New York Comics english by Nicolas Forsans

introduction

American author Thomas Wolfe said “One belongs to New York instantly; one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years,” I’d have to agree. You don’t just visit New York, but quickly become a blood cell running through the subway veins. An unbreakable elastic thread binds between you and the city, always yanking you back, for either a visit or a stay. She’s the girl that, at the very least, you just have to keep going out on dates with in a lifelong on-and-off relationship, and at the very most, need to stick with for the rest of your life. I’ve pounded the pavement, ridden the subways at odd hours, and experienced a new corner of the city each time I visited, and even more after I stayed. I b e l o n g a m o n g st t h e t h ro n g o f people on the sidewalks of Manhattan, with the sardine-can like nature and forced intimacy of a subway car, or with the ghosts of the comic book pioneers who still haunt the city’s sidewalks. And, because of that, I permanently belong to her. The entire history of the comic book, from its birth to renaissance, started in the hearts and minds of a group of (mostly) high school kids, many of whom grew up on the city’s streets. The Lower East Side of Manhattan, that formerly rough and tumble neighborhood

Left page Spider-Man gets warmed up for a day of web-swinging and crime-fighting in this panel by John Romita, Jr..

new york comics jammed full of crowded tenements gave birth to more than its share of comic book visionaries, artists who started portraying the violence of their childhoods on the comics page from the medium’s early days in the 1930s and ‘40s. Mixed amongst the first publishers were a mix of wanna-be mobsters, crooks, shucksters, and even occasional creative geniuses. They could rent a broom closet, call it an office, and hire kids hungry for work to crank out comic book pages to pad between cheaply printed covers. Publishers like the infamous Victor Fox (who allegedly went bankrupt four times in his career, was involved in a “boiler room” stock market scheme, never paid his employees…he even had a printer he owed money to publish his comics for a year to pay back the debt he owed them) chomped their cigars in dirty and cheap bullpens. Often times, these publishers dabbled in pornography and girlie mags…there was no real love of the comics medium, it was mostly just a bunch of sometimes savvy, often lower-level, pseudo-businessmen trying to turn a buck. B u t fo r eve r y t wo - b i t wa n n a - b e publisher, there was a small army of teenage wanna-be comic strip artists and illustrators that grew up to wrest control of the ship and steer it into far more exciting waters. Many of them were the sons of immigrants (and, in the case of artists like Gil Kane, an immigrant himself), several were Jewish, and almost all of them were New Yorkers. It took a Brooklyn kid named Will Eisner to form a comics studio of artists working in assembly-line fashion on comics for other publishers, before he later went on to create a comic book called The Spirit (set in…guess where? His cipher of New York called Central City) and, in later years, pushed the graphic novel format into the limelight with 1978’s A Contract with God. The studio system was the School of Hard Knocks, a place where artists could still goof off, compete, and chide one another through sleepless deadline after sleepless deadline. Fr iendships (some lifelong) were for med, among this bunch of kids creating often crude mythological superheroes and demigods in the now mythical era of post-Depression era America. They worked in Midtown, Soho, or

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If you grew up in an English-speaking country, New York is the center of the world, because so much American media is New York-Centric. Sesame Street, it’s very New York. I didn’t appreciate it until I started living in New York. You can’t escape New York. It filters everything because it’s this pinch-point in American culture. I’m sure it’s to the detriment of other places in America, but so much comes to New York and so much is getting done here. You have

Comics and stayed with the company long enough to rechristen it Marvel Comics twenty years later. This also included ar tists like Jack Kirby, whose bombastic style mixed g race with violence. He practically invented the language of the superhero action comic with his partner Joe Simon, and would continue to reinvent the genre (as well as create and contribute to a few more) before he was done. Jack’s vision of New York ran through most all of the major Marvel Comics in the 1960s, graced with Stan Lee’s dialogue. He continued to bring New York to life in the rest of his work, primarily in his autobiographical comic story Street Code, which recalled his childhood in the tenements. Drawn in rough pencil, it shows the very real underside of the New York married with the superhero’s visual language. Jack Kirby couldn’t help but be heroic, even in the often unheroic circumstances of comics’ early days in the 1930s. And all of this was in New York City, a grand city struggling in the grip of a Great Depression and an oncoming World War. Its crowded city streets, of pedestrians blocking traffic at crosswalks, of subways packed like clown cars, or people rushing around through the subway veins of the city…it all made its way into those comics birthed by the city’s own children. New York City became the model for every crime-infested superhero city, that unmistakable skyline doubled for cities that tried to be somewhere else, but were still inescapably New York.

to sacrifice so much to be in New York but at the end of the day, if you want to be next to these people who are doing all of these things, that environment pushes the best out of you and you have to make that concession. Yes, I’m enjoying the hell out of it, but it’s grim sometimes. Simon Fraser Cartoonist, 2000AD, Doctor Who.

Tudor City, in crummy studios and at kitchen tables. Some of them even worked for a publisher in the Empire State Building, like Stan Lee, who started as an office boy for Timely

Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Irwin Hasen, Alex Toth, Jerry Robinson, Joe Kuber t, Bob Kane…They struggled on the streets and in tiny apartments and helped each other out; one comic book, the first issue of a Golden Age hero named Daredevil in 1941, was drawn in a crowded apartment building during a fierce blizzard of Biblical proportions, the young artists living off of coffee and sandwiches. It wasn’t the apex of the storytelling medium, but it was the apex of a camaraderie rarely seen in other storytelling industries. The superheroes thrived as America entered t he Second World War af ter t he bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on

December 7, 1941. Suddenly, these urban avengers and f lying do-gooders were seen across the lines, in Germany or Japan, socking Adolf Hitler or mowing down Nazis with machine guns. They sold war bonds and made V’s with their fingers (not as a gesture of peace, but “V for Victory”), and never revealed how a terrible war could continue going in a world full of god-like heroes. World War II also gave comic books the best badguys ever in the Nazi party. It was hard to top that after the war finally ended in 1945. Superheroes kept hanging on, but were soon being overshadowed by other genres like crime and horror, aimed towards older readers with heavy injections of sex, violence, and gore. The kids who started on Superman when little were now looking for something more appealing—and more dangerous. The most famous of these were the EC line of comics, which included Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Hor ror, Two-Fisted Tales, and Weird Science. The EC Comics, rife with gore, blood, and innuendo, were far more sophisticated than their early ‘40s predecessors. The art by the likes of Wally Wood, Graham Engels, Harvey Kurtzman, Johnny Craig, and Al Feldstein were high illustrations and exercises in cinematic mood, and the writing veered from absurd horror tales to adaptations of Ray Bradbury. The publisher of EC’s masterful line was William C. Gaines, who was a far cry from the Victor Fox’s of a decade before and actually cared about the content of comics and his creators. Inheriting EC from his late father Maxwell, the rebellious William reveled in creating comics that were subversive in their gratuity and absurdity. The EC books looked at t he post-War suburban nuclear family with a look of horror, as the protagonists in their stories were pushed to the edge by anything from a nagging wife, to society itself, or even their own petty jealousies. They were violent, sexy, and dark— perhaps too much so. A psychiatr ist named Fredr ic Wertham, and others, lashed out against

hor ror and cr ime comics as a cor r upting inf luence on America’s young comic book readers. There was enough of an urge and demand to censor comics that the U.S. Senate started a sub-committee to investigate the evil of comic books. It was a show, of course, televised across the country, as Presidential hopeful Estes Kefauver led the talks right in New York City. It was the well-meaning and outspoken William, who came out against the anti-comics crowd of the 1950s. He failed to turn the tide and became a whipping boy, demonized into the image of publisher corrupting the innocent youth of America. Despite his apparent fall from grace, the work he published and continued to publish is still looked at as a high watermark. The result was a censorship code and negative media attention that nearly killed

I love the history of comics, and I feel the history of comics here, in New York City. I went to the Kubert School and had Kubert, Tex Blaisdell and Irwin Hasen as teachers. The school is in New Jersey, but those guys made history here in New York. I’m here, very much on purpose, because this is where it is. Mike Cavallaro Cartoonist, Parade with Fireworks, Life and Times of Savior 28.

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comics. As publishers created the Comics Code censorship guidelines and forced the medium into a vanilla-like blandness, Gaines and creator Harvey Kurtzman’s satirical comic book Mad became a magazine…where the Code had no power. Something unexpected happened after the industry was almost dealt a fatal blow: comics got better. They stood up to the establishment time and time again, taking their licks but getting back up, like a true New Yorker. Periodically, they even got in a good punch or two and proved they were here to stay. Batman became an absurdist TV show that erupted into a pop culture craze, and Mad’s new life as a magazine made it a cultural icon (along with the EC horror books) influenced an entire generation of cartoonists to created the expressive adult comics called the Undergrounds. Before anyone knew it, comics had reinvented pop culture, from gallery walls to the silver screen. In the 1960s, Marvel Comics editor and writer Stan Lee had a brilliant idea: why not set his new line of superhero books in the world he knew—New York City! The real world setting gave superhero titles like The Amazing SpiderMan and The Fantastic Four an unprecedented grounding. The struggling medium was pulled out of the doldrums, by a New York publisher, selling characters meta-textually living in a fantasized New York. And then—and this is where it gets even more exciting—new generations of artists, writers,

and full-on cartoonists born and raised into the medium, started to change the language while putting unprecedented spins on thentired genres like the superhero. They came into New York City in the ‘70s and ‘80s, when it was anything but a safe place, and the urban decay and grime was ground into the superheroes’ cities. Some lived in crappy apartments while bringing a new craft to creating comics, there were sometimes a lot of drugs, some of them starved, but all of them looked to the generation that were once exploited kids for guidance. They all knew they were on the same streets Will Eisner and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and countless others walked down in their youth, translated to a comics page as a Metropolis or Gotham or Central City. Those streets might just teach them the same hard lessons and make men out of them. New York was the same stern matriarch who could comfort them as soon as knock them upside the head. Even after FedEx took comic book artists out of the city that houses the two major publishers, and even after the Internet made communication instantaneous, comics are still New York. Even after DC Comics, now DC Entertainment, has made the move to California, we still know New York will always have ownership of the comics medium. Like comics are in the blood of the current generation of creators, New York is in the ink/blood of the comics themselves, indelibly printed on now-glossy pages or displayed on computer screens. It is our cultural memory of not just a comic book city, but of an American metropolis. Look at a typical New York day: it cuts to the quick. New Yorkers don’t mosey through life—they expediently get from point A to point B. If a New Yorker could live in shorthand, they would. The benefit a comic book possesses is that it can live in shorthand, it can cut from points A to C without the need of B. Could the same energy (conducted

The Amazing Spider-Man #600 (Sept., 2009) This cover by artist John Romita, Jr. (himself the son of the second artist to draw Spider-Man) puts the implied line of Spidey’s costume to good use.

by the romance and history of the city, from Bleecker Street to Times Square) come from San Diego? Or Seattle? Both incredible cities in their own right, but lacking that same infectious vibe broadcast on a select frequency, that same electricity...that synergy between the creative spirit of the current breed of cartoonists and the ghosts of the old. New York City is still where comics have to happen and, because of that, it’s where creators are born and bred. And no matter who you talk to in the comics field, Jack Kirby almost always come up in conversation. Older artists who worked with him, established ones who looked up to him and (if they were lucky) had a chance to meet him in person, or young artists in their 20s who embrace his work and life. He was the example of a New Yorker who made the best of himself from the toughest beginnings, but also a creator who bravely struck out on his own so that he could own his work, after feeling frustrated and exploited at points in his career. The late creators have gone from legendary to becoming as mythical as the heroes and villains they created on paper all those long years ago, when they were hunched over a studio by the buzz of a desk lamp and consumed absurd amounts of coffee and cigarettes when their livers and lungs were young enough to take the punishment. I’d bet that right now, hunched over a table or board in a studio in Brooklyn or an apartment in Queens, there’s someone creating comics and recalling meeting his or her hero on the streets of New York, where they gleaned a nugget of wisdom to pass on to their next generation… The best way to completely find out why New York is vital to the comic book medium, is to come and visit this city of dreams, skyscrapers, energy, and ghosts. This is the same world filtered onto movie and television screens, adapting the very comics that came from her foundations and streets for the world to see in live action. Like everything in comics, the city’s onscreen love affair with superheroes started with Superman.

This is an international city. New York is a satellite, really, a moon of America. A friend of mine was telling me that some of the bad effects we’ve had recently have made foreigners sad. Everyone projects on New York, because here is where you start over again.

In that sense, I see New York as an international

city. The great thing about living here on the periphery of the East Coast, is that it’s really easy to get to Europe, and I travel over there all of the time. I have a really interesting relationship with publishers in Europe.

In terms of where we are now, in 2008, where

do I see comics in 2100? What can I do now to help set that up? Paul Pope Cartoonist, Battling Boy, 100%.

In the 1970s, producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind got the option to make a major Superman film. This wouldn’t be low budget kid’s fare, but an actual major motion picture aimed at an adult audience as well as the younger set. The Salkind’s genius was in tapping Richard Donner to direct. His genius was in

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filming Superman on the streets of New York City. Giving the film that real world setting would make the Man of Steel’s unbelievable powers more, well, believable. The casting of an unknown actor named Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent and Superman sealed the deal. It made a star of him and cemented New York as the ideal setting for a superhero movie. So why didn’t more superhero movies follow in Superman’s steps? It wasn’t just the cost prohibitive nature of bringing superheroes’ powers, but the “world” (as in Hollywood) wasn’t ready to look at comics as being more than anything for the kids. That Superman didn’t inspire a rash of superhero films isn’t a slight against the movie, but one against how comics were viewed by the studios and general public. Producer Michael Uslan struggled for years to get Batman made as a dark and serious superhero film; when he finally succeeded in 1989, he had the last laugh, as the Tim Burton movie, star r ing Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, became an enormous blockbuster. Four movies and eight years later, though, the Batman movie franchise was dead in the water with the failure of the camp Batman and Robin in 1997. But then a movie called The Matrix, created by the Wachowskis, came out in 1999 and changed everything. Characters dodged bullets in slow motion, air ripples left in the wake of each slow-moving bullet, all while existing in a world straight out of Metal Hurlant. A visual masterpiece with a strong

visual inf luence based off of comic book art (cartoonist Geof Darrow was even a designer on the film), The Matrix did for the superhero much of what Star Wars had done for science fiction in 1978: proved that technology had finally caught up with the dreams drawn on comic book pages. The Matrix did what had only really been accomplished with the first two Superman movies. It showed that super powers, with martial arts action thrown in, could not just be cool onscreen, but visually arresting. Blade, starring Wesley Snipes, had come out in 1998 and brought martial arts to the comic book world. That film’s success helped make an X-Men film possible in 2000. A s t h e X- M e n fa c e d o f f a ga i n st Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants in the Statue of Liberty, big screen superheroes were not only back—but their relationship with New York City was freshly renewed. When Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man hit big screens in 2002, New York played an even bigger role, as the quintessential New York superhero’s adventures were shot on location for a total of three movies. Warner Brothers got back into the superhero game with Christopher Nolan’s gritty Batman Begins in 2005; even though much of it was shot in Chicago, New York City’s familiar settings became crucial to the relevancy of the final film: 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. Marvel, meanwhile, had been rallying their forces to become their own independent film studio. The first salvo in their attack on the

The Amazing Spider-Man #655 (April, 2011) Spider-Man reflects on his mission as a crime-fighter, and protecting his city. Dan Slott, art by Marcos Martin.

big screen competition came with Iron Man in 2008, starring Robert Downey, Jr. Loyal to the comics, Iron Man was the shot in the arm both Marvel and the genre needed. With their next movie, Marvel brought The Incredible Hulk to the streets of Harlem for a final showdown with his enemy The Abomination. Even Iron Man found himself in the Big Apple for some of his sequel, with a final fight in Flushing Meadows Park. With the onslaught of Marvel movies based, like the original comics, in New York City, the superhero’s best home city has found itself harboring a steady stream of heroes and villains in battle amongst its sidewalks and in its buildings. But as our imaginations get sucked into these worlds of heroes and villains on both the comic book page and movie screens, our hearts get stolen by the city where they all started. Expect New York to take a piece of you and keep it for herself, forever storing it in her subways and sidewalks, and old buildings haunted by the ghosts of comics geniuses. Now let’s go meet some of those ghosts and legends, and breath in the atmosphere that Hollywood just can’t let go of in adapting.

statue of liberty

She’s the most beautiful woman in all of New York City. Standing amidst the New York Harbor, between New Jersey and New York, the Statue of Liberty is the first person immigrants saw when arriving from other countries to the land of opportunity and wish fulfillment that is America. Built in France and shipped over in pieces, she’s the child of both countries. The Statue was conceived by French intellectual Edouard de Laboulaye and sculpted by Auguste Bartholdi from sheets of hammered copper, which were then set over a steel framework designed by Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel himself. Bartholdi, allegedly, modeled her off of his own mother. It took ten years to build her, culminating in her dedication by U.S. President Grover Cleveland in 1886. She stands 151 feet and 1 inch high, holding a torch aloft in her right arm to light the way to the new country. Against her left breast, she holds a tablet that reads JULY IV MDCCLXXVI—July 4, 1776, the date America officially defied British rule and signed its Declaration of Independence. 100 years later, Lady Liberty was extensively restored in time for her Centennial. The Statue is the gateway into America for immigrants f leeing persecution in their own country, or even ones looking to benefit from the opportunities of this bustling young one. When the U.S. government opened an immigra-

The Statue of Liberty Photo by Howard Wallach.

new york harbor

The Spectacular Spider-Man #140 (July, 1988). Art by Sal Buscema. Captain America #267 (March, 1982). Art by Mike Zeck.

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tion center on Ellis Island in 1892, it served to welcome 12 million immigrants into their new country over the course of 62 years. To the comic book world, she’s an icon that must always be saved. Her destruction is visual shorthand for the end of our own freedom—and a sign of subjugation and oppression. In the 1968 movie Planet of t he Apes, t he destroyed Statue of Liberty as the end’s tragic reveal, proving an end to humanity’s dominance of the Earth. It partially inspired Jack Kirby’s post-apocalyptic comic book series for DC Comics, Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth; the cover features the blond hero paddling through a f looded New York City in a raft, determination in his eyes as the Statue juts out of the water behind him. In Super man: The Movie, S u p e r m a n’s f ly i n g by t h e Statue makes it abundantly clear that Metropolis is New York City. In Superman III, S u p e r m a n p i ck s u p a g i rl threatening to jump from Lady L i b e r t y ’s c row n , a n d eve n risks his life in the next movie to save it from the destructive Nuclear Man by carrying it on his shoulder. In 2000, the X-Men came to movie screens for the first time, and face off against Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants at the Statue. They fought their way through the Statue, where Magneto has placed a doomsday device in the lamp that threatens humanity. We’ve already met Lady Liberty. Now, let’s see the city, hear the stories, and meet the legends behind the legendary superheroes.

Superman (Christopher Reeve) flies past lady liberty in this moment from Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman the Movie.

Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth was Jack Kirby’s take on a post-apocalyptic world (October, 1972).

The Punisher is faced with a dilemma, from Spectacular Spider-Man #140.

great white alley

Times Square wasn’t always the bright, glitzy, safe section of Manhattan that it is now. As far back as the late 1890s, it was called Longacre Square and was one of New York City’s more unsavory districts. By 1904, it was rechristened Times Square by New York Mayor George McClellan when The New York Times moved their offices to the area. The presence of a major newspaper forced the area to improve; it’s a move that changed the course of Longacre forever. The New York Times arrived to Longacre already an institution and forged ahead to become an even bigger one in subsequent decades. When the paper started in 1851, it was the New York Daily Times and was sold for a penny six days a week. Six years later, it became The New-York Times and, shortly after, added a Sunday edition. The New York Times, with their slogan of “All the news that’s fit to print,” has long been a bastion of objective and balanced journalism. It has led to the downfall of the political machine known as Tammany Hall, and even exposed government secrets with the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” during the controversial War in Vietnam in the 1960s and ‘70s. Three years after the move, Times’ owner Adolph Ochs began a tradition that continues to this day: the lowering of the glass ball at midnight on the roof of their main headquarters to announce the start of the New Year. That year, New York City’s first subway line also opened—

and crossed through Times Square, making the area more accessible to other New Yorkers. Also about this time, theaters started to spring up around this commercial and residential area, primarily on Broadway, and Times Square now attracted the upper crust of New York while embracing the blossoming movie industry. Where Times Square had been a hotbed of crime in the 19th century, it became the hotbed of entertainment, dubbed “The Crossroads of the World.” During the 1930s, a boy named Gene Colan would come up to Manhattan from his home in Brooklyn, and stand outside a movie theater showing the classic horror films like Universal’s Dracula and Frankenstein. “There was a theater down on 42nd Street that would play back the soundtrack and blast it out into the street to entice people to come in and see the images,” he remembered. “I would stand there and listen to the soundtrack a little bit.” Ironically, Gene grew up to become a great horror comics artist, with his eerie artwork gracing Marvel Comics’ 1970s Tomb of Dracula comic book. Expensive enter tainment was less feasible after the Great Depression struck in the 1930s, and several theaters were unable to keep their doors open. Over the next few decades, Times Square first boasted more movie theaters, which then turned into adult theaters, peepshows, and a return to the crime-infested ways of the preceding century in everything from drugs to prostitution. By the 1990s, though, Times Square was on the mend, with more tourist-aimed stores, and a reinvigorated Broadway scene. The adult theaters are now gone from Times Square, with family-friendly stores and restaurants well in place. Some call it the “Disneyfication” of Times Square, citing the opening of a Disney Store there, while others view it as catering to the tourists coming in to see the sights. While there are plenty of chain restaurants around Times Square, the most classic Broadway eatery is Sardi’s at 234 West 44th Street. Its walls are plastered with framed caricatures of Broadway actors who have performed nearby and come through the restaurant’s legendary doors for a drink or meal. Opened by immi-

Left: Time2: The Epiphany was Howard Chaykin’s 1986 graphic novel about the Great White Way. Next: Times Square. Photograph by Howard Wallach.

times square

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grant couple Vincent and Eugenia Sardi, in 1927, Sardi’s became the spot for actors, struggling and established, to grab a meal. The Sardis even had a lower-priced menu just for actors, and Vincent was known for giving meals on credit. In 1927, Sardi employed a Russian artist, Alex Gard, to draw caricatures of the Broadway actors in exchange for two meals a day. The fourth and current artist, Richard Baratz, has been drawing caricatures for Sardi’s since 1974. Sardi’s has a comic book movie connection: it’s where Christopher Reeve was formally announced to the world as being the new movie Superman on February 23, 1977—three weeks after his screen test for the role. Also in the 1970s, Marvel’s superhero Luke Cage, the Hero for Hire, had his offices overlooking Times Square (back in its seedier days). In The Incredible Hulk TV show in 1978, actor Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk ran down the streets of Times Square, wearing green slippers to keep him from cutting his feet on any glass, needles, or garbage that may have been strewn about. At the end of Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers awakens from a decadeslong slumber and races out to be greeted by today’s Times Square. The technological billboard paradise is a far cry from the Times Square Steve would have walked through in his younger days. The superhero most involved with Times Square, at least in terms of film, is Spider-Man. He first faces his enemy the Green Goblin in 2002’s Spider-Man, while 2013’s The Amazing Spider-

Man 2 features a Times square face-off between Spidey and Electro. A constant visitor to the Great White Way was cartoonist Howard Chaykin, whose slick linework graced not only The Shadow comic book for DC, but also his creator-owned comic book American Flagg! Meeting c o m i c s a r t i st G i l K a n e (most known for co-creating the 1950s version of Green Lantern), led a young Howard to a life of comics art. Like Kane, Chaykin’s art embraces design firstly. Coming into the comics industry in the 1970s, Howard’s artwork quickly developed into his dynamic and polished style that pushed the boundaries of comic book storytelling and design. But back when Chaykin was only a big deal on his way to becoming a comics legend and revolutionary—he was making his comics in the same studio as a handful of other legends-in-the-making, in the nearby Garment District.

Someone once said that in New York, you’re either Jewish, Irish, or Italian. We were of a particular guild of Jew: I was raised on welfare, in a neighborhood that was predominantly black, Puerto Rican, and Italian. My early experience was basically spent fucking around with a lot of black kids, fucking around with a lot of Italian kids, and running around crazy in the street with them. I was not an athletic kid, and was bookish, which is what was expected of me as a Jew. Howard Chaykin, Cartoonist, American Flagg.

Daredevil: End of Days #2 (2012). Daily Bugle reporter Phil Urich navigates Times Square, alone. NAME, art by Klaus Janson (pencils), Bill Sienkiewicz (finished art). Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) faces off against Electro in Times Square in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), directed by Mark Webb.

