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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 2, 2024 18:51:59 GMT -5
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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 4, 2024 3:04:34 GMT -5
Here is what Mark Evanier has to say about the creation of Spider-Man. It's pretty interesting and it makes a lot of sense, especially the part about changing Spidey's origin to avoid legal action by Archie. Cei-U! I summon the informed insight!
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Post by commond on Jul 4, 2024 16:22:42 GMT -5
I've been continuing to read the Atlas books, and I've gotta say, if Jack Kirby was the savior of Atlas then it didn't manifest itself that way in the actual books. Even if it was Kirby who persuaded Goodman and Lee to do sci-fi books, his input is limited and his stories are no better or worse than anyone else's. I suspect that's because he was still working as a freelancer at the time. It's not clear whether he's writing his own stories or working from a script from Lieber or one other staff writers. Knowing Jack and the way he felt about writers, if he was working from a script then he probably created his own version of the story. The most notable thing about his stories so far is that he doesn't really stick the landing in the way that a lot of the other stories do. He's starting to move into monster territory now, so things may change. Ditko is by far the most creative and imaginative of the artists. The books feature some really beautiful art from Don Heck, Al Williamson and John Buscema, but you can tell they're working from scripts. Ditko is the one guy who you feel is either plotting the stories himself or reworking old inventory stories into something new. I've been very impressed by the Ditko stories.
Even though the books were bimonthly, there's a lot of repetition. It's basically the same set of ideas over and over again. Common themes include time travel, alien invasions, invisibility, giant invaders, tiny invaders, and stories that touch on the cold war, nuclear war, and the civil rights movement, though for the latter they use prejudice against robots as an allegory for prejudice against black people. It's easy to get burnt out if you read too many issues in a row.
It did strike me that a lot of the stuff they did in the superhero comics wasn't that original since they'd done it all before in the sci-fi/monster books. I also have a raised eyebrow at the idea that only Kirby knew about science, etc., since he didn't write all of these stories and Stan had to have at least had some general knowledge of what was happening in the books.
The read through continues. I just wanted to touch base with myself for the sake of my own insanity.
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Post by berkley on Jul 4, 2024 17:33:17 GMT -5
I think everyone would acknowledge that Stan was a versatile writer who could produce competently written comics stories in pretty much any genre, including science fiction. But it doesn't appear to have been one of his personal over-riding interests. The books most people, on both sides of the controversy, cite as examples of what Stan could do when he took on most of the writing responsibilities himself seem to focus mostly on relationships, social issues, things like that. Even in the SF-based Silver Surfer he was more concerned with philosophical questions of justice, human rights, man's inhumanity to man, and similar moral issues. THat's all people are saying when it comes to Stan and science: not that he was ignorant or completely uninterested, just that it never seemed to be a personal focus of his.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 4, 2024 18:04:19 GMT -5
I think (though I could be wrong) what people are saying about the Kirby and Ditko monster books helping keep Atlas going. Was not that they were Earth shattering, but they sold better than what Atlas was doing at the time. They were definitely fun as well. The creative aspect for both was to come up with so many different monsters, month after month. There was a similarity to the stories with a lot of the twist endings made popular by EC.
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Post by impulse on Jul 5, 2024 13:57:28 GMT -5
Tangentially, I was browsing the shelves at my local library while the kids played at some activity, and I stumbled on Jack Kirby's comic-illustrated biography, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics . I almost grabbed it, and I may go back, but I figured there can't be much of interest this group doesn't already know. I just thought it was neat.
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