The Golden Age?

The Golden Age? While amazing characters were drawn and incredible stories written, it is disheartening to learn of so many people robbed of their artistic rights over the characters and stories they had written. The comic book industry was very young, so I hope that I learn going forward, that these were just blips, mistakes made in childhood and learned from with age.  It is this issue of "credit for works" that struck me the most throughout this week's assigned readings from Arie Kaplan's "From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books."

I wonder...

Did these companies simply not take the new world of comics seriously, did they not think it would have staying power and therefore not consider what they were doing at least in a serious way? Or did they knowingly take advantage of a young group of artists and writers?   It seems to me that these companies struck gold and the people responsible for the works were afterthoughts.  Did the fact that many of these young writers and creators were Jewish make it easier for them to get away with such a thing, or am I simply misunderstanding the time in which these things took place and was this kind of thing rather common place? I guess these are the questions I am left with after this weeks readings.

  On a side note...I've been very sick this week. While resting up and in between school reading, I took the time to sit down with another of Eisner's comics. I found a  gem of a  book at Appleton's "Half Price Books." It is a POP-UP version of a "The Sprit" comic, in which The Spirit knowingly lets a villain get away because she was his childhood sweetheart. I'm not a huge fan of comics, I'd say I started to have a bit of a "crush" on the genre after reading Spiegelman's Maus I & II, followed by Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, but I am not by any means an avid comic book reader.  But after reading these past few weeks a bit about the idea of Super heroes in comics, during our course readings, I am eager to learn more about Eisner's "super-hero" The Spirit, because he is so different. Not the super power wielding super hero, but the average Joe Super Hero. Is this why The Spirit lets the villain get away in this book? Because he's human? Would Superman let her go or would he demand that justice be served? If anyone is interested, Half Price Book's in Appleton had quite a few copies of this Pop-up version of The Spirit, and they seem to have a relatively good selection of comic book works and graphic novels. I picked up quite a few. I used to skip this section of the store during my regular visits, however, I'll be sorting through this area as well now.