Howard Chaykin à Times Square

upstart studio

garment district

Talk about an all-star studio of comics talent, and you get Upstart Studios, which was located in the Garment District in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. The Garment District, located from about 34th to 42nd Street between Fifth and Ninth Avenues, is the center for fashion in the United States, where everything from design to manufacturing can be found. It has held onto that position since the mid 19th century. Four cartoonists, when they were still relative newcomers—Val Mayerik, Howard Chaykin, Walter Simonson, and Jim Starlin— caught up and decided to join up and form a studio over dinner one night in 1978. This generation was the first to get into comics as fans of the ‘60s Marvel Comics. Their injection into the mainstream superhero comic book companies brought a degree of experimentation and an unprecedented energy that pushed the oncejuvenile superhero into greater realms. In short, many of them grew up off comic books and, in turn, helped comic books grow even more. Over time, Upstart came to bring in Frank Miller and Jim Sherman. At its height, Walter Simonson was bringing new life to Marvel’s Thor, injecting a load of change in the God of Thunder’s Kirbyinspired world; Starlin continued to make comics even more cosmic with his creator-owned Dreadstar; Chaykin was doing his creator-owned book American Flagg, which was way ahead of its time in its criticism of the media; and Miller was

Upstart Studios building Photo by Howard Wallach

Daredevil #176 (November, 1981) Frank Miller The Mighty Thor #342 (April, 1984) Walter Simonson

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“I had a stellar 1985, hopping a subway after school to Upstart Studios in the Garment District on 29th street,” Dean recalls his more innocent years. “I walked into a studio that housed the talents of Howard Chaykin, Walter Simonson, James Sherman and (at other times, before I entered), Frank Miller, Jim Starlin, and Alan Weiss. I first got a gig in the room down the hall from Upstart Studios, with Bill Sienkiewicz, who was looking for an assistant...I also got to work on the first issue of Elektra: Assassin, doing things like blocking in cell paint colors. “I wanted there to be consistency and hang out with more cartoonists. My good friend at the time was Larry O’Neil, who was working for Howard Chaykin, and Howard decided he needed a second assistant.

“Pretty soon, I was working for Howard on

American Flagg!, and doing some stuff for Walt Simonson on Thor. It was really cool to be working on stuff like that and then on my own comics at home.” Dean Haspiel, Cartoonist, Opposable Thumbs.

reinventing Daredevil into a crime-noir superhero book by making the red-clad superhero darker and more serious than ever before. A high school student named Dean Haspiel started his lifelong career in comics as an assistant for another artist in the building, Bill Sienkiewicz, but soon moved down to Upstart to assist Walter Simonson and Howard Chaykin. Dean went off to become his own voice in independent comics, telling his life in autobiographical stories such as Opposable Thumbs, telling semi-autobiographical action stories with his hero Billy Dogma, and drawing stories for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor and Archie Comics’ superhero The Fox. Having taken several up-and-coming artists under his wing, he continues the legacy started from Gil Kane to Chaykin to himself. To many, Upstart was the last great comic book studio, a rare instance when so much genius talent came together and created work that continues to influence other comic book creators to this day.

5th ave. and E 66th st.

The Uncanny X-Men #132 (April, 1980) Art by John Byrne. The Uncanny X-Men #94 (August, 1975) Art by Gil Kane and Danny Crespi.

The Hellfire Club, introduced in Uncanny X-Men in 1980 by writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, is an aristocratic shadow society that boasts mutants as several (if not, at times, all) of its membership. The goingons within the walls of their headquarters first snared the X-Men in the 1970s, when initiate Sebastian Shaw kidnapped Jean Grey to manipulate her into becoming a member known as the Black Queen. Their guards wear faceless white masks, cold and terrifying bodyguards to the mutant elite. The X-Men weren’t always superstars. Originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, they were a team of five “Mutants,” or people born with superpowers. By the early 1970s, Marvel had stopped making new X-Men comics and were, instead, reprinting old one. At the behest of Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas, writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum brought the X-Men back with a new team—and a vengeance. Called the “All New, All Different X-Men” in the special Giant-Size X-Men #1, the book now starred Mutant superheroes Wolverine, Colossus, Banshee, Cyclops, Storm, Thunderbird, and Nightcrawler. Wein left after the debut issue, with a new writer named Chris Claremont taking over. A former intern at Marvel, Claremont was given the reins to the X-Men and, with Cockrum, continued to make it a progressively better book, as the heroes faced off against new villains and X-Man Jean Grey was reborn as the Right: Jean Grey’s hallucination, from The Uncanny X-Men #134 (June, 1980). Chris Claremont, art by John Byrne.

cosmically-powered Phoenix. Cockrum left in 1977 and was replaced by Canadian cartoonist John Byrne who, with Claremont, began the issues-spanning “Dark Phoenix Saga,” where Jean Grey is corrupted to evil. As popular and great as the Claremont/ Cockrum run was, the Claremont/Byrne led both X-Men and superhero comics into new territory. The early seeds of the “Dark Phoenix Saga” happened with the Hellfire Club. X-Men: First Class brought the Hellfire Club to the forefront, with Kevin Bacon’s Shaw and January Jones’ White Queen, even though they were absent their Manhattan hideaway. Of course, since the Hellfire Club isn’t real, neither is their headquarters on the corners of 5th Avenue and East 66th Street. But, if it were, you’d be taken into a world of cherry wood paneling, hidden entrances and passages, and unparalleled mysteries.

hellfire club

Chris Claremont dans une allée enneigée de New York Next: 5th Ave. and E 66th St. Photo by Howard Wallach.

dc comics

1700 broadway

Countless stories have come from the halls and offices of DC Comics, the first great comic book publisher—started by Major Malcolm WheelerNicholson as National Comics—preceded all of the competition in 1934. Like many of the early publishers, Wheeler-Nicholson was floundering with book sales, and took his printer on as a partner. It was Harry Donenfeld and his partner Jack Liebowitz who, upon Wheeler-Nicholson’s departure, started to form Detective Comics—the company we now know as DC Comics. DC Comics’ debut of Superman in June, 1938’s Action Comics #1 forever changed the course of comics. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, Superman is widely regarded as the first superhero, his popularity and sales created a new genre that would quickly take the comics medium over. Siegel and Shuster were high school buddies who bonded over their mutual love of the newly emerging field of science fiction; they were dreamers, the two of them, escaping into fantastic worlds of their own making—perhaps as an escape from the difficulties of the real one they did not fit into. While they were creating action characters Doctor Occult and Slam Bradley for Nicholson, Jerry was trying to make his idea of a character named Superman take flight. First, Superman was a mastermind villain in a pulp story illustrated by Joe called Reign of the Superman; then, he was an adventurer with a streak of white

5th Ave. and E 66th St. Photo by Howard Wallach.

Detective Comics #27 (May, 1939) Bob Kane Action Comics #1 (June, 1938) Art by Joe Shuster

45 36

in his hair and street clothes, also drawn by Joe but rejected; Jerry even got a science fiction comic strip pitch together with Buck Rogers artist Russell Keaton that failed to go anywhere. When Superman finally came together, it followed the man-from-another-planet formula of Keaton’s take, but included two vital components—the character’s dual identity of strong Superman and nebbish Clark Kent, and his stunning blue and red costume. Originally drawn as a comic strip pitch, Superman was bought by National and reformatted as a comic book story, in Action Comics #1. National Comics was elevated to the stratosphere from the birth of the first superhero. Batman followed on Superman’s red-booted heels the next year, when he debuted in Detective Comics #27 (May, 1939). Artist Bob Kane was given the challenge to create a new superhero; engaging his writer friend Bill Finger, the pair gave birth to a superhero who was every bit as mortal as Superman was super. With his black cape and mask and gray bodysuit, Batman was a dark counterpart to the brighter Man of Steel. Other artists came in to draw the Batman comics for Kane, including Jerry Robinson and Sheldon The Amazing Spider-Man 2 : le Destin d’un Héros De Mark Webb - Columbia Pictures, 2014

Moldoff; with them, and Finger’s writing, came a growing cast that came to include Alfred Pennyworth the butler and Robin the Boy Wonder. Batman’s world was dark, atmospheric, and something straight out of a 1930s gangster movie; it’s no surprise that his villains, such as The Joker, were in a grotesque vein not unlike Chester Gould’s comic strip Dick Tracy. To this day, Batman and Superman hold top rank in the DC Comics pantheon of heroes. They are two sides of the same superhero coin and, after 75 years, are gearing up to star together in a film for the first time. 2016’s Superman Vs. Batman: Dawn of Justice, by director Zack Snyder. But back then, dreams of major motion pictures starring long underwear characters meant for kids were uncommon. They were a company that was also a breeding ground for new talent, comics creators that were kids with big dreams, dreams that started on paper and—in the cases of the more popular superheroes grew to become cultural institutions. When comics crashed and burned in the 1950s, in a combination of an aged-out readership, competition from television, and a censorship

Left & up: Superman (Henry Cavill) and Batman (Ben Affleck) from 2016’s DC Entertainment crossover movie, Superman v Batman, Dawn of Justice by Zack Snyder.

Back then; you could afford to have the floor space to have a coffee room. It had plastic chairs and tables, and vending machines with stale sandwiches, soda pop, and bad coffee…We sat down and shot the breeze, and they wanted to know what I was doing. I showed them my work and my portfolio. Jack Adler, who was the second in command in production, was sitting right behind us. Kaluta said ‘Let’s show Jack this.’ I had an actual bound book of my art that I’d put together, and he showed it to Jack. Jack looked it over, and said ‘Let me show this to Carmine.’ Carmine, at that time, was the big guy, so Jack went off with my stuff.

Carmine liked my stuff, and called in three of his editors: Archie Goodwin, Joe Orlando, and Julie Schwartz, and made them all give me a job. In those days,

comics had back-up stories, so you could learn your craft in the back of stuff and do your damage quietly. Walter Simonson, Cartoonist.

scare, DC Comics reinvigorated the superhero by reintroducing superhero The Flash in the pages of Showcase #4 in October, 1956. Written by

wearing one of the several Batman movie costumes; another was designed to look like the lobby of the Daily Planet, with Clark Kent and Superman mannequins; and another floor was dedicated exclusively to Mad Magazine. Whichever floor, however, had walls graced with framed artwork from their decades of comic book publishing. D C C o m i c s ex p e r i e n c e d a major change in September 2009, when they rechristened themselves as DC Entertainment. Long owned by the Warner Brothers studio, the DCE era was started to best help their vast library of characters make the transition to other media like video games, film, television, and animation. With a false start at a superhero movie universe with 2011’s Green Lantern, DCE came back with a vengeance with 2012’s hit TV show Arrow and 2013’s blockbuster Superman film Man of Steel. Fall of 2014 saw DCE taking a strong hold on the television market with several new shows debuting—The Flash, a third season of Arrow, iZombie, and Constantine—with several more announced in development. To better maintain a synergy between media and comic books, DC moved their offices to Burbank, California in 2015. While it is the start of a new chapter for DC Comics, it is the end of an era of comics in New York City. But for now, let’s look at how New York City helped bring DC’s biggest legend to life on the silver screen, just a mile and half from their last NYC home.

Grant Gustin as The Flash, from the successful show on the CW Network.

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Robert Kanigher and drawn by Carmine Infantino, this new take on an old character helped reignite the superhero craze. Kanigher cut his teeth at Fox Comics in the 1940s, and Infantino was of the first generation (like Gil Kane) to grow up as a comic book reader. Kanigher, infamous for his mercurial nature, understood creating a narrative tempo between his words and the artwork. He was a writer also blessed with a keen visual and illustrative sense; he allegedly designed the cover of Showcase #4—of the scarlet-clad Flash bursting out of a roll of motion picture film, and the cover itself. Infantino’s art on his earlier work had thicker contour lines influenced by the work of Terry and the Pirates’ Milt Caniff. By the time he drew the adventure of this new Flash, his work had taken on a heavy design slant. The new Flash is forensic scientist Barry Allen who, when struck by a freak bolt of lightning and doused by chemicals from his lab, gains the power of super-speed. Kanigher smartly made the first Flash story about Allen’s discovery of his powers and placed the reader alongside the scientist in Infantino’s cinematic, widescreen panels. The superhero was now back; this new Flash followed by a new take on Hawkman, The Atom, and Green Lantern. By the 1970s, Infantino rose to Editorial Director; thinking from a creator’s perspective, he brilliantly installed a freelancer-only coffee room in their offices at 909 Third Avenue. The coffee room was a stroke of genius: creators, both hopeful and established, could hang out without the interference of editors to exchange ideas, advice, and wisdom. Certain creators, such as a young Walter Simonson, got their first break drawing for DC out of the coffee room. DC Comics move their offices to 1700 Broadway in the 1990s, right across from the Late Night with David Letterman television studio. Each of the several floors were given a separate theme: one floor was designed to look like a Gotham City rooftop, complete with mannequin

daily news building

220 E 42nd street

Superman: The Movie director Richard Donner, determined to have Superman stand out as the one super element in a real world like our own, smartly shot on location in New York City. After all, Superman’s home city of Metropolis is as much New York as anything else, with its bustling streets and incredible skyscrapers. Because of these real world settings, and the stellar cast and special effects, Christopher Reeve’s charming portrayal of Superman sells you on the idea that, yes, a man really can fly. A Julliard graduate and Broadway actor, Reeve won his audition with one shortcoming: he was too slim for the role. Trained by bodybuilder and actor David Prowse (known for playing Darth Vader onscreen in the Star Wars films), Reeve put on an impressive amount of muscle in a short time. His Superman brought a Peter Pan playfulness and unprecedented sexiness to the role. Cast opposite him as Lois Lane was Canadian model and actress Margot Kidder, who played the news reporter like a feisty newshound from a 1930s screwball comedy. As Lois and Clark, they were comic genius; as Lois and Superman, their onscreen chemistry was electric. The Daily Planet, the great metropolitan newspaper where Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane work, is in actuality the iconic Daily News building. The building’s aesthetic power doesn’t stop at the art deco facade: even the lobby, complete with the largest indoor globe, is the real deal and not a studio set.

