Jaime Hernandez
Jaime Hernandez is the co-creator of the alternative comic book Love and Rockets with his brothers Gilbert and Mario. Jaime Hernandez grew up in California, he is the youngest of his family, with one sister. His family embraced comics: their mother read them and old issues were kept in large quantities in the house, to be read and re-read by all over the years. "We grew up with comics," Hernandez said. "I wanted to draw comics my whole life."They read all types of comics and enjoyed those that gave a realistic depiction of family life as well as the standard superhero adventures. Hernandez was influenced by Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace and Dan DeCarlo's Archie' comics; the children in his otherwise rather realistic stories are drawn to resemble Ketcham's, Jaime's characters strike "DeCarlo-esque" poses. The work of Alex Toth, Charles Schulz, Jesse Marsh and Jack Kirby were hugely influential. Hernandez has a lifelong fascination with pro wrestling women's wrestling, it has been a regular part of his work.
Hernandez has been a lifelong punk rock fan. In addition to playing in bands himself it has been a constant element of his work, his heroine Maggie and her friends are all punk fans. Jaime's main contribution to Love and Rockets is the ongoing serial narrative Locas which follows the tangled lives of a group of Latina characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day; the two central characters of Jaime's cast are Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo and Esperanza Leticia "Hopey" Glass, whose on-again, off-again, open romance is a focus for many Locas storylines. Early on, the stories switched back and forth between Maggie's sci-fi adventures journeying around the world and working as a "prosolar" mechanic repairing rocketships, much more realistic stories of Maggie and her friends in a grungy Latin California neighborhood known as "Hoppers". Hernandez dropped all of the sci-fi elements, although he does still include references to the earlier stories and he still does occasional short stories about superheroines and other sci-fi genre elements.
The Hernandez brothers announced they were ending Love and Rockets with issue 50, that they would be doing solo books from on. For the next few years, the brothers released many solo books, with Jaime doing several books featuring his Locas characters and Maggie occupying a supporting role, they resumed doing Love and Rockets and Maggie again took center stage, but instead of the large, magazine-style format of the original issues, the book was now released in a more traditional comic book format. The entire Locas storyline to date was collected into one 700 page graphic novel in 2004. Hernandez has been praised for the physical beauty of his female characters as well as their complex personalities, for years he struggled to create comparably nuanced male characters. Hernandez has said that Maggie and Ray Dominguez both represent different aspects of his own personality. In an interview with The Comics Journal, Hernandez admitted he'd had difficulty aging his characters, because while he'd known girls like Maggie and Hopey when he was young, he'd never known them long enough to find out what they did in adulthood.
In addition to his Locas stories, Hernandez has done occasional work for DC Comics and The New Yorker, he has done many album covers for such artists as Michelle Shocked. Earlier in his career Hernandez did album covers for some "Nardcore" punk bands, such as Ill Repute and Dr. Know, the latter of whom featured his younger brother Ismael on bass. In September 2006, Hernandez created the artwork for the critically acclaimed Los Lobos album The Town and the City. In 1984-85 Gilbert and Jaime collaborated on Mister X, a sci-fi comic book series from Vortex Press, with Jaime handling the art and Gilbert and Mario plotting; the book's noirish look has been cited as an influence by the creators of Batman: The Animated Series among other retro-futuristic works. The Hernandez brothers themselves hold little affection for it, with Gilbert once describing it being "like a bad zit... it just sort of happened." The Hernandez brothers left the book. Responding to the non-payment accusations, publisher Bill Marks said "I don't dispute that one bit.
