Subject: Comic Book Heroes
From: heyjones@ix.netcom.com
Date: 1998/08/08
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
An open letter from Gerard Jones:

Dear comicdom,

Now that over a year and a half have passed, the messages pointing out
errors in my and Will Jacobs's revised The Comic Book Heroes  have
finally trickled to a stop.   And now that we are considering pursuing a
revised edition, it seemed like a good time to post another list of
those errors, as both a sort of "errata" page for interested readers of
the latest edition and a call for further corrections from readers who
haven't yet contacted us, to help us make the next version less
mistake-riddled.

Upon rereading the book, I've been pleasantly surprised: it's flawed,
but it's good.  It could use another couple of drafts to tighten and
clarify it, but it succeeds in much of its aim, to be the first history
of superhero comics, not only as a genre, a pop-culture artifact, and an
industry, but as a community.  I wanted the book to be a social,
cultural, and critical history - personal, emotional, idiosyncratic, but
as honest as I could make it - and I think it succeeds, if not quite as
well as I'd hoped, at least much better than I feared.  Unfortunately,
for complex and not very interesting reasons, the book had to be turned
around much more quickly than we or anyone at Prima Publishing really
wanted, and so an embarrassing number of errors found their way into
print.  Fortunately, none of the errors so far discovered are big enough
to make me want to change any significant part of the narrative or
criticism.

In this letter I'll skip the many grammatical and typographical errors,
assuming the readers can find that way through that thicket by
themselves, and stick to the errors of fact.  Many thanks to Mike Barr,
Bob Beerbohm, Kurt Busiek, Mark Evanier, Gary Groth, Heidi MacDonald,
Lou Mougin, Carl Potts, Roy Thomas, Martha Thomases, and all the others
who've contacted me.  From the top:

Pg. IX.  In noting our sources, we neglected to mention that some quotes
and anecdotes were taken from the many fan-press articles of Lou Mougin
(especially for pp. 40-47 and 109-119), and from Mike Barr's article,
"The Madame and the Girls," from WaP (especially for pp. 123-125).

Pg. X.  Some readers might assume that my erroneous ascription of the
creation of coffee to Central America is part of some old grudge I'm
carrying against the people of Ethiopia.  In fact, I was drinking a
mocha as I was typing the acknowledgments and got coffee and chocolate
mixed up.  Make it "the precolonial horticulturists of the Central
African highlands."

Pg. XI.  The phrase, "...essentially a whole new book...", combined with
my first-person acknowledgments, has given some readers the impression
that there's nothing left in this edition of Will's contribution.  I was
the guiding hand of the revision, but the basic structure and viewpoint
are still those of the original book that Will and I wrote together;
there are huge chunks left from the first edition, including passages
Will wrote himself; Will helped me with some of the new research for
this edition; and he read nearly all the chapters as I rewrote them,
commenting and correcting.  This edition is more "mine" than the first,
but it's still a collaboration.

Pg. 11, the marginal note in the balloon.  "Published in August" should
read, "Dated October".

Pg. 12, illustration caption.  A writer knows he's in trouble when a
picture in the first chapter is signed by Joe Giella but the caption
attributes the work to Murphy Anderson.  Sorry, Mr. Giella.

Pg. 33.  No trivia shall escape his sight:  Lou Mougin reports that
Alfred Bester insists he did not create Green Lantern's oath, despite
Julius Schwartz's assertions to the contrary.

Pg. 45, caption.  The Grand Comics Database on the Internet credits Herb
Castle with writing Magnus #17.

Pp. 47, 109, and 125.  The origin of Creepy is shrouded in conflicting
reminiscences by the men involved, and Lou Mougin suggests that I may
have overvalued the roles of Wally Wood and Joe Orlando, while
neglecting that of writer Russ Jones.  I'll try to unscramble the facts
and give Mr. Jones his due in future printings.

Pg. 56, caption.  Roy Lichtenstein's name is misspelled.  It's correct
in the body-text, though.

