Too Many Pens On The Drawing Board: The Rise and Fall of The Comic Book Anthology

The Strand was the original
home for works by Kipling,
Christie, Doyle and Wells 

Many great works of fiction before the the 21st century were first published serialized in anthologies with short stories in magazines and journals. When literacy wasn't as ubiquitous as it is is now, the serial format was a way to appeal to as many members of the reading market. By containing a mix of genres, these publications could hold the attention and interest of a wide market before demographics became as defined and catered to as they are today.

For some reason, it's hard to find current comics anthologies that thrive with the support of an audience. Consumers may not want to take the killer with the filler. Even still, that doesn't explain how anthologies that more than held their own, that broke the mold to introduce talent that was new or unjustly ignored couldn't be maintained. The editors aren't to blame. With titles like Flinch and Solo, DC Comics editors managed to fill pages with great stories that just couldn't support the sales needed to maintain publication.

Not for capes alone!

Are people not interested in anthologies any more? Most Marvel and DC characters that have lock down on the shelves of comics stores today came from serial anthologies. These are the same characters that are projected on movie screens and dominate television ratings. Characters from the Golden and Silver Age of comics, like Batman, Spider-Man, Thor, and many other characters debuted in titles that were designed to function as a testing ground. DC comics took it's name from the anthology Detective Comics. Once known as National Comics, DC changed its name after Batman became so popular in the pages of Detective Comics and title was soon given to him alone. The story of Batman and National Comics is testimony to the one time power, influence and popularity of anthologies in comics, much like the story of Sherlock Holmes and Strand before him.

But something happened. Something happened to the public and the perception of the serial to make it step into the shadows to let the dawn shed light on individual titles that would succeed or be buried in the sands of time. 

I can't help but wonder what change happened that makes it nearly impossible for an anthology comic to maintain publication. While Heavy Metal and 2000 A.D. have bucked the trend to stay in publication for decades, it seems nearly impossible to maintain an anthology comic, especially when long running Dark Horse Presents called it quits after a 14 year run (though they did move to a digital format and return to paper in 2014). Is it something about the American audience? Heavy Metal and 2000 A.D. are both European books. Though they get brought into american comic shops, the states is hardly their target audience. In the case of Heavy Metal, they publish a brand of science fiction and fantasy that is often lush and stylized (and sexy!) in a way so rarely seen in american comics that readers looking for that type of story had no where else to go.

A view of 2000 A.D. and  Heavy Metal covers throughout the years.

Still, when U.S. publishers try to tackle the anthology, it's either a special event with a finite amount of issue planned, like Marvel's Strange Tales, or a title that doesn't last much longer than a year, like D.C.'s Flinch and Solo. D.C.'s Wednesday Comics is an amazing throw-back to newspaper comics, with over sized pages and a wealth of the best talent in comics (Azzarello, Rizzo, Gaiman, Busiek, Allred, Baker, Pope, Villarrubia). Giving a generation of readers the feel of reading comics in a way they weren't alive to experience (that of sunday edition newspaper comics), and offering a reminder of the way it was for older readers, Wednesday Comics took on the anthology to bring together magnificent stories to resurrect the classic shape and look they originally came from. Even though it was planned to only last for 12 issues, Wednesday Comics proved an anthology could sell well when, in 2009, 7 issues hit the top 100 and 3 other issues placed in the top 300 --in the month of August alone!

Wednesday Comics went on to be collected, as did Strange Tales, which took talent from alternative comics (Vazques, Pekar, Shaw, Jason) to give fresh takes on Marvel properties for two mini-series. Both titles had a previously set amount of issues planned, and were well marketed. Other anthologies, that were just as good as Wednesday Comics and Strange Tales, just couldn't be kept alive like Solo and Flinch. Both published by D.C., these titles did something that hadn't been done in a while by the big two.

While comic book horror anthologies had never gone away, being kept alive by  independent publishers, most horror came from books based on properties such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason, Evil Dead and other movies, while original horror stories seemed to only exist in character driven books like Hellblazer and Hellboy before The Walking Dead created a phenomenon that would span mediums. Still, D.C. took a chance with Flinch, when Vertigo decided to welcome the possibility of bringing its own brand of horror to mature audiences. For my money, Flinch was one of the best books being published at the time. Aside from Taboo, which was published by Spiderbaby Graphix, horror anthologies had never been so violent, literary and frightening. While it had some yarns I didn't care for, the majority were top notch stories coming from talents like Ted McKeever, Azzarello/Rizzo, Mike Carey, Bill Willingham and Greg Rucka, which earned the title an Eisner nomination and won a Bram Stokers Award for Joe R. Lansdale's "Red Romance" in issue #11. Even though there was no other comic out there at the time doing what Flinch did, it couldn't be kept alive for more than 16 issues. 

