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Post by MDG on Oct 15, 2022 12:18:39 GMT -5
Kurtzman and Elder Goodwin and Ditko (at Warren) Harvey Pekar and Frank Stack
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 15, 2022 13:14:32 GMT -5
I didn't mean to invalidate your choice, and you I right, I left the question open. But I would hesitate to make comics synonymous with Superhero comics. There were comics before Action #1 and they sold well without superheroes. And while that contribution is extremely significant, it is not the the starting point of comic books in America. Kirby did quite well in other genres, and even created one or two. So I think saying there would not be comics without S&S overplays how important they were (and yes, they were important). One can cite one foundational creation (or creators) as "the greatest", but without an evolving genre, level of creativity and business model, said "greatest" creators are isolated, subject to be judged only on their merits, and not what others would do to expand the potential of their creations. Mind you, this is not a universal law, as there were many creators of say, the late 1980s and 1990s to work on Golden or Silver Age creations and did more damage to them than anything else, but in the case of Siegel and Shuster, the creation of Superman was undeniably important, but the character needed the talents of others to continue its life as an influential character and live up to his potential.
It is the reason I would not dare say the team of Ditko and Lee on Spider-Man or Simon and Kirby on Captain America were the greatest of teams at their respective origin points with those characters, since their creations needed the minds and talents of others to truly turn those creations into representations of the characters (and creative teams) at their best.
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Post by DubipR on Oct 15, 2022 13:35:54 GMT -5
I agree with everyone's reply. Adding a few not mentioned:
Azzarello/Risso Evanier/Aragones Gerber/Colan Canales/Guarnido Dupuy/Beberain Goscinny/Uderzo Ennis/Dillon Jorodowsky/Moebius
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 15, 2022 14:11:22 GMT -5
It is the reason I would not dare say the team of Ditko and Lee on Spider-Man or Simon and Kirby on Captain America were the greatest of teams at their respective origin points with those characters, since their creations needed the minds and talents of others to truly turn those creations into representations of the characters (and creative teams) at their best.
While I get how people might prefer the Lee/Romita Spider-Man, or other later incarnations, I don't agree that it was not great under Ditko and Lee. Those issues are all-time classics. O don't agree Spider=Man needed later talents to make it what it was. It's all there in those early issues. For another team, I don't know if the Fantastic Four ever surpassed Kirby and Lee.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,051
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Post by Confessor on Oct 15, 2022 16:47:47 GMT -5
It is the reason I would not dare say the team of Ditko and Lee on Spider-Man or Simon and Kirby on Captain America were the greatest of teams at their respective origin points with those characters, since their creations needed the minds and talents of others to truly turn those creations into representations of the characters (and creative teams) at their best.
While I get how people might prefer the Lee/Romita Spider-Man, or other later incarnations, I don't agree that it was not great under Ditko and Lee. Those issues are all-time classics. O don't agree Spider=Man needed later talents to make it what it was. It's all there in those early issues.The bolded is absolutely my opinion too. Asthetically, I probably do prefer the Romita era over the Ditko one, just ever so slightly, but everything that made or makes Spider-Man such a great and popular superhero was 100% all there in the Ditko run. That's not to diminish later creatives like Romita's contributions at all: his run on ASM is one of my "holy trinity" of comics runs. But its not like Spider-Man was a good basic idea in need of lots of help and development from later writers and artists to make it great. AF #15 and ASM #1-38 are already great.
