title: Ramesses I

text: Horemheb himself had been a nobleman from outside the immediate royal family, who rose through the ranks of the Egyptian army to serve as the royal advisor to Tutankhamun and Ay and, ultimately, pharaoh. Since Horemheb had no surviving children, he ultimately chose Ramesses to be his heir in the final years of his reign presumably because Ramesses I was both an able administrator and had a son (Seti I) and a grandson (the future Ramesses II) to succeed him and thus avoid any succession difficulties.


title: Ramesses I

text: Upon his accession, Ramesses assumed a prenomen, or royal name. When transliterated, the name is "mn-pḥty-rʿ", which is usually interpreted as Menpehtyre, meaning "Established by the strength of Ra". However, he is better known by his nomen, or personal name. This is transliterated as "rʿ-ms-sw", and is usually realised as Ramessu or Ramesses, meaning 'Ra bore him'. Already an old man when he was crowned, Ramesses appointed his son, the later pharaoh Seti I, to serve as the Crown Prince and chosen successor. Seti was charged with undertaking several military operations during this time–in particular, an attempt to recoup some of Egypt's lost possessions in Syria. Ramesses appears to have taken charge of domestic matters: most memorably, he completed the second pylon at Karnak Temple, begun under Horemheb.


title: Ramesses I

text: Ramesses I enjoyed a very brief reign, as evidenced by the general paucity of contemporary monuments mentioning him: the king had little time to build any major buildings in his reign and was hurriedly buried in a small and hastily finished tomb. The Egyptian priest Manetho assigns him a reign of 16 months, but this pharaoh certainly ruled Egypt for a minimum of 17 months based on his highest known date which is a Year 2 II Peret day 20 (Louvre C57) stela which ordered the provision of new endowments of food and priests for the temple of Ptah within the Egyptian fortress of Buhen. Jürgen von Beckerath observes that Ramesses I died just 5 months later—in June 1290 BC—since his son Seti I succeeded to power on III Shemu day 24. Ramesses I's only known action was to order the provision of endowments for the aforementioned Nubian temple at Buhen and "the construction of a chapel and a temple (which was to be finished by his son) at Abydos." The aged Ramesses was buried in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb, discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817 and designated KV16, is small in size and gives the impression of having been completed with haste. Joyce Tyldesley states that Ramesses I's tomb consisted of a single corridor and one unfinished room whose walls, after a hurried coat of plaster, were painted to show the king with his gods, with Osiris allowed a prominent position. The red granite sarcophagus too was painted rather than carved with inscriptions which, due to their hasty preparation, included a number of unfortunate errors.


title: Ramesses I

text: Seti I, his son and successor, later built a small chapel with fine reliefs in memory of his deceased father Ramesses I at Abydos. In 1911, John Pierpont Morgan donated several exquisite reliefs from this chapel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.


title: Ramesses I

text: A mummy currently believed to be that of Ramesses I was stolen from Egypt and displayed in a private Canadian museum for many years before being repatriated. The mummy's identity cannot be conclusively determined, but is most likely to be that of Ramesses I based on CT scans, X-rays, skull measurements and radio-carbon dating tests by researchers at Emory University, as well as aesthetic interpretations of family resemblance. Moreover, the mummy's arms were found crossed high across his chest which was a position reserved solely for Egyptian royalty until 600 BC.


title: Ramesses I

text: The mummy had been stolen from the Royal Cache in Deir el-Bahari by the Abu-Rassul family of grave robbers and sold by Turkish vice-consular agent Mustapha Aga Ayat at Luxor to Dr. James Douglas who brought it to North America around 1860. Douglas used to purchase Egyptian antiquities for his friend Sydney Barnett who then placed it in the Niagara Museum and Daredevil Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls Ontario, Canada. The mummy remained there, its identity unknown, next to other curiosities and so-called freaks of nature for more than 130 years. When the owner of the museum decided to sell his property, Canadian businessman William Jamieson purchased the contents of the museum and, with the help of Canadian Egyptologist Gayle Gibson, identified their great value. In 1999, Jamieson sold the Egyptian artifacts in the collection, including the various mummies, to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia for US $2 million. The mummy was returned to Egypt on October 24, 2003 with full official honors and is on display at the Luxor Museum.


title: Ramesses I

text: The 1956 motion picture "The Ten Commandments", directed by Cecil B. DeMille, depicts Ramesses I (portrayed by Ian Keith) as the pharaoh who orders the elimination of the first-born of every Hebrew slave family in Egypt, leading to the scenario of future prophet Moses being sheltered by Bithiah, who in the film is said to be the daughter of Ramesses I and sister of Seti I. However, this is artistic license, for in Exodus 1:15-22, the name of the pharaoh is not given.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man's scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: The novel is a fix-up of three short stories Miller published in "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" that were inspired by the author's participation in the bombing of the monastery at the Battle of Monte Cassino during World War II. The book is considered one of the classics of science fiction and has never been out of print. Appealing to mainstream and genre critics and readers alike, it won the 1961 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel, and its themes of religion, recurrence, and church versus state have generated a significant body of scholarly research. A sequel, "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman", was published posthumously in 1997.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: By 1955, Walter M. Miller Jr. had published over 30 science fiction short stories in such magazines as "Astounding Science Fiction", "Amazing Stories", and "Fantastic Adventures". Significant themes of his stories included loss of scientific knowledge or "socio-technological regression and its presumed antithesis, continued technological advance", its preservation through oral transmission, the guardianship of archives by priests, and "that side of [human] behavior which can only be termed religious". These thematic elements, combined with the growing subgenre of the "post-disaster" story and Miller's own experiences during World War II, set the stage for the short story that would become the opening section of "A Canticle for Leibowitz".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: During World War II, Miller served as a radioman and tail gunner in a bomber crew that participated in the destruction of the 6th-century Christian monastery at Monte Cassino, Italy, founded by St. Benedict and recognized as the oldest surviving Christian church in the Western world. This experience impressed him enough to write, a decade later, the short story "A Canticle for Leibowitz", about an order of monks whose abbey springs from the destroyed world around it. The story, which would evolve into "Fiat Homo", the first of three parts of the fix-up novel, was published in the April 1955 edition of "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" ("F&SF").


