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Hanging Around The Library
2008-05-14 19:55:42
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It's been reported all around the internet at this point, but in case you're one of those people that've ben hiding out on a desert island or something, an anonymous donor recently gifted the Library of Congress with all of the original artwork to AMAZING FANTASY #15, the origin and first appearance of Spider-Man.
Given that the entirety of the book is still all together, including the two back-up stories, it's likely that the artwork didn't go through Marvel's typical art return process back in the 80s. Before art returns became a matter of policy, all of the originals were stored in a Marvel-run warehouse, on which security wasn't always the greatest. It's impossible to tell, but it's likely that all sorts of artwork walked out the door there over the years the place was in operation.
Regardless of the circumstances, it's great that this artwork is still all in one place (rather than being scattered to the winds) and will now reside in a place where everybody can enjoy it, and where people will take steps to preserve and maintain it.
As you can see from the attached photos, the originals reveal some (relatively minor but nonetheless interesting) details concerning this first Spidey story. There are some production notes from Stan penciled in the margins in a few places, indicating adjustments that either Ditko or production man Sol Brodsky should make to the art. Liz Allen's face on the splash page has been redrawn by somebody else (possibly romance artist Al Hartley) to make her more attractive. And the logo on the first page is a stat, underneath which there's evidence of an earlier logo drawn directly on the board, which has been whited out (and which is missing the character-defining dash between Spider and Man).
It's a pretty amazing thing to have this, probably one of the five most significant comic book stories of all time preserved in this manner. I'm going to make it a point to schedule a viewing the next time I have occasion to be in the area.
More later.
Tom B
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Core Four Fan Perspective
2008-05-12 18:25:06
A little bit later than I'd intended--which is going to become teh pattern for awhile, i think, as we deal with some staffing issues internally--but here's my follow-up to last week's post about the "Core Four" titles that have the reputation of being difficult to make sell.
One of the things that almost all of these books have in common--CAPTAIN AMERICA is kind of the odd man out when it comes to this analogy--is that their most hardcore, vocal online fan base is an extremely tough audience.
Back when I used to post around the web a bit more than I have the chance to do these days, a certain truism became apparent: The boards with the toughest audiences inevitably belonged to the Hulk and Thor, with Iron Man really close behind. In each case, there was a particular classic run that was held up as the ne plus ultra of the character, against which almost anything that was going on in the books failed to measure up at least with a segment of these folks (And let me state for the record that I'm not speaking of all HULK, THOR or IRON MAN fans here. This is a generality.) And inevitably, whenever teh discussion turned towards who they'd like to see handle the characters, the same litany would be heard again: Simonson on THOR, Michelinie & Layton on IRON MAN, Peter David on HULK.
Additionally, and maybe this is just a byproduct of one's favorite character not being the most popular hero on the block, but all three groups of these fans always seemed to me to be inordinately concerned about the amount of "respect" these characters got in the books--respect being defined as being shown to be powerful and capable, and held in esteem or awe by the other heroes of the Marvel U. This would especially become a heated topic when you got any two of these guys together in the same story--one group would salute the excellent way in which Iron Man was able to come out ahead of Thor, while another group would decry the obvious lack of respect that all of Marvel's creators and editors had for Thor, allowing him to be momentarily bested by Iron Man, which any sane person knows could never happen. Mix up the character names as you like, the same pattern repeated itself over and over again.
These were also tough boards in terms of inclusion. I saw more than one creator actively chased away from communicating directly with the readers by that small but vocal and entitlement-driven segment of the fanbase who'd accost them about how they were handling the book and the character in question. On each one, there was a doctrine, a dogma, and if you weren't down with it, you were at the very least in for some tough times.
What all of this means, I don't know. Could just be the way the scrappy spirit of the underdog has to adapt to a changing world to survive. Maybe it's like being a fan of one of those ballclubs that never seems to be able to make it to the World Series, or hasn't been able to for years. Whatever it was, it definitely polarized the audiences for these characters. But at the moment, there seems to be a general (if only momentary) degree of happiness with how these characters and their titles are being treated. It's not all sweetness and light, of course, and there are always going to be people who don't like a given series or a given creator's take. But there is a feeling of stability like we haven't seen for awhile.
I expect it's going to last until the HULK issue comes out in which the Red HUlk fights Thor...
More later.
