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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 4, 2014 6:00:21 GMT -5
That was due less to the original plan failing and more to Jim Shooter being ousted, followed by the original owners selling Valiant to a video game company that had extended itself too far and had no idea what to do with a comic book line. Yeah, the plan didn't fail... It was abandoned! Part of the appeal of Valiant (to me) was that in reaction to the general early 90s trend, it focused on the stories and had a long term vision. It started failing when it joined the bandwagon of killing most supporting characters, undoing all he world-building that had been the hallmark of the line and trying to become another early Image comics. There were some who hated Rai #0 because it showed what happened to Shadowman, sting etc. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 4, 2014 8:17:36 GMT -5
I agree that the Marvel phenomenon was the result of a happy accident - the right people coming together at the right time, as Tolworthy puts it - rather than any kind of master plan to revolutionise the medium.
I'd also add Stan's ability to write irreverent, early MAD-style humour and long-running soap-opera sub-plots to the mix. I don't think either of those elements had been commonly used in superhero comics before, certainly not to the extent they were by Stan, or with anything like his flair.
And I'd add Kirby's love of science fiction to his interest in mythology: striking SF concepts were was very important to both the FF and to Thor, and I think they almost all came from Kirby, as Stan showed very little ability to write SF in his work with other collaborators - e.g. his Silver Surfer series.
It's true Kirby wasn't able to reproduce the kind of writing in his later solo work with DC and Marvel that Stan had brought to their work together, but I don't think that would have been appropriate to the kind of stories Kirby was interested in writing by then. Stan would have damaged rather than enhanced those projects.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 4, 2014 9:13:11 GMT -5
Part of the appeal of Valiant (to me) was that in reaction to the general early 90s trend, it focused on the stories and had a long term vision. YES. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Aug 4, 2014 9:14:40 GMT -5
Yeah, the plan didn't fail... It was abandoned! Part of the appeal of Valiant (to me) was that in reaction to the general early 90s trend, it focused on the stories and had a long term vision. It started failing when it joined the bandwagon of killing most supporting characters, undoing all he world-building that had been the hallmark of the line and trying to become another early Image comics. There were some who hated Rai #0 because it showed what happened to Shadowman, sting etc. Rai #0 was an interesting choice produced at an awkward in-between phase where Valiant was still using some of Shooter's ideas after his dismissal, but was also changing things a whole lot. I'm not sure how much of Rai #0 was in the original plan. Certainly, the new Rai introduced at the end was not. And I go back and forth on how I feel about that issue. Was it more ambitious or foolish? I'm still not sure. |
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Post by paulie on Aug 4, 2014 11:14:53 GMT -5
I think that your theory holds water a lot better than the "it was all planned" self -serving explanation. But even if the initial start of Marvel was a fluke, I am convinced that its success as a phenomenon was due to Stan's hyperbolic communication style and to Jack Kirby being allowed to fire on all cylinders. Stan's hyperbolic communication style and to Jack Kirby being allowed to fire on all cylinders.
That's actually the best I've heard it put. Stan had TONS to do with Marvel exploding... just not necessarily the reasons Stan wanted us to think.
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Post by MDG on Aug 4, 2014 12:15:45 GMT -5
I agree that it was an "accident," but one that wouldn't have happened without Lee and Kirby and Ditko.
Lee, once he had the opening provided a personality to the line of books, but that opening was provided by Kirby and Ditko who, throughout their careers were artists (cartoonists might be a better word) who thought and created in terms of character and story more than many comic artists. They had the ability to generate story and characters and tell the story visually, making the books more viscerally exciting than DCs. My opinion, but a lot of early Marvel that didn't involve Kirby or Ditko is pretty weak tea compared to what they did.
I wouldn't discount the fact that Stan was Goodman's nephew, so he had a lot more lattitude in playing with the entire line than an editor-for-hire would've had. And stan knew that if the comics bombed he had a safety net.
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Post by tolworthy on Aug 4, 2014 14:32:59 GMT -5
Stan's hyperbolic communication style and to Jack Kirby being allowed to fire on all cylinders.
That's actually the best I've heard it put. Stan had TONS to do with Marvel exploding... just not necessarily the reasons Stan wanted us to think.
Very well put! I think you've nailed it. Stan thought of himself as a writer. He wanted to write novels and screenplays. He wanted to take credit for all those stories he suggested then dialogued. But I don't think he was as good a writer as he thought. He was a good dialoguer compared with other comic writers, but that is faint praise. However, he was a world class huckster (I use the term affectionately) and probably the best comics editor ever (according to Jordan Raphael's biography, and I agree) . I differ from most comic readers in that I think Stan's huckstering and editing were every bit as creative, difficult and vital to success as any plotting/drawing. And this is not to say Stan's plots and dialogue were unimportant, but I think he could have hired others to do that if needed. But nobody could replace Stan at running the whole show, not in that crucial 1961-1965 window. I think back to those early letters pages, where he was so hungry for feedback, where he would do anything to get just one more reader: he was passionate, hyperactive, while behind the scenes spinning plates and herding cats! No other editor or writer could compete with that. I think the crucial story elements appeared by accident, and I don't think Stan understood exactly why they succeeded. He was not a genius writer. But he was a genius editor and promoter and communicator and organiser, that's what the comics needed. He didn't provide the seed, but he provided the fertile soil and sunshine and water. Continuing the seed analogy, I think Stan was no biologist, but he was the most creative and energetic gardener: he made things live when nobody else could. |
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 4, 2014 18:57:14 GMT -5
[...] this is not to say Stan's plots and dialogue were unimportant, but I think he could have hired others to do that if needed. But nobody could replace Stan at running the whole show, not in that crucial 1961-1965 window. But he did hire other writers in that period, and they didn't work out. Larry Lieber, Robert Bernstein, Ernie Hart, Don Rico and Jerry Siegel all wrote some superhero stories in those years, but eventually Stan decided he needed to write the whole line himself until he could find more compatible scripters. A lot of the weaker early Marvel stories mentioned in this thread were the ones not scripted by Stan. So it seems like he did have a vision of how the stories and characters should be handled, a vision which probably developed in the 1961-62 timeframe when he was trying other writers and seeing that their work didn't have the same magic. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Aug 4, 2014 19:40:31 GMT -5
And nearly all of those early writers, including Lieber, Bernstein and Siegel, worked full script, not Marvel Method style.
