Movie Comics: Page to Screen/Screen to Page

by Blair Davis

Overview

As Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and releases from the Marvel Cinematic Universe have regularly topped the box office charts, fans and critics alike might assume that the “comic book movie” is a distinctly twenty-first-century form. Yet adaptations of comics have been an integral part of American cinema from its very inception, with comics characters regularly leaping from the page to the screen and cinematic icons spawning comics of their own.    Movie Comics is the first book to study the long history of both comics-to-film and film-to-comics adaptations, covering everything from silent films starring Happy Hooligan to sound films and serials featuring Dick Tracy and Superman to comic books starring John Wayne, Gene Autry, Bob Hope, Abbott & Costello, Alan Ladd, and Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. With a special focus on the Classical Hollywood era, Blair Davis investigates the factors that spurred this media convergence, as the film and comics industries joined forces to expand the reach of their various brands. While analyzing this production history, he also tracks the artistic coevolution of films and comics, considering the many formal elements that each medium adopted and adapted from the other.    As it explores our abiding desire to experience the same characters and stories in multiple forms, Movie Comics gives readers a new appreciation for the unique qualities of the illustrated page and the cinematic moving image.    

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813572277
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	01/03/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	83 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

BLAIR DAVIS is an assistant professor of media and cinema studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema (Rutgers University Press) and coeditor of Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Happy Hooligan, Buster Brown, Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, Charlie Chaplin, Film Fun, The Kinema Comic

1          1930s Comics-to-Film Adaptations
Skippy, Little Orphan Annie, Harold Teen, Popeye, Funny Page, Tailspin Tommy, Ace Drummond, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Jungle Jim, Dick Tracy, Blondie

2          1930s Cinema and Comics
Mickey Mouse, Big Little Books, Tim McCoy, Police Car 17, Famous Funnies, Jumbo Comics, Action Comics, Marvel Comics, Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, Movie Comics

3          1940s Comics-to-Film Adaptations
Superman (1941), Captain Marvel, Batman, Captain America, Terry and the Pirates, Don Winslow, Red Ryder, Superman (1948), Dick Tracy, Tillie the Toiler, Joe Palooka

4          1940s Cinema and Comics
Superman meets Orson Welles, Walt Disney Comics and Stories, Four Color, Cinema Comics Herald, Graphic Little Theater, Gene Autry, The Adventures of Alan Ladd, John Wayne Adventure Comics

5          1950s Comics-to-Film and Television Adaptations
Atom Man vs. Superman, Blackhawk, Jungle Jim, Prince Valiant, The Sad Sack, L’il Abner, The Spirit, Dick Tracy, Fearless Fosdick, Flash Gordon, Terry and the Pirates, Blondie, Dennis the Menace, Steve Canyon, Adventures of Superman, Superpup

6          1950s Cinema, Television, and Comics
Howdy Doody, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, Milton Berle, Tee and Vee Crosley in Television Land Comics, Fredric Wertham, Movie Love, Motion Picture Comics, Dell Four Color, Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Hopalong Cassidy, Dale Evans, Hollywood Film Stories, Hollywood Diary, Hollywood Confessions, Starlet O’Hara

Conclusion: The 1960s and Beyond
The Phantom, Archie, Batman, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Super Special

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

11/07/2016
In this insightful new work, cinema and media studies scholar Davis (The Battle for the Bs: 1950s Hollywood and the Rebirth of Low-Budget Cinema) takes a currently profitable and high-profile relationship—the one between comics and film—and reveals a history going back to the earliest days of both media. Davis’s lens focuses on three decades, the 1930s through the 1950s, alternating between page-to-screen and screen-to-page adaptations. Davis is a keen cultural interpreter, carefully balancing references to documents such as promotional materials and sales figures with close reading of individual works. He goes on to detail the production and distribution of comic films, such as the 28-feature Blondie series and the equally prolific Dick Tracy, and film comics, a medium with less clearly defined borders and goals. Sometimes these were faithful recreations of movies; sometimes they built upon narratives and cross-promoted characters, as when Disney released a short comic book story about Dumbo meeting Snow White’s Dwarfs; and sometimes they even used images from films to tell original stories. This is an enlightening, scholarly history. Davis treats his topic seriously while also celebrating the pleasures of these two lively arts. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"His proven talent for trenchant research well on display, Blair Davis not only chronicles comics' influence on cinema but shows innovatively the movies' frequent adaptation into comics. A masterful study."

author of The Sopranos (Spin Offs) - Dana Polan

"Both accessible and well written, Movie Comics will appeal to specialists in film and popular culture and also to the wide fan community that enjoys comic books."

author of George Gallup in Hollywood - Susan Ohmer

"The curiosity which the Movie Comics elicits about these mostly forgotten artifacts testifies to the success of its project: making accessible and understandable a period heretofore covered only tangentially in a variety of cinema and comics histories. The cultural history it presents provides a nuanced and polyphonic account of the practice of adaptation in the middle of the 20th century, a necessary background for anyone interested in the current surge in the practice and discussion of comics adaptations."

The Comics Grid

"In addition to being a highly rewarding read, [Movie Comics] is a thing of utter beauty, with photos, panels and pages reprinted in gorgeous full color. In film studies like this, that royal treatment is not the norm, but it makes perfect sense here. That Davis’ contents deserve it makes it all the more special."

Flick Attack

"Thanks to Davis's arduous work and keen knowledge of media and cinema, Movie Comics is a masterful work, suitable for both academic use and leisure reading… Highly recommended."

Choice

"Movie Comics makes a crucial contribution to media studies not only by unearthing and exploring the very long history of comics adapted for the screen, but also by simultaneously covering the myriad ways that comics presented material originally produced for film and television. The real subject of this book is the never-ending saga of media mediating one another, and in Blair Davis’s most capable hands, it’s a tale meticulously researched and engagingly told."

author of Hellboy’s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins - Scott Bukatman

"Take a studied look at the synergy between the silver screen and the pulpy pages from which Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and hundreds of other colorful characters have sprung."

Parade Preview

"As Davis’s Movie Comics so masterfully proves: the modern explosion of comic book movies cannot be understood without looking at the origins of this dynamic and vital comic-screen alliance."

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature.

"As Davis’s Movie Comics so masterfully proves: the modern explosion of comic book movies cannot be understood without looking at the origins of this dynamic and vital comic-screen alliance."

From the Publisher