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Les Daniels: Four Fabulous Decades Of Chronicling Comic Book History

Published Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:08:44 -0600

Comics historian Les Daniels (1943-2011) died in Providence, R.I. on November 5 of an apparent heart attack. Daniels was the author of numerous books on the history of American comics beginning in 1971 with Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America, and including widely-read histories such as Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics, and DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes. A prolific author, Daniels also wrote a well-regarded history of horror called Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media, and a series of five novels featuring his vampire character Don Sebastian de Villanueva. (photo at right: Les Daniels at Necon in 2001)

I've written quite a bit about comics history, both here on Bleeding Cool and years ago in the pages of Wizard magazine, and Daniels' work is important reference for the field. His book Comix was published during a two-year period which also brought us The Steranko History of Comics and the first edition of the Overstreet Price Guide (in its early years an invaluable reference itself for its organized information on what had been published, when, and by which publishers and creators), all of which served as a springboard for getting subsequent generations of fans interested in the history of American comic books.

In an interview with horror magazine Tabula Rasa in 1995, Daniels said of his comics history work:

My first book ever was a history of comics, a general history. It was called Comix, A History of Comic Books in America. That was in 1971. And that was to some extent based on my concerns, which you've been touching on earlier, about censorship, and the fact that when I was a boy in the 1950's, the horror comics were more or less banned in the United States; something that I'd been reading, specifically the EC comics Tales From The Crypt and its sister publications, like Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear. I liked comics as a form; when I was a small boy, again, I used to draw my own little comics and I thought, maybe I would get involved in that but I'm not much of an artist, and at the time I thought that you had to be able to write and draw them both, only later I realised. But rather than ever going into comics, in terms of writing, I just have this sort of sideline now of being a 'comics historian', in addition to writing the novels. I hadn't thought I would, I did the first book on comics in the early seventies, I thought that would be it. But, I was actually just called by Marvel a few years ago, and asked if I would like to write their official history, I guess because someone there had read the old book. And following that, the DC thing came up and I don't know, because those are the two big, active companies that have long histories, maybe I'm done.

But comics history kept pulling Daniels back in, and he went on to compile histories on Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Daniels also stayed active in his other passions as well — he was a regular at Northeastern Writers Conference (Necon) events, and was a frequent participant on horror film forums such as the Classic Horror Film Board up until his death. Over a long creative career, Daniels was also involved in a short horror/comedy film called Comediac, and in 1975 recorded a music album In the Soop with actor Martin Mull.

Posting in remembrance of Daniels' varied talents, Stephen Bissette said:

it must be noted for that community that since the 1990s books Les authored were all company (DC, Marvel) sanctioned projects, Les often bemoaned the great stories he wasn't permitted to share about comics history—and there were some doozies. Alas, many comics pros (rightly) complained about the laundered nature of some of those character histories (the Superman book above all), complaints Les weathered knowing had he had his way, those histories would have been far more insightful and revealing than they were. Still, it was work, and Les was a working writer.

But I think it's a fitting tribute to Daniels' career that his body of work has inspired subsequent generations of historians who will keep bringing those untold tales of comics history to light.

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