And they'll be paid every nickel of it, or every quarter of it." The Hernandez brothers were indeed paid for their work on Mister X in 1988. In 2006, Publishers Weekly ranked Hernandez' work Ghost of Hoppers second on its critics' poll of the best comic books of 2006. 1986 Kirby Award – Best Artist, Best Black-and-White Comic 1986 Inkpot Award 1989 Harvey Award – Best Continuing or Limited Series 1990 Harvey Award – Best Continuing or Limited Series 1992 Harvey Award – Best Inker 1998 Harvey Award – Best New Series 1999 Harvey Award – Best Single Issue 2000 Harvey Award – Best Inker 2001 Harvey Award – Best Artist or Penciller 2003 Harvey Award – Best Inker 2004 Harvey Award – Best Single Issue or Story 2006 Harvey Award – Best Single Issue 2007 Harvey Award – Best Cartoonist 2012 Ignatz Award - Outstanding Artist 2013 Harvey Award - Best Cartoonist (
Graphic novel
A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction, anthologized work, it is distinguished from the term "comic book", used for comics periodicals. Fan historian Richard Kyle coined the term "graphic novel" in an essay in the November 1964 issue of the comics fanzine Capa-Alpha; the term gained popularity in the comics community after the publication of Will Eisner's A Contract with God and the start of Marvel's Graphic Novel line and became familiar to the public in the late 1980s after the commercial successes of the first volume of Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1986 and the collected editions of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in 1986 and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen in 1987. The Book Industry Study Group began using "graphic novel" as a category in book stores in 2001; the term is not defined, though Merriam-Webster's full dictionary definition is "a fictional story, presented in comic-strip format and published as a book", while its simplest definition is given as "cartoon drawings that tell a story and are published as a book".
In the publishing trade, the term extends to material that would not be considered a novel if produced in another medium. Collections of comic books that do not form a continuous story, anthologies or collections of loosely related pieces, non-fiction are stocked by libraries and bookstores as "graphic novels"; the term is sometimes used to distinguish between works created as standalone stories, in contrast to collections or compilations of a story arc from a comic book series published in book form. In continental Europe, both original book-length stories such as La rivolta dei racchi by Guido Buzzelli, collections of comics have been published in hardcover volumes called "albums", since the end of the 19th century; as the exact definition of the graphic novel is debated, the origins of the form are open to interpretation. The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck is the oldest recognized American example of comics used to this end, it originated as the 1828 publication Histoire de M. Vieux Bois by Swiss caricaturist Rodolphe Töpffer, was first published in English translation in 1841 by London's Tilt & Bogue, which used an 1833 Paris pirate edition.
The first American edition was published in 1842 by Wilson & Company in New York City using the original printing plates from the 1841 edition. Another early predecessor is Journey to the Gold Diggins by Jeremiah Saddlebags by brothers J. A. D. and D. F. Read, inspired by The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck. In 1894 Caran d'Ache broached the idea of a "drawn novel" in a letter to the newspaper Le Figaro and started work on a 360-page wordless book. In the United States there is a long tradition of reissuing published comic strips in book form. In 1897 the Hearst Syndicate published such a collection of The Yellow Kid by Richard Outcault and it became a best seller; the 1920s saw a revival of the medieval woodcut tradition, with Belgian Frans Masereel cited as "the undisputed king" of this revival. His works include Passionate Journey. American Lynd Ward worked in this tradition, publishing Gods' Man, in 1929 and going on to publish more during the 1930s. Other prototypical examples from this period include American Milt Gross's He Done Her Wrong, a wordless comic published as a hardcover book, Une semaine de bonté, a novel in sequential images composed of collage by the surrealist painter Max Ernst.
Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theater? Combines images and captions; the 1940s saw the launching of Classics Illustrated, a comic-book series that adapted notable, public domain novels into standalone comic books for young readers. In 1947 Fawcett Comics published Comics Novel #1: "Anarcho, Dictator of Death", a 52-page comic dedicated to one story. In 1950, St. John Publications produced the digest-sized, adult-oriented "picture novel" It Rhymes with Lust, a film noir-influenced slice of steeltown life starring a scheming, manipulative redhead named Rust. Touted as "an original full-length novel" on its cover, the 128-page digest by pseudonymous writer "Drake Waller", penciler Matt Baker and inker Ray Osrin proved successful enough to lead to an unrelated second picture novel, The Case of the Winking Buddha by pulp novelist Manning Lee Stokes and illustrator Charles Raab. Presaging Will Eisner's multiple-story graphic novel A Contract with God, cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman wrote and drew the four-story mass-market paperback Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book, published in 1959.
