Review Essay: Rebirth of the English Comic Strip: A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870 by David Kunzle

David Kunzle. Rebirth of the English Comic Strip:  A Kaleidoscope, 1847-1870, Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Hardcover:  ISBN:  978-1-4968-3399-0, 472 pp., 309 b&w & 12 color illustrations. US $90. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/R/Rebirth-of-the-English-Comic-Strip

 A Review Essay

 by

Richard Scully

Reviewing another book for another journal, Michael Connerty (2021) observed that “This is a good time to be alive for anybody interested in the development of cartooning and comic strip art during the nineteenth century.” Among the reasons why, he mentioned the hugely-significant recent study of Marie Duval by Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite (2020), and my own Eminent Victorian Cartoonists (2018). To that list we should also add Ian Haywood’s The Rise of Victorian Caricature (2020), and Brian Maidment’s Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture (2021), but of the original three works Connerty mentioned, the one that probably represents an epoch in the field is the latest--and possibly final--offering by the “foundational scholar” of early comics history:  David Kunzle.

With The Rebirth of the English Comic Strip, Kunzle returns to explore the British contexts first touched upon more than a generation ago in The Early Comic Strip (1973) and then in The History of the Comic Strip, Vol. II:  The Nineteenth Century (1990). At the time, it was the German and Francophone comic artists whose work was given pride of place in the grand narrative of c. 1450-1825 and beyond, to the 1890s. Only two of the chapters of The Nineteenth Century related to “England”--just 36-odd pages out of the total of 300--and in Rebirth, Kunzle expresses regret that “space restriction inhibited closer look at the English contribution,” especially given “the riches of Britain’s contribution to the comic strip” (x).

This richness is now given its due, with nearly all the main subjects first explored in 1990--and additional topics discovered in the intervening decades--examined with customary thoroughness and incisiveness; and all in the unmistakable prose style that has led so many of us to follow Kunzle into the serious study of comics. David Kunzle has always written inclusively. Second-person pronouns abound, as “we” are taken along for a remarkable peek into the archives. The story told in Rebirth is not merely his hobby horse, but “our exploration” (398). The language is not preserved in the amber-like fixity of the formal “academese” past tense--it is living and present. It is often funny. It is emotive. From the very beginning to the charming and beautiful postscript at the very end (437). Kunzle is also a master of dropping in and out of different modes, such as a divergence into Victorian theatricality in the Prologue (xv-xvi), the “Once upon a time” (xi), or the excurses that appear in several chapters (50-52; 97; 112-113; 200; 410-412). This is to say nothing of the way Kunzle--and the publishers--allows the comic art to speak for itself for page after page (a fortunate byproduct of intellectual property law, and the presence of such work in the public domain, rather than in corporate hands).

Divided into chapters focused on particular artists (e.g. Chapter 1 on George Cruikshank) or publications (e.g. Chapter 2 on The Man in the Moon, 1847-1849), the approach is chronological, and covers what W. L. Burn called The Age of Equipoise (1964). This was the period of relative calm that characterized “the Mid-Victorian generation” between the ending of the “hungry ‘40s” amidst the upheavals of Chartism and the Continent-wide revolutions of 1848, and the Gladstonian ascendancy, Beaconsfieldism, and the “New Imperialism” of the 1880s and 1890s. While Burn concentrated on 1852 to 1867, Kunzle’s span of time is a little longer:  between the “sudden erupt[ion] of “comic strip fireworks” in 1847 (ix), and the “bizarre new stylistic era” beginning around 1870. Context is king from the outset of the book, and the cultural status of the Victorian magazine (arbitrated by Carlyle and Dickens), and the “sociopolitical history” of a period not well-known for its comic strips, is presented in fine form. The contrast between Britain (or England, as Kunzle has it) and France; the working lives of comic artists; the sources for comic comment; and--in a deliberate glance back to 1990 and The Nineteenth Century--the crucial importance of a society shaped by the railways and by the theatre, all make for an ideal Prologue.

The prehistory of the English comic strip is the focus for the Introduction, with Hogarth the logical starting point. Kunzle sees the narrative, though, as a disconnected one. From Hogarth to the “Great Age of Caricature” there is continuity, but huge changes in the “printing and publishing industries, cultural attitudes (such as the ‘Victorian’ rejection of Regency libertinism), and caricature itself” separated Kunzle’s period of Rebirth from what had gone before. This is actually rather an older way of viewing the periodization, and the evolution of British comic art; something challenged by Brian Maidment and others (including myself). But here is nonetheless an engaging narrative encompassing Rodolphe Töpffer--whose reputation Kunzle has done much to reinforce in two key volumes (2007a and 2007b)--and a potential, crucial transnational transfer from his Swiss homeland to England via John Ruskin and George Eliot (3-4). Rounding out the chapter is a somewhat disconnected study of Robert Seymour, who--Kunzle argues--“deserves to be remembered for more than his illustrations to Pickwick, his pre-Punch satirical Figaro in London (1831-1838), or his tragic suicide at the age of thirty-eight” (8). It’s a little surprising that Kunzle shows some ignorance of Brian Maidment’s (2013a) early work on Seymour, which went a long way towards remedying such a myopia, and has culminated with the first full-length study just this year (2021).