While Flinch was an unsuccessful attempt at bringing back the horror anthology, Solo did something virtually new. Similar to the Golden and Silver Age Showcase, which offered different creators one to three issue to introduced new characters to discover fan favorites that could support their own title, D.C. debuted Solo in 2004 to give 48 pages to popular talents like Mike Allred, Darwyn Cooke, Howard Chaykin and Teddy Kristiansen to publish original stories or play with stock characters in their own well-developed styles. Published bimonthly, Solo only lasted for 12 issues before being canceled. Perhaps one of the problems was the $4.99 price tag for a comic with no ads. Fans may have decided to use their funds in a more economical way. Maybe readers preferred an ongoing story. Whatever the reason, poor sales numbers halted production on the title even though it won all three Eisner awards it was nominated for (two for stories and one for editing).

The various styles of solo

Barring few exceptions, like 200 A.D. and Heavy Metal, it seems anthology comics just can't stick around, despite them being a wonderful way to get exciting new stories and offer exposure to talents that are up and coming. Still, there is hope! Soon, Image Comics will be publishing Island, a 72 page anthology curated by Brandon Graham and Emma Rios. I can't remember being as excited for a new comic as I am for Island. While I have never heard the names on the list of writers and artists attached to the line-up, it's my unfamiliarity with them that gives me this anticipation. It's the newness and hope of discovering writers and artists that can show readers worlds and ideas they never thought of that makes me so excited over this anthology. I am feeling the same level of excitement for Islands that I felt for titles like Wednesday Comics, Flinch and Solo. I can only hope the ad-free issue #1, with a $7.99 price tag, doesn't put the book on a path that will give it the same fate as Solo.

The cover for an upcoming issue of Island

The Art of War Comics

War sells. It has been bought, sold and commodified since the preservation of history. War is in the production of weapons people use and collect, governmental motives, the tickets to movies and sporting events people attend, and in the pages of the books we read. War can even be found in our comic books. Even today, most people think of the spandex stereotype when hearing “comic books.” It’s not very surprising that this is the case. Despite the proliferation and growing popularity of the genius marketing term, “graphic novel,” which has aided the public relations campaign to legitimize the comic book (to the chagrin of some creators and fans alike), it is superheroes that come to mind when comics are brought up.

"My father conceived the idea of taking

the Sunday pages, folding them over,

and folding them once again, and ending

up with something roughly the size of

todays comic book"

-William M. Gaines

With Superhero stories flooding today’s theatres and making their way to television screens, it’s no surprise that people associate comics with superheroes. Though, comics have since moved from originally being refolded inserts of Our Gang, Krazy Kat and Popeye to be found in the pages of newspapers, marketed to get the pennies from young pockets after relieving the nickels from their parents' pockets. Soon after the basic shape and tone of the medium was formed, the war story became one of the biggest sellers. Along with romance and funny animal stories, there was a time when comics that focused on war occupied the same number of hands that superhero stories originally did. This was a time when war was commonly found in the newspaper and on the radio waves. War served as topic for discussion and was shown in a glamorous light through posters and propaganda scattered around the small towns and big cities of early America. For its time, it only made sense that the genre of war stories would be a popular one before the blood and gore found in the horror genre took focus and before the superhero came to the rescue. This is a time where the heroes and roles of make-believe for children were policemen, fire fighters, cowboys and soldiers.

In the later 20th century, most American comic books were mostly free of war. Taking a look into comics with science fiction elements, readers certainly observe the presence of war. Alien races the Fantastic Four encounter are often at war. The Kree / Skrull war is something the Marvel universe may forever keep in the stars to serve as a potential plot device for future stories. Though, with many superhero books, war is nothing more than a plot device. With the exception of a one-shot here and a mini-series there to bring back The Unknown Soldier or Enemy Ace for a look into the history of comics and the role war stories played in it (meta stories), war stories did not serve much of a role in comic shops past the 70's. There are exceptions to be found with titles like Real War Stories (2 issue by Eclipse Comics, one published in '87 and one in '91), which brought together some of comics most refined talent to tell moving and true stories that may not have been given an audience elsewhere. But these stories moved beyond the more common war stories of soldiers staying alive while working a path through enemy lines. These stories attempted to show another side of war by giving accounts of the post war lives of soldiers.

Now in the the 21st Century, which can also be referred to as a post 9/11 culture, the war story is something much more present in comics. More than the war story, the focus is now on war itself. After the attack, Marvel, DC and many other publishers began to print books with covers that acknowledged the events. Some titles told stories that focused on the actual event with one-shots and larger anthologies printed to raise funds for workers and families. With The Amazing Spider-Man, a character with a movie about to be released, Marvel printed issue  #36 with a cover that was all black except for it’s title , number, and company logo. The story turned the New York City that was ravaged and covered in the clouds of dust and cement of the real world into the NYC Spider-Man fights the Vulture and takes pictures as a photographer, the same NYC that houses a large portion of Marvel characters. The issue had Spider-Man take a look at the damage of his city and wonder how this could happen. Careful not to make a political statement, the story focused on one man trying to wrap his mind around the events and regret not being able help, a sentiment shared by many readers.

