Comics History

The Professor’s been focused on school work (instead of the important stuff, like comics trivia questions), and the submissions have piled up alarmingly, so let start with the earliest, and do a few a day until they’re current. The first question is from, embarrassingly, Jan. 21: In Green Lantern when Kyle Rayner was still in the main title, before they brough back Hal Jordan, he was in space and defeating the Black Circle Syndicate. After he defeated Amon Sur the Femail Guardian appears behind him and stabs Kyle Rayner. She leaves his to die but he telports himself out of … Continue reading →

In the 60’s, there was one comic issued by DC that had about 100 pages and it had a story line that involved most, if not all, of the DC heroes. Back in the late 60’s or 70’s, there was a giant comic book with a story line about a mirror that allowed you to enter a different world. I’ve been trying to find this comic, but I don’t quite remember whether it was DC or Marvel. I seem to remember that the story line had a host that narrated the story. Whats the story where Conan the cimmerian is … Continue reading →

The Professor’s a month behind on these, and now has three stacked up, so let’s start with the earliest, from Sept. 11: i have comics that look like newspapers and they are in excellent condition how do i found out what they are worth “Comics that look like newspapers”? They could be Sunday comics sections — do they have a name of a newspaper, or a date, on them? Is it as big as a newspaper, and does it fold out? (There’s a thing called Wham-O Giant Comics that did that, too, that the Professor vaguely remembers having Wally Wood … Continue reading →

Who first wrote the comic book? That’s an interesting (if ungrammatical) question, but the only true answer is: it depends, on what you mean by “comic,” “book,” and “wrote.”  Candidates range from whomever did those cave paintings in the south of France, 10,000 years ago, to Rudolphe Toppfer (who published books using sequential pictures to tell a story in the first half of the 1800s) to Major Malcolm Wheeler, whose New Fun, published in 1935, is generally considered the first comic in the format we’re familiar with today — a floppy pamphlet, for 10 cents — which consisted mostly of … Continue reading →