Picking up the pieces
Picking up the pieces |
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Page 33 of 38  Cover, The Savage Sword of Conan (Marvel Comics, 1977). Art: Earl Norman. One way forward for the publishers was to think laterally: Conan the Barbarian looked like a superhero, and found a new audience. Other genres also saw developments. Humour, for example, entered a new phase, partly inspired by the success of the underground, and partly by the continuing popularity of Mad, which in the early 1970s reached the peak of its success, selling an impressive two-and-a-half million per issue. Marvel sought to mix these two influences by bringing out magazine-format comics with more satirical, adult themes. Their main success was Howard the Duck, a regular comic from 1976, and a magazine from 1979. The witty scripts by Steve Gerber, about a cigar-chewing fowl from another dimension, 'trapped in a world he never made!', did not go as far as, say, Robert Crumb's Fritz the Cat, but were socially relevant in a way that was rare in a Marvel title. They caught something of the spirit of the time, and the comic became a cult, especially among students. Howard eventually became the star of a misguided live-action movie in 1986 (executively produced, but later disowned, by George Lucas). More obviously designed as an underground cash-in was Marvel's Comix Book (1974), an anthology featuring many of the movement's biggest names - including Robert Crumb, Skip Williamson, S Clay Wilson, Art Spiegelman and Trina Robbins. It appeared with the somewhat un-comixy strapline America's Craziest Contemporary Cartoonists!', which served to make a link with Mad, and indeed it went on to include contributions from Mad luminaries such as Harvey Kurtzman and Basil Wolverton. Despite some hilarious moments, it fell between two stools, neither appealing to the counterculture nor to fans of mainstream funny comics, and lasted for five issues.  Cover, Comix Book (Marvel Comics, 1974). Art: Peter Poplaski. Marvel's ill-fated 'subterranean' anthology. |