Tales of the Parodyverse

Post By

An Interested Historian.
Tue Dec 06, 2005 at 08:51:53 pm EST
Subject
Parody Comics - A Brief History : Part One of an intermittent monologue.
[New] [Email] [Print] [RSS] [Tales of the Parodyverse]
 		Next In Thread >>

The Golden Age


Marty Feinberg Gets his Break

Martin Feinberg was born in Hackensack, New Jersey in 1912 and - according to family and friends - immediately sought a career in comedy. "He was a born prankster," his brother Albert told a reporter in the 1954. "Always playing jokes on the rest of us, we weren't surprised when he announced he was going to be a comedian." Between 1932 and 1942, "Mad" Marty Feinberg was a regular staple of the New York vaudeville circuit, boasting the tagline: “Mad” Marty Feinberg - The Funniest Guy You Ever Met.
During one of his acts, he was spotted by an assistant editor for the little-known WhizPop! Comics and was asked to contribute an 8-page story for their periodical Furious Funnies, Marty agreed and the story was entitled 'What a Woman's Gotta do....’ Though only a few copies exist today, the first appearance of a prototype 'Amazing Guy' defending himself against the amorous advances of Lana Turner is one of the most highly sought after comics in the business; a Very Fine copy was auctioned at Sotheby's in 2001 and fetched over $250,000. Though today considered a break-through in the medium of comics, in 1942 it went virtually unrecognized, no other offers from WhizPop! Comics were forthcoming and Marty Feinberg went back to vaudeville, though the comic bug had bitten him. "I guess it was seeing my work first-hand," he told an interviewer in 1963. "I had something to show for it at the end of the day."
Marty began applying for jobs at all the biggest companies in town though Fawcett, Quality, Timely and even the soon to be defunct Centaur turned him down. "It was like I had herpes or something," he commented. Only one company threw him a lifeline. "I think it was called Better-Nedor at the time, though the name changed so often, I can't be sure, but as I go into the interview with some assistant editor, some guy comes up to me and tells me that he saw me at the [New York] Palace and that I was great, later I learn that the guy who loves me is [Better-Nedor’s owner/publisher] Ned Pines." Marty would produce only a handful of stories for Better-Nedor over the next few years, mostly on its second-string characters Pyroman and Fighting Yank. “The editors were killin’ me; they cut all the jokes and inserted this propaganda about War Bonds and evil Japs. It’s not what I wanted to write about... I wanted to make people laugh.” Though little of Marty’s later wit is evident in his early work, there are occasional flashes of brilliance; the issue entitled ‘Fighting Yank Walks the Plank’ is as left field as anything produced by the company during the war years.
In 1946, Marty decided to quit Better-Nedor and self publish. “It was risky sure,” he said about the move. “But I felt there’d been a change in the way people felt about Heroes, we didn’t need ‘em to win a war anymore, we’d done it ourselves.” Though Marty had been a successful comedian and writer, he knew that he would need help with the money-matters and everyday running of the company. He turned to his brother Albert. "He was incredible, when I told him I was gonna go solo and that I needed his help, he quit his job at the bank and we became partners... he set up all the distribution side of it, where it was printed, on what kind of paper, with what kind of ink... if it wasn't for Al, I'd still be hocking 'Fighting Yank' stories."
With his brother onboard to control the every day running of the company, Marty now needed to publish a comic; drawing on his experience as a stand-up and his ever-present need to make people laugh, he decided to publish a ‘comic’ comic-book and in July 1946, Parody Comics premiered its first issue of Acting Comics #1, featuring the first feature-length appearance of Amazing Guy.

Parody Comics: The Beginning

Though Scott Brunsen’s origin has been retooled and reworked numerous times, Marty Feinberg first intended the ‘Man of Slate’ to be a savage attack on the ‘Man of Steel’, Superman. “I hated the guy,” the publisher chuckled. “Every issue, it seemed like the world would end if it wasn’t for some alien ... and all the humans were either evil or incompetent!” The artist would be Matt Baker. "Matt was an intern at WhizPop! when I first met him, a great kid," Feinberg reported. "I gave him a chance when I saw the dames he could draw."
Scott Brunsen was exiled as a baby from the planet Slipt-on because his abilities and constant crying destroyed the familial house, crash landing in the town of Littlesmallville on Earth, he was found by the Brunsens and raised as one of their own. Deciding upon adulthood to use his powers for the benefit of mankind, he left his foster parents and moved to Parodiopolis to become a superhero, though despite his best efforts, nothing ever went right for him and it frequently left him in the bad books of his girlfriend, Janeen.
"When I read Acting Comics for the first time, I couldn't tell if I was delighted or outraged," Jerry Siegel wrote. This dichotomy appeared throughout comic fandom, some appreciating the wicked subversion Superman had been subjected to, others seeing the character of Amazing Guy as an outright insult. The New York post ran an editorial in the summer of '46 demanding that the series be pulped and Marty Feinberg be run out of town. "It was like I had herpes or something," he commented. The newspaper needn't have bothered, National Periodical Publications' lawyers had already brought a number of lawsuits against other companies characters (most notably Fawcett's Captain Marvel) and with Parody Comics' Amazing Guy they saw a target ripe for picking.
In the fall of 1946, National Periodical Publications filed it's lawsuit against Parody Comics' stating that the character plagiarized from and defamed the character of Superman, Marty Feinberg agreed. "That was the whole point!" he told friends.
"Mr Feinberg told me to start looking for other work as soon as possible, I guess he didn't want me involved," Matt Baker wrote. "Fiction House brought me aboard for Phantom Lady and Marty dropped Amazing Guy."
Feinberg had seen what had happened to the lawsuit brought against Fawcett and Empire Comics. "I was a stand-up comic with some rented office space and a kid intern drawing leggy blondes, I wasn't going to court." The case was dropped when Feinberg cancelled Acting Comics after just 4 issues. The next few months would prove to be difficult for Feinberg. "I had no artist, no hero, no output and no income, so my next comic was a role of the dice to see if I was gonna be homeless or not."