Tom B
Core Four
2008-05-08 19:50:22
IRON MAN. THOR. HULK. CAPTAIN AMERICA. These core Marvel Universe titles have had a reputation of being a bit difficult to market, especially over the last fifteen years or so. As opposed to properties like X-MEN and SPIDER-MAN that have continued to have strong youth-appeal and cool-factor as the years have rolled on, the "Core Four" all have elements to their basic make-up that have given them the reputation of being out-of-step with the desires of a wider audience in the world of the 21st Century. Now, I don't really buy into this rap--and the fact that all of these books and all of these characters are selling very well at the moment would tend to put the lie to it. Nevertheless, it's worth examing these myths, if for no other reason than to understand the impressions various editorial regimes have had towards these characters over the years.
IRON MAN has faced the rap that readers, especially young readers, can't relate to a middle-aged guy, to a millionaire, to an inventor. And certainly back in the early 70s, Stark's day-job as a weapons designer put him at odds with the anti-Vietnam War stance of most of teh readership (a big reason why the character wound up turning his back on weapons-peddling.)
THOR has been characterized as a guy who's difficult to relate to because he talks funny, because he comes from what amounts to a fantasyland, and because his whole worldview comes from a perspective that's alien to teh casual reader. And his civilian identity as a lame Doctor isn't terribly sexy.
THE HULK is a limited character based on who and what he is. There are only so many things you can do with the big, dumb "Hulk Smash!" brute. But if you change him around too much, then you're not really doing the Hulk. He's also got no stable environment, as he tends to move from place to place, which makes it difficult to build up a supporting cast around him that anybody cares about.
CAPTAIN AMERICA is a big boy scout, totally out of step with the viewpoints of today's kids. He doesn't kill, endorces clean living, and is a symbol of the sort of patriotism that just isn't fashionable these days. He's your dad, not your hero.
These characters have all had to live with the stigma of this litany of excuses that people have given over the years for why their books didn't sell as well as some others, when very often the reason sales were down is that the material just wasn't all that compelling to the fans. And it's funny to see, especially now when IRON MAN is a top box-office hit, CAPTAIN AMERICA keeps hitting the newspapers, and THOR and HULK are both in the Top-5 in terms of sales.
Tomorrow: The particular viewpoints of the hardcore fans of these characters.
More later.
Tom B
Iron Man Week Ends
2008-05-05 17:54:39
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A day late but not a dollar short (did you see the excellent box office estimates?), here's the wrap-up on our IRON MAN WEEK coverage.
As has now been revealed on a couple of other websites, back around last December a group of us--myself, Joe Q, Axel Alonso, Ralph Macchio, Brian Bendis, Mark Millar and one or two others--were invited out to the West Coast for a brainstorming session with Jon Favreau and the Iron Man production team. We spent the better part of two days touring the production offices, seeing all of the assorted designwork for the characters, sets and props. It was especially gratifying to me to see all the stuff being cribbed from the six-issue "Extremis" arc I'd edited--and of course, Adi Granov, the artist for that storyline, also did production design for the film.
We also got to walk around on an enormous soundstage, within which sets were being constructed for the film. The soundstage itself had once been the hanger in which Howard Hughes had built and stored his enormous Spruce Goose plane, a fact that resonated well with Tony Stark and his own dreams of innovative construction. The set team was in the process of erecting the network of caves where Tony Stark is held captive, and in which he builds his first suit of armor. We were told that, during their lunch hour, members of the production crew would stage mock battles with squirt guns and Nerf weapons while racing through and around the set.
But the centerpiece of the whole visit was a massive round-table discussion and dissection of the latest draft of the screenplay. We'd all goten to read it the previous day, and it was already in pretty solid shape--I'd say that it was about 85% the same as what we saw in the finished film. Jon Favreau, as you'd expect, was both witty and charming, and seemed entirely open to all sorts of input from the gang. I didn't contribute much of value--just one observation about a sequence that didn't make it into the final picture--but we tossed out all kinds of crazy ideas and observations and thoughts. At one point, we spent literally ninety minutes debating whether Tony and Pepper should kiss at the end of the film or not. And while I don't think anything we said in-and-of itself changed the course of the movie, it was all listened to, and was factored into the thinking of those involved with actually shooting and cutting the picture.
The guy who most impressed me was Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, who took us all out for a great steak dinner. It hadn't been all that long at that point since Kevin had stepped into the shoes of Avi Arad as the lead guy at the studio, but it was clear from the conversation around the table that he was sharp, well-spoken, and clearly loved movies.