Cei-U!
I summon the footnote!
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Post by berkley on Aug 4, 2014 20:41:05 GMT -5
Yeah, I was going to say: I have the impression that the one characteristic common to all those writers was an inability to adapt to the new way of doing comics that had come about from this fortunate confluence of talents (Stan Lee, Kirby, Ditko). Once Stan was able to find a small group of (younger?) writers who were capable of doing that, he did in fact find that he could stop writing the comics himself and concentrate on editing, promotion, and general overseeing, just as Tolworthy said.
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Post by tolworthy on Aug 4, 2014 21:05:04 GMT -5
I should have clarified, he could have (in theory, Goodman allowing) paid for actual proven science fiction writers, not comic book writers. Harlan Ellison is a good example. I'm not saying it would be easy, but there were dozens of really good writers in America, but only one person with Stan Lee's mix of talents.
Of course, finding and paying for the best writers, and making them happy with the Marvel Method would be very difficult, might be unrealistically difficult. I just want to emphasise that Stan was a creative genius with unique talents, but just not a genius writer: that part was luck IMO.
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Post by hondobrode on Aug 5, 2014 0:35:48 GMT -5
Tolworthy, you echo what Greg Theakston said years ago about a lot of the origin of Marvel comics is how could they continue to be distributed by Independent News, which was owned by DC.
IIRC, Independent News allowed them 8 titles to be distributed. Those early issues also looked less like straight super-hero comics that we know now, and Stan had them look more similar to monster comics, which had done all right for them up.
It all made sense to me.
Also, Marvel was a pretty sorry place to be after the wipe out of Atlas a couple years before. Essentially, I think Stan did listen to wife Joan and figured, "What have we got to lose ?", but I also think later on that Kirby and Ditko were the main creators on their titles on Stan wrote dialogue and came up with the plot.
A lot of it was timing and luck, and the rest was geniuses at work. I don't think they started out trying to turn the industry upside down, but they were doing what they wanted to do.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 5, 2014 7:14:36 GMT -5
A lot of it was timing and luck, and the rest was geniuses at work. I don't think they started out trying to turn the industry upside down, but they were doing what they wanted to do. I think it was Bob Marley who said - we didn't know we were making history, we were too busy living it. |
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Post by benday-dot on Aug 5, 2014 11:46:13 GMT -5
Yeah, I was going to say: I have the impression that the one characteristic common to all those writers was an inability to adapt to the new way of doing comics that had come about from this fortunate confluence of talents (Stan Lee, Kirby, Ditko). Once Stan was able to find a small group of (younger?) writers who were capable of doing that, he did in fact find that he could stop writing the comics himself and concentrate on editing, promotion, and general overseeing, just as Tolworthy said. I very much agree with this, and your above comment berk. Working Marvel Method essentially meant that artists were required to be their own best writers. (And, of course, I use writers in its most catholic sense, not confined to just the art of dialoguing). Writers, even very good writers, were not easily adaptable into the Marvel fold. If you had not the sense of a comic artist (composition, plotting, pacing etc.) your skills as a writer might not have been to much avail. The same was true for the reverse. Artists who lacked the sense of punchy storytelling often failed in Marvel Method until they found ways to adapt. Even great artists like Romita (or others who had done fine work for DC; wherein, "church and state" were much more firmly divided) initially had trouble taking a paragraph's worth of concept and making a workable comic out of it. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Aug 5, 2014 21:17:22 GMT -5
I think tolworthy brings up good points about the nature of Stan Lee's genius; Stan was great at balancing humor with melodrama and was fantastic at getting you excited about all things Marvel. I never got the impression that it was a "master plan" of any sort, just a perfect storm that reached critical mass at the right time do to internal and external stimuli. The quasi-monster comic nature of those early titles was a strong-point in many ways and clearly set them apart from what DC had been doing so far in the Silver Age; the Thing and the Hulk straddle two genre's, and when you get that sort of thing right, it's almost impossible for great concepts like that to ever go stale. (Though Marvel has certainly tried to achieve this goal!)
What I do think was a "master plan" was Stan Lee's editorials and letter page antics. Once the ground-swell of fan interest was clearly manifest, Stan took a page from EC and really amped up the club house feel. I think this was a necessity in a lot of ways, seeing as how the formative Marvel didn't have DC's large stable of creators or resources to fall back on. Ironically, it would also be the root of a lot of Stan's later problems in terms of public perception and critical analysis.
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