Rome was nice, but I’d recommend it more for a weekend break than a full week-long stay — all those churches and ruins begin to blur after a few days. Although it may have more mileage if you’re into shopping. Nicer than anything was seeing new-stands that were still selling a healthy number of comic books of many sorts and the only superhero is sight was the Brave and the Bold Batman.

I knew I’d heard of the concept behind Justice League Dark somewhere before

Well, it amused me at least.

[via: Bleeding Cool ]

Newsarama started a debate over what to call the period of the DC Universe from the Crisis on Infinite Earths to Flashpoint as the usual term, post-Crisis, is increasingly confusing.It got me thinking so I sketched out the different eras/versions of the DC Earth/Earths in the above flow chart (click it to enlarge, updated to include Wildstorm). The trouble with most of Newsarama’s suggestions is that they get into descriptions of in-universe trends and those may only be true for one particular phase of that entire Earth 0.1 to Earth 0.4 cycle. That block is 25-years long – as long as the Silver and Bronze Ages combined.

The classic publishing ages don’t really match step perfectly with the in-universe continuity either. For example, the Classic Earth-One continuity period covers both the Silver Age and the Bronze Age (the split between them being the wholesale replacement of DC’s old guard at the end of the Silver Age and the injection of a new wave of writers and artists). Earth-Two is often use as a short hand for the Golden Age material, but, in a strict sense, its a Silver/Bronze Age construction. Ditto for all the multitude of Classic Multiverse Earths. And all of this is what we generally lump together as pre-Crisis.

The post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe splits into five distinct incarnations with each separated from the last by a wholesale in-universe revision of the timeline. This happens in Zero-Hour, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and in Flashpoint. The timeline is revised in Zero-Hour to fix the continuity mess created by merging five parallel Earth’s into one at the end of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Infinite Crisis splits the single Zero-Hour Earth into a Multiverse of 52 Earths. Grant Morrison restarts the timeline in Final Crisis with, for once, little visible effect on continuity. And then Flashpoint rejigs everything again and and brings us the post-Flashpoint Earth of the New 52. If that’s confusing think about all the parallel Earths that vanish with the Crisis and reappear with the Infinite Crisis.

All that post-Crisis revision doesn’t really parallel with any particular publishing trend or age. The grim-and-gritty “Dark Age” is in vogue immediately after the Crisis and into the Image Comics dominated 1990s. A central thesis of Morrison’s Supergods is that, by the mid-to-late 1990s, there is a push back against the Dark Age and a new Heroic Age of sorts comes about in works like Waid and Ross’s Kingdom Come, Morrison’s JLA & All-Star Superman, and Busiek’s Astro-City. Its also arguable that we’re actually seeing a new Dark Age with mainstream comics dominated by the Authority, Ultimates, Hush – a sort of cinematic, widescreen, ultra-detailed approach – that’s certainly the look that the new JL appears to be following.

So names… the publishing ages don’t align well enough to be usable. Terms like post-Crisis, post-Zero Hour, etc are okay, but require a certain level of knowledge about when they terminate. A grandiose title might be something like the Crisis Cycle, like ‘ramas own Crisis Era, but it again requires you to know what a Crisis is. However, I suppose that could be said of many different terms. I think the most neutral choice might be to resort to archaeology where the age that follows the Bronze Age is the Iron Age or if you want to split it down the Dark/Iron Ages. Whether the post-Flashpoint world deserves its own Age remains to be seen.

The impending end of the Universe (re: DC New 52 reboot) occurred to me as a good time to finally organise my comic collection. It’s been over a decade since I last did it and I’ve moved around a bit during that time. New stuff got boxed as and when there was enough to fill a long box, a lot of stuff wasn’t bagged at all, and that which was bagged now needs to be re-bagged.

On a storage side I just don’t have the room to store the collection at home any more in a way that is accessible so a lot of stuff is going to have to go into an off-site storage locker. If I’m going to do that I feel I need to do it properly with archival quality storage materials and a properly maintained catalogue of what I’ve got and where it is. Most of my stuff isn’t really valuable – it’s mainly 1980s and later – but it still needs protecting.