Where Kunzle is on firmer ground is in his shedding new light on the otherwise well-known and high-profile artists of the Victorian Age. In the first of the substantive chapters, Kunzle focuses on George Cruikshank (of the famous dynasty of caricaturists), and explores his work in the temperance and teetotal social movement in depth. Following Robert Patten’s immense, two-volume biography of Cruikshank (1992; 1996)--itself almost a conscious imitation of the classic Victorian form of the genre--it’s hard to imagine how anything new could be said about this Janus-faced figure. But Kunzle draws-in likely influences from Töpffer and re-interprets much of Cruikshank’s work; and The Toothache is dealt with in ways not hitherto appreciated as well.

Albert Smith’s brief, but significant, Man in the Moon (1847-1849) takes up Chapter 2, and Kunzle successfully rescues that publication from more than a century of condescension by Punch scholars. Since his departure from Punch, the judgement of his one-time peers, Douglas Jerrold and Mark Lemon, has been that Smith was “vulgar and bumptious” (43) and that his own paper was little more than a foil to the senior paper. Kunzle sees much more merit in its pages than the admittedly quite deliberate swipes at Punch. For starters, there was Cham’s (Amédée de Noé) contribution (45-47), and the work of Henry Hine and the character Mr. Crindle. Nevertheless, Man in the Moon did deflate (just as assuredly as did Smith’s own hot-air balloon in 1847), and Kunzle does a good job of accounting for that (as well as providing a nice summation of Europe’s revolutionary atmosphere around the time of its demise).

Beginning with Chapter 3, Kunzle embarks on a truly fascinating series of studies of Punch that truly breaks new ground. So, while the existing literature on Punch is vast (and is still growing), it is surprising that neither Richard D. Altick (1997), nor Frankie Morris (2005), Patrick Leary (2010) or Brian Maidment (2013b), have picked-up on this crucial role as not merely an inspiration for comic strip magazines, but also the very practice. This is the London Charivari as a comic, and its chief cartoonists--Richard Doyle, John Leech, John Tenniel, Charles Keene, and George Du Maurier--as comic strip artists.

Interspersed with the Punch exploration are additional chapters on the fascinating political Francophobia/cultural Francophilia of two short comics regarding King Louis Philippe; and on Thomas Onwhyn’s shilling booklet Mr. and Mrs. John Brown’s Visit to London to See the Grand Exposition (1851). The impression given is precisely what Kunzle intends for these middle chapters:  to restore the mid-Victorian period as one of the key historical phases of comic strip art, in which multiple, regular, comic publications appeared to cater for various tastes. The status of the comic strip was enhanced by its association with Punch, at the moment it became a fixture of the establishment. So too it was adapted for other periodicals, such as Town Talk (the subject of Chapter 12) and the Illustrated London News (Chapter 13), as well as other journals, before disappearing after 1870.

But before the Epilogue deals with the sudden fading of the Victorian comic strip (compromised by a new perception that it was “vulgar”), the final substantive chapter (14), picks up on themes that have been of particular interest to the most recent Victorian-age comics scholarship:  the hitherto-neglected career of Marie Duval at Judy, and perspectives from the sesquicentenary of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). For the former, the aforementioned work of Grennan, Sabin, and Waite may be of unsurpassed quality, but it was built on the foundation established by Kunzle himself, who basically discovered Duval back in the 1980s. For the latter, Kunzle was name-checked by a number of scholars attending the May 2021 conference Chroniquer la guerre La Guerre de 1870-1871 dans la presse européenne et atlantique (held online because of COVID, via the École Polytechnique, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Musée de l’Armée). And like the rest of Rebirth, this chapter is not an exercise in resting on one’s laurels, but a further advancement in the interpretation of both comic touchstones. In part, this is due to the acid Kunzle wit:  Bismarck’s Ems telegram is likened to Trumpian “fake news” (403), and the link between the correspondents of 1870 with those in Baghdad or Kabul in more recent years. There does seem to be one slip-up (probably editorial, post-proofing) in misidentifying Judy’s “big cut” artist as William Brunton, not William Boucher (404); but that does not prevent Kunzle from joining a recent push to highlight Boucher’s remarkable body of work (Scully, 2013; Scully, 2018; Grennan, Sabin, and Waite, 2020; Gangnes, 2020).

