Ummmm.....yeah.......



I figured this was pretty much just going to be Marvel in Other Entertainment, without watching, as that is the only way these things get done (like the PBS docu-series that focused pretty much entirely on adaptations of comics, in radio, tv, movies, etc). Comics aren't a mass medium, so focus on one that is. Fine.

Except, this (I did watch it) is the equivalent of a WWE-produced history of the WWE (let alone pro wrestling) or a Disney-produced look at the history of Walt Disney Pictures.

Total corporate PR.

If there was any more spin to this, I would have vertigo. "...two Marvel EMPLOYEES, named Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...." etc, etc.

Steve who? Dit-ko?

Never heard of him.

Stan created all of this, right? Obviously. Stan wrote an outline, which he gave to Jack Kirby, who drew the pictures, then Stan wrote the dialogue.

Except he didn't.

Stan & Jack created the Marvel Method.

Except they didn't.

Okay, I expect that and I get it and I'm not losing sleep over it. This isn't about the comics, because who cares about the comics? As one of the talking heads says, it's the "intellectual property" that is important.

Not the people. Certainly not anyone who wasn't named Lieber.

Scratch that. Named Stanley Lieber.

Sucks to be Larry.

No, where I call shenanigans is the misinformation, omission of information and outright BS that is presented as fact, in the narrative. The MCU begins with Captain America, starring Reb Brown.

WTF?

Well, it starts with Captain America........starring Dick Purcell....in 1944.

Well, one clip with no context will take care of that.

Gantray-Lawrence Spider-Man? Never heard of it. Marvel Super Heroes syndicated cartoon series? Is that the one with fantastic Four and Iron Man? Uh...no. Hanna-Barbera Fantastic Four? No, that was just the Thing. Margaret Loesch says so. Ruby-Spears Fantastic Four? Oh that's the one I was thinking of, with Iron Man. No, no it wasn't. Spider-Man? Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends? The Hulk?

Wait, where is talk of the ratings hit Hulk tv series?

Oh, right.....Universal.

Oh, well, there's the Spidey tv series. Hey, Dr Strange!

Okay, Disney doesn't want to admit they don't control the Hulk and they sanctioned this, which means they can't independently go to Universal for footage of the Incredible Hulk. Maybe it will come up when they talk to Lou Ferrigno about the Incredible Hulk movie.

This is a very selective narrative that is really playing fast and loose with timelines and the truth, to present a rather revisionist history. The Perfect Film and Chemical Company buys Marvel. Yes, they did, in 1968. And, in 1970, rebranded itself as Cadence Industries, but that name is never used because the old name has the word "film" in it, like this was a studio who bought Marvel to produce films of their characters. The only "film" part of the company was a film laboratory, which it soon sold off. But, why let the legal name of the company, for the bulk of its ownership of Marvel, get in the way of a concocted narrative?

We jump ahead and now Ron Perelman is suddenly responsible for selling the rights to make these other films cheaply....except X-Men had been in development since 1984, starting with Orion Pictures, who got into financial trouble, then Carolco, then Columbia, then Fox. Spider-Man went through a similar route, with Cannon holding rights, then selling conflicting rights to everyone, to finance a film, leading to the endless lawsuits, before Sony got their greedy little hands on it.

Even Marvel Entertainment gets muddied heavily, with no mention that it was DePatie-Freleng, who sold to Marvel Comics (under ownership of Cadence Industries) in 1981. They make it sound like Stan was sent to Hollywood and created Marvel Entertainment (Or Marvel Productions, as it was originally known). Stan didn't run Marvel Productions. David DePatie ran it, until Loesch as brought in, in 1984. Stan was Vice President, Creative Affairs. Stan was not Loesch's boss. It's always been a bit murky as to what Stan really did in Hollywood; but, it seems like he mostly schmoozed with people, as the public face of Marvel, but was not involved in actually running anything involving any of the productions, produced or otherwise.

Here's the thing; I liked Vice's pro wrestling stuff, like Dark Side of the Ring and Tales from the Territories. For the most part, they are well-researched, well produced, entertaining shows. They are limited to fair use clips from WWE-owned footage (which includes WWF, Crockett NWA/WCW, AWA, World Class, Mid-South/UWF, ECW, Smokey Mountain) and re-enactments. Tales From the Territories was a bit underwhelming, because the Rock was involved and the episode devoted to his grandparents promotion, Polynesian Pacific Wrestling, in Hawaii, was heavily massaged to make the family look good, rather than give an accurate history. The series is further limited to mostly being anecdotes from the few surviving veterans of the subject promotions. Anyway, the difference is that Dark Side of the Ring is produced by people who are enthusiastic about the subject and do their research. This comes off like it was handed to them by Disney/Marvel's PR department and they swallowed the whole thing, hook, line and heavily massaged "history." Even Sean Howe is being edited down to what fits their pre-conceived narrative.

I still want to see the other episodes, to see the stuff about the MCU productions, but also see how much that gets spun.

The statement about the IP being what was really important, though, completely sums up the state of both Marvel and DC Comics. Both parent companies would likely dump comic book publishing if they didn't need it to maintain trademarks.

