HEY KIDS COMICS VOL 03 SCHLOCK OF THE NEW (2023)

A generation of artists ashamed of their careers has come to this, scratching out a living entertaining children who wonder why anyone would want to do anything else. With the birth of the comics industry comes the afterbirth, a shadow twin that will sustain and occasionally sabotage it for generations to come...   Fandom.

With the soon-to-be self-styled greatest generation grudgingly called to war, it's high time for those back on the home front to step up and fill in for the fighting men overseas.   But when the work needs writers and artists, and the only bodies available are unambitious halfwit hacks and talentless, overeager fans...will this be what kills the comic book cash cow?

Threatened by ginned-up moral outrage, the money-minting luster of a decade ago long gone, four-color micro-moguls shoot themselves in the foot to hold on to what's left.      Meanwhile, fandom takes hold hard in a generation of young enthusiasts-but with so much of what they love gone with the wind, what's left for them?

After years of being kept at bay, a new generation finally scales the castle walls, only to discover the hacks have beaten a hasty retreat, leaving nothing behind them but nostalgia. The newcomers arrive with a bill of rights. Management hands them a bill of goods.

The 1980s births a completely unanticipated commercial and artistic renaissance...   ...but Editorial has notes.    And fans who only yesterday were sneaking time on the school office mimeograph become today's commercial comic book darlings.   WTF?

MINISERIES FINALE Who lives? Who dies? Whose (frequently doubled) voucher gets lost in the mail? HOWARD CHAYKIN's three-volume journey through comic book history concludes with one last look at how fandom-joyful, toxic, proprietary, take your pickâ€"paradigm shifted from captive audience to creative architect in no time flat. And sure, some of it didn't happen. But it's all true.