![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khaosworksI'm delirious, so I'm going to ramble.
One of the things I left behind in Singapore were volumes of the "Essential" collections put out by Marvel Comics. Essentially, these are toilet paper reprints of Silver Age Marvels - Essential Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Captain America and so on. Not cheap, though, even if they are on newsprint and in black and white. But that doesn't really matter to me, because it's material that counts. All of these have one thing in common - they were written by Stan Lee.
For a long, long time, especially when I was growing up reading comics in the 1970s and 1980s (Lord, I feel old), Stan had become a bit of a joke. Sure, his name was on the banner of every Marvel comic being put out, but he was considered the product of a bygone era, and often descended into self-parody - Stan's Soapbox, for example, with its deliberately bombastic language, and the caricatures of Stan himself.
However, with the films coming out - since Spider-Man, really - I think people are starting to appreciate what a creative genius Stan really was. I've been trying to persuade some people of this for the last couple of years. Not the hard core aficionados, who have realized this long before me, but the more casual comic book fans.
Yes, Stan's dialogue was hokey, but a close reading of the comics of that era will show that he was actually aware that his dialogue was hokey (characters would make reference to it in the work itself!), but he went ahead with it anyway because it was the best way to make the point. Books like "Tales of Suspense" were anthology books, so the first Iron Man and Captain America stories published there were, on average, only about 13 pages long. And, holy crap, in those 13 pages Stan squeezed enough action, excitement and plot development that comics are lucky to see in three months, these days.
And the situations he creates are timeless, and wonderfully iconic. I've ranted before about the brilliance of Spidey's characterization, but let's take a look at two others:
Captain America, who struggled not the same demons as Spidey did but from the other side. Steve Rogers was a national icon, a super-hero that everybody loved, unlike Spidey, but that also meant that nobody would leave him alone. He was created for a war which was long over, but people still expected him to fight that war, making him incapable of having what he wanted - an ordinary life, with the woman he loved. It didn't help that the woman he loved was also an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., or that he was a living anachronism, or that if he let himself rest for too long he started to crave the excitement of adventure again. The price of fame, the call of one's blood, the soldier out of place in the society that demands he fight on. These are pretty heady themes for a kid's comic.
Iron Man, the richest man in the world, a handsome playboy adored by women. And yet, he was a man living on borrowed time, being kept alive only by his own inventive genius. Unable to tell the woman he really loves how he feels (because it wouldn't be fair on her to marry a man who could die at any time), and yet driven by vengeance to fight against injustice. This was a man who commanded the absolute loyalty and devotion of his employees, yet was unable to reciprocate, a man kept apart from the world by the very barrier that allowed him to go on living in it. At the same time, he had to deal with the fact that people did not take him seriously as a playboy, and the struggle for government funding. Tony Stark was Iron Man - not because of the suit, but because of the strength of character that allowed him to carry on.
Stan also understood the importance of setting: Cap fights in a world of high-tech espionage, against the same forces of bigotry and fascism he did during World War II, albeit in new or resurrected forms. Iron Man's world is exotic locations, glamorous women, corporate intrigue, and the military/propaganda battles of the Cold War. Busiek hit the nail on the head when years later he said that Iron Man should be like James Bond.
Different things for different stories: Thor, Ant-Man and the Hulk never had as much angst as the others, but they were for different things. Thor was a platform for Stan to play with fantasy and mythology, in the same way that Doctor Strange was an extension of the old horror/supernatural genre. The Hulk was obviously Jekyll and Hyde, but the concept of the hero who must fight not only against villains but his own dangerous nature was years ahead of anything else. Ant-Man was just science fictional adventure. But all this - from one man.
Imagine if Julie Schwartz and Stan Lee had gotten together to do stuff. The mind boggles.
I don't know if Stan intended all this - he may have simply thought that people would relate better to heroes with problems, and threw all kinds of angsty stuff at his characters to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if it was as simple as that, but this only makes me more impressed, that he was able to pull this iconic stuff together with little more than sheer inspiration. His work is not without flaws, of course - recycled plot elements (a common enough practice in comics), stilted dialogue, mistakes in continuity. But consider that he was practically plotting (if not actually writing) the entire frickin' line of Marvel comics in the early sixties, and you can sympathize.
I'm not trying to take away the contributions of such great artists as Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, Don Heck and of course Jack Kirby - their designs brought Stan's ideas to life, and in the case of Kirby, he created many of the initial concepts. But Stan fleshed them out, and if Kirby's later output is any indication, we should thank Stan from saving us from Jack's plotting and dialogue for many, many years.
So if you haven't thought about this before and you get the chance, read the early stuff again. I mean, really read it. I hope you'll see what I've been seeing, and become a True Believer.
