[driving triumphant theme] ♪ - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard a professor in the department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is comic book historian Tim Hanley.

Tim welcome to Comic Culture.

- Thanks so much for having me.

So Tim, you are a comic book historian and I'm just wondering if you could explain to me what exactly a comic book historian does.

- They read a lot of comic books it's mostly that and then contextualize in the comic books within what's going on at the time.

So for example I wrote a book about Wonder Woman which entailed reading everyone woman comics ever published.

And then for each era reading and studying things from each era to understand the context which had happened So say late sixties mod wonder woman I do a deep dive into a women's lib feminism at the time try to understand that and then relate to comics to that.

- This is interesting because you say you have to read every comic and you've written as far as I know that the four that I have you've written a book about Catwoman about Lois Lane, Wonder Woman and the latest one at least as far as 2020 goes is the Betty and Veronica book.

So how are you getting a hold of these libraries of comics is this something that you're contacting DC or Archie comics and sort of maybe doing an archive dive or is this something where everything's digital these days and you can just go on comiXology and do your research that way.

- The publishers are not super keen on critical histories of their characters so I don't get a lot from them.

A lot of it is available in different editions DCS archive editions, and showcase editions and through those you can kinda cobble together.

Good but Archie's app is particularly good for old comics a lot of it I have to get online through a somewhat dubious means.

You can get every comic ever published online.

And it's either that or spend a small fortune to try to buy everything cause as a story and I wanna know everything I can you don't want to miss the one issue that's gonna blow your thesis to two bits.

So I try to get as many through straightforward legal means as possible and then there's just some areas that are not available anywhere like if you want early fifties Wonder Woman comics there's no one's got them.

- Now is this is this something again I'm assuming that you were a comics fan and that's why you choose to write about it.

Is this something where you kinda run the risk of maybe burning yourself out from that love of comics and then it just becomes a slog it becomes work, it becomes something that you just have to do Cause the rent's gotta come in.

- In the earlier years of writing books like the Wonder woman and the lowest books I would do all my research first.

So like for probably four months straight I would just read comics and then the stuff that kind of surrounds them and that would burn you out a bit not have a better idea of how I wanna write things and how things will shape together and final book form.

I can outline a bit better and then do like a chapter at a time so for Betty and Veronica I would read like decades worth of comics just a ludicrous amount of comics and then do my surrounding research kinda put the chapters together and then go back to reading.

So the back and forth is a lot less onerous.

- Let's talk a little bit about the way that you put these books together because what I find impressive about this is not only are you talking about the publication history where it's what adventure is Wonder Woman had through the 1930 forties and fifties and then putting that contextualization to it but you're also able to look at the creator's history a little bit and maybe what brought them to creating these characters and what they went through.

So how do you research that because that information might not be something you can get so easily.

- Getting behind the scenes with the creator stuff is one of my favorite aspects of the books like it's great to talk about the comics themselves but to understand what's going on behind the scenes I think adds so much to understanding the characters and their stories.

There's a lot of other comic nerds out there who have done extensive interviews with so many creators.

So it's rare that I come across a creator that someone hasn't talked to them and hasn't dug stuff out even like old golden age creators their fanzines that started in the sixties that would go back and read these guys or interview these guys.

So it's not too hard to get a hold of information.

And then there's different people like say William Moulton Marston wrote several books and had like extensive correspondence that's been reprinted everywhere.

So he was pretty easy to get into though conversely the artist on the early one when we're comics HD Peter is more or less a ghost.

I know like some bits and pieces about them but there's not a lot out there for him.

But generally speaking mainstream comics, creators there's stuff out there to understand.

And then there are a few of them I'm talking about modern stuff.

There's a lot of them that are still alive some of them will talk to me and then modern stuff especially is covered extensively.

There's so many comics new sites it's really released to get everything you need about modern comics.

- Is this something where because there was so much information available I mean let me try and rephrase this because I know that as a scholar you have to be very particular about how you are putting the citations to all your work.

