Secret History of Comics

This is a six episode documentary on the history of the comic book. The first episode is Marvel, mostly the collaboration of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. It's nice to have Stan before his death a year later. The second episode is the strange origins of Wonder Woman. The third is Superman centering on the struggles of Shuster and Siegel. The fourth is about 9/11 and Civil War. The fifth is the struggle of black artists and Milestone Comics. The last is Image Comics which has the titular Robert Kirkman as a partner.

Robert Kirkman is the executive producer and the name above the title. That allows for some inside man information but also plenty of spin. The main spin is that artists need to get paid and they should have control. Nobody but the money men would disagree to that. The information is relatively well-known to fans but it's put together in a nice way. Only the fourth episode doesn't really fit the central theme. I think that this is worthwhile for fans and newbies alike. They will find different things interesting.

I've seen only the episode on Wonder Woman and it was great. The documentary goes back and provides great archival footage of the people who developed the original story line, but more interesting, it provides a look at the times and how this interacted with the people involved. They follow the history of Wonder Woman and the evolution of the character, and along the way they are many talking heads who provide a context in which to view the people and the comics.

A very American (and sorry to say narrow-minded) view of the art of comics. For ex., I believe clichés like "he was the best comic artist ever" would be opposed by the Japanese where manga is big business. "The best comic artists ever" (and manuscript writers) in my opinion, have previously been found in France and Belgium, and I think they are still to be found there. There is a world outside the US ...

Interesting evolution, the name "comics" was derived years ago from strips in newspapers being funny, or "comic." As a kid in the 1950s I recall looking forward to the Sunday paper each week to read the comic strips. And then came comic books, again with the focus on funny stories.

Somewhere along the line the emphasis changed from comedy to drama, like the Superman and Superboy comic books I so enjoyed as a teenager in the 1960s. I don't read comics anymore but I suppose few if any are meant to be funny nowadays. Although they probably all contain humor.

This 2017 series was originally broadcast on TV, presently I am able to watch the six episodes on a two DVD set from my public library, each episode about 42 minutes for a total running time of just over 4 hours. This is really enjoyable for me. When I watched the episode with Stan Lee and Marvel I was amazed at their process. Lee would verbally describe a story to Jack Kirby then leave. Kirby would use his creativity and superb art skills to create the drawings depicting the story. Later Lee would get the drawings to write the dialog that would go along with it. Lee admitted, at times when he got the drawings he wasn't sure which story they represented. But it worked!

Each of the six episodes are interesting, in total an interesting glimpse into that world and how the comics led to new TV and movie universes.

I watch a lot of "AMC" series especially like "Comic Book Men" as I like being a nerd and geek and a fan of comics as it brings memories back of being a kid. I for one am also a fan of pop culture and a history buff, and this series covers it all. As interviews are featured with comic book editors of D.C. and Marvel and pop historians give their take as how comics influenced fans and changed the culture of the world. Really you as the viewer learn stuff that you may not even know! And the footage is reacted to look like it created past times that the narrator talks about. Each episode also features a different comic character or a different topic that involves the comic book world. This is a series that "AMC" can expand on and make more episodes because the universe of comic characters and comic books is big. I hope to see more of this.