The biggest problem I faced was normal comic bags. Old comics are inherently self-destructive as the chemicals in cheap paper and plastic degrade and react with each other over time. So normal bags are only okay for short-term storage and the received wisdom is that they should be replaced every 2-5 years. I sorry, but I just don’t have the energy or the time to be constantly re-bagging comics. If I do this I want to do it once and have it done with. That therefore means a bag made from a non-reactive plastic like Mylar.

After a bit of research I settled on 2mil Mylar bags with archival quality half-back boards (3% Ca solution throughout).  These bags aren’t cheap, but with some experimentation I found that 2 modern comics will fit in a 7″ Mylites2 with a half-back board. It works out about 12 cents a comic which isn’t outrageous when you consider that the comic book cover price is $2.99 minimum nowadays.

The 2-up only works for modern 32-page comics which are already in pretty good condition. Things like Annuals or 80-pages seem to need a bag on their own or even a 7.25″ bag. I didn’t want to got to 7.25″ for normal issues as they just feel to “baggy” (for lack of a better word) and I wanted to stick with a maximum of two comics per bag. Things should be held securely, but not so securely that newsprint is going to transfer from one page to another.

Doubling up also means that I have odd-numbered issues facing forward and even-numbered issues facing to the back. That works well for continuous runs, but can fall down if you’ve got holes (missing issues). What I chose to do was to deliberately leave gaps for sequences that I intend to finish. For example if I have issues 1,2,4,5 of a series I would use three bags: 1 for #1,2, a second for #4, and a third for #5. That way I can just add #3 to the second bag without having to rebag #5 to maintain the correct order. It’s a little overkill, but it avoids the problem of having to rebag entire sequences to maintain the correct order.

Finally I decided to use scotch tape for holding down the tap (I only use a small amount to hold the tab down, hermetically sealing them isn’t a practical option, but it does keep insects and dirt out). I was really put off by normal cellotape as its made from a cellulose compound which the packaging actual boasts is bio-degradable (something you certainly don’t want around an archival situation). Scotch tape – from experience – seems more stable and has these handy pre-cut dispensers that are just right for bagging comics. I may have to monitor that situation to see whether its worth switching to full archival tape.

As for boxes. I was really tempted by full acid free card-board boxes. Gerber do a range of acid free boxes, but it felt like that it might be overkill. I also avoided the traditional 30″ long box – those things are okay when you’re younger, but they are just too fragging heavy for me. The 17″ model seems fairly standard nowadays – you can get a descent amount in them without them sagging or being impossible to move around. I use to have some even shorter boxes, 14″ I think, which I really liked, but they created the problem of a profusion of boxes. I have seen averts for drawer boxes, but I remain to be convinced.

Bags, boards, and boxes were all fairly logical and scientific to work out. The hard part is working out a filing system. I thought about alphabetical, but that gets problematic if you want to find a lot of stuff that is close in time chronologically – you end up pulling out a lot of boxes for only a few issues out of each. Conversely filing chronologically makes it harder to follow titles across many years. I think I may try a compromise by splitting it down by continuity – Pre-Crisis to Crisis on Infinite Earths, post-Crisis up to Zero-Hour, Issue 0′s until Infinite Crisis, One-Year Later until Flashpoint. That then leaves a completely fresh break for the new upcoming continuity.

Now I just have to put all that into action… this may take sometime!

The first column list the rank in terms of number of pages produced at DC Comics, the second column lists the name of the writer, and the third column lists the number of pages they produced. The fourth column lists the number of pages as a percentage of DC Comics total output as listed in the GCD. I’ve also listed columns for the number of stories, issues, and the date of publication for their first work at DC Comics.

