All in Colo(u)r For A Dime

© ACE. My original paperback copy.

Back when I started seriously collecting American comics as a twelve-year-old around 1971, I quickly became aware that there was thirty-plus years of comics history that I’d missed at that point. Whereas I’d picked various Batman comics back around the time of the Batman TV series, and knew then that I liked the 80-page Giant reprint comics much better than the then currently-new items, it did not really dawn on my seven-year-old brain in 1966 that the stories in those Giants that I really liked (especially Batman drawn by Dick Sprang) came from a previous era.

So when DC began putting reprints into the back pages of 25-cent comics in the period Aug 1971-Jul 1972, my awareness of the depth of comic history became more acute, and I was eager to pick up any book that shed light on that mysterious “Golden” age, particularly if it reprinted comic covers.

The first historical work I purchased was the Ace paperback version of All in Color For A Dime, by Dick Lupoff & Don Thompson. Although the original publication of the hard-back was in 1970, I reckon that I obtained my paperback copy in 1974 from Dark They Were & Golden Eyed in Berwick St, Soho. I certainly enjoyed looking at the colour cover reproductions in the book, but somehow the dense, small print and tightly-bound margins dissuaded me from settling down to read it cover to cover. So the book sat on my bookshelf at my mother’s house well into the late 80s, then moved to a shelf in in our family home in Southampton in the 90s, before being packed away in a crate for the past 23 years. 

This week I decided to sit down to read the book - still pristine - but was unwilling to risk cracking the spine. So I looked for a hardback copy of the original publication on eB*y, and was lucky enough to get a decent copy for $25, and have settled down to read the robustly bound hardback.

© Arlington House. The hardback cover from 1970

What a brilliant book! Written at a time before people wrote in terms of the “Bronze Age”, it is essentially a set of eleven essays written by serious comic fans back in the late sixties, covering the genesis of the US comics industry and the various elements of its evolution. Plus some great cover repros! Of the essay writers, it is fun to read Roy Thomas as a fan who became a full-time comics professional, although final essay-writer Harlan Ellison also had some claim to subsequent popular success.

Contents on back cover.

The fascination of the book for me, published in 1970,  is that it was written by people who had been collecting comics since the late 30s and early 40s, and had quite a different perspective on the target audience for comics. For example, the introduction by Lupoff & Thompson is quite firm in stating that comics are for children, but also read by adults, whereas newspaper strips were designed for adults, that would also be read by children. It is worth getting the book for their observations alone.

I also highly recommend the chapter called “The Spawn of M.C. Gaines” written by Ted White, which explores the origins of the American comic book from first reprinting newspaper strips to the creation of new material. Many you will be familiar with elements of the history, but I am yet to read a more concise and entertaining account. White writes at a time when Siegel & Shuster were still peripherally involved in the comics business, and is quite objective about the lack of professionalism in their early work, as his is about Bob Kane’s on Batman.

Anyway, if you have an interest (and do not already have the book), I urge you to track down a copy of the hardback version. You won’t be disappointed.

© Ian Baker