First "Marvelized" book at DC?

[JulianPerez]

My inclination is to say the Shooter/Swan ADVENTURE COMICS run on "Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes."

Truth be told, I don't think many works on comics history have really gotten across how unclassifiable the Shooter "Superboy and the Legion" was. The entire series was in a strange, in-between state: with elements of the Weisenger worldbuilding and gimmick-centered stories, and the Schwartz obsession with science fiction. It was also an in-between book, moving between DC-style old-school heroism, and Marvel style subtle "hip" dialogue and "counterculture" vibe, consisting of evil grownups and sympathetic monsters. How many stories in that period were about mind-controlled grownups that just didn't get it? The Mantis Morlo tale was explicitly about pollution. "The Unkillables" had peace prove to be more valuable than war.

The characters spoke in a variation of the Stan Lee-patented Marvel lingo, like Brainiac 5 saying "Chuck the chatter! Listen to that guy's spiel!"

It was very, very different from the "Jumping Protons!" future-talk the equally visionary Ed Hamilton gave them.

(Incidentally, am I the only one that noticed how similar the Ed Hamilton dynamic, where Dream Girl was visibly leched after by the entire male roster - is similar to the early X-Men?)

[Reptisaurus!]

Hmm. When was that? My first thoughts are Doom Patrol, (freak hero) Metamorpho, (Freak hero in love) and Deadman slightly later. But I dunno what year any of them debuted.

[Mike Kuypers]

The Doom Patrol's first appearance was cover-dated June, 1963. Metamorpho's first appearance was cover-dated December-January 1964-1965. I think Jim Shooter didn't begin writing the LSH until 1965 or 1966.

[Red Oak Kid]

Just off the top of my head I would also say The Doom Patrol was the first DC comic that broke out of the DC mold and was closer to the Marvel style.

Second might be the Teen Titans.

[gentlesatirist]

...Doom Patrol, Metamorpho and Deadman as more or less original ideas that didn't bear a strong Marvel influence. They were more risky than usual for conservative DC, but still seemed to be unique entities.

When I think of Marvelization, I more often think of how story elements were tossed into early 70s issues of titles like Justice League and Superman for no other reason than to create character conflict and personal drama - in other words, to become more like Marvel.

But when DC tried it, it seemed really ham-fisted and obvious, whereas Marvel's seemed more natural, since they were there from the beginning. As others have observed, Stan Lee just took the melodrama and self-doubt and hand-wringing that he'd been writing in romance comics for 15 years and put in into his superhero comics. Plus sci-fi and monsters too, of course.

Examples of this type of Marvelization at DC would be the self-doubts of Red Tornado and Elongated Man, the Green Arrow/Black Canary relationship, the GA/Hawkman rivalry, and the changes to Superman's supporting cast, like the antagonism of new characters like sports anchor Steve Lombard and Galaxy Broadcasting owner Morgan Edge. I know with Superman, part of it was updating and modernizing the character's job, but the conflicts seemed to appear out of thin air.


- FE
Wickliffe OH

[Cei-U!]

I would consider the abrupt change in the status quo of Green Lantern in #49 (December '66)--Hal Jordan quits his job at Ferris Aircraft after Carol announces her engagement to another man and begins drifting from one short-lived job to another--as the first serious attempt to use Marvel-style character development in the DCU. It was, in my opinion, a terrible miscalculation.

Cei-U!
I summon the big boo-boo!

[Gothos]

Though I see where JulianPerez is coming from, I would tend to agree with GentleSatirist that the defining attempt at "Marvelization" comes late in the sixties, when some titles start attempting the most "Marvel-like" facet of storytelling: the soap-operatic subplot. A continuing motif like "Green Arrow and Hawkman don't like each other" is much more un-DC-like than "Robotman and Negative Man occasionally get on each other's nerves but will team up against Rita' new beau Mento."

