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Post by commond on Feb 27, 2024 19:09:05 GMT -5
Probably Bruce Berry, I thought his inking was inferior to Royer. KIrby only stayed until #40, so he was probably working up other things. I wonder if he was already doing the new Marvel stuff. Been a long time since I read the run, but I thought it was Conway using Kirby plots by the time of issue #40. According to Evanier and Conway, Kirby drew issues #38-40 from Conway's plots. Conway had already been making changes to Kirby's stories since the lettering was being done by Ben Oda in New York to lessen Bruce Berry's workload. Kirby no longer cared at this point as he already knew he was leaving. In fact, his departure had already been confirmed in the letter pages. It seems to me in the final issues that Bruce Berry was changing Kirby's faces to keep them in line with Kurbert's covers. |
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Post by commond on Feb 27, 2024 19:26:49 GMT -5
I just finished Kirby's run on The Losers and I feel it highlights a lot of his strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Kirby was very good at plotting a story out on the page, panel by panel, which led to some excellent single issue stories, however there was no sense of an overarching story. They're a series of random adventures with nothing tying the plots together. A deliberate choice by Kirby, but not a particularly satisfying one, especially when he decides to send The Losers on missions all over the globe. Kirby also forgoes any sort of characterization of The Losers themselves, which was a big complaint among readers at the time. There is pathos and tragedy in the series, but it happens to other characters. There are a lot of great action scenes, especially the scenes involving Nazi patrols, and I enjoyed the final issue and the way Kirby signed off, but there were a lot of silly single issue stories. I guess some folks may find Kirby's sillier stuff charming or amusing, but the way the series is sold is that it's a more serious take on war than the average war comic and that's simply not true. ; Kirby was reportedly unhappy about taking on this assignment, taking justifiable offense, as a combat veteran himself, at the very idea of a team of war heroes labeled "losers". His solution, whether made consciously or not, was to make the "losers" of his stories not the lead characters, but the other characters in the stories: the victims of war, the war criminals, the opportunists and collaborators. I'm a big fan of the Losers series as a whole, but I found Kirby's take a refreshing change from the moping, defeatist and depressed characterization that cropped up under other writers of the feature. And to keep it on topic, I can only imagine this run would have been the worst possible thing for Lee and Kirby to have hypothetically collaborated on, since Stan would have been pulled in an entirely different direction, making the Losers a bunch of happy-go-lucky wise-crackers trading insults in every other panel. From what I understand, Kirby didn't like the characters and didn't like the idea of working on a book that had been created by someone else. Some folks have speculated that they put Kirby on the book because they knew that he'd hate it, especially because it had been Kanigher's book. I've only just begun reading Kanigher's stories so I can't really compare the two runs, but I should point out that The Losers were having random adventures all over the world during the Kanigher run as well, so that criticism of Kirby's writing was perhaps a tad unfair. Kanigher's stories to appear to have more continuity to them, however. I haven't really encountered any moping, though the characters do refer to themselves as losers whenever possible. I totally agree that Stan would have had them trading wise-cracks until the sun went down, but I don't know if that's a bad thing. There definitely would have been a noble death or two, which as an article in the CBJ once mentioned was a Stan Lee contribution that we can point to when determining who was responsible for the stories. |
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Post by berkley on Feb 27, 2024 22:05:38 GMT -5
I haven't read any Losers comics, neither Kirby's nor whatever came before or after - mostly through not being a huge fan of war-stories in general, though I've read and watched my share and will no doubt do more in the future. From what I've seen, I don't think D. Bruce Berry's inks looked too bad but he certainly wouldn't rank with my favourite Kirby inkers. From memory, he had a relatively simple, clean style that possibly wasn't the best choice for a gritty war series.
On Stan Lee's writing style, we can all think of one series where he didn't use a lot of wise-cracks: the Silver Surfer, so we should grant the possibility that he might have tried a bring a serious tone to another series if he could be convinced it was appropriate. But then, it would probably have to be different from the Surfer's pseudo-philosophical monologues as well as from Spider-Man's or Daredevil's mixture of wise-cracking action and sentimental melodrama. I dunno - did Stan write other war comics that we could use as an indication of what he would be likely to do in that genre?