So what sort of when you're putting together the bibliography or the footnotes how much of this do you have to credit and how much of this do you have to get rights to or is this something that because it's academic and you're creating a new work that you don't have to go through maybe all of those little steps to get that book put out.

- Yeah I don't have to get rights for like quotes there's a certain length I would have to get it right for a quote like if I extracted an entire paragraph of something I'd probably run into some legal issues generally speaking small snippets of interviews or articles and stuff I can quote easily.

And I do end up with a very extensive bibliography I was just looking at the books before I came on and I always forget how short the books actually are cause the last third of the book is the bibliography and notes and everything.

If I wanted to show artwork I would have to get rights to do that and I can't cause again the publishers do not care for critical histories of their characters.

There are things like covers and advertisements that fall under fair use and I can reprint those but for interviews and other things like that it's pretty easy.

- I know that some of the golden age books have some questionable characters in them and they were there was certainly during world war II there were some rather racist portrayals of our enemies during world war II.

And I'm wondering is this why you think perhaps these publishers are reluctant to give you assistance when you're trying to work on something like Wonder Woman who's basically going back to the early forties during world war II.

- I think it's more that the publishers are owned by massive corporations now and the legal departments just squash any requests that comes in.

I remember with the Wonder Woman book just a straight no with the Lois Lane book by that time I had like a couple of connections inside DC I had people who could go to bat for me it was still just a straight note.

They don't want anyone doing anything with their characters that they don't control the IP is so valuable I guess they don't want anything that might diminish it.

- When we're looking at the books that you've written I noticed that it's Wonder Woman it's Lois Lane it's Catwoman and Betty and Veronica.

And these are characters that are they're women and we know that in comics there are more male heroes there's certainly more male creators at the big two publishing houses.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't women who are reading comics it doesn't mean that there aren't women fans but it does seem as if women characters don't necessarily get the same I guess strong hand when they're being created or developed over the course of their run.

So what is it about the women characters that make you want to do this copious amount of research?

- I kind of fell into it initially in my days at university I had done some papers on the gay panic surrounding Batman in the 1950s and the creation of the comics code and things like that.

And in all of that research I kept reading the most bizarre things about Wonder Woman like bondage imagery in the 1940s and she loses her powers in the sixties and Gloria Steinem gets involved to bring her back.

So for my master's thesis I ended up writing about Wonder Woman and in doing that I really saw the disparity you discussed I always knew that there were more male creators and more characters in comics but when you look at it in detail it's really stark.

And then in doing the surrounding research for my Wonder Woman thesis I read so many feminist texts, classics and more obscure things.

And before I started the thesis I probably would not have called myself a feminist and then by the end I was like Oh yeah this makes a lot of sense.

So I was very on board and I realized there's a million books about Batman and Superman and all the main guys out there there's not much on these great female characters who have been there from the beginning and are just as interesting as their male counterparts.

So it was an Avenue no one had really explored yet and I had the background to do it so I dove right in.

- It's interesting I had the opportunity to speak with Dan Jurgens a little while ago and he said something that makes perfect sense but stupid me I didn't think about it.

That Lois Lane is sort of the co-star of Superman it's Lois and Clark.

They would be the names above the title if this were a movie and yet Lois has had this kind of weird history where she's been the damsel in distress she has been around since action comics number one but she's also had that great series Lois Lane I guess it was Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane that in many ways may have been a more compelling book than some of the Wonder Woman adventures when they were at contemporaries.

So when you're looking at Lois Lane and you're looking at all of these various iterations what is it that you're seeing that you can kinda maybe see that line of demarcation between when she's merely a prop and then she becomes sort of this important lead that as I think you say in the book that that Lois Lane is Clark Kent Superman.

- Lois Lane started out as essentially a prop.

She is in an action comics number one but she's there as you said as a damsel in distress to be rescued She's not even a reporter at this point She works for the lovelorn column at what is then the daily star doesn't change it to the daily planet till later but then Superman blows up within a year or two.

