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Post by tarkintino on Oct 6, 2022 17:09:54 GMT -5
Without dialogue, the page posted above (for one example) would give no indication of character interaction--how they work around one another or feel--what's motivating them before moving to action. Kirby had his storytelling strengths, but Lee certainly had them as well, which helped many a Marvel title break out to be hits in the Silver Age.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2022 17:46:53 GMT -5
Without dialogue, the page posted above (for one example) would give no indication of character interaction--how they work around one another or feel--what's motivating them before moving to action. Kirby had his storytelling strengths, but Lee certainly had them as well, which helped many a Marvel title break out to be hits in the Silver Age. you can absolutely read their emotions. i.e. how they feel, from the expression and body language of the characters on the page. If you can't. it's probably because you are distracted by the mass of words or reliant on the dialogue and not actually looking at what the art is actually doing on the page and not reading the visual cues present in the art. But it's there to be read without the words. -M |
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Post by commond on Oct 6, 2022 18:31:47 GMT -5
That's an incredibly average page. I have a hard time believing anyone would understand what was going on without dialogue if they weren't already familiar with the Fantastic Four and the Invisible Woman's powers. There's barely any characterization, either. I'm sure there are much better examples of Kirby's storytelling ability than that page.
Personally, I find Lee's dialogue easier to read than some of his Bronze Age successors.
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Post by MWGallaher on Oct 6, 2022 21:23:47 GMT -5
Quite literally, Gerald Jablonski:  |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Oct 6, 2022 22:14:38 GMT -5
About Lee's dialogue: it is shaping the not only the plot, but giving life, specific behaviors and motivation to the characters. Without it, there's no heart, no human substance for the reader to connect to--that cannot be conveyed only in visuals, thus, it would not be much more than a series of storyboards, or at its worst, certain Image comics from the 90s. I can get most of that from Kirby's art, which gives life and personality to the characters through expression and body language. For me, Lee's dialogue now sucks all life out of the pages and characters, not enhances it. It dulls the power and dynamics of Kirby's art and action by absolutely destroying the pacing of the story. There's now way anyone could get that many words out between the actions form one panel to another without having to pause in the middle of the action to verbalize that much redundant dialogue. -M I wonderif that would still be true if you weren't already familiar with the characters? I can definitely see what you mean, but I think a reader new to the comic, or one that just had a passing acquaintance, might need those words. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2022 23:51:54 GMT -5
I can get most of that from Kirby's art, which gives life and personality to the characters through expression and body language. For me, Lee's dialogue now sucks all life out of the pages and characters, not enhances it. It dulls the power and dynamics of Kirby's art and action by absolutely destroying the pacing of the story. There's now way anyone could get that many words out between the actions form one panel to another without having to pause in the middle of the action to verbalize that much redundant dialogue. -M I wonderif that would still be true if you weren't already familiar with the characters? I can definitely see what you mean, but I think a reader new to the comic, or one that just had a passing acquaintance, might need those words. Well that page is isolated, a reader would have the context of the previous pages leading up to it and the pages that follow to help provide the necessary visual context and cues of the narrative flow. A new reader would have gotten the new reader exposition from Stan on Page 1 and from that you would have been good to go to get what was happening in the issue if you were unfamiliar with the FF or the story so far. So yes, you needed some context, but the way comics were structured and presented you would have gotten what you needed for comprehension as a new or familiar reader on the first 1-3 pages, and the rest was carried by Kirby's skill with visual narrative and his extensive use of body language/posture and facial expressions. At the start of the page you can "read" the menace and consternation from Mole Man's stance and expression. A reader likely picked up that the girl in the group had invisibility powers earlier in the issue so it is quite apparent what is causing the consternation and who he is menacing in the page, and form the visual flow of the story preceding that page. A good storyteller understands the flow form panel to panel and from page to page to show what is needed to carry the story. A writer has to tell what is happening if the visuals fail. Kirby's visuals rarely failed, so most of Lee's dialogue and captions were superfluous, telling the reader what they were already being shown by Kirby's art and storytelling. Younger readers who may not have picked up the visual literacy of comics yet may have needed the words, and readers who had never read comics perhaps (but at that time comics were ubiquitous in people's lives-not comic books, but comic strips, editorial cartoons, etc. etc. so most people had at least a basic visual literacy of how to read comics, something you cannot assume about later generations where comics (not comic books) were not ubiquitous in their daily lives (later generations needed things like Eisner's Graphic Storytelling and McCloud's Understanding Comics to gain the kind of literacy earlier generations almost instinctively picked up just from their daily interactions with comics in their everyday life even if they never picked up a comic book to read). -M |
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Post by Confessor on Oct 7, 2022 1:31:41 GMT -5
Alan Moore's writing is definitely something I deliberately take my time reading because there's usually so much going on, so much to interpret or reflect on, and just because it's so wonderfully literary. Neil Gaiman in The Sandman is another whose writing I love to savour, but he's not quite on the same level as Moore for me personally.