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Post by codystarbuck on Feb 27, 2024 22:12:05 GMT -5
Th combination of characters in The Losers made for some silliness, if you tried to play it straight. There is almost no reason you'd build a special operations team out of a fighter pilot, a PT Boat captain, and two Marines and a dog. You might get the Marines on the PT Boat, for a mission, but that's about it. The premise was that they were all cancelled features, thrown together, hence the Losers, then a premise within story was concocted to try to make it work. I read some of Kanigher's; but, Kirby's stories were better tales of real combat or more interesting ideas. Kanigher started well, with many features, than hit the cliches hard, after a while. Even Enemy Ace, which is his high water mark, for me, gets old quickly.
Kirby seems to ignore the fact that Johnny Cloud is an aviator and Capt. Storm is a naval officer. That character's name was ridiculous, if he is removed from a PT Boat. He was a lieutenant, the equivalent of an Army captain and the "captain" part meant he was the skipper of a PT Boat. Of course, he existed because he debuted in 1964, following on the death of John F Kennedy, a former PT Boat skipper and subject of a movie, with Cliff Robertson. Thing was, Storm would have been either chained to a desk or discharged, because he had lost a leg and had a wooden prosthesis. Kirby ignored that completely, because he was either unaware of it or knew it made no sense.
The premise works better if they are all Marines, with Cloud there as a code-talker. Making them a Marine Raider force works far better, as they sort of resemble a fire team and would be right for special missions, in the Pacific; or as Alamo Scouts, though they would all have to be Army, for that. Better yet, an OSS team.
Kirby pretty much treated Storm as Army, other than drawing his combination cover, with the colorist giving his uniform a lighter color, even when it didn't match Navy khakis or utilities. In issue #156, he is sees in Service Dress Khakis, with shoulder boards and Kirby drew enough gold braids for an actual Naval captain, which is four full, then he should only have two, as a lieutenant. That had me confused, the first time I read it, since Cloud was obviously in command, yet, based on that, Storm outranked him. I had to go research it to determine that Storm was depicted with lieutenant bars, in his own series, meaning he and Cloud were of equal rank. Cloud would have no infantry training, either, which is why I say Marines make more sense, as Marine pilots train as infantry officers, at The Basic School, before they are sent off to flight training.
Regardless, Kirby didn't give them much characterization, but neither did Kanigher, apart from what had been established in their original series. Storm was missing a leg and and eye, Cloud was a Navajo and Gunner & Sarge had the most personality of any of them (and were the most popular characters, among the fans). The art was always the main selling point, especially with John Severin and Sam Glanzman.
Darwyn Cook used them best, in The New Frontier, in the modern era.
Kirby would have preferred to create new characters and probably infantry soldiers, which is how he mostly treated the Losers, apart from the nature of a few of their missions. His combat scenes are some of the best and most realistic you will find, at DC, especially the house-to-house fighting in #152, "A Small Place in Hell." I've been reading Antony Bevor's book about Operation Market Garden and his description of the street fighting in Arnhem and Nijmegin are exactly like what Kirby depicted. Kirby fought at Metz and experienced plenty of that kind of thing, as Patton tried to push into the Sar region of Germany.
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Post by commond on Mar 16, 2024 18:14:50 GMT -5
I finished reading the Robert Kanigher/John Severin run on The Losers and I can understand the dismay that readers had when Kirby initially took over. The book was in the middle of an ongoing storyline that Kirby nixed and Jack completely ignored Kanigher's characterization of the characters. A big part of that was there was mounting tension in the group thanks to the introduction of a female member named Ona, whom Gunner had fallen in love with. At the end of Kanigher's run, Gunner had falsely assumed that Ona had betrayed them and crossed over to the enemy's side, but that was the last we'd see of Ona until further on into Kanigher's second run on the title. I also can't, for the live of me, remember Kirby mentioning Captain Storm's wooden leg. We know that Kirby didn't want to take on characters and a concept created by someone else, but I'm not sure how I feel about Kirby completely ignoring continuity like that. People often gripe about what other creators did with his Fourth World characters, etc.
Personally, I enjoyed the Kanigher/Severin run more. Kanigher is a better writer than Kirby and Severin is a far more atheistically pleasing artist than Kirby (at least to my eyes.) There was some silly stuff, like the Losers not being able to recognize that the pirate they kept encountering was their missing, presumed dead, comrade Captain Storm, but the characters were far more interesting and the actual focal point of the stories. Another bonus was that because Severin wasn't capable of producing a full comic book on a monthly basis, you got interesting backup stories from the likes of Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Frank Thorne, Sam Glanzman and Alex Toth. The best of these stories was the brilliant Tom Sutton story "Dirt", which felt like an old Kurtzman war story. Not all of the backup stories were great, but they created the aesthetic of a traditional DC war comic. Joe Kubert's covers were another visual treat, especially while he was editor of the book.
