Next time we see each other could you give me a crash course on legit Western comics so I'm not so lost on where to go from my relative groping in the dark?
The above request came to me in 2023, from my friend Colby Smith, who is a Neo-Decadent writer living in Cleveland. I must have had some free time on my hands, because I responded by writing him an entire Word Document on the requested subject. I completely forgot about this, but stumbled upon the document recently while looking for another file. Having read it over, I think my off-the-cuff recommendations (along with some historical context) do hold up as a crash course, albeit idiosyncratic and written for a specific audience of one. At the time, Colby also mentioned he was familiar with manga (unsurprising, as he is a Zoomer) and that he was also "getting into Grant Morrison." I used that information, combined with my personal knowledge of his other literary tastes, while crafting this quick guide. Perhaps it will be of some use to other Zoomers—or anyone else who is curious about comics, but intimidated or turned off by nerd culture and all the shitty books which can obscure what's interesting.
So with some minimal editing and clarification, here is my original response to Colby Smith, ZOOMER:
Golden Age (The first comics, up into the very early ‘60s.)
Outside of Plastic Man, most of the superhero shit from this period is extremely dated and of little interest to anybody except diehards.
Almost everybody agrees that the best comics of the 1950s were put out by EC. They’re best remembered for their horror comics like Tales from the Crypt, but they also did science fiction comics, war comics, and crime comics. There are a million collections and reprints of this material, none of them bad. You’ll probably find the writing to be juvenile, but it really pushed the envelope for the time period and they had the absolute best artists.
Silver Age (superheroes almost died out after WWII, but came back in a big way. DC redesigned and updated a lot of their characters to be sleeker and more space age, and Marvel also got started. This timeframe runs from the early ‘60s to the mid/late ‘70s.)
DC had some great artists in the ‘60s, but the stories were very goofy and aimed at a younger audience. Grant Morrison actually references this stuff a lot, but there really isn’t a single title or author/artist pairing to recommend. There’s just so much of this crap.
Marvel is absolutely overrated, but there is no denying that their early output had an energy and excitement about it. Early Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and Doctor Strange are the titles of interest here, and Penguin (yes, Penguin) recently did some nice collections of some of this material, which I can recommend as far as the quality of the presentation. Be forewarned that a little can go a long way with this stuff— it starts out fun and charming but can quickly become a chore.
Bronze Age (Late’70s to late’80s. The readership is now a little older, and the first comics specialty shops get started. The ‘80s were a real high watermark for comics in general, a time of real innovation. This is the "comics aren't just for kids" era.)
After a slump in the ‘70s, Marvel came back hard. Their three major titles of interest were Chris Claremont’s X-Men, Walter Simonson’s Thor, and Frank Miller’s Daredevil. But honestly, you can probably skip all that.
DC was fucking badass in the ‘80s. After his Daredevil stint, Frank Miller jumped over to them and did Ronin—an early graphic novel that took inspiration from Manga and Euro comics. (Incidentally, Miller is largely responsible for bringing Manga to America.) Ronin is very ambitious and innovative, but it’s a little clunky. Miller really got it together shortly after with Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. For superhero comics, these are pretty good.
Alan Moore also started with DC at this time and did Watchmen. Honestly, you’d probably be more interested in his run on Swamp Thing.
Heavy Metal magazine also got going in this period, and brought a lot of Euro artists to American readers. For Euro shit, check out The Incal, by Moebius and Jodorowsky. For smutty Euro stuff, most everything by Manara is good. For total psychosis, check out RanXerox, by Liberatore.
A lot of other odd publishers sprung up in this period, and there were interesting titles like Dave Steven’s Rocketeer (really only interesting because of the art), and Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, which was kind of cyberpunk and very cutting edge visually.
Tangential to all this was the “black and white boom,” which largely came about because of The Ninja Turtles— publishers realized they could make money doing cheaper comics without any color, and tons of them saturated the market. I’ve never read The Crow, but that book is a better example of a book like that. Dave Sim’s Cerebus is also somewhat related to that current, but also total distinct. (Dave Sim is a rabbit hole unto himself.)
“The Dark Age” (1990s to early 2000s?)
Marvel had a somewhat interesting sugar rush in the early 90s, but the interest was mostly visual, and many of those artists jumped ship to start Image.
Some of those Image guys did better work at Marvel, but once they had their own company and they basically got rid of any editorial guidance they just acted like idiots. Out of the ‘90s Image books, about the only thing that might interest you is Sam Keith’s The Maxx, which was pretty wild and inventive, as was Keith Giffen's Trencher. (Alan Moore also did some stuff for Image, but I’m not really familiar with it.)
DC kept it comparatively classy in the ‘90s, and the monthly Batman titles were somewhat good early in the decade. They also started their “Elseworlds” line, where they did zanier stories outside of established continuity. A good example of this would be the Batman “Red Rain” stories in which Batman fights Dracula and then becomes a vampire himself— sounds stupid, but it’s really well done.
DC’s Veritigo imprint will probably interest you more than anything else. The line has its origins in the ‘80s but didn't officially start until the ‘90s, so it’s not generally thought of as “Bronze Age.” I’ve noticed that whenever Neo-Decadent people try to talk to me about comics, it is almost always Vertigo related— probably because it was a writer-forward imprint and often had “weird horror” aspects. But honestly, I never read much of this stuff. Sandman might be good, but I never read it. And Grant Morrison did Animal Man for Vertigo, and from what I’ve heard that sounds kind of interesting.
