Last night I had the excellent opportunity to attend a discussion at the UCLA Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater with three of DC’s biggest names - - Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Paul Levitz - - that was moderated by notable comics fan, the comedian of comedy, Patton Oswalt. It was truly validating to be there, as the Hammer staff was keen to stress this was part of the museum’s ahead-of-the-curve efforts to recognize comics as an art-form.
While the talk covered some basics that fans such as yourselves are well familiar with, there were still plenty of interesting tidbits. For one, Levitz pointed out that the very first comics published by Marvel and DC were edited by the same man (and he thus compared the two's subsequent symbiotic histories to being like Cain and Abel going out into the world.)
The trio's discussion of how comics have evolved from trash literature to respectable museum topic offered an excellent explanation for why these characters have seemed to perpetually grow in relevancy. Noting how the earliest comics were created by young men who very much made things up as they went along, Levitz suggested that the inherently-infectious youthful enthusiasm behind these characters has always driven their appeal. Lee added that characters like Batman continue to capture audiences' imaginations today precisely because DC has allowed them to change and encouraged creators to do personal spins on them (rather than binding them to the kind of rigid guidelines that have stagnated other characters created in the same era.) == TEASER ==
The event coincided with the release of 75 YEARS OF DC COMICS: THE ART OF MODERN MYTHMAKING, an absolutely enormous coffee table book Levitz recently wrote for Taschen that’s the most comprehensive history ever published about the company. Reportedly the largest book of its kind, the extra large tome is 720 pages long and it includes thousands of rare images from DC's records such as the original inks of WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. It also weighs 16 lbs and runs for around $200, so it’s a stocking stuffer for the seriously-committed fan who also happen to have cinder-block sized feet.
If you do want to get your hands on this coffee-table-book-that’s-big-enough-to-be-a-coffee-table, this museum-between-two-covers, it's available right on Tachen's website.
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE . Order them on Amazon here & here . Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk