We recently connected with Arlen Schumer and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Arlen, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My most meaningful project I’ve worked on is my coffee table comic book art history book, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art (original 2003 edition published by Collectors Press; 2014 revised edition by Archway Publishing).

The idea to do a book on mainstream superhero comic book art in the 1960s–a.k.a. “The Silver Age” (as opposed to the earlier “Golden Age off the 1930s-40s, when superheroes first flourished)–goes back to legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer’s 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes, even though it’s more of a handful of wonderfully written, witty essays on specific Golden Age superheroes Feiffer followed avidly as a boy, accompanied by reprints of the origins or earliest adventures of those heroes. Feiffer may not have realized what it was like to be an 8-year old comic book fan in 1966 and hear that there was actually a book in the Fair Lawn, New Jersey public library about comics!

Then, in 1970, the great Marvel Comics artist/writer Jim Steranko wrote, designed and published the first of his twin-volume History of Comics, which remain the best books of their kind, and were—and continue to be—a source of inspiration. Except they were about the Golden Age of Comics (circa 1938-1950), the period Steranko grew up with and was affected by, not the Silver Age of comics (circa 1956-1972) that I, and the entire baby boom generation, was turned on to.

But again, that book, as serendipitous as it was, was not about the heroes or the artists I was interested in, artists whom I think rank among the greatest American artists of the 20th (and 21st) Century. Artists for whom there has never been a coffeetable book celebrating their work, the actual printed comic book art as it was transmitted and perceived by the readership, printed with ben-day dots on cheap newsprint—not the black and white original art, as beautiful as it is; that’s production art, as far as I’m concerned. And certainly not the recent spate of reprints, which, though they serve a noble purpose, remove the original coloring and replace it with garish colors on harsh white paper.

I wanted to create the first true art book about the art of the comic book artists of the Silver Age of comics. Now it is true, that most of the comics in those days were poorly printed, with mis-registrations rampant; yet there is also something beautiful about them, too, and in trying to capture the integrity of the original printed art while also “cleaning” it up, I assumed the more accurate role of art restorator: not recoloring, but retouching.

I also took license here and there to drop out original word balloon and caption text in favor of artists’ quotes or my own prose. My justification is that this book is not about the characters per se, nor is it about the “stories”; there are plenty of books about both. And not that this book is a substitute for either; of course the play’s the thing, but primarily, my entire design approach—utilizing reliefs, drop shadows and enlargements—has been to treat each spread as if it were a 13-foot by 18-foot museum wall exhibit (I suppose I have come full circle), with me as your curator, celebrating, for the first time, the glorious artwork by the greatest artists of our generation.

And that, in the end, is the true genesis of this book: I am of the generation that spent countless hours, upon days, into years reading and studying and collecting and drawing from these sacred comic books.

Arlen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Comic book art continues to infiltrate American popular culture on all fronts, from superhero movies to graphic novels! And as Roy Lichtenstein brought comic book art into the fine art world, I’ve brought it into the commercial art world via my unique illustration career, creating comic book-style art for advertising, editorial and promotional usage, becoming a member of The Society of Illustrators in the process. My backgrounds in graphic design (via Rhode Island School of Design), art direction and copywriting, combined with expertise in and enthusiasm for the comic book medium and its rich history, produce imagery that stands out from the crowd!

I draw traditionally with pencil on paper, then scan my inked work into my Mac computer, and color in Photoshop. I try to ride the line between the organic warmth that the hand-drawn line allows, with the range of fantastic coloring effects that the
computer provides—without letting the latter overwhelm the former.

At the same time, I’ve been working to get comic book art appreciated and treated seriously in the academic and cultural worlds as an indigenous American art form with a rich history, via my comic book art history “VisuaLectures” (so dubbed because “lectures” is such a pejorative, and mine are as visual as they are verbal) and verbal/visual essays (which form the basis of my book about comic book art in the 1960s, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art). I also create live lectures and webinars on a vast array of other 20th Century pop culture subjects, from the Connery Bond films to The Flintstones, with a concentration on the legendary TV series The Twilight Zone, and the music of Bruce Springsteen.

I would love to create and oversee an entire national/international advertising campaign with a major consumer client in my own comic book style, that would (possibly) involve creating custom-designed superheroes, and incorporate all of my skills as a writer, copywriter, art director, illustrator and graphic designer, and work across all platforms: print, TV and online.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Creating the first–and only–coffee table art book about the legendary TV series The Twilight Zone sent me on a journey through my own personal “twilight zone”!

