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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 20, 2017 2:53:07 GMT -5
Another aspect of Stan's writing I think is often overlooked is his work on the "girls'" comics like Millie the Model and Patsy Walker. I remember reading these as a kid (my sister collected them) and enjoying them but for years I've been assuming that those fond memories were founded more in nostalgia and my own lack of discrimination as a young'n than any real quality. Recently, however, I read the 9-issue run of Linda Carter, Student Nurse from the early '60s and was pleasantly surprised by how good it often was. Not only was Stan's dialogue snappy and often hilarious but his stories often had a serious side, touching on such subjects as the dangers of judging by appearances, the importance of owning up to one's mistakes, and the dignity and nobility of the nursing profession. These lessons were never ham-handed, as they often were during the era of "relevancy," but woven seamlessly into the fabric of the narrative. Nothing world-changing, you understand, but good stuff all the same. Cei-U! I summon the eye-opener! Huh. I've never read these 'cause they've never been reprinted and are kinda pricey but now I'm very curious. I've *ahem* never seen writing women as one of Stan's strong points. (I am on my phone but if I wasn't I would post the "wives should be kissed and not heard" panel. Pretend that is here followed by a dozen eye roll smileys.) |
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Post by Icctrombone on Oct 20, 2017 8:26:02 GMT -5
...or get Hank Pym slapped for saying this but...Stan Lee is actually more of a marketer than he is a comic book writer/author. True? Not true? (The enemies or the statement...either or). Ha. No enemies on this forum. Oh wait- maybe if you join the Political Thread.  |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2017 10:04:36 GMT -5
I think you can look at the Lee/Kirby collaborations and then their solo stuff post-collaboration much like you can look at the Lennon/McCartney collaborations and post-collaboration stuff and see what each brought to the table and how each benefited from the other during the collaborative period. There's been a lot of stuff written analyzing the Lennon/McCartney stuff and it's out there, so if interested go look for it, I'm not going to get into it here, but...
For Lee/Kirby, I pretty much see Kirby as the creative demi-Urge of the pairing. He was coming up with all the raw material, characters, concepts, what have you, but it was RAW, while Lee was the polisher and popularizer of the material. Lee was very much like the concept of the medieval alchemist, taking the raw materials putting them through the refiner's fire and transmuting them into gold. Kirby did a lot of the grunt work, but Lee took the raw creation, much like a first draft, and polished it into a much more finished product that was able to catch the attention of the comic buying public and fuel the growth of Marvel Comics as a whole. The end product was better for both their contributions, but without Kirby, there's nothing for Lee to work with, and without Lee, Kirby's work wouldn't have gotten the audience it did to make him King Kirby.
When Kirby left Marvel, you still see the demi-Urge at work, creating all sorts of new material, some of it still very raw, some of it a little more polished as a result of him having worked with Lee for the time he did. Kirby was constantly feeding his creativity exploring new ideas from what he read, science, speculative history, psychology, etc. and it fueled the creative engines of the demi-Urge and was being churned out into new comic ideas on the pages he drew. People will quibble about the quality of scripting and other things with the Kirby solo stuff, and many of those points are valid, but you also cannot deny that the steady stream of new ideas and new characters did not slow down one iota when Kirby went solo as compared to when he collaborated with Lee. The end product post-Lee may have been less refined, but it was still the demi-Urge at work.
Post-Kirby, Lee's stuff is still very polished, readable and popular, but there is no longer that stream of new ideas, concepts, and creativity underneath the surface that fueled the growth of Marvel when the two were together. Lee worked with several other collaborators to varying degrees of success, and everything still read well and had the Lee voice that made it popular and entertaining, but there weren't a lot of new building blocks for Marvel in that material. It used what material was there very well, but didn't contribute all that many new ideas. There were some, but nowhere near the rapid fire stream of ideas that appeared when the Lee and Kirby were collaborating. Lee was still turning out quality stuff, but without the steady supply of raw material from Kirby, the alchemist wasn't able to produce much new gold. When he did get raw material to work with, he was still able to produce the magic, but he never really supplied a lot of the raw material himself.
In many ways, Lee and Kirby's collaboration was a near perfect partnership for them as it allowed each to bring their strengths to the table and combine them into something greater than the sum of the parts, which became the foundation of Marvel as we know it. But human nature being what it is, nothing is ever perfect, and the cracks in the partnership grew until it was sundered.
