Hey Kids! Comics! #2 - Image Comics

HEY KIDS! COMICS! No. 2, September 2018

Shifting 5,481 copies in September 2018, and resultantly becoming the two hundred and fifty-fourth best-selling book of the month according to “Diamond Comics Distributors”, Howard Chaykin’s narrative for Issue Two of “Hey Kids! Comics!” must have thoroughly entertained any bibliophiles with either a long memory or deep interest in the early years of the super-hero led story-telling medium. In fact, considering that the twenty-four page periodical’s New Jersey born writer openly admitted at the time of its publication that "much of it really happened” and “the names have [simply] been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike”, this "behind-the-scenes” account of Silver Age shenanigans arguably reads more like a historical adaption of true events rather than a piece of imagined fan fiction for a creative era long gone.  

For starters, the American author’s marvellous sequence depicting Senator Eustis Cleghorne and the “renowned cartoonist” Pete Sawyer haranguing horror comics in Washington DC during the mid-fifties is clearly little more than a repackaged recapping of the 1954 Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings. “Foisted on innocent American boys and girls by publishers making illicit fortunes off this filth” and crammed full of “graphic depictions of unspeakable acts”, readers familiar with the formation of the Comics Magazine Association of America will instantly recognise the self-same prevalent public concern regarding the grisly contents of comics actually leading to the creation of the Comics Code Authority in the real world, and clearly a similar stringent set of self-regulations is imposed upon the artists of Chaykin’s narrative.

Likewise, this book contains a rather disconcerting scene at the Big Apple Gotham Con during the start of the twenty first century, where an aged Ray Clarke venomously attacks the work of upcoming popular penciller Tom Hollenbeck for “swiping my stuff since he got into the business” and demands “half your royalties.” The utter frustration in the elderly artist’s face as he publically speaks about spending “fifty years bouncing between hiding what we did and desperation for the world to know” only to see the younger generation carving a successful career out of ‘copying’ his work is genuinely heart-wrenching, and it is all-too easy to then see the late legend Stan Lee in the shape of Verve Comics editor-in-chief Bob Rose acting as peacemaker by stepping in between the two irate men and asking them to “bury the hatchet and keep smilin’ for the folks?”

The regular cover art of "HEY KIDS! COMICS!" No. 2 by Don Cameron

Hey Kids! Comics! #1 - Image Comics

HEY KIDS! COMICS! No. 1, August 2018

Reading like a reality television show based upon the comic book industry of yesteryear, this opening instalment to Howard Chaykin’s “new creator-owned series filled with what he calls behind-the-scenes personal drama, lurid flimflammery, and just plain out and out larceny” is undoubtedly not for the faint of hearted with its formidable mixture of expletive-laden dialogue, word-heavy speech bubbles and frequent time hops around “a fictionalised history of more than half a century.” Indeed, for those readers disinterested in this story-telling medium’s dark and dirty past, back when the likes of Jack “King” Kirby and Steve Ditko were merely artists working for hire and Stanley Martin Lieberman still had an aspiration to be a ‘serious writer’, the New Jersey-born author’s narrative to Issue One of “Hey Kids! Comics!” will doubtless disappointingly strike them as a choppy, tediously dull series of set-pieces depicting little more than a group of people, predominantly men, smoking, drinking and swearing at one another whilst trying to figure “out what comes next” now “the mask and cape thing has seen its day.”

For those who have perhaps read Sean Howe’s “Marvel Comics: The Untold Story” multiple times however, this twenty-eight page periodical paints an enthralling flashback to the days when “aspiring artists climbed into business and bed with conmen and clowns, gainers and gangsters, to create the foundations of today’s biggest entertainment business”, and resultantly offers a fascinating insight into the harsh ‘hand-to-mouth’ job such Silver Age luminaries like Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Gene Colan, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams endured. Certainly it’s hard not to see comparisons between “some of the greatest comic book artists of their generation” and the Eagle Award winner’s fabricated pencilers Ray Clarke and Ted Whitman, nor sympathise with the unkempt Irwin when his creation “Powerhouse” opens up at the St. James Theatre on Broadway, and is forced to accept a begrudgingly given financial handout from the disheveled man’s former boss who is clearly living an extravagant lifestyle based upon his work; “Guy used to work for me, way back when. Him and his dead partner made the thing up.”

Chaykin’s own uniquely-styled artwork also adds to the engaging atmosphere of this publication, as its clear the illustrator learnt a lot when he once “lived in the same Queens apartment building as artists Allen Milgrom, Walter Simonson and Bernie Wrightson”. In fact, a good proportion of this book’s overall charm stems from Howard’s fantastic attention to detail for his leading cast’s facial features, as well as the similarities between them and the likes of Kirby’s famous pipe-smoking habit or Tom Hollenbeck’s evident financial success as a result of the “junk” his predecessors “made for a half-century” suddenly becoming “the culture…”

Writer & Artist: Howard Chaykin, Colorist: Wil Quintana, and Letterer: Ken Bruzenak