Pg. 59.  Steve Ditko did in fact allow Marvel to publish his caricature
in the first Spider-Man Annual, and even drew it himself.  That was the
last time he allowed his likeness to appear in print, however.

Pg. 67.  Roy Thomas had completed his fourth, not his first, year of
teaching when hired by Mort Weisinger.

Pp. 87 and 110.  Dan Adkins has said that it was he, not Ditko, who
thought of having Menthor die, although it was Ditko who executed the
idea.

Pg. 111.  Dave Kaler was a Floridian, not a Missourian.

Pg. 112.  Nightshade was Captain Atom's sidekick, not his opponent.

Pg. 124 and 181.  I'm told that Robert Kanigher didn't just "shift back
to freelance writing" but left his editorial post after a nervous
breakdown...

Pg. 125.  ...and that Steve Ditko's abrupt departure from Hawk and Dove
and Creeper was necessitated by a bout of tuberculosis.  Nonetheless - as
far as I can tell - Ditko's dissatisfaction, and his reasons for returning
to Charlton instead of DC, were as I described them.

Pg. 153.  Gullivar Jones is misspelled.

Pg. 168.  Tom Wolfe's name is misspelled.

Pg. 176.  Savage Sword of Conan got accidentally lumped in with all the
titles edited by Marv Wolfman.  It was edited by Roy Thomas.

Pg. 211.  Bob Beerbohm reports that he was only the cochairman of
Berkeley Con and shouldn't be given all the credit for pulling it
together.

Pg. 218.  Steve Gerber started working in animation before Marv Wolfman
and Len Wein.

Pg. 231.  When I first tackled this rewrite, I told friends that I
prayed I'd get everything right, but that I knew that publication would
reveal one blunder so boneheaded that I'd want to shrivel up and die.
Well, here it is.  The cocreator and artist of Sabre - and thus, in a
sense, one of the cocreators of the direct market - was not Billy Graham
but Paul Gulacy.  Considering that I knew this, and that I've worked
with Paul and even consider him something of a pal...well, as I wrote to
him, "my only excuse is that I'm a f***in' moron."  And as he wrote
back, "Amen to that."

Pg. 247.  Frank Miller came from Vermont, not New Hampshire.

Pg. 256.  Mark Evanier tells me that Dan Spiegle was already attached to
Blackhawk before he got involved.

Pg. 260.  I should have specified that Jim Starlin's "The Computers That
Ate Metropolis" was not part of the comic book per se, but a Radio Shack
insert.

Pg. 264.  It was the ministry that Mike Barr nearly joined, not the
priesthood.  Mike isn't a Catholic, he's a Protestant.

Pg. 277.  Shogakukan is misspelled.

Pg. 285 and 307.  Apparently Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were never
"given the Charlton heroes by DC."  They submitted a proposal for the
characters that impressed DC editorial but was rejected because it
didn't open the way to ongoing series; they were encouraged to rework
the proposal into an original creation, which became Watchmen.

Pg. 286.  When I wrote that DC's projected romance line never happened,
I neglected Angel Love.  But then, who didn't?

Pg. 294.  I wrote that every DC title tied into Crisis on Infinite
Earths, but Mike Barr reminds me, with pride, that Batman and the
Outsiders never did.

Pg. 299.  Most of these errors are simply embarrassing, but there are a
few that cause me real pain.  Pouring out memories of my early,
tumultuous days in fandom swept me back into the mentality of those
days;  Chapter 41, in particular, reads like something from a fever
dream, and on rereading it I find the febrility of my prose and my
generalizations ("Shooter was the enemy now, and nothing he did would
ever change that") to be both goofy and yet somehow appropriate.
Unfortunately, in allowing myself to be sucked uncritically into those
old passions, I also passed some old misconceptions unexamined to the
page.  My assertion that Gary Groth and Mark Evanier disliked each other
is simply wrong.  My point, that people who disliked each other banded
together in defense of Jack Kirby, is true.  But Gary and Mark are not
examples of that, and I apologize to both of them.