By the late 1960s, American comic book creators were becoming more adventurous with the form. Gil Kane and Archie Goodwin self-published a 40-page, magazine-format comics novel, His Name Is... Savage in 1968—the same year Marvel Comics published two issues of The Spectacular Spider-Man in a similar format. Columnist and comic-book writer Steven Grant argues that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko's Doctor Strange story in Strange Tales #130–146, although published serially from 1965–1966, is "the first American graphic novel". Critic Jason Sacks referred to the 13-issue "Panther's Rage"—comics' first-known titled, self-contained, multi-issue story arc—that ran from 1973 to 1975 in the Black Panther series in Marvel's Jungle Action as "Marvel's first graphic novel". Meanwhile, in continental Europe, the tradition of collecting ser
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, is the county seat of Allegheny County. As of 2018, a population of 308,144 lives within the city limits, making it the 63rd-largest city in the U. S; the metropolitan population of 2,362,453, is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, the 26th-largest in the U. S. Pittsburgh is located in the south west of the state, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known both as "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the "City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges; the city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The city developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, shipbuilding, foods, transportation, computing and electronics.
For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment. S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out; this heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, research centers, a diverse cultural district. Today, Apple Inc. Bosch, Uber, Autodesk, Microsoft and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has served as the long-time federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, energy research and the nuclear navy; the area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The nation's eighth-largest bank, eight Fortune 500 companies, six of the top 300 U. S. law firms make their global headquarters in the area, while RAND, BNY Mellon, FedEx, Bayer and NIOSH have regional bases that helped Pittsburgh become the sixth-best area for U.
S. job growth. In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the "eleven most livable cities in the world"; the region is a hub for Environmental Design and energy extraction. In 2019, Pittsburgh was deemed “Food City of the Year” by the San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm af&co. Many restaurants were mentioned favorable, among them were Superior Motors in Braddock, Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville, Spork in Bloomfield, Fish nor Fowl in Garfield and Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette in Bloomfield. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham; as Forbes was a Scot, he pronounced the name PITS-bər-ə. Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough on April 22, 1794, with the following Act: "Be it enacted by the Pennsylvania State Senate and Pennsylvania House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania... by the authority of the same, that the said town of Pittsburgh shall be... erected into a borough, which shall be called the borough of Pittsburgh for ever."
From 1891 to 1911, the city's name was federally recognized as "Pittsburg", though use of the final h was retained during this period by the city government and other local organizations. After a public campaign, the federal decision to drop the h was reversed; the area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee and several other settled groups of Native Americans. The first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers Dutch, followed in the early 18th century. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers. During 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off; the French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims.
The French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne; the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddock's Field. General John Forbes took the forks in 1758. Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named "Pittsborough". During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes conducted a siege of Fort Pitt for two months until Colonel Henry Bouquet relieved it after the Battle of Bushy Run. Fort Pitt is notable as the site of an early use of smallpox for biological warfare. Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered blankets contaminated from smallpox victims to be distributed in 1763 to the tribes surrounding the fort; the disease spread into other areas, infected other tribes, killed hundreds of thousands. During this period, the powerful nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, had maintained control of much of the Ohio Valley as hunting grounds by right of conquest after defeating other tribes.