And there's so many Superman stories and the background cast just keeps appearing and appearing and growing and because Lois was there at the beginning she ends up getting more to do and more to do she becomes an Ace reporter she kinda ends up moving away from the damsel in distress thing and starting like instigate stories on her own maybe working with Superman old scooping Clark Kent even with the super powers he has to write articles quicker than she does.

So by the mid 1940s Lois has really come into her own and you see like a pretty good lowest as well in the Fleischer Cartoons of the early 1950s they did a great take on Lois.

So just like out of sheer volume Lois develops as a character.

And then by the 1950 she's a core of the Methow she's in every book and then she gets her own series in 1958 unfortunately titled Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane and she does spend a lot of the book trying to figure out how to marry a Superman but it is a comic book with a female lead which in 1958 at DC comics was it was her and Wonder Woman.

And that was it so it's remarkable in that capacity as much as the stories could be a little cringe-worthy at times.

Then course over the decades the lowest goes back and forth depending on who's writing or sometimes it's more of a soap opera sometimes she gets to take the lead and do around stories.

You mentioned Dan Jurgens when Superman died in the early nineties Lois really became the lead of the book because there were four different Superman and four different titles and Lois Lane was the only thing that tied it all together.

So that was a kind of an accidental cool moment for Lois Lane - We have seen Lois Lane in other mediums she's been on the television series in the 1950s she's been played brilliantly by Margo Kidder in the 1970s and early eighties Superman films and we've seen Lois on television we've seen her in animated form Do you see a moment when maybe one of those performances became the way the comics would portray Lois like it was just so impactful that there was no way they could ignore the public's perception of Lois Lane from that other form.

- I think you see a couple of shifts in this.

So the Superman TV show in the 1950s with George Reeves that originally had a very tough Lois in the first couple of seasons and then they brought in Noel Neill and later seasons and she became more of a passive in love with Superman Lois.

And so then when you see Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane start in 1958 she's very much in Noel Neill style Lois they have the same haircut it's the same vibe.

So you can definitely see that influence there but then you get Margo Kidder in 1978 and it's such a brash bold take on Lois.

And that's kind of become the standard since everyone's been trying to capture what Margot Kidder was able to do.

- We talked a little bit about Wonder Woman sort of being the perhaps not as interesting character in DC comics but she also has an opportunity to shine in the 1970s thanks to Linda Carter and the television series.

Is there a moment again through your research where you sort of see that maybe the characters or the creators rather are looking at the characters differently because of somebody else's approach because an hour long television show is certainly going to reach more viewers than a monthly comic.

- DC when the Linda Carter show started switched Wonder Woman to be back in the 1940s because the first season of the Linda Carter show was set in the 1940s and then they decided to jump back to the seventies for the second season and DC had to catch up the depiction didn't change all that much DC at that point like in the late seventies was a mess.

They had what was called the DC implosion where they'd launched a bunch of books and then there was like an economic crisis in the country and DC just got slammed.

So they're just trying to survive and Wonder Woman was not a top priority for them.

So in that area you don't really see a huge correlation between the popularity of the show and what's going on in the comics.

If anything you'd get like some confusion in the letter columns like I'm watching this fun show and this comic kinda it's kind of sucks.

But now with Gal Gadot and the Wonder Woman movie you've seeing a lot of Gal Godot and the way they do Wonder Woman now the costume currently is basically just the movie costume with a few tweets.

So they've really adapted to that version of character visually and I think in terms of attitude and the style of character as well - One of the more famous Wonder Woman storylines is she decides to renounce her powers and become sort of as a secret agent I think you referred to it as the mod period and Denny O'Neil had from what I understand nothing but the best intentions for this but realize that it just didn't work.

So can you give us a little bit of insight as to what was going on at that time and why they switched and why they switched back?

- Sure Danny O'Neil definitely had the best of intentions and good on the guy.

