60s COMIX: A BRIEF HISTORY - part one

[Max Galli]

An even briefer introduction to this "Brief History" of 60s comics.

 

I started to post the three parts of this feature about four years ago on "Yahoo 360", a myspace-like blog page. Then, after Yahoo discontinued "Y 360", I moved to Myspace, carrying on the writing job for this project. But at the time I couldn't run the "60s Comics Collectors" because I was busy with my "Ultrapop Publishing" job, so I had to stop it. The page is still there, somewhere in the Myspace melting pot.

Today, I'm quite proud to re-post here, on The New Untouchables network page, all my old features about 60s Comics history and collection, as I believe these will be useful to comics and books collectors and to the simply curious "newbie" as well.

 

                                                                      Max Galli, 17 february 2010

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1962 was an interesting year. Obviously I'm not talking about wines. 1962 was the time when comics broke the cage and came out from children's world, straight into the one of grown-ups.

 

"The amazing Spiderman" was the first superhero to have very human problems, including moral and psychological ones. He was quite a new experience for traditional american comics market. It had these bright, saturated colours, a pop-art appeal and the main carachter was one Peter Parker, with his "boy next door" attitude and slightly shy manners. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko - the geniuses who created him - didn't know how successful he was going to be. He represented - and maybe introduced - a revolution in comics.

 

This was in the US.

 

In UK, Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise, drawn by Jim Holdaway (the same who made late 50s "Romeo Brown" an instant success), was the first modern girl spy. Sexier than Matha Hari, smarter than James Bond and with an attitude to make people like Dick Tracy and Phil Corrigan (Agent X-9) look very small. Brown hair, brown eyes and a life of risk and difficulties, but always with her stiletto-heeled shoes ready to kick some enemies. The phrase "dressed to kill" suits her like few other ones.

 

In France, revolution in comics meant revolution in sexual attitudes. Jean-Claude Forest invented Barbarella in 1962, for comic mag "Magazine V" and it was instant scandal. French censorship put the accent on the space heroine being sexually uninhibited and appearing quite undressed most of the times. An illuminated publisher, Eric Losfeld, published Barbarella as a luxury edition comic book - adults only, of course - and the success it earned him was as immediate as unexplainable (for the censorship). Losfeld became the first european publisher to deal with quality sexy comics (Jodelle, Pravda, Saga de Xam, to name but a few) with loads of innovative graphic styles, influenced by pop-art as well as the new-born psychedelia.

                                                                                      

                                                                              (to be continued)