taschen magazine 2010 02

taschen magazine 2010 02, Taschen

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Fall/Winter 2010
years
TA SCHEN
50
years
Ali’s first
professional fight
75
super m a n
Who will
outsell whom?
years
DC Comics
Est. 1980
30
ali
vs
1
2
3
4
30
5
YEARS
Est. 1980
1. Sean Combs, Muhammad Ali
and Will Smith at
GOAT
launch
in Miami, 2003.
2. Rem Koolhaas at TASCHEN,
Cologne, 2001.
3. Richard Meier and Natacha
Merritt at
Digital Diaries
launch
in NYC, 1999.
4. Willy DeVille at TASCHEN
booth / Frankfurt Book Fair, 1999.
5. Eric Kroll at American Book
Expo, 1996.
6. Albert Oehlen at the Chemo-
sphere House, Hollywood, 1999.
7. Jeff Koons at the Chemo-
sphere House, Hollywood, 2001.
8. Wladimir and Vitali
Klitschko
with Benedikt Taschen, 2003.
Photo © Howard Bingham
9. Nobuyoshi Araki, Venice, 2002.
10. Wolfgang Tillmans at
TASCHEN Cologne, 1996.
11. Karl Lagerfeld at TASCHEN,
Cologne, 1990.
Right: The
GOAT
team with
Muhammad Ali, presenting the
original edition at the Frankfurt
Book Fair in 2003.
6
7
8
Ali vs Superman
From early childhood, Muhammad Ali was
my hero. Like many others of my generation,
I remember watching the irst live broadcasts
of his ights with my family, which for us in
Germany was in the middle of the night. When
I was 16 years old, I read his autobiography
The Greatest: My Own Story
, and 20 years later
I saw Ali at the 1996 Olympic Games and
watched Leon Gast’s award-winning documen-
tary
When We Were Kings
. It was then that I
began to understand why I was so fascinated by
him: the man was cool and charismatic, dressed
immaculately, had a great sense of humor and
a phenomenal
joie de vivre
...and more than
anything else, he stood up for his beliefs and
did exactly what he wanted—and he was right.
And despite his illness later in life, he didn’t give
up, and with the Olympic torch in his hand, he
conquered the heart of everyone.
In 1992 I had a revelation: we planned to pub-
lish a catalogue raisonné of Dalí’s paintings.
As always, we produced a mock-up of the book
for the trade. At that time we still used stickers
to apply the title of the book to the slipcase.
It being summer, and the temperature rising,
the “D” happened to drop of suddenly, leaving
the title to read “ALI”. Then Ali was still in his
ifties, but in the collective memory of the world
he was a living legend, and most of his entourage
were still around. So I spoke to Ali’s manager,
Bernie Yuman. He was familiar with our pub-
lishing house and with the model for the Ali
book that I had in mind: the legendary
SUMO
by Helmut Newton. Bernie visualized the scale
of the project at once: a book unlike any other,
a book to be remembered for generations to
come, one that would chronicle a man whose
prominence would be felt as strongly far in the
future as it is today. So I sent a copy of
SUMO
with a letter to Ali. It didn’t take long until a
desperate Bernie—usually never short of words
—called me: “I was just on the phone with The
Champ, who received your Newton book, and
he wondered why you sent him, a Muslim, a
book full of naked women? How do we get out
of this? What shall I say?” I told him to explain
that all the girls in the book were very poor and
had no money to buy clothes. Five minutes later
a relieved Bernie was on the phone again—Ali
laughed, was happy to collaborate, and under-
stood that this book could become an important
part of his heritage. Four years later we looked
at what felt like a million photographs of Ali in
archives all over the world, visited and talked
to dozens of photographers, journalists, writers,
ex-opponents, managers, lawyers. All in all, it
was an amazing experience, the result of which
was described by
Spiegel
magazine as “the most
megalomaniacal book in the history of civiliza-
tion, the biggest, heaviest, most radiant thing
ever printed.” Today, seven years after the pub-
lication of
GOAT
, we are proud to publish this
afordable edition at last so that Ali’s genius can
be shared with the widest possible audience.
Smaller in size but not in impact, this new version
of
GOAT
brings the people’s champ to the people.
9
10
11
This year TASCHEN turns 30. That another
childhood hero of mine, Superman, and his
mythical publishing house, DC Comics, are
celebrating their 75th birthday with a giant
TASCHEN-book is a fortunate coincidence and
a itting reminder of my roots as a comic-book
dealer. No matter who outsells whom, Ali or
Superman, we are in for an amazing race!
