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Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!

American Flagg! was an independent comic published by First Comics starting in summer of 1983, dated for October. It lasted 50 issues. It was a unique publication when it hit the newstands that summer and influenced the definition of Comic Books for a generation to come, creating new standards for creative works and story telling. This is a review of this important work

Since I have been 9 years old I have been reading and collecting comic books. I have read just about everything from Platinum Age until now. This covered such strips as the turn of the century work like Windser McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, though to the modern era gems like Brian Woods' Local.

I started this life long passion by hocking the local newspaper, The Canarsie Courier at the Rockawy Parkway Train Station on the LL line, earning spare pennies. Not long after I had noticed that the corner newspaper stand on Glenwood Road and Rockaway Parkway had a comics rack. There I grabbed my frst books in exchange for my hard earned pennies, often reading books before school over an ice cream soda. In this way, I flt, even as an opharned child, connected to a larger universe, and the City of New York. And I was.

Over the history of Comics, there has been several transformative or watershead moments. Sometimes they are brought about by a single book; by the vision of an individual author. Sometimes important series or events are the product of an effort of an entire editorial team, such as the work the EC comics team which has helped define a new genre. Such influential works include George Herriman's Krazy Kat, Frank King's Gasoline Alley, Shuster and Siegel's Superman, Kirby and Lee's Fantastic Four, William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, in the Tales of the Crypt and Mad Magazine, and that is not a complete list.

By the late 1970s, the comics business was reeling. For all its success, Marvel comics was near bankrupcy in the mid-1970s. The firm was virtually and famously saved by the Star Wars adaption done by Howard Chaykin and Roy Thomas. Newspaper stands sales was drying up. Saturday Morning Cartoons had overtaken comics for the interests of little boys and girls. The teen market was all but squashed by congressional censorship efforts in the 1950's. New urban patterns of travel and work put pressure on the newspaper, magazine and comics business.

Entering into this, by the 1980's, a new and untapped market was developing, and I can best explain this through personal experience. In the later 1970's, I found a new venue for my Comics reading habits. Jerry Kanowitz, and his wife, Harriot, opened a back issues comic shop on Rockaway, Parkway, past the fire station near Foster Avenue. Jerry was one of the first owners of a comic book shop, and he had deep connections within the publishing business. Aside from bins upon bins of back issues, Jerry had a steady supply of key issues that hung on his wall. In those early days, it would not be unusual to see an Amazing Fantasy #1 on the wall, along with Avergers 1, Captian American 100 and Avengers 4, early Hulks and Iron Man apearances, along with DC Showcase 4, and 22. Neil Adams' Batmans were popular at the time, and a lot of neighborhood kids turned Jerry's place onto a hangout. More than just a comic store, for guys like Frank, Rizzo and myself, it was the neighborhood safe house.

By 1976 the comic convention had become a regular goto event. Jerry's gang was exciting to go the Hilton Slatler Hotel for the big convention. We had never seen so many comic fans in one place before, and we were all autograph hounds. My friend Frank got Neil Adams to sign about a dozen books and declared so in his excitement. He was then lectured by Adams, telling him, what happens to all the people I can't get to because I ran out of time. It was all in good natured fun at the time and not a terrible way of burning a childhood.

Jerry eventually moved to Avenue M, near Bildersee JHS. I went on to College. Just before I left for school in 1983, I picked up a few new kinds of books, unlike anything I had seen before, from the news stand at the Junction in Brooklyn, at Avenue H, and Nostrand Avenue. I picked up Ms Tree, John Sable, and American Flagg!! These were the first independent comics I ever read. The work was all fresh. But of all the work done at that time, American Flagg!!, by Howard Chaykin was unlike any comic yet published for the mass market. It was heads and shoulders above the rest. This was the magic year of 1983, which is the year that is now commonly referred to the year when the Modern Era of comics was born, and American Flagg! was largely responsible for coalescing the new movement.

While events were slowly building toward the modern era, by 1983 all the necessary elements for exploiting the new comics market were in play. Through the years, slowly the collectors market had been brewing. Jannette Kahn, on taking over DC had tried to collect talent by offering royalties. Distributors were brought on board to bring direct sales to specialty stores. Both DC and Marvel had decided to carve out the back issues market by flooding the stands with new titles and talents. Experimentation and adult story lines had slowly developed. Before 1983, the most breakthrough title was likely Neal Adams and Dennis O'Neil Green Lantern/Green Arrow series that closed out the Green Lantern silver age series, which ran from issue 76-89. This series that ran from 1970- 1981 covered much of the troubling issues festering in the national conscious for nearly a decade. The target audience was clearly more adult. And that adult market was converging on back issue stores, "Comic Shops". Comic Shops where increasing market to by bringing new titles which opened up opportunities for moderately funded, talent driven and creator owned companies. One such company was First Comics, which was out of the Chicago Suburb, Evanston, Illinois. First released to the direct market American Flagg!!, The Badger, E-Man, Dreadstar, and Jon Sable. Somehow these also made it to the newspapers stands. But the First title that got on the national radar was American Flagg!!

Despite the growing trends, it was hard to anticipate the arrival of American Flagg!! Chaykin, though well know for his Star Wars work, had never delivered anything with the skill and development that American Flagg!! had. It was difficult to look back on Chaykins career up to that point with anticipating for this kind of enormous breakthrough. At this time, I had never heard of him and had to research his work after the first issue was released. He did a minimal amount of Superhero work. He did some minor work in Sci-Fi. His Star Wars work, to my eye, was merely adequate for the task. But American Flagg!! was bolt from the blue.

The craftsmanship was unlike anything else I could remember seeing in a standard comic format. Every panel was thick with detail. The standard 17-25 page comic might take 20 minutes to read. American Flagg!! read like a literary work, taking over 2 hours to work through a first reading. The book was always delayed in its release, which added to the anticipation, awaiting for the next issue to hit the stands. The story telling wasn't in any way rushed. It unfolded in a natural way, spending nearly 3 pages on the uneventful flight from Mars to the Chicago Plex, which did nothing for the storyline other than set the tone and feel for the rest of the series. The main protagonist, Reuben Flagg, doesn't show his face until page 5. From that point on, however, a bewildering number of characters make there appearance, giving a feel that I only again experienced in the opening scenes of "Lost in Translation" when Bill Murray is surrounded by smiling helpful Japanese faces who he can barely record in the stuper of his long trans-pacific flight. Flagg and the reader is likewise surrounded by a bunch of unfamiliar and unknown names and faces. Slowly the players come into focus. Hammerhead Kreiger and his daughter Mandy take center stage. Gretchen Holstrum, Raul the cat, Representative Klein-Hernandez, Charles Keenan Blitz, all soon take the stage. It's a big cast, and it grows bigger over time. I had to write the names of the characters on a peice of paper in order to keep track.

It's been said that Carmen Infanano was famous for his page layout and design. He taught page design in New York's the School of Visual Arts. But Carmen Infantino was second seat to Howard Chaykin. Chaykin's page design was revolutionary. His partner in this was his letterer, Ken Bruzenak. Through page design, he adequately told the 30 year history of the Plex on the single page, page 17, of the first issue of Flagg!! Panels bleed into each other and the order in which they are read become optional, adding to the feel of chaos to the stories, drawing the reader into the process of creating chaos. Chaykin slows time and speeds it up at will, creating a background of tension and surprise.

Flagg hit the American Comic book creative community like one of his Gogang attacks.