mhdantholz
" LET'S START THE AUCTION ! " - BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 18 November-December 1952 Cover: Gil KANE & Bernard SACHS
PHOTO: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN. NY 1950s
wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21249&page=10
****
" LET'S START THE AUCTION ! " -
BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 18 November-December 1952 Cover: Gil KANE & Bernard SACHS
****
Big Town @ Wikipedia
Big Town is a popular long-running radio drama series which was later adapted to both film and television and a comic book published by DC Comics.
Comic book
DC's Big Town comic book ran 50 issues, from January, 1951 to March-April, 1958. The comic book was edited by Whitney Ellsworth, and the contributing artists included Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, John Lehti, Manny Stallman and Alex Toth, with most of the later scripts written by John Broome.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town
****
Big Town ( DC )
# 1 January 1951 - # 50 March-April 1958
Publication Notes
Actual editors: Jack Schiff (#1-2); Julius Schwartz (#3-50).
Script and art credits confirmed by copies of DC editorial records received by Gene Reed from E. Nelson Bridwell in 1986. Changes in the handwriting on the editorial records indicate that Schwartz start keeping the records with one story in issue #3 and all records thereafter. This would indicate that Schwartz took over and finished work on issue #3 and assumed full assignment of script and art and editorial with issue #4.
Notes
Licensed title based on the radio and television shows.
****
Big Town # 29 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
# 29 (September-October 1954)
Steve Wilson's Night Beat; Crime Goes to the Fair; The Riddle of the Roving Reporter
Crime Goes to the Fair (1954).
Steve discovers that crime waves are sweeping the country near Big Town. Delightfully inventive tale.
Broome's often wrote sf stories about worlds ruled by sinister dictatorships: see his Qward stories in Green Lantern. This story deals with a comic variation on this: a zany look at the criminal underworld. This is a whole miniature "society" ruled by criminals, a pocket version of the serious criminal worlds in his sf. This story also burlesques the many benevolent expositions that will appear in later Big Town tales, such as "Passkey to Big Town" (1957) and "Theft of the Billion-Carat Diamond" (1957). Everybody in Big Town wants to take part in large public institutions. Why shouldn't crooks? Broome will later develop other comic tales about people who support the underworld, such as his Paul Gambi story, "The Mystery of Flash's Third Identity" (Flash #141, December 1963). Flash also goes undercover in that tale, just as Steve does in this.
Carnival stories in Broome seem to take place underground. The basement scenes here resemble the maze of corridors containing dressing rooms underneath the circus in "The 3-Ring Murder Case" (1954).
**
Steve Wilson's Night Beat (1954).
Steve is a guest lecturer in the evening class at Big Town University taught by Lorelei Kilbourne. Steve will later teach a whole journalism course of his own at the same school in "Underground Trail of Peril" (#46, July-August 1957).
The plot here about undergrad Kenneth Mitchell is in the tradition of other Broome characters who are trying to find their place in life. Mitchell has given up more than other Broome characters - he is in the lost stage, without having figured anything out.
The bonding between Steve and Kenneth anticipates the stories about male friendship Broome would write in The Flash. We get a window into Steve's feelings here.
Unless I'm greatly mistaken, the trees on the beautiful University campus look like palms. This would place Big Town in the same latitudes as Los Angeles or Miami. This is in contradiction to nearly all other Big Town stories, which depict it as a fictionalized version of New York City. Perhaps I'm just not reading Stallman's vegetation right.
The campus here is very beautiful, with modern looking buildings and gorgeous landscaping. Stallman includes an overhead view of the campus (p2), and a close up view of one of the buildings (p8). There is also a good nocturnal landscape of a mansion (p3), with its grounds and a curving road. Stallman liked curving paths and roads in his tales. These overhead views of landscapes look like maps or models, such as one would use for model trains.
**
The Riddle of the Roving Reporter (1954).
Illustrated Press foreign correspondent Courtney Kane behaves oddly after returning to the United States after five years covering the news in a dictatorship.
This is one of the few Big Town tales with an international theme, along with "The Billion Dollar Captive" (1954). While that tale offered a sympathetic view of India, this story echoes Broome's concerns about totalitarianism. One suspects that the country of Rogravia is a Communist state behind the Iron Curtain, although this is never stated explicitly in the story, and Broome's negative portrait of dictatorships could also apply to right-wing dictatorships such as Franco's Spain.
Another foreign correspondent friend of Steve's will show up in "The Dangerous Coat of Dan Brewster" (1957). Both tales will begin with a similar opening situation - a foreign correspondent will return to Big Town after many years covering the news abroad - but then their plots will shift to completely different directions.
This story is more interesting for its lively art, than for its easily guessed mystery plot. The splash has Stallman's circular arcs mixed with straight lines. The later sections of the tale have many Stallman views of a factory.
****
Big Town @ @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
All Big Town stories are written by John Broome, with art by Manny Stallman, unless otherwise noted.
Big Town starred Steve Wilson, a talented newsman. Although Steve was the editor of the daily newspaper the Illustrated Press, he seemed to spend most of his time as a reporter, tracking down big stories.