Daily News Building Photo by Seth Kushner

The Adventures of Superman #562 (October, 1998) Karl Kesel, Art by Tom Grummett and Denis Rodier.

6 44

Designed by famed architect Raymond Hood, Andre Fouilhoux and John Mead Howells, the Daily News building was built from 1929 to 1930 and stands at 37 stories. The News, wanting a building that could house both their editorial offices and their noisy printing presses, picked an area then unpopular for development. The façade is designed as a series of verticals created by the windows and alternating bands of brown and white brick. Each window was actually designed and sized to be opened by a single worker in the building. A DAILY NEWS logo stands atop a relief mural over the main revolving doors. It’s pretty hard, when you walk through those rotating doors, to not want to fumble and get caught up in it like Clark Kent. But when you do

enter, you stand in the circular lobby with a centerpiece of a globe; clocks showing the world’s time zones circle along the wall. Set in aluminum and black glass, the lobby’s iconic status was further cemented with its presence in Superman. Founded in 1919, the Daily News wa s l a u n ch e d a s a tabloid—the first American newspaper to do so. The format was perfect to showcase news photography as it came into vogue, and the Daily News became known as much for its visuals as its news content. The Daily News left their building in 1995 and it now serves as the main headquarters for the Associate Press, along with TV station WPIX-TV (also known as PIX 11). While the Daily News building helped make New York into Superman’s own fictitious version of it, the one publisher who has always embraced New York City as a superhero haven is our next stop.

Superman #25 (November, 1943) Clark Kent with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen in the Daily Planet. Art by Joe Shuster and the Superman shop.

empire state building

early marvel comics HQ, 350 5th avenue

Marvel Comics is New York, its characters passing up life in a fictitious city for the real world setting of the Big Apple. In the beginning, Martin Goodman and Louis Silberkleit formed Western Publishing to publish pulp magazines—the precursor of comics that featured sensational prose stories printed on cheap paper. Goodman took over from Silberkleit two years later and his company went through a couple more name changes until, in 1939, he adopted the name Timely Publications and got into the comic book business with Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly. That all started in the former RKO Building, at 1270 Avenue of the Americas, part of Rockefeller Center. This first comic book was packaged by a studio called Funnies, Inc., where Goodman paid the owner, Lloyd Jacquet, to have his talent produce comic book stories. One of these creators was Bill Everett, an intense young artist who created the character Namor the Sub-Mariner—a half-Atlantean/half-human who could breathe underwater, f ly, and had a vendetta against humanity for their unintended attacks on his home city of Atlantis. Namor’s wrath would soon be unleashed on New York City itself. 1939 continued to be a big year for Goodman, as Timely’s offices moved to the McGraw-Hill building at 330 West 42nd Street on April 15th. Built in 1931, it was then still a

The Empire State Building lobby Photo by Howard Wallach

Marvel Comics #9 (July, 1940) by Bill Everett and Carl Burgos Captain America Comics #1 (March, 1941) by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby

7 48

new building, with a distinctive art deco facade made of blue-green tiles. The neighborhood it was located would, in later years, become known as Hell’s Kitchen. Marvel Mystery Comics #7, published in 1940, featured another comic book milestone, as two heroes faced off against one another. When Namor unleashed his fury upon New York City and wreaked vengeance upon mankind by derailing subway cars and trashing midtown, he is confronted by the heroic Human Torch.

A synthetic man made in a laboratory by Dr. Horton, he had the bad habit of catching on fire when exposed to the air. Eventually, the Human Torch learned how to control his power and joined humanity as a hero and protector. When he faced off against Namor, it was a battle of both ideologies and the elements. Considered the first superhero brawl, it would become par for the course in the next twenty years. Timely wasn’t all that moved into the McGrawHill, as Goodman brought in creator Joe Simon as editor and to help develop new characters

Up: Namor the Sub-Mariner visits the Empire State—with fateful results.

From Marvel Comics #7 (November, 1939) by Bill Everett

Right: The Empire State Building from 33rd Street and Broadway

Photo by Howard Wallach.

Left: 417 Fifth Avenue Photo by Howard Wallach

for his line, with Jack Kirby following as art director. Together, Simon and Kirby created Captain America—Timely’s first big hit and the first superhero to premiere in his own first issue. The cover of Captain America Comics #1 featured an infamous image of Cap punching out Adolph Hitler. Unlike other patriotic heroes who just fought mobsters and enemy spies from fake countries, Captain America faced the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan head-on. Simon and Kirby soon started receiving death threats from Nazi sympathizers and groups, but kept on with the book until the eleventh issue. Simon was encouraged to hire an office boy soon after starting: 18 year-old Stanley Lieber, a clarinet-playing kid with literary aspirations. He also happened to be related to Martin Goodman through marriage. When Simon and Kirby left Timely to go work for the competition (National Comics, now known as DC), Stan wound up becoming Editor-in-Chief of the comics line. It’s a position he held on to for a few decades. Three years after Namor wrested the top spire from the Empire State Building and sent it hurtling down to the street below, Timely moved into an office on the fourteenth floor of that New York landmark. The Empire State Building, located at Broadway and Fifth Avenue, was built in just over a year: construction started on March 17, 1930 at a rate of 4 and a half stories per week. The 102 story skyscraper was completed by May 1, 1931. United States President Herbert Hoover pressed a special button from Washington, D.C. that lit the building and it officially opened for business. At the time, it was the tallest building in the world at 1,250 feet. With art deco design, the Empire State Building’s spire was actually designed to be a mooring mast for dirigibles and airships—once thought to be the transportation of the future. The observation deck at the top of the building is not only one of its trademarks, but also a favorite spot for visiting tourists. By the time of Spider-Man’s creation in 1962, Marvel had moved to 635 Madison Avenue, the same stretch of street populated by high-powered ad executives. It was here, in this smaller office, that writer and editor Stan Lee

worked with his artists to create the early Marvel heroes—Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and The Avengers. It’s doubtless these “mad men” knew that, amongst their sea of gray flannel suits, walked one of the creators of the modern superhero. Marvel outgrew its old offices by the 1970s, and moved further down to 575 Madison. They’ve hopped around since then, going to 387 Park Avenue South in the ‘80s, and landed at their current home: 135 West 50th Street. The lights of the Empire State change color depending on the time of year, or for special occasions. One occasion was to celebrate the release of The Amazing Spider-Man movie in 2012, when The Empire State Building lit its spire in red, blue, and red.

grand central station

At 42nd Street and Park Avenue is the Grand Central Terminal—still called Grand Central Station, the name of its predecessor—it is the hub of all rail transportation, letting commuters come in to New York from the Metro-North Railroad and within the five boroughs via the MTA Subway. The current Grand Central Terminal was gradually built over sections of the original Grand Central Station from 1903 to 1913. The Terminal features a few dozen restaurants (such as the famous Oyster Bar) and shops, as well as a bevy of architectural gems. The highlight is the Main Concourse, which is the nucleus of the terminal, with ticket windows and arrival and departure boards. A brass clock with four faces stands in the Concourse, with faces ground from opal glass. Overlooking the Concourse is a grand ceiling mural of the night sky and constellations. The ceiling was replaced by 1930, not quite two decades after its conception, due to failing plaster. What was thought to be pollution and a blackening of the mural from diesel smoke over the years was discovered to actually be from accumulation of cigarette smoke. The restored ceiling shows the constellations Orion, Taurus, Gemini, Pisces, and others; it is intentionally painted in reverse—to give the perspective of a god looking down upon the constellations and through to the Earth below. Entering Grand Central Terminal from 42nd Street, you’ll look up to see a 14.6-meter Left: Grand Central Station hallway, photo by Howard Wallach Next: Grand Central Station lobby, photo by Howard Wallach

sculptural group of Roman Gods Mercury, Minerva, and demi-god Hercules, perched on and alongside a 4 meter clock designed by the Tiffany Company. The trio signifies travel and speed, wisdom, and strength. “Transportation” was created by French artist Jules-Felix Coutan, who refused to come to America to sculpt his masterpiece. The massive, 1,500 ton sculpture took seven years to build. Two iron eagles perched along the outside of the Terminal are from the original Grand Central. With 13 foot wingspans, these 4,000 pound eagles “flew” to different places throughout New York state. Likewise in The Avengers, the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes gather outside of Grand Central to battle the invading alien forces of the Chitauri.

89 E 42nd street

metlife building

In Marvel’s The Avengers, Steve Rogers (Captain America) sits across the street to sketch the classically sculpted entrance to Grand Central station, with the high tech Stark Tower looming behind it. This clash of both the old and new is actually the MetLife Building, which stands over the Grand Central entrance on Park Avenue. When this iconic skyscraper on Park Avenue was built for the airline PanAm in 1963, it was the largest office building in the world, not from its height of 59 stories, but from sheer square footage. It even, at one point, had a special

Left: MetLife Building, photo by Seth Kushner Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) uses the MetLife as his Stark Tower in this still from Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012).

helicopter service from the building’s rooftop helipad to nearby airports. The MetLife Building is an example of Brutalism in architecture, with its blockiness and heavy use of concrete. This architectural style, and its straight angles and octagonal shape fell out of fashion shortly after its construction. Before PanAm went out of business, they sold the building to the insurance company MetLife for $400 million. When MetLife sold the building 24 years later, in 2005, the price tag had skyrocketed to $1.72 billion. In its heyday, PanAm was the epitome of traveling in style, their planes were amongst the fastest and most high-tech, and their crews the most well trained—which makes it rather fitting that in The Avengers, Tony Stark (Iron Man) buys the MetLife building and expands on it with his own futuristic design. Rechristening it Stark Tower, it’s the epicenter of the gigantic battle of New York in the last act of the movie, and serves as the heart of the film. Expectations are that we’ll see it transformed into the new headquarters of The Avengers by the sequel, The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Marvel’s first superhero team set up their comic book headquarters just around the corner...

200 park avenue

fantastic four

42nd street and Madison avenue

Since The Fantastic Four were the first superhero team without secret identities, it also made their headquarters not-so secret. Like Marvel’s offices, they also had a swank HQ on the same street as Manhattan’s swinging advertising agencies, their blue costumes popping out amidst a sea of ad men in gray flannel suits. When Fantastic Four #1 debuted in 1961, it ushered in the groundbreaking line-up of Marvel superheroes, one that would soon boast The Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, and Spider-Man. But back then, this odd comic created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby threw together a stretchable scientist, flammable young man, invisible girl, and rock-covered brute into an unlikely team that was more of a family—complete with bickering and in-fighting. The FF, as they came to be called, were Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Sue Storm (Invisible Girl), Johnny Storm (Human Torch) and the tragic Ben Grimm (The Thing); their living in the happening metropolis of New York City made them that much more rock star. The celebrity theme became a constant thread throughout what is arguably Lee and Kirby’s best work together, a run that culminated in 102 issues. The FF’s first headquarters was in the fictitious Baxter Building, built in 1949 by the Leland Baxter Paper Company, where Reed Richards bought the top five floors of the building and outfitted them with labs, living

quarters, and a rocket silo. Mr. Collins, the building manager, was soon faced with tenants unwilling to renew leases on their offices, as the FF’s occupancy welcomed the supervillains to attack. In one of the FF’s earliest adventures, the entire Baxter Building was even catapulted into space by archfoe Dr. Victor von Doom. Reed Richards eventually bought the Baxter Building outright from Mr. Collins, and even took care of the building’s established tenants, until the building was entirely destroyed in yet another battle. Four Freedoms Plaza was quickly built in the place of the Baxter Building, promptly destroyed, and most recently replaced with a new Baxter Building. Delivering the mail to the Baxter is mailman Willie Lumpkin, who was played by Fantastic Four co-creator Stan “The Man” Lee in the movies Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Lee’s sharp-witted dialogue went with Kirby’s inimitable pencils, mostly inked with a slick line by Joe Sinnott. That initial run is one of the most perfect superhero comics, an example of a dream team of creators drawing a dream team of characters. As his artwork on the original Fantastic Four comic shows, Jack Kirby lived and breathed New York, from the crowds of rushing onlookers to the canyons of skyscrapers. It was in his blood and innate as his incomparable talent. Let’s go across town and see just where it all began for Kirby...

