Hey Kids! Comics!

Howard Chaykin’s “Hey Kids! Comics!” focuses on comic book writers, artists, and publishers at several fictional companies between 1945 and the early 2000s, tracking the history of the medium from the postwar slump through the 1960s resurgence of the Silver Age, ending with the new talent of the 1990s re-inventing the classics while film adaptations turned what was published as a disposable medium into mainstream culture. In an afterward, Chaykin writes, “I wanted to do a roman à clef about a healthy chunk of the history of our curious and intimately tiny industry…based on common and private knowledge, salacious rumor, comic anecdote and frankly, unsubstantiated gossip too delicious to disregard, regardless of any measure of proof” (pg. 148, ellipses in original). He continues, “We invest the material with a dee-seated and occasionally unconditional nostalgic love. This is despite the fact that many of its most creative and fabled practitioners – certainly those men and women who created the language and bult the foundations in the decades before comics achieved a measure of popular appeal – spent lives of disappointment, working in an industry that treated them with contempt, nagged by the reality of simply being not good enough to find a more legitimate way to make a living” (pg. 149). In this, Chaykin challenges his readers to understand what comics creators went through during the years of struggle and what they now experience seeing the work they produced at six pages a day on pulp paper become a massive industry that dominates the entertainment world, while they continue to receive little if any recognition or share of the sudden profits. In terms of its topic and verisimilitude, Chaykin’s story resembles Michael Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” though Chaykin benefits from his perspective as an insider in the medium and is primarily focused on the comics industry, rather than using it as a backdrop for a larger narrative. His keen insight will be of interest to those considering the field or who have ever been curious about what it was “really” like during the Gold and Silver Ages of comics.

People who have read comic books with any regularity over the past half century may recognize Howard Chaykin from his wide-ranging work creating superheroes, villains, and all manner of characters in between. Here he crafts a world as immersive and engaging as any of those earlier creations, and without violating the laws of physics. In telling the history of the American comic book industry, he presents a cast of characters modeled after people he may or may not have worked with at DC and Marvel. They drink, cuss, fight, fornicate. And they age, which Chaykin renders in exquisite detail (in contrast, it must be said, to comic book heroes who stay perpetually young by being rebooted every so often). My only disappointment is that we won't see a new installment for at least another six months.

Howard Chaykin, now with an almost 50 year history in the comic book business, "knows where all the bodies are buried," so to speak. He changes the names of both the (almost) innocent and the guilty, but Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Joe Maneely, DC big shots Donenfeld and Liebowitz and many others are easy to recognize. Stellar art and first class satire, Chaykin speaks truth to power yet again. Not to be missed. A+.

Chaykin's take on the history of comic books is beautifully drawn, imaginative, clever and a delight to read.

Chaykin’s “fictional” look at comic book history is a great companion to Chabon’s Kavalier & Clay. Can you find Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Alex Toth? I hope Chaykin continues the story. I’d love to read his take on Image and the other modern publishers.

If you are interested in comics history, this is a really great read. If you already know a little, some of the real life counterparts of the characters here will be obvious. Others might take some puzzling out. And Chaykin still has the drawing chops!

You can't go wrong with a book by HVC. The guy has been around and seen or heard it all. Now, he's pulling back the curtain to show the rest of us.