I know it sounds like I'm just blowing smoke, but take a look at what Brian and Mark have to say about that trip over on their boards--it was a great privilege to have been included, and it really gave us a feeling of being part of the production in a way that the previous Marvel films never quite did. This was our movie in some small way, and we had a stake in it that truly mattered. And (even more importantly) the film turned out great and got both great response and great turn-out at the box office.
(The best part of seeing the film, just last Wednesday, was in knowing that Larry Leiber was also in the audience--Joe Q called him out during his pre-movie remarks. Larry had written the very first Iron Man story back in 1962, so it was terrific that not only did he get to have the experience of seeing what he had written up on the screen--the origin sequence in the film is very faithful to that first story--but he was listed in the credits as well. Larry's one of the more overlooked contributors to teh early Marvel Universe, so it was great to see him get a little bit of his due.)
More later--maybe even "One More Ray" if I can get all my ducks in a row.
Tom B
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Letter of the Day
2008-05-01 17:33:44
Remember when I used to write one of these almost every day? Me either. It's starting to read like the the competition's text pages around here, with me having to beg off every other day because things have been too busy for me to focus on writing something substantial.
But to keep the sorta-content flowing, here's a very cool letter that we received today. (And it's even got a tangental connection to Iron Man Week):
Hi,
My name is John Wilinski. I teach eighth grade Language Arts at an inner city public school in Kansas City. I just finished the first meeting of the middle school comic book club. I figured this was a good week to have the first meeting with Iron Man and free comic book day coming out this weekend. (There probably only be one more before the end of the school year.)
We watched the web trailer for Secret Invasion, I went through a powerpoint presentation of some of the main characters from the story, and then I gave away a half dozen of Secret Invasion (the reprints that came out today) that I bought for them, and we read it.
16 students attended, and I have never seen them as well-behaved as when we were reading through the comic book. It was honestly the most fun I've had since I started teaching. I was worried that the comic might not be very friendly to new readers, but I was wrong. Bendis does a really nice job letting new readers into what is going on. The kids really enjoyed the book. More than a few said that they'd be picking up the next issue. (Assuming they can afford it. 4 bucks is a lot for some of these kids.)
I just wanted to say thanks for providing such entertaining material for them to read and to let you know how much we all enjoyed it. I truly believe that I wouldn't have developed a love of reading all types of literature today if I didn't first develop a love of reading comic books at their age.
Best wishes,
John
John, it's gratifying to hear that the dopey little stories we produce are such a help in the important work you're doing in teaching the next generation.
More later.
Tom B
Iron Man Artwork
2008-04-30 16:17:07
In observance of IRON MAN week (and because I need to jet out of here to attend Marvel's screening of the new film), here's a special mid-week Shellhead-specific art preview!
More later.
Tom B
Iron Man and Me
2008-04-29 16:24:01
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Because absolutely nobody asked, in honor of Iron Man week, here's a quick rundown of my personal history with the character.
I likely first came across the character of Iron Man on repeats of the 60s Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons that ran on dim UHF channels, but I don't have any conscious memory of doing so, so he didn't make much of an impression.
The first Iron Man story I read was literally the first Iron Man story--his origin, from TALES OF SUSPENSE #39, as reprinted in the SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS collection Simon & Schuster issued in the '70s. I had actually gone to my local library looking to check out their copy of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, because I'd just started reading FANTASTIC FOUR and was interested in looking at the first FF tale. But coming up empty, I took SON OF ORIGINS home as a consolation prize. And therein, I met the X-Men, the Avengers, Daredevil, Nick Fury, the Watcher and the Silver Surfer in addition to Iron Man.
Truth be told, I wasn't all that knocked out by Iron Man. His first story was all right, but the second, more modern Iron Man story they'd included (illustrated by Gene Colan, who's one of my all-time favorite Iron Man artists) didn't really strike my fancy. Could be because it was a middle chapter of a longer storyline, in which Iron Man didn't do much other than writhe in agony and recharge his armor from a car cigarette lighter.
But comics were relatively cheap in those days, and as I got deeper and deeper into the Marvel line (sampling modern issues of X-MEN, AVENGERS, DAREDEVIL and so forth), I eventually picked up a copy of IRON MAN on some slow week. That issue, #111, was right in the middle of an extended sequence itself, and probably wasn't the best place to come in. IRON MAN was a series that, unbeknownst to me, had been limping along for some time, and while Bill Mantlo (who wrote this issue) had done yeoman work on the book, it wasn't really setting the world on fire.