Five years after 9/11, Marvel decided to print Civil War.  To call Marvel’s Civil War event a war story would not be completely accurate. At best, it’s an allegory that has one super villain using his powers to cause a destructive and violent act towards civilians. The super villain attack is a way to examine the current role of the superhero (namely Captain America) in relation to the role they played in the 1940’s. In this story, the U.S. government forces superheroes to register themselves as weapons of mass destructions by using their real identities. When certain heroes refuse, they flee or get taken to detention camps. The story reflects the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay, both very serious issues to be sure. Still, this is not a war story, it’s a story that uses war, and the real life events that come about because of it, as a vehicle to tell a different story, a story that questions the role of the superhero in a world where super villains still exist and do evil, a story that questions why evil is still active 70 years after the superhero put on a mask. Even then, that’s a question Alan Moore has examined twice with Watchman and Miracleman.

So where else is war found in the pages of comics in the post 9/11 world? Marvel didn't own patriotism, even though they owned Captain America, the personification of American Patriotism. Also, Marvel wasn't the only publisher of war comics in the height of its popularity, not even close. They have Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos and The ‘Nam. Aside from those titles, war stories could commonly be found in anthology books published by Dell and EC. As far as recurring titles are concerned, many war comics were published by Charlton and continued by DC when they bought and incorporated those Charlton properties. Giving Garth Ennis and other talent the go ahead, DC did bring back the genre of war stories to comics for a brief period in the form of the mini-series, but they didn't stay around long. While Ennis is a big name in the world of comics, he would be able to keep the classic war story alive moving to publishers like Dynamite (Battle Fields), that work with hot and historically proven franchise properties and give well known creative talent a lot  of creative freedom.

By and large, the war story genre wasn't around in comics after the late 80’s. With Marvel’s Civil War, it was a domestic act that unsettled the state of operations superheroes faced, and to a point, a story that exploited real life events. The story was not a war story, it was about superheroes struggling with their role in society. Still, it wasn't since Captain America and Superman took to the battlefield to punch Hitler and his allied forces that superheroes had a role in war comics (Marvel knocked him in '41, DC smacked him '42). To get war stories in comics after the 70's, you had to abandoned Marvel, DC and superheroes, you had to walk away from fiction altogether. To get war stories in comics, you had to look towards the independently published work of Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi. In those titles, comics began to reshape the war story.

In the early 80’s Spigelman began to tell his own war story. There is no muscular hero with a gun, ripped fatigues and unstoppable attitude propelling Maus. It’s a war story that doesn't tell itself through the people fighting or waging the war, but the victims, the people caught in the middle, trying to survive and make sense of their situation. Spanning the time between WWII and the late 70’s, Maus is a literary comic. The story is framed and on the surface focuses on the author interviewing his father to get the story of  a survivor of Germany's concentration camps. The story proves Spiegelman to be a master or comics narrative techniques in the ways he seamlessly flows between his father's story and his own. Maus is a modern war story that doesn't aim to show battles of violence, but the internal struggles that follow war. Maus is a tale of how the author deals with the history of his family, his role as both a father and a son, and how the war he didn’t experience first hand haunts him in adulthood. Maus started a trend in reforming not only what stories comics could tell, but how comics took on the war story. Showing wasn't enough for the new school of creators. It was now time to take a deeper look at war, going past the battles by looking at them directly, then taking a look around them.

The war story changed its face in the 80’s. Spiegelman’s Maus may be the reason for this, but it wasn't the only book to take the nonfiction approach of telling war stories.  A journalist by trade, Joe Sacco would make comics from the interviews and experiences he had while in and around Bosnia and Iraq. Spiegelman played with the idea of the biography and created a comics work that is something very different than a biography. Maus became a very unique story and document about history, family and self aware art. Sacco, on the other hand, isn't interested in creating a biography with his war stories. What Joe Sacco does, and does very well, is work with the concepts and form of journalism. As with Maus, it’s not always the war itself that plays a character, it’s the post war reality and anxiety-fueled moments of rest that play as silent and loud character that emphasize motivations of characters, whether he’s a war profiteer (The Fixer), or she’s an orphaned refugee (Palestine), making sense of her new environment. War and its aftermath is ever present and forcing people to make the decisions they make, and the stories of the people that live through it is at the heart of what Joe Sacco writes about.