Here's something that occured to me when I reread the first DOOM PATROL a while back: if you eliminated the super-powers aspects, but kept just some aspect of the heroes being freaks, you could just about have rewritten the basic plot into one of DC's gimmicky war-stories. Now, I'm far from an expert on the DC war books, but I've seen just enough from that early period that I could easily envision editor Kanigher signing off on something like "the Freak Patrol" or the like. I can imagine the Patrol being various men (probably no women) who were partly incapacitated by various catastrophes (war-related or not) but who were able to pool their remaining abilities to do whatever needed to be done, etc.

We tend to forget sometimes that the creators of the superhero books back then usually did a lot of different genres, and that although most of DC's early-60s superhero books were emotionally staid, the war books were probably just as heavily emotional as the Marvel superheroes, though of course, the DC war books of that time had no more interest in continuing plotlines than did most DC superhero books.

I'm not denying that DP writer Arnold Drake didn't look around, see all the funny stuff Stan was doing at Marvel on the "straight" superheroes, and start incorporating more jokes into DP. I think he did, just as I think Haney did on METAMORPHO, which like DP originally begins with a very sombre tone. Eventually, Drake also started to bring in more subplots on DP (Beast Boy vs. Galtry), but one should notice that many of the other characters stay pretty fixed and immoveable.

Incidentally, another series that got loosened up around the same time is AQUAMAN under Haney. Mera was introduced in '64 (though not by Haney), and thereafter the series got away from the gimmicky, episodic approach that had endured with the character for close to 20 years. Haney gave the Aqua-family a family dynamic that resembles the FF more than the Superman Family, though again, I don't see a huge upsurge of subplots and quarrelsome characterization.

All that said, I don't have a particular choice for the "first FULLY Marvelized DC book." So I'll shut up now.

[T GUy]

Gothos,
Here's something that occured to me when I reread the first DOOM PATROL a while back: if you eliminated the super-powers aspects, but kept just some aspect of the heroes being freaks, you could just about have rewritten the basic plot into one of DC's gimmicky war-stories. Now, I'm far from an expert on the DC war books, but I've seen just enough from that early period that I could easily envision editor Kanigher signing off on something like "the Freak Patrol" or the like. I can imagine the Patrol being various men (probably no women) who were partly incapacitated by various catastrophes (war-related or not) but who were able to pool their remaining abilities to do whatever needed to be done, etc.

Spot on. Sounds very like Morgan and Mace, the soldiers who hated each other more than the enemy, alias the Suicide Squad in Star Spangled War Stories.

[jaguarshark]

I realise that pretty much nobody will agree with this and that I'm probably wrong, but I'm convinced that Green Lantern was the first "Marvelized" book at DC... even before the Marvel Age began.

Seriously. Broome and Kane's GL, at least the earlier issues that were collected into the Showcase volume, had the soap-opera elements and gradual world-building that would later define Marvel Comics. They didn't do it as well as Stan did (who could?), but I maintain they were doing it before him.

[Agentum]

I don't agree, but i agree that you can see the first examples of a DCU in those GL books, they try to give it some continuity.

But to call it "Marvelized" is too far.

[gentlesatirist]

...of what we're calling Marvelization, you almost need a team book like JLA or a larger supporting cast like Superman. The GL stuff had some of those elements, but seemed basically love interest/sidekick in terms of character development.


- FE

[rick]

I tend to think that DC first attempted to "Marvelize" when they hired Steve Ditko after his departure from Marvel.

Before that time, they had never even considered having as loose an artist as Ditko in their books.

And look at his books.

The Creeper was an attempt at doing a differnt kind of hero who was not your normal square jawed member of the JLA. The Creeper was just plain weird, and for DC, that was a real change.

Then there was Hawk & Dove which not only featured teenaged heroes who weren't sidekicks, but it also attempted, although I admit it was in a very DC like manner, to deal with relevent issues of the time.

Even at the time when these first came out I saw them as DC's attempt to move to the Marvel style.

[Scott Shaw!]