It is rather striking that the book can be so original despite relying almost entirely on published primary sources. The Punch archives held by the British Library were not consulted for the light they shed on matters such as income, editorial decision-making, and the like, meaning there is still work to be done in this area. Although the expenses of geography and time can account for this omission, the absence of the editors’ copy of Fun, held at the Huntington Library, close to Kunzle’s base of operations, is a little less forgivable. Still, one can really only quibble about the details, as they are not crucial to the overall argument. For instance, from the 1860s, major Punch artists were not paid “£10-20 per major drawing” (xiii), but rather received a salary--Tenniel’s was £853.5s per year in 1875 (Scully, 2018b: 147). True, at Fun, John Gordon Thomson was paid by the drawing, but this was only ever in the realm of £4-6 for a “large cut” cartoon in the 1870s and 1880s (Scully, 2018b: 146). One of Kunzle’s key case-studies--George Du Maurier--spent an inordinate amount of time worrying over the relative incomes of his senior colleagues as early as 1861:  John Leech reportedly earning £1000 a year, and Tenniel £500 (Scully, 2018a: 107).

There are also a few notable omissions from the secondary sources, too. I, for one, would have enjoyed seeing Kunzle weigh-in to the obvious debate with Belgian historian Thierry Smolderen on The Origins of Comics (2014; published in the same Mississippi series). Although complementary, their interpretations differ, but there seems to be very little historiographical engagement with this, more broadly. James Chapman’s complete history of British Comics (2011) also doesn’t merit a mention--but then, Chapman didn’t seem terribly aware of Kunzle’s volumes, either, and just one of his articles on Ally Sloper (261, n14). Indeed, the literature review does not seem itself to be a favored means of contextualizing much comics scholarship. Absent from Kunzle’s Bibliography are also works by Brian Maidment (see above) and Henry Miller (2009a & b), as well as Richard D. Altick’s 1997 study of the early Punch, and (it has to be said) some of my own recent stuff on cartoonists; all of which would provide important context, if not being of direct relevance to the comic strip itself. That the scholarly literature is still somewhat disjointed and disconnected is underscored by Kunzle’s own observation (444, n6) that his work on Marie Duval--amounting to three articles (1985; 1986a; 1986b) and copious references in The Nineteenth Century (1990)--was largely ignored by the late Denis Gifford in writing an entry on the “Ally Sloper group” for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). This is something that Kunzle--perhaps in partnership with Grennan, Sabin, and Waite--should address.

One does also wonder why Kunzle did not revisit aspects of his earlier work that would have benefited from a second opinion, modified by the passage of time. Looking back to 1990, and The Nineteenth Century, one is struck by the absence in Rebirth of a chapter updating Kunzle’s work on James Sullivan, Fun, and “The British Working Man” (spanning pages 324-329 of the earlier volume). The Huntington Library copy of Fun would provide some very interesting new material for such a study; as would the only substantial work to have been based on that primary source:  E. S. Lauterbach’s doctoral thesis (completed at Urbana, Illinois in 1961). But, as Kunzle notes himself, one can only do so much, and there is not always much point in revisiting the past when trying to drive forward.

Speaking of the past, though; for someone like me, I’m most cheered by the fact that Kunzle has always--unashamedly--written history (as opposed to critique, commentary, or other, jargonistic or theory-heavy analytical forms from the literary or cultural studies world). Without the scholarly weight of his works to point to, I’d probably have been laughed-out of one too many seminars--and possibly a job--long ago. As an art historian, however, Kunzle is permitted to be more critical when it comes to the aesthetic merits of his subject-matter than the “straight” historian. And this is evident as he closes his volume with a riposte to the Punch tradition of comic art:

 

Punch’s reputation had declined [by the 1890s], having become tired and repetitive… [It] persisted through to the end of the century and beyond, in the endless, dreary perambulation of academically drawn illustrated jokes, with captions featuring the witty and the witless, the fatuous infelicity and the verbal faux pas [433].

 

Reputations are difficult things to track, historically. And Kunzle doesn’t offer any evidence for this perceived decline, which is important, given this was a time when the circulation figures were exceeding 80-90,000 per week (Scully, 2018, I: 18), and its status had been cemented by The History of “Punch” (1895) from M. H. Spielmann (a great arbiter of taste). Certainly, its fin de siècle content is unattractive to the radical sensibility, and Kunzle joins Sir David Low in criticizing it for staidness (Scully, 2018, I: 15). But Punch was hugely popular in its time and of its class; and any diminution of its quality is a subjective, anachronistic one, from the perspective of the 21^st Century and the focus on the comic strip.

