Anniversaries

Depending on where you live, you might have seen them everywhere. On the bus; on the subway; in the parking lot of Walmart. You might have been handed one instead of candy at Halloween. If you had the audacity to wait tables on a Sunday morning, you might have had one left for you as a tip. They're those little rectangular pamphlets that contain what seem at first to be innocuous comic strips, with a smiling jack o' lantern or a child dressed as a ghost on the cover. When you open them, however, they turn out to be what Los Angeles magazine has described as “equal parts hate literature and fire-and-brimstone sermonizing.” They're Chick tracts, the work and legacy of one Jack T. Chick, who died October 23, 2016, at the age of 92.

It was today in 2006 that we received one of the most iconic of Marvel interactive experiences, allowing us to put our dream teams of heroes together to brawl against evil villains throughout the universe in Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

Born October 24, 1925, Al Feldstein was one of comics' great guiding lights. Although an exceptional artist, Feldstein's legacy comes from his work as a writer and editor at EC, where he was one of the primary driving forces behind two of the most influential movements in comics history.

When Jack Kirby came to DC Comics, darkness followed after him. He arrived ready to build his own mythology, the interlocking Fourth World, a saga of gods locked in an eternal interplanetary war, with Earth caught in the middle. And Kirby wasted no time introducing the villain of that saga, a gray-skinned god of evil named Darkseid. What Kirby didn't see coming was that he'd created such a great villain that he would grow larger than Kirby's saga and become perhaps the most important villain of the DC Universe.

On this day in 1913, one of the most influential creators in the history of the comic book industry was born. Joe Simon --- best known as the co-creator of Captain America alongside Jack Kirby --- helped establish superhero comics as one of the most exciting and dynamic storytelling forms of the 20th century, and created a host of iconic characters alongside Cap.

When you think of Cosmic Marvel, you think of something specific, even though that's never been the title of a comic. Some of what you're thinking of comics from Jack Kirby: Galactus, Silver Surfer, Celestials. But chances are even more of that cosmic stuff came from another writer-artist: Jim Starlin. Thanos, Drax, Gamora, the Infinity Gauntlet, Kronos and Mentor and everything happening on Titan. That's all Starlin, doing what he does best: re-imagining superhero comics as psychedelic space opera.

Born October 3, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York, Harvey Kurtzman might be the single most influential cartoonist of all time. As the editor of Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat for EC Comics, Kurtzman created an entirely new kind of war comic that is still considered the gold standard today; as the creator and driving force behind Mad, he introduced his own brand of satire into the American lexicon. In an expansive family tree of truth-seekers that includes artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, and comedians, Harvey Kurtzman is the root.

On October 1st, 2003, Image Comics published the debut issue of The Walking Dead, a black and white zombie comic by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. Despite all odds, the series grew and grew to become one of the most successful independent comics franchises of all time, with spin-offs in television, video games, novels and more.

It's no secret that women have long been underrepresented in superhero comics, both as characters and as creators. In the case of the latter, in the Silver Age of comics, your options were more or less limited to two: Marie Severin, who did her groundbreaking work largely at Marvel, and the brilliant Ramona Fradon over at DC. Ramona Fradon was born on October 1, 1926, and studied art at the Parsons School of Design in New York, as well as the New York Students' Art League. She never read comic books as a child, but had a love for newspaper strips, including The Phantom, Li'l Abner, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates, and The Spirit.

If you were to mention the name “Al Capp” to a modern comics reader, there is a good chance it would mean nothing to them at all, or maybe they would think he was the British guy with the checkered hat on the bag of hot fries. But for several decades in the 20th century, Al Capp's creation Li'l Abner was one of the most popular and beloved works in any medium, and Capp himself was a household name and national celebrity.