But things started looking up a few short months later, as in rapid succession John Romita Jr, David Michelinie and Bob Layton took over the series, and found new life in it. Their run--and Dave and Bob's once JRJR departed for other pastures--was thoroughly enjoyable.
While I like him just fine, Iron Man's never really been a big favorite of mine. But I sure am looking forward to seeing the film in a day or so's time.
More later
Tom B
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Super Heroes With Super Problems
2008-04-28 17:22:45
Happy Iron Man week!
We're building towards a little bit of tomfoolery later this week ("What would you do...with One More Ray!"), but for no real reason other than that I came across it, here's one of the earliest mainstream articles written about the Marvel line, from back in 1966. It gives a pretty interesting snapshot of the way things were.
Super Heroes With Super Problems: Herald Tribune
by Nat Freedland 1966
On the drawing board is a big oaktag sheet recording Fantastic Four's last-ditch struggle to save Earth from being "drained of all basic elements" by the godlike villain Galactus. One picture shows cosmic force rays bombarding Manhattan. Stan Lee, chief writer-editor of Marvel ,Comics, tells production man Sol Brodsky, "it's not clear that the rays are hitting now." He thinks for a few seconds and then pencils in "ZIK, ZIK, ZIK" at the points of impact. No other comic book writer would have wasted that seconds to think what cosmic force rays sound like. They would have just written "Pow" or "Zap" or something equally conventional.
Stan Lee, 43, is a native New Yorker, an ultra-Madison Avenue, rangy lookalike of Rex Harrison. He's got that horsy jaw and humorous eyes, thinning but tasteful ay hair, the brightest-colored Ivy wardrobe in captivity and deep suntan that comes from working every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday on his suburban terrace, cranking out three complete Marvel mags weekly. He is also a good mimic and does a fine reproduction of that rolling, Continental voice we were hearing on the class TV interviews back in October. That voice got on the phone to Marvel Comics at 625 Madison Avenue and said, "Hello, this is Federico Fellini. I like very much your comics. In one hour I come see you, yes?" No, it wasn't a put-on. Somebody had shown Fellini a couple of Lee's Marvel masterpieces while the great Italian film director was racked out with virus at the Hotel Pierre. Fellini turned up at Stan Lee's office with a medium-sized entourage his first day out of sickbed. `"He's my buddy now," says Lee. "He invited me to me to see him at his villa any time I'm in Rome. I'm supposed to take him to the cartoonists' convention when he's back here for the Sweet Charity in January."
Stan Lee drew a bigger audience than President Eisenhower when he spoke last year at Bard, one of the hippest schools on the Eastern Seaboard. Co-ed dormitories! From the Ivy League to the Pacific Coast Conference, 125 campuses have their own chapter of the "Merry Marvel Marching Society." The M.M.M.S. is at Oxford and Cambridge, too. Pre-college Marvel fans at times have taken to assembling on the corner of Madison and 58th Street, waving wildly with home-made signs whenever anybody appears at the second floor windows of Marvel's three workrooms. "Like we were the Beatles or something," Lee muses.
In terms of the real world, all this adulation means that Marvel circulation has tripled in three and a half years. With an annual
circulation of 35 million, Marvel (which puts out 17 super type comic books) is now a comfortable number two in the comics industry, gradually edging up on the long-established Superman D. C. line., No other comic book publisher can show anything like Marvel's phenomenal sales growth in the sixties. A secondary harvest of promotion tie-ins is starting to bloom, too Forty thousand Marvelites have come up with a dollar for their Merry Marvel Marching Society kits. In the works are plastic models, games, a Spider-Man jazz record and a television cartoon series. "We really never expected all this, you know," Lee admits. "I mean it started out as a gag, mostly. I just thought maybe it would be worth trying to upgrade the magazines a little bit. Audiences everywhere are getting hipper these days. Why not the comic book audience, too? And then all of a sudden we were getting 500 letters a day about what great satire these stories were, and how significant. We used to get about one letter a year ... before."