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Although not originally intended as a serialization, the saga continued in "And the Light Is Risen", which was published in August 1956 (also in "F&SF"). That work would later grow into "Fiat Lux", the second part of the novel. It was while writing the third story, "The Last Canticle", for magazine publication in February of the following year that Miller realized he was really completing a novel: "Only after I had written the first two and was working on the third did it dawn on me that this isn't three novelettes, it's a novel. And I converted it".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: The publication of the three "Canticle" stories, along with Miller's "The Lineman", in "F&SF", marked a significant evolution in the writer's craft. Under the editorship of Anthony Boucher, "F&SF" possessed a reputation for publishing works with "careful writing and characterization". Walker Percy considered the magazine "high-class sci-fi pulp". The appearance of these stories in the magazine is indicative of the direction Miller's writing had taken toward human' stories, less crowded with incident, more concerned with values".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: "A Canticle for Leibowitz" was the only novel Miller published during his lifetime. For the fix-up, Miller did not just collate the three short stories. He changed the title and the names of some characters, added new characters, changed the nature and prominence of existing characters, and added Latin passages. These revisions affected the religious and recurrence themes of the story, improving it from the magazine version.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: The Latin phrases in the novel relate to Roman Catholic Church practices, rituals and official communications. Susan Olsen writes that Miller did not include the Latin phrases just to "add dignity" to the work, but to emphasize its religious themes, making it consonant with the tradition of Judeo-Christian writings.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Changing the name of the abbot of the first part from "Father Juan" to "Abbot Arkos" strengthened the cyclical/recurrence motif, since the name of the first abbot encountered, "Arkos", begins with the first letter of the Latin alphabet and the name of the last abbot, "Zerchi", begins with the last letter. Miller also expanded certain scenes, increasing their importance: for instance, the initial encounter between Brother Francis and Abbot Arkos in "Fiat Homo" grew from two pages in the short story to eight pages in the novel. Abbot Arkos was shown to possess doubts and uncertainty, unlike the dogmatism of Father Juan.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Miller also used the adaptation process to add a significant layer of complexity to the story. Walker Percy recognized this dimension of the novel, which he compared to a "cipher, a coded message, a book in a strange language". David Seed deemed the novel "charged with half-concealed meaning", an intricacy that seems to have been added as Miller was revising the stories for publication as a novel. Decoding messages such as this is an important activity in Miller's works, both in "A Canticle for Leibowitz" and in his short stories. For example, in the original version of "Fiat Homo", Miller limits his "wordplay" to an explicit symbolism involving the letter "V" and Brother Francis' "Voice/Vocation" during Francis' encounter with the wandering pilgrim. In the novel, however, "Miller reserves such symbolistic cross-references to the more intellectual analysts and builds a comedy of incomprehension around Francis".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Miller's extensive experience in writing for science fiction magazines contributed to his achievement with "A Canticle for Leibowitz". His strengths were with the medium lengths of the short story, novelette, and short novel, where he effectively combined character, action, and import. The success of this full-length novel rests on its tripartite structure: each section is "short novel size, with counterpoint, motifs, and allusions making up for the lack of more ordinary means of continuity".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: "A Canticle for Leibowitz" was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. as a hardcover in 1960 with a 1959 copyright, and two reprints appeared within the first year. More than 40 new editions and reprints have appeared for the book, which has never been out of print. It often appears on "best of" lists, and has been recognized three times with Locus Poll Awards for best all-time science fiction novel.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: After 20th-century civilization was destroyed by a global nuclear war, known as the "Flame Deluge", there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led to the development of nuclear weapons. During this backlash, called the "Simplification", anyone of learning, and eventually anyone who could even read, was likely to be killed by rampaging mobs, who proudly took on the name of "Simpletons". Illiteracy became almost universal, and books were destroyed en masse.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Isaac Edward Leibowitz, a Jewish electrical engineer working for the United States military, survived the war and sought refuge from the mobs of the "Simplification" in the sanctuary of a Cistercian monastery, all the while surreptitiously searching for his wife, from whom he had become separated in the war. Eventually concluding that his wife was dead, he joined the monastery, took holy orders (becoming a priest), and dedicated his life to preserving knowledge by hiding books, smuggling them to safety (known as "booklegging"), memorizing, and copying them. He approached the Church for permission to found a new monastic order dedicated to this purpose. With permission granted, he founded his new order in the desert of the American Southwest, where it became known as the "Albertian Order of Leibowitz". The Order's abbey is located in a remote desert in Utah, possibly near the military base where Leibowitz worked before the war, on an old road that may have been "a portion of the shortest route from the Great Salt Lake to Old El Paso". Leibowitz was eventually betrayed and martyred. Later beatified by the Roman Catholic Church, he became a candidate for sainthood.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Six hundred years after his death, the abbey still preserves the "Memorabilia", the collected writings and artifacts of 20th-century civilization that survived the Flame Deluge and the Simplification, in the hope that they will help future generations reclaim forgotten science.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: The story is structured in three parts: "", "", and "". The parts are separated by periods of six centuries each.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: In the 26th century, a 17-year-old novice named Brother Francis Gerard is on a vigil in the Utah desert. While searching for a rock to complete a shelter from the desert wolves, Brother Francis encounters a vagrant Wanderer, apparently looking for the abbey, who inscribes Hebrew on a rock that appears to be the perfect fit for the shelter. When Brother Francis picks up the rock, he discovers the entrance to an ancient fallout shelter containing "relics", such as handwritten notes on crumbling memo pads bearing cryptic texts resembling a 20th-century shopping list. He soon realizes that these notes appear to have been written by Leibowitz, his order's founder. The discovery of the ancient documents causes an uproar at the monastery, as the other monks speculate that the relics once belonged to Leibowitz. Brother Francis's account of the Wanderer, who ultimately never turned up at the abbey, is also greatly embellished by the other monks amid rumours that he was an apparition of Leibowitz himself; Francis strenuously denies the embellishments, but equally persistently refuses to deny that the encounter occurred, despite the lack of other witnesses. Abbot Arkos, the head of the monastery, worries that the discovery of so many potentially holy relics in such a short period may cause delays in Leibowitz's canonization process. Francis is banished back to the desert to complete his vigil and defuse the sensationalism.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Many years later, the abbey is visited by Monsignors Aguerra (God's Advocate) and Flaught (the Devil's Advocate), the Church's investigators in the case for Leibowitz's sainthood. Leibowitz is eventually canonized as Saint Leibowitz – based partly on the evidence Francis discovered in the shelter – and Brother Francis is sent to New Rome to represent the Order at the canonization Mass. He brings with him the documents found in the shelter, and an illumination of one of the documents on which he has spent years working, as a gift to the Pope.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: En route, he is robbed by "The Pope's Children" – an affectionate name for outcast genetic mutants who are the descendants of fallout victims – and his illumination is taken, though he negotiates with the robbers to keep the original blueprint on which the illuminated copy was based. Francis completes the journey to New Rome and is granted an audience with the Pope. Francis presents the Pope with the remaining blueprint, and the Pope comforts Francis by giving him gold with which to ransom back the illumination; however, Francis is killed during his return trip by the Pope's Children, receiving an arrow in the face. The Wanderer discovers and buries Francis's body. The narrative then focuses on the buzzards who were denied their meal by the burial; they fly over the Great Plains and find much food near the Red River until a city-state, based in Texarkana, rises.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: In 3174, the Albertian Order of Saint Leibowitz is still preserving the half-understood knowledge from before the Flame Deluge and the subsequent Age of Simplification. The new Dark Age is ending, however, and a new Renaissance is beginning. Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, a highly regarded secular scholar, is sent by his cousin Hannegan, Mayor of Texarkana, to the abbey. Thon Taddeo, frequently compared to Galileo, is interested in the Order's preserved collection of Memorabilia.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: At the abbey, Brother Kornhoer, a talented engineer, has just finished work on a "generator of electrical essences", a treadmill-powered electrical generator that powers an arc lamp. He gives credit for the generator to work done by Thon Taddeo. Arriving at the monastery, Thon Taddeo immediately recognizes the significance of Brother Kornhoer's pioneering work. By studying the Memorabilia, Thon Taddeo makes several major "discoveries", and asks the abbot to allow the Memorabilia to be removed to Texarkana. The Abbot Dom Paulo refuses, offering to allow the Thon to continue his research at the abbey instead. Before departing, the Thon comments that it could take decades to finish analyzing the Memorabilia.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Meanwhile, Hannegan makes an alliance with the kingdom of Laredo and the neighboring, relatively civilized city-states against the threat of attack from nomadic warriors living on the plains. Hannegan, however, is secretly manipulating the regional politics to effectively neutralize all of his enemies, leaving him in control of the entire region. Monsignor Apollo, the papal nuncio to Hannegan's court, sends word to New Rome that Hannegan intends to attack the Empire of Denver next, and that he intends to use the abbey as a base of operations from which to conduct the campaign. For his actions, Apollo is executed, and Hannegan initiates a church schism, declaring loyalty to the Pope to be punishable by death. The Church excommunicates Hannegan.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: In the year 3781, mankind has emerged into a new technological age, and now possesses nuclear energy and weapons again, as well as starships and extrasolar colonies. Two world superpowers, the Asian Coalition and the Atlantic Confederacy, have been embroiled in a cold war for 50 years. The Leibowitzian Order's mission of preserving the Memorabilia has expanded to the preservation of all knowledge.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Rumors that both sides are assembling nuclear weapons in space, and that a nuclear weapon has been detonated, increase public and international tensions. At the abbey, the current abbot, Dom Jethras Zerchi, recommends to New Rome that the Church reactivate the ("Whither wanders the flock, the shepherd is with them"), a contingency plan in the case of another global apocalypse which involves "certain vehicles" the Church has had since 3756. A "nuclear incident" occurs in the Asian Coalition city of Itu Wan: an underground nuclear explosion has destroyed the city, and the Atlantic Confederacy counters by firing a "warning shot" over the South Pacific. Rumors swirl about whether the city's devastation was deliberate or accidental.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: New Rome tells Zerchi to proceed with , and to plan for departure within three days. He appoints Brother Joshua as mission leader, telling him that the mission is an emergency plan for perpetuating the Church on extrasolar colony planets in the event of a nuclear war on Earth. The Order's Memorabilia will also accompany the mission. That night the Atlantic Confederacy launches an assault against Asian Coalition space platforms. The Asian Coalition responds by using a nuclear weapon against the Confederacy capital city of Texarkana, which kills millions of people. A ten-day cease-fire is issued by the World Court. Brother Joshua and the space-trained monks and priests depart on a secret chartered flight for New Rome, hoping to leave Earth on the starship before the cease-fire ends.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: During the cease-fire, the abbey offers shelter to refugees fleeing the regions affected by fallout, which results in a battle of wills over the euthanasia of hopelessly irradiated refugees between the abbot and a doctor from a government emergency response camp. The war resumes, and a nuclear explosion occurs near the abbey. Abbot Zerchi tries to flee to safety, bringing with him the abbey's ciborium containing consecrated hosts, but it is too late. He is trapped by the falling walls of the abbey and finds himself lying under tons of rock and bones as the abbey's ancient crypts disgorge their contents. Among them is a skull with an arrow's shaft protruding from its forehead (presumably that of Brother Francis Gerard from the first section of the book).


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: As he lies dying under the abbey's rubble, Zerchi is startled to encounter Mrs. Grales/Rachel, a tomato peddler and two-headed mutant. However, Mrs. Grales has been rendered unconscious by the explosion, and appears to be dying herself. As Zerchi tries to conditionally baptize Rachel, she refuses, and instead takes the ciborium and administers the Eucharist to him. It is implied that she is, like the Virgin Mary, exempt from original sin. Zerchi soon dies, having witnessed an apparent miracle.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: After the abbot's death, the scene briefly flashes to Joshua and the crew, who are preparing to launch as the nuclear explosions begin. Joshua, the last crew member to board the starship, knocks the dirt from his sandals (a reference to Matthew 10:14, "If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet"), murmuring "" ("Thus passes the world", a play on the phrase , "thus passes the glory of the world").