Anytime he's been interviewed ever since he was like yeah I've dropped the ball on this one.

But in the mid 1960s Wonder Woman was the lowest selling DC comics Robert Canterbury had been writing it for 20 years he did not care about the book at all.

It was evident in every story he would rehash stories you would see the same thing like four or five times.

It was just really uninspired bland comic booking.

And it was basically either cancel the book or do something different.

So Danny O'Neil came in with this pitch let's get rid of all the superhero trappings let's make her a modern normal woman except it was a man trying to write a modern normal woman and it didn't work great.

They killed off Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman was so sad.

She went on like a rampage her emotions will always get the better of her She got together with a Chinese martial artist master named I-Ching who taught her to control her emotions and learned to comfort or some other type of martial arts at the time.

And it was very, very bad and it hit at the same time that women's lip was exploding in America.

And a lot of the now women who had as girls read Wonder Woman and love these kind of early 1940s stories where Wonder Woman was tough and awesome and working with other women and just as strong and powerful as any other superhero we're like hey what's going on with this we want our one woman back Laurie Steinem in particular was a particularly incensed.

And she in publishing herself with Ms. Magazine had connections with DC and was like you gotta bring the classic Wonder Woman back.

Ms. actually ended up putting out a collection of old 1940s.

Wonder Woman's story is to sort of celebrate the character say elicit the bad air but it had a cool end and that kind of brought it got to the original intention of the thing which was a modern feminist take on Wonder Woman which sort of came about when they actually brought in modern feminists.

- Speaking of modern one of the things that you write about in the book you did about The Many Lives of Catwoman one of the things you wrote about was in the nineties when Catwoman was given her own series she was one of the few books that had a largely female creator percentage.

I think you were saying it was it was close to maybe 50% female writers on the book.

Can you talk a little about that?

- Sure so in the nineties there were a few female writers that the big superhero publishers not a lot but then they launched this capitalism book and over the course of it's a 90 issue run I think just over half of the writers on the book were women like per issue.

So like 45 of the 90 it was just like four or five different women over the years.

And that was the first for that type of extended period we didn't have like moments of female writers here and there there was a female co-writer during the Perez era of Wonder Woman for a little while Lois Lane one of the she was in Superman family just like a group book in the seventies and eighties and she had a female writer for a few issues but not for any extended period of time.

So this was a big change and it led to some cool stories but at the same time it was the nineties so the art was ridiculous.

The nineties are known for hyper exaggeration so big muscly men and skinny yet extremely curvaceous women.

And Jim tweets was the artist on Catwoman for the vast majority of this run.

And he is infamous for the way he draws women.

So you get these very interesting stories women finally get them to take the lead and crafting Catwoman stories and then are the sort of undercuts the progressiveness of what was going on.

- I think you included some information in there in your book about how female readership of the book may have actually been one of the higher for DC at that time based on research you did for letter submissions or printed letters in the back of comics.

So when you're going through the letter column I mean this is really getting into the nitty gritty and I'm wondering if at a certain point you're going through this and you're just saying man this is a lot of work.

- I say that a lot it comes up but the letter column data is always really rewarding cause you get to read the letter.

So you get to understand the reactions at the time which is so valuable understanding the comic book itself with Catlin in particular talking about GMO balance art there was a massive debate for vote five or six issues with letters going back and forth with people saying this art is does not match the stories it's kind of ridiculous and sexist and they don't care for it typically from writers and men would respond.

It's just superheroes are over the top like the men are muscly and the ladies are curvy and then female readers would write back and say these are different things.

This is a power fantasy, this is a sexual fantasy these are completely different elements.

So that aspect of the letter columns is so valuable and so great.

The accounting the names is tedious but again it gives you a picture of what's going on not an exact picture.

Cause I mean with a female led book editors would probably be more inclined to include female readers but anytime I've looked at a female led book versus a male led book over any extended periods of time there are always more female readers in the letter columns by a considerable margin.

I think more than would account for letter selection.

