There’s Money In Comics
by Jeet Heer
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
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1. In 1947 Stan Lee was virtually unknown, except to the few perverse readers who paid attention to the credit lines of 3rd rate knock-off comics. But Marshall McLuhan, who himself was years away from fame, had a great radar for what was happening in popular culture. He noted a 1947 issue of Writer’s Digest where Lee wrote an article arguing “There’s Money In Comics” (which turned out to be very true for Lee, although much less true for Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko). In his 1951 book The Mechanical Bride, McLuhan used Lee’s article as a jumping off point for talking about middle- and low- brow art.