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: As a coda, a final vignette depicts the ecological aspects of the war: seabirds and fish succumb to the poisonous fallout, and a shark evades death only by moving to particularly deep water, where, it is noted, the shark was "very hungry that season".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Scholars and critics have noted the theme of cyclic history or recurrence in Miller's works, epitomized in "A Canticle for Leibowitz". David Seed, in discussing the treatment of nuclear holocaust in science fiction in his book "American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film" (1992), states, "it was left to Walter M. Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" to show recurrence taking place in a narrative spanning centuries". David N. Samuelson, whose 1969 doctoral dissertation is considered the "best overall discussion" of the book, calls the "cyclical theme of technological progress and regress ... the foundation-stone on which "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is built".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: The story's circular structure – and the cyclical history it presents – support a number of thematic and structural elements which unify its three sections. Although the novel's events take place in a fictional future, the three parts allegorically represent crucial phases of Western history. The first section, "Fiat Homo", depicts a Church preserving civilization, a counterpart to the "Age of Faith" after the Fall of Rome. The action of the second part, "Fiat Lux", focuses on a renaissance of "secular learning", echoing the "divergences of Church and State and of science and faith". "Fiat Voluntas Tua", the final part, is the analog of contemporary civilization, with its "technological marvels, its obsessions with material, worldly power, and its accelerating neglect of faith and the spirit".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: In her analysis of Miller's fiction, Rose Secrest connects this theme directly to one of Miller's earlier short fiction works, quoting a passage from "The Ties that Bind", published in the May 1954 edition of "If" magazine: "All societies go through three phases... First there is the struggle to integrate in a hostile environment. Then, after integration, comes an explosive expansion of the culture-conquest... Then a withering of the mother culture, and the rebellious rise of young cultures".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: The third part, "Fiat Voluntas Tua", includes a debate between future Church and state stances on abortion and euthanasia, a thematic issue representative of the larger conflict between Church and state. Literary critic Edward Ducharme claimed that "Miller's narrative continually returns to the conflicts between the scientist's search for truth and the state's power".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Initial response to the novel was mixed, but it drew responses from newspapers and magazines normally inattentive to science fiction. "A Canticle for Leibowitz" was reviewed in such notable publications as "Time", "The New Yorker", "The New York Times Book Review", and "The Spectator". While "The New Yorker" was negative – calling Miller a "dull, ashy writer guilty of heavy-weight irony" – "The Spectator's" was mixed. Also unimpressed, "Time" said, "Miller proves himself chillingly effective at communicating a kind of post-human lunar landscape of disaster", but dubbed it intellectually lightweight. The "New York Times Book Review"s Martin Levin, however, hailed the work as an "ingenious fantasy". The "Chicago Tribune" gave the book unusual exposure outside the genre in a front-page review in the "Chicago Tribune Magazine of Books", reviewer Edmund Fuller calling the book "an extraordinary novel". Rating it five stars out of five, Floyd C. Gale of "Galaxy Science Fiction" said that "It has many passages of remarkable power and deserves the widest possible audience". A decade later, "Time" re-characterized its opinion of the book, calling it "an extraordinary novel even by literary standards, [which] has flourished by word of mouth for a dozen years". After criticizing unrealistic science fiction, Carl Sagan in 1978 listed "A Canticle for Leibowitz" as among stories "that are so tautly constructed, so rich in the accommodating details of an unfamiliar society that they sweep me along before I have even a chance to be critical".


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: "A Canticle for Leibowitz" was an early example of a genre story becoming a mainstream best-seller after large publishers entered the science-fiction market. In 1961 it was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel by The World Science Fiction Convention. In the years since, praise for the work has been consistently high. It is considered a "science-fiction classic ... [and] is arguably the best novel written about nuclear apocalypse, surpassing more popularly known books like "On the Beach"". The book has also generated a significant body of literary criticism, including numerous literature journal articles, books and college courses. Acknowledging its serialization roots, literary critic David N. Samuelson writes that the novel "may be the one universally acknowledged literary masterpiece to emerge from magazine SF". Fellow critic David Cowart places the novel in the realm of works by Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Percy, in 1975 stating it "stands for many readers as the best novel ever written in the genre". Percy, a National Book Award recipient, declared the book "a mystery: it's as if everything came together by some felicitous chance, then fell apart into normal negative entropy. I'm as mystified as ever and hold 'Canticle' in even higher esteem". Scholars and critics have explored the many themes encompassed in the novel, frequently focusing on its motifs of religion, recurrence, and church versus state.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: A 15-part full-cast abridged serial of the novel was adapted for radio by John Reeves and broadcast in 1981 by National Public Radio (NPR). Directed by Karl Schmidt, it was produced by him with Marv Nonn. Carol Cowan narrated the production.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: In 1992, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 90-minute dramatization of the first two parts, "Fiat Homo" and "Fiat Lux", with Andrew Price as Brother Francis and Michael McKenzie as Dom Paulo. The adaptation was by Donald Campbell and it was directed by Hamish Wilson.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: A 2012 adaptation of "Fiat Homo, Part One of A Canticle For Leibowitz" read by Nigel Lindsay, abridged by Nick McCarty and produced by Philippa Geering for BBC Radio 4 Extra, was broadcast in five 30-minute parts.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: Toward the end of his life, Miller wrote another installment of the Abbey of Saint Leibowitz saga, "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman". A full-length novel (455 pages) significantly longer than its predecessor, it is set in AD 3254, eighty years after the events of "Fiat Lux" but several centuries before "Fiat Voluntas Tua". Suffering from writer's block and fearful the new work would go unfinished, Miller arranged with author Terry Bisson to complete it. Bisson said all he did was go in and tie up the loose ends Miller had left. The novel tells the story of Brother Blacktooth St. George of the Leibowitzian abbey who, unlike Brother Francis, wants to be released from his holy vows and leave the abbey. In addition to recounting his travels as Cardinal Brownpony's personal secretary, the book describes the political situation in the 33rd century as the Church and the Texark Empire vie for power. Miller died before the novel's publication.


title: A Canticle for Leibowitz

text: "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" has been called "Walter Miller's other novel". Reviewer Steven H. Silver points out that this "is not to say that "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman" does not deserve to be read. It is a fantastic novel, only suffering in comparison to Miller's earlier work".


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: DSC Arminia Bielefeld (; full name: ; commonly known as Arminia Bielefeld (), also known as "Die Arminen" or "Die Blauen" ), or just Arminia (), is a German sports club from Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia. Arminia offers the sports of football, field hockey, figure skating, and cue sports. The club has 12,000 members and the club colours are black, white and blue. Arminia's name derives from the Cheruscan chieftain Arminius, who defeated a Roman army in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The club is most commonly known for its professional football team, which currently plays in the 2. Bundesliga. The team mostly played in the first or second tier of the German football league system, among them 17 seasons in the Bundesliga. Arminia's most successful years were the 1920s, the early 1980s and the middle 2000s. In 1947 and in the 1950s Arminia had sunk down to a team playing in a rather local area in the third tier (later third tiers covered larger areas).