- Caroline is just one of those characters that is now in the year 2020 she is just such a part of pop culture she's been in numerous movies, she's had animated shorts, she's been a part of the video game the Arkham asylum video game franchise and I believe one of the most interesting Batman stories of recent history was the will they won't they get married storyline.

So obviously you don't have to keep reading Batman and Catwoman adventures now but have you been keeping up and if so are you noticing that the character is being treated differently now than she was even in the nineties when you may have had more progressive writers trying to give cat something more than just a crime spree?

- I do keep up I usually take like a little bit of break after the book is done maybe I don't read Catlin for like a year or so but eventually I catch up cause I'm a nerd and I like to read all the comics.

So I ended up doing it with Catwoman yeah It's great that she's had such a big role in the Batman run recently.

It is mainly as a romantic interest which I don't love to see but then out of that romantic interest she has spun off into her own series written and drawn by Joel Jones.

And that was a pretty good book it's still ongoing now I think a different creative team but it's good that the sort of romantic role has led to a more independent role for her.

It's a they're going to launch a new series soon I believe in December that's Batman and Catwoman it's going to dive into the hypothetical feature that Tom King had set up in some of the Batman annuals.

So it's nice that she's around it's nice that she's a big part of the universe and will continue to be she's gonna be in the Batman movie that's coming up.

So it's great to see them out in a boat.

Like after you write a whole book about a character you still have affection for them and you want them to succeed so anytime one of them is out there doing something getting attention I always feel glad about that.

- I see we have just about three minutes left in our conversation.

I wanted to talk to you about your latest book latest as of 2020 which is about Betty and Veronica from Archie comics.

What is it about these two characters who are basically I guess we'll Archie choose one or the other.

I know comics has done a number of books where Archie's married to Betty he's married to Veronica.

So what is it about these two characters sort of America's sweethearts that is so compelling that in 70 years 80 years on we're still talking about it.

- I got really interested in Betty Veronica.

I've been a comics nerd forever but I've been like an Archie nerd first.

I've had Archie for as long as I have a memory of my life and I've always read them in day time.

So I get all the different eras of the comics smashed together into one compact amalgam.

And it's Betty Veronica or such archetypes it's the friendly girl next door it's this rich girl.

They seem so simple and yet doing research for the book dividing them in the different areas.

There it's fascinating to see the way they have evolved over the years.

It's never like a stark change but there's slight changes over the years in the way they adapt to what's going on in the world at the time where they reflect society.

There's always some sort of connection that I think makes them relevant for readers at the time.

And then to look back on it now you can kinda see all of these are a great representation of how sort of the modern or not modern but contemporaneous conception of teenage girls has evolved over the decades.

So for my own historical interest that's what got me into it for general interest the comics are really funny.

Archie's are good I read them still and laugh my head off they're great.

- When we're looking at Betty and Veronica we are always looking at them as the love interest to Archie but they also had their own books where they were doing solo adventures.

So is there a difference in tone between let's say an Archie book where they might be more of a Co-Star rather than the star of the book and when they're doing their own solo adventure.

- Yeah definitely so in an Archie comic they're usually there to like Archie will double book a date and that will be their role to instigate it and then get upset at the end.

Whereas they launched their own book similar to Superman's girlfriend Lawrence Lane It was called Archie's girls Betty and Veronica not a great title but the book was more about their friendships.

So they get up to the sort of whacking adventures you'd see Archie and Jughead having but it would be Betty and Veronica getting up to all the fun.

And then with their own solo book Betty launched her own in the sixties and then they kind of each had their own in the nineties through the two thousands.

And again those were more solo adventures.

I was intentionally with old Archie like there's entire months in the Betty comic in the nineties where Archie doesn't even appear or get mentioned it's really a good chance for the writers and artists to flesh out the characters and let them stand on their own.

- Well Tim being told that we are out of time I'd like to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

- Thanks for having me.

- And I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture we will see you again soon.

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