One final point of contention, it's often implied that Kirby brought a more authentic approach to DC war comics because of his own war experiences. While those experiences undoubtedly informed Kirby's own work, the actual scenarios he depicts, such as street fighting or a single soldier taking on a tank, had been depicted much the same in previous stories. Likewise, I've read massive amounts of praise for the way Kirby depicted Nazi firing squads shooting down civilians, but Severin drew the same scenario several times previously with far greater detail.
I haven't read Kanigher's return to the book, but I probably should to see the changes he makes from the Kirby run.
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 18, 2024 14:33:04 GMT -5
Stan Lee and John Romita did not create Mary Jane. Steve Ditko did. He introduced her in ASM #25 after her first mention in issue #15. All these stories were fully plotted by Ditko. In he first appearance, Liz and Betty see she is a knockout.  Now we don't know what Ditko eventually intended. And I have no problem attributing her character development to Romita and Lee. But to say Romita and Lee created her. As all Marvel sources say, is flat out false. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 18, 2024 15:23:31 GMT -5
Stan Lee and John Romita did not create Mary Jane. Steve Ditko did. He introduced her in ASM #25 after her first mention in issue #15. All these stories were fully plotted by Ditko. In he first appearance, Gwen and Betty see she is a knockout. Aunt May says in the first panel that the blonde girl is Liz Allan. Gwen first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #31. |
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 18, 2024 15:31:01 GMT -5
Stan Lee and John Romita did not create Mary Jane. Steve Ditko did. He introduced her in ASM #25 after her first mention in issue #15. All these stories were fully plotted by Ditko. In he first appearance, Gwen and Betty see she is a knockout. Aunt May says in the first panel that the blonde girl is Liz Allan. Gwen first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #31. Thanks, corrected. Gwen, another solo Ditko creation, yet attributed to Lee and Ditko. |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Mar 18, 2024 19:51:53 GMT -5
Stan Lee and John Romita did not create Mary Jane. Steve Ditko did. He introduced her in ASM #25 after her first mention in issue #15. All these stories were fully plotted by Ditko. In he first appearance, Liz and Betty see she is a knockout. Now we don't know what Ditko eventually intended. And I have no problem attributing her character development to Romita and Lee. But to say Romita and Lee created her. As all Marvel sources say, is flat out false. Yeah, saying that Lee/Romita created MJ is clearly incorrect, though as you point out, the development and design that created the character we all know and love was definitely down to Lee and Romita. But with that understood, I'm not sure how you can definitively say that Ditko created MJ without any input from Stan at all (unless you have a reliable third-party source that I'm unaware of, of course). ASM #25 was the very first issue where Ditko was credited as the plotter, but clearly MJ had been in the background since issue #15, as you say, and was -- prior to the Romita-drawn reveal in ASM #42 -- used as a running gag about this (almost certainly) ugly girl that Aunt May was desperate to fix Peter up with. Stan and Steve's relationship fell apart not long after ASM #25, with the pair reportedly not talking at all for the last year of Ditko's tenure on Spider-Man (Ditko would apparently drop off his finished art, with brief dialogue notes, and Stan would take the artwork and script it, without the two interacting at all). But prior to this total breakdown in communications, Stan would've almost certainly had some input into the discussions about adding another love interest for Peter to the comic. I know that Ditko has written in letters that Lee had no input at all into the stories from the second half of his stint on ASM, but as I pointed out earlier in the thread, some pages back, Ditko is himself an unreliable source and certainly had an axe to grind. As author Sean Howe points out in his book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Lee was still having input into the Spider-Man stories that Ditko plotted because he was still writing the dialogue for them and would, in fact, often use the dialogue to change minor story elements or lessen some of Ditko's more extreme objectivism. In a related subject, I think it's fascinating to speculate on what Ditko (and Lee) may've originally intended with Mary Jane before her Lee/Romita makeover. Ditko clearly intended for her to be a stunning beauty (Liz and Betty's reactions in the panels above prove that), but I think he was looking to introduce a love interest for Peter with a more mature, grown-up personality than Gwen or Liz (though not necessarily an older woman). Unlike Romita's MJ, Ditko's version is definitely not a happening, swinging '60s chick...just look at her conservative clothing and headscarf. Now admittedly, the headscarf was likely added as just another device to conceal her appearance, but nevertheless, clearly Ditko was intentionally dressing her like a more sophisticated and glamorous woman, a la Grace Kelly, than the free spirited and groovy Ann-Margret influenced character we eventually got. |
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 18, 2024 22:42:35 GMT -5
I have read that Sol Brodsky and others confirm Lee an Ditko weren't talking at this point.