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia has been playing their home games at the Bielefelder Alm Stadium since 1926. Since 2004 the stadium has been named "SchücoArena" through a sponsorship deal.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia Bielefeld was founded on 3 May 1905 as "1. Bielefelder FC Arminia". The fourteen men who founded the club were from the local bourgeoisie. Two weeks later, the club played its first match against a team from Osnabrück. Neither the name of the opponent nor the result are known. The club was admitted to the German Football Association in the same year and started to play in a league (in one consisting only of Arminia and three teams from Osnabrück, at first) in 1906. In 1907, local rivals "FC Siegfried" joined Arminia, a move which strengthened Arminia's squad. Soon other clubs from Bielefeld joined League football.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: After playing on various grounds, Arminia moved to a new home at the Pottenau in 1910. Their first big achievement came in 1912, when they won the Westphalian championship after a 5–1 win over BV 04 Dortmund in the final. The outbreak of World War I interrupted Arminia's rise to the top. In 1919, Arminia merged with "Bielefelder Turngemeinde 1848" to form "TG Arminia Bielefeld". However, the two merged teams dissolved the merger in 1922 and both parent clubs were formed again.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia won the West German championship in 1922. Originally, they were level on points with Kölner BC 01, but Köln fielded an ineligible player in one match. Arminia played for the first time in the German Championships but were eliminated in the quarter-finals after losing 0–5 to FC Wacker München. In 1923, Arminia won their second West German championship in a dramatic way. They trailed TuRU Düsseldorf 1–3 at half time of the final, but came from behind to win 4–3 after extra time. Arminia faced Union Oberschöneweide in the quarter-finals of the German championships. The match ended goalless, so a replay was held. Arminia led 1–0 and suffered the equalizer in injury time. The Berlin side won the match after extra time. Walter Claus-Oehler became Arminia's first player to win a cap in the German national team. Arminia won further Westphalian titles from 1924 to 1927 but were unable to repeat their success in the West German Championships. A match between SC Preußen Münster and Arminia in November 1925 was the first football match to be broadcast on German Radio. On 30 January 1926, the club took its current name "Deutscher Sportclub Arminia Bielefeld". Their next piece of silverware was won in 1932 with a triumph in the Westphalian cup.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: In 1933, Arminia qualified for the Gauliga Westfalen, from which they were relegated after the inaugural season. Three attempts of gaining promotion failed before their return to the top flight was won in 1938. Their best performance in the Gauliga was the 1939–40 campaign, where Arminia finished second. Two years later, Arminia was one of only two teams to win a match at Schalke 04. On 25 July 1943 Arminia merged with local rivals "VfB 03 Bielefeld". The merger finished the 1943–44 season in last place.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: After World War II, a new league with all teams who competed in the Gauliga Westfalen was formed. Arminia were relegated and failed to win re-promotion. In 1947–48, Arminia were a third division side for the first time in their history. After a dominating season in the Bezirksklasse, Arminia was docked 14 points because they fielded an ineligible player. The next season was already under way when the Landesliga (II) was expanded by two teams. Arminia took their chance, won the league and gained promotion to the Oberliga West.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The dream lasted for only a year. Arminia beat Schalke 04 4–2 at home but finished only second from the bottom. In 1954, Arminia were even relegated to the third tier, the "Landesliga Westfalen, Gruppe Ostwestfalen", a league only covering the north-eastern part of Westphalia. In 1956, Arminia qualified for a new third tier, the "Verbandsliga Westfalen, Gruppe Ostwestfalen", which encompassed a slightly larger area. Only in 1962, Arminia became a second division side again (then: 2. Liga West, covering the whole of North Rhine-Westphalia). In 1962–63, they struggled to finish in seventh place to secure a spot in the newly formed Regionalliga West, which was situated directly below the new Bundesliga.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia finished their first seasons in mid-table, but became one of the better Regionalliga teams later on. In 1966, Arminia beat Alemannia Aachen to claim the West German Cup for the first time. A year later, forward Ernst Kuster joined the team and went on to become the club's all-time leading goal scorer. A 0–1 loss to Wuppertaler SV on the last day of the 1966–67 season stopped Arminia entering the Bundesliga promotion play-offs. Arminia were runners-up in the 1969–70 season and won their first promotion to the Bundesliga after a 2–0 win at Tennis Borussia Berlin in the play-offs.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The team had a poor start in their first Bundesliga season, but results improved and they eventually finished 14th. However, near the end of the season it was discovered that Arminia had engaged in match-fixing; three of the ten Bundesliga games which were proven to have been manipulated through bribery directly involved Arminia. Two players at the club were banned from football for life (Waldemar Slomiany and Jürgen Neumann). Arminia was allowed to play the 1971–72 season in the Bundesliga, but were automatically relegated to the Regionalliga as a penalty. Arminia struggled in the following seasons, but were good enough to be appointed to the newly formed 2. Bundesliga in 1974.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: After two seasons in mid-table, Arminia had good chances of returning to the Bundesliga in 1976–77 but they finished only as runner-up behind FC St. Pauli. They faced TSV 1860 München in a two-legged play-off whose winner would win promotion to the top flight. Arminia won the first match at home 4–0, but lost the second leg in Munich 0–4. A third match had to be played in Frankfurt which Munich won 2–0.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The team was shocked but bounced back to win promotion in 1977–78. Arminia started well and on 10 March 1979, they won 4–0 at Bayern Munich. However, Arminia were hit by a slump and were relegated again. The club managed to keep the team together and bounced back after a record-breaking year. They won 30 of 38 matches, scored 120 goals, had a 28 match unbeaten streak and set a league record by beating Arminia Hannover 11–0.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia struggled to avoid relegation and managed to stay in the Bundesliga for five years, including two finishes in eighth place in 1982–83 and 1983–84 seasons. Furthermore, Arminia took part in the UEFA Intertoto Cup three times. An ugly event shocked Germany when Werder Bremen defender Norbert Siegmann slashed Ewald Lienen's right thigh during a match. The success on the pitch did not prevent the club from suffering declining attendances which enlarged the financial problems. In 1984–85, Arminia finished third from the bottom and lost the relegation play-offs against 1. FC Saarbrücken.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The team failed to gain promotion and in the fall of 1987, Arminia had debts of 4.5 million Marks. The result was a last place finish in 1987–88. Ernst Middendorp became the new manager and assembled a young team for the new season. Arminia led the way in the Oberliga Westfalen but finished only second in 1988–89. They won the Oberliga a year later, but failed in the promotion play-offs to VfB Oldenburg and TSV Havelse. Four dismal years followed in which the team started well but were unable to compete for the championship. In 1991, Arminia won the Westphalian Cup, a cup for Westphalian teams not playing in the First or Second Bundesliga, and beat FSV Mainz 05 in the first round of the DFB-Pokal.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: In the spring of 1994, Arminia created a relatively large media buzz by signing veteran Bundesliga players like Thomas von Heesen, Armin Eck and Fritz Walter. Arminia struggled at first but went on the become champions of the newly formed Regionalliga West/Südwest and runners-up in the 1995–96 2. Bundesliga. Arminia signed Stefan Kuntz for the 1996–97 Bundesliga season, their first in 11 years and finished in 14th position.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The club wrote German football history by signing Iranian players Ali Daei and Karim Bagheri along with the SK Brann icon Geirmund Brendesæter, who enjoyed a brief spell with the club in 1997. However, after a poor run after the winter break, Arminia were relegated shortly after Brendesæter had left the club. They bounced back by winning the 1998–99 season. Bruno Labbadia became the league's top scorer with 28 goals. The club suffered from financial problems and entered the 1999–2000 season with a smaller budget. Relegation followed again after the team became the third team in Bundesliga history to lose ten matches in a row.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia struggled against relegation again the next season and avoided to drop into the Regionalliga in close season. Their fortunes turned around and Arminia won their sixth promotion to the Bundesliga in 2001–02 with Artur Wichniarek scoring 18 goals. Arminia were almost saved the next year but a slump with only two points out of the last six matches sealed relegation again.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The team bounced back again in 2003–04 after Ghanaian striker Isaac Boakye scored 14 goals in his debut season to end as the club's top goalscorer and help them go back to the Bundesliga. They were able to stay in the top flight until 2009. In 2004–05, Patrick Owomoyela became Arminia's new record national player. Furthermore, Arminia reached the semi-finals of the DFB-Pokal in 2005 and 2006. In both seasons, Arminia also kept away from the relegation zone virtually the whole time (except the season's beginnings). In those years the image campaign "Aktion 5000 +" let the number of members rise above 10,000. In 2007, many Arminia fans were sad to see the old East Stand being torn down (then the last non-seater stand in the Bundesliga not being placed behind one of the goals) and also further marketing attempts alienated the fans from the Club's Management Board. From 2007 onwards, managerial sackings became more and more common and avoiding relegation became more and more difficult.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia played their fifth consecutive Bundesliga season in 2008–09. They finished last and were relegated to the 2. Bundesliga. However, after finishing seventh in the 2009–10 season, their next season was fraught with managerial sackings and financial difficulties. After a poor season, picking up only 16 points and winning only four games, Bielefeld were relegated to the 3. Liga.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: After a poor start, they ended the 2011–12 season in 13th place. They also won the Westphalia Cup in a final against arch rival SC Preußen Münster. By reaching the final, they also qualified for the 2012–13 DFB-Pokal, where they beat SC Paderborn 07, a team playing in the 2. Bundesliga, but lost in the second round in a close match against Bayer 04 Leverkusen, a Europa League participant. On 11 May 2013, Bielefeld beat VfL Osnabrück 1–0 to guarantee a top two finish and promotion back to the 2. Bundesliga for the 2013–14 season. That season began quite hopeful: Arminia qualified for the second round of the DFB-Pokal again and at the 8th matchday they had even climbed up to the 3rd rank in the league table. But after a disastrous autumn and a mediocre winter Arminia fell down onto the 17th rank and the popular coach Stefan Krämer had to leave. His successor Norbert Meier at first had only little more success: Arminia finished 16th in the 2. Bundesliga, and lost a playoff against SV Darmstadt 98 on away goals after a 122nd minute (extra time) goal gave Darmstadt the victory. Arminia had to go back into the 3. Liga.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: But the next season could wipe out the bitterness of that disaster: In the 2014–15 DFB-Pokal, as a 3. Liga club, Arminia reached the semi-finals by defeating three Bundesliga teams (Hertha BSC, SV Werder Bremen and VfL Borussia Mönchengladbach). They also were the top team in the 3. Liga (after a bad beginning with only four points from the first four matches) for most part of the season. After the loss against VfL Wolfsburg in the semi-final of the DFB-Pokal, Arminia seemed to have lost their ability to win their matches in the 3. Liga as well. Even the qualification for the 2. Bundesliga seemed to become doubtful, but was secured after a 2–2 draw against SSV Jahn Regensburg, the last team in the league table, at the 37th matchday. Liberated from the pressure of a possible non-qualification, they also won the 3. Liga with a final 1–0 victory at the last matchday.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: A stable season with a defeat in the first round of the DFB-Pokal, a lot of draws in the league (especially in the beginning: eight out of ten matches; in the end Arminia reached a record of 18) and only very few goals scored at home (only eight until the 30th matchday) followed so that the 4–2 over Greuther Fürth at the 31st matchday which secured Arminia's staying up was only Arminia's third win at home. That season's highlights probably were the draws against all three top teams away. In the league table Arminia never went deeper than rank 14 and finished 12th.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: After the season, the coach Norbert Meier was bought by SV Darmstadt 98. A difficult 2016–17 season with two manager sackings followed. Arminia found themselves among the lowest four teams in the league table from the fourth matchday onwards, mostly on the 16th or 17th rank. On the other hand, Arminia reached the quarter final in the DFB-Pokal. They avoided relegation as they finished in 15th after a 6–0 win over promotion candidate Eintracht Braunschweig and a 1–1 against Dynamo Dresden at the last two matchdays.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The 2017–18 season turned out easier. Having gathered 10 points out of the first four matches, Arminia hardly ever left the upper half of the league table (only at the 19th matchday: rank 10) and finished on the 4th rank – though in that season's very close league table this never meant much. In that season, Arminia also made a big step in lowering its debts through an alliance of sponsors.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: In November 2018, Arminia were practically free of debt but had to sell its stadium. The team faced a more difficult situation when December started: Having gained less than one point per match on average, only the weakness of the competing relegation candidates kept them up and they were already out of the DFB-Pokal after a 0–3 defeat at home against MSV Duisburg – another relegation candidate – in the second round. Thus, the popular coach Jeff Saibene was replaced by Uwe Neuhaus who managed to bring back Arminia back into mid table within four matchdays and into 7th place by the last matchday.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The 2019–20 season would turn out even better. When Arminia had climbed on the 3rd rank of the league table after a 2–0 victory away against Hannover 96 – who were originally regarded as a promotion candidate – at the 6th matchday, hardly anyone guessed they would stay in the promotion area of the league table for the rest of the season. They had just reached the second rank of the league table when they met FC Schalke 04 in the 2nd round of the DFB-Pokal on 29 October. In spite of Schalke clearly dominating the match in the first 70 minutes, Arminia thrilled the supporters in the last 20 minutes by scoring two goals and only closely missing extra time. They finished the 15th matchday on 1 December on the first rank of the league table where they would stay for the rest of the season in spite of competing with Hamburger SV and VfB Stuttgart who were originally estimated as main promotion candidates. After Arminia's 1–1 draw in Stuttgart on 9 March 2020 (25th matchday) the season was interrupted because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even this interruption didn't affect them: they finished the season with 68 points – 10 points more than VfB Stuttgart who finished 2nd.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: In the 2020–21 season, they were the team with the lowest budget in the Bundesliga. After a defeat in the first round of the DFB-Pokal they had a quite promising start in the Bundesliga season, but from the 4th matchday onwards they could be found among the last five teams in the league table, from the 6th matchday onwards amongst the last four teams. In March, the manager Uwe Neuhaus was replaced by Frank Kramer. A 2–0 win over VfB Stuttgart on the final matchday secured the 15th rank and thus their spot in the 2021–22 Bundesliga.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: That season turned out even more difficult. They started it with three draws, but at the end of October, after only two draws out of seven matches in the league (and a defeat in the second round of the DFB-Pokal) they were in danger of even losing touch to the 16th rank. They started November with 1-0 win away over VfB Stuttgart, their first win in the whole Bundesliga season. That match sort of stabilized Arminias performance. They even won 2-0 away over RB Leipzig in December, and after a 2-2 draw against SpVgg Greuther Fürth in January they climbed up to the 16th rank after having been 17th for about three months. In February they even climbed up to the 14th rank after a 1-0 win over 1. FC Union Berlin. But this match was the last win in the season. Especially two draws and a defeat against the other relegation battlers FC Augsburg, VfB Stuttgart and Hertha BSC Berlin at home and a 4-0 defeat away at VfL Wolfsburg, at least partially a relegation battler in that season, let them fall to the 17th rank, which meant relegation to the 2. Bundesliga.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia took the club colours blue, white and black upon their foundation in 1905. The colours haven't changed though the current club colours are black, white and blue. Despite this, Arminia played their first match in an orange kit. Arminia's home kit was blue for most of the time while their shorts and socks were white. The team that won promotion to the Bundesliga in 1970 wore a blue shirt with thick white stripes. The away kit was mostly all white while green shirts were worn in the 1990s.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The crest consists of a flag with the club's colours black, white and blue from left to right. The white part of the flag includes the letter A for Arminia. The flag is surrounded by a wreath of oak.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia played their first home matches at the "Kesselbrink" in downtown Bielefeld. They moved to a new ground at the "Kaiserstraße" (today: August-Bebel-Straße) in 1907 and to the "Pottenau" in 1910. In 1926, Arminia leased a ground from a farmer named Lohmann. The ground didn't look like a football pitch. The club member Heinrich Pahl said that the area looks like an Alm (German for "alpine grassland"). The stadium was known as the Alm. Arminia played its first match against Victoria Hamburg on 1 May 1926. The first grandstands were constructed in 1954. When Arminia won promotion to the Bundesliga in 1970, the Alm underwent a general development. A main stand with seats was built and the northern and eastern stands were enlarged. The Alm had a capacity of 30,000 and floodlights were installed. In 1978, a roof was added to the main stands and the other stands were enlarged again. The stadium had a capacity of 35,000 then.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: When Arminia was relegated to the Oberliga in 1988, the northern and the southern stand were torn down because both stands didn't match the new safety regulations. The eastern stand was also made smaller and a roof was added. The capacity was reduced to about 15,000. After Arminia won promotion to the Bundesliga in 1996, the main and northern stands were demolished and completely rebuilt. The same happened to the south stand in 1999. In 2004, Arminia signed a sponsorship deal with Schüco and the stadium was named "SchücoArena". The latest redevelopment saw the Eastern Stand being rebuilt in 2008.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The Bielefelder Alm has a capacity of 27,300, including 20,381 seats. Bielefelder Alm was a candidate to host matches of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia have a large number of loyal supporters. Even in 2011–12, Arminia had an average attendance of 8,930 which was the highest in the 3. Liga. In 2014–15, Arminia had an average attendance of 14,540 which was the second highest in that 3. Liga season. The numbers also show the risen popularity of the 3. Liga. Arminias matches during the 2013–14 2. Bundesliga were attended by 16,890 on average. These numbers only count league matches. Arminia's matches in the 2014–15 DFB-Pokal were attended by 21,763 on average. The core of the fans can be found on the terraces of the Southern Stand.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: Arminia's fans come primarily from the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region with a catchment area of about 100 kilometers around Bielefeld. There are around 140 fanclubs, mostly from Ostwestfalen-Lippe. However, there are fanclubs in Berlin, Stuttgart, London, Birmingham, Taunton, Austria and the Netherlands.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: There is a traditional rivalry with SC Preußen Münster. The match against them in March 2012 which was the first one taking place in Bielefeld after nearly 20 years was attended by 21,203 spectators. No other match in the 3. Liga had such a high attendance. One year later the stadium was nearly sold out in that derby. An earlier rival was VfB 03 Bielefeld from the east of Bielefeld, but the rivalry lessened and nowadays friendly matches between Arminia and VfB Fichte Bielefeld, as the club nowadays is called, take place every year. Another rival is VfL Bochum, especially since the late 90s, and there were "fashion rivalries" with other clubs from the Ruhr, because that area also belongs to Westphalia. Also the matches against VfL Osnabrück are a small derby. Some SC Paderborn 07 supporters seem to consider Arminia as their main rival, but Arminia fans are unlikely to feel the same about them. There are friendly relations to the supporters of the Hamburger SV with both clubs sharing the same colours (black, white and blue) resulting in the chant ""Schwarz, weiß, blau – Arminia und der HSV"" ("Black, white, blue – Arminia and HSV") among supporters of both clubs. For many fans this friendship also involves friendly ties to Hannover 96, whose fans share a friendship with Hamburg as well. All three clubs are sometimes dubbed the "Nordallianz" ("Northern Alliance"), despite the fact that Bielefeld (other than Hamburg and Hannover) is not located in what is considered Northern Germany.