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 15, 2022 17:03:33 GMT -5
If you look at it as a graphic novel that goes from AAF #15 to ASM #33, it is one of the best ever done.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2022 17:06:40 GMT -5
I didn't mean to invalidate your choice, and you I right, I left the question open. But I would hesitate to make comics synonymous with Superhero comics. There were comics before Action #1 and they sold well without superheroes. And while that contribution is extremely significant, it is not the the starting point of comic books in America. Kirby did quite well in other genres, and even created one or two. So I think saying there would not be comics without S&S overplays how important they were (and yes, they were important). I am usually the last one to equate super-heroes comics or vice versa, but the case can be made that the growth of comics in the 40s was fueled in large part by the many publishers (DC included) trying to capitalize on and cash in on the popularity of Superman with a metric boat-ton of (copycat) superheroes in more and more comics, and that the popularity of Superman (not just in comics books, but in comic strips, on radio, and in the Fleischer shorts) paved the way for the massive growth of publishers and books playing in the super-hero sandbox. Yes, there were plenty of other genres in the 30s and 40s in comics, but Superman (and later Captain Marvel in the same vein) with its circulation numbers approaching 1 million copies per issue) was the engine that drove that growth and people chasing that success and trying to emulate it with other costumed characters is what created the comic book boom of the Golden Age. I don't think you can overstate the importance of Superman's success to the growth of the comic industry and to the expansion of costumed comic book heroes to other media. And that all comes back to Siegel and Shuster and their creation. -M
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Post by commond on Oct 15, 2022 17:35:51 GMT -5
Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima.
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Post by Calidore on Oct 15, 2022 17:38:11 GMT -5
I didn't mean to invalidate your choice, and you I right, I left the question open. I think seeing peoples' different interpretations are part of the fun of questions like that. I decided to take it as writers and artists who have especially good synergy, like the way Steve Bissette, Rick Veitch, and John Totleben were game for whatever Alan Moore dreamed up and executed it spectacularly well.
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 15, 2022 17:38:35 GMT -5
One wonders if not for Superman, would another genre taking the lead and pushed comics publishing forward. To big a What If for me to tackle.
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Post by commond on Oct 15, 2022 18:26:00 GMT -5
Who's to say some other pair wouldn't have created the superhero genre? It's not as though Seigel and Shuster reinvented the wheel.
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Post by kirby101 on Oct 15, 2022 18:49:58 GMT -5
We already had costumed heroes in the comic strips, but if someone else did it, it would have been vastly different. Maybe not super at all.
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 15, 2022 21:07:12 GMT -5
It is the reason I would not dare say the team of Ditko and Lee on Spider-Man or Simon and Kirby on Captain America were the greatest of teams at their respective origin points with those characters, since their creations needed the minds and talents of others to truly turn those creations into representations of the characters (and creative teams) at their best.
While I get how people might prefer the Lee/Romita Spider-Man, or other later incarnations, I don't agree that it was not great under Ditko and Lee. Those issues are all-time classics. O don't agree Spider=Man needed later talents to make it what it was. It's all there in those early issues. For another team, I don't know it the Fantastic Four ever surpassed Kirby and Lee. I was not saying the Lee/Ditko were not great--but, my belief is that they were not the greatest writer/artist team on that title.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2022 23:13:24 GMT -5
Who's to say some other pair wouldn't have created the superhero genre? It's not as though Seigel and Shuster reinvented the wheel. When you have lightning in a bottle, it's often hard to recreate. You have other lightning, and other bottles, but rarely lightning in a bottle. There certainly were other creators who could have made other super-heroes for comics, but that's no guarantee it would have caught on and fueled the growth that Superman did. Superman didn't have the impact it did because people were waiting around for a super-hero comic t ignite things, it had the impact it did because it had aspects to it that resonated with the zeitgeist of the time in a way no other strips did up to that point, and a large part of that was the channeling of the unique set of shared experiences that Siegel and Shuster had that made its way to the page. It wasn't just a super-hero strip making it big, it was the unique synthesis of the Wonder Boys' experiences filtered through the lens of the Super-Hero (Superman) onto the comics page hitting when it did. No other combo of creators doing some other type of caped hero was going to be able to replicate all the variables and the particular voice and tone that Siegel and Shuster brought to that creation that caused it to resonate as it did. Something else might have been popular, nothing else was going to be Superman in that time, in that place, with the staying power it ended up having because of the resonance with audiences they brough to the strip. -M
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Post by Bronze age andy on Oct 16, 2022 9:47:59 GMT -5
DeFalco/Frenz Stern/J.Buscema Gerber/S.Buscema Wein/S.Buscema
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