Browsing through a box of old comic books recently, I realized they were all from the mid-70’s, when I was in college. I had next to no spending cash, so even at 25¢ each, I was very selective in my purchases.
Yet the undeniable reality is that most of them are awful. Even if the art was worth the price of the comic, as was the case with Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula, the writing and ideas were mostly junk, compared to what I had read in the 60’s, into the first couple of years in the 70’s. These were the comics that Stephen Colbert grew up reading??
Even the creative legend Jack Kirby began turning out work that could be called eccentric to the point of being incomprehensible. One such example was “The Dingbats of Danger Street,” from 1975.
I’m second to nobody in my admiration of Jack Kirby, but he needed an editor and a dialogue writer, although I suspect nothing could have saved this clunker. Kirby drew three issues, but DC published only one of them.
No wonder the Marvel Comics adaptation of Star Wars, which started months before the movie’s release, seemed so good, despite mediocre art. I hadn’t read a good story in years.