Book Review: From Gum Wrappers to Richie Rich: The Materiality of Cheap Comics

 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 21^st 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.