Comic Book Journal

Comic books are, like any entertainment industry, one built around hype. We may not always admit it, but comic book companies are all about promoting the next Watchmen, the next Sandman, just as much as Hollywood is searching for that next Godfather, that next Star Wars.

Funny thing about success is that sometimes it happens to people who weren’t looking for it, or at least not in the way they thought. Like penicillin for pages and panels, here are the Top 10 Accidental Comic Book Discoveries:

Hellblazer: Alan Moore claims to have discovered the character he first breathed to life in the pages of Swamp Thing through a real life meeting. The face-to-face was supposedly in Westiminister, London, as the reclusive writer described to Wizard Magazine an encounter with John Constantine at a sandwhich bar. I guess “Life Imitates Art” isn’t a one-way street after all!

9. Harvey Pekar: Not all success stories center around those seeking fame and fortune. A collegue of Robert Crumb and a pioneer in autobiographical comic books, Pekar’s small-press fame lead to eight appearances on David Letterman (though he was subsequently banned for criticising General Electric) as well as ultimately a feature film adaptation starring Paul Giamatti.

As Scott McCloud writes, “For years, Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor had been a lonely standard bearer for comics autobiography, but suddenly the ‘Alternative’ shelves were swarming with the things — almost enough to constitute a full-fledged genre of their own.” Pekar’s discovery by a largely mainstream culture is a success story in and of itself, documenting how Pekar met succcess on his own terms, not someone else’s.

8. Heavy Metal: Least we forget, not all comic book success stories are American. Its easy to point to Japanese manga, which have now densely populated a shelf of their own in Barnes and Noble. But while interest in manga and anime has slowly but steadily grown for decades, it was a French magazine of all things which virtually exploded on export.

Originally entitled “Metal Hurlant” (Screaming Metal) in France, this illustrated adult fantasy magazine nearly trippled in sales upon its re-naming as “Heavy Metal” by the editors of National Lampoon magazine. In addition to its overseas appeal, “Heavy Metal” would herald the apperances of the likes of Trina Robbins, Howard Chaykin, Walt Simonson and Michael Moorcock among many others. The magazine would also spawn two animated films as well as a video game, feeding a generation of science fiction and fantasy fans who had grown tired of mainstream superheroes.

7. Hellboy: If you’re a comic book fan, it stands to reason you should probably attend comic book conventions. There, you can buy (or at least drool over) rare comic book memobilla, meet and greet your favorite writers, maybe, just maybe, launch a demonic superstar from the pit of the convention hall.

Mike Mignola coined Hellboy while drawing a simple comic con cover - one that would slowly metamorphosize into the wise-cracking-demon-hunting-demon for Dark Horse Comics. Now, with a golden comic book empire as well as one feature film, two (going on three) animated DVDs and talk of a second film, Mike Mignola has effectively proved that comic conventions are moved than sweaty fans and overpriced hot dogs.

6. Golden Age Comic Boom: Not all accidental discoveries are good ones. You might be wondering, how can comics worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions be a bad thing? This is actually two accidents in one - the first the unforseen effect of a sixty-odd year history, and the second an accident waiting to happen in the comic book industry.

It was in the 1990’s that news stories were first a flutter with tales of kids finding big bucks in their grandma’s basement. Old comics from the 1940’s were all the rage, and suddenly the possibility of raising your kid’s tuition in these dimestore rags was a real possibility. But this mainstream interest backfired in the comic book shops, as the resulting “collector bubble” burst, with the industry leaders like Marvel and DC offering variant issues of big events like “The Death of Superman” to entice the non-comic crowd. Soon the truth came out: Golden Age comic prices were only hiked up by the shredding and recycling of World War II rationing efforts, with the regular laws of “supply and demand” applying to everything.

And that, my friends, is why your gold-etched copy of “The Death of Superman” is still worth only five bucks.