By the terms of the 1768 Treaty of
Fiction House
Fiction House was an American publisher of pulp magazines and comic books that existed from the 1920s to the 1950s. It was founded by John B. "Jack" Kelly and John W. Glenister. By the late 1930s, the publisher was Thurman T. Scott, its comics division was best known for its pinup-style good girl art, as epitomized by the company's most popular character, Queen of the Jungle. The company's original location was 461 Eighth Avenue in New York City. At the end of 1929, a New York Times article referred to John B. Kelly as "head" of Fiction House, Inc. and a new location of 271 Madison Avenue. In late 1932, John W. Glenister was president of Fiction House and his son-in-law, Thurman T. Scott, was secretary of the corporation. By the end of the 1930s Scott had risen to the title of publisher. In January 1950, the Manhattan-based company signed a lease for office space at 130 W. 42nd Street. Fiction House began in 1921 as a pulp-magazine publisher of aviation and sports pulps. According to co-founder John W. Glenister: During their first decade the company produced pulp magazines such as Action Stories, Air Stories, Lariat Stories, Detective Classics, The Frontier, True Adventures and Fight Stories.
Fiction House acquired other publishers' magazines, such as its 1929 acquisition of Frontier Stories from Doubleday, Doran & Co. By the 1930s, the company had expanded into detective mysteries. In late 1932, however, in the midst of the Great Depression, Fiction House cancelled 12 of its pulp magazines — Aces, Action Novels, Action Stories, Air Stories, Detective Book Magazine, Detective Classics, Fight Stories, Frontier Stories, Love Romances, North-West Stories and Wings — with the stated goal of reviving them. After a short hiatus, Action Stories resumed publishing through this period. In addition, Fiction House relaunched its pulp magazines in 1934, finding success with a number of detective and romance pulp titles; the cancelled pulps Fight Stories and Detective Book Magazine were revived in spring 1936 and in 1937 with both magazines publishing continuously into the 1950s. Fiction House's first title with science fiction interest was Jungle Stories, launched in early 1939. At the end of 1939 Fiction House decided to add an sf magazine to its line up.
By the late 1930s, publisher Thurman T. Scott expanded Fiction House into comic books, an emerging medium that began to seem a viable adjunct to the fading pulps. Receptive to a sales call by Eisner & Iger, one of the prominent "packagers" of that time which produced complete comic books on demand for publishers looking to enter the field, Scott published Jumbo Comics #1 under the company's Real Adventures Publishing Company imprint. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle appeared in that initial issue, soon becoming the company's star character. Sheena appeared in every issue of Jumbo Comics, as well as in her groundbreaking, 18-issue spin-off, Queen of the Jungle, the first comic book to title-star a female character. Other features in Jumbo Comics #1 included three by future industry legend Jack Kirby, representing his first comic-book work following his debut in Wild Boy Magazine: the science fiction feature The Diary of Dr. Hayward, the modern-West crimefighter strip Wilton of the West, Part One of the swashbuckling serialization of Alexandre Dumas, père's The Count of Monte Cristo, each four pages long.
Jumbo proved a hit, Fiction House would go on to publish Jungle Comics. Fiction House referred to these titles in its regular house ads as "The Big Six," but the company published several other titles, among them the Western-themed Indians and Firehair, jungle titles Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and Wambi, five issues of Eisner's The Spirit. Developing its own staff under editor Joe Cunningham followed by Jack Burden, Fiction House employed either in-house or on a freelance basis such artists as Mort Meskin, Matt Baker, Nick Cardy, George Evans, Bob Powell, the British Lee Elias, as well as such rare female comics artists as Ruth Atkinson, Fran Hopper, Lily Renée, Marcia Snyder; the popularity of Sheena led to numerous other Fiction House "jungle girls": Ann Mason — the mate of Ka'a'nga, Jungle King. They were war nurses, girl detectives and animal skin-clad jungle queens, they were in command. Guns blazing, daggers unsheathed, sword in hand, they leaped across the pages, ready to take on any villain.
