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KC flanked by former Legionnaire artists, Cory Carani & Jeff Moy
by KC Carlson
Though we may be inundated by it in current superhero comic books, long-form serialized storytelling is nothing new.
The idea of telling a long-form storyline as a series of chapters originally dates back to somewhere between the mid-8th and the mid-13th century. The work in question? One Thousand and One Nights, a lot more colloquially known in English as the Arabian Nights. They are actually a series of independent stories gathered together with a framing device, but as originally told, each story was shared over a period of nights, including some kind of “cliffhanger” ending, which would be resolved the following night. some of the a lot more popular of the stories include “Aladdin’s terrific Lamp”, “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, and “The seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor”, all of which are probably much better known to several generations of American children as the basis for three very memorable (and historically important) Popeye the Sailor cartoons.
In the 19th century, lots of writers wrote serialized stories for popular magazines or newspapers. best known for this was Charles Dickens (The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield, among others) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes). In a lot more recent times, author Stephen King has also experimented with serialization, first publishing The green Mile in small paperback chapters.
Serialization was popular among writers in the Victorian Age because the a lot more chapters that were written, the a lot more money the writer was paid. This, especially in Dickens’ case, describes why lots of of his novels are so long. These facts will be interesting to tuck back into your brains for when we go over decompressed storytelling later in this article. also of note, Americans were whipped into a frenzy by Dickens’ serials – a lot of noteworthy being the people waiting on the docks for the ship bringing the final chapter of The Old Curiosity shop to see what became of little Nell.
Such storytelling was also popular during the 1930s golden Age of radio dramas, with scores of shows like The shadow or The Lone Ranger and even Superman spreading their stories over several weeks. As television slowly developed, and eventually overtook radio, the new medium mainly avoided serialization for done-in-one dramas, situation comedies, and variety shows. early drama series also tended to be complete hour-long stories with very minimal subplotting. The big exception to this policy for TV was daily soap operas, which were mainly being brought over from radio anyway.
Terry & the Pirates
Newspaper comic strips – especially the action/adventure type like Terry and the Pirates, buck Rogers, or Rip Kirby – are evident examples of serialized storytelling. What else could you make with only three or four panels a day? By the 1960s, even the gag-a-day Peanuts gang were off on adventures that lasted a week or more, as were Pogo Possum and his pals. a lot more and a lot more humor strips (Doonesbury, Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes) followed suit as the decades rolled by.
The golden Age
Early comic books, however, did not tell long stories. Book-length, maybe, on rare occasions. but for the most part, golden Age comic books were anthologies – collections of lots of different short stories. even comics that starred a single character normally told four to six different stories per issue, often by different creative teams. The early Justice society stories in All-Star Comics were collections of individually produced, kinda-connected adventures, with the team only really coming together for the first and last chapters. (This would change, within a few years.) This formula was successfully repeated for Leading Comics’ seven Soldiers of victory and All-Winners for Timely’s All-Winners’ Squad.
Action Comics #1
Obviously, there were exceptions to this. The big one is also incidentally recognized as the first superhero story ever. That’s right, the very first Superman story in action Comics #1 is directly continued into the next issue. That’s mostly by expediency rather than by design, however, considering that these first Superman tales were originally created to be read as daily newspaper strips. They were only later cut and pasted into the comic book format, as the strip was historically rejected by everyone before being gotten by DC. The early installments of the Superman feature in action Comics were, in fact, recycled (but unpublished) newspaper strip continuity.
Other early long-form stories include the ongoing Human Torch vs. Sub-Mariner battles over at timely (neo-Marvel), a seven-part Captain Marvel/Spy Smasher serial in Whiz Comics and the even longer Captain marvel “Monster society of Evil” storyline, from Captain marvel Adventures#22-46 (March 1943 to may 1945), both of which were originally published by Fawcett. (Hey, whatever happened to DC Comics’ proposed reprint of “Monster Society”?)
Some of the longer stories in comics at the time were being done in the realm of kids’ comics, a lot of notably at the house of mouse in Walt Disney stories published by Dell Comics. “Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold”, written by Bob Karp and illustrated by Carl Barks and Jack Hanna, clocked in at a whopping 64 pages when first published in Dell’s four color #9 in 1942. lots of of the classic Barks-written and -drawn Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories were also long by then-current standards – a lot of of these clocked in at 28 to 32 pages when first published. None of the Barks work was serialized, however. His stories were always done-in-one.
This was not the case for the comic strip and comic book adventures of Disney’s flagship character Mickey Mouse. Mickey fist appeared as a newspaper comic strip on December 19, 1929. From the beginning, the strip featured Mickey starring in long adventure tales drawn by the legendary Floyd Gottfredson. These started with the may 5, 1930, strip (Gottfredson’s 25th birthday, incidentally). Initially, it was intended to be a momentary assignment, but Gottfredson would continue to draw the daily and Sunday strip for the next 45 years! lots of of these stories would eventually be reprinted in the comic books, serialized in the pages of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. beginning in the 1950s, new Mickey mouse stories were specifically created and serialized in WDC&S, illustrated by Paul Murry, and written by a number of different writers, including Carl Falberg.
Incidentally, a number of the early four color comics feature extra-long 67-page stories – the story also ran on the inside covers and back cover!
Long-form comic stories were also popular in Europe during this time period. Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin began in 1929, first appearing in French and serialized in a children’s supplement to the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. other popular European series included the western Lieutenant Blueberry and the adventure series Corto Maltese. later on, children’s features like Asterix and the Smurfs became popular. all of these series achieved greater readership once the strips were compiled into albums, which were the forerunners of the modern graphic novels (although that term really didn’t get any traction until the late 1970s in America).
