reviewed by
Brian
Flota, Humanities Librarian and Associate
Professor, James Madison University Libraries
Neale
Barnholden. From Gum Wrappers to Richie
Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics. University Press of Mississippi, 2024.
https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/F/From-Gum-Wrappers-to-Richie-Rich
I
was immediately drawn to the title of Barnholden’s book because of my role as
an academic (comics) librarian. Librarians, particularly those working in or
with Special Collections, are especially attuned to the materiality of comics,
and often juxtapose them with materials more commonly associated with rare book
reading rooms–such as illuminated manuscripts, illustrated hard-bound books,
broadsides, serialized novels, early comic strips in newspapers, and dime
novels, for example–to demonstrate for students the evolution of the form and
its continuity with these earlier material forms. In a recent book chapter,
Michael C. Weisenburg, the Director of Rare Books & Special Collections at
the University of South Carolina, discusses how, in 1977, Pizza Hut restaurants
gave away six DC Comics that reprinted Batman,
Superman, and Wonder Woman issues from the 1950s as part of a promotion. Despite
the claim, on the back cover of these books, that “these comics are identical
to the originals with the exception of the paid advertising,” Weisbenburg
notes, “the format, cover, and other elements beyond the ads were also changed
due to basic differences in production and distribution of the issues” (116).
He concludes his discussion by arguing, “The point is not to scrutinize the
historic claims of either DC or Pizza Hut but to show how diffuse comic books
were during this period and to illustrate how being mindful of the bibliographic
elements of any given copy might teach us unsuspected things about comic books
and their history” (116).
This
is a roundabout way of demonstrating the affinities between a librarian working
with comics and Barnholden’s thesis in his book. In the introduction, he
rightly acknowledges the slow turn towards the materiality of comics in Comics
Studies. He is also correct when he observes, “although book history methods
are present in comics scholarship, auteurism is still the predominant mode of
comics criticism, and stories rather than editions are the common units of
study” (17). As such, Barnholden selects four case studies to show how a
cultural materialist approach to Comics Studies can deeply enhance and
contribute to the interpretation and analysis of comics. The book’s four main
chapters focus on the Uncle Scrooge story “Back to the Klondike,” which first
appeared in Four Color #456 (March
1953, Dell Comics), the DC Comics series Watchmen
(1986-87), the comic books associated with Harvey Comics character Richie Rich,
and Dubble Bubble Funnies, the free,
tiny comics given away with individually-wrapped pieces of Dubble Bubble
Bubblegum. With each example, Barnholden provides rich material analyses,
unraveling how meaning can and is changed in these properties over the course
of time.
His
first two examples, “Back to the Klondike” and Watchmen, pierce through the auteurist approaches that have been
broadly applied to these works in Comics Studies scholarship. Barnholden traces
the printing history of the notable Uncle Scrooge story over time from its
first appearance in 1953 in a comic book that cost 10 cents to its inclusion in
Vol. 12 of hardcover series of books published by Fantagraphics titled The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library
in 2012 with a cover price of $35. When it first appeared in 1953, its artist
and writer, Carl Barks, was unknown to all, recognized by Walt Disney comics
obsessives as ‘the good duck artist.’ He is not credited at all in Four Color #456. The credit goes to the
Walt Disney brand instead. In subsequent 1966 and 1977 reprints, Barks is again
uncredited. These two reprints come in slightly different sizes, have different
stories packaged with them, are colored differently, and have different
advertisements. After Barks’ identity becomes known, the nature of subsequent
appearances of “Back to the Klondike” changes drastically. Barks claimed pages
were cut from the original issue, and since the original art for the issue no
longer exists, it was recreated by Barks in the early 1980s and added to later
reprints of the story. Barnholden discusses in great detail the changes made to
this story, its recontextualization over the decades, and how contemporary
readings of Barks’ work remove the “lowbrow” context which they were originally
part of and replace it with the prestige afforded to the “graphic novel.” This
first section is a great example of Barnholden’s approach, one in which
materialist approaches successfully blend with close readings, and one he will
repeat, with different emphases, in the chapters that follow.