The tales took place in a city named Big Town, which was clearly a thinly fictionalized version of New York City. Big Town was a detective comic book. Nearly all of the stories in Big Town had an element of crime. However, in many of the tales the crime element was fairly downplayed, with greater concentration on the life of a newspaperman, and the glamorous world of Big Town itself in the 1950's. Even in the pure detective tales, the creators were far more interested in the reporter detectives and their efforts to solve the case, than in the crooks.
Big Town was a popular radio program (1937-1951) and TV show (1950-1956). The comic book lasted a year and a half longer than the TV show, then folded. The phenomenon of a program existing in several different media forms - radio, TV, comics - is today called "convergence". Some pundits describe it as a feature of today's world, when most of the media are controlled by a few corporations.
But in actual fact,, a large number of DC's pre-Silver Age comics of the earlier 1950's were based on TV programs. Even Superman was a TV series during much of the 1950's. I have no statistics on how profitable this was for DC. Were these TV-tie comic books lucrative? Or were they a desperate attempt by the comic book industry to keep afloat in tough times? These are questions for which I have no answer.
By contrast, the Silver Age revival of super-heroes around 1958 led to comic books that were much more divorced in content from the rest of the mass media. Silver Age super-hero comics were largely a world unto themselves, utterly different from the TV shows and paperback books of their era.
Big Town was never noir. During the Broome years, the tales were optimistic. This was not the smug optimism sometimes associated with the 1950's.
Big Town was among the most realistic of comic books. "Realism" is a loaded word, one with many meanings. Big Town focused on non-science fiction stories about honest people who lived in modern day New York City. It was partly in the tradition of such prose mystery story collections about typical New Yorkers as William MacHarg's The Affairs of O'Malley (collected 1940) and Ellery Queen's Q.B.I. (1950 - 1953).
New York City itself was considered a fascinating subject in those days, and people wanted to read about the fascinating lives of people who lived there. These people did not have to be criminals or sleazy to be interesting; rather, readers wanted to know about the actual inhabitants of the city.
During its early issues (#1-13), Big Town was scripted by a huge variety of writers. Most of these pieces are not very good, although a few were excellent, especially the handful of scripts by France E. Herron and Robert Kanigher. From issue #14, many of the scripts were by John Broome, who had occasionally contributed scripts before; he eventually became the sole scriptwriter of the magazine. In #17, the magazine got its permanent artist, Manny Stallman. There is little discussion in this article of the early, poorer quality scripts.
****
COVER GALLERY >> Big Town
AND
comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=17964
AND
www.atomicavenue.com/atomic/TitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=15064
AND
" LET'S START THE AUCTION ! " - BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 18 November-December 1952 Cover: Gil KANE & Bernard SACHS
PHOTO: MIDTOWN MANHATTAN. NY 1950s
wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21249&page=10
****
" LET'S START THE AUCTION ! " -
BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 18 November-December 1952 Cover: Gil KANE & Bernard SACHS
****
Big Town @ Wikipedia
Big Town is a popular long-running radio drama series which was later adapted to both film and television and a comic book published by DC Comics.
Comic book
DC's Big Town comic book ran 50 issues, from January, 1951 to March-April, 1958. The comic book was edited by Whitney Ellsworth, and the contributing artists included Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, John Lehti, Manny Stallman and Alex Toth, with most of the later scripts written by John Broome.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town
****
Big Town ( DC )
# 1 January 1951 - # 50 March-April 1958
Publication Notes
Actual editors: Jack Schiff (#1-2); Julius Schwartz (#3-50).
Script and art credits confirmed by copies of DC editorial records received by Gene Reed from E. Nelson Bridwell in 1986. Changes in the handwriting on the editorial records indicate that Schwartz start keeping the records with one story in issue #3 and all records thereafter. This would indicate that Schwartz took over and finished work on issue #3 and assumed full assignment of script and art and editorial with issue #4.
Notes
Licensed title based on the radio and television shows.
****
Big Town # 29 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
# 29 (September-October 1954)
Steve Wilson's Night Beat; Crime Goes to the Fair; The Riddle of the Roving Reporter
Crime Goes to the Fair (1954).
Steve discovers that crime waves are sweeping the country near Big Town. Delightfully inventive tale.
Broome's often wrote sf stories about worlds ruled by sinister dictatorships: see his Qward stories in Green Lantern. This story deals with a comic variation on this: a zany look at the criminal underworld. This is a whole miniature "society" ruled by criminals, a pocket version of the serious criminal worlds in his sf. This story also burlesques the many benevolent expositions that will appear in later Big Town tales, such as "Passkey to Big Town" (1957) and "Theft of the Billion-Carat Diamond" (1957). Everybody in Big Town wants to take part in large public institutions. Why shouldn't crooks? Broome will later develop other comic tales about people who support the underworld, such as his Paul Gambi story, "The Mystery of Flash's Third Identity" (Flash #141, December 1963). Flash also goes undercover in that tale, just as Steve does in this.
Carnival stories in Broome seem to take place underground. The basement scenes here resemble the maze of corridors containing dressing rooms underneath the circus in "The 3-Ring Murder Case" (1954).