But Kunzle’s opinion of Punch in part a lament, rather than outright criticism, for in eschewing the comic strip, the London Charivari left that medium to its lower-class rivals--although Kunzle dismisses the notion of any true rivalry (434). Between 1870 and the Edwardian period, Will o’ the Wisp, Judy, Fun, Pick-Me-Up, Funny Folks, Scraps, Illustrated Bits, and Comic Cuts witnessed the “vulgarization” of the comic periodical, and in cheapening the fare to be had by British readers, “it would take generations before the comic strip and comic books could rise from the reputational miasma of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century” (435). A harsh assessment indeed, especially given Judy probably entered a definite, post-Sloperian “Golden Age” in the 1890s (Scully, 2018, II: 83-84). Fun did decline in the later 1890s, and expired in 1901; Funny Folks folded in 1894. But Pick-Me-Up was a glossy and glorious product of the “Naughty Nineties,” despite its obvious piracy from Continental counterparts; hardly of a kind with the cheap-and-nasty Scraps, Illustrated Bits, and Comic Cuts (something evident from their very names). If one steps-back and applies a less aesthetic set of judgments, then what Kunzle identifies here is precisely what he spotted occurring in the 1830s (1983):  the material change of medium that accompanies a seismic shift in the history of the cartoon and comic. The “graphic bric-a-brac”--in his own, memorable phrasing (Kunzle, 1990: 20)--of the late Regency/early Victorian period finds its counterpart in these comics, which were experimental publishing forms, deserving of less judgmental assessment, and appreciation for what they were, not the later standards they failed to attain.

There is thus an opportunity here to challenge Kunzle’s assessment of the late-Victorian/Edwardian comic paper, just as Brian Maidment (2018: 54) and others have done for his assessment of the beginning of that period. Aspiring scholars should probably get their skates on, though. As Kunzle points out, the very cheapness of the Harmsworth/Northcliffe Comic Cuts presents a major problem for the historian of a century later:

 

in consulting Comic Cuts of this period… I found the danger not so much the bleeding through of the ink onto the reverse side (as shown on p. 369), not so much the occasional indecipherability, but the acidic disintegration of whole pages, as I turned them into a shower of confetti (435).

 

A timely reminder in our digital age of the need to preserve the archive, but also to consult the material culture, not merely its facsimile.

In an earlier age, in 1973 and 1990, comics studies was of fringe interest; edgy; even subversive. And Kunzle’s radical credentials were reinforced by his choice of subject-matter. For years we have been weaning ourselves off the need to bemoan the “neglectedness” of our field, because today, it is no longer the poor cousin in the Literature and Media/Cultural Studies departments, nor even a minor area of study. It is probably the fastest-growing field in the Humanities, if not quite yet a nascent discipline of its own.¹ Rebirth is not a standalone curiosity, but a handsomely-produced, well-edited, contribution to Mississippi’s Comics Studies series--some 162 volumes to date--which is itself just one of a number of series devoted to the field (including those of Palgrave, Routledge, Bloomsbury, Ohio State, Nebraska, and more). Kunzle’s work across six decades is one of the key reasons for the all-conquering strength of the field and, appropriately, Rebirth brings us not only full circle, but opens up new vistas for the future.

 

 

 

References

 

Altick, Richard D. 1997. Punch:  the Lively Youth of a British Institution, 1841-1851. Columbus:  Ohio State University Press.

Burn, W. L. 1964. The Age of Equipoise:  A Study of the Mid-Victorian Generation. London:  George Allen & Unwin.

Chapman, James. 2011. British Comics:  A Cultural History. London:  Reaktion.

Connerty, Michael. 2021. “Book Review:  Marie Duval:  Maverick Victorian Cartoonist, by Simon Grennan, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite, Manchester University Press, 2020, 272 pp.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Published online May 11, 2021.

Connerty, Michael. 2021. The Comic Strip Art of Jack B. Yeats. Cham (Switzerland):  Palgrave.

Gangnes, Madeline B. 2020. “Material Romance:  Kidnapped In and Out of Young Folks Paper.” Victorian Periodicals Review 53 (2): 183-213.

Gifford, Denis. 2004. “Ally Sloper Group (act. 1867-1923).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/66301>. Accessed Nov. 15, 2021.

Grennan, Simon, Roger Sabin, and Julian Waite. 2020. Marie Duval:  Maverick Victorian Cartoonist. Manchester:  Manchester University Press.

Haywood, Ian. 2020. The Rise of Victorian Caricature. Cham:  Palgrave Macmillan.

Kunzle, David. 1973. The Early Comic Strip:  Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825. Berkeley and London:  University of California Press.

Kunzle, David. 1983. “Between Broadsheet Caricature and Punch:  Cheap Newspaper Cuts for the Lower Classes in the 1830s.” Art Journal 4 (43): 339-346.

