Posts Tagged ‘comic books’
“…theoretical considerations require that what is to-day the object of a phobia must at one time in the past have been the source of a high degree of pleasure”*…
In 1955, in the wake of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency investigation into the corrupting influence of comic books (and the now largely-discredited but then damning testimony of Frederic Wertham), E.C. Comics, which had been singled out as an offender, inaugurated an “educational” series, “New Direction,” with the series Psychoanalysis. Each issue, drawn by Jack Kamen (whose earlier work had included Tales from the Crypt), narrated the clinical experiences of three patients in analysis…
The series– realistically recounting the sessions of patients, each cured by their therapists– bewildered retailers and readers alike. It was cancelled after four issues. Within 5 years EC publisher William Gaines had shifted his attention completely to what was, in 1955, a nascent side project for Harvey Kurtzman: Mad.
Read more about Psychoanalysis— see more covers, find precis of the storylines– at “Curious ‘Psychoanalysis’ comics from the 1950s.”
* Sigmund Freud, The Sexual Enlightenment of Children
###
As we’re gently informed that our time is up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1936 that neuropsychiatrist Walter Freeman and his friend and colleague, the neurosurgeon, James W. Watts performed the first pre-frontal lobotomy in the U.S. Freeman and Watts had learned of the technique from it’s “inventor,” Egas Moniz, a Portuguese surgeon who’d performed the very first lobotomy (or “leucotomy” as it’s also known) earlier that same year. Now out of favor and largely out of practice, Freeman and Watts developed a method that was the basis for procedures– an estimated 40,000 in the U.S.– conducted until around 1960, when the practice effectively ceased. But in headier days, lobotomies were the rage: Moniz shared the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine “for his discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses.”
Site of borehole for the standard pre-frontal lobotomy/leucotomy, as developed by Freeman and Watts
Holy Huffmobile, Batman!…
From the first appearance of the Caped Crusader’s wheels…
Before the familiar bat-finned cars, the title "Batmobile" was first used on a red convertible in Detective Comics #48 in February 1941. Most of the design was based on the 1936 Cord, though the nose of the car looked more like that of a Lincoln or similar car. The bat mask did not exist yet, but the car did sport a small "bat" hood ornament. Several "Proto-Batmobiles" had appeared in comics by this point, though this was was the first to use the name. It was also the last car used before the now famous Batmobiles with the bat-masks and roof fins.
…to the most recent…
From Batman, The Return (2011, though reminiscent of "The Tumbler" from Christopher Nolan's 2005 film Batman Begins)
… there have been 110 different models of The Batmobile (so far). One can explore them all at BatmobileHistory.com. (And check them out in infographic form at SyFy’s Blastr.)
As we search the night skies for the Batsignal, we might pause to celebrate the most popular Batmobile of all– Adam West’s regal ride in the hit series which premiered on ABC on this date in 1966:
Custom car builder George Barris decided to use the Ford Motor Company's abandoned Futura concept car as a basis for what would go on to become one of the most famous cars in the world. The car featured an impressive array of bat-gadgets. In addition to the "atomic turbine engine" (the car was actually powered by a blueprinted Ford V8), the car had a nose-mounted chain slicer, lasers, rockets, an on-board telephone, radar, dash monitor, on-board computer, and police beacon. If needed, the Batmobile is capable of a quick 180° "bat-turn" thanks to two rear-mounted 10' parachutes, and the it is equipped with a smoke emitter and a nail spreader to discourage pursuit.
“The map is not the territory”…
“The Treachery of Images,” René Magritte, 1928-9
Alfred Korzybski reminds one (in the title-line quote, above), as does Surrealist wit like Magritte’s, that representations are not the things they represent.
Still, they fascinate us– precisely because of their power to evoke the thing that they aren’t. And when the things that maps evoke aren’t real things at all? Even niftier!
Consider, for example, two kinds of maps of fictional territories…
For nine years, from 1943 to 1952, Dell published 557 mystery novels with “map backs.” Some charted fictional action on “real” terrain, for instance…
But most located the imagined plot in an imaginary setting, for example…
and…
In a different imaginary arena (not to say “a parallel universe”), the world of comics, comic books, and graphic novels, maps also play an important role…
Sometimes they are used to elaborate on a conceit in a way that adds narrative credibility through detail, e.g…
Nick Fury’s Tunnel, Strange Tales #141
…and sometimes, simply for dramatic effect, e.g…
Superman throws out the first pitch
Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: A hypperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is never the less the map that proceeds the territory – pressesion of simulacra- that engenders the territory.
– Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra & Simulation, 1994
Or, as someone who isn’t a French Post-Structuralist might say, way cool!
Readers can find more Bantam map-backs at Marble River’s Ephemera (from whence, the examples above) and at Mystery Scene. Readers can get more graphic guidance at Comic Book Cartography (the source of those examples). Grateful TotH to reader MH-H for the lead to CBC.
As we endeavor (but not too hard) to avoid the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, we might recall that it was on this date in 1987 (44 years to the day after “Bicycle Day,” the day that Dr. Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD, deliberately took the hallucinogen for the first time) that The Simpsons debuted, as a short within The Tracey Ullman Show.
TRUTH is stranger and a thousand times more thrilling than FICTION!…
(Readers can find the rest of this run– and myriad other examples of arresting artwork– at The Comic Book Cover Browser.)
As we decide how to spend our allowances, we might recall that on this date in 1937, the fathers of Crystal City, Texas, took the occasion of the second annual Spinach Festival there to unveil a six-foot concrete statue of Popeye (whose covers begin here…).
You must be logged in to post a comment.