3-D comic books: The only gimmick that ever (kind of) worked

Gimmicks have always been a thing in comic books, but for my money, only one ever really succeeded.

The only gimmick that ever really grabbed me was the one I discovered in a copy of Mr. Monster’s 3-D Hi-Octane Horror from 1986, the very first 3-D comic I ever saw and one of my favourites from a very good year for comics. I’ve always loved Michael T. Gilbert’s spunky Mr. Monster, and this one-shot featured Mr. Monster “introducing” a series of ‘50s horror reprints.

I put on the red-and-blue cardboard glasses that came with the comic and felt a wee bit of vertigo, as my eyes adjusted, and then a sense of wonder – the word balloons appeared to float, eerily, over the artwork, and the panels revealed hidden depths – sound effects danced off the page, fists and knives hovered over the backgrounds. One character even played with a paddle ball that seemed to be springing off the artwork. It was an experience that felt both intimate and cosmic, back in the day.

I was entranced, even if it was just the simple trickery of splitting the images into two fields and wearing glasses that made them seem to pop.

The ‘90s saw a flurry of strange gimmicks – gaudy foil and barely visible “hologram” covers, covers with bullet holes shot into them and a terrible gimmick in an Eclipso comic which had a plastic diamond glued to the cover, which immediately damaged any comics stored with it. None of that compared to a 3-D comic done well.

Back in the Eisenhower era, 3-D hit its brief cultural zenith. There was quite a fad for a while as 3-D movies like Creature From The Black Lagoon dazzled crowds of kids, and it carried over to comics.  3-D comics first emerged in the 1950s, with the legendary Joe Kubert one of the pioneers behind them with titles like Mighty Mouse 3-D and Superman 3-D. Jack Kirby dove right in with Captain 3-D. But along with the broader 3-D movies fad, it all pretty much faded out by the late ‘50s.

There was a brief vogue for more 3-D comics back in the ‘80s, around the time 3-D movies also made a little comeback with schlocky flicks like Friday The 13th 3-D and Jaws 3-D. It rapidly turned into a glut, with small black-and-white publishers churning out dozens of poorly done books (was anybody really asking for Hamster Vice 3-D or The California Raisins in 3-D?).

For a quality 3-D comic experience, be sure to look for the name Ray Zone. The late Ray was the king of 3-D, and any comic book he touched is far more immersive and interactive than those done by lesser converters. Back in the ‘80s he did it all by hand, painstakingly splitting the images with X-acto knives to achieve the effects he wanted.

The “big two” Marvel and DC didn’t really touch 3-D, other than a quite well-done Batman 3-D graphic novel by John Byrne towards the end of the ‘80s fad. (Weirdly, Marvel had a C-list hero called The 3-D Man who appeared in a handful of solo adventures, but nobody seems to have ever thought about actually publishing them in 3-D!)

Despite the dross, there were some solid gems out there. Eclipse Comics generally were quite good value with their 3-D publications – two issues of Seduction Of The Innocent reprint gory ‘50s crime comics with some excellent 3-D, and they produced what I’d probably say is the best 3-D comic I’ve ever seen, Scott McCloud’s amazing Three-Dimensional DESTROY!!

McCloud, the creator of Zot! and Understanding Comics, drew DESTROY!! as a goofy lark – “filled with nothing but pure senseless violence from beginning to end.” The only plot is two muscle men beating the crap out of each other for 30 pages. It’s delightfully stripped-down primal comics, published as an oversize mag and as a special 3-D version, which is utterly fantastic. Bricks float in the air as the heroes clash, shouty word balloons ripple off the page, and the escalating carnage of the story proves a perfect vehicle for showing off 3-D.

The 3-D in that was of course done by Ray Zone. The handful of non-Ray Zone 3-D comics I have are notably less well done, and just seem like gimmicky pop-up books. And you’ve got to have a good print job – a cheap Freak Brothers 3-D comic I’ve got is a sludgy mess, while what should’ve been a cool Aardvark-Vanaheim 3D special comic with the adventures of Cerebus, Ms. Tree and the Flaming Carrot is printed so badly it’s actually more readable WITHOUT the glasses.

There are downsides to 3-D. It can be difficult to focus correctly to get the intended effect. As I get older, 3-D is a little harder for me to tolerate for too long – it’s a young man’s gimmick, really. It’s not very amenable to people with vision problems and being a little bit colour-blind myself the red-green variety has never worked well for me (I’m fine with the more common red-blue, though). 3-D comics don’t seem to be made for hours of leisure reading as they usually give one a headache after a few reads, probably part of the reason they’ve always remained rather niche.

From what I can tell 3-D comics basically vanished again after their ‘80s boom, and not even the mega-success of Avatar in 2009 and the brief glut of 3-D movies it created could really revive them. There’s been a couple attempts, like the super-groovy Madman: In Your Face 3-D Special circa 2014 starring Michael Allred’s loveable oddball hero. I’d imagine putting on dorky cardboard glasses to see images leap out of the page seems painfully low-fi in an age of CGI and AI.

Yet, despite its kind of awkwardness, I’ll always be a bit fond of those great Eclipse 3-D comics of the ‘80s like Mr Monster and DESTROY!!, which were a bit magical to me. Most comic book gimmicks were just that – gimmicks.

But 3-D, when lovingly handmade by dedicated folks like Ray Zone, felt it was trying to truly take comics to another dimension. It could never entirely succeed – but it was worth the try.