Before Stan Lee dreamed up the "Marvel Age of Comics" in 1961. When Lee went to work for the comic book division of Martin Goodman's publishing outfit he was 17 years old. By 1961 he had been manufacturing comic strips at the same stand for 20 years. It was getting to be tiresome. Nostalgia about old comic books is a large item now what with Pop art and Camp riding high, but fond remembrance of childhood joys is one thing, and actually reading that stuff is something quite different. It's no accident most adults outgrew the comics of their day at puberty. The carefully selected samples in Jules Feiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes anthology give pleasure because they are perfect examples of their form. But as the same old tired stories and stiff drawings
were trotted out year after year they couldn't keep up the pace. "Have some punch," Batman would quip as he decked a bad guy; idiot puns were the height of old comic book humor. "What th'?" and "Huh" were as expressive as Captain Marvel ever got. Superboy, on returning from a recent adventure in the ancient past, said, "Bye now, Hercules and Samson." This is hardly an example of super-conversation, points out John Butterworth, Class of `64. in his Colgate Maroon study. "Spider-Man strives for Status in Competitive Comic Book World of Insincere Super Heroes."
Comic book super beings had mighty powers but no personality—not until Stan Lee tried out the Fantastic Four in October, 1961. The whole new tone of Lee's vision to bring human reality into comic books was set in an early F.F. appearance. (All Marvel characters quickly pick up affectionate nicknames.) This super crime-fighting team was evicted from their Manhattan skyscraper HQ because they couldn't get up the rent. The stock market investments that paid their laboratory bills had temporarily failed. The Fantastic Four, who appear in their own comic book and guest star in other Marvel publications, are beset as much by interpersonal conflicts as by super villains. Invisible girl, Sue Storm Richards, is always bugging hubby Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, to leave off with the world-shaking inventions already and take her out to a discotheque. One sometimes wonders how much the phallic implication of Mr. Fantastic's body-stretching power has to do with holding this stormy couple together, Sue's kid brother Johnny is the Human Torch. He flames and flies and swings off-duty in a Corvette Stingray. The grumpiest, most complex, most ambivalent and most
popular member of the Fantastic Four is the Thing. "Bashful, blue-eyed Benjamin J, Grimm," as the Thing likes to refer to himself in more lyrical moments, usually just before issuing his clarion cry, "It's Clobberin' Time," has actually deserted to the side of the villains on occasion.
Lee calls Ben Grimm "a tragic monster who cheers himself up by acting the clown ... a good man with a bitter heart." The Thing talks like Jimmy Durante and has good reason to be bitter. A moon rocket mishap with cosmic rays gave the rest of the F.F. super powers that can be turned on and off at will. But it left him looking like a human-shaped rock formation "covered with broken pieces of orange-colored flowerpots," an apt description from Jennifer Stone's Hunter College Meridian analysis, "Hark, the Hulk Hurtles into Your Heart."
The Fantastic Four rapidly became one of the hottest things in comic books and Lee followed up with the most off-beat character he could think of—his masterpiece, Spider-Man. Spider-Man is the Raskolnikov of the funnies, a worthy rival to Bellow's Herzog for the Neurotic Hipster Championship of our time. "If Charlie Brown wore a skintight costume and fought crime, he would be Spider-Man," concludes John Butterworth in the Colgate Maroon. According to Sally Kempton in the Village Voice, "Spider-Man has a terrible identity problem, a marked inferiority complex, and a fear of women. He is anti-social, castration ridden, racked with Oedipal guilt, and accident prone." In short, "... the super-anti-hero of our time." The saga of "your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man" began when orphan Peter Parker, a brilliant but friendless high schooler from Forest Hills, Queens, got accidentally bitten by a radioactive spider at a science fair. This made him the equal of a gigantic spider in: Speed, Agility, Climbing Prowess, Strength to Body-Mass Ratio and Sixth Sense. He also invented a web-shooting wrist apparatus as an extra aid. Peter immediately sewed himself a disguise costume; so as to avoid shocking kindly old Uncle Ben and Aunt May, and then—he went into show biz. His super acrobatics got him instant television stardom. But this triumph. like most of Spider-Man's brief tastes of victory, soon, turned to ashes. To keep his secret identity a secret, he had to accept' a paycheck made out to Spider-Man.... The TV producer insisted he couldn't give out cash because of the tax records. So Spider-Man went to a bank and:
Bank Clerk: I have to see some dentification!
Spider-Man: What about my COSTUME?
Bank Clerk: Don't be silly! ANYONE can wear costume! Do you have a social security card, or a driver's license in the name of Spider-Man?
