Marvel Comics -The Untold Story by Sean Howe

[Omega Alpha]

Oh I've read all the books in the Silver Age by Stan, I'm just unconvinced that he had the time to add all the dialogue he is taking credit for. He had like a dozen books he was supposed to have been doing every month, plus run a business, plus juggle personel, let alone the distribution that goes with it all. Now maybe a superman could do all that, but this is just one guy. I can certainly imagine Stan taking the company line that all that is published was company property and that the tradition is to assign the writing credits to the editor was common practice, but I find it unrealistic that for a man to have achieved all that as editor, and writing duties to boot? I may be wrong, but I have some sympathy for Jack Kirby when assigning all the credit to Stan Lee. Somehow, that story got lost in all this. My problem is about this Marvel Method of giving a creator the bare minimum about the plot and then the creator submitting the finished goods, and Stan Lee thinking he can put words in the dialogue boxes like it is that easy. Unless someone actually tells me what is going on in the panels, I can't imagine the flow of the story. I'm sorry. That's my handicap.

You've got to imagine all these pages of art coming across one mans desk and he knows how each story goes, month in, month out, year in, year out? Come on. I'd get confused by the second month.

Today it's more formalized and the voices of the writers are very clear, but in the Silver Age, I read the dark voice of Steve Ditko and the jubilant voice of Jack Kirby, and blasé voice of Don Heck. But that's just me.

Like I said, both Ditko and Kirby had problems when they didn't work with Stan, and the major complaint was dialogue. Stan added a more informal and lighthearted tone into it, and was very distinctive from Kirby's or Ditko's.

And there's a quote by Kirby right at the beginning of the book that symbolizes well the problem; in a collaborative process like this, it's very hard to tell how much influence each person had, and where one's role ends and another starts.

That said, it's pretty clear that this book pretty much trashes both the nice uncle/grandpa image of Stan as well as the poor, innocent tortured artist of Kirby- more than a discussion about the role of each collaborator, their arguments were mostly a war of egos.

[jackolover]

Sean Howe lastly, uses a Josh Whedon quote as a critique of the modern Marvel Method of the "creator summits", by saying that everything is so interconnected now that a writer may not know if he finishes, that his character has morphed in some way that he couldn't predict. Whereas this is my favorite period of recent Marvel comics.

Earlier, Sean had stated (with Quesada and Palmiotti's introduction to Marvel Knights), that the new blood " wanted to show Marvel that we could do their characters better", which I subjectively give them that analysis. And this carried, until the aforementioned switch across to crossover events, when there was apparently this settling into a quagmire of the appearance of change, but really just returning to what was before. Somehow this appears to a criticism of the Marvel Method now. What started out as a fairly reasonable "doing better than Marvel", now seems to be mired " in elastic realities, passed from one contemporary custodian to the next, and their heroic journeys are forever denied an end"? What? Hasn't it always been like that, so what is the news? I don't see it that way as a fate that is unresolvable, because the characters stories are more an endless opportunity to further broaden the history of these characters.

Dedicated readers have " watched the narrative cycles repeat multiple times", but it was that challenge that Quesada and Bill Jemas took head on, and defeated, by making the characters better, that has the characters live again, like they have never been since the 1960's. I think that still holds true when comparing the stories of the 1990's they had to compete with. Jemas supplied Quesada with more money and resources than the traditional editors and freelances in The offices down stairs, but that just laid the groundwork for the improvement that came with it.

I'm not sure why this episode from 2000 -2012 has been just this shortened précis of events he shows at the end, but maybe it's because Sean Howe couldn't get past the corporate congeniality present at Marvel at this time. But the foreshortened ending of the story being so abrupt gives a false summation of the state of the books, at least from my impression. Event crossovers I see as a positive, instead of the dismissive tone Sean places on it. I may be preferentially in favor of the period from 2005 onwards, so my bias may affect my judgment, in this matter, so I may be reading Sean's comments out of context.

[jackolover]

Like I said, both Ditko and Kirby had problems when they didn't work with Stan, and the major complaint was dialogue. Stan added a more informal and lighthearted tone into it, and was very distinctive from Kirby's or Ditko's.

And there's a quote by Kirby right at the beginning of the book that symbolizes well the problem; in a collaborative process like this, it's very hard to tell how much influence each person had, and where one's role ends and another starts.

That said, it's pretty clear that this book pretty much trashes both the nice uncle/grandpa image of Stan as well as the poor, innocent tortured artist of Kirby- more than a discussion about the role of each collaborator, their arguments were mostly a war of egos.

One can't but see that complications of the method make it cloudy as the actual degree of collaboration that was involved in this period in the development of the Marvel Super Heroes, that's true. The statements made on either side have been very emotional, and to a degree, I look on that emotional drama in The same light as the books they produced, with a degree of appreciation at the honesty of the responses. I can't help but enjoy, as well as feel pain, at both the creative stories these people produced and the high value they placed on them that they fought so tenaciously for their stances.

[Iron Maiden]

Oh I've read all the books in the Silver Age by Stan, I'm just unconvinced that he had the time to add all the dialogue he is taking credit for. He had like a dozen books he was supposed to have been doing every month, plus run a business, plus juggle personel, let alone the distribution that goes with it all. Now maybe a superman could do all that, but this is just one guy. I can certainly imagine Stan taking the company line that all that is published was company property and that the tradition is to assign the writing credits to the editor was common practice, but I find it unrealistic that for a man to have achieved all that as editor, and writing duties to boot? I may be wrong, but I have some sympathy for Jack Kirby when assigning all the credit to Stan Lee. Somehow, that story got lost in all this. My problem is about this Marvel Method of giving a creator the bare minimum about the plot and then the creator submitting the finished goods, and Stan Lee thinking he can put words in the dialogue boxes like it is that easy. Unless someone actually tells me what is going on in the panels, I can't imagine the flow of the story. I'm sorry. That's my handicap.

