American Comics: A History by Jeremy Dauber

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American Comics: A History

They rejected Superman—repeatedly. When a couple of Jewish teenage Clevelanders proposed the caped crusader to comic book publishers, “you gotta be kidding” was the response. Finally, with some apparent reluctance, DC accepted Superman, paid the kids $130 (good money in 1938) and took ownership of the name and every adventure to come.

The familiar story is retold as part of a larger history by Jeremy Dauber, professor of Jewish and American studies at Columbia. His American Comics is among several recent books working the same field. Unlike some of his predecessors, Dauber walks the fine line between gushing fandom and dry scholarship. American Comics is a fascinating chronicle of an entertainment (art?) form that has, as he writes, “conquered pop culture.”

The roots of comics run deep. Some trace them to cave paintings. Dauber isn’t sure he’d go back that far into (pre)history, but cites other candidates: Egyptian tomb paintings, Greek book rolls, Mayan ceramics, Japanese woodblock prints (he overlooks Eastern Orthodox icons). What’s certain is that cartoons, complete with speech bubbles as well as captions, were well established by the 18th century (Benjamin Franklin published several), usually with satirical intent (more on that later). The word “cartoon” gained currency in 19th century England and found a ready audience in the U.S., especially among the growing, often pre-literate (or non-English speaking) immigrant population.

In cartooning as in world politics, America was ascendent in the early 20th century, establishing familiar contours for comic strips and comic books in an almost step by step process. Recurring characters, instantly recognizable costumes, bizarre villains, the horizontal format of the comic strip, the pulp magazine layout of the comic book (allowing artists to splash an image across an entire page): the elements were in place when Superman took the sky over Gotham.

Dauber identifies the essence of cartooning as visual (and mental) shortcuts that exaggerate and simplify, ideal for attacking political opponents (their main function in earlier centuries) by drawing attention to their least attractive characteristics. Cartoons can also easily stereotype ethnic, gender, class and other groups. Like all cultural work, but perhaps more graphically, cartoons mirror and magnify prevailing social attitudes. Dauber retells the little-known story of George Herriman, whose Krazy Kat was among the most popular comic strips of the early 20th century. Herriman was never photographed without a hat. The reason was that the texture of his hair revealed the light-complexioned cartoonist as Black.

Comics triggered moral panics from early days. Dauber quotes a 1907 editorial accusing the strips of a “depraving vulgarity so colossal that it is rapidly taking on the dimensions of nothing short of a national crime against our children.” Regarding crime-busting superheroes, essayist Gershon Legman derided the “philosophy of ‘hooded justice’” and compared Superman to the night riders of the Ku Klux Klan. Dauber arches his eyebrow but the critics had a point about the content of comics at their worst. Of course, by the end of the last century, Maus and Sandman would repudiate any high-brow accusation that comics are inherently trash.

American Comics examines the long-running question of individual creativity vs. corporate ownership. Individuals were often hard to identify, given the collective workshop production of comics, especially in their early years. Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were eventually given more money and were allowed to continue cranking out tales in bright primary colors about their man in tights. That too is a familiar story but Dauber uncovers something less known. One of Siegel’s inspirations for Superman was … Franklin D. Roosevelt?