As for artists, Hergé's work on Tintin often has clever little hidden details or gags that only an eagle-eyed reader who is carefully examining the panels would catch. Likewise, Al Williamson's art always has so much sumptuous detail to explore -- especially when he's depicting jungle or swamp settings. Frank Hampson's glorious painted artwork on the British comic Dan Dare is another example of art that I will pause from reading to get lost in the incredible detail of the illustrations.
Regarding Stan Lee's writing, I have to agree that it could definitely be a little verbose at times, but it's colour, characterisation and whit are absolutely essential to the flavour of those Silver Age comics -- and a BIG reason why they became so popular in the first place.
Comics work best when the pictures and words work together IMHO. Most comics aren't designed to be a purely visual medium: they are a combination of images and words working together to tell a story. It's like cinema in that respect. To suggest that an artist -- even a great artist like Jack Kirby -- could achieve as much on a page as an artist and a script writer working together seems barmy to me. Especially when Kirby was drawing those pages knowing full well that dialogue would be added later to help with the narrative heavy lifting.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2022 1:41:00 GMT -5
Alan Moore's writing is definitely something I deliberately take my time reading because there's usually so much going on, so much to interpret or reflect on, and just because it's so wonderfully literary. Neil Gaiman in The Sandman is another whose writing I love to savour, but he's not quite on the same level as Moore for me personally. As for artists, Hergé's work on Tintin often has clever little hidden details or gags that only an eagle-eyed reader who is carefully examining the panels would catch. Likewise, Al Williamson's art always has so much sumptuous detail to explore -- especially when he's depicting jungle or swamp settings. Frank Hampson's glorious painted artwork on the British comic Dan Dare is another example of art that I will pause from reading to get lost in the incredible detail of the illustrations. Regarding Stan Lee's writing, I have to agree that it could definitely be a little verbose at times, but it's colour, characterisation and whit are absolutely essential to the flavour of those Silver Age comics -- and a BIG reason why they became so popular in the first place. Comics work best when the pictures and words work together IMHO. Most comics aren't designed to be a purely visual medium: they are a combination of images and words working together to tell a story. It's like cinema in that respect. To suggest that an artist -- even a great artist like Jack Kirby -- could achieve as much on a page as an artist and a script writer working together seems barmy to me. Especially when Kirby was drawing those pages knowing full well that dialogue would be added later to help with the narrative heavy lifting. that's the thing though, that dialogue and those captions aren't working with the art, they are duplicating what the art is doing making them mostly redundant. And at times they are working against the art when Lee wanted to go in a direction Jack didn't or didn't jibe with what Jack was doing. I agree comics work best when art and words complement each other. I don't see that the case with most of the Lee-Kirby stuff where the words are not only verbose, they are duplicating the work already done by the art and/or contradicting the intent of the art at others. The worst comic text is when a frustrated prose writer tries to create prose story via captions and dialogue ignoring what storytelling is already there in the art creating a page that is at odds with itself in its central purpose. It's why I also think comics work best when the artist and writer are the same person since there is no contradiction of purpose there between art and text. -M |
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Post by Confessor on Oct 7, 2022 2:38:59 GMT -5
Alan Moore's writing is definitely something I deliberately take my time reading because there's usually so much going on, so much to interpret or reflect on, and just because it's so wonderfully literary. Neil Gaiman in The Sandman is another whose writing I love to savour, but he's not quite on the same level as Moore for me personally. As for artists, Hergé's work on Tintin often has clever little hidden details or gags that only an eagle-eyed reader who is carefully examining the panels would catch. Likewise, Al Williamson's art always has so much sumptuous detail to explore -- especially when he's depicting jungle or swamp settings. Frank Hampson's glorious painted artwork on the British comic Dan Dare is another example of art that I will pause from reading to get lost in the incredible detail of the