In her own books, Satrapi does not play with genre. Persepolis is an autobiography that focuses on the life of its author. The book takes the real life setting and atmosphere of Iran during the time of the Islamic Revolution. While the story isn't about Iran and Iraq fighting one another, the book focuses on first hand experiences of war similar to Sacco and Spiegelman. The reader is shown the life of a girl living in a culture under a time of change, where her setting forces values and behavior onto her before she leaves her home and moves to Paris to start living a new life. Persepolis is the story of how war can affect the development of a girl and the displacement it puts her though in order  to find her own path. It’s a story of how to navigate through and around war, where the role of war in the story is less graphic and unsettling to the reader than both a classic war story and books like Maus and Palestine. Like Sacco and Spiegelman, the work is built on serious topics that just happen to be in comics form.

Private Pyle is not made for war

With those works, it's evident the war story didn't completely leave American comics, it just changed its face. This face lift may have come from the tastes of comic book readers, it may have come from a cultural shift. Taking a step back from comics to look at movies that handle the war story, there’s Apocalypse Now and  Full Metal Jacket that exit the 70’s and head to the 80’s to show horrific sides of war. While there is combat in the movies, the most troubling parts of the movies, the scenes with the most character development and attention to detail, show soldiers that can't handle the realities of war, people that break down and turn to drugs and experience mental decay instead of kill the bad guy, with the seriousness of John Wayne, before coming back home to be greeted by the wives they left behind. These are the creations of people that lived through war and combat footage being broadcast on nightly news. These were the war stories of people that had no interest in making movies without a message. Perhaps the same can be said of the new wave of war stories looked at above. And perhaps this is the reason for the new wave of war comics being put out now.

While Saga, one of today’s most popular comics*, doesn't focus on a war and the people fighting in the trenches, like the classic war story, it revolves around a war and it exists because of one, focusing on characters living in the middle of one as they are ricocheted around the solar system because of it. Like the new war stories mentioned above, Saga wears more hats than war story. In many ways, It borrows from the titles mentioned above. 

Unlike the other new war stories mentioned, Saga is a work of fiction. The humanoid characters that have fallen in love are not real, the war being waged by their separate species did not happen, and the narrator a reader watches grow up was never really be born. Like the other comics and movies mentioned, Saga does not only tell a story of war, but of a family, the love between two people unlikely to share such a relationship, culture clashes, and self discovery all done with an interesting narrative technique. Like Civil War, Brian K. Vaughan is writing an allegory, an allegory of war, but one that isn't limited to the superhero genre, one that is afforded the opportunity and broad movements of a story that can take its genre in whatever direction it wants. If assigned a genre, Saga would be a Science Fiction / Fantasy story. But where Civil War used its allegorical aspects to tell a superhero story, Saga uses it’s SciFi / Fantasy genre to tell a story about lives and how they are affected by war to fully form its allegory. 

Though it’s current tone and pacing suggest this story has every intention of having a solid set of acts, complete with a planned ending, it’s unknown how long Saga will go. When it begins, there are plot points forming very fast in order to catch-up the reader on the world the story takes place. There are two characters from opposite species (Alana and Marko) birthing their love child. They are on the run. Both have dissent from their military posts and are different species. And the person narrating is their mixed species child. If this story came out in a different time, it may just be another science fiction story that deals with issues that a reader can relate to, but it didn’t. This is a story being written while several neighboring countries in the middle east continue to fight wars that have gone on for a very long time, while ruling governments and their motivations and tactics may not always seem so obvious. Also, this story is an American comic, directed to an adult audience (there’s cursing, sex and graphic violence) being presented to a post 9/11 culture aware of, if not terrible well versed in, world events.

If the story was set on Earth, which it could be, and the two main characters were human instead of humanoids, say Alana was Indian and Marko a Pakastani (or one was Israeli while the other Palestinian, China/Japan, N. Korea/S. Korea, etc.) and the story starts off in Kashmir before the characters take their child away to parts of China, or another land neutral in the dispute, the story would start to resemble one Sacco may cover, a displaced family Spiegelman may write about, or a little girl Satrapi may want to guide to self discovery. And if this story was set on earth, all three of them could do a great job of telling their story, but it doesn’t. This story never happened, the people never existed and the war never took place. But it could have. This story could be happening right now, but not without the war moving it from chapter to chapter.

*Saga does not sell as well as other titles by Marvel and DC. Though, the numbers don’t always account for the digital sales and, this being a book that is drawn digitally, I don’t think most would have a problem reading it on a screen. Which is to say, I bet there's a lot of readers not tallied in Diamonds estimation.  Also, with collected volumes, single issues are not as popular as they used to be. While Saga #24 didn’t place in the top 100 comics sold in January, there’s an alternative way to look at it. With four collections available, the title sold  22,233 units, with volumes 1, 2 and 3 placing in the top 8 for sales of trades.