Left: Fantastic Four Annual #3 (October, 1965). Jack Kirby delineates this cutaway of the Baxter Building. Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers. Next: 42nd St. and Madison Ave. Photo by Seth Kushner.

headquarters

76 suffolk street

This house, an old tenement in New York City’s rough Lower East Side, is where a dreamer lived— Before he became a King. Jack “The King” Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917 on Essex Street. When he was still very young, his Austrian immigrant parents moved their family to this house, at 76 Suffolk Street, right by the Williamsburg Bridge that connects Manhattan to Brooklyn. The Lower East Side, partly because it was overpopulated, became a rough neighborhood. Young Jakie Kurtzberg used to get into street fights with the other kids his age. His small size made him have to be that much more tougher than the rest. But when he wasn’t dealing with the cold hard reality of the Great Depression and hawking newspapers to help feed his family, Jakie was immersed in pure escapism—the daily comic strips, movies and the pulp magazines. He might not have known it then, or even been able to see past the walls of their overstuffed tenement apartment, but he would become the greatest, and change the course of pop culture through his comic books. When the comic book hit its stride in the 1930s, publishers sprouted up all over the place. Not all were ethical (most, actually, were not), and

76 Suffolk St Photo by Seth Kushner

many artists were fresh out of high school, and looking for their big break. Jakie Kurtzberg changed his name to Jack Kirby, and eventually landed his first staff job drawing comics for crooked publisher Victor Fox. Fox called himself “The King of Comics”. If he only knew that, twenty-five years later, his lowly artist would genuinely earn that title—Fox would have had a heart attack (he did die, of an actual heart attack, a few years before Stan Lee was to give Jack that title at Marvel). Working as his editor was a young man from upstate New York named Joe Simon. Tall, lanky Joe was also drawing for other publishers after work hours, and he asked Jack to join him. And a team was born. Simon and Kirby invented a cinematic language for comics, one of action and pathos—the sheer violence of Jack’s childhood coming out in a hero’s punch, figures flying out of the panels and across the page. They were lean and athletic heroes jumping off the page, often times acrobatic, and always able to take down a room full of badguys without breaking a sweat. The pair eventually took their new hero, Captain America, to Timely Comics. Apparently first envisioned by Joe, and then fleshed out by Jack, the patriotic Captain America was the first anti-Hitler superhero in comics, brazenly punching out the Fuhrer on the cover of his first issue. With Captain America came jobs at Timely—Joe was editor, and Jack art director. Simon and Kirby went back and forth over the years, inventing genres and working for different publishers. They even published their own. After the pair split, Jack eventually found himself back at Marvel Comics, formerly Timely, and working with his former office boy. Stan Lee had become top editor at Timely when Simon and Kirby left and, with Jack’s energy and talent, this new pair created tons more superheroes for the new Marvel line of comics. Fantastic Four. Thor. Ant-Man. Nick Fury. The X-Men. A frustrated Jack left Marvel a few years later, and then went to DC Comics, where

J ack K irby ’ s C hildhood H ome

11 he created his magnum opus The Fourth World— interlocking comic books that told the saga of a race of intergalactic New Gods. Heady stuff, sometimes incoherent with it’s sheer action and violence, but drawn with sheer power. In 1983, Kirby revisited his Suffolk Street, Lower East Side home in Street Code, a story from his rough and tumble childhood. He drew it in rough pencil, to reflect the conditions of that bygone era. When he was an unknowing prince growing up in a tiny tenement castle.

The double-page spread from Kirby’s autobiographical story Street Code (1983)

delancey street

yancy street

Growing up in the Lower East Side, young Jack Kirby would undoubtedly have spent time on the major thoroughfare of shops and delis on Delancey Street. It’s doubtful that Jack was just out to pick up groceries for his family—he was a member of the Suffolk Street gang, a ragtag bunch of tenement kids who clashed with another ragtag bunch of tenement kids in an ongoing turf war from street to street, or block to block. The Lower East Side, by the Great Depression, became the hub of Jewish culture, not just in terms of synagogues, but also Jewish institutions like Katz’s Delicatessen (which opened in 1888 and is still around today). The Delancey area was overpopulated, as residents struggled through low-paying jobs and not enough space in their tiny tenements. Kirby’s obvious cipher in The Fantastic Four is in Ben Grimm, the Thing. Like the kid version of Kirby, Grimm had to deal with a rival gang with a vendetta against him— The Yancy Street Gang, forever faceless and anonymous, would send Grimm prank-laden care packages, providing a steady stream of frustration for the rock-skinned superhero, and comic relief for the readers. A short walk can bring us to another marketplace rife with another culture, this one embedded as the center of all things Eastern.

Left: The Lower East Side Photo by Seth Kushner

Fantastic Four #34 (January, 1965) The Fantastic Four on Yancy Street, art by Jack Kirby and Chic Stone.

chinatown

It is the hub in New York for all things Eastern, a neighborhood that has held strongly to its heritage and identity throughout the constant change and gentrification of other parts of New York City. Chinatown is where one can step into a different country—simply by turning the corner. As political tensions mounted against the Chinese in the Western part of the United States in the 1870s, many flocked to New York for a new life. Many wound up in a segregated ghetto that became known as Chinatown. Sadly, the only work available for immigrants were service jobs, primarily in laundries and restaurants. In 1882, the United States government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which forbade any new Chinese citizens from entering America, or for those already living in the country from gaining citizenship. Many Chinese converged around Mott Street when Chinese grocery store Wo Kee opened, and then moved outwards. By opening their own businesses that other Chinese could also patronize, the Chinese immigrants created a community that allowed them to embrace and maintain their proud heritage in a country that denied them a fair chance. For tourists, Chinatown was a chance to experience that other culture, and turn the corner into an entirely different world. The area soon became a regular attraction for New Yorkers and those visiting the Big Apple. In The Incredible Hulk TV show, Bill

Left: Chinatown Photo by Seth Kushner

Bixby’s David Banner is befriended by an old martial arts master in Chinatown, and fights gangsters as The Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) for two episodes. Cartoonist Paul Pope’s New York-based 100% takes place in a Chinatown that could happen in a future that may not really be that far off from our present. In 2002, Marvel Comics reinvented their Chinese martial artist Shang-Chi in their Ultimate line of comics. Fleeing his crime lord father, Shang-Chi settled in Chinatown, where his Kung Fu skills were put to the test. Going through Chinatown in real life is far more peaceful, however. You’ll walk amidst a bustle of people going about their day, and experience a vast amount of storefronts selling anything and everything.

financial district

The Financial District is the center of America’s economy, with the Stock Market affecting the entire country’s (and by default, the world’s) economy. In filming the Dark Knight trilogy, director Christopher Nolan presented a Gotham that was a juxtaposition of American cities like Chicago and Philadelphia. For the third and final, The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan extensively used New York City. When the terrorist Bane attacks the Stock Exchange, the New York setting gives the scene a gravitas that could not have been achieved if shot in any other American city. The New York Stock Exchange is located at 11 Wall Street and is the hub of trading in the United States. They started as an organization in 1817 and, after having a few different locations, moved into the current building in 1903. With six grand Corinthian columns that flank 95-foot windows to let the light into the crowded interior, trading occurs at a breakneck pace in this shrine to capitalism. The Black Thursday Stock Market crash of 1929 is one of the causes of America’s Great Depression. This Depression created the world in which superheroes were created, and much of contemporary pop culture developed as a response to the troubled national climate. The Financial District is also home to One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower. Standing at 1,776 feet (to signify

Left: Captain America #1 (July, 2009), John Ney Reiber. Art by John Cassaday. Captain America mourns the 9/11 victims. Next: The Stock Exchange on Wall Street, photo by Howard Wallach

the year the Declaration of Independence was signed) and 104 stories, it is the country’s tallest building. Like many great things, it grew from tragedy. On September 11, 2001, four American commercial airplanes were hijacked by terrorists; two of these planes were flown into both towers of the World Trade Center and caused both towers to collapse and kill about 2,977 innocents. The reaction was overwhelming, as America worked to rebuild itself from the attacks. Creator Art Spiegelman told 9/11 from his perspective in the graphic novel Between No Towers. Marvel Comics had Captain America volunteering at the site of the WTC (known as Ground Zero) in his comic books, while other heroes responded to the tragedy in the pages of their own comics. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man was first teased in a preview mere months before the attacks; in the preview, Spider-Man catches a helicopter full of escaping bank robbers in a giant web, spun between the two towers. The preview was pulled after 9/11, but Raimi put his own nod to the tragedy in the movie, with not only a shot of a construction worker at Ground Zero, but in the camaraderie between New Yorkers who stood up to the Green Goblin. The Financial District is where America rebuilt itself following an unprecedented tragedy. Another tragedy would happen to America in the pages of Marvel Comics but, just as in real life, resulted in a stronger city and country coming out of the healing process.

thurgood marshall united states federal courthouse

40 centre street

This center for justice in the Big Apple marks the death of a dream—when Steve Rogers, Captain America, was shot on the iconic steps. In the Marvel Comics, Steve had led the rebellion against a government-enforced registration act for superheroes. Called the Civil War, the superheroes were set against one another; Iron Man led the pro-registration side, who believed in working under the government, while Captain America the anti-registration. The battle ended when Captain America decided to surrendered himself to the authorities. While walking up the courthouse steps for his trial, he was killed by an assassin’s bullet. It was not the end of Captain America (or Steve Roger’s) story—a story about to come to movie screens in part as the third Captain America film, Captain America: Civil War—as he fought his way through the timestream and back to life. The Thurgood Marshall Federal Courthouse was completed in 1936 on the Foley Square section of Lower Manhattan near Chinatown and City Hall. The base of the Courthouse is six stories high and features Corinthian columns and a detailed frieze. The square tower coming from the base gives the Courthouse a height of 37 stories. The steps leading up to the main landing are where Steve Rogers’ body fell after being shot—and created

an epic and startling image of the superhero’s selfsacrifice. It was renamed for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in 2001. The first African-American judge to serve on the United States Supreme Court, Marshall was a judge of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals at this courthouse from 1961-1965.

Left: The Death of Captain America, Ed Brubaker. Art by Jackson Guice and Mitch Bertweiser, from Captain America #25 (April, 2007). Next: The Courthouse Steps, photo by Howard Wallach

city hall

260 broadway

all, Spider-Man, has quite a connection to City Hall. In his everyday identity of Peter Parker, he married his girlfriend Mary Jane Watson at City Hall in 1987. It was in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, written by David Michelinie and drawn by classic Spider-Man artist John Romita. City Hall Park played a role, once more, for the web-slinger in 2004’s Spider-Man 2. Not only does Spider-Man save Aunt May from Doctor Octopus by City Hall, but Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst) jilts her groom at the altar and—in wedding dress—runs by the fountain in the center of the park and a mile to her true love, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire).

Left: The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, David Michelinie, with art by John Romita (1987). Next: City Hall Park, photo by Howard Wallach.