Lee gets the lion-share of the credit for creating the Marvel Universe, and in one sense that is true, he took all the disparate pieces and forged them into this thing we know as the Marvel Universe. What I take issue with is Lee being credited with creating all the pieces, as those I think came from the demi-Urge of the partnership in Kirby. Kirby was churning out the raw material Lee was then forging into the Marvel U, i.e. the ideas, characters, concepts, etc. and I think the growing mythos of Stan was part of what was widening the cracks in the creative partnership. I don't think it was ego so much as Jack wanting a deal that took care of his family. Security was a big, big thing for those of the generation that had endured the Great Depression. I saw it a lot in my grand-uncles and grandparents who were trying to raise families in the teeth of the Depression. They had no issue doing the work, but they wanted the economic security for their families that they believed should come with the work, and woe unto anyone who tried to take that away from them (or that they perceived as trying to take away their rightful due). It was something I saw destroy friendships, family relationships and business partnerships in that generation, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the motivation for Jack looking for and taking what he considered a better deal to go to DC (and then back to Marvel, and then into animation). I think moreso anyways than who got the credit, it was who got the rewards for the work that was the breaking point for the collaboration, but that's just conjecture on my part based on stuff I read and experiences with a lot of folks who were of the same generation as Lee & Kirby.
-M
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 20, 2017 13:45:51 GMT -5
I think you can look at the Lee/Kirby collaborations and then their solo stuff post-collaboration much like you can look at the Lennon/McCartney collaborations and post-collaboration stuff and see what each brought to the table and how each benefited from the other during the collaborative period. There's been a lot of stuff written analyzing the Lennon/McCartney stuff and it's out there, so if interested go look for it, I'm not going to get into it here, but... For Lee/Kirby, I pretty much see Kirby as the creative demi-Urge of the pairing. He was coming up with all the raw material, characters, concepts, what have you, but it was RAW, while Lee was the polisher and popularizer of the material. Lee was very much like the concept of the medieval alchemist, taking the raw materials putting them through the refiner's fire and transmuting them into gold. Kirby did a lot of the grunt work, but Lee took the raw creation, much like a first draft, and polished into a much more finished product that was able to catch the attention of the comic buying public and fuel the growth of Marvel Comics as a whole. The end product was better for both their contributions, but without Kirby, there;s nothing for Lee to work with, and without Lee, Kirby's work wouldn't have gotten the audience it did to make him King Kirby. When Kirby left Marvel, you still see the demi-Urge at work, creating all sorts of new material, some of it still very raw, some of it a little more polished as a result of him having worked with Lee for the time he did. Kirby was constantly feeding his creativity exploring new ideas from what he read, science, speculative history, psychology, etc. and it fueled the creative engines of the demi-Urge being churned out into new comic ideas on the pages he drew. People will quibble about the quality of scripting and other things with the Kirby solo stuff, and many of those points are valid, but you also cannot deny that the steady stream of new ideas and new characters did not slow down one iota when Kirby went solo as compared to when he collaborated with Lee. The end product post-Lee may have been less refined, but it was still the demi-Urge at work. Post-Kirby, Lee's stuff is still very polished, readable and popular, but there is no longer that stream of new ideas, concepts, and creativity underneath the surface that fueled the growth of Marvel when the two were together. Lee worked with several other collaborators to varying degrees of success, and everything still read well and had the Lee voice that made it popular and entertaining, but there weren't a lot of new building blocks for Marvel in that material. It used what material was there very well, didn't contribute all that many new ideas. There were some, but nowhere near the rapid fire stream of ideas that appeared when the Lee and Kirby were collaborating. Lee was still turning out quality stuff, but without the steady supply of raw material from Kirby, the alchemist wasn't able to produce much new gold. When he did get raw material to work with, he was still able to produce the magic, but he never really supplied a lot of the raw material himself. In many ways, Lee and Kirby's collaboration was a near perfect partnership for them as it allowed each to bring their strengths tot he table and combine them into something greater than the sum of the parts, which became the foundation of Marvel as we know it. But human nature being what it is, nothing is ever perfect, and the cracks in the partnership grew until it was sundered. Lee gets the lion-share of the credit for creating the Marvel Universe, and in one sense that is true he took all the disparate pieces and forged them into this thing we know as the Marvel Universe, what I take issue with is him being credited with all the pieces, as those I think came form the demi-Urge of the partnership in Kirby. Kirby was churning out the raw material Lee was then forging into the Marvel U, the ideas, characters, concepts, etc. and I think the growing mythos of Stan was part of what was widening the cracks in the creative partnership. I don't think it was ego so much as Jack wanting a deal that took care of his family. Security was a big, big thing for those of the generation that had endured the Great Depression. I saw it a lot in my grand-uncles and grandparents who were trying to raise families in the teeth of the Depression. They had no issue doing the work, but they wanted the economic security for their families that they believed should come with the work, and woe unto anyone who tried to take that away from them (or they perceived as trying to take away their rightful due). It was something I saw destroy friendships, family relationships and business partnerships in that generation, so I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of the motivation for Jack looking for and taking what he considered a better deal to go to DC (and then back to Marvel, and then into animation). I think moreso anyways than who got the credit, it was who got the rewards for the work that was the breaking point for the collaboration, but that's just conjecture on my part based on stuff I read and experiences with a lot of folks who were of the same generation as Lee & Kirby. -M Nailed it. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 20, 2017 15:09:41 GMT -5
I'll just add that the person who denied Kirby the full financial rewards of his creations was Martin Goodman, not Stan. Stan paid Kirby as much as Goodman allowed him to.