**
Steve Wilson's Night Beat (1954).
Steve is a guest lecturer in the evening class at Big Town University taught by Lorelei Kilbourne. Steve will later teach a whole journalism course of his own at the same school in "Underground Trail of Peril" (#46, July-August 1957).
The plot here about undergrad Kenneth Mitchell is in the tradition of other Broome characters who are trying to find their place in life. Mitchell has given up more than other Broome characters - he is in the lost stage, without having figured anything out.
The bonding between Steve and Kenneth anticipates the stories about male friendship Broome would write in The Flash. We get a window into Steve's feelings here.
Unless I'm greatly mistaken, the trees on the beautiful University campus look like palms. This would place Big Town in the same latitudes as Los Angeles or Miami. This is in contradiction to nearly all other Big Town stories, which depict it as a fictionalized version of New York City. Perhaps I'm just not reading Stallman's vegetation right.
The campus here is very beautiful, with modern looking buildings and gorgeous landscaping. Stallman includes an overhead view of the campus (p2), and a close up view of one of the buildings (p8). There is also a good nocturnal landscape of a mansion (p3), with its grounds and a curving road. Stallman liked curving paths and roads in his tales. These overhead views of landscapes look like maps or models, such as one would use for model trains.
**
The Riddle of the Roving Reporter (1954).
Illustrated Press foreign correspondent Courtney Kane behaves oddly after returning to the United States after five years covering the news in a dictatorship.
This is one of the few Big Town tales with an international theme, along with "The Billion Dollar Captive" (1954). While that tale offered a sympathetic view of India, this story echoes Broome's concerns about totalitarianism. One suspects that the country of Rogravia is a Communist state behind the Iron Curtain, although this is never stated explicitly in the story, and Broome's negative portrait of dictatorships could also apply to right-wing dictatorships such as Franco's Spain.
Another foreign correspondent friend of Steve's will show up in "The Dangerous Coat of Dan Brewster" (1957). Both tales will begin with a similar opening situation - a foreign correspondent will return to Big Town after many years covering the news abroad - but then their plots will shift to completely different directions.
This story is more interesting for its lively art, than for its easily guessed mystery plot. The splash has Stallman's circular arcs mixed with straight lines. The later sections of the tale have many Stallman views of a factory.
****
Big Town @ @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
All Big Town stories are written by John Broome, with art by Manny Stallman, unless otherwise noted.
Big Town starred Steve Wilson, a talented newsman. Although Steve was the editor of the daily newspaper the Illustrated Press, he seemed to spend most of his time as a reporter, tracking down big stories.
The tales took place in a city named Big Town, which was clearly a thinly fictionalized version of New York City. Big Town was a detective comic book. Nearly all of the stories in Big Town had an element of crime. However, in many of the tales the crime element was fairly downplayed, with greater concentration on the life of a newspaperman, and the glamorous world of Big Town itself in the 1950's. Even in the pure detective tales, the creators were far more interested in the reporter detectives and their efforts to solve the case, than in the crooks.
Big Town was a popular radio program (1937-1951) and TV show (1950-1956). The comic book lasted a year and a half longer than the TV show, then folded. The phenomenon of a program existing in several different media forms - radio, TV, comics - is today called "convergence". Some pundits describe it as a feature of today's world, when most of the media are controlled by a few corporations.
But in actual fact,, a large number of DC's pre-Silver Age comics of the earlier 1950's were based on TV programs. Even Superman was a TV series during much of the 1950's. I have no statistics on how profitable this was for DC. Were these TV-tie comic books lucrative? Or were they a desperate attempt by the comic book industry to keep afloat in tough times? These are questions for which I have no answer.
By contrast, the Silver Age revival of super-heroes around 1958 led to comic books that were much more divorced in content from the rest of the mass media. Silver Age super-hero comics were largely a world unto themselves, utterly different from the TV shows and paperback books of their era.
Big Town was never noir. During the Broome years, the tales were optimistic. This was not the smug optimism sometimes associated with the 1950's.
Big Town was among the most realistic of comic books. "Realism" is a loaded word, one with many meanings. Big Town focused on non-science fiction stories about honest people who lived in modern day New York City. It was partly in the tradition of such prose mystery story collections about typical New Yorkers as William MacHarg's The Affairs of O'Malley (collected 1940) and Ellery Queen's Q.B.I. (1950 - 1953).
New York City itself was considered a fascinating subject in those days, and people wanted to read about the fascinating lives of people who lived there. These people did not have to be criminals or sleazy to be interesting; rather, readers wanted to know about the actual inhabitants of the city.
During its early issues (#1-13), Big Town was scripted by a huge variety of writers. Most of these pieces are not very good, although a few were excellent, especially the handful of scripts by France E. Herron and Robert Kanigher. From issue #14, many of the scripts were by John Broome, who had occasionally contributed scripts before; he eventually became the sole scriptwriter of the magazine. In #17, the magazine got its permanent artist, Manny Stallman. There is little discussion in this article of the early, poorer quality scripts.
****
COVER GALLERY >> Big Town
AND
comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=17964
AND
www.atomicavenue.com/atomic/TitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=15064
AND