Also sprach Jack Kirby, whose voice (in the guise of "Sid Mitchell") is frequently heard as a righteously angry Greek chorus, raging at the ethical vacuum of the American comics industry, in Chaykin's excellent graphic history thereof.The history of American comics is largely characterised by those in power (publishers and editors) *****ing over the creators (mostly freelancers) whose talents made them rich in the first place. Chaykin notes that this isn't inherently different from most American businesses, except for the fact that at least some of the exploited were blazingly talented and those exploiting them had no interest in or knowledge of the intellectual properties they grew rich on. What went on may have been wholly legal, but that doesn't make it right, and there's an ironic gulf between the ethics of superhero publishers and those of their cash cow characters. It's a fascinating if depressing story and Chaykin's new take on it is gripping.Chaykin's strategy is to tell the story by dramatising characters and anecdotes which are largely well-known to those with an interest in comics history. If you know the field much of this will be familiar stuff, but seeing it "happening" to realistically crafted people, rather than just reading about it, makes it so vivid it's almost like you're hearing about it for the first time. As there's no obvious way to make a linear narrative out of such a diverse batch of source material, he's created what might be called a "mosaic novel". Each of the five issues of the original comic book publication looks at an event occuring in or around each of 1945, 1955, 1965 and the turn of the Millenium, each of which is, for different reasons, a crucial tipping point in the industry's history. This approach works surprisingly well and paints an entirely convincing picture of the industry and its progress (or lack of) over more than 50 years. Chaykin's always had an affinity for the recent past and clearly relishes the chance to draw New York in the forties, fifties and sixties. The book's only real weakness lies in Chaykin's limited ability to draw clearly differentiated faces, which is occasionally a little confusing.These events are seen from the worm's eye view of three freelance artists - Ted Whitman, Benita Heindel and Ray Clarke, whose fortunes go up and down as the industry changes. In the supplementary material Chaykin somewhat disingenuously states that most of his characters, with the exception of Sid Mitchell and the Stan Lee analogue Bob Rose, don't directly correlate with specific historic individuals. This is certainly true of his three lead characters. Whitman bears some resemblance to the great artist Matt Baker, but their stories are sufficiently different this might not be evident were not both Whitman and Baker black, and black artists were very rare in the period in question. There weren't many female artists either, and Heindel bears almost no resemblance to the two most prominent, Ramona Fradon and Marie Severin. Clarke has quite a bit in common with Gil Kane (his appearance and arrogant manner), but Clarke is at best a journeyman while Kane (Chaykin's early mentor) was one of the greatest artists the industry ever saw and one of the very few who could be considered something an intellectual.Others are also composites, but the inspirations for some characters are much more obvious. It's very easy to spot Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Siegel and Shuster, Jack Liebowitz, Harry Donenfeld and Joe Maneely. Anyone with a passing interest in comics industry will know the tale of an angry freelancer who allegedly dangled an editor out of a high window until the latter signed his paycheck, and will know the tale is usually told about a vastly talented artist with a Hungarian name and a difficult personality. Here, the character in question is a vastly talented artist with a Hungarian name and a difficult personality. You get the picture.It's interesting that Chaykin seems to reserve more vitriol for the editors than their bosses the publishers. It's almost as though he doesn't expect anything but grasping chicanery from the publishers, but feels the editors just might have been a tiny bit more decent. When (cat out of bag, now) Alex Toth is dangling Bob Kanigher out of that window, you'll be very disappointed when he hauls him back in again once he gets paid.All told, this is an excellent and unusual work which will pretty much delight anyone who likes to travel in the backwaters of comics history. Fingers crossed there's more to come, as the stories of the likes of Steve Ditko, Wallace Wood, Neal Adams and Graham Ingels offer lots more material. For me, this was an absolute five-star item, but I've given it four stars here to essentially point out that it's for a small and very specific target audience, and if you don't recognise most of the names I've mentioned, it's probably not for you.Oh, and if you're one of those people who can't abide a word of criticism of Stan Lee, you're best avoiding it, as your blood pressure will rise so dramatically you'll end up in critical care. The kindest thing that can be said about "Bob Rose" ("more interested in how he is perceived than in earning that perception") is that he's a paragon of moral rectitude compared to "Ron Fogel" ( the Bob Kane counterpart who is "incapable of writing or drawing the work to which his name is signed"). Caveat emptor, frantic ones!

Really enjoyed this graphic novel but I did find it a quite confusing read as many of the characters looked much the same and the timeline flicked back and forth between different periods of comic book history. The artwork was excellent throughout and the overall story was first rate - certainly probably needs a few re-reads. Does make you wonder why anyone would want to be an artist in the comic industry (certainly a few decades ago, I really hope it has improved now ? )

Das Comic-Business ist heutzutage ein Multi-Milliarden-Dollar-Geschäft, doch basiert es im wesentlichen auf Erfindungen, die Teenager in den 30er Jahren machten - und dabei von den Verlegern über den Tisch gezogen wurden. Während Marvel und DC Jahr um Jahr riesige Gewinne scheffeln, starben diejenigen, die sich die Figuren ausgedacht hatten, verbittert und teilweise verarmt. Howard Chaykin, einer der intelligentesten (und zynisch-ironischsten) amerikanischen Comicautoren entfaltet hier eine Erzählung, die über mehrere Jahrzehnte die Geschichte der amerikanischen Comic-Industrie aufs Korn nimmt. Manche Figuren sind eindeutig zu erkennen (und insbesondere Stan Lee kommt schlecht weg), andere weniger eindeutig, aber das alles ist ein großer, bitter-lustiger Lesegenuß. Exzellent.

A story about history of comics, by someone who was there to tell the tale firsthand, Those large promotors who called themselves creators are the great villains against some powerful creators who will last longer with their art