the format of the old pulp magazines, with stories, poems, and illustrations in every issue. I suppose that makes me an anachronism now that the future of words on paper looks so bleak. I would like to tell stories, though, and I would like to offer a real, physical, and enduring object to readers who desire something more than to look at a stream of electrons.

I'm interested in the genres of weird fiction, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. I would like to tell stories in the spirit of the pulp magazines and digests of the 1920s through the 1950s and '60s--not pastiches, not video games or comic books converted to prose, not ripoffs of Lovecraft, Howard, or Tolkein, not stories filled with purple prose or mounds of adjectives and adverbs, but well written, imaginative, and enjoyable fiction. That may also mark me as an anachronism.

I'm asking here for opinions, suggestions, ideas, and perhaps more than anything, encouragement, if anyone can offer honest encouragement. Please send me your questions and comments either below in the comments block or by email at:

info@hoosiercartoonists.com

Thanks. I look forward to hearing from you.

Copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley

Happy Birthday to Nictzin Dyalhis

Today is Nictzin Dyalhis' birthday, that is, if he told the truth about the day he was born. I suspect that he did. Today is also the 140th anniversary of his birth, again, if he told the truth about the year of that event. He may or may not have. I think 1873 is the best of the dates offered as his year of birth, but there isn't much evidence to support it. In any case, Happy Birthday to an enigma, a curiosity, a character who could not have been invented but who could only have invented himself. Happy Birthday to Nictzin Dyalhis.

Copyright 2013 Terence E. Hanley