Wandering off in a blue funk, Spider-Man just shrugged unconcernedly as a burglar ran by. When he got back home to (a regrettably unauthentic rural-looking) Forest Hills, of course it turned out that the burglar had just murdered Uncle Ben. Spider-Man duly vowed to be more public-spirited in the future. But now he really had money problems. Aunt May would not hear of his quitting school. But how could he support the household with a part time job and still find time to catch crooks? He tried to solve everything by going on salary at the Fantastic Four (All of Lee's characters live in New York and run into each other on the job). But the F.F. wanted to keep their non-profit status and turned him down. "You came to the wrong place, pal" The Thing said unsympathetically. "This ain't General Motors." At the moment, Peter Parker has a science scholarship to State College and supplements it by freelancing nears photos. His specialty is delayed-action pix of his spider self it combat. It's not much money—Peter Parker is a lousy businessman—but at least it picks up the tab for Aunt May's many hospitalizations.
The Hulk is the most unstable character in the history of comic books. At first, scientist. Bruce Banner and the jolly green monster had a gamma-ray induced Jekyll-Hyde co-tenancy. But now the Hulk is in permanent possession, having absorbed some of Banner's I.Q. but none of his peaceable ways. Hulky will bash anything that gets in his way—including Marvel's other super heroes and the U. S. or Soviet Armed Forces. Thor, the Norse thundergod, recently had to take an elevator to the top of a midtown skyscraper before he could fly off to Asia to stop a rampaging super witch-doctor—because a cop wouldn't let Thor whirl his magic hammer on a crowded street. A woman in the elevator looked up at Thor's shoulder-length blond curls and mused. "That REMINDS me—I'm due for a PERMANENT at noon." Practically every costumed hero in Lee's new Marvel Comics mythology displaces enough symbolic weight to become grist for an English Lit. PhD. thesis. The unremittingly tragic Iron Man usually has to shlep home his transistor-powered armor for recharging after a fight. Since his heart (chewed up by Viet Gong bullets) is also transistorized, this tends to become a tricky business. Daredevil, revival of a famous comic book name, is now the world's only blind masked hero. He struggles through with his indomitable will and "radar senses acquired by getting run over with a truckful of uranium, Equally indomitable is the unshaven, cigar-chomping Nick Fury, who functions simultaneously in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. A black eye-patch distinguishes the post-war Fury from his military self. However, Captain America, that fighting hero of World War II, comes on more like Captain Anomie these days. Returning to action in 1963. after 18 years of suspended animation in an iceberg, he does more brooding over his destiny than any Captain since Ahab. "The TIME I live in belongs to others. The only thing that's rightfully mine is my -PAST. Can I ever forget BUCKY, the teenager who was like a brother to me? What has become of SGT. DUFFY?"
Lee always provides full backstage credits for these epics:
Bombastically Written by —Stan Lee
Brilliantly Drawn by ... Jack Kirby .
Beautifully Inked by ... Vince Colletta
Bashfully Lettered by — Artie Simek
No detail of the month's output is too minor for Marvelites to single out for praise in the letters pages ... "The art was great, especially page 5, panel 3, which was a perfect rendition of the beam's effect." No error is too minor for complaint ... and Cap' had an `A' where his star should have been on his chest." Young dreams of romance appear often in these pages... "Please don't make Sub-Mariner lose his dignity. He reminds me of `The Sheik.'... If Sue and the Scarlet Witch don't want him, I do." Contemporary problems may also break in ... "Could you maybe publish a letter to parents or something? I'm tired of getting static from my mother about how ridiculous it looks for a Rice U. sophomore to stand in front of a drugstore haggling with an eight-year old kid over the last copy of F.F. or Avengers. (I got them, but it cost me 30 cents and I had to let him read them first!)"
"It's ruining my eyes," says Lee shout the avalanche of mail. "I never wore glasses before this thing started." He tries to read as many of the letters as possible. "That's the kids telling us what they want." His private life has also been somewhat curtailed by the demands of success. "I take my wife out to dinner with friends three or four times a week. That keeps her reasonably happy, even though I'm working every day and haven't been able to take a vacation in three years." The chic blonde Mrs. Lee is a former British model Daughter Joanie, 15, is a talented artist. but not particularly excited about comic books.
