Comics, Comix, and the Graphic Novel

The original Captain Marvel was published by Fawcett Comics and outsold Superman in the 1940s. Ironically, DC Comics in the 1970s purchased the original Captain Marvel character, but could not put his name on a front cover. So, the comic was called Shazam (after the wizard who granted Captain Marvel his powers). Robert Harvey tells us that, “The reason DC Comics uses Shazam instead of Captain Marvel is that Marvel Comics many years ago launched a Captain Marvel of their own—punctuating it a little differently (Mar-Vel) but close enough that DC didn’t want to risk using a rival’s close approximation.”

Today’s comics range from simple domestic humor such as The Family Circus to the sophisticated social and political satire of Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury. Cathy takes on the problems of single professional women. BC, The Wizard of Id, Broom Hilda, Zippy and many more offer a combination of simple amusement and allegorical meaning.

Underground comix deal with the underbelly of society as they make fun of drugs, sex, violence, racism, elitism, blasphemy, risque music, body functions, and crude language. The distorted heads and enlarged feet of Robert Crumb’s drawings came from his LSD-distorted view of people and symbols. Gilbert Shelton-- another drug-inspired underground comix writer of the 1960s. His well-received parody of the 1960s hippie drug culture was designed not to preach, but to entertain. Shelton also created “Wonder Wart-Hog” as a parody of superhero comics.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from underground comix are the coffee table comic books: Joe Anderson’s Bugs Bunny: Fifty Years and Only One Grey Hare, Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness, Walt Kelly’s Pluperfect Pogo, and Bill Watterson’s The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book. More recently, graphic novels have become a major part of modern literature. Many people first took notice of them in 1986 when Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize for his Maus.

International Society for Humor Studies: http://www.humorstudies.org/