Kunzle, David. 1985. “The First Ally Sloper:  The Earliest Popular Cartoon Character as a Satire on the Victorian Work Ethic.” Oxford Art Journal 8 (1): 40–48.

Kunzle, David. 1986a. “Marie Duval and Ally Sloper.” History Workshop Journal 21 (1): 133-140.

Kunzle, David. 1986b. “Marie Duval--Caricaturist Rediscovered.” Woman’s Art Journal 7 (1): 26-31.

Kunzle, David. 1990. The History of the Comic Strip, Vol. II:  The Nineteenth Century. Berkeley and Los Angeles:  University of California Press.

Kunzle, David. 2007a. ed. Rodolphe Töpffer:  The Complete Comic Strips. Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi.

Kunzle, David. 2007b. Father of the Comic Strip:  Rodolphe Töpffer. Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi.

Leary, Patrick, The Punch Brotherhood:  Table Talk and Print Culture in Mid-Victorian London. London:  The British Library.

Maidment, Brian. 2013a. “The Presence of Punch in the Nineteenth Century.” In Asian Punches:  A Transcultural Affair, edited by Hans Harder and Barbara Mittler, pp.15-44. New York & Heidelberg.

Maidment, Brian. 2013b. Comedy, Caricature and the Social Order, 1820-50. Manchester:  Manchester University Press.

Maidment, Brian. 2018. “Caricature and the Comic Image in the 1830s.” The Yearbook of English Studies 48:  Writing in the Age of William IV, pp. 54-81.

Maidment, Brian. 2021. Robert Seymour and Nineteenth-Century Print Culture--Sketches by Seymour and Comic Illustration. London: Routledge.

Miller, Henry J. 2009a. “John Leech and the Shaping of the Victorian Cartoon:  The Context of Respectability.” Victorian Periodicals Review 42 (3): 267-291.

Miller, Henry. 2009b. “The Problem with Punch.” Historical Research 82 (216): 285-302.

Morris, Frankie. 2005. Artist of Wonderland:  The Life, Political Cartoons, and Illustrations of Tenniel. Charlottesville:  University of Virginia Press.

Patten, Robert L. 1992. George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art--Volume 1:  1792-1835. Cambridge:  Lutterworth.

Patten, Robert L. 1996. George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art--Volume 2:  1835-1878.  Cambridge:  Lutterworth.

Scully, Richard. 2013. “William Henry Boucher (1837-1906):  Illustrator and Judy Cartoonist.” Victorian Periodicals Review 46 (4): 441-474.

Scully, Richard. 2018. Eminent Victorian Cartoonists. 3 volumes. London:  The Political Cartoon Society.

Smolderen, Thierry. 2014. The Origins of Comics:  From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (trans.). Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi.

Spielmann, M. H. 1895. The History of “Punch.” London:  Cassell & Co.

 

 

 

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¹ My appraisal of the evolution of the field is paraphrased (if not plagiarised, unashamedly!) from Roger Sabin’s joyful editors’ preface to Palgrave’s “Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels” series.

Book Review: Authorizing Superhero Comics: On the Evolution of a Popular Serial Genre by Daniel Stein

 Daniel Stein. Authorizing Superhero Comics:  On the Evolution of a Popular Serial Genre. Columbus:  The Ohio State University Press, 2021. 306 pp. ISBN:  978-0-8142-1476-3. US $35 or $99.95. https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814214763.html

 reviewed by Eric Berlatsky

Daniel Stein’s new book, Authorizing Superhero Comics operates in a context known, in literary circles, as the “history of the book” approach. Stein’s overarching claim is that superhero comics are not “authored” in a conventional sense simply by creative human beings, but rather such creators (writers, artists, editors, etc.) collaborate with a variety of other elements, organic and non-, in order to fashion the genre and (perhaps more often) to be fashioned by it. Such elements include readers/fans, the material circumstances of production, the physical objects themselves (comic books, graphic novels, digital comics), fanzines, parodies, “musealizing” texts, other media, adaptations, and more.

That is, while some critics take part in “auteur” theorizing about superhero comics and/or “great man” (typically gendered as such) theories of superhero comics, revolving around the idea that specific creators make crucial breakthroughs in the genre and shift the field in important ways, Stein argues that such an account insufficiently allows for the importance of non-human actors and historical context. The “great men” of such criticism are typically men like Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, William Moulton Marston, Bob Kane, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Neal Adams, Grant Morrison, Brian Michael Bendis, and the like. Many of these figures make appearances in Stein’s book, but in order to illustrate the ways in which they are as much the creation of the genre as they are its creators. Stein, then, theorizes superhero comics through the lens of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory which, according to Stein “distinguishes between a notion of a society as a tangible entity that is always already there and can be taken as context for, and a force behind, human activities, and a more fleeting unstable sense of a collective as something that emerges from the interlocking actions of human and nonhuman actors and has no existence beyond those actions” (6-7). Stein proposes to apply this notion to superhero comics in order to “complicate overly person-centered histories and stories of heroic individuals and can help us account for the many twists and turns that mark the genre’s evolution” (7). Stein, then, is less interested in talking about authors, their choices and achievements, than he is a variety of “authorizing functions” that exist in the orbit of superhero comics (both the comics themselves and the discourse, or metaverse, that surround them) that participate in “authorizing, allowing, affording, encouraging, permitting, suggesting, influencing, blocking, [and] rendering possible…” (20) the genre’s continuing existence and development. The book is divided into four lengthy chapters that explore different elements of these “interlocking human and nonhuman actors” to illustrate what role they play in “authorizing” superhero comics, often through case studies of the two largest comics’ companies most popular characters, Batman (DC) and Spider-Man (Marvel).