And they did not need rescuing. Despite such pre-feminist pedigree, F
Illustrator
An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, the reason illustrations are found in children's books. Illustration is the art of making images that work with something and add to it without needing direct attention and without distracting from what they illustrate; the other thing is the focus of the attention, the illustration's role is to add personality and character without competing with that other thing. Illustrations have been used in advertisements, architectural rendering, greeting cards, books, graphic novels, manuals, magazines, video games and newspapers. A cartoon illustration can add humor to essays. Use reference images to create scenes and characters; this can be as simple as looking at an image to inspire your artwork, or creating character sketches and detailed scenes from different angles to create the basis of a picture book world.
Some traditional illustration techniques include watercolor and ink, airbrush art, oil painting, wood engraving, linoleum cuts. John Held, Jr. was an illustrator who worked in a variety of styles and media, including linoleum cuts and ink drawings, magazine cover paintings, comic strips, set design, while creating fine art with his animal sculptures and watercolor, many established illustrators attended an art school or college of some sort and were trained in different painting and drawing techniques. Traditional illustration seems to have made a resurgence in the age of social media thanks to social networks like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Traditional and digital illustration are both flourishing. Universities and art schools offer specific courses in illustration so this has become a new avenue into the profession. Many illustrators are freelance. Most scientific illustrations and technical illustrations are known as information graphics. Among the information graphics specialists are medical illustrators who illustrate human anatomy requiring many years of artistic and medical training.
A popular medium with illustrators of the 1950s and 1960s was casein, as was egg tempera. The immediacy and durability of these media suited illustration's demands well; the artwork in both types of paint withstood the rigors of travel to clients and printers without damage. Computer illustration, or digital illustration, is the use of digital tools to produce images under the direct manipulation of the artist through a pointing device, such as a tablet or a mouse. Computers changed the industry and today, many cartoonists and illustrators create digital illustrations using computers, graphics tablets, scanners. Software such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, Affinity Designer are now used by those professionals. Airbrush artist Archaeological illustration Architectural illustrator Cartoonist Fashion illustration Graphic designer Marker rendering Painters Pictorial maps Storyboard artist Stuttgart Database of Scientific Illustrators Visualizer Societies and organizationsDirectory of Illustration Illustratörcentrum Society of Illustrators American Illustration Communication Arts Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators San Francisco Society of Illustrators Society of Illustrators of Los Angeles The Association of Illustrators The Illustrators Partnership of America AIIQ – l’Association des Illustrateurs et Illustratrices du Québec Colorado Alliance of Illustrators The Association Archaeological Illustrators and Surveyors Guild of Natural Science Illustrators The Association of Medical Illustrators Guild of Natural Science Illustrators-Northwest Illustrators Australia French illustrators Urban Sketchers Official website
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
TCL Chinese Theatre is a movie palace on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6925 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood, California. Named and still known as Grauman's Chinese Theatre, it was renamed Mann's Chinese Theatre in 1973. On January 11, 2013, Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL Corporation purchased the facility's naming rights, under which it is known as TCL Chinese Theatre; the original Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre, which opened in 1922. Built by a partnership headed by Sid Grauman over 18 months starting in January 1926, the theater opened May 18, 1927, with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings, it has since been home to many premieres, including the 1977 launch of George Lucas' Star Wars, as well as birthday parties, corporate junkets, three Academy Awards ceremonies. Among the theatre's most distinctive features are the concrete blocks set in the forecourt, which bear the signatures and handprints of popular motion picture personalities from the 1920s to the present day.
In 2013, the Chinese Theatre partnered with IMAX Corporation to convert the house into a custom-designed IMAX theater. The newly renovated theater seats 932 people and features one of the largest movie screens in North America. After his success with the Egyptian Theatre, Sid Grauman turned to Charles E. Toberman to secure a long-term lease from Francis X. Bushman on property at 6925 Hollywood Blvd. the site of Bushman's mansion. In appreciation, a plaque was installed on the front of the theater dedicating it to Bushman. Toberman contracted Meyer & Holler, designer of the Egyptian, to design a "palace-type theatre" of Chinese design. Grauman financed the theater's $2.1 million cost and owned a one-third interest in the Chinese Theatre. The principal architect was Raymond M. Kennedy of Holler. During construction, Grauman hired Jean Klossner to formulate an hard concrete for the forecourt of the theater. Klossner became known as "Mr. Footprint", performing the footprint ceremonies from 1927 through 1957.