illustrations. Regarding Stan Lee's writing, I have to agree that it could definitely be a little verbose at times, but it's colour, characterisation and whit are absolutely essential to the flavour of those Silver Age comics -- and a BIG reason why they became so popular in the first place. Comics work best when the pictures and words work together IMHO. Most comics aren't designed to be a purely visual medium: they are a combination of images and words working together to tell a story. It's like cinema in that respect. To suggest that an artist -- even a great artist like Jack Kirby -- could achieve as much on a page as an artist and a script writer working together seems barmy to me. Especially when Kirby was drawing those pages knowing full well that dialogue would be added later to help with the narrative heavy lifting. that's the thing though, that dialogue and those captions aren't working with the art, they are duplicating what the art is doing making them mostly redundant. And at times they are working against the art when Lee wanted to go in a direction Jack didn't or didn't jibe with what Jack was doing. I agree comics work best when art and words complement each other. I don't see that the case with most of the Lee-Kirby stuff where the words are not only verbose, they are duplicating the work already done by the art and/or contradicting the intent of the art at others. The worst comic text is when a frustrated prose writer tries to create prose story via captions and dialogue ignoring what storytelling is already there in the art creating a page that is at odds with itself in its central purpose. It's why I also think comics work best when the artist and writer are the same person since there is no contradiction of purpose there between art and text. Sure, I get what you're saying, but I just think you're wrong. I think that most of the time Lee's dialogue worked very well with the art and ultimately improved the comics he wrote. I mean, I wouldn't say that the page reproduced above is one of Lee or Kirby's best...not by a long shot... but as a rule, they mostly complimented each other very well. For my money, Amazing Spider-Man is the best of Silver Age Marvel, and Lee's dynamic, often humorous, and grippingly soap-operaesque dialogue is an absolutely vital ingredient to what makes that comic so good. Both Steve Ditko and John Romita were incredible artists, but it's Lee's scripting that makes us sympathetic to Peter Parker and makes us engage so strongly with him and the other members of the ASM cast. His dialogue is a cornerstone of what made Spider-Man such a popular character. I also think that the whole "Lee working against Kirby's artistic intentions" (or Ditko's for that matter) thing has been massively overstated as the decades have passed. Sure, it happened on occasion, but nowhere near as often as some people like to make out. Mostly, they complimented each other beautifully, as far as I can see. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 7, 2022 4:51:38 GMT -5
We should make a drinking game out of how fast someone bashes Stan Lee in one of these threads.
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 7, 2022 4:53:10 GMT -5
Lee gave personality to the characters that we love.
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 7, 2022 8:18:53 GMT -5
If Kirby thought pictures alone could tell the story, he wouldn't have written dialog for his own books, or put in notes for Stan about the dialog at Marvel. QED.
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Post by MDG on Oct 7, 2022 9:04:53 GMT -5
Stan Lee. There is no rushing through a page like this.   It was driving me nuts where I'd seen that third panel of the Mole Man before. It's from the second panel here (Wally Wood, Mad 17):  |
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Post by commond on Oct 7, 2022 9:12:34 GMT -5
The art can only take you so far. I'm pretty sure that if most folks read a manga in Japanese they'd have a hard time figuring out what was going on. Unless the story's being deliberately told as a silent comic, you need some form of exposition. How should Lee have scripted that page of art? Captions instead of the Mole Man speaking? Resisting the temptation to have all four members speak at once? It's not a very dynamic page. There's no real drama. I don't really see what else Lee could have done aside from explaining the plot. Kirby did the same thing when he scripted himself.  |
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Post by tonebone on Oct 10, 2022 10:58:11 GMT -5
Stan Lee. There is no rushing through a page like this. It was driving me nuts where I'd seen that third panel of the Mole Man before. It's from the second panel here (Wally Wood, Mad 17): Eh, I think that's a bit of a stretch... nice coincidence, but not really a swipe or anything. |
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