The first chapter reviews and interrogates superhero comics’ paratextual apparatus, including author bios, letters pages, and fanzines, focusing largely, though not exclusively, on Batman. In this chapter, Stein looks closely at DC’s changing attitude toward the writers and artists of early superhero comics. Early on in the publication of both Superman comics and Batman comics, the comics themselves and surrounding publicity would highlight the creativity and talents of creators like Siegel, Shuster, and Kane. Profiles of creators were often included in comics, with the creators shown at their drawing desks and often interacting with their creations, muddling the creator/created divide. As the genre developed, however, despite the continuing reference to Batman’s creator, Kane, in each Batman story, letters column and fanzine debates about the authorship of each story, led to DC’s admission that Kane was no longer solely at the helm, and fan commentary and suggestions began to help steer the direction of Batman’s adventures from “linear to multilinear” development and towards crediting the other contributors rather than leaving such credits to the guesswork in letters columns and fanzines. Stein’s chapter traces, in particular, the influence and impact of the Batmania fanzine, fans and letter writers like Biljo White and Irene Vartanoff, and how the fanzine form itself contributed to the “extension of the superhero discourse, the broadening of the spectrum of authorization practices, the emerging of new author figurations, and the genre’s embrace of longer storylines, sprawling character constellations, complex narrative universes, and interacting trajectories…” (67). That is, rather than conceive of shifts in Batman’s narrative trajectory, and the types of Batman stories told, as the result of creator choice alone, Stein skillfully illustrates how interaction with fans and readers in letters columns and fanzines, substantially influenced the characters and stories themselves.

Chapter two applies the same logic to the “metaverse,” a concept that is somewhat defined and a little more fluid than the “fanzines + letters columns” of chapter one, but which refers to the entirety of a superhero comics’ character’s “storyworld” combined with the imagined world of the comics creators’ personalities, locations, and society, which, in turn, particularly in the “Marvel Age” of the 1960s, frequently intersected with those storyworlds. In this chapter, Stein investigates the mix of tongue-in-cheek self-mockery and blustery promotion that characterized the Marvel comics of this period (typically associated with Stan Lee, but also with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and other supposed “bullpen” members). Stein particularly uses Spider-Man as a case study, recounting the way in which the character was promoted, how the creators were depicted in comics form, and how the comics themselves contained miniature advertisements and self-promotion on the covers and within the stories themselves. In addition, Stein looks closely at self-promoting books like Origins of Marvel Comics, the use of creator signatures, the Bullpen Bulletins column, the “Secrets of Spider-Man” feature in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1, Marvel’s self-produced fan magazine FOOM, the introduction of the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club, and related ephemera. Through all of these elements, Stein proposes that the superhero develops both as a “conservative figure suffering from the tyranny of the serial and as a fluxible [sic] figure of the radical imagination,” (153) due to the wide variety of inputs, influences, and “authors” that comprise their story. Likewise, Stein recounts how these elements contributed to the development of Marvel fandom as a type of secular religion populated by “true believers” that would, on occasion, allow them to ascend into the role of “official” creators, though, in a way, they unofficially occupied that position as part of Marvel’s Latourian “actor-network.” One result of this was, of course, the creation of a sense of the existence of a privileged “in-group” of fans as opposed to an insufficiently feverish “out-group” which facilitated the notion, if not the actuality, that said fans were part of Marvel itself, its corporate structure, and its storyworld.