I was buying both Marvel and DC comics in 1963, and I can tell you that "The Doom Patrol" in MY GREATEST ADVENTURE impressed me right off the bat that it was much more in line with Marvel's approach than DC's. It was the first book that I noticed was intentionally similar to Marvel. And when THE DOOM PATROL started running Kirby-esque covers (usually with the team facing off against a huge foe) mostly drawn by Bob Brown (who took over CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN from Kirby), this similarity was downright obvious.

For that matter, CHALLENGERS was also packaged to resemble a Marvel production, which is only fair, I suppose, since THE FANTASTIC FOUR was, in many ways, a repackaged CHALLENGERS! Both DOOM PATROLand CHALLENGERS were edited by Murray Boltinoff, who must have been more aware of the competition than anyone realized.

DOOM PATROL artist Bruno Premiani worked for Simon and Kirby in the 1950s, too. It's possible that, although his style in no way resembled Kirby's, that there was an editorial expectation that he'd understand Kirby's kind of storytelling and dynamics due to his experience. And Stan Lee later wound up hiring Arnold Drake to write X-MEN, which many folks feel is supiciously similar to DOOM PATROL (or vice versa). Interesting, huh?

Aloha,

Scott!

[MichikoS]

It's my contention that NO DC book was ever "Marvelized." In fact, that is exactly why Marvel became ascendant in the 1970s and 1980s, and why DC lost the #1 spot to upstart Marvel.

DC didn't have the Marvel formula, and couldn't duplicate it.

Other posters here have cited elements of Marvelization that include "Kirby-style" storytelling, soap-opera sub-plots, character conflict, personal drama, team interaction, relevance, and romance.

I would add that there were frequent literary allusions and out-and-out swipes that appealed to bookish types like myself -- borrowings from the metaphysical poets to Dickens to the Bible.

And finally, and most decisively, there was the authorial and editorial uber-presence of Stan Lee, whose influence was the single most important ingredient in Marvel's success.

DC couldn't Marvelize any of their books even if they wanted to, because they lacked the necessary ingredients.

Michi

[rick]

It's my contention that NO DC book was ever "Marvelized." In fact, that is exactly why Marvel became ascendant in the 1970s and 1980s, and why DC lost the #1 spot to upstart Marvel.

DC didn't have the Marvel formula, and couldn't duplicate it.

Other posters here have cited elements of Marvelization that include "Kirby-style" storytelling, soap-opera sub-plots, character conflict, personal drama, relevance, and romance.

I would add that there were frequent literary allusions and out-and-out swipes that appealed to bookish types like myself -- borrowings from the metaphysical poets to Dickens to the Bible.

And finally, and most decisively, there was the authorial and editorial uber-presence of Stan Lee, whose influence was the single most important ingredient in Marvel's success.

DC couldn't Marvelize any of their books even if they wanted to, because they lacked the necessary ingredients.

Michi

You are rather missing the point.

It is not an issue of if they managed to Marvelize the books, it's an issue of when they first tried.

Which are simply very different conversations.

[Agentum]

Of course they tried, if not because a lot of people had been working at Marvel before and knew that way.
They still borrow stuff from eachothers.
When DC finaly understood that Marvel was the big thing they changed to survive.

Simple things like giving the heroes flaws and personal problems, a more soap opera related story, more character driven storys.

[T GUy]

Mich,
the authorial and editorial uber-presence of Stan Lee, whose influence was the single most important ingredient in Marvel's success.
I suspect they would not have had that success without all of Jack Kirby's input creating the characters/series in the first place.

[jaguarshark]

Mich,
I suspect they would not have had that success without all of Jack Kirby's input creating the characters/series in the first place.
Probably not. But the common link between all the great Marvel concepts was Stan. (Except for the Golden Age characters, of course, which totally kills my argument. But meh.)
I think it's fair to say that Marvel's brilliance was due to the fusion of Lee and Kirby and Ditko's styles... on their own, they never had quite as much impact as when they were together.

[Gothos]

Here's another nominee, also around '65-- the incredibly-obscure PRINCE RA-MAN.