Princeton University's Merry Marvel Marching Society sent up a delegation to meet the master the other day. Fabulous Flo Steinberg the secretarial star of Marvel Bullpen Bulletin gossip notes, ushered the group into the Presence. "Here I am fellows," said Lee. "I guess it's a pretty big disappointment, huh?" They assured him it wasn't. Don't tell me what you like about the books," Lee requested. "It's more help if you tell me what you don't like." "There's a schism in the cult over Spidey's personal life." said one. "Factions are forming about all the play Peter Parker's adjustment
problems are getting lately." Lee hastened to explain. "I don't plot Spider-Man any more. Steve Ditko, the artist, has been doing the storks. I guess I'll leave him alone until sales start to slip. Since Spidey got so popular. Ditko thinks he's the genius of the world. We were arguing so much over plot lines I told him to start making up his own stories, He won't let anybody else ink his drawings either. He just drops off the finished pages with notes at the margins and I fill in the dialogue. I never know what he'll come up with next, but it's interesting to work that way."
Actually, Lee hardly ever writes out a standard picture-by-picture script any more. (He recently hired three assistant writers. after 200 applicants flunked a sample Fantastic Four assignment. But he doesn't
think the boys are really yet for anything more demanding than Millie the Model and Kid Colt.) Lee arrives at his plots in sort of ESP sessions with. the artists. He inserts the dialogue after the picture layout comes in. Here he is in action at his weekly Friday morning summit meeting with Jack "King"
Kirby, a veteran comic hook artist. a man who created many of the visions of your childhood and mine. The King is a middle-aged man with baggy eyes and a baggy Robert Hall-ish suit. He is sucking a huge
green cigar and if you stood next to him on the subway you would peg him for the assistant foreman in a girdle factory.
"The Silver Surfer has been somewhere out in space since he helped the F.F. stop Galactus from destroying Earth," begins Lee. "Why don't we bring him back?"
"Ummh," says Kirby. "Suppose Alicia, the Thing's blind girl friend, is in some kind of trouble. And the Silver Surfer comes to help her." Lee starts pacing and gesturing as he gets warmed up. "I see," says Kirby. He has kind of a high-pitched voice. "But the Thing sees them together and he misunderstands. So he starts a big fight with the Silver Surfer. And meanwhile, the Fantastic Four is in lots of trouble. Doctor Doom has caught them again and they need the Things help." Lee is lurching around and throwing punches now. "Right," says Kirby. "The Thing finally beats the Silver Surfer. But then Alicia makes him realize he's made a terrible mistake. This is what the Thing has always feared more than anything else, that he would lose control and really clobber somebody." Kirby nods. "The Thing is brokenhearted. He wanders off by-himself. He's too ashamed to face Alicia or go back home to the Fantastic Four. He doesn't realize how he's failing for the second time.... How much the F.F. needs him."
Lee sags back on his desk, limp and spent.
Kirby has leaped out of the chair he was crumpled in, "Great, Great." The cigar is out of his mouth and his baggy eyes are aglow. His high voice is young with enthusiasm. Here's the esprit that makes this the Marvel Age of Comics. You can bet Stan Lee hasn't lost the touch that won him three first prizes in the Herald Tribune's "Biggest News of the Week" teen contest back at old DeWitt Clinton H.S.
More later.
Tom B
I Was A Teenage Moron
2008-04-25 16:32:55
For some reason, Marvel's servers seem to have eaten the last few paragraphs of the previous blog entry, which has caused a couple of people to get the wrong idea about where I was coming from. My point wasn't that the people complaining about any of these stories were wrong, but more that there are always going to be people both loving and hating anything and everything we do--and it's often impossible to tell at the moment of publication which stories are going to become classics, and which history is going to condemn.
To kind of illustrate this point, and as promised in the section of the last post that didn't make it to your screens, I went and dug up a bunch of comments about some Marvel books that I made in fanzines twenty years or so ago. I can completely relate to the irate fans (even if I don't always agree with them) because I used to be one of them. Here are a few choice selections:
1988 Tom: "One good thing about the current Marvel Ed-in-Chief--he likes the right stuff. Unfortunately, he likes it so much he's trying to imitate it. Even less fortunate is the fact that he has absolutely no one on his payroll that's fractionally as talented as Kirby, Ditko, Lee, Romita, Colan, etc. Tom DeFalco would like nothing so much as to be back in 1966 again, when Marvel was the cutting edge of mainstream comics. His THOR, for example, (done in collaboration with current Marvel house-style pretty boy Ron Frenz) reads like nothing so much as a bad parody of the Lee-Kirby run on that series. His new project SPEEDBALL is a blatant attempt to "re-create" the Spider-Man concept ("If Lee & Ditko could do it, then Ditko and I can do it again!")"