5. Maus: Unlike Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, both of which had the backing of a major comic publisher, Art Spiegelman’s Maus was for the most an underground experience, published for 3 pages in Apex Novelties in 1972, and then in serial form starting 1977 in RAW Magazine. Once collected, however, the graphic novel had a profound effect on the medium, even winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

I suspect the core honesty of the book aided its impact. Art’s father, although a Holocaust survivor, exhibits racism, and one point even Art himself confesses fears his father has become the stereotypical stingy Jew. Though it may be a bit of a stretch to call this comic’s mainstream inception accidental - as the underlying metaphor of the Holocaust Jews being depicted as mice to the cats of the Nazi party was visually profound - it is amazing that such an underground graphic novel rose so quickly to the ranks of the literary elite in a time when comics were still fighting public perception as “funny-books”.

4. Star Wars: Okay, okay, I know most of this is a movie truimph, not a comic triumph, but some credit has to be given to George Lucas for holding on to the merchandising right for Star Wars, an overshot and overbudgeted film so sure to be a box office bomb, so no one really gave a Wookie in 1977. The instant success of the movie made merchandising possible, and much of that merchandise exists to this day in the form of comic books.

Though Star Wars slipped in and out of comic book form afterwards, it was truthfully Mike Richardson’s Dark Horse Comics, which expanded the view of the Star Wars Universe beyond the canon of the films, giving fans a view of characters ranging from Kevin Rubio’s bumbling Tag and Bink to Timothy Zahn’s fan-favorite figure Mara Jade.

But none of this would have happened if a maverick director all but relegated to failure for a cheeseball sci-fi flick hadn’t kept his merchandising rights.

3. Superman: We’re already in the Top 3, and you might be thinking, if this is the beginning of the Top 3, why is Superman on the bottom already?

Well, because Superman was a mediated discovery - creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had high hopes for the last son of Krypton - but no one else did.

In fact, DC editor Vin Sullivan accidentally discovered what would would become the publisher’s most recognizable hero in the slush pile.

Supes joins the ranks of Stephen King and Nicolas Sparks as book-selling personalities gracing the interiors of waste baskets and slush piles alike, with Sullivan chosing the Siegel and Shuster creator simply because it looked different than all the rest.

Who knew waste disposal systems were such fountains of creativity?

2. Spider-Man: Once again, like Siegel and Shuster, writer Stan Lee had high hopes for his bold new superhero Spider-Man - but his boss Martin Goodman didn’t. The idea of a teenager being the hero instead of the guy in short-shorts running beside the hero was a laughable one back before the dawn of the Marvel-lead Silver Age.

So Lee put Spidey on the cover of the last issue of a failed series Amazing Adult Fantasy - figuring his boss wouldn’t care about Spider-Man taking up the front page of a cancelled series. But Amazing Fantasy #15 struck a cord not just in sales, but in a fan mail explosion, one which ultimately garnered Spidey his own comic, Amazing Spider-Man.

In retrospect, Spider-Man’s success paved the way for a large number of similarly angst-ridden teen heroes, including the X-Men, Teen Titans and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But none of this wouldn’t have happened if Martin Goodman, who favored square-jawed Golden Agers like Captain America and Ka-Zar, had his way.

I mean, can you imagine a Silver Age sans the wry and skiny Spidey, replaced by the bare-chested Tarzan clone Ka-Zar?

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Unlike Stan Lee or Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird didn’t have high hopes in the least when they penciled on masks and ancient ninja gear onto four overgrown turtles - they were just brainstorming.

But still, Laird and Eastman knew something was up as a result of their accidental discovery, so they gathered funds from tax refunds and family loans to publish one single issue - parodying current comic hits like Daredevil (”The Foot Clan” to “The Hand”), New Mutants, Cerebrus and Ronin.

The resulting pop culture tidal wave was probably more than any Laird or Eastman could have prepared for. The subsequent Saturday morning cartoon, airing several years after the start of the creator’s Mirage series, included a far more humorous and self-conscious tone in contrast to the Laird and Eastman comicseries, which parodied the darker tones of Frank Miller and Dave Sim.

With the release of the latest TMNT at the box office, there’s no doubt from the box office numbers that TMNT still holds a popular grasp on pop culture.

Not surprisingly, Peter Laird was attached as executive producer of the CGI film, which beat down the competition for a No. 1 spot when it was released.