HEY KIDS, COMICS! | FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK | AUTHOR: HOWARD VICTOR CHAYKIN | ARTIST: DON CAMERON, HOWARD VICTOR CHAYKIN | PUBLISHER: IMAGE COMICS | RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 19TH
It’s fair to say that Howard Chaykin’s recent work hasn’t touched the heights of his 1980s output, in terms of both quality and reception. Even going back to the controversial Black Kiss failed to garner much reaction, but there was a warmer welcome for this series, a fictionalised history of the very real drama behind the scenes in comic book history.
Hey Kids, Comics! – named for the sign that would sit atop spinner racks in America’s mom and pop stores, once the only place kids would get their fix – builds around three central characters, chosen to cipher some of the experiences their like would have lived through from the 1940s to the present day. Ted Whitman and Ray Clarke are jobbing artists who have just returned from military service when the story begins. They reconnect with Benita Heindel, one of the legion of women drafted in to do “men’s” jobs while the boys were at war, only in this case producing comic books rather than riveting battleships.
Whitman is black and must suffer through the indignities of pre-Civil Rights America, while Heindel – as a woman in a male-dominated world – suffers ignominies of her own. Clarke, by contrast, gets by on his charm, and always seems to have one more chance to do right, even after wrong upon wrong.
Choosing a core cast of three to simplify the narrative was a sensible decision, but it leaves too many pivotal stories on the periphery. A Stan Lee figure features heavily throughout, and there are analogies for Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, Bob Kane, and Milton Canniff, but trying to squeeze some of the (possibly apocryphal) stories about black and female creators into Whitman and Heindel’s stories often paints with too broad a stroke.
Chaykin’s art seems more focussed than on recent titles, and it’s clear that this is a labour of love for the veteran artist. Interestingly, the one period not covered by the title is the years Chaykin was on the rise and on top of the comic book world, perhaps to save the blushes of his contemporaries as much as himself.
At just five issues in length, and with a time-jumping narrative in each, it’s a too-short and disjointed journey through an exciting period of a fascinating medium. It’s perhaps better told in longer-form prose, with Gerard Jones’s Men of Tomorrow, or the fiction of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, recommended reads on the subject.
If you’re even a casual student of comic book history, and aren’t averse to seeing Stan Lee pulled down off his pedestal and given a beating with a rock in a sock, then this could hold some interest for you. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of crazy references you won’t get.