The Dark Knight Cometh

"I'd been reading The Spirit, Batman, The Shadow... all those guys and felt that there could be something to the 'dark-side' of heroes... they didn't explore the meaning of justice or the consequences of revenge enough for me, so I created Greg Burch."
Defective Comics #1 is an extraordinary turn in the history of comics as a medium; at the start of the premiere issue, he's a jaded, cynical reporter who finds his only comfort in the mantle of the Dark Knight and in the comfort of his fiancée, Diane, but during an investigation into the fabled ‘Crime Clown’ of Parodiopolis, his intended is murdered to silence the man. It has the opposite effect. Dark Knight murders the Crime Clown and steps over a line that Batman or Superman would never cross (at least, not in the post-war years). Subsequent issues would explore the Dark Knight’s feelings about the death of Diane and the Crime Clown, while juxtaposing his careers as a hero and a reporter. Gary Groth writes, “Defective Comics was the best comic-book written in the 1940’s, it wasn’t just about what the hero did... it was about how the man inside the costume felt about what the hero did.” The series was pencilled by Murphy Anderson. "Fiction House gave me my break-through with 'Star Pirate' in '44, but when I met Mr Feinberg and he told me his plans for the Dark Knight, I signed on." Anderson's clean line work and solid composition would see the penciller enjoy a 13-year career at Parody before heading to DC, primarily as an inker to Curt Swan's revamped Superman and Gil Kane's Green Lantern.
Defective Comics was an instant hit, financially as well as critically, and it ensured Parody Comics immediate future. “I can turn the lights on with confidence!” joked Feinberg.

Parody Comics Gets a Staff

Until the winter of 1947, the only staff occupying the Parody Comics office were: Albert Feinberg, Parody's business manager, Marty Feinberg who wrote, lettered and edited Defective Comics and the artist for the book, Murphy Anderson. "It was a big office and kinda lonely," he recalled. "Over the course of weekend, our staff doubled."
Barbara ‘Babs’ Bennett was a 21 year-old Brooklyn native who charmed Feinberg into a job as a secretary. “I remember sitting down with Marty and his great bulldog face looked at me over his desk and I knew he was interested. I gave him a look saying ‘maybe later’ and I got the job.”

Ian Watson was a scrawny 16 year old boy who began at the company as a runner. “I remember being extremely nervous, Mr Feinberg wasn’t exactly the most welcoming of men, until you got to know him. I shuffled into his office and replied to most of his questions looking at the floor. He asked me why I was here and I told him I loved comics, especially the Dark Knight. Then he hit me with possibly the best offer a 16-year old who loves comics can hear: he told me that while I was fetching and cleaning, I could earn extra money coming up with new ideas for his comics, I think it was something like 5 cents…I looked up at him and told him 10 I’d never seen before. I remember his half-lit stogie fall onto the desk with a damp thud and roll haphazardly onto the floor. It was a real “Visionary” moment.”

“When Alex [Toth] showed me his stuff, I signed him right away,” Feinberg recalls. Toth had been unemployed for over 3 months after the Eastman Color/Famous Funnies Company had let him go due to restructuring. “Marty was the craziest guy I ever met,” Toth recalls. “I’d shown him maybe a page of [my] work when he launches himself from his chair and starts raving about the series I’m going to draw... and how it’s going to make us all a whole heap of money, all I could get from the first meeting was that it was going to be about hats."




Part Two: The Adventures of Hatman, Nation Periodical sues (again) and the Formation of the Lair Legion.

P.S. If you know who I am, shh! Don't tell!


82-32-114-216.cable.ubr03.hawk.blueyonder.co.uk (82.32.114.216) United Kingdom
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6/Windows XP (0 points)
[New] [Email] [Print] [RSS] [Tales of the Parodyverse]
Follow-Ups:

Echo™ v3.0 alpha © 2003-2006 Powermad Software
Copyright © 2004-2006 by Mangacool Adventure