One speculation I read somewhere was Ditko was setting her up to be a villain, that is why we don't see her face. It is similar to Osborn and the Goblin. Don't know how true that might be, but it is interesting.
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Post by tarkintino on Mar 18, 2024 23:59:30 GMT -5
Considering Ditko's style of / approach to women, there's no conceivable way he would have designed the unforgettable look or very liberated mid-60s personality of Mary Jane as created by Romita and Lee. To say that was not in Ditko's wheelhouse of creativity would be one of the understatements of comic book history.
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 19, 2024 7:15:48 GMT -5
If Wolverine had stayed a character who appeared in the Hulk he would never be the one Clairmont and Byrne gave us. But no one says they created Wolverine. It's Wein, Trimpe and I think Romita.
Same with MJ.
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Post by kirby101 on Mar 19, 2024 7:34:18 GMT -5
Further on Ditko and MJ. The speculation is Mary Jane was Princess Python, who Ditko added to the Circus of Crime. There are some clues about it in the stories and the way she dressed in civilian clothes was just like the panel with MJ. It might also be that Stan did not go along with this in his dialog. Who knows? just fun stuff to think about.
One thing though, it is clearly established in Stan's dialog that MJ looks like a movie star. His friends and Aunt May have seen her. Yet Stan forgets this when Aunt May finally gets him to meet her in issue 42, as Peter laments how bad she might be.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Mar 19, 2024 10:52:15 GMT -5
Further on Ditko and MJ. The speculation is Mary Jane was Princess Python, who Ditko added to the Circus of Crime. There are some clues about it in the stories and the way she dressed in civilian clothes was just like the panel with MJ. It might also be that Stan did not go along with this in his dialog. Who knows? just fun stuff to think about. I'd never heard this idea about Ditko possibly intending MJ to be a villain, kirby. Fascinating idea. The suggestion that she may've even been Princess Python is doubly fascinating and certainly fits timeline-wise, as she had first appeared in ASM #22. Looking at these panels from ASM #22, which show Princess Python in her civilian clothing...  It's clear that Princess Python's style of dress isn't a million miles away from the way Ditko dressed Mary Jane, in terms of it being a bit more glamourous and sophisticated than the more teenage clothing he gave Gwen and Liz. But then again, this was also the way that thousands of young American women dressed in the early-to-mid '60s. Plus, there's no headscarf...which isn't necessarily important, I guess, but if Ditko was intending them to be the same person, you might think he'd give her a headscarf? Like I say, it's fascinating to speculate on this though. One thing though, it is clearly established in Stan's dialog that MJ looks like a movie star. His friends and Aunt May have seen her. Yet Stan forgets this when Aunt May finally gets him to meet her in issue 42, as Peter laments how bad she might be. Yeah, but what self-respecting teenager would take their Mum's/Aunt's/Grandmother's word for it that a girl is attractive?! Besides, as far as I remember, Liz and Betty never mentioned how attractive Mary Jane was to Peter, did they?  The thing is, the whole running gag about Aunt May trying to set Peter up with her friend's niece, who he assumes will be an ugly dork, would've mirrored similar experiences that many young male readers would've had with their Mothers, Grandmothers and Aunts. I, for one, can remember my Great Aunt forever trying to set me up with her friend's granddaughters or similar when I was aged 13-16 or so...and they were all 'orrible!  The joke of course is that the reader is in on the fact that MJ is legitimately a stunning babe long before Peter realises it. |
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Post by berkley on Mar 19, 2024 12:10:21 GMT -5
I think the headscarf might have been there partly just to keep readers in suspense as to the exact appearance of the new mystery character and not necessarily meant to be part of her trademark look, or at least not necessarily something she'd wear all the time. If she was meant to be glamorous and sophisticated she might have been given to wearing all kinds of different things - always at the height of fashion, of course.
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The joke of course is that the reader is in on the fact that MJ is legitimately a stunning babe long before Peter realises it.