One of the things I left behind in Singapore were volumes of the "Essential" collections put out by Marvel Comics. Essentially, these are toilet paper reprints of Silver Age Marvels - Essential Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Captain America and so on. Not cheap, though, even if they are on newsprint and in black and white. But that doesn't really matter to me, because it's material that counts. All of these have one thing in common - they were written by Stan Lee.
For a long, long time, especially when I was growing up reading comics in the 1970s and 1980s (Lord, I feel old), Stan had become a bit of a joke. Sure, his name was on the banner of every Marvel comic being put out, but he was considered the product of a bygone era, and often descended into self-parody - Stan's Soapbox, for example, with its deliberately bombastic language, and the caricatures of Stan himself.
However, with the films coming out - since Spider-Man, really - I think people are starting to appreciate what a creative genius Stan really was. I've been trying to persuade some people of this for the last couple of years. Not the hard core aficionados, who have realized this long before me, but the more casual comic book fans.
Yes, Stan's dialogue was hokey, but a close reading of the comics of that era will show that he was actually aware that his dialogue was hokey (characters would make reference to it in the work itself!), but he went ahead with it anyway because it was the best way to make the point. Books like "Tales of Suspense" were anthology books, so the first Iron Man and Captain America stories published there were, on average, only about 13 pages long. And, holy crap, in those 13 pages Stan squeezed enough action, excitement and plot development that comics are lucky to see in three months, these days.
And the situations he creates are timeless, and wonderfully iconic. I've ranted before about the brilliance of Spidey's characterization, but let's take a look at two others:
Captain America, who struggled not the same demons as Spidey did but from the other side. Steve Rogers was a national icon, a super-hero that everybody loved, unlike Spidey, but that also meant that nobody would leave him alone. He was created for a war which was long over, but people still expected him to fight that war, making him incapable of having what he wanted - an ordinary life, with the woman he loved. It didn't help that the woman he loved was also an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., or that he was a living anachronism, or that if he let himself rest for too long he started to crave the excitement of adventure again. The price of fame, the call of one's blood, the soldier out of place in the society that demands he fight on. These are pretty heady themes for a kid's comic.
Iron Man, the richest man in the world, a handsome playboy adored by women. And yet, he was a man living on borrowed time, being kept alive only by his own inventive genius. Unable to tell the woman he really loves how he feels (because it wouldn't be fair on her to marry a man who could die at any time), and yet driven by vengeance to fight against injustice. This was a man who commanded the absolute loyalty and devotion of his employees, yet was unable to reciprocate, a man kept apart from the world by the very barrier that allowed him to go on living in it. At the same time, he had to deal with the fact that people did not take him seriously as a playboy, and the struggle for government funding. Tony Stark was Iron Man - not because of the suit, but because of the strength of character that allowed him to carry on.
Stan also understood the importance of setting: Cap fights in a world of high-tech espionage, against the same forces of bigotry and fascism he did during World War II, albeit in new or resurrected forms. Iron Man's world is exotic locations, glamorous women, corporate intrigue, and the military/propaganda battles of the Cold War. Busiek hit the nail on the head when years later he said that Iron Man should be like James Bond.
Different things for different stories: Thor, Ant-Man and the Hulk never had as much angst as the others, but they were for different things. Thor was a platform for Stan to play with fantasy and mythology, in the same way that Doctor Strange was an extension of the old horror/supernatural genre. The Hulk was obviously Jekyll and Hyde, but the concept of the hero who must fight not only against villains but his own dangerous nature was years ahead of anything else. Ant-Man was just science fictional adventure. But all this - from one man.
Imagine if Julie Schwartz and Stan Lee had gotten together to do stuff. The mind boggles.
I don't know if Stan intended all this - he may have simply thought that people would relate better to heroes with problems, and threw all kinds of angsty stuff at his characters to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if it was as simple as that, but this only makes me more impressed, that he was able to pull this iconic stuff together with little more than sheer inspiration. His work is not without flaws, of course - recycled plot elements (a common enough practice in comics), stilted dialogue, mistakes in continuity. But consider that he was practically plotting (if not actually writing) the entire frickin' line of Marvel comics in the early sixties, and you can sympathize.
I'm not trying to take away the contributions of such great artists as Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, Don Heck and of course Jack Kirby - their designs brought Stan's ideas to life, and in the case of Kirby, he created many of the initial concepts. But Stan fleshed them out, and if Kirby's later output is any indication, we should thank Stan from saving us from Jack's plotting and dialogue for many, many years.
So if you haven't thought about this before and you get the chance, read the early stuff again. I mean, really read it. I hope you'll see what I've been seeing, and become a True Believer.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-14 01:10 pm (UTC)Excelsior!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-14 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-14 07:04 pm (UTC)