2008 Tom: This whole statement is pretty ridiculous. First I condemn Tom D for having the good taste to like the same comics that I like, and for trying to bring some of that flavor to what he was working on. Then I put on my magic mind-reading helmet and ascribe egotistical motives to everything he's working on. That off-handed cheap shot at Ron Frenz, a thorough professional and a proven talent, is especially idiotic.
1988 Tom: "Marvel's entire current output is aimed solely at the "new-kid/fan on the street", with the exception of Englehart's books. In trying for a common denominator audience, Marvel has reducd it's line to little more than formula books, with X-MEN (you just knew I was gonna pick out that one, didn't you?) being the prime example. Chris Claremont won't have to do a lick of creative work for the rest of his life. He can just run the same three stories over-and-over-ad infinitum. What's more, along with Louise Simonson, he can do it in FOUR X-TEAM books, a WOLVERINE solo book (Would you believe that this book's solicitation stressed the fact that Wolverine kills 72 people IN THE FIRST FIVE @#$%^&* PAGES?!?! That's a SELLING point, mind you.) "
2008 Tom: Boy, this one's a winner. Fist it starts out with an ovewhelming sense of entitlement ("Don't make comics for a broad mainstream audience, only make them for meeeeeee!") then rolls into some more character assassination. I still think that soliciting a book around the notion that the lead character massacres 72 people in five pages is pretty idiotic, and 1988 Tom would be aghast if he could see how many X-Titles we have these days, but everything else is just the self-importance of youth, and an attempt to sound smart by acting edgy.
It's also a bit humiliating that in each of these instances I singled out for scorn creators who are still working in the business on a regular basis today--proof of their longetivity and appeal. These guys definitely have my apologies for taking these stupid non-reviews to an ill-informed personal level.
So the point is: I get it. I understand these guys, because I was these guys. We're all the same moron, in our own individual ways. And in some cases, those opinions are going to prove to be embarasing in the years to come. Hey, it could happen--!
More later.
Tom B
It's All Cyclic
2008-04-23 16:57:41
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Here's one of the things I've realized about this business: it's all cyclic. The same patterns repeat themselves again and again, from generation to generation--not the specific instances, but the overall shape of people' reactions.
I'm still reacting in part to some of the people I spoke to at the New York Comic Convention, as well as the e-mails that we've been getting. But it's really driven home this idea of cycling.
For example: it's not great secret that there are still people upset about the changes to Spider-Man. Fair enough, But in the space of a day or two, I got five-or-so comments lamenting the elimination of Spidey's organic webbing, and the fact that there's been no mention of the additional powers he gained during "The Other."
Which comes as a bit of a shock, frankly, because the overwhelming majority of the reactions we saw at the time those two stories came out were decidedly negative! Nobody seemed to like the organic webbing, and people wrote long treatises about how Peter creating mechanical web-shooters was better, because this showcased his science skills. But just a couple short years later, we go back to the mechanical web-shooters, and it's like we fire-bombed something.
Believe it or not, this is really one of the great things about the Marvel characters, one of th eelements that allows them to survive and thrive over time. It's just a guess, but one based in part on the internal evidence of those bits of correspondence, but it seems like the people who really dug the organic webbing were largely newer fans, people who'd maybe come into Spidey's world through the portal of the movie. (Though one or two of them seemed moer from the "more-power-for-my-favorite-character-is-beter" school of thought--these tended to be the people who lamented the loss of the "Other-powers" as well.) And if, in two years' time, we go back to the organics, we'll get a whole new outcry from readers about that.
Each generation adopts Spider-Man as their own, and that version is "their" Spider-Man. But Spidey himself is eternal (well, at least so far), which means that each successive generation accepts him in whatever state they find him. Right now there are likely a new crop of potential web-heads being generated by the cool new Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon.
And once you've formed that deep personal connection, I totally understand how a change of direction can befoul you. From personal experience, I can remember how I felt when it was first announced that Spidey was getting a new costume coming out of Secret Wars. It was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard! Spidey's costume is a classic, the new, black design wasn't in keeping with the character, and it was an alien super-costume to boot! I wasn't reading Spidey at the time (having stopped just a few months prior to that), but I was nonetheless outraged--how dare Marvel ruin this classic character that I loved?
Of course now, that outfit itself is a classic, and is effortlessly accepted as part of the overall tapestry of Spidey's life. A reader who began following Spidey even as much as twenty years ago never even knew a Spidey who didn't have one. And that string of stories by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz look pretty good in hindsight as well.
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About this blog:
Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."
 | About the author:
Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four. |
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