Every great city needs a great center of power, and New York’s City Hall is no exception. It’s great enough, even, for a superhero to get married at. City Hall Park, in lower Manhattan, is just blocks away from the World Trade Center and Financial District. French architect Joseph Francois Mangin and New York Builder John McComb Junior’s original, extravagant design from 1802 was pared down for being too ornate and expensive for the city. And while City Hall took an entire decade to build, finally dedicated in 1811 and opened the next year, it has commanded the city with dignity ever since. The French-inspired design emanates grandeur as you walk up the steps to the grand entrance, flanked by columns and design of both the Ionic and Corinthian schools. The Governor’s Room looks down over the entrance, with five arched windows facing City Hall Park and the downtown area. The tower, capped off with a dome and known as the cupola, also holds a statue of Justice; with a sword by her side and a balance with two scales, she greets visitors to one of the city’s most hallowed buildings. Within its walls has been a succession of Mayors, Governors, and even United States Presidents (both Presidents Lincoln and Grant were laid in repose their upon their deaths). But it also houses an impressive art collection of 108 paintings. The most New York superhero of them

peter parker ’ s apartment

187 chrystie street

Left: 187 Chrystie Street, photo by Howard Wallach. Up: Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) in his apartment, from Spider-Man 2 (2004). Sam Raimi, Director.

As Spider-Man, it’s important for Peter Parker to be close to the action in Manhattan. In Spider-Man 2, director Sam Raimi has Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker living in a run-down studio apartment set in this Lower East Side building. Renting from his odd landlord Mr. Ditkovitch (played by Elya Baskin, and named after Spidey’s co-creator, Steve Ditko), Peter sometimes enters through the window after web-swinging or to avoid explaining why he’s late on his rent. Bordered by Chinatown and the East Village, the Lower East Side was once the rough neighborhood Jack Kirby had grown up in, populated by immigrant families living sardine-like in tenement houses. 187 Chrystie is in the Bowery section of the LES, formerly one of the sketchiest areas of Manhattan that was once rife with prostitution, derelicts, and vagrants. Luckily for Peter Parker, the Lower East Side is now much safer, and home to several art galleries. As a matter of fact, one currently exists on the ground floor of Peter’s movie apartment. Less than a mile away from Peter’s movie digs is an apartment building that once served as the real-life home of a couple of legendary writers, and is the fictitious home of one of the iconic mystical superheroes.

le sanctum sanctorum du docteur strange

greenwich village, 177A bleeker street

Greenwich Village, long regarded as the center of bohemia in New York, was home of poets, writers, and actors—and the center of everything from the Beat generation to weekly newspaper The Village Voice. It’s no surprise that, back in the 1960s, the mystical Dr. Strange set up residence at this specific address. Upon entering the Doctor’s home, visitors are immediately shocked at the vast, lavish interior that belies the building’s smaller, non-descript exterior. Situated on the top floor is the Doctor’s Sanctum Sanctorum, where he meditates, relaxes and focuses his mystical energies. A distinctive round window, with four non-parallel lines lets light in for the Doctor, whether he’s in meditation, chanting an incantation, or perusing the Sanctum’s library of magical tomes like the vaunted Book of Vishanti. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, Dr. Strange’s house lacked an address, until writer Roy Thomas gave it his own: 177A Bleecker Street. Thomas, who succeeded Stan Lee as Marvel’s second Editor-in-Chief in 1972, had been living there with fellow writer Gary Friedrich and, at one point, artist and Namor creator Bill Everett. The actual 177A Bleecker Street stands five stories tall and was built in 1900. It has

Left: Dr. Strange in his Sanctum Sanctorum. Next: 177A Bleecker St, photo by Howard Wallach.

Doctor Strange #1 (June, 1974) Strange looking out on a rainy New York night. Steve Englehart, art by Frank Brunner.

88 In the ‘60s, I’d take the subway down to Greenwich Village. I loved Jazz and would sit and listen. I don’t understand how I’d come there from way Uptown. I’d get on the subway, and go to restaurants with the ladies, and would wear double-breasted suits. I thought I was Ronald Coleman, and I pulled it off. I remembered those days when I was a man about town, not society, but town. I liked the nice restaurants, but not like The Stork Club. New York in those days had reasonable restaurants, reasonably priced, but today they’re a complete rip-off, catering for the young and middleaged wealthies. This is a town not for the time when I was a kid. It’s much overpriced for what you get; the value of a buck doesn’t get a damn thing for you here. It’s not in the hands of people like actors and writers, unless you’re a celebrity.

Back in those days, while I was working, I was also playing. If the word is grateful, that word comes back to me now. I’m 90 years old, and I see how

most 90 year-olds walk. Believe me, I’m just lucky that I’m even sitting here talking to you the way I am. Irwin Hasen Comics legend, Dondi, Wildcat.

seventeen units—the first of which was home to those three legendary creators. Today, the Village—like much of Manhattan—has become too expensive for many of the writers, artists, musicians, and all-around bohemians of days past to live. It does, however, still maintain a flurry of shops, restaurants, nightclubs, and bars. Be very careful when you get to the heart: the narrow streets angle in confusing directions. And they just may lead you to parts unknown. But for now, let’s head to the less mysterious area of Manhattan known as Midtown, with a quick stop in Soho on the way to the home of one of the most visionary and infamous comic book publishers.

ec comics

225 lafayette street

William Gaines was only twenty-five when he inherited his father Maxwell’s comic book company, Educational Comics, in 1947. EC had been publishing not-so riveting comics such as Picture Stories from the Bible. William took things in a different—and revolutionary— direction. When Gaines brought on artist Al Feldstein as his editor, they launched a new line of horror comics by 1950, kicking off with Crypt of Terror and Vault of Horror. The pair were huge fans of horror-themed radio shows, where stories would be narrated by hosts always possessing of gallows humor and a penchant for macabre puns. Inspired by this, the comics soon featured a trio of ghastly hosts: the Crypt Keeper, Vault Keeper, and Old Witch (who soon got her own title, Haunt of Fear). Each crossed over and hosted stories in the others’ titles, and had a primary artist for each. The EC horror books were also accompanied by a crime line—Crime Suspenstories and Shock Suspenstories—and a science fiction one that boasted Weird Science and Weird Fantasy. The stories were often formulaic and predictable, and the constipated lettering was a typeface, but it’s the army of the best artists in comics that make the EC Comics amongst the greatest ever published. The deceptive simplicity of Harvey Kurtzman’s gestural artwork (coupled with his masterful adventure and war scripts) brought an adult sophistication to what was

Left: 225 Lafayette Street Photo by Howard Wallach.

then a kid’s medium; Jack Davis’ expressive and exaggerated style even worked on horror stories; Graham Ingels’s varicose artwork made horror even more ghastly; Wallace Wood’s buxom beauties and intricate machinery were a high point of their science fiction line, along with Al Williamson’s impeccable rendering of other worlds and futuristic machinery; Johnny Craig’s design

alone lent more strength to his draftsmanship; Bernie Krigstein’s work was amongst the earliest to combine fine art with comic book storytelling. Harvey Kurtzman was a genius in a room full of other geniuses at EC. A High School of Music and Art graduate, Harvey was the king of slapstick, notorious for being an enormous goofball at a young age. When it came to his art, a gestural quality allowed him to convey power and range of emotion with just a minimum of lines. His work on the War books were, often, anti-war in nature, conveyed the horrors of the battlefield rather than the glory of combat. After getting burnt out by the research-intensive war books, he shifted gears and began a humor comic book, Mad, which initially satirized other comic books in its stories—starting with EC’s own. Despite this all-star team of talent, the EC Comics were put in the crosshairs of a 1950s censorship movement, spearheaded by a Senator named Estes Kefauver and a psychiatrist named Frederick Wertham. This fear of comic books creating juvenile delinquents out of America’s youth led to a televised Senate investigation and, eventually, an industry censorship code that basically killed EC’s comics line. The Comics

Code forbid horror in comic books, and made it practically impossible for EC to continue with what they were best at. A short-lived line of Code approved books, called the “New Direction” had titles like Piracy, Valor, and Psychoanalysis, that failed to catch on. Gaines kept aloft with Mad, which went to a magazine format. Since the Comics Code couldn’t touch it, Mad instead went on to subvert the country’s youth for decades to come as a cheap black and white magazine.

Harvey Kurtzman, photo by NAME..

hell ’ s kitchen

Clockwise from top left: Matt Murdock in Hell’s Kitchen; Man Without Fear #1 (October, 1993). Frank Miller, art by John Romita, Jr. and Al Williamson. Daredevil in his element, from Daredevil #159 (July, 1979). Frank Miller. A quiet moment for the Man without Fear.

Hell’s Kitchen isn’t just the home of Marvel Comics’ Daredevil, but also the real-life home of Daredevil’s greatest living architect—Frank Miller. When Prohibition banned the sale of alcohol in the 1920s, Hell’s Kitchen became a haven for rumrunners and bootleggers for its warehouses and proximity to the piers. Planted in the sidewalk cracks were the seeds of organized crime—ones that grew into weeds and choked peace out of the neighborhood. Hell’s Kitchen was aptly named, as it was the last place any decent, law-abiding citizen would want to be. Frank Miller came to New York, practically a kid, and was taken under the wing of comics genius Neal Adams. Miller worked his way up, after much diligence and training, and eventually took the reins of the comic book Daredevil. It was a minor hero being taken over by a minor creator, but Miller’s work on the book would change that forever. Miller created the definitive comic book version of Hell’s Kitchen through his pivotal run on Daredevil, where he introduced gutter level crime to parallel the white collar machinations of archfoe Kingpin, who thrived in the crime-infested Irish American neighborhood. His Hell’s Kitchen literally felt like Hell on Earth— muggers hiding in alleyways, steam billowing out of industrial pipes—and a man in a red devil suit dispensing justice through his gloved fists. Miller’s

Next: Hell’s Kitchen, photo by Seth Kushner.

New York was a city made of as much atmosphere as buildings and alleyways. A city breathes in a Frank Miller story—part of it is the influence of The Spirit creator Will Eisner, who would come to be a mentor of Miller, and defined the city as a character in his comics. By the time Miller ended his run on Daredevil in 1983, Hell’s Kitchen was on its way towards gentrification. Today, the area is known as Clinton, and houses several of the more affluent of New York citizenry, making it a safer and cleaner neighborhood than ever before. But Miller stays in the area he defined, with a studio that overlooks the rooftops and water towers. After leaving Daredevil, he took his pen to Batman, redefining Gotham City by injecting it with a bit of Hell’s Kitchen, and a lot of classic crime writing. His much-loved Sin City series takes place, we all know, is a city with shades of New York. Miller himself has gone on to other mediums, directing three comic book movies (both Sin City films, with Robert Rodriguez co-directing, and The Spirit) and a couple of commercials for Gucci. But you always find the city in Frank’s work, and it always looks like New York. With a lot of Hell seeping into the mortar and between the sidewalk cracks. Even though Hell’s Kitchen is a much nicer place now, it isn’t stopping Marvel from setting their Daredevil TV show along its rooftops and in its alleys. Matt Murdock (played by Charlie Cox) is going to have his hands full onscreen as much as in the comics pages. One of Miller’s mentors, the great Will Eisner, honed his craft two miles from Miller’s current home.

daredevil’s neighborhood

l ’ atelier de will eisner

tudor city

Tudor City wasn’t always the best spot in the city to live in the early 1920s, but some of the best comics came out of the area in the 1940s. Lit up by a big red neon sign on 5 Tudor City, Tudor City was the brainchild of a developer named Fred F. French. At that point in the ‘20s, the Midtown area of Manhattan was growing in leaps and bounds. French’s genius idea was to build apartments where people could walk to work; the only downside was that the land he got a deal on was right near a bunch of slaughterhouses. The smell was terrible. But French persisted and, twenty years later, the first residential skyscraper was built at 5 Tudor City, along with some apartment hotels. The big advertising campaign pushed luxury and proximity to Broadway, with the Tudor styling giving it that extra bit of class and panache. Two amazing creative teams worked there: Simon and Kirby had a studio there around the early ‘40s, set up in a one bedroom apartment, and probably rented on the cheap. One artist who visited them said the building screamed of Art Deco. Also at Tudor City was Will Eisner, who had just left creating comic books for other publishers, to create a comic book for newspapers called The Spirit. The Spirit was a crimefighter in a blue suit and fedora, with a matching domino mask plastered across his handsome (often smirking) face. The Spirit was about more than

Left: One of Will Eisner’s atmospheric The Spirit splash pages. Next: 5 Tudor City, photo by Seth Kushner

the hero slugging his way through each case— it became an eight-page weekly experiment in comics storytelling and character studies. Each one opened with a dynamic splash page, featuring the Spirit logo as a piece of architecture, or a name on a poster, or even rainwater draining off the sidewalk and into a puddle. The Spirit was also a masterpiece in urban tone, with sheets of rain often pelting down on the characters, and captured New York as cinematically as a film could. It’s hard to believe that such a sprawling city came out of an apartment so small that Will’s art assistants had to bump elbows while working in the kitchen. Eisner later joked the studio key was used for all the bachelor artists after hours hi-jinx.

the flatiron building

175 fifth avenue

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The Flatiron Building is a New York City landmark, a distinctive building designed like an enormous classical column. The city winds are cleaved in two against the angled front. In Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, the webswinger is known to whiz past the distinctive Flatiron Building in trying to stop Green Goblin or Doctor Octopus, and then later go up the elevator and into the Daily Bugle news offices as freelance photographer Peter Parker. The Flatiron Building is an example of a Left: The Flatiron Building, photo by Seth Kushner. The Daily Bugle offices (1982), art by Mike Zeck.

clever architect—Daniel Burnham—designing around a limited space; in this case, the wedgeshaped spot of land at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and between 22nd and 23rd Streets. Coming in at 22 stories, the steelframed skyscraper is shorter than others in New York—even when built in 1902. Across the street from the Flatiron, in Madison Square Park, is the Shake Shack, a small hamburger restaurant with fresh hamburgers and hand-spun milkshakes. If you’re in the city and want to give them a try, expect long lines on a nice day in the park. Artist Bob Kane even attended classes at the Commercial Art Studio, then located in the Flatiron. It would be just a stop for him, before working his way to DC Comics to co-create Batman with writer Bill Finger. At its point, the Flatiron is only six feet across. After it’s construction, New Yorkers were skeptical if it could even stand the crosswinds of that intersection. Little did they know that, years later, it would even withstand Green Goblin’s flying pumpkin bombs.