Many stories exist to explain the origins of the footprints. The theater's official account credits Norma Talmadge as having inspired the tradition when she accidentally stepped into the wet concrete. However, in a short interview during the September 13, 1937, Lux Radio Theatre broadcast of a radio adaptation of A Star Is Born, Grauman related another version of how he got the idea to put hand and foot prints in the concrete, he said. I walked right into it. While we were building the theatre, I accidentally happened to step in some soft concrete, and there it was. So, I went to Mary Pickford immediately. Mary put her foot into it." Still another account by Klossner recounts that Klossner autographed his work next to the right-hand poster kiosk and that Grauman and he developed the idea and there. His autograph and handprint, dated 1927, remain today; the theater's third founding partner, Douglas Fairbanks, was the second celebrity after Talmadge to be immortalized in the concrete. In 1929, Grauman decided to sell his share to William Fox's Fox Theatres chain.
However, just a few months Howard Hughes convinced Grauman to return to the theater because he wanted Grauman to produce the world premiere of his aviation epic Hell's Angels, which would feature one of Grauman's famous theatrical prologues before the film. Grauman remained as the theater's managing director for the entire run of Hell's Angels, retiring once again after its run finished. Unsatisfied with retirement, Grauman returned to the theater as managing director on Christmas Day 1931 and kept that position until his death in 1950. One of the highlights of the Chinese Theatre has always been its décor. In 1952, John Tartaglia, the artist of nearby Saint Sophia Cathedral, became the head interior decorator of the Chinese Theatre, as well as the theater chain owned by Fox West Coast Theatres, he continued the work of Klossner, by recommendation of J. Walter Bantau, for the Hollywood footprint ceremonies. Tartaglia performed his first ceremony as a Master Mason for Jean Simmons in 1953, for the premiere of The Robe, the first premiere in Cinemascope.
Although replacing Klossner was thought to be a temporary job for Tartaglia, his dedication resulted in a 35-year career in which he last performed as the master mason/concrete artist in honor of Eddie Murphy in May 1987. The Chinese Theatre was declared a historic and cultural landmark in 1968, has undergone various restoration projects in the years since then. Ted Mann, owner of the Mann Theatres chain and husband of actress Rhonda Fleming, purchased it in 1973. From until 2001, it was known as Mann's Chinese Theatre. In the wake of Mann's 2000 bankruptcy, a partnership of Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures acquired the theater, along with the other Mann properties and the Mann brand name. In 2000, Behr Browers Architects, a firm engaged by Mann Theatres, prepared a restoration and modernization program for the structure; the program included a seismic upgrade, new state-of-the-art sound and projection, new vending kiosks, exterior signage, the addition of a larger concession area under the balcony.
The program began in 2002 and restored the original name—"Grauman's Chinese Theatre"—to the cinema palace. As part of the upgrade, Behr Browers designed a new Chinese-themed six-plex in the attached Hollywood and Highland mall that continued to operate under the name Mann's Chinese 6 Theatre. In 2007, the CIM Group purchased the land on which the theater sits for an undisclosed
Golden Age of Comic Books
The Golden Age of Comic Books describes an era of American comic books from the late 1930s to circa 1950. During this time, modern comic books were first published and increased in popularity; the superhero archetype was created and many well-known characters were introduced, including Superman, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Wonder Woman. The first recorded use of the term "Golden Age" was by Richard A. Lupoff in an article, "Re-Birth", published in issue one of the fanzine Comic Art in April 1960. An event cited by many as marking the beginning of the Golden Age was the 1938 debut of Superman in Action Comics #1, published by Detective Comics. Superman's popularity helped make comic books a major arm of publishing, which led rival companies to create superheroes of their own to emulate Superman's success. Between 1939 and 1941 Detective Comics and its sister company, All-American Publications, introduced popular superheroes such as Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Doctor Fate, the Atom, Green Arrow and Aquaman.
Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, had million-selling titles featuring the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America. Although DC and Timely characters are well-remembered today, circulation figures suggest that the best-selling superhero title of the era was Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel with sales of about 1.4 million copies per issue. The comic was published biweekly at one point to capitalize on its popularity. Patriotic heroes donning red and blue were popular during the time of the second World War following The Shield's debut in 1940. Many heroes of this time period battled the Axis powers, with covers such as Captain America Comics #1 showing the title character punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler; as comic books grew in popularity, publishers began launching titles that expanded into a variety of genres. Dell Comics' non-superhero characters outsold the superhero comics of the day; the publisher featured licensed movie and literary characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roy Rogers and Tarzan.
It was during this era. Additionally, MLJ's introduction of Archie Andrews in Pep Comics #22 gave rise to teen humor comics, with the Archie Andrews character remaining in print well into the 21st century. At the same time in Canada, American comic books were prohibited importation under the War Exchange Conservation Act which restricted the importation of non-essential goods; as a result, a domestic publishing industry flourished during the duration of the war which were collectively informally called the Canadian Whites. The educational comic book Dagwood Splits. According to historian Michael A. Amundson, appealing comic-book characters helped ease young readers' fear of nuclear war and neutralize anxiety about the questions posed by atomic power, it was during this period that long-running humor comics debuted, including EC's Mad and Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge in Dell's Four Color Comics. In 1953, the comic book industry hit a setback when the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency was created in order to investigate the problem of juvenile delinquency.
After the publication of Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent the following year that claimed comics sparked illegal behavior among minors, comic book publishers such as EC's William Gaines were subpoenaed to testify in public hearings. As a result, the Comics Code Authority was created by the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers to enact self-censorship by comic book publishers. At this time, EC canceled its crime and horror titles and focused on Mad. During the late 1940s, the popularity of superhero comics waned. To retain reader interest, comic publishers diversified into other genres, such as war, science fiction, romance and horror. Many superhero titles were converted to other genres. In 1946, DC Comics' Superboy and Green Arrow were switched from More Fun Comics into Adventure Comics so More Fun could focus on humor. In 1948 All-American Comics, featuring Green Lantern, Johnny Thunder and Dr. Mid-Nite, was replaced with All-American Western; the following year, Flash Comics and Green Lantern were cancelled.
In 1951 All Star Comics, featuring the Justice Society of America, became All-Star Western. The next year Star Spangled Comics, featuring Robin, was retitled Star Spangled War Stories. Sensation Comics, featuring Wonder Woman, was cancelled in 1953; the only DC superhero comics to continue publishing through the 1950s were Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Detective Comics, Superboy, Wonder Woman and World's Finest Comics. Plastic Man appeared in Quality Comics' Police Comics until 1950, when its focus switched to detective stories but his solo title continued bimonthly until issue 64, cover dated November 1956. Timely Comics' The Human Torch was canceled with issue #35 and Marvel Mystery Comics, featuring the Human Torch, with issue #93 became the horror comic Marvel Tales. Sub-Mariner Comics was cancelled with issue #42 and Captain America Comics, by Captain America's Weird Tales, with #75. Harvey Comics' Black Cat was cancelled in 1951 and rebooted as a horror comic that year—the title would change to Black Cat Mystery, Black Cat Mystic, Black Cat Western for the final two issues, which included Black Cat stories.
Lev Gleason Publications' Daredevil was edged out of his title by the Little Wise Guys in 1950. Fawcett Comics' Whiz Comics, Master Comics and Captain Marvel Adventure