Chapter three turns to a discussion of the ways in which superhero parodies contributed to the consolidation and development of the genre, both by acknowledging superhero comics’ standard tropes and allowing for the deflation and re-examination of those tropes. Stein first discusses MAD parodies of Batman (both comics and other media), Superman, and Wonder Woman and notes how though these parodies mock the “original” comics and their typical tropes, they also help to define those tropes as such and provide inspiration for self-reflexive, self-mocking parodies-from-within. Stein then discusses how parodies also played an important role in fanzines, like Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego (1961). Finally, as the genre came to more confidently define itself, Marvel and DC began to publish their own parodies in the late 1960s:  DC’s Inferior Five and Marvel’s Not Brand Ecch. Stein argues effectively that such self-parodies serve not only to deflate and mock the genre, but to authorize and more firmly define it. In regard to Not Brand Ecch, Stein writes that “…this self-parody rarely undermines the integrity of the characters but pursues a strategy of self-affirmation through pre-emptive self-deflation” (189). Indeed, Stein shows that future Marvel storylines are played out, or even tested, in the pages of these parodies. Perhaps most convincingly, Stein notes that the use of parody and self-parody presumes the exact kind of in-group that Marvel was trying to create through intricate continuity, Bullpen Bulletins and the Merry Marvel Marching Society, given that the humor in these parodies relies upon the kind of cult-like encyclopedic knowledge that DC and Marvel were cultivating more seriously elsewhere. In this context, Stein’s point that self-parodies serve less to critique a genre, or company, than to provide another avenue of promotion, authorization, and community-building, seems spot-on.

At the same time, Stein’s close reading of Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, et al.’s 1963 (1993) from Image Comics, as a more biting critique of Lee/Kirby-era Marvel is undercut by his own arguments about parody in general. Certainly, Moore’s parodic criticism of creator exploitation and naked hucksterism is meant to be taken a bit more seriously than Marvel’s Not Brand Ecch, but it is also true that 1963 depends upon knowledge of and affection for Silver Age Marvel, and, in fact, 1963 was ultimately meant to function as a critique of Image-style 1990s comics through a revival of Silver Age aesthetics. Thus, 1963’s parody functions as much as a reauthorization of the Marvel Age as it does as a critique of it. Stein’s claim that 1963 sets out to “shatter the nostalgic lens” (207) through which many 1990s fans viewed the Silver Age does not ring true, especially considering Moore’s subsequent work (Supreme, Tom Strong), which doubles down on Silver Age nostalgia, if with a bit more skepticism than some peers.

In the final chapter, Stein discusses the general practice of collecting superhero comics, not just reading them, and the more recent publication of “museum-in-a-box” books like Batman Collected (1996), and the 21^st Century’s The Marvel Vault, The DC Vault, The Batman Vault, The Spider-Man Vault, and others. Stein notes how with the digitization of comics and the easy accessibility of back issues in digital form, a fetishization of physical objects as collector’s items with Benjaminian “auras,” has increasingly defined superhero comics fandom and the industry itself. Stein notes how the boxes/books mentioned above attempt to “musealize” mass-produced objects by simulating age and authenticity, working to give purchasers and collectors the haptic feeling of owning and holding the “extinct” (Golden or Silver Age comics, “original” artwork, business documents from comics companies’ histories) despite their knowledge that they are not actually doing so. Relying heavily on Aleida Assman’s (and others’) theorization of the archive, Stein emphasizes the ways in which these books create meaning, authority, and history, rather than recover it, promoting certain elements of characters’ and companies’ histories over others, obscuring (for instance) a lengthy history of misogyny and racial exclusion in favor of the rosy glow of nostalgia and cultural capital.  As Stein notes, a fetishization of old, mint condition, floppies, combined with a “musealization” of reprints and ephemera in expensive hardcover books and a recycling of old stories on the silver screen, lends gravitas and/or “authority” to a genre and medium once considered laughable. Likewise, archiving, as Stein asserts “shape[s] a system of enunciability by determining what can be authoritatively known and thus legitimately said” (270). That is, it functions as an assertion of how comics’ companies (and their parent companies) wish to be defined and understood, though (as Stein also acknowledges) because of the open-ended and serial nature of the medium, such an “enunciation” can never be complete.

Ultimately, Stein’s account of “actor-network” authorship and authority in superhero comics is compelling and convincing. If there is a critique to be made, it is that Stein’s account does not assert much that is not generally known and understood. Will Brooker’s 2001 book Batman Unmasked covers much of this territory, if at an earlier stage of development and in a narrower orbit, as does the slightly earlier Comic Book Culture by Matthew Pustz. Beyond that, fans, critics, and theorists of the medium know well the influence of letters columns, fanzines, and fans, and the somewhat porous relationship between creator and reader, production and consumption, within superhero comics. While Stein does an excellent job in consolidating and extending that understanding into the present day, as well as providing useful theorization of this process via Latour, Assman, and others, the book functions more as confirmation of conventional understandings of the medium than surprising revelation or insight. If anything, Stein’s premise that most critics/theorists understand superhero comics through the lens of the “great man” theory of comics is questionable. Certainly, there are books, articles, and collections devoted to specific creators, but there is also a general acknowledgment and understanding that superhero comics are collaborative, both in simple ways (most individual superhero comics involve more than a handful of creators) and in more complex ones (the collaboration between creators and fans, past and present, seriality and completion, humans and non-human actors, etc.). Likewise, to my mind, Stein insufficiently acknowledges the influence and power some few individual creators (some named above) actually do assert over an entire creative field. Obviously, these individual creators are also a product of their influences, both human and non-human, but Stein’s approach tends to devalue and de-emphasize the ways in which some individuals can bend the genre in new and exciting (or troubling) directions by creatively re-reading their influences and influencing others to do the same. No individual creator is an island, to be sure, but Stein’s deployment of actor-network theory tends to downplay the agency of individual creators, which, in some cases, have an outsized importance Stein tends not to acknowledge.

