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Episode 1290 Talkback: 'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story' with author Sean Howe
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'Marvel Comics: The Untold Story' is 'An unvarnished, unauthorized, behind-the-scenes account of one of the most dominant pop cultural forces in contemporary America.' Marvel history buff Chris Eberle from Wild Pig Comics joins us to talk about the book with the author Sean Howe (50:17)
Listen here.
Listen here.
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And since its only ten episodes away any big plans for 1300?
Chris, please please please can you bring some of your great offers and such to the London Super Comic Con??? Not only would it be awesome to meet you and have a chat. But I'd also end up buying a load of books :D
Chris: I know you have a wealth of knowledge, especially concerning Marvel comics. I love to hear you talk about Marvel, Spider-Man, etc, when you are a guest on the show. However, in this interview, I feel you needed to tone it down a few notches. It felt like, consciously or not, you were a little too eager to let the interviewee know that you , too, were in the know about Marvel. While you never want the interview subject to think you are a moron and are completely devoid of knowledge, it's generally better to let the interviewee spell things out himself, name the names, cite the dates... he is, after all, the authority on the subject, hence he's the one being interviewed. It is never, EVER a good thing when you finish the subject's sentences for him.
That being said, the book is at the top of my list, and overall, the interview was great. Please take this criticism in the constructive vein in which it is offered. Let the dislikes and disagrees commence.
Marvel Comics - The Untold Story
Book will arrive with my DCBS order later this month
Its horrible.
-The faux aging looks less like aging and more like poor production quality.
-The color scheme has no pop and looks way to muted both in life, on the screen, and on the shelf.
-And the title font is just trying way to hard to emulate the old 60s Marvel title style, but it just makes the book look juvenile. I know (assume) they couldn't use any character images, but I just think they could have classed the book up a'la some of the other oral history books that are currently the "high water mark"
Sure it stands out, but more like a sore thumb, than as eye catching...
I get that their problem is that the iconic images are not available to them, vs the stars and anchors of ESPN, SNL and NBC, but anything would have been better than this thing...
But it keeps pushing the myth that comics in the 50's were killed by the comics code.
Comics started a collapse before the code, and the distribution collapse killed a lot of smaller publishers of comics and magazines (it's why Kurtzman's Trump folded despite high sales), and the collapse from the end of Leader News. It's why EC had books returned in bundles, unopened, even after they subscribed to the code. Then, when Atlas (Goodman's distribution company) collapsed in 1957, Timely was limited to 8 books a month.
The Code did nothing about sales. Dell didn't subscribe, and they still sold better than anyone else. It was availability of television and magazine distribution completely falling apart in the mid 50's. It also finally killed what was left of the pulps, and why many publishers moved to mass market paperbacks for their genre fiction.
Doesn't seem like a hatch job so far, but once you get into the mid 50's, he's no longer telling the story chronologically, which makes the book confusing at times. He talks about Romita on Spidey and the changes he made THEN tells the story of Ditko leaving the book? Factual, but poorly relayed.