In
his chapter on Watchmen, the emphasis
shifts, because, unlike the Barks story from 1953, the twelve-issue DC Comics
series, written by Alan Moore with art by Dave Gibbons, was “an instant
classic,” immediately recognized as a significant work upon its publication in
1986 and 1987. Commonly considered part of the highlights of 1986 which led to
the popularization and codification of the “graphic novel” trade
paperback–which in time would become the primary printed means of reading
comics–along with Art Spiegelman’s Maus
and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark
Knight, Watchmen did not appear
as a bound single-volume collection until late 1987. Due to the popularity of
the series in this format, and writer Alan Moore’s unwillingness to participate
in its subsequent rebranding and corporate canonization by DC Comics,
Barnholden argues that reprints of the series that follow, containing added
material, commentary, and pricier “prestige” editions, impose a
highly-manicured edifice around this instant classic. In one interesting aside,
he notes that the first trade paperback printing adds the Juvenal quotation
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who watches the watchmen”) after the text,
which did not appear in the original twelve-issue series. The quote is added in
the context of the long-forgotten Tower Commission report on the Iran-Contra
scandal, which is referenced nowhere else in the series. Barnholden argues,
“The citation places Watchmen in
conversation with the world around it in an unusually direct manner, part of
the trade paperback’s agenda of positioning Watchmen
as a weighty graphic novel with something to say about ‘real life’ using the
debased genre of superheroes” (55). In these ever-evolving attempts by DC to
shape the continuing sales of Moore and Gibbons’ comic, Barnholden writes, “Watchmen has come to exemplify a certain
kind of prestige comic book, one that transcends its genre subject matter and
context through the use of realism and becomes timeless rather than remaining
dated” (80). I think this gets to the core of his project: using cultural
materialism to unmoor the perceived and/or received timelessness affixed to
canonized works by the cultural and corporate monoliths who have ascribed those
values, by pointing out the (possibly contrary) systemic values in place at the
time of their original production.
The
next two chapters are not quite as engaging, but that is mainly the result of
Barnholden choosing subjects–the character Richie Rich and Dubble Bubble Funnies comics–which lack the fan and critical
apparatus afforded to the works of Carl Barks and Alan Moore. Barnholden is not
trying to “rehabilitate” or canonize these two comics series, but rather
illustrate how these two different cultural artifacts have been relegated to
figurative and literal dustbins of (comics) history. In the case of Richie
Rich, a “glut” of product in the 1970s and 1980s–at one point over thirty
different Richie Rich titles were in production at Harvey Comics
simultaneously–led to the company’s demise. Barnholden cites how subsequent
rehabilitations of the character (such as the 1994 live action movie, directed
by Daniel Petrie and starring Macauley Culkin as the titular character) failed
to resonate, culminating in the contemporary use of “Richie Rich” as an insult.
His analysis shows how this is at odds with the ways the character is portrayed
in the comics, suggesting a complex and strategically misremembered cultural
memory regarding the character.
