So at seven I was a winner - and didn’t know how to handle it. Only a year earlier I had won a gold medal in the John Wanamaker Art Contest for a crayon drawing on oak tag paper of Tom Mix jailing an outlaw.

I mention these items in tandem, not only to give color to the period, but as a sly historic survey to those in our own time who, of the items cited, only know of comic books. Detective Comics was on the stands, Hitler was in Spain, and the middle class (by whose employment record we gauge depressions) was, after short gains, again out of work. Comic books, World War II, the Depression, and I all got going at roughly the same time. Out-of-print for several years, the complete text from this seminal essay is proudly presented here in a new format.ġ. In a long, personal and clear-headed reminiscence, Feiffer engaged comic book art in a serious and enlightening way: dissecting the psychological underpinnings of popular superheroes, extolling the virtues of various craftsmen, and all the time holding the art form itself to a high standard it didn’t come close to meeting.

But for others, the value of the book was not solely in its reprints, but in Feiffer’s introductory essay and concluding remarks. In 1965, Bonanza Books released The Great Comic Book Heroes, a 192-page book of reprinted 1940s comic book stories “compiled, introduced and annotated by Jules Feiffer.” For many who purchased the book or studied a library copy, The Great Comic Book Heroes is fondly remembered for providing a first exposure to a battery of artists and cartoonists from Joe Shuster to Bob Kane to Will Eisner. In this expanded intro and afterword to Jules Feiffer's The Great Comic Book Heroes, he explains how the art and business of comic books has evolved since its origin. From the TCJ Archives The Great Comic Book Heroes Intro & Afterword by Jules Feifferįrom The Comics Journal #200 (December 1997)

The great comic book heroes 1965