The New Self-Proclaimed Comic Book Historians

I revisit this subject because two people threatened to “revoke” my alleged status of “Comic Book Historian” because I did not agree with them or promote their interests.  

Well, I have never called myself a historian or an expert. I am a fan of comics, a researcher and a student. I love the medium and I love exploring it and finding new things about it. I feel the term “Historian” has been greatly misused. 

The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of historian is:

A writer or author of a history; esp. one who produces a work of history in the higher sense, as distinguished from the simple annalist or chronicler of events, or from the mere compiler of a historical narrative.

I guess I am being a bit harsh. This is because I have meet a lot of SPCBH’s, Self-Proclaimed Comic Book Historians. I have just seen too  many websites with that term, "Historian" in it. And I have seen too many books and magazines that have scanned a bunch of stories without any new thoughts or context and the author calls himself an historian. 

It was about 1960 and a reader wrote into Batman that they were an historian and knew everything about Batman and the editors had made several mistakes. The editors replied that they were sick and tired of people claiming to be historians of Batman. And they asked the reader, “Did you know that Batman carried a gun??  Well, I didn’t know that!!!! And I wanted to learn about it and read those old comics!

I have read twice as many DCs as Marvel, simply because DC published twice as many comics. Equal to both combined I have read comics from EC, Charlton, ACG, Harvey, Dell, Western, Archie, and dozens of companies from the 1950s. For me, the first collected publication of old comics was something I looked forward to so much. They were the 80-page Giants from DC. I especially loved the rare publication of comics from the “Golden Age,” the 1940s. I also loved the reprints of the old Batman Sunday comic strips, they were beautiful. Then after reading “The Flash of Two Worlds” and “Crisis on Earth 1 and 2” I really wanted to learn more about the Golden Age. 

So why do I write more about Marvel? I was there in the beginning! 

I was there before the Fantastic Four had uniforms; before Spider-Man broke up with Betty, when Ant-Man was a member of the Avengers, when the X-Men  graduated high school, when Daredevil had a yellow costume, when Thor’s (Don Blake’s) nurse was Jane Nelson not Jane Foster, when Henry Pym met Janet Van Dyne, when Johnny Storm live in Glenville and had a secret identity, when Iron Man didn’t have a secretary named Pepper, when Junior was a member of the Howlers and the first time the Hulk was colored green. (It was a misprint in his first issue, fixed in reprints.) 

I have met people who want to be an authority of comics. For example, about 2002, I went to a series of lectures about the Silver Age of comics.  An audience member asked if there was a connection between Marvel’s Black Panther and the Political group of the same name. The host didn’t know.  But I did and explained at length that there was no connection and, in Fact, T’Challa came out 9 months before the political group. 

The next week, the host got up and repeated what I said, saying that he looked it up. And he kept saying, “Remember, you heard from me!” He didn’t want them to remember that they heard it from me. After all, he was the “historian.”

During the same class a person asked why in the 1940s Superman did not serve in the military.  I responded that a very famous story that was published in the comic strip where Superman accidentally read the wrong eyechart, because he was using his x-ray vision. Believing he had bad vision was not drafted. The story is so famous that in Roy Thomas’s book on Superman during World War II Roy included it. Well the host said that was ridiculous and told everyone not to believe me. But soon he had claimed the historian mantle, not just of a certain era or a certain company but of all comics and was speaking about those two subjects. 

To Too many people just    click, copy, and paste. Stealing is not research. You must show us where you got your material and substantiate your claims, with references, footnotes or end notes   Copying makes you a plagiarist not an historian. Too many people scan in comics from other people's collections and put their name on the cover of the book. Those books often do not have any information on what the stories were about and why they were chosen. 

Many people, who post on the web and in some fanzines, give no indication of their background, research and sometimes their own identity. They write as they were witnesses to great or pivotal events in comic books history when they were not.

They make up their own scenarios  often discussing Stan Lee’s relationship with Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. Some even talk about what went on at DC and Charlton but Marvel gets most of the press. Throughout their storytelling, they use words such as “presumably”, “maybe” and “possibly” and yet reach concrete conclusions, treating their assumptions as facts they actually know! Journalists do print speculation and when properly labelled that is fine.

An advocate is not an historian.

Advocate:  One who defends, maintains, publicly recommends, or raises his voice in behalf of a proposal or tenet.

This is America, it’s OK to be an advocate. Presenting only your own point of view is advocacy, not history. People are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.