Contemporary
After the mid ‘90s I really lost interest in mainstream comics and think they mostly went to shit. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight sequel (DK2) from the early 2000s is interesting though, if only because it is so insane and unhinged.
Underground (Mid ‘60s to late ‘70s)
UG comix are kinda hard to talk about, in that all those guys continued to do stuff after the official timeframe ended. They sold the books in head shops, but for a variety of complicated legal reasons that all fell apart. But a lot of those guys came back in the ‘80s since they could sell their stuff in the new comic shops, and frankly almost all the work from the ‘80s was better. Also, most of the original UG books were anthologies, featuring multiple artists. Zap is the most famous, but it really wasn’t all that good. The absolute best UG anthology was Arcade, which was a victim of bad timing, as it came out right as the UG movement was dying, but before the ‘80s “alternative” scene started.
Crumb: You’d understandably consider starting with his hippy ‘60s stuff, but his best work was from the ‘80s. All his stuff is in print and easily found across a variety of collections. None of it is bad.
S. Clay Wilson: Honestly, he wasn’t all that great and he just did the same thing over and over, but it’s so psycho you should check out at least a few examples of his work.
Rory Hayes: Rory was more of an “outsider artist.” I don’t really like his stuff, but you might find it interesting— really strange and crude stories about teddy bear creatures. He died young, I think from a drug overdose. Fantagraphics did a complete collection of his work.
Rick Griffin: Hardly any writing to speak of in his work, as he was mostly a poster artist. But his comics are like mystic surfer shit written in an alien language. Nothing else like it. He became a Jesus freak and died in a motorcycle accident.
Art Spiegelman: His early stuff (collected in Breakdowns) is very experimental. Maus is also good, but kinda middlebrow.
Harvey Pekar: The first two American Splendor collections have good stuff. Avoid everything he did after that, as it ranges from mediocre to awful.
Liminal Zone
There were some guys who kinda straddled UG and mainstream. Richard Corben is a prime example. He almost exclusively did horror comics and was very into Edgar Allan Poe. Personally, I’m only interested in him for his use of color, which is absolutely lurid and unlike anything else.
Steve Ditko (original Spider-Man artist) lost his mind and started self publishing comics inspired by Ayn Rand and Objectivism. These books are fucking insane and I love them.
Will Eisner did a Golden Age newspaper strip about a superhero, The Spirit. Technically, this was very innovative stuff. He spent some time after that doing general commercial art, but he saw what was going on with the UG comix and he got inspired and started doing early graphic novels like Contract with God. I really haven’t read as much of this stuff as I should, and it is a bit middlebrow—but it is 100% of historical importance.
Witzend: Extremely strange self-published magazine by the old EC artist, Wally Wood. This publication, which featured numerous contributors, is probably the best example of the liminal space between UG and mainstream. Imagine alcoholic WWII vets trying to be underground, but all they can come up with is thin stories about barbarian women. (Ditko's Randian stuff was also featured in Witzend.)
Alternative (‘80s to present)
Love and Rockets: This is a historically important title and people still love it, but I never really understood it.
Peter Bagge: He really got cooking in the ‘90s with HATE, but I have to wonder if that has aged well. It is extremely Gen X.
Dan Clowes: A fucking genius, all his stuff is good. (Note: the Ghost World movie is better than the comic.)
Chester Brown: Complete maniac. His first collection, Ed the Happy Clown, is a good place to start.
Mike Diana: Very crude and basically “outsider art.” He got arrested for his work back in the ‘90s, and it was a major First Amendment rights battle.
Some women artists of interest: Mary Fleener, Dame Darcy, Phoebe Gloeckner, Nina Bunjevac.
Some later stuff of interest: D.J. Bryant (Unreal City), John Porcellino (King Cat—very meditative and deceptively simple), Noah Van Sciver.
And with that, my guide for Colby trailed off. So on the subject of contemporary alternative comics, I'd like to add:
Anyone looking for non-mainstream comics might very well find themselves disappointed if they only see what is getting hyped and pushed. As things stand currently, much of the trendy and popular work is insufferably twee and simple-minded. Imagine a contemporary middlebrow best-selling novel that is suffused with identity politics, but written for babies and drawn poorly; On the surface, that's the current situation, and has been for at least a decade. But don't despair. For those willing to look beyond their local library or bookstore, interesting work can be found. Ryan Carey's Four Color Apocalypse frequently reviews otherwise overlooked work from the contemporary comics scene (along with other writings which could be classified as "fringe lit"), and the wonderful Domino Books always has a vast but curated selection of publications that are often near impossible to find elsewhere. And of course, a handful of major cities also have "brick and mortar" stores which make a point of promoting worthwhile work, like Desert Island (in Brooklyn) and Partners and Son (in Philadelphia), to name a few.
Are comics "not just for kids" anymore? I don't know. From Zoomers to Boomers, sometimes it feels like we're all babies now.
Left, Aaron Lange. Right, Super Host. Akron Ohio, 2019.
I liked Robert Williams and Skip Williamson if I have that name remembered right. You’re right about EC comics. It’s been so long since I’ve thought about any of this. Jim Woodring is good. I need to read all of Eightball. Anarchy Comics with Paul Mavrides’ work I liked too.