The Silver Age
Justice league of America #21
Longer stories didn’t take much of a foothold until the Silver Age, when book-length Superman stories started to be cover-blurbed in 1957 (Superman #113) as a “3-part novel”. even then, with DC’s strict format rigidity, their book-length stores were always divided up into three chapters of seven or eight pages each. Jack Kirby’s early Challengers of the unknown stories were often book-length, beginning with their first appearance in showcase #6, also cover-dated 1957. In 1959, a two-part Bizarro story appeared in action Comics #254-255. The annual JLA/JSA crossovers in Justice league of America were always two-parters, but an early two-part JLA story preceded them in issues #10 and #11. Over in action Comics, the Supergirl backup was normally only 8-10 pages, but that was occasionally serialized to tell longer stories. The 1961-62 storyline that culminated in Supergirl being revealed to the public was one of the earliest Silver Age serials, running for eight issues. When the story was later reprinted as an entire 80 Page-Giant, pages were edited out to get it to fit.
Avengers #4
Marvel Comics, as we know it today, was just getting started in the 1960s, so experimentation was the name of the game. As primary writer for a lot of of this decade (at least on the main superhero titles), Stan Lee created a verbal stew of ongoing, occasionally interconnected storylines. In an era where DC readers didn’t really know if the Doom Patrol and Superman existed in the same “universe”, it was a radical idea of the time to see Spider-Man swinging by in the background of other marvel comics. Marvel’s heroes didn’t exist in a vacuum – they populated an entire universe together. Dr. Doom didn’t just menace the fantastic Four; he took on Spider-Man as well. and Stan wasn’t shy about turning to the past, either, introducing golden Age greats Sub-Mariner in fantastic four #4 and Captain America in Avengers #4. (Something magical about the number 4 in the MU.)
Cap’s reappearance in modern times used the marvel universe something else in terms of storytelling – the specter of death. In Avengers #4, it was revealed that Cap’s WWII-era partner Bucky did not survive the end of that war, killed by the villainous Baron Zemo (who in turn met his own death in Avengers #15). These stories, as well as the death of Uncle Ben in the origin of Spider-Man, indicated to readers that the marvel universe was going to be a place where major events would actually happen and would play an ongoing part in the lives of the characters. (This being comic books, Bucky is now back as well, although – at last count – Ben and Zemo are still dead.)
Marvel was much a lot more liberal in the use of continued stories, with the fantastic Four, Avengers, and Thor titles prominently featuring two- or three-part stories on occasion. continued stores were a necessity, as unfortunate service deals limited the number of comics that marvel could publish each month, leaving lots of of Marvel’s greatest or a lot of interesting characters (Captain America, Iron Man, Giant-Man & the Wasp, the Hulk, Sub-Mariner, Dr. Strange, and Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) sharing space with each other in Marvel’s popular anthology titles, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, and odd Tales. considering that each character only had 10 pages a month to work with, a lot of of these characters were forced into serialized storytelling as a matter of survival. An early, epic 17-part Dr. odd story in odd Tales #130-146 was especially notable.
Fantastic four #49
Marvel’s a lot of popular multi-part story in this era is the “Galactus Trilogy”, appearing in fantastic four #48-50 and introducing both Galactus and his herald, the sensitive and tortured Silver Surfer. This was hailed by lots of as an advancement in storytelling for revealing Galactus on the final page of FF#48 as a cliffhanger/teaser of what was to come (although this was not the first time this technique had been used). the most interesting storytelling technique in the “Galactus Trilogy” was that the actual Galactus story begins at the bottom of page 7 of issue #48 and is pretty much wrapped up on page 13 of FF #50 — indicating that stories could now begin and end wherever the hell they wanted to.
Meanwhile, DC Was Napping…
DC was slow to pick up on Marvel’s revolutionary storytelling style. Historians note that DC’s executives at the time were so slow on the uptake because Marvel’s books looked so much crappier than their own that they couldn’t believe that they were being outsold by this undoubtedly inferior product. Granted, DC had incredible production standards and some legendary artists, but their characters and their writing seemed old, tired, and produced by 50- or 60-year-old men. (Because they were.) Marvel’s, on the other hand, were full of action, drama (or melodrama), and in-your-face excitement. The big secret was that, for the most part, Stan and lots of of the artists producing the marvel books were about the same age as the DC folks — the difference being that people like Stan and Jack Kirby refused to act their age! the most telling thing about this era at DC was that they had Neal Adams kicking around the offices for years, and they couldn’t figure out what to make with him. (He was drawing Jerry Lewis and Bob hope comic books. I am not making this up.) When Adams started drawing Superman and action Comics covers, and the sales shot up because of it, the DC brass couldn’t figure out why.
One of the rare exceptions here was 14-year-old Jim Shooter’s work on the legion of Super-Heroes in adventure Comics, beginning in 1966. Shooter continued the use of frequent two-part stories, while slowly adding issue-by-issue continuity to his memorable legion stories.
Fortunately, things changed in a big way for DC around 1968. a lot of of the old management was out. Carmine Infantino, the artist known for drawing Batman, The Flash, and Adam Strange, was on the way up the DC corporate ladder, and people were listening to what he had to say. He brought in artists to be editors, an experiment that supplied big dividends, at least in the short run.
Two of those editors were Dick Giordano and Joe Orlando. (A third, Joe Kubert, really revolutionized DC’s war titles, but that’s not the focus of this article.). I covered Giordano’s accomplishments in an recent post on his passing. Joe Orlando’s accomplishments were a lot more subtle in the short run, but Joe wa