Before Lee passed, the aforementioned Silver Age "Host" told me that “Kirby should get half the pension of Stan Lee.” That is,  Stan Lee should give half his pension to Jack Kirby.” The irony of course, is that he was exploiting Kirby to get attention for himself, at the same time that he is accusing others of exploiting Kirby.

Ever since I read that comment about Batman I knew that there was so much out there to learn consider myself a fan, a researcher and a student.

I have found that often these people have no real idea that comic book publishing was and is a business. They often see comics solely as an art, not as a product needed to be sold and profitable.

 A true historian has to acknowledge, and deal with, everything he discovers. He looks for facts, he is not an advocate. As advocates, not historians, they look back at the Silver Age and want to be the lawyers, agents, and mothers of those who contributed, feeling they got a raw deal.  Well, they did, but no one held a gun to their heads, they did it voluntarily.  When it comes to Marvel, they may disavow anything Stan has said, unless it is one sentence from a complete interview, which - out of context - supports their case. Or they they  cite what Jack Kirby said AFTER 1981 and ignore what he said before then, when he was not combative with Marvel. In most cases, they’ll ignore Kirby’s "over the top" comments (like he created Spider-Man) because they know that is not true.

                                   

                                          You can’t prove a negative!

This is not a slight at Jack Kirby's genius. Jack Kirby was an incredible artist and storyteller, and SPCBH advocates will claim that Jack Kirby designed ALL the Marvel characters and wrote the scripts for ALL the Marvel stories he drew and then some. They present NO proof that he did these things, but challenge you by saying: Prove that he didn't.” Well, you can’t prove a negative. 

Steve Ditko often gets the worst of it because he lets his work speak for itself and wisely doesn't get involved with internet chatter. One “historian” had a ten minute conversation with Mr. Ditko 50 years ago, and contends now to be an expert on him. He told me that “he could tell by the tone in voice” what Ditko meant, even though he didn't ask the specific questions about the event this SPCBH relates.

A  Ditko story: 
Stan Lee, John Romita, Roy Thomas and even Steve Ditko have all said that Lee and Ditko were not talking to each other the last year Ditko worked at Marvel.  I received an e-mail asking, “Why did Ditko stop talking to Lee?”  My response was, “Why do you assume that it was Ditko who stopped talking?” It’s because they have already reached conclusions about Ditko without ever meeting him. People just tell the same Ditko rumors over and over again. Ditko, in his publications with Robin Snyder does discuss his last days at Marvel.

I have become friends with great comic book researchers including Nick Caputo, Mike Vassallo, and Ken Quattro. They are truly historians. Ken Quattro, who is a great researcher, modestly, refers to himself as the “Comic Detective,” a perfect term for all of us searching for facts. The SPCBHs come to them all the time wanting their comics, scans and research. Nick, Ken, Kid and Mike are perfect examples of the OED definition. They are not just simple chroniclers, or mere compilers, they research and produce comic book history on the highest levels. They are the prime sources for a lot of books. Mike has a wonderful, fun and informative book about Marvel’s hidden history!  They also have their own blogs where they freely share their views and findings. Often they are ripped off by SPCBH who steal their information and use it as their own, never giving the original source credit.

                            Mike and his family introducing his book

What Is a Comic Book Historian?

1. Historians let the facts lead them to a conclusion, not the other way around, where their conclusions lead them to select certain facts. Often facts can lead to speculation. A true historian labels it as such.
2. The absence of facts or evidence should not be labeled as fact or a conclusion. Things cannot be "supposedly", "possibly" or "presumed" to be true.  
3. True comic book historians  have devoted a large amount of time to reading and collecting comics. They have many of the originals, with the letter’s columns, notes and advertising! 
4. Historians  collect newspapers, magazines, fanzines, recordings, etc. They also have libraries full of books about the comics. They have sources and references AND THEY USE THEM. They have developed sources and communicate with them to verifying their facts. 
5. True historians know how much they DON’T know and accept that not every question will have an answer. 
6. There are well informed, good intentioned  people, who were in the comic book field, who like to think that they are historians and they may be. However, many are also witnesses to a select period of  comic book history
7. Finally, not all opinions are equally valid. When Nick posts and identifies an artist, or when Mike places a person at Timely on a certain date, or Ken reveals a hidden fact on Lev Gleason, or Mark Evanier relates an quote, I believe them. 

In the world of Academia papers and essays have  procedures to go through before they are printed. This, of course, is also true in journalism. Even a bad editor would stop a lot of this speculation on the internet.