Peace,
Benedikt Taschen, October 2010
—
1
—
Four-color fantasy
Super heroes from the Atom to Zatara: 75 years of DC Comics
XL
FormAt
“tASCHEN has found stuff under rocks,
and we didn’t even know where the rock was,
much less what was under it ... there’ll be
things that no matter who you are, you won’t
have seen before.”
—Paul Levitz to
PREVIEWS Comic Catalog
, New York
75 Years of DC Comics:
The Art of Modern Mythmaking
Paul Levitz
Hardcover, 5 fold-outs, format:
29 x 39.5 cm (11.4 x 15.6 in.), 720 pp.
¤ 150 / $ 200 / £ 135
Opposite:
Batman
No. 10. Cover art, Fred Ray
and Jerry Robinson, April–May 1942
All illustrations on pp. 2-9:
TM & © DC Comics. All rights reserved
Paul Levitz, DC Comics ofice, 2010
Photo © Kareem Black/Courtesy TASCHEN
In 1935, DC Comics founder Major Malcolm
Wheeler-Nicholson published
New Fun
No. 1,
the irst comic book with all-new, original mate-
rial—at a time when comic books were mere
repositories for the castofs of the newspaper
strips. What was initially considered to be dis-
posable media for children was well on its way
to becoming the mythology of our time—the
20th century’s answer to Atlas or Zorro. More
than 40,000 comic books later, in honor of the
publisher’s 75th anniversary, TASCHEN has
produced the single most comprehensive book
on DC Comics, in an XL edition even Superman
might have trouble lifting. More than 2,000
images—covers and interiors, original illustra-
tions, photographs, ilm stills, and collectibles—
are reproduced using the latest technology to
bring the story lines, the characters, and their
creators to vibrant life as they’ve never been
seen before. Telling the tales behind the tomes
is 38-year DC veteran Paul Levitz, whose
in-depth essays trace the company’s history,
from its pulp origins through to the future of
digital publishing.
Year-by-year timelines that fold out to nearly
four feet and biographies of the legends who
built DC make this an invaluable reference for
any comic book fan.
—
2
—
the Golden Age
of comics
It all started with Superman
“the history of DC Comics is one
of the world’s most colorful stories 
—and no one can tell it better
than the brilliant Paul Levitz.”
— Stan Lee
doomed planet (named Krypton by Siegel in a
nod to its fellow noble gas, helium, where Edgar
Rice Burroughs’s John Carter had discovered
his greater-than-normal strength from the
lesser gravity of Mars), and a bullet-proof skin
that would have saved Siegel’s father, and the
hero was born.
Superman’s success was so great that Siegel
and Shuster got one of their wishes almost
immediately: On January 12, 1939, “Superman”
debuted as a daily newspaper strip, with a
Sunday strip added later that year. This more
than doubled the amount of Superman material
being created, and vastly extended the audience
the character could reach. The phenomenon
continued, with a special World’s Fair one-shot
comic issued in April starring Superman and
other DC heroes, sold only at the New York
fairgrounds at the unprecedented price of 25
cents. And in May, the irst four stories from
Action
were collected into
Superman
No. 1, the
irst solo title for a comic book character. When
that comic started running new material with
the second quarterly issue, the demand for art
was so great that it was clear Shuster would need
a substantial Superman art studio team. The
model for increasing production came from a
mixture of the newspaper comics
tradition of assistants “ghosting ” material signed
by the strips’ creators, and the factory system
that Lloyd Jacquet and others had used to supply
the early comics publishers, with salaried artists.
Above: The original
Superman
creative team,
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, 1941
The 1930s were a dark decade in America,
between the overwhelming weight of the Depres-
sion and the gathering clouds of war abroad.
Only President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s warm
voice coming through the radio ofered hope,
and people were ready for a new kind of hero . . .
they simply didn’t know where he’d come from.
Certainly no one expected much from the early
comic books beyond a smile and a few minutes
of entertainment, mostly from characters
reminiscent of the newspaper strips. [. . .]
History fails us here, for success has so many
fathers. Many people have claimed a role god-
fathering Superman’s birth in that irst publi-
cation [. . . but] there’s no dispute that [Jerry
Siegel and Joe Shuster’s] irst story was bought
to ill that hole in
Action Comics
for a legendary
$130 (the then-high page rate of $10 for the
13-page tale) contract signed by Jack Liebowitz,
who himself claimed to have picked out the
since-classic image for the cover, the now-icon-
ic man lifting a car that became part of our visu-
al language as a symbol of physical strength. [. .
