Publisher: TwoMorrows
Writers: Jon B Cooke, Fred Hembeck
Artists: Fred Hembeck, Ron Sutton, Gil Kane, Klaus Janson
Editor: Jon B Cooke
Publisher and Consulting Editor: Jon Morrow
Release Date: OUT NOW!
Price: $8.95

I was pleased to pass the module of the history component of my degree and, as the second history module beckoned, I felt I had made the right choice again. Six assignments and a sit-down, two-hour exam. The result was assured, in the bag and the degree would be all mine, all mine (cue evil laughter, etc.). I have a thing for history anyway, so the exam was a shoe in for me. Except, as it turned out, it was not. I failed.

I had sensed something was amiss from the beginning, I just did not want history to be the way this module was turning out to be. This history module presented history as dry, an academic dustbowl, of statistics, graphs, bar charts, pie charts, and analysis, so focused on proving the facts the history itself robbed  history of its interest, its charm, its wow-factor. Of its imagination. The death of History via PowerPoint. And I can hear my tutor now: ‘History has no imagination, Mr Hooker’. Go to the bottom of the class! Or assignment marks to that effect.

And why am I telling you this? Well, for some history is just that a desiccated academic death march towards boredom. So what has that got to do with comic books? Well, if you are a regular to the TwoMorrows history of comic books and comic book creators, obviously: Hello! but for those not ofay, well buckle in, and prepare to get the history of comic books and its personnel, with imagination, care and something else missing from my history module, passion and enthusiasm.

Which brings me to the latest edition of TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator: The Invention of Gil Kane. Eighty-four pages of the best researched – without the dryness (or the snobbery) tribute to Gil Kane, possibly one of the most underrated but prolific artists of the twentieth century, often, to mind, eclipsed may be by those comic book luminaries who shouted louder, had fans more capable (and sometimes mistakenly) building shrines to them (on FaceBook) or who courted more controversy. Whoever they were, history seems to have pushed Gil Kane further and further into the background of the comic book firmament.

TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator: The Invention of Gil Kane, is, therefore, timely and very much needed to address an imbalance and to remind comic book readers of Kane’s dogged brilliance. The main section of TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator: The Invention of Gil Kane is given over to a study of the man himself. Jon B Cooke’s thoughtful and well-researched piece on Kane, warts and all, as any study should be, is entertaining, well-written, seeing beyond Gil Kane the comic book artist to the essence of the man as a human being, foibles and all, is testament to how history should be told. Cooke is, for me, one of the few writers of comic book history who tells it with care and, the often missing component, enthusiasm.

There’s Fred Hembeck’s take on Gil Kane, in the suitably known as: Gilbert Eli Kane Changed My Life, which is where much of the imagination in my diatribe on the faults of academic history comes from. There is also a moving tribute to the great Herb Trimpe in too. As well as an interview with Paul Levitz around his new book Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel.

If you have had an experience of history like the one on my degree course (I passed after taking the module ‘The Art of English’, I thought I ought to play to my other strength; I passed with flying colours) or see no point in reading about history of comic books, those who were there at the beginning, and how their lives shaped the comic books they created – well, from my point of view, you have no place in comic book fandom, but hey, maybe that’s just me – pick up Comic Book Creator #11: The Invention of Gil Kane and have your hard felt convictions altered for the better. And then seek out the other ten issues of TwoMorrow’s Comic Book Creator series as well.

There is nothing boring about the past, not when it is presented and well written like Comic Book Creator #11: The Invention of Gil Kane.

 

Reviewer: Steve Hooker