Despite these critiques, Stein’s book is a compelling read, perhaps most so for those relatively new to superhero comics and their criticism. For those less familiar with the material history, including letters columns, fanzines, parodies, etc., the book will no doubt shed new light on superhero stories. For those familiar with this history, Stein provides useful background, contextualization and theorization in a clear and readable context. It is a book well worth reading.

Exhibit Review: Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles

Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles, Minna Honkasalo. Washington D.C.: National Children’s Museum on September 3, 2021-January 9, 2022. https://nationalchildrensmuseum.org/

 reviewed by Mike Rhode

In 1945, Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson created her Mumintrolls for a children's book. The Moomins look like hippos crossed with the Pillsbury doughboy, but have proved popular enough to make her the Scandinavian equivalent of Walt Disney. She eventually wrote or drew 9 books about them. In 1947 she started a comic strip with the characters, which started appearing in English in 1954. Her brother Lars Jannson joined her on the strip from 1959-1961 and then he took the strip over until 1975 when it ended. Reprints have been published by Canada's Drawn & Quarterly. There have been multiple animated versions of her characters, and that is what this exhibit focused on.

The NCM has had some rough years, closing off and on while searching for new locations. In 2020, it finally wound up just off Pennsylvania Ave, NW in a plaza behind the Reagan building. They had to shut again almost immediately due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but reopened in September 2021 with the Moomin exhibit among others, and are aiming for an attendance of a half million people per year. Note that you have to visit with a child; unaccompanied visitors need to make an appointment, and throughout my tour of the exhibit, I was accompanied by a staff member. The museum is actually largely underground; one enters at ground level and then moves downward through an unfinished concrete warren. The guide is probably necessary for more than the main reason.

The Embassy of Finland has brought over a version of Honkasalo's original exhibit from the Moomin Museum that is completely composed of reproductions. It has several sections - a wall on Jansson's life, stills from various animations, 4 screens showing cartoons, and several activity areas for children. An average American viewer might have no knowledge about the Moomins, in spite of the fact that there have been so many adaptations. This exhibit focuses on animated versions and includes episodes from 1959 (West Germany), 1969 (Japan), 1977 (Poland), 1990 (Japan). Obviously, none of these would be particularly easy for an Anglophone to find, but the 1969 one in particular was surpressed by Jansson, as noted in the exhibit catalog - "She felt that Momin was too far removed from her stories' world and atmosphere. Elements foreign to Moominvalley had been inserted into the tales, including cars, money and weapons. For example, a few episodes show Snork driving around in a car, Moomintroll makes money by busking, and weapons feature in several episodes." "She did not want them to reach international distribution, so they have never been broadcast outside Japan. Today, they are hard to find even in Japan, on account of complicated copyright issues connected with the [1900s series]." The exhibit catalog is unfortunately not available, except for a few copies lying in the exhibit, but I recommend it highly if you can find it.

Jansson has been the focus of recent attention including a documentary, two biographies, and an edition of her letters. The wall on her life is written for children, but includes the basics necessary to have an idea about her as a person and as a creator. To the exhibit's credit, the segment on her life does not shy away from her love of another woman, even though it was socially unacceptable at the time. "A soul mate. Amid the hustle and buslte, Tove meets Tuulikki, the woman who will become her life partner for the rest of her life..." reads part of the panel.

The wall of stills would probably have been of more interest in the original exhibit, as it apparently included some actual artwork by her. Here, understandably, it's all reproductions and screen captures. A fan of the characters might be interested in seeing how they evolved in different animations. There are also some areas for children to draw, hang things on a tree, or take a picture with cardboard standups. There is also a small selection of gifts in the giftshop. Also of interest from a cartoon perspective are a STEAM-centric exhibits about creating animations featuring SpongeBob and his cast, and another on Paw Patrol.

All the images, except for "Exhibition space 4" and "Tove Jansson," are courtesy of the Embassy of Finland in Washington, D.C. The two are courtesy of the NCM. The exhibit catalog cover is taken from the copy the staff gave to me. A version of this review also appeared on the ComicsDC blog. My photographs can be seen here.