On the plus side, at least Sean Howe is there to try to give an outsider point of view, but mostly its limited to the bankruptcy and talk of Avi Arad, who comes off a lot like Meyer Lansky. The bankruptcy is mostly accurate, though skimpy enough to miss out on what the real issue was, that Perelman was using Marvel as collateral to sell junk bonds, which he then pocketed, rather than use it to capitalize Marvel (as he did with the stock). The rationale for buying Fleer and Heroes World isn't exactly accurate; but, hey, they got mentioned...which is something.

No talk of the relationship with Fox, which produced the Nick Fury and Generation X tv movies. In fact, little mention of the X-Men film franchise, except when they talk about the price of the license. The FF movie history ignores the fact that it was under development at Columbia, with Chris Columbus tapped to direct, before the property ended up at Fox. But, Disney owns Fox.

Obviously, this isn't intended for the comic book audience, since nothing is. This is to sell to the people who have seen the movies and think that Superman and Spider-Man are published by the same company. They know F-all about any of this. Still, this is like doing a history of the Lord of the Rings, but no mention is made of Tolkien and only Peter Jackson's work is considered......but none of parts about how other people were supposed to direct The Hobbit and such.

ps I loved the line about Batman was probably a big hit because people recognized the character from the 60s tv series...not the 3 plus generations that grew up reading his comics, watching the cartoons, seeing the tv series, watching the movie serials or picking up the hugely successful Batman: The Dark Knight Returns...or read articles about it in Rolling Stone and Newsweek and such. Or that it was a really good film, with a big name director, with a character known around the world, instead of one that made people say...Iron Man? Like the Black Sabbath song? Or do you mean the triathlon?

You PR Flacks....er, documentary tv producers (HACK.....CHOKE....sorry, couldn't swallow that) get off my lawn!

I don't have a problem, per se, with summarizing Marvel's history in comics, if your focus is solely on the development of the MCU.  I do have a problem with some of the language used to summarize that histories, which slants the importance of the people involved, besides Stan Lee.  They made a very deliberate emphasis on "employees," when they first mentioned Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.  They also make it sound like Namor and the Human Torch were created by people working for Martin Goodman.  That work was done by an outside company, Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies, Inc.  Carl Burgos, creator of the Human Torch and The Angel; and, Bill Everett, creator of the Sub-Mariner, bth worked for Funnies, Inc, who Goodman tapped to create Marvel Comics, the actual anthology comic that started the ball rolling, at Timely.

They make it sound like Timely's comics were different, because Martin Goodman published pulp magazines.  Nearly every early comic book publisher started as a publisher of pulp magazines.  DC, MLJ/Archie, Fawcett, Ned Pines/Nedor/Better/Standard....you name it.  DC's Harry Donenfeld published the Spicy line of pulp magazines, yet DC wasn't full of tawdry covers with half naked women.  The analogy that they try to make doesn't bear scrutiny.

They kind of hint at, but never come out and say that Goodman's standard practice was to see what was selling for other companies and put out a dozen knock-offs, glutting the market.  Westerns are selling?  Give me 14 western titles.  They also hint at but never say that most of them were pretty mediocre, but only to segue into Stan creating the FF.  Of course he did, Jack didn't do anything until he got the outline....right?

They really gloss over that Timely/Atlas was in really bad shape, by the 50s witch hunts, because they churned out so much crap and they had lost Simon & Kirby to DC, who worked for themselves, after they returned from the army (and Coast Guard).  They make it sound like Stan was the sole editor, after Simon left/was fired.  Nothing about Vince Fago running things, during the war, because Stan was in the Army, even though they showed photos of him, in uniform.  In a cushy stateside billet, I might add, while Jack was ahead of the front lines, scouting and fighting.  Not that I fault Stan for where the Army assigned him, just that serving in the military, in a safe area and serving in combat are two vastly different things.  I served during the Gulf War; but, I was in Charleston, SC, not the Persian Gulf and damn sure not in the desert.  Everyone does their job, but there is a certain reverence and respect that is held for combat veterans, by those of us who worked in support jobs.

Hopefully, subsequent episodes may explore more of those other productions, like the Captain America serial and the Hulk tv series; but I suspect the latter will only be in the context of Lou Ferrigno's involvement with the film and far less about the tv series.  I will be very happy if it gets more than 5 minutes of the segment.  The Captain America serial I doubt will even get 5 minutes; but you never know.  They bring up Reb Brown, but never mention that there were two pilot films and never actually name him or mention Christopher Lee, from the second film.  Again, maybe they will expand upon it; but, I kind of doubt there will be much time devoted to them, except in passing, as failed early stuff.  It would have been nice to actually give some time to the 70s productions and interview Reb Brown and Peter Hooten (waited too long to talk to Jessica Walter).  

The next episode is about Feige and the start of the whole MCU production.  I wonder if they will even mention the previous Fox deal, in that episode, which led to Nick Fury and generation X (and, ultimately, to the X-Men film series).? They own Fox, now; so why not?  Except maybe that they would have to admit that the X-Men films and the Sony Spider-Man films are the reason they were able to start making films, since they got the big influx of cash, that paid off the bankruptcy debt and got the Marvel name in the public consciousness, beyond comic book fans.

Really, it is the corporate control of the narrative that irks me. Warner is equally bad and it filters all through the corporate world, which includes Hollywood.  Documentaries have always reflected a certain POV; but, this is more of a hagiography, so far.  Maybe the balance will improve, over the series; but, I'd be willing to lay money that it will be more of the same.