Goodman's penny-pinching also alienated Steve Ditko, and had at least as much to do with Steve leaving Marvel as his rift with Stan over Randian ideas.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Oct 22, 2017 15:54:43 GMT -5
I've got more. I... uh... think about Stan's writing A LOT.
So, setting. Ok, so I don't think that Stan did much with characterization that previous comic writers didn't. I'd probably buy an argument that his characters were deeper than any SUPERHEROES that came before him, but they were still flatter than Sugar and Spike or Uncle Scrooge or any of John Stanley's Little Lulu cast.
But he did amazing work with supporting and background characters - off the top of my head only the Hernandez Brothers are even close to as good in all of American comics - and that went a long way to giving the Marvel Universe verisimilitude, color, and character. I'm hesitant to use the word "realism" when describing superhero comics, but - hell - STan Lee's New York felt more real than any other large-scale location in comics.
Some people in the Marvel Universe liked superheroes. Many ADAMANTLY did not. Quite a few didn't care. And the superhero leads would run into ALL these types of people on the regular. Stan gave the sense of a wide-open city full of diverse people with diverse opinions - and quite often used 'em as a chance to stick some comic relief in his stories. The strong supporting characters who pictured themselves as the "heroes" in their stories (regardless of the name on the cover) kept Stan's New York and his superheroes grounded, and this attention to creating an organic, entertaining, and unpredictable setting kept the heroes grounded and relatable in a way that nobody else in comics ever had.
AND this is another amazing feature of early Marvel that current writes and editors have completely forgotten how to utilize. *Sigh*
(On the downside, this meant that when Stan set the stories anywhere other than New York they immediately lost something - he simply wasn't that great with fantastical settings like Atlantis or the Great Refuge.)
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Post by Rob Allen on Oct 26, 2017 15:07:25 GMT -5
I've found some interesting reading about the early Silver Age and the Marvel Method. First, Nick Caputo's blog, which I highly recommend all of, has an article devoted to: "Development of the Marvel Method". "The first ongoing character Lee worked on with Kirby was the revamped Rawhide Kid, beginning with issue # 17 (Aug 1960). [...] Lee probably began providing plots for Kirby around this time period, as he was quite aware of Kirby's talents and experience. Another reason this makes sense is because Steve Ditko, who began working for Marvel in 1959 on a regular basis, has noted that he never received a full script from Lee, and worked from a synopsis on the 5 page fantasy stories. If Lee trusted the younger Ditko to work in this manner early on, would he not do the same for Kirby, whose track record went back two decades? [...] Dick Ayers is an invaluable resource, as he has kept records of his work. Ayers recalls that he first worked Marvel method on a Two Gun Kid story, "The Bronc Buster" which appeared in Two-Gun Kid # 63, May 1963 cover date. [...] When did Stan start the synopsis system with you?
Heck: I don't think he started with me as early as some of the others up there. I believe about 1962. It could have been 1963. I'm sure Kirby was doing stuff from a synopsis a lot earlier than that.[...] As Lee's workload grew in late 1963, including new titles such as the Avengers and X-Men, everyone was probably initiated into the method, including Jack Keller, Stan Goldberg and Al Hartley." And more from Aussie fan extraordinaire Daniel Best - Don Heck - In His Own Words"... Stan Lee used to give you the first three pages, tell you who the character was fighting, and give you the last couple of pages so you'd know how it ended. And in between you'd put about fifteen page of stuff. And at the time, I thought, "Oh, my God! This'll never work!" But then I'd sit down and start to figure different things that these types of characters could do. Then when I went back to working from a script, years and years later, sometimes I felt like I was a little closed in. I got used to the synopsis and I'll tell you why: because you're not hindered by the amount of copy that's there... It's a freer way of working." |
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