Created by Jack Miller and Bernard Baily to replace the Mark Merlin feature in HOUSE OF SECRETS, Ra-Man has some physical likeness to Doctor Strange, as well as a similar modus operandi. Most of all, as I remember the stories, they're a lot less plot-heavy than most DCs, with more emphasis on Marvel-style fast action. Admittedly, though, there's still no big emphasis on soap-opera plotting, and Miller may not have been doing anything different from the kind of plots he'd done for the early 60s AQUAMAN title.

But at the very least, there's a DC character who really has some physical resemblance to a Marvel one, though not really a super-popular one.

[Aaron King]

To pull in again with a quote from The Comics Journal, which always ends up being a thread-killer, here's Bob Haney from a recent interview:

Haney: And we saw (Marvel's) stuff. Arnold and I, late at night. We'd be working late at night sometimes. We'd go over to the other side of the office building, the other part of the floor where Independent News was. We'd look at stuff and steal a few magazines because they distributed all sorts of magazines.
And we were looking at thsi Marvel stuff and saying, "Look at this stuff!" Kirby was doing this great stuff and Stan Lee was editing and writing it. And we said, "This is terrific stuff! This is real far-out, wingy-dingy comics!"
We recognized it immediately. So Arnold and I went in together to see Donenfeld, young Donenfeld. I think the father was either dead by then or no longer invovled with anything. And we said, "Look at this stuff!"... Of course, he didn't know shit about Shinola. He never should have been in that job. He inherited it. He's much happier as a man who runs a boatyard now.
He tried to think he knew things. Sowe came into him and he was an insecure guy and when you work out of insecurity, you're defensive and you don't see things and you don't do the right thing. He's a very unfair man and I don't think he even understands that but he was a very unfair man.
Anyway, we came to him and we said, "Look Iriwn, blah blah blah... This is great stuff." He says, "We do $90 million a year" -- whatever the figure was -- "and they do $35 million." And we said, "Yeah but look at this stuff!"
Well, about a year or two later, Mike, DC stars doing the 35 and they were doing doing 90, right?...
But essentially what was happening was the Marvel Revolution and we pointed it out to him. And he didn't recognize it. It took years for him to recognize it. So then the DC sales began to really drop. We're getting through the mid- and later '60s. In other words, instead of a book selling 92 percent or whatever, they were selling 70 percent."

Now, I'm as likely to believe Bob Haney as I am Stan Lee (seeing as how both seem to have a... hyperbolic memory), but it seems that Haney and Drake, if any, were ready to bring the Revolution to DC. Given that I, along with others, cite books such as Deadman, Doom Patrol, Metamorpho, and Aquaman as the first instances of this trans-company storytelling technique, I'd say this quote supports this fact pretty well and reliably. Unless Haney read our minds before he passed on.

I summon the fuzzy science?
(I've noticed more and more people summoning Cei-U's signature quote. Does that make us a closer community or a society of copycats? I summon the thread drift.)

[Mike Kuypers]

Excuse me. Wingy-dingy?

[Cei-U!]

I summon the fuzzy science?
(I've noticed more and more people summoning Cei-U's signature quote. Does that make us a closer community or a society of copycats? I summon the thread drift.)

I'm calling my attorney in the morning is what it means!

Cei-U!
I summon the frivolous lawsuit!

[Aaron King]

I will settle out of court. And I think that Doom Patrol is more Marvelous than Metamorpho, but I dearly love them both.

[Cei-U!]

I will settle out of court.

Good move. Word on the streets is I can be had, and for a shockingly low price.

Cei-U!
I summon the sell-out!

[gentlesatirist]

...quotes like that Haney anecdote, it makes you realize why there was some serious doubts as to whether the comics part of DC was even going to survive if the Superman movie hadn't been a hit in the late 70s.

That seemed to get DC off of life support, and then Jennette Kahn's non-comics style of marketing pretty much created the DC that we all know today - comics, movies, cartoons and other licensed products.

That may not be the accepted history, but if you take a step back and look at it from a non-fanboy perspective, that's pretty much what happened.


- FE
Wickliffe OH