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dewitt clinton highschool

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To get into DeWitt Clinton High, you had to be the best. Luckily for comics, many of the early, pioneering creators—many of them Jewish—were products of DeWitt, right by East 205th Street. Two unlikely classmates, Will Eisner and Bob Kane, both attended DeWitt and had a huge impact on comics—but through different ways. The brilliant Eisner not only revolutionized how comic books were produced by inventing the comics assembly line with the studio shop he started with partner Jerry Iger, but also brought a cinematic technique to comics with his Spirit stories, and later defined the graphic novel with 1978’s A Contract with God. Bob Kane, then known by his original name of Robert Kahn, had been school pals with Eisner, going on double dates and pounding the beat of editor’s offices with him. It was Bob who pointed Will in the direction of Wow! What a Magazine, where Will met up with his future business partner Jerry Iger. The rest, for Will, is history: he wound up partnering with Iger, and then went off to create The Spirit comic stories on his own. Kane’s creative partner was writer Bill Finger. Just a bit older than Kane, Finger had been working part-time as a shoe salesman when he and Kane first teamed up to make comics for DC Comics. Bob had been drawing in a “bigfoot” style, with cartoon animals like Peter Pupp; he and Bill teamed up to create a superhero smash to

DeWitt Clinton High School, photo by Howard Wallach.

follow the success of this new character named Superman. What Bob Kane initially came up with was the red-suited Bird-Man. It took Bill to suggest a name change to The Bat-Man, with the addition of a batwing-like cape, and the distinctive pointy-eared cowl. Even though Bill not only wrote the first story, but also developed many of the defining character elements of the hero now known the world over as Batman, it was Kane who took sole credit for decades. All criticisms aside for Kane, however, you can argue that he steered Eisner towards the unexpected opportunities that emerged from Eisner’s hard work and mastery of the comics form. As for Batman, he was about to find another creator—this one was a kid named Jerry Robinson on his way to Columbia University— who would bring another dose of creativity to the caped crusader.

100 west mosholu pkwy Street

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university 24

116 th S t & B roadway

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Columbia University has been vital to American comic books—both in pop culture and in real life. But as a university, Columbia is more than that: established in 1754, Columbia is one of the few colleges established before America’s Revolutionary War with England. It’s located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the neighborhood of Morningside Heights, right below Harlem. Its sunny, tree-lined campus produced three U.S. Presidents—Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Barack Obama. Writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac started the Beat movement after attending Columbia, while novelist J.D. Salinger and Harlem Renaissance figure Langston Hughes also attended its hallowed halls. In 1940 Jerry Robinson started in the Journalism program but abandoned that career trajectory to draw the Batman comic book for artist Bob Kane. There’s a chance that, as a journalist, Jerry may have blown the top off countless news stories, but it’s unlikely that he would’ve affected the world in the same way his creating the looks of both The Joker and Robin the Boy Wonder— or through his relentless work towards creator’s rights. After working in comics through the ‘50s, Jerry broke into cartooning for the daily newspapers with syndicated strip work, and became president of the National Cartoonists Left: Columbia University Library, photo by Howard Wallach. Next: Columbia Library, photo by Howard Wallach.

Society in the late 1960s. The 1970s saw Jerry lobbying for the rights of creators in comics, with him coming to the aid of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in helping to get their credit restored for creating Superman. Jerry’s actions, along with the help of cartoonist Neal Adams, helped set the stage for a greater awareness of the rights of comic book creators. Flash forward to 2002, and Columbia plays a vital part in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movie trilogy: not only is Columbia where Peter Parker is fatefully bitten by the spider, but its campus is where Parker attends college as a science major. In the comics, Daredevil’s real identity of Matt Murdock graduated Columbia Law School with his friend and partner Foggy Nelson. Walking down the library steps one fateful day, he met Elektra Natchios, who would prove to be both the love of his life, and one of his greatest adversaries. Beyond those steps, and in the realm of real life, comics are preserved at Columbia through the work of Graphic Novels Librarian Karen Green, who has grown the library to include the papers of great comics figures like Robinson, X-Men writer Chris Claremont, and Mad Magazine genius cartoonist Al Jaffee. Also, Columbia professor David Hajdu wrote the definitive history book on the censorship movement against comic books in the 1950s; The Ten-Cent Plague outlines the history of EC Comics and the 1950s censorship movement that almost killed the comic book industry.

columbia

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Bill [Finger] became my friend, and my culture mentor. I was a really young kid, 17, just out of high school and in New York for the first time. I just really knew how to get from the Bronx to Columbia and back. He took me, for the first time, to the Met, to MOMA, to foreign films, to the Village. That was exciting. I was a sponge that soaked everything up. Jerry Robinson Comics Legend, Batman artist.

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morningside heights

wesley dodd’s mansion/jsa headquarters

Morningside Heights doesn’t just contain Columbia University: it has become known as an “Academic Acropolis” for being home to so many colleges and universities, including NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Barnard College, and the Manhattan School of Music. Morningside Heights was primarily an upper class neighborhood, with its apartment buildings being amongst the first to have elevators in New York City. One of DC Comics earliest heroes was The Sandman, who donned a trenchcoat, gas gun, fedora, and gas mask to fight crime. Created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman in 1939, Sandman’s adventures were brushstroke black, sometimes grotesque, and always foreboding. In daytime, like many of his contemporaries, Sandman was a rich playboy named Wesley Dodds. Sandman was part of the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America, who debuted in All-Star Comics #3 in October 1940. He fought crime along with Hawkman, Mister Terrific, Wildcat, Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Dr. Fate, The Spectre, The Atom, Hourman, and Jonny Thunder. Each issue of All-Star Comics featured art from a different team of artists, as the heroes often broke off and worked a case from either alone or with another team member. The

JSA became the template for DC Comics’ 1960s counterpart, the Justice League of America. When creator Matt Wagner told the Great Depression era adventures of Dodds in the Sandman Mystery Theatre comic book, he set it in a film noir version of New York City, with Dodds operating out of his Morningside Heights mansion. In later years, DC Comics would have the mansion serve as the headquarters of superteam Justice Society of America, after Dodds’ death. But Sandman’s first appearance is either in an issue of Adventure Comics in 1939, or in a special comic book that likely got into kids’ hands a week or two before his first official appearance: It was the 1939 New York World’s Fair Comic. Our next stop is at the site of that fantastic exhibition.

Left: All-Star Comics #3 (October, 1940). Gardner Fox, art by E.E. Hibbard. Next: Morningside Heights, photo by Howard Wallach.

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new york world’s fair

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What was once an ash dump became the site where dreams of the future were laid down for all to see—not on one, but two occasions. Flushing Meadows was a pile of garbage, manure, ashes, and dead animals; when it was deemed the perfect site for a 1939 World’s Fair, the exhibition to end all exhibitions, people probably thought the city was crazy. But, $160 million dollars later, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses had the swampy wasteland built up and landscaped as home for the “World of Tomorrow.” Why was a glimpse at a futuristic utopia so important to America? The Great Depression had been more than just an economic one, as the country was in need of a morale booster amidst the

Left: New York State Pavillion, photo by Howard Wallach

unemployment and hardships endured over the decade of the ‘30s. The World’s Fair’s centerpiece was the Trylon and Perisphere; the Trylon was a 610-foot tall needle-like obelisk, and the Perisphere a large 180-foot globe that housed Democracity, a giant diorama that showed the world of tomorrow—one where citizens lived in the open country, and commuted into the city to work. Other exhibits were set up and paid for by corporations, anxious to show off new technology like long distance phone calls and closed circuit television. About sixty other governments set up exhibits at the fair, in the name of the world peace that was inevitable—unfortunately, it began to look more like a pipe dream as the world teetered on the brink of World War II. The World’s Fair was also a haven for comic book companies to advertise. DC Comics held “Superman Day” on July 3, 1940, where an actor named Ray Middleton stood in the Man of Steel’s already-popular red and blue costume—the character then only being two years old. DC also published a New York World’s Fair comic book in 1939, which was followed by a second issue, likely put out on that Superman Day. The issue is so important as it featured the first time Batman, Superman, and Robin had ever been drawn together on the cover, by an artist named Jack Burnley. Burnley would later go on to draw adventures of both characters, while also co-creating the superhero Starman. Even a smaller publisher, Fox Comics, had a “Blue Beetle Day” at the 1940 World’s Fair on August 7, a month after the Superman one. The notorious publisher released their own comic book, Big 3, around that time—with a cover startlingly similar to the DC Comics one. T h e c e l e b r a t i o n o f A m e r i c a’s independence became a day of tragedy at the World’s Fair when, on July 4th, 1940, a timebomb was placed in a bag left in the British Pavillion. Two policemen, Joe Lynch and Freddy Socha, cut the bag open to investigate and were killed in the explosion. Several others were injured by the blast.

F lushing M eadows P ark

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These photographs of the World’s Fair in ‘63 are very much what the world of the ‘50s America thought was really going to happen. There was a picture of the car of the future, which is almost exactly like a car my Dad owned fifteen years ago. Then there were all of these exhibits that were so charged. The pictures of the World’s Fair were pictures my whole family would look at every year. Simon Fraser Cartoonist, 2000AD, Doctor Who.

to a zoo, a Science Museum, and an Art Museum. The New York Mets ballpark, Citi Field, is also part of the park, as well as the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the U.S. Open tournament. The 1964 World’s Fair, via stock footage, doubled as the “Gotham City World’s Fair” in the first episode of the 1966 Batman TV show. Ever iconic, the World’s Fair lives on: in the 1980s, writer Roy Thomas set DC Comics’ 1940s superhero superteam the All-Star Squadron’s headquarters in the Perisphere. Michael Chabon, in his novel The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay (2000) wrote a scene where his fictionalized comic book writer Klay sneaks into the Perisphere one night. Marvel Studios sent Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes to the 1940s Stark Expo at Flushing Meadows in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, over sixty years before Tony Stark would open his own ill-fated Stark Expo in Iron Man 2. A nearby world landmark got its start on the grounds of Flushing Meadows, before its current home overlooking Queens.

To this day, the tragedy remains unsolved. The World’s Fair closed its doors on October 27, 1940. Most of the structures, intended as temporary, eventually came down. In 1964, New York City tried another World’s Fair, but this one was even less successful. In the place of the Trylon and Perisphere stood— and still stands, to this day—the Unisphere, a twelve-story stainless steel globe elevated over a fountain. Both the Unisphere, and the degrading New York State Pavillion and observation towers from the later fair were featured in the movie Men in Black with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, itself a movie based off of a comic book. Today, there are few remnants of either Fair left standing, as Flushing Meadows has become home Previous: The Unisphere, photo by Howard Wallach.