On the same page, I credited Dave Olbrich with cruising the conventions
with a pro-Kirby petition but didn't mention that the petition was first
mailed to freelancers from the Fantagraphics offices.

Pg. 305.  Olbrich wasn't hired away from Fantagraphics by Scott
Rosenberg; in fact, he had already quit Fantagraphics in order to take a
job with Round Table Pizza before Rosenberg came calling.  Kind of shows
you where comics stand in the grand scheme of things, doesn't it?

Pg. 310.  Mike Barr says that he didn't quit DC but was fired by Dick
Giordano for writing a letter to The Comics Journal criticizing DC's
failure to acknowledge Bill Finger's contribution to the creation of
Batman.

Pg. 311.  "Some ex-Fantagraphics employees said Groth spent all the
money on a new sports car...."  The readers I've talked to generally
interpreted this as it was intended - not as an accusation of Gary but
simply as an example of the sort of gossip that constituted the "fights
and fissures" of the "loudest and most exciting conversation" in the
comics business - but it still seems to call for further explication: I
have no reason to believe that Gary misspent the Anything Goes funds.
The mere existence of the story reveals a great deal about this deranged
field of ours, though.

Pg. 312.  Mike Thibodeaux's name is not Art.

Pg. 318.  Although Liz Schiller, Anina Bennett, "and others like them"
(as if there could be anyone like Liz or Anina) played roles in getting
Friends of Lulu going, it was actually Heidi MacDonald Herself who
started it all.

Pg. 319.  Todd McFarlane is from Western, not Eastern, Canada.

Pg. 328.  I called Alan Davis "the sort of discovery DC would have made
a few years earlier."  To which Mike Barr responds, "DC did discover him
a few years earlier.  His first USA series was Batman and the
Outsiders...then we did Detective for a few months."  Then he got
popular and joined the exodus to Marvel.

Pp. 328 and 364.  Ron Perelman's name is misspelled.

Pg. 332.  Although it's true that Arkham Asylum was "the most
commercially ambitious project a comics publisher had ever undertaken,"
it should be noted that Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham's Batman: Son of the
Demon, from late 1987, was DC's first hardcover book and its first
graphic novel featuring an established character.  Its success opened
the door to packages like Arkham.

Pg. 347, caption.  Obviously the argument of this caption isn't well
supported by the accompanying illustration.  I'd originally planned to
use a Rob Liefeld drawing of a hero blowing up somebody's head, but Rob
refused permission because he didn't like what I'd written about him.
Todd was much more cooperative, which helped the publisher preserve the
layout.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get the caption rewritten in
time.

Pg. 352.  Tiny typos that twist the telling: Superman and Lois became
engaged in 1990, not 1992.

Pp. 369, caption, and 370.  Understanding Comics was copublished by
Harper Collins, not Viking.

Pp. 375-400.  There are tons of errors in the index, but I've discovered
two that might actually prevent someone from finding a reference: Mike
Grell is listed under "Gress," and Ed Herron under "Gerron."  Note also
that the "Academy of Arts and Sciences" should be "Academy of Comic Book
Arts and Sciences," and that "Sid" Brodsky should be "Sol."  A reference
to Jack Abel on page 141 is missing, as is one to Gary Groth on page
117.  Scott McCloud is listed twice; the listing on page 388 appears
complete, while that on 390 is not.

I should note that there are some omissions that don't lend themselves
to easy page-location.  I wish, for instance, that  I'd mentioned Andy
Mangels's reportage on gays in comics, Mike Barr's Maze Agency, Howard
Chaykin's Time2, and Innovation Comics; I wish I'd read Gary Groth's
interview with Gil Kane in The Comics Journal  before I wrote anything
about either man.  The discovery of such omissions make me especially
desirous of another edition.  Feel free not only to point out factual
errors and argue critical points but to suggest additions as well.

The best way to send me information is probably to email me at
heyjones@ix.netcom.com.  You can also fax me at (415) 647-2072 or write
to me in care of Prima Publishing, PO Box 1260, Rocklin, CA 95677.

Sincerely,


Gerard Jones