Initially, the esteemed publisher Harmony Books in New York was interested in my book proposal, and I received a $10,000 advance to write and design the book.

Once I had completed my viewing of the entire series, I set about transcribing the excerpts of the philosophic dialogue and narration that creator Rod Serling & Co. famously wrote, and began to match those text excerpts with my photos of Twilight Zone episode images that I knew I wanted to treat like black and white art photography. I didn’t feel I had to keep the text and images from the same episodes together; I adopted more of a William Burroughs cut-up method.

Something strange and unique began to happen as I began to work on the layout of the actual book. Instead of a more traditional chapter book as my proposal indicated, separated in distinct categories, what began to take shape instead was more of a free-flowing, organic picture book, an adult picture book, of the series’ images and words, which now read
like poetry to me–the philosophical “visions” of The Twilight Zone, matched with its television images.

Though I was proceeding in uncharted waters, I took comfort in a film director’s adage I had read once: there is the movie you set out to make, and the movie you end up making.

Unfortunately, when I presented this idea to my editor at Harmony, she freaked. She was expecting that chapter book, and I was faced with a hard decision: either deliver the book she wanted, or return the $10,000 advance and find another publisher who’d do the book my way—a publisher who would provide at least the same advance, since I had already spent Harmony’s.

I decided not to compromise on my ideals, took the financial risk and withdrew from Harmony. Luckily, it wasn’t too long before my agent found a new publisher, Chronicle Books in San Francisco. I was able to pay Harmony back with Chronicle’s advance, and set out to complete the book with renewed vigor. I bought a classic TV set from the 1950’s and had it photographed for the cover of the book, so that the book itself would resemble a miniature TV set. I titled my finished book, Visions from The Twilight Zone.

And though many other books about The Twilight Zone have been published since mine, my book is still the only coffee table art book about the greatest television series of all time.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I love comic book art because it really taught me everything I know—and perhaps more importantly, love—about art itself. It instilled in me so many things: a love of drawing, a love of the human body (which the superhero is all about), a love of American popular culture via all those superheroes, a love of color, a love of the printed, page-turning medium.

And a love of reading itself; I remember learning to read from comic books long before I learned to read from books in school. My mother used to tell my brother and I when we got older that she once went to see the elementary school guidance counselor over her “fear” that we were only reading comic books (leftover from the 1950s scare that comics caused juvenile delinquency). Whoever that guidance counselor was, God bless ‘im, because he simply responded, “Don’t
worry; as long as they’re reading”!

And “everything I needed to know I learned from comic books,” too! The morals and ideals and lessons those superheroes stood for and taught us by proxy, like understanding the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, when to stand up for what you believe—when to fight for what you believe—have remained with me to this day.

Comic art, being a unique combination of words and pictures—each working individually but also creating a “third” artistic reality, the simultaneous, symbiotic, harmonic convergence of verbal and visual—is one of the few truly indigenous American art forms (along with jazz, baseball and musical theater). It’s not only one of the greatest forms of American popular culture of the 20th Century, with a history to rival film and rock & roll, but now, in the 21st Century, is more popular than ever, with superheroes having taken over film and television, and graphic novels becoming the lingua franca. Our entire visual culture, whether virtual or “real,” is actually a combination of words and pictures, just like comic art has always been, of its time and ahead of its time.

And comic art, being not just “pretty pictures,” but “pretty pictures” that have to tell a story, a narrative, is therefore far richer and more rewarding in content than most “fine art” I see in galleries and museums. And “content is king,” no?      

Contact Info:

• Website: www.arlenschumer.com
• Instagram: @arlenschumer
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arlenschumerNEW
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/arlen-schumer/3/164/8a7
• Twitter: @arlenschumer
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/arlen6658/videos
• Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/arlenschumer1 Print Magazine: “Arlen Schumer’s VisuaLectures: Where Comics Scholarship Meets Design Showmanship”: https://bit.ly/3CMQWb8 The Silver Age of Comic Book Art: https://bit.ly/3BUHSjP Visions from The Twilight Zone: https://amzn.to/3xZM7af The Neal Adams Sketchbook: https://amzn.to/3uATfHZ