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After World War I ended in 1918 and left an unprecedented swath of destruction and death in its wake, President Woodrow Wilson proposed a “community of power” to create a peaceful world order. World War II proved that the League, while valid in theory, was not that way in practice. It was replaced with the new United Nations on October 24, 1945 as a way to prevent another World War from occurring, right as a Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union was starting to heat up. Its General Assembly was composed of France, the United States, China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom; New York City was chosen as the base of operations. Most of the World’s Fair had been scrapped after it closed, literally, when buildings were torn down and forty thousand tons of steel was salvaged for the war effort. The irony is not lost there, nor in that UN’s first headquarters was in the old New York City Building on the former World of Tomorrow site. It remained there until the new headquarters, along the East River, was completed in 1951. The UN Headquarters belongs to all of the member states, with no singular nationality. As such, it’s neutral ground for all members. To reflect this, an international team of architects— twelve in all—designed the 39-floor building. The UN was the setting for the 1966 Batman movie, starring Adam West and Burt Ward: When the Penguin’s Dehydration device

The United Nations Building, Photo by Seth Kushner.

was inflicted upon the UN members, it was up to the Dynamic Duo to save the day—and the political balance of the entire free world. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace from 1987 has Superman addressing the UN about disarming the world from nuclear weapons. Given the small budget of the movie, it was unsurprisingly done on a set that was a small fraction of the actual U.N. Silver Surfer: Parable is a two-issue comic book that united two legends of comics: writer Stan Lee and French cartoonist Moebius. Silver Surfer, at the story’s end, must explain his place in the universe to the assembled world leaders at the United Nations. Finally, Superman and the rest of his allies address the U.N. in the futuristic tale Kingdom Come, by writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross, in the finale of this crowning achievement of a comic book. The United Nations’ ability to represent the best countries of the world make it an unsurprising stand-in for the world, and the most relevant when dealing with the worldliest of all superheroes.

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C o m i c b o o k s a re n’t o n ly a b o u t superheroes. Cartoonist Art Spiegelman—raised off of a healthy diet of Mad Magazine and EC Comics’ horror books, as well as the great comic strips of the past—entered comics in the late 1960s as one of the great experimental generation of Underground Comix creators. Left: Art Spiegelman’s childhood home, photo by Howard Wallach. Up: Maus, Art Spiegelman

The greatest result of the Comics Code was actually a backlash: Mad rose into the stratosphere as a magazine, and had a subversive influence on its young readers. The satirical worlds created by Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman, and his successor Al Feldstein, and company inspired this new generation that grew up through the Summer of Love and the War in Vietnam. Art Spiegelman’s 1968 story “Prisoner on the Hell Planet” tells of his return home to find his mother’s suicide. T h a t h o u s e , i n t h e Re g o Pa r k neighborhood of Queens, was also featured in Spiegelman’s revolutionary graphic novel, Maus. For Maus, Art interviewed his father and holocaust survivor Vladek about his time in the concentration camps during World War II. Rego Park’s name actually comes from a real estate company, Real Good Construction Company, which built the area up from farmland in the 1920s. It is a diverse neighborhood with a large Jewish immigrant population, including many Holocaust survivors who came to New York to escape the horrors of World War II. Spiegelman’s straightforward handing of the horrors of the Jewish experience in World War II, coupled with his mastery of the comics form, made Maus and it’s follow-up, Maus II, instant classics. Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992.

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New York’s cement walks and skyscraper canyons are a trademark, but so is the vast amount of greenery and peacefulness in the 840 acres of Central Park. As New York grew throughout the 19th century, the influx of new faces and urban expansion created a cacophony of sounds, with little peace to be had for New Yorkers. A grand public park was planned for the area in the Upper West Side, between 59th and 106th Street. Its design by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, called the Greensward Plan, was agreed upon in 1857. Upon the park’s completion in 1873, it was planted with approximately four million trees, plants, and shrubs. Unfortunately, Central Park was allowed to fall into a state of disrepair—which it remained until New York’s mayor Fiorello La Guardia assigned “Master Builder” Robert Moses to oversee an overhaul and general cleanup of the city’s parks in 1934. Where the original park was conceived as a great open area, Moses’ overhaul included adding ballfields and playgrounds, and gave Central Park a recreational air it had lacked before. Central Park became a key destination for assemblies, events, and theatrical productions. History, sadly enough, would repeat itself, and the park was back to being in a state of disrepair and decline not long after. When Gerry Conway wrote the origin of Marvel’s urban vigilante The Punisher, he revealed

that New York City cop Frank Castle started his crusade against all crime after his family was caught in the crossfire of a mob hit in Central Park. Conway has since stated that he envisioned the area that is now known as Strawberry Fields as the site of the tragedy. After his time with the Beatles, legendary rock star John Lennon adopted New York as his home. At the young age of 40, Lennon was assassinated on December 8, 1980. As a tribute to Lennon’s memory and activism in the name of peace and love, this area of Central Park was officially dedicated as Strawberry Fields on October 9, 1985. It would have been Lennon’s 45th birthday. Named after Lennon’s classic song “Strawberry Fields Forever,” it features a round mosaic with the words “Imagine” in the center—Lennon’s own anthem of peace, released in 1971. Gifted to the park from the city of Naples, Italy, it joins the total of 121 countries who collectively declared Strawberry Fields as a Garden of Peace. Luckily, the City stepped in and began managing Central Park once more. Since the early 1980s, Central Park has been cleaner, well maintained, and graffiti free. When visiting Central Park, you can also encounter the art museums the Guggenheim and Metropolitan Museum, as well as the American Museum of Natural History. Central Park can be seen in Spider-Man 3 (2007), as Mary Jane and Peter Parker walk across the famously photographed Bow Bridge. This 60-foot cast-iron bridge dates back to 1862 and, with its stunning view of the lake, and was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. It’s located at 74th Street, around the middle-point of the park. There is also another, more obscure, comic book connection in Central Park: At East 74th Street sits a bronze statue straight from Lewis Carroll’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with Alice at the tea party with the March Hare, Dormouse, and Mad Hatter. The statue is cast at ground level and kids are encouraged to climb

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upon it to interact with the sculptures—a condition of George Delacorte, who commissioned it from sculptor José de Creeft in 1959. At the time, Delacorte was publisher of Dell Publishing, who was then a huge comic book publisher. Take a close look at the face of the Mad Hatter: it is modeled after Delacorte himself. More pieces of art await us on the fringes of the Park. Let’s go there.

Up: Marvel Preview #2 (August, 1975). Gerry Conway, art by Tony DeZuniga. Alice in Wonderland Photo by Seth Kushner

Next: Strawberry Fields, photo by Howard Wallach.

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In Marvel Comics, Tony Stark grew up in his family’s manor at 890 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Not long after becoming Iron Man, he teamed up with other superheroes—Thor, Hulk, Wasp, and Ant-Man—as the super team The Avengers. In their first fight, they faced off against Loki, Thor’s evil half-brother. W h e n t h i s n ew t e a m n e e d e d a headquarters, Stark donated his family home to The Avengers—complete with loyal Stark family butler Jarvis. The Mansion stayed with The Avengers for years, and was at one point decorated with statues of the greatest Avengers on its lawn. It has been destroyed on more than one occasion, and rebuilt to continue housing the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

You can actually go to Avengers Mansion or, more accurately, the building it was modeled off of: The Henry Clay Frick House on 5th Avenue in the Upper East Side houses the collection of philanthropist Henry Frick. Upon his death in 1919, he bestowed the mansion and everything in it to the City of New York so that it could be a showcase for his private art collection. The Frick House went to the City after Mrs. Frick’s passing in 1931, and opened as a museum on December 16, 1935. When you go in, you can experience six galleries of the masters, as well as an Art Reference library. The collection includes masters such as El Greco, Francisco Goya, François Boucher, James McNeill Whistler, and Anthony Van Dyck. What started as a collection of 137 paintings has now grown into more than 1,000 works of art. It is doubtless Mr. Frick would have ever envisioned his repository for art becoming a centerpiece of popular art in the pages of The Avengers. Now let’s go to the home of some of the greatest American art forms—

Left: A look inside the Avengers Mansion, from King Size Special #1 (1967). Art by Don Heck. Next: The Frick Collection, photo by Seth Kushner.

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la frick collection 1 east 70th street

harlem

Heading back up nor th of Midtown and Morningside Heights is Harlem, the seat of African-American culture in Manhattan. Some of the greatest activists, musicians, and artists hail from this neighborhood. Harlem did not become a primarily African-American area until after the American Civil War ended in the late 1800s. Anxious for more opportunities than afforded them in the Southern states, African-Americans moved en masse to Harlem, a neighborhood that over ambitious developers originally intended for white workers. Since Harlem was then more out of the way from Manhattan, and African-Americans were finding themselves forced out from the rush of gentrification, Harlem became a haven for this emerging new middle class. The Harlem Renaissance began around the early 1900s, as Civil Rights leaders like W.E.B. DuBois organized political interest groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (the NAACP) in 1909. Harlem became the birthplace of AfricanAmerican art, literature, and music. Figures such as Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Zora and Neale Hurston emerged, creating literature and art that cemented the African-American population as a driving force of American culture. The 1920s, known as â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Roaring 20sâ&#x20AC;? for the partying and excess, materialism and economic boom after the First World War, gave

The Apollo Theater, photo by Howard Wallach.

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Luke Cage suits up, from Luke Cage, Hero for Hire #1 (June, 1972). Archie Goodwin, with art by George Tuska and Billy Graham.

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31 birth to Jazz music. This music form, created and developed by vital African-American performers like Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Waller, and Thelonious Monk reached over racial boundaries to influence mainstream white culture. Jazz music irrevocably changed the cultural landscape forever. Jazz music is one of three cultural movements and forms that began as distinctly American. The other two are baseball— And comic books. In 1923, the Hurtig & Seamon’s New Burlesque Theater was built and open to whites only and remained open until 1930. It experienced a namechange in 1934 and became The Apollo Theater,

aimed at the African-American population of Harlem. The Apollo’s shows were vaudeville in nature, and featured a mix of comedians, dancing girls, and musicians. Countless performers debuted on their stage, including Ella Fitzgerald, The Supremes, Sammy Davis, Jr., James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye. Harlem was the birthplace of Luke Cage, Marvel Comics 1970s “Hero for Hire” and the first black superhero granted his own title in 1972. Created by writer Archie Goodwin, and artists John Romita and George Tuska, Luke Cage was framed, put in prison, and there experimented upon and given superpowers. Escaping, he set up an office over Times Square, hiring his super abilities out to anyone who would employ him. The Hulk takes on The Abomination in The Incredible Hulk (2008), directed by Louis Leterrier.

Cage has thankfully developed beyond a ‘70s stereotype and become a key member of The Avengers. In the comics, he can now be found right back in Harlem, protecting the streets because it’s right—and not for mercenary reasons. Cage will become the star of his own television show on Netflix, which takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After decades, he has finally received his due. In Marvel Studio’s Incredible Hulk, the Hulk fights the Abomination on the streets of Harlem, tearing up more than a city block or two. We are grateful that, in the real world, Harlem stands fully intact, its restaurants, shops and museums a testimony to a heritage of culture and diversity.

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to New Jersey, and is a double decker suspension bridge that opened in 1931. It was named after the first President of the United States for being situated along the route Washington and his forces used to evacuate New York in 1776—after an unsuccessful bid to keep the city from British occupation. It spans 1,450 meters and features exposed steel towers that reflects it industrial origins. When Gwen died, the second level of the GW Bridge had only been open for about a decade. It was one of the first deaths of a major comic book character, and the fan backlash was overwhelming.

Left: The controversial death of Gwen Stacy, from The Amazing Spider-Man 121 (July, 1973). Gerry Conway, with art by Gil Kane and John Romita. Next: The Brooklyn Bridge, photo by Howard Wallach.

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The Brooklyn Bridge, in the comics, was the site of Spider-Man’s second greatest tragedy. Sentry over the East River, the bridge joins Brooklyn to Manhattan, and ferries about 150,000 pedestrians and vehicles across it on a daily basis. Made of granite and steel, the Brooklyn Bridge is the first steel suspension bridge in the world. It took the vision of German architect John Augustus Roebling, who devised a way to reinforce and stabilize the suspension bridge, to conceive this 1,600-foot bridge. Roebling, in a touch of tragic irony, didn’t live to see the bridge completed: his toes smashed by a boat, he passed away from a tetanus infection. It took the work of his son Washington, $15 million, and over 600 workers to finish it over a span of fourteen years. Years later, in 1973, editor Roy Thomas and writer Gerry Conway, determined to cause waves in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man #121 with a character death, got more than they bargained for when they chose Peter Parker’s longtime girlfriend Gwen Stacy. Kidnapped by Spider-Man’s arch foe Green Goblin, Gwen is thrown from the top of the bridge’s tower: Spidey’s webline shoots out to catch her, and its unclear whether her neck snaps from his webline, or from the fall. In an editorial misstep, it was referred to as the George Washington Bridge in the issue itself. The George Washington Bridge connects Manhattan

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