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the club's formation, a fan poll was taken to determine the club's greatest starting XI, as well as seven substitutes and a manager. The following players were chosen:


title: Arminia Bielefeld

text: The following players have been selected by their country in the World Cup Finals, while playing for Arminia Bielefeld.


title: Alex Chilton

text: William Alexander Chilton (December 28, 1950 – March 17, 2010) was an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer best known as the lead singer of the Box Tops and Big Star. Chilton's early commercial success in the 1960s as a teen vocalist for the Box Tops was never repeated in later years with Big Star and in his subsequent indie music solo career on small labels, but he drew an intense following among indie and alternative rock musicians. He is frequently cited as a seminal influence by influential rock artists and bands, some of whose testimonials appeared in the 2012 documentary "".


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton grew up in a musical family; his father, Sidney Chilton, was a jazz musician. A local band recruited the teenaged Chilton in 1966 to be their lead singer after learning of the popularity of his vocal performance at a talent show at Memphis's Central High School. This band was Ronnie and the Devilles, which was subsequently renamed the Box Tops. The group recorded with Chips Moman and producer/songwriter Dan Penn at American Sound Studio and Muscle Shoals's FAME Studios.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton was 16 when his first professional recording, the Box Tops' song "The Letter", became a number-one international hit. The Box Tops went on to have several other major chart hits, including "Neon Rainbow" (1967), "Cry Like a Baby" (1968), "Choo Choo Train" (1968), "Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March" (1969), and "Soul Deep" (1969). Aside from the hits "The Letter", "Neon Rainbow", and "Soul Deep", all written by Wayne Carson, many of the group's songs were written by Penn, Moman, Spooner Oldham, and other top area songwriters, with Chilton occasionally contributing a song. By late 1969, only Chilton and guitarist Gary Talley remained from the original group, and newer additions replaced the members who had departed. The group decided to disband and pursue independent careers in February 1970.


title: Alex Chilton

text: After deciding against enrolling as a student at Memphis State University, Chilton began performing as a solo artist, maintaining a working relationship with Penn for demos. During this period he began learning guitar by studying the styles of guitarists like Stax Records great Steve Cropper and Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys. Chilton began recording his own solo material in the fall of 1969 at Ardent Studios with local musicians including producer Terry Manning (who had worked with Chilton as an engineer on the Box Tops' recordings) and drummer Richard Rosebrough, and producing a few local blues-rock acts. His 1969-1970 recordings were released in the 1980s and 1990s on albums such as "Lost Decade" (New Rose Records), "1970" (Ardent Records), and "Free Again: The "1970" Sessions"" (Omnivore Recordings).


title: Alex Chilton

text: After a period in New York City, during which Chilton worked on his guitar technique and singing style (some of which was believed to have been influenced by a chance meeting with Roger McGuinn at a friend's apartment in New York where Chilton was impressed with McGuinn's singing and playing), Chilton returned to Memphis in 1971 and co-founded the power pop group Big Star, with Chris Bell, recording at engineer John Fry's Ardent Studios. Chilton and Bell co-wrote "In the Street" for Big Star's first album "#1 Record", a track later covered by Cheap Trick and used as the theme song of the sitcom "That '70s Show".


title: Alex Chilton

text: The group's recordings met with little commercial success but established Chilton's reputation as a rock singer and songwriter; later alternative rock bands like R.E.M. and the Posies would praise the group as a major influence. During this period he also occasionally recorded with Rosebrough as a group they called the Dolby Fuckers; some of their studio experimentation was included on Big Star's album "Radio City", including the recording of "Mod Lang". Rosebrough would occasionally work with Chilton on later recordings, including Big Star's 1975 album "Third" and Chilton's solo record "Bach's Bottom", also released in 1975.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Moving back to New York in 1977, Chilton performed as "Alex Chilton and the Cossacks" with a lineup that included Chris Stamey (later of the dB's) and Richard Lloyd of Television at venues like CBGB, releasing an influential solo single, "Bangkok" (with a cover of the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine" as the B-side), in 1978. Influenced by the performers in New York's CBGB scene, Chilton's late-1970s recordings abandoned the multi-layered pop production of his Big Star albums and utilized a more minimalist punk and psychobilly-influenced performance style. His songs during this period were often recorded in one take and featured few overdubs. In New York, he met the members of the Cramps, a formative psychobilly group. After moving back to Memphis in April 1978, Chilton produced music by the Cramps that appeared on the group's "Gravest Hits" EP and "Songs the Lord Taught Us" LP.