In
his analysis of the Dubble Bubble Funnies,
he differentiates them from Bazooka Joe,
another tiny comic given away with pieces of Bazooka bubblegum, because comics
and art world luminaries such as Art Spiegelman and Wesley Morse were, at
times, involved in their production. He discusses these comics in terms of
“trash”: “While Bazooka Joe made a return from the trash through the operations
of nostalgia and the association of several famous creators, Pud [the main
character in Dubble Bubble Funnies] remains in the cultural sphere of garbage”
(125). The role of trash is important for his discussion. He astutely observes:
The
rhetoric of trash also existed for comics creators. The attitude that, in the
words of historian David Hajdu, comics were “a diversion that may serve a
purpose for a time but is best considered abandoned before too long,” could
also be expressed with the same rhetoric of rubbish put forth by [comics
historian Les] Daniels, [historians George] Perry and [Alan] Aldridge, the
Senate [S]ubcommittee [on Juvenile Delinquency], and [Helen] Meyer [the
longtime president of Dell Comics]. Of course, this rhetoric also reflects the
material fact that as ephemera, the majority of comics and comic books were
literally trashed [...] [T]he evaluative words used here indicate a midcentury
conversation in which people with a variety of relationships to comics, from
fans to politicians, could agree that there was something trashy (and not
booky) about comics, a move that eventually had to be undone by salvage. (127,
ellipses added)
By
commenting on the trashy and disposable nature of most comics throughout
history, Barnholden’s project also seeks to highlight how many Comics Studies
scholars have been guilty of positioning the subjects and objects of their
study as prestigious and exclusive ones, and, in the process, reinforce the
notion that all comics are trash save for a select certain few. The deliberate
erasure of the history of comics as lowbrow cultural objects and transformation
from cultural product to literal trash from these analyses obfuscates the
trashy roots of comics, and that is something Barnholden has no patience for!
Because
of the lack of a critical apparatus around either Richie Rich or Dubble Bubble Funnies, Barnholden
employs some novel techniques for reading them. In the case of Richie Rich, he
painstakingly attempts to capture every variation (he counts 43) in the drawing
of Richie Rich’s face on the 1,723 covers he appeared on. His distant reading
of the covers, which prove that Richie Rich’s appearance on the covers of his
comics show him “luxuriat[ing in his wealth] in a way that the Richie of the
stories seldom does” contributes to the fact that “Richie Rich” is now a term
of derision for those with inherited wealth (104, 110). Sadly, it is a fairly
laborious read to have him arrive at this rather anodyne conclusion. To
assemble the collection of 175 Dubble
Bubble Funnies he analyzes in the final chapter, he describes buying a
one-kilogram bucket of Dubble Bubble gum to get a large and representative
sample of the comics (134). (In the Acknowledgements, he writes, “thanks to
everyone who has, over the years, helped me eat the bubble gum”! [ix]) This
approach, random distribution, yields better results, though these one- and
two-panel comics do not offer much to actually analyze, but Barnholden does his
darnedest. While he was quick to point out Richie Rich’s renovated
signification as a specific contemporary popular slur, he misses the fact that
the name of the protagonist of Dubble
Bubble Funnies, Pud, although created in the 1930s, has slipped into the vernacular as a slang term
for “penis” and “loser” in the 21st century. I feel this is ripe for
commentary as well. These criticisms are fairly minor though.
Barnholden’s
first book is a fascinating, intriguing, well-researched and -theorized read
that rises near the top of the heap of Comics Studies monographs. My only other
criticism is that I wish it was longer! To return to Weisenburg’s example at
the beginning of this review, I would love to read Barnholden’s take on those
Pizza Hut giveaways from 1977, for example. I think even Barnholden would
agree, as he writes, “Comics offered as ‘premiums’--inducements to consumers to
purchase items–are an undertheorized material form of comics, where the
cultural values associated with the materiality of ‘the book’ or ‘the magazine’
are replaced by the visibility of consumer culture in such marketing schemes,
and by the related concept of trash” (113-4). Another example that comes to
mind is the IDW-produced mini-comic that comes with Anchor Bay’s 2004 4-DVD
“Ultimate Edition” of George A. Romero’s zombie classic Dawn of the Dead. I would love to read Barnholden’s analysis of
this packaging, the synergies between movies and comics, and the history of
film adaptations. But now I am just giving him more work to do, work that I or
any other Comics Studies scholar could (or should) take up. That this book is
inspiring such ideas as I write this is a testament to the quality and
originality of the slim but dense volume From
Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich.
Works
Cited
Weisenburg, Michael C. “Bibliography,
Print Culture, and What to Do with Comics in a Rare Book Library.” Comic
Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library, edited by Brian Flota
and Kate Morris, ACRL, 2023, pp. 103-119.
Posts
