John Hood: Carolinians Helped Shape Comic Culture
RALEIGH — Although we’re already a quarter of the way through the 21st century, much of our pop culture bears the unmistakable imprint of the previous century. You can see it in fashion, architecture, and entertainment. Check out the music even young people today are consuming. Most of the songs aren’t new, and indeed a sizable share of streamed content and movie soundtracks draw from the Great American Songbook (jazz standards and show tunes from the 1920s to the 1950s) or rock, soul, and pop songs from the 60s and 70s.
Speaking of movies, 13 of the 15 top-grossing franchises of all time feature characters our grandparents and even great-grandparents might instantly recognize (such as Batman, Captain America, James Bond, and Frodo Baggins) or homages to stories of adventure, fantasy, and science fiction from the early- to mid-20th century.
Among the inspirations for Star Wars, for example, were Flash Gordon (introduced in a 1934 comic strip by Alex Raymond) and John Carter of Mars (introduced in a 1912 story by Edgar Rice Burroughs). James Cameron also credited John Carter as an inspiration for Avatar. And when creating Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton drank from a deep well of dinosaur-themed fiction by the likes of Burroughs (At the Earth’s Core, 1914) and Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World, 1912).
While we properly associate American pop culture with places such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, I’ve recently come to appreciate the pivotal contributions of North and South Carolinians to the pulp fiction of the early 20th century and the comic-book culture that followed it.
Consider the case of O. Henry, born William Sydney Porter in 1862 in Greensboro, NC. In addition to writing such famous stories as “The Gift of the Magi” (1905) and “The Ransom of Red Chief” (1907), he created the Cisco Kid — originally a villain but later a popular hero in comic strips, radio, television, and film.
Another key figure was Thurman Scott. A Winston-Salem native, Scott co-founded an oil-burner company and then made a radical shift in career by marrying the daughter of the co-owner of Fiction House, a major producer of pulp magazines and comic books, and becoming its publisher in 1938. Fiction House help launch the careers of such notables as writer Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles), screenwriter Leigh Brackett (The Big Sleep and The Empire Strikes Back), and artist Jack Kirby (co-creator of The Avengers and The Fantastic Four, among many other comics).
Murphy Anderson, also from Greensboro, illustrated such characters as Superman, Green Lantern, the Flash, and Burroughs’ John Carter and Tarzan. Manly Wade Wellman, born in Africa but a longtime resident of Chapel Hill, wrote Burroughs-style planetary romances and many other kinds of stories before finding his niche as a writer of fantasy tales set in the North Carolina mountains.
Prominent South Carolinians in the field included Adolphe Barreaux, a Charleston native who during the 1930s became one of the first African-American writers for pulps and comics, and Dave Cockrum, a longtime resident of Belton, SC, who started out as an assistant to Murphy Anderson and later worked on such influential series as The Legion of Super-Heroes for DC and X-Men for Marvel.
For that latter job, Cockrum’s supervisor was Roy Thomas, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and co-creator of such characters as Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Luke Cage, and the Vision. During the 1970s, Thomas helped bring pulp-era characters like Tarzan, Doc Savage, and Conan the Barbarian into the realm of comics and, in the latter case, film. A Missouri native, Thomas now lives in St. Matthews, SC, and continues to create new works.
The first volume of his autobiography, A Life in Four Colors, was just released by Raleigh-based TwoMorrows Publishing. Roy Thomas will speak and sign the new book at the 2026 Edgar Rice Burroughs Convention, to be held June 25-28 in Raleigh (visit CarolinaCalots.com for more information).
The Carolinas have many claims to fame. Now you know another one!
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