title: Alex Chilton

text: In 1979, Chilton released the album "Like Flies on Sherbert" in a limited edition of 500 copies. Produced by Chilton with Jim Dickinson at Phillips Recording and Ardent Studios, it features Chilton's interpretations of songs by artists including the Carter Family, Jimmy C. Newman, Ernest Tubb, and KC and the Sunshine Band, along with several originals. "Sherbert"—which included backing work from such notable Memphis musicians as Rosebrough, drummer Ross Johnson, and Chilton's longtime on-again/off-again companion, Lesa Aldridge—has since been reissued several times. Beginning in 1979 Chilton also co-founded, played guitar with, and produced some albums for Tav Falco's Panther Burns, which began as an offbeat rock-and-roll group deconstructing blues, country, and rockabilly music.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton spent most of 1980 and 1981 living in Memphis and staying off the road, except for a trip to London in May 1980 to play two shows with bassist Matthew Seligman and drummer Morris Windsor of the Soft Boys, and guitarist Knox of the Vibrators. The second show, at the Camden club Dingwalls, was recorded, and was released in 1982 on Aura Records as "Live in London". He also continued to work with Tav Falco's Panther Burns on stage and in the studio during this period.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton toured briefly in 1981 as a solo act, backed by a trio of musicians who played at different times with Tav Falco's Panther Burns: guitarist Jim Duckworth, bassist Ron Easley (with whom Chilton would tour and record with extensively in the 1990s and 2000s), and drummer Jim Sclavunos. The group played a string of shows in the fall in Chicago, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey; this would be Chilton's last tour for three years.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton moved to New Orleans in 1982, where he spent much of 1982 and 1983 working outside music: washing dishes at the Louis XVI Restaurant in the French Quarter, working as a janitor at the Uptown nightclub Tupelo's Tavern, and working as a tree-trimmer. He resumed playing with Panther Burns in 1983. His new association with New Orleans jazz musicians (including bassist René Coman) marked a period in which he began playing guitar in a less raucous style and moved toward a cooler, more restrained approach, as heard in Panther Burns's 1984 "Sugar Ditch Revisited" album, produced by Jim Dickinson. He moved back into playing music full-time in the summer of 1984, when he and Coman began a four-month stretch playing in a cover band called the Scores, working in four-hour shifts at the Bourbon Street tourist bar Papa Joe's, and taking requests from a printed list of songs placed on the customer tables.


title: Alex Chilton

text: After the cover-band job ended, Chilton contacted a booking agent recommended to him by the dBs drummer Will Rigby, and soon had a handful of club gigs lined up in New York, New Jersey, and Boston for the fall of 1984. He stopped playing regular gigs with Panther Burns and formed a trio with the group's bassist, Coman, and drummer Joey Torres to play his out-of-town bookings. At this point, his career was effectively relaunched, and for the next 25 years, Chilton sporadically led a three-piece touring band (augmented by saxophonist Jim Spake in 1989 and 1990), recorded studio and live solo records for several independent record labels, and reunited with versions of his previous bands the Box Tops and Big Star for brief tours and recordings.


title: Alex Chilton

text: At the outset of this period, while in New York in 1985 to play a booking at Danceteria, Chilton was connected through a journalist with Patrick Mathé, founder of the Paris-based record label New Rose. Chilton's business relationship with Mathé would last the rest of his life, and New Rose (and its successor label, Last Call Records) released much of Chilton's solo work from 1985–2004 in Europe, as well as a 1998 Box Tops reunion album. In the U.S., Chilton's solo releases were released by the Big Time, Razor & Tie, Ardent, and Bar/None record labels. In 1985, Chilton began working with Memphis jazz drummer Doug Garrison (who had played music with Chilton's father Sidney in a big band), and his trio continued touring and began to record as well. Six songs were recorded at Ardent Studios for the 1985 EP "Feudalist Tarts", three originals joined by songs from the catalogs of Carla Thomas, Slim Harpo, and Willie Tee. In 1986 Chilton followed this with a second EP, "No Sex", which contained three more originals, including the extended mood piece, "Wild Kingdom", a song highlighting Coman's jazz-oriented, improvisational bass interplay with Chilton.


title: Alex Chilton

text: During this period in his recordings Chilton began frequently to use a horn section consisting of Memphis veteran jazz performers Fred Ford, Jim Spake, and Nokie Taylor to imbue the soul-oriented pieces among his repertoire with a postmodern, minimalist jazz feel that distinguished his interpretative approach from that of a simple soul revivalist style. Chilton forged a new direction for his solo work, eschewing effects and blending soul, jazz, country, rockabilly, and pop. Coman left Chilton's solo trio at the end of 1986 to pursue other projects, forming (with Garrison) the Iguanas three years later with other New Orleans musicians; both would record occasionally with Chilton after departing.


title: Alex Chilton

text: In 1986, the Bangles released their second LP, "Different Light", which contained a cover version of Chilton's Big Star song "September Gurls". Royalties from this version allowed Chilton, who had struggled financially since leaving the Box Tops, to buy his first new car since his Box Top days, and a piece of rural land near Hohenwald, Tennessee, where he planned to build a small house. The following year, his visibility increased in the alternative rock scene when he was the subject of the song "Alex Chilton" by American rock band the Replacements on their album "Pleased to Meet Me", on which Chilton was a guest musician playing guitar on the song "Can't Hardly Wait".


title: Alex Chilton

text: With 1987's "High Priest", Chilton released his first full-length LP in eight years, for which he served as producer and wrote four new songs. He was given a $21,000 recording budget by his European and U.S. record labels (New Rose and Big Time, respectively) which allowed him to augment his band on various songs with a three-piece horn section, backup singers, piano, keyboards, and rhythm guitar. He was also able to continue the genre-mixing he had started with "Like Flies on Sherbert" by including soul, blues, gospel, and rock songs on the same record. He ended the album with a cover of "Raunchy", his instrumental salute to Sun Records guitarist Sid Manker, a friend of his father from whom he'd once taken a guitar lesson; this song was also a standard in his early Panther Burns repertoire. "High Priest" also included other covers like "Nobody's Fool", a song originally written and recorded in 1973 by his old mentor and Box Tops producer Dan Penn. While his solo career was continuing to pick up momentum, Chilton was also singing Box Tops songs during 1987 with a package tour of 1960s artists including Peter Noone, Ronnie Spector, and ? & the Mysterians.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton followed up "High Priest" with "Black List", his third EP in four years (and his first recording since his mid-1980s career relaunch not to get a U.S. release). "Black List" continued to display his eclecticism, containing covers of Ronny & the Daytonas' "Little GTO", Furry Lewis's "I Will Turn Your Money Green", and Charlie Rich's country-pop arrangement of Frank Sinatra's "Nice and Easy". The EP also included three original songs. Chilton also produced albums by several artists beginning in the 1980s, including the Detroit group the Gories, and continued producing Panther Burns albums well into the 1990s.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Touring and recording as a solo artist from the late 1980s through the 1990s with bassists Mike Maffei, John S. McClure (later to become a professor of divinity at Vanderbilt University), and Ron Easley, and with drummers Doug Garrison and, from 1993 on, Richard Dworkin (who also played for many years with the jazz group the Microscopic Septet), Chilton gained a reputation for his eclectic taste in song covers, guitar work, and laconic stage presence. Writing about a live performance in "The New York Times", critic Peter Watrous said of Chilton that "he's a soul and blues guitar connoisseur; he chooses his guitar licks as carefully as he does the blues songs he covers, and during his solos, a listener heard a history of soul and blues guitar." Watrous went on to say of the show that "irony flowed over everything, and it was hard to tell exactly what Mr. Chilton was after, except perhaps a little fun."


title: Alex Chilton

text: In 1990 and 1991, Chilton took time off from touring and recording to live during the warm months in a tent on his land in rural Tennessee and work on clearing trees and framing his planned house, a project he was never to complete. In 1993, Chilton recorded "Clichés", an acoustic solo record of jazz and pop standards, in New Orleans' Chez Flames studio with producer Keith Keller. The record was inspired by a short solo acoustic tour of the Netherlands in January, 1992. Chilton's final two studio albums featured his band and continued his pattern of mixing together songs from pop, soul, blues, gospel, R&B, swing, and country music. "A Man Called Destruction" (1995), like "High Priest", featured a mix of covers and originals and an expanded band that included horns, keyboards, and occasional backup singers, and was released in the U.S. on the relaunched Ardent Records label. Chilton took an enlarged edition of his band on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in July 1995 to promote the album, playing the song "Lies". This was Chilton's second appearance on national television in less than a year; in October 1994, he appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno with the reformed Big Star. Chilton's final solo studio record, "Loose Shoes and Tight Pussy" (1999), featured only his trio, and was named after an old off-color joke made infamous in 1976 by politician Earl Butz. Chilton released one more album as a solo artist, the 2004 CD "Live in Anvers", which featured him playing a show in Belgium with a pick-up band of European musicians.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton reformed Big Star in 1993 with a lineup that included two members of the Posies, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. From then on, he added to his schedule concerts and recordings with the new version of Big Star. The final Big Star studio album, entitled "In Space", with songs penned by the then-current lineup, was released by Rykodisc on September 27, 2005.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Big Star's October 29, 1994, performance, their only known show to be professionally filmed in its entirety, was released in November 2014 by Omnivore Recordings as "Live in Memphis". According to "Mojo", the DVD documents how Big Star's 1990s lineup defied expectations and endured for another 16 years: "Chilton's musicality is mesmerising as he drives the band... Alternating between lead and rhythm, he plays with a mix of laser focus and utter insouciant cool."


title: Alex Chilton

text: In 1996, Chilton regrouped in Memphis with original Box Tops members Danny Smythe, John Evans, Bill Cunningham, and Gary Talley, and the following year they recorded "Tear Off!", the group's final record with Chilton. The album, which was recorded primarily at Easley Recording Studios in Memphis, was released in Europe in 1998. Chilton subsequently toured with the original group annually. Chilton had toured Europe in 1991 with a version of the band, and had sung Box Tops material as a featured singer in oldies package tours during the 1980s and 1990s. After Chilton's death, the Box Tops were to reform again in 2015 with guitarist Gary Talley as lead vocalist.