.] Indisputably, the cultural ramiications were
phenomenal:
Action Comics
No. 1 sold out and
went through multiple printings, and an icon
was born, leaping over tall buildings and chang-
ing the face of American comics forever. The
Golden Age had begun.
Superman mixed fundamental wish-fulillment
themes together in a new way: the aspiration
that if only Lois would look beyond the glasses
and see that Clark was really a Superman
touched the inner milquetoast, and Superman’s
physical abilities to act out solutions ordinary
mortals could only fantasize about was an
enduring meme. Add in a touch of Moses in
the bulrushes reset as a child rocketed from a
Right:
All-Star Comics
No. 37. Cover art, Irwin Hasen,
October–November 1947
Opposite:
Superman
No. 63. Cover art, Al Plastino,
March–April 1950
—
4
—
“I do nothing that a man of
unlimited funds, superb physical
endurance, and maximum
scientific knowledge could not do.”
—Batman
Same Bat-time,
Same Bat-channel
Super-hero superstar
“Superman and Batman were the yin and yang
of the comics. together they covered the range of
psychological appeals and established DC as
the premier comics publisher.”
—Jerry Robinson, Golden Age comics artist
grave voice even in the middle of the most
improbable action. In a rare and serendipitous
moment, a new issue of
Batman
featuring the
Riddler hit newsstands just as Frank Gorshin’s
hysterical chuckle stopped audiences in their
tracks. The irst episode aired a day later,
concluding with a “Same Bat-time, same Bat-
channel” clihanger that catapulted the show
to the top 10. The comic blew of the newsstand
like nothing DC had seen in decades.
After almost three decades as a mainstay of
comic books, Batman was suddenly a fad. It
was a time when America moved from one phe-
nomenon to another with a cultural speed and
passion greater than ever, as mass media and
mass advertising achieved essentially universal
penetration . . . but most families only had a
choice of three television channels, focusing
attention in a much more concentrated fashion
than is possible now in the 21st century.
DC’s sister company, Licensing Corporation
of America, originally formed to expand
Superman’s merchandise program, began han-
dling outside properties, including James Bond
during that craze a few years before, and was
appeared on the cover of every DC title where
it was remotely plausible. He pushed other
co-stars out of
The Brave and the Bold
, and
even popped up in
Jerry Lewis
within months.
A “Batman” newspaper strip launched in 1966
for an eight-year run, just as the longstanding
Superman strip was fading away.
The
Batman
show itself was deceptively simple,
with West, Burt Ward as Robin, and an array of
spectacular guest villains stylistically triumph-
ing over tight budgets, short shooting schedules,
and formulaic plots on pure energy, and captur-
ing the zeitgeist. America needed an outrageous
laugh, and turning the melodrama of pulp drama
If DC wasn’t ready for the real world, the real
world was ready for DC.
On January 12, 1966,
Batman
hit the airwaves.
At the time, most American television was lim-
ited to three broadcast networks, and virtually
all new series debuted in the fall. But ABC, with
the weakest set of ailiate stations (and so, in
that pre-cable/satellite era, the smallest poten-
tial audience), decided to try a new approach
and begin a group of programs labeled as “The
Second Season.” Reportedly conceived by pro-
ducer Bill Dozier while watching a screening of
the 1940s
Batman
movie serials at a party
thrown by Hugh Hefner, the show was an ideal
camp treatment of the Caped Crusader, with
Adam West playing the hero with a perfectly
“the comic blew off
the newsstand like
nothing DC had seen
in decades.”
well set up to ensure that all things Bat-themed,
from costumes to lunch boxes, reached stores
quickly. The print runs on the comics ratcheted
up, month after month, until the magic number
of a million copies of an issue sold, and Batman
on its head safely made fun of authority in an
uneasy time. With the twice-a-week schedule,
the fad ran hot and fast . . . and 20th Century Fox
capitalized on it by quickly producing a ilm ver-
sion while the show was on hiatus between sea-
sons, to release in October 1966.
Opposite: Adam West on the set of
Batman
, Season 1,
1966. Photo © Yale Joel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty
Images
Above left:
Wonder Woman Hula
, unpublished
illustration, H. G. Peter, 1940s
Above:
Strange Adventures
No. 25. Cover art,
Gil Kane and Joe Giella, October 1952
Far left:
Flash Comics
No. 30. Cover art, E. E. Hibbard,
June 1942
Left:
Police Comics
No. 28. Cover art, Jack Cole,
March 1944
—
7
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