A few interesting observations:

• The most prolific DC writer of all time is Robert Kanigher who is responsible for 3.5% of all DC’s original output across their entire 75-years. Second to him is Gardner Fox. Together they are responsible for more than 5% of DC’s entire output.
• The most prolific DC female writer of all time is Gail Simone at No 42. Other women on the list include Dann Thomas (No. 57), Louise Simonson (No. 66), and Devin Grayson (No. 68).
• The most prolific DC writer to start working after the Golden Age is Chuck Dixon at No. 3.
• The newest writer on the list is Matthew Sturges who appears at No. 61.
• The writers with the earliest start dates are Jerry Siegel and Sheldon Mayer who both have credits dating back to 1935.
• The massive caveat is that these details are only as certain as the details in the GCD. Also the Stories column may be over-estimated as individual chapters of a single book length tale (e.g. the separate All-Star Comics chapters) are indexed as separate stories.

Updated 02-Aug-2011 to make the table sortable by clicking on the column header (via the excellent Tablesorter jQuery plugin as included in PolyVision’s WordPress plugin.) I’ve also added an additional column listing which feature they did most of their work on, the number in brackets is the number of pages on that feature.

Notes

• Methodology: This table was constructing from a list of the most profile writers based on the total sum of the pages written. This was done in several passes. In the first pass I simply searched for all unique values in the script field for stories published by “DC”. Once I had those I ran a second pass looking for script fields were a previously found writer was listed as substring – e.g. “Mark Waid” appears as a substring in the “Mark Waid; Brain Augustyn” partnership. Once this adjusted list was completed I concatenated entries for writers who had differing spellings of names (“Gardner F. Fox” and “Gardner Fox”).
• The highest ranked result isn’t show. Its “?” meaning unknown. I’ve left it out as
• I don’t claim any knowledge on pseudonym so I’ve not done anything about them. Theoretically the substring filtering in the second pass should have picked up any credits where the indexer has noted the use of a known pseudonym.
• I have attempted to exclude reprints by excluding any story which contains the word “from” in its reprint field  – I couldn’t exclude stories just on the presence of a reprint field as some indexers use it to note where the story has been reprint rather than where it is from.

Civil Rights

February and March 1960 were pivotal times for the Civil Rights movement both in the United States, but also in South Africa. It was on February 1st 1960 that four black college students stated a peaceful sit in at a lunch-counter in North Carolina. That moment is the spark that started the USA civil rights movement.

In South Africa on the 21st of March 69 non-violent protesters were shot dead by police in an event now known as the Sharpeville Massacre. The event was condemned internationally and marked a turning point in South Africa’s history. Sharpeville became so symbolic that it is where President Nelson Mandela signed South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution and its date is the day of the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Current Events

Outside of the comics John F. Kennedy had announced his candidacy for the US Presidency the previous month. In February CERN became operational, France successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb, and the 1960 Winter Olympics start. In March the iconic image of Che Guevara was taken by Alberto Korda, Elvis Presley returned to the USA from his posting in Germany, and Pioneer V launched.

Popular Culture

In popular culture teen heart-throb Edward Byrnes (age 27) is on the cover of Hep Cats and TV Picture Life Magazine. He was the star of 77 Sunset Strip and played a kid who helped out the regular detectives (one of who was Efrem Zimbalist Jr, the future voice of Alfred Pennyworth in Batman: The Animated Series). Byrnes is allegedly the prototype for the character of Snapper Carr, the League’s mascot who first appeared in this story.

Other magazine cover stars in February and March of that year included Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Debbie Reynolds, and Janet Leigh (all in the late-20s/early-30s). Leigh was starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Psycho which was released in March.

Mark Dinning’s “Teen Angel” led the Hit Parade for two weeks before being knocked off the top spot by Percy Faith and the “Theme From A Summer Place”. Faith’s theme may not be recognised by name, but the its a quintessential late-50s easy listening classic and will be familiar to you the as incidental music used when tv/film makers want to invoke the age.

In the Comics

Overview

This was just three months into the 1960s and DC’s line of comic books is still very much in the pattern that it had been in the 1950s. The Superman/Batman suite of books and their co-stars (Aquaman, Martian Manhunter) are published monthly, but the Julius Schwartz reboot is still in its infancy. The Flash is still bi-monthly and Green Lantern still hasn’t left Showcase.