title: Alex Chilton

text: In 1998, the Alex Chilton/Chris Bell song "In the Street" (from the first Big Star album) was chosen as the theme music for the U.S. television series "That '70s Show" at the suggestion of Chilton's friend and occasional touring partner Ben Vaughn. Vaughn was working for the series at the time, and oversaw a new recording of the song by singer Todd Griffin and a group of Los Angeles studio musicians; in subsequent seasons, a version recorded by the band Cheap Trick would be used.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton toured and recorded less frequently in his final decade, choosing to spend more of his time at home in New Orleans. In 1995, Chilton purchased a 19th-century center-hall cottage in the Tremé neighborhood for $13,000, and he enjoyed working on his house and practicing Scott Joplin rags on his piano (an instrument he later lost in Hurricane Katrina). "Thanks to his low overhead, Chilton subsisted [during the 2000s] on periodic Big Star, Box Tops and solo gigs augmented by modest publishing income…He saw little reason to hustle more than was necessary to make ends meet and travel, a favorite pursuit," wrote New Orleans journalist Keith Spera in a profile published after Chilton's death. Chilton was present at his home in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and evacuated by helicopter on September 4, 2005. In 2009, he remarried. Chilton's last studio projects included playing bass on Cristina Black's "The Ditty Session," and producing tracks by guitarist and singer "Johnny J." Beninati, a former member of the New Orleans rockabilly group the Blue Vipers. Chilton's final live performance was in New Orleans on January 24, 2010, where he participated in a benefit show for Haitian earthquake victims.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Chilton was taken to a hospital in New Orleans on Wednesday, March 17, 2010, complaining of health problems, and died the same day of a heart attack. Chilton had experienced at least two episodes of shortness of breath in the week prior to his fatal heart attack, though he did not seek medical attention in part because he did not have health insurance. He was survived by his wife, Laura, a son, Timothee, and a sister, Cecilia.


title: Alex Chilton

text: He had been scheduled to play a concert with Big Star at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, on March 20; the show instead took place as a tribute to Chilton, with guests Curt Kirkwood, Chris Stamey, M. Ward, Mike Mills, John Doe, Sondre Lerche, Chuck Prophet, Evan Dando, the Watson Twins, and original member Andy Hummel (who died three months later) joining the other members of Big Star.


title: Alex Chilton

text: Alex Chilton was honored with a star on the outside mural of the Minneapolis nightclub First Avenue, recognizing performers that have played sold-out shows or have otherwise demonstrated a major contribution to the culture at the iconic venue. Receiving a star "might be the most prestigious public honor an artist can receive in Minneapolis," according to journalist Steve Marsh.


title: Ameno (song)

text: "Ameno" is a song by French new-age musical project Era (stylized as +eRa+). It was released in June 1996 as a single from their self-titled debut album "Era" and became a chart success in France, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland and Latin America.


title: Ameno (song)

text: "Ameno" was written by new-age artist Eric Lévi. The lyrics, by Guy Protheroe, are written in Pseudo-Latin, i.e. sounding like Latin but are in fact deliberately devoid of any exact meaning. The vocals are performed by Guy Protheroe and Harriet Jay. Eric Lévi played keyboards and programmed it, whereas Philippe Manca played lead guitar, bass and drums. The choir rendition is by The English Chamber Choir.


title: Ameno (song)

text: A music video for "Ameno" was shot for the song featuring actors Léonore Confino (sword girl) (version 1), Iréne Bustamante, and Pierre Boisserie (version 2). The music video, set in medieval times, shows three children who go on an excursion to Montségur. The girl sees a monument and when she touches it she seems to have memories of a past life. In her vision, a girl (perhaps herself) is seen with a group of children and an eagle on her arm. They are apparently homeless and looking for a place to camp; the place they choose is the same monument from the beginning of the video. Almost simultaneously a knight goes to the same place and when he arrives he tries to behead the monument with his sword, but is unsuccessful. The sword falls near the girl who manages to break the monument. Inside there is a medallion in the shape of a cross. The girl from the beginning of the video reappears and is wearing the same medallion.


title: Ameno (song)

text: Famous versions include DJ Quicksilver (2000), Roberto Molinaro techno mix version in Italy (2005) and French tenor Vincent Niclo interpretation with the Red Army Choir (2012).


title: Ameno (song)

text: A remix of "Ameno" was made by Turkish-German DJ and music producer DJ Quicksilver. It appeared in the "Clubfiles - The Album" by DJ Quicksilver and was a hit for him in a number of countries including singles charts in Austria, Belgium (Wallonia French charts), Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It was produced by Tommaso De Donatis and by Orhan Terzi (actually DJ Quicksilver himself using his real name).


title: Ameno (song)

text: French tenor Vincent Niclo recorded the song accompanied by the MVD Ensemble (widely known as Red Army Choir or in French as credited in the recording, "Les Chœurs de l'Armée Rouge").


title: Ameno (song)

text: The song appeared on his album "Opéra rouge" and was released as a single in France reaching #87 in SNEP, the official French Singles Chart.


title: Ameno (song)

text: A cover known as "Ameno Amapiano Remix" was made by Ghanaian music producer, Nektunez who paired Nigerian Singer, Goya Menor. It charted at number 1 on the billboard music chart. It was released on 16 June 2021. Goya Menor was inspired to remix the original while listening to the song in a night club. The song was sung and rapped by Menor while Nektunez served as the producer and song writer. "Ameno Amapiano Remix" became popular in late 2021 and was commonly used in night clubs to announce when expensive drinks are purchased. It also gained popularity on the social networking site, TikTok and was used in over half a million videos and responsible for the internet slang, "You want to bambam". It is regarded as the anthem of Detty December. Menor performed the song at the Livespot X Festival by Tiwa Savage.


title: Ameno (song)

text: The use of the song in YouTube videos and Twitch streams has led to its popularisation as an internet meme, with a resurgence in popularity as a TikTok meme in early 2020.


title: American comic book

text: An American comic book is a thin periodical originating in the United States, on average 32 pages, containing comics. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publication of "Action Comics", which included the debut of the superhero Superman. This was followed by a superhero boom that lasted until the end of World War II. After the war, while superheroes were marginalized, the comic book industry rapidly expanded and genres such as horror, crime, science fiction and romance became popular. The 1950s saw a gradual decline, due to a shift away from print media in the wake of television and the impact of the Comics Code Authority. The late 1950s and the 1960s saw a superhero revival and superheroes remained the dominant character archetype throughout the late 20th century into the 21st century.


title: American comic book

text: Since 1934 and since 1939 two most comic book publishers of DC Comics and Marvel Comics. DC and Marvel comic book publishers, when, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four and many of the company's heroes began appearing in stories together, DC and Marvel characters inhabited a shared continuity that, decades later, was dubbed the "DC Universe" and "Marvel Universe" by fans.


title: American comic book

text: Some fans collect comic books, helping drive up their value. Some have sold for more than 1 million. Comic shops cater to fans, selling comic books, plastic sleeves ("bags") and cardboard backing ("boards") to protect the comic books.


title: American comic book

text: An American comic book is also known as a floppy comic. It is typically thin and stapled, unlike traditional books. American comic books are one of the three major comic book schools globally, along with Japanese manga and the Franco-Belgian comic books.


title: American comic book

text: The typical size and page count of comics have varied over the decades, generally tending toward smaller formats and fewer pages.


title: American comic book

text: Historically, the size was derived from folding one sheet of Quarter Imperial paper (), to print 4 pages which were each . This also meant that the page count had to be some multiple of 4.


title: American comic book

text: The format of the American comic book has been adapted periodically outside the United States, especially in and the United Kingdom.


title: American comic book

text: While comics can be the work of a single creator, the labor of creating them is frequently divided between a number of specialists. There may be a separate writer and artist, or there may be separate artists for the characters and backgrounds.


title: American comic book

text: The process begins with the writer (often in collaboration with one or more others, who may include the editor and/or the penciller) coming up with a story idea or concept, then working it up into a plot and storyline, finalizing it with a script. After the art is prepared, the dialogue and captions are lettered onto the page from the script, and an editor may have the final say (but, once ready for printing, it is difficult and expensive to make any major changes), before the comic is sent to the printer.


title: American comic book

text: The creative team, the writer and artist(s), may work for a comic book publisher who handles the marketing, advertising, and other logistics. A wholesale distributor, such as Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest in the US, distributes the printed product to retailers.


title: American comic book

text: Another aspect of the process involved in successful comics is the interaction between the readers/fans and the creator(s). Fan art and letters to the editor were commonly printed in the back of the book, until, in the early 21st century, various Internet forums started to replace this tradition.


title: American comic book

text: The growth of comic specialty stores helped permit several waves of independently-produced comics, beginning in the mid-1970s. Some early examples of these – generally referred to as "independent" or "alternative" comics – such as "Big Apple Comix", continued somewhat in the tradition of the earlier underground comics, while others, such as "Star Reach", resembled the output of mainstream publishers in format and genre but were published by smaller artist-owned ventures or by a single artist.


title: American comic book

text: This so-called "small press" scene (a term derived from the limited quantity of comics printed in each press-run) continued to grow and diversify, with a number of small publishers in the 1990s changing the format and distribution of their comic books to more closely resemble non-comics publishing. The "minicomics" form, an extremely informal version of self-publishing, arose in the 1980s and became increasingly popular among artists in the 1990s, despite reaching an even more limited audience than the small presses.


title: American comic book

text: The development of the modern American comic book happened in stages. Publishers had collected comic strips in hardcover book form as early as 1842, with "The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck", a collection of English-language newspaper inserts originally published in Europe as the 1837 book "Histoire de M. Vieux Bois" by Rodolphe Töpffer.


title: American comic book

text: The G. W. Dillingham Company published the first known proto-comic-book magazine in the US, "The Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats", in 1897. A hardcover book, it reprinted material—primarily the October 18, 1896, to January 10, 1897, sequence titled "McFadden's Row of Flats"—from cartoonist Richard F. Outcault's newspaper comic strip "Hogan's Alley", starring the Yellow Kid. The 196-page, square-bound, black-and-white publication, which also includes introductory text by E. W. Townsend, measured and sold for 50 cents. The neologism "comic book" appears on the back cover. Despite the publication of a series of related Hearst comics soon afterward, the first monthly proto-comic book, Embee Distributing Company's "Comic Monthly", did not appear until 1922. Produced in an format, it reprinted black-and-white newspaper comic strips and lasted a year.


