The Return of the Silver Age
Arlen Schumer
By Mark Turner
By Steve Pennella
Arlen Schumer (http://arlenschumer.com) is the author of the newly
reissued The Silver Age of Comic Book Art (Revised Edition) (Archway
Publishing). The original 2003 edition won the Independent Book
Publishers Award for Best Popular Culture Book. Arlen is also an awardwinning comic book-style illustrator for the advertising and editorial
markets, a member of The Society of Illustrators, an author/designer of
coffee table art books, and a recognized expert on American popular
culture— ABC-TV’s 20/20 called him “one of the country’s preeminent
authorities on comics and culture”after interviewing him in 2010 (http://
youtu.be/_e634FDTBaI). He presents his VisuaLectures on comic book
art history and other subjects (The Twilight Zone and the music of Bruce
Springsteen) at universities and cultural institutions across the country.
SP!: THIS BOOK WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2003. WHAT
COMPELLED YOU TO BRING IT BACK TO PRINT?
AS: Back in 2003, when the original edition of The Silver Age of Comic
Book Art came out, Facebook wasn’t around and the Marvel movies had
just kicked off the decade (The X-Men and the first Sam Raimi-directed
Spider-Man film). My book, published by a mom-and-pop publisher in
Oregon, came and went with no major promotion or publicity. Though
it received great reviews, and was blurbed by the likes of Will Eisner
and Alan Moore, and won the Independent Publishers Award for Best
Popular Culture Book of 2003, neither the general comic book audience,
nor the larger pop culture audience, ever even heard of it.
comic strip history, like the IDW Artist Editions—enough to warrant a
double-page spread in The New York Times a couple of years ago!
When I decided to fully participate in Facebook as my social media of
choice a couple of years ago, I was able to begin two comics history
groups of my own—one based around my Silver Age book and the era,
the other devoted to the career of Neal Adams (whose art graces the
title page of my book as well as its final, concluding chapter), both with
over 2500 members each—and I found out that I had a following that I’d
never had before and a community I could get my work directly to. So,
along with the growth in self-publishing at the same time as Facebook’s
rise, it made me realize last year that I didn’t have to wait for a“real”publisher to come along and pat me on the head. I could do it myself!
After some research, I decided to go with Archway Publications, the
“assisted publishing”division of Simon & Schuster (http://www.archwaypublishing.com). They’ve done a BEAUTIFUL job on the printing of the
book—it truly is “new, improved”! My original edition was beautifully
printed, but Archway went above and beyond it: they gave me a trulysilver dust jacket this time (versus a four-color approximation of silver on
my original), as well as a matte-finish case wrap illustration (under the
dust jacket) that is worth the price of admission (if I do say so myself! ☺
I was also able to revise ALL the typography in the book, because I was
only happy with about 60 percent of it the first time around, as well as
throwing in a few new graphics throughout the book for sharp-eyed
owners of my original edition!
So, when the publisher went belly-up in ’05, and rights to reprint
reverted back to me, I was determined to bring my book back into SP!: COMICS IS A VISUAL MEDIUM, YET VIRTUALLY ALL COMIC ART
print ever since. Though I was without an agent, and therefore had dif- BOOKS ARE TEXT HEAVY. YOU TOOK THE OPPOSITE APPROACH.
ficulty getting to a lot of publishers, the many rejections I did get over IT SEEMS SO OBVIOUS TO PRESENT VISUAL HISTORY IN A VISUAL
the past eight years were offset by my belief that there was a brand MANNER, YET IT’S NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE OR SINCE. CAN
NEW audience interested in comics history (and specifically The Silver YOU TAKE US THROUGH THE DESIGN PROCESS AND SHARE WHAT
Age), because of specific developments in the past decade: the boffo INSPIRED YOU TO TAKE THIS APPROACH?
box office of the Marvel movies, all based on characters from The Silver
Age; the growth of Facebook, creating many comic-centric groups; and AS: Every comic book history book before mine was text heavy, with
the proliferation of hardcover, archival collections of comic book and miniature reproductions of the comic book art, panels, pages and covers.
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SELF PUBLISHER MAGAZINE 2015