In the same month Superman and Batman’s adventures are being written by their co-creators, Jerry Siegel (back at DC) and Bill Finger (Bob Kane’s original ghost writer/collaborator), and they are being drawn by their classic late Golden Age artists, Wayne Borning and Al Pastino on Superman and Sheldon Molfoff and Dick Sprang on Batman. Likewise Ramona Fradon is drawing Aquaman’s adventures (including the first appearances of Aqualad) and Ross Andru is drawing Wonder Woman’s adventures. The original Batwoman features prominently in Batman’s stories and he is actively fighting aliens.

DC Titles Featuring the Justice Leaguers in February and March 1960

• Aquaman
  • Adventure Comics #269 “The Kid From Atlantis” (Robert Bernstein/Ramona Fradon) – the first appearance of Aqualad
  • Adventure Comics #270 “The Menace of Aqualad” (Robert Bernstein/Ramona Fradon) – gee second appearance and the kids already making a nuisance of himself
• Batman
  • Batman #129 “Web of the Spinnner” (Bill Finger/Sheldon Moldoff)
  • Batman #130 “Batman’s Deadly Birthday” (Bill Finger/Dick Sprang) & “The Master of Weapons” (Bill Finger/Sheldon Moldoff) & “The Hand From Nowhere” (Bill Finger/Sheldon Moldoff)
  • Detective Comics #276 “The Return of Batmite” (Bill Finger/Sheldon Moldoff)
  • Detective Comics #277 “The Jigaw Menace From Space” (?/Sheldon Molfoff)
  • World’s Finest #107 (with Superman) “Secret of the Time Creature” (Bill Finger/Dick Sprang)
  • World’s Finest #108 (with Superman) “The Star Creatures” (Jerry Coleman/Dick Sprang)
• Flash
  • The Flash #111 “The Invasion of the Cloud Creatures” (John Broome/Carmine Infantino)
• Green Lantern
  • Showcase #24 “The Secret of the Black Museum!” & “The Creature That Couldn’t Die!” (John Broome/Gil Kane) – (the third appearance of Green Lantern Hal Jordan)
• Martian Manhunter
  • Detective Comics #276 “The Crimes of John Jones” (Jack Miller/Joe Certa)
  • Detective Comics #277 “The Menace of Mr Moth” (Jack Miller/Joe Certa)
• Superman
  • Action Comics #261 “Superman’s Fortress of Solitude” (Jerry Siegel/Wayne Boring)
  • Action Comics #262 “When Superman Lost His Powers” (Robert Bernstein/Wayne Boring)
  • Superman #135 “When Lois First Suspected That Clark Was Superman!” (Jerry Siegel/Al Plastino) & “Superman’s Mermaid Sweetheart” (Jerry Siegel/Wayne Boring) & “The Trio of Steel!” (Jerry Siegel/Al Plastino)
  • World’s Finest #107 (with Batman) “Secret of the Time Creature” (Bill Finger/Dick Sprang)
  • World’s Finest #108 (with Superman) “The Star Creatures” (Jerry Coleman/Dick Sprang)
• Wonder Woman
  • Wonder Woman #112 “The Chest of Monsters” (Robert Kanigher/Ross Andru)

(NB: Superman would have more appearances, but I haven’t included Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and Superboy titles).

As I [Schwartz] started the new series, I had a basic question to confront: Should it be numbered one as the first of the new Flash, or should it pick up its numbering from 104 which was where the Golden Age series had left off?

Donenfeld [the owner] was adamant. It had to be the latter, and when I asked why, he explained “If you go to a newsstand, you see hundreds of titles on display. If you are looking at two of them side by side and one said number one, and one said number one hundred and four, which is a kid going to spend his hard-earned dime on? If the kid is smart, it will obviously be number one hundred and four and not an unknown number one because any comic that has gone that long must be worth reading.”

– Julius Schwartz, pg. 88, Man of Two Worlds.

How times change. I came across the quote while looking for something else and just had to share it.

Muppet’s lampooning the Green Lantern buzz – and remember that the Muppets are now owned by Disney who also own Marvel Comics.

And while everybody is at it here is the Onion’s take:

[via: BC ]