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A new day for hero worship
Comic collecting has declined in the past decade, but with America at war the industry may be poised for a comeback. The Tampa Comic Book, Toy and Collectibles Convention offers a look at comics old and new.
By LOGAN D. MABE
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 8, 2001
[Marvel Comics]
Heroes was published to honor the real heroes from the Sept. 11 attacks.
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This world needs its heroes.
Tim Gordon knows it. That's why he named his son Clayton, after Clayton Moore, who played the Lone Ranger on television. Bob Layton knows it as he carries on the tradition of creating Captain America. Mark Alessi, a local comic book entrepreneur, knows it and has made it his business to create heroes for a world suddenly hungry for them.
America knew it needed heroes, that it had heroes, on Sept. 11 when firefighters, police officers, emergency medical technicians and airline passengers did the right thing, some at the cost of their own lives.
That's what heroes do: They do the right thing.
* * *
"What I read comics for when I was a kid was for the stories. Good defeated evil, but it wasn't easy all the time. You had to work hard. You had to stand up behind your word," says Gordon, a middle school science teacher and comic book fan from St. Petersburg.
"My favorite thing in the Spiderman stories was that with great power came great responsibility. That's one of the things they repeated again and again in these stories. In the end, he had to do the right thing."
Gordon has put together the first comics convention to be held in this area in several years, set for this weekend in Tampa.
Comics have always been a big deal for kids and collectors, going back 60 years or more. But after some boom years in the '80s and early '90s, comic collecting has been on a steady decline as superheroes became darker, edgier, more conflicted. The narrative, which had long been the real strength behind any superhero, grew stale.
“Heroes are people that recognize that fear is a process they have to pass through to accomplish something that’s more important. And they don’t have to be wearing Spandex.”
Mark Alessi, founder of CrossGen comics
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"Comics in the '90s got to be, "How large can we draw women's breasts and how small can we make the costumes and can we somehow tell a story about this?' " Gordon said. "The line between good and evil got very gray. Maybe it did reflect our world, but the idea of heroes is that we can aspire to something greater. And they changed the rules. For instance, Superman and Lois Lane getting married. That looks like a cute thing. But you can't have a wife and be the protector of the Earth."
Bob Layton of Apollo Beach has been in the comics publishing business for 30 years and currently is an ink artist on the Captain America series. "When I started out, heroes were a very black-and-white sort of thing," Layton said. "Then in the '80s, the antihero came in. I think it was the sign of the times, and heroes took on a darker side."
Too, the industry was hard hit by the proliferation of youthful diversions, namely video games, the Cartoon Network and the home computer.
"A lot has happened in the last decade," said Neil Johnson, who owns Emerald City Comics in Seminole. "In the early '90s, there was a big explosion of people that were all trying to buy comics to invest in, and it really bit everyone in the behind. Comics in the past decade have lost more and more of their audience because kids have too many things vying for their attention."
[Times photos: Krystal Kinnunen]
Andrew Hennessy uses ink to fill in the comic strip Sigil, created at CrossGen Comics in Oldsmar.
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But with America under attack from terrorists and at war in the Middle East, comic books are poised to become relevant again, Layton said.
"I think with the events that have occurred in the last month or so, everybody seems to be leaning back toward "Truth, Justice and the American Way,' " Layton said.
Industry leader Marvel Comics, which has struggled to retain market share in recent years, rushed into print with a comic book titled simply Heroes. In it, "the world's greatest superhero creators honor the world's greatest heroes . . . 9/11/2001."
"They can't stick to walls. They can't summon thunder. They can't fly," was the message in Marvel's promotional material for the comic. "They're just HEROES."
And the next issue of The Amazing Spiderman will feature Manhattanite Peter Parker dealing with the tragedy, Johnson said.
"Comics have always been very close to whatever the pulse of the nation is," Johnson said. "In the '40s, Batman and Superman and Captain America fought the Nazis and encouraged people to buy war bonds. It's always been there."
[CrossGen Comics]
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If anyone reveres the Golden Age of comics, it is Mark Alessi, whose collection of classic comics and artwork is valued at about $1.5-million. But that's chump change compared to the more substantial investment he's made in CrossGen Comics, his upstart comic publishing house in Oldsmar.
Alessi made his fortune first at IBM, then started his own software company, Technical Resource Connection, which he sold for millions to Ross Perot. In just two years, CrossGen has grown from a sparkle in Alessi's eye to a 60-employee comic book factory that churns out enough titles to make it No. 5 in the industry. (For a sample, go to www.crossgen.com.)
"What we do is heroic fiction," Alessi explained. "Since people have been carving figures on the inside of caves, people have been creating heroic fiction. It's been the reading staple of choice for over 3,000 years."
A comic book fan since his childhood, Alessi was repulsed by the industry's slow erosion of the hero motif and is betting his financial future on recapturing lightning in a bottle.
"For the last 15 years, people have gone away from concepts of "might for right,' and "justice for all,' because we forgot how to present it to the next generation," said Alessi, whose greatest hero is his father. "He did the right thing, because it was the right thing, not because someone patted him on the back. We have a tendency to praise those who are brought to our attention, and we ignore those around us who every day deserve praise."
That is one of the reasons that Alessi is bullish on heroes, super or otherwise.
"Heroes are people that recognize that fear is a process they have to pass through to accomplish something that's more important," Alessi said. "And they don't have to be wearing Spandex. And quite frankly, if we start assuming that our heroes wear Spandex, we'll find they don't exist. We'll find that we are surrounded by heroes."
Butch Guice, a penciler at CrossGen, works on the comic Ruse, which hit newsstands for the first time Oct. 31 and is likely to sell out. Guice will be one of the artists featured at Saturday’s convention.
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PREVIEW
The Tampa Comic Book, Toy and Collectibles Convention will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Holiday Inn Express, 4732 N Dale Mabry Highway, about a half mile north of Raymond James Stadium. Convention organizer Tim Gordon expects about 55 dealers selling thousands of comics from the Golden Age to contemporary. Also for sale will be cards, toys, action figures, Star Wars memorabilia, magazines and card games. Admission is $2.
Appearing at the convention will be eight guest artists from CrossGen Comics: Butch Guice, Scott Eaton, John Dell, Don Hillsman, Mike Perkins, Andrew Crossley, Justin Ponsor and Rick Magyar.
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