title: American comic book

text: In 1929, Dell Publishing (founded by George T. Delacorte, Jr.) published "The Funnies", described by the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert" and not to be confused with Dell's 1936 comic-book series of the same name. Historian Ron Goulart describes the 16-page, four-color periodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book. But it did offer all original material and was sold on newsstands". "The Funnies" ran for 36 issues, published Saturdays through October 16, 1930.


title: American comic book

text: In 1933, salesperson Maxwell Gaines, sales manager Harry I. Wildenberg, and owner George Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut, company Eastern Color Printing—which printed, among other things, Sunday-paper comic-strip sections – produced "Funnies on Parade" as a way to keep their presses running. Like "The Funnies", but only eight pages, this appeared as a newsprint magazine. Rather than using original material, however, it reprinted in color several comic strips licensed from the McNaught Syndicate, the Ledger Syndicate, and the Bell-McClure Syndicate. These included such popular strips as cartoonist Al Smith's "Mutt and Jeff", Ham Fisher's "Joe Palooka", and Percy Crosby's "Skippy". Eastern Color neither sold this periodical nor made it available on newsstands, but rather sent it out free as a promotional item to consumers who mailed in coupons clipped from Procter & Gamble soap and toiletries products. The company printed 10,000 copies. The promotion proved a success, and Eastern Color that year produced similar periodicals for Canada Dry soft drinks, Kinney Shoes, Wheatena cereal and others, with print runs of from 100,000 to 250,000.


title: American comic book

text: Also in 1933, Gaines and Wildenberg collaborated with Dell to publish the 36-page "Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics", which historians consider the first true American comic book; Goulart, for example, calls it "the cornerstone for one of the most lucrative branches of magazine publishing". Distribution took place through the Woolworth's department-store chain, though it remains unclear whether it was sold or given away; the cover displays no price, but Goulart refers, either metaphorically or literally, to "sticking a ten-cent pricetag on the comic books".


title: American comic book

text: When Delacorte declined to continue with "Famous Funnies: A Carnival of Comics", Eastern Color on its own published "Famous Funnies" #1 (cover-dated July 1934), a 68-page giant selling for 10¢. Distributed to newsstands by the mammoth American News Company, it proved a hit with readers during the cash-strapped Great Depression, selling 90 percent of its 200,000 print, although putting Eastern Color more than $4,000 in the red. That quickly changed, with the book turning a $30,000 profit each issue starting with #12. "Famous Funnies" would eventually run 218 issues, inspire imitators, and largely launch a new mass medium.


title: American comic book

text: When the supply of available existing comic strips began to dwindle, early comic books began to include a small amount of new, original material in comic-strip format. Inevitably, a comic book of all-original material, with no comic-strip reprints, debuted. Fledgling publisher Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications, which would evolve into DC Comics, to release "New Fun" #1 (Feb. 1935). This came out as a tabloid-sized, , 36-page magazine with a card-stock, non-glossy cover. An anthology, it mixed humor features such as the funny animal comic "Pelion and Ossa" and the college-set "Jigger and Ginger" with such dramatic fare as the Western strip "Jack Woods" and the "yellow-peril" adventure "Barry O'Neill", featuring a Fu Manchu-styled villain, Fang Gow. Issue #6 (Oct. 1935) brought the comic-book debut of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman. The two began their careers with the musketeer swashbuckler "Henri Duval", doing the first two installments before turning it over to others and, under the pseudonyms "Leger and Reuths", they created the supernatural-crimefighter adventure Doctor Occult.


title: American comic book

text: In 1938, after Wheeler-Nicholson's partner Harry Donenfeld had ousted him, National Allied editor Vin Sullivan pulled a Siegel/Shuster creation from the slush pile and used it as the cover feature (but only as a backup story) in "Action Comics" #1 (June 1938). The duo's alien hero, Superman, was dressed in a cape and colorful tights. The costume, influenced by Flash Gordon's attire from 1934, evoked circus aerial performers and circus strongmen, and Superman became the archetype of the "superheroes" that would follow.


title: American comic book

text: In early 1939, the success of Superman in "Action Comics" prompted editors at National Comics Publications (the future DC Comics) to request more superheroes for its titles. In response, Bob Kane and Bill Finger created Batman, who debuted in "Detective Comics" #27 (May 1939). The period from the late 1930s through roughly the end of the 1940s is referred to by comic book experts as the Golden Age of comic books. It featured extremely large print-runs, with "Action Comics" and "Captain Marvel" selling over half a million copies a month each; comics provided very popular cheap entertainment during World War II especially among soldiers, but with erratic quality in stories, art, and printing. In the early 1940s, over 90 percent of girls and boys from seven to seventeen read comic books.


title: American comic book

text: In 1941, H. G. Peter and William Moulton Marston, created the female superhero character Wonder Woman, who debuted in "All Star Comics" #8 (December 1941) and "Sensation Comics" featuring Wonder Woman in 1942.


title: American comic book

text: MLJ's "Pep Comics" debuted as a superhero, science-fiction and adventure anthology, but after the title introduced the teen-humor feature "Archie" in 1942, the feature's popularity would soon eclipse all other MLJ properties, leading the publisher to rename itself Archie Comics.


title: American comic book

text: Following the end of World War II, the popularity of superheroes greatly diminished, while the comic-book industry itself expanded. A few well-established characters such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman continued to sell, but DC canceled series starring the Flash and Green Lantern and converted "All-American Comics" and "All-Star Comics" to Western titles, and "Star Spangled Comics" to a war title. The publisher also launched such science-fiction titles as "Strange Adventures" and "Mystery in Space". Martin Goodman's Timely Comics, also known as Atlas, canceled its three formerly high-selling superhero titles starring Captain America (created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby), the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner, briefly reviving the characters in 1954 only to cancel them again shortly thereafter to focus on horror, science fiction, teen humor, romance and Western genres. Romance comics became strongly established, with Prize Comics' "Young Romance" and with "Young Love", the latter written and drawn by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby; those two titles' popularity led to an explosion of romance comics from many publishers.


title: American comic book

text: Dell's comic books accounted for a third of all North American sales in the early 1950s. Its 90 titles averaged a circulation of 800,000 copies per title for every issue, with "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories" peaking at a circulation of three million a month in 1953. Eleven of the top 25 best-selling comic books at the time were Dell titles. Out of 40 publishers active in 1954, Dell, Atlas (i.e. Marvel), DC and Archie were the major players in volume of sales. By this point, former big-time players Fawcett and Fiction house had ceased publishing.


title: American comic book

text: Circulation peaked in 1952 when 3,161 issues of various comics were published with a total circulation of about one billion copies. After 1952, the number of individual releases dropped every year for the rest of the decade, with the biggest falls occurring in 1955–56. The rapid decline followed the introduction of the Comics Code Authority in the wake of Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency, which, ignoring the social problems caused by the wars of 1939–45 and 1950–52, sought to blame those problems solely on comics. While there was only a 9% drop in the number of releases between 1952 and 1953, circulation plummeted by an estimated 30–40%. The cause of the decrease is not entirely clear. Television had begun to provide competition with comic books, but there was also a rise in conservative values with the election in 1952 of Dwight Eisenhower. The Comics Code Authority, a self-censoring body founded to curb the juvenile delinquency alleged to be due to the crime and horror comics, has often been targeted as the culprit, but sales had begun to drop the year before it was founded. The major publishers were not seriously harmed by the drop in sales, but smaller publishers were killed off: EC (the prime target of the CCA) stopped publishing crime and horror titles, which was their entire business, and were forced out of the market altogether, turning to magazine publishing instead. By 1960, output had stabilized at about 1,500 releases per year (representing a greater than fifty percent decline since 1952).


title: American comic book

text: The dominant comic book genres of the post-CCA 1950s were funny animals, humour, romance, television properties, and Westerns. Detective, fantasy, teen and war comics were also popular, but adventure, superheroes, and comicstrip reprints were in decline, with "Famous Funnies" seeing its last issue in 1955.


title: American comic book

text: In the late 1940s and early 1950s horror and true-crime comics flourished, many containing graphic violence and gore. Due to such content, moral crusaders became concerned with the impact of comics on the youth, and were blaming comic books for everything from poor grades to juvenile delinquency to drug abuse. This perceived indecency resulted the collection and public burning of comic books in Spencer, West Virginia and Binghamton, New York in 1948, which received national attention and triggered other public burnings by schools and parent groups across the country. Some cities passed laws banning comic books entirely. In 1954, psychiatrist Fredric Wertham published his book "Seduction of the Innocent", where he discussed what he perceived as sadistic and homosexual undertones in horror comics and superhero comics respectively, and singled out EC Comics due to its success as a publisher of these genres. In response to growing public anxiety, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held hearings on comic book indecency from April to June of 1954.


title: American comic book

text: In the wake of these troubles, a group of comics publishers, led by National and Archie, founded the Comics Code Authority in 1954 and drafted the Comics Code, intended as "the most stringent code in existence for any communications media". A Comic Code "Seal of Approval" soon appeared on virtually every comic book carried on newsstands. EC, after experimenting with less controversial comic books, dropped its comics line to focus on the satirical "Mad"—a former comic book which was now converted to a magazine format in order to circumvent the Code.


title: American comic book

text: DC started a revival in superhero comics in 1956 with the October 1956 revival of its former golden age top-seller The Flash in "Showcase" #4. Many comics historians peg this as the beginning of the Silver Age of American comic books, although Marvel (at this point still known variously as both "Timely" and "Atlas") had started reviving some of its old superheroes as early as 1954. The new Flash is taken symbolically as the beginning of a new era, although his success was not immediate. It took two years for the Flash to receive his own title, and "Showcase" itself was only a bimonthly book, though one which was to introduce a large number of enduring characters. By 1959, the slowly building superhero revival had become clear to DC's competitors. Archie jumped on board that year, and Charlton joined the bandwagon in 1960.