You've got to imagine all these pages of art coming across one mans desk and he knows how each story goes, month in, month out, year in, year out? Come on. I'd get confused by the second month.

Today it's more formalized and the voices of the writers are very clear, but in the Silver Age, I read the dark voice of Steve Ditko and the jubilant voice of Jack Kirby, and blasé voice of Don Heck. But that's just me.

It's interesting to note that when Jack wrote and drew a featurette in a Fantastic Four annual, he pretty much verifies the Marvel method....Stan giving ideas, plots to Jack to work on.
Mark Evanier heard many inside stories from Kirby and he attributes both men with bad memories. IMO they didn't really think it was all that important as to who did what as long as the work went out the door. It was probably after Marvel starting gaining attention and making a serious challenge against DC/National Periodicals that their egos started to clash. Stan started to do a lot of interviews and appearances. Kirby only came in to drop off his pages so naturally if a reporter called or showed up at Marvel, they talked to Stan. We can see today how much of a performer Stan is when the spotlight is on him. This certainly didn't help their relationship. Joe Simon remembered how Kirby used to get annoyed with a young Stan when Stan first started working in Martin Goodman's company offices way back in the 1940s. So there was a bit of a history to Stan and Jack not really being on friendly terms from very early on.

[Omega Alpha]

Sean Howe lastly, uses a Josh Whedon quote as a critique of the modern Marvel Method of the "creator summits", by saying that everything is so interconnected now that a writer may not know if he finishes, that his character has morphed in some way that he couldn't predict. Whereas this is my favorite period of recent Marvel comics.

Earlier, Sean had stated (with Quesada and Palmiotti's introduction to Marvel Knights), that the new blood " wanted to show Marvel that we could do their characters better", which I subjectively give them that analysis. And this carried, until the aforementioned switch across to crossover events, when there was apparently this settling into a quagmire of the appearance of change, but really just returning to what was before. Somehow this appears to a criticism of the Marvel Method now. What started out as a fairly reasonable "doing better than Marvel", now seems to be mired " in elastic realities, passed from one contemporary custodian to the next, and their heroic journeys are forever denied an end"? What? Hasn't it always been like that, so what is the news? I don't see it that way as a fate that is unresolvable, because the characters stories are more an endless opportunity to further broaden the history of these characters.

Dedicated readers have " watched the narrative cycles repeat multiple times", but it was that challenge that Quesada and Bill Jemas took head on, and defeated, by making the characters better, that has the characters live again, like they have never been since the 1960's. I think that still holds true when comparing the stories of the 1990's they had to compete with. Jemas supplied Quesada with more money and resources than the traditional editors and freelances in The offices down stairs, but that just laid the groundwork for the improvement that came with it.

I'm not sure why this episode from 2000 -2012 has been just this shortened précis of events he shows at the end, but maybe it's because Sean Howe couldn't get past the corporate congeniality present at Marvel at this time. But the foreshortened ending of the story being so abrupt gives a false summation of the state of the books, at least from my impression. Event crossovers I see as a positive, instead of the dismissive tone Sean places on it. I may be preferentially in favor of the period from 2005 onwards, so my bias may affect my judgment, in this matter, so I may be reading Sean's comments out of context.

I agree with most of what you're saying- Howe allows his own nostalgia to cloud his judgement there: he treats the 70's, which was the period when he was growing up, almost as a new golden age, but most creators there come off as unprofessional and petty and were partially responsible for nearly bankrrupting Marvel, while the 21st Century a period he sees with some detachment and even disdain, but someone looking without childhood nostalgia sees that Marvel of the early 00's, and even Marvel of today, is in a much better creative state than the were in the period Howe is so fascinated about, even if (or because) creators are less likely to be going out together to party and use LSD.

[jackolover]

I agree with most of what you're saying- Howe allows his own nostalgia to cloud his judgement there: he treats the 70's, which was the period when he was growing up, almost as a new golden age, but most creators there come off as unprofessional and petty and were partially responsible for nearly bankrrupting Marvel, while the 21st Century a period he sees with some detachment and even disdain, but someone looking without childhood nostalgia sees that Marvel of the early 00's, and even Marvel of today, is in a much better creative state than the were in the period Howe is so fascinated about, even if (or because) creators are less likely to be going out together to party and use LSD.

I never picked up on that the 70's was Howes fav period of Marvel. That could explain it.

[taem]

This book should be essential reading for anyone who wants an inside look at how the sausage gets made. It ain't a pretty process. Stan Lee probably won't be writing any blushin' blurbs for Howe because when he's not being a self-promoting con man, he's a clueless egomaniac.:

Reading the book now but I'm past the Kirby era.

Here's the thing about Stan. No doubt Kirby Ditko et al did much of the work. But when you take Stan out of the equation, the stuff sucks. Komandi anyone? Sure characters like Darkseid come to have great significance - in the hands of others - but Kirby alone can't make anything stick, no one wants what he's selling.

So i think Stan deserves more credit on the creative side. He obviously brought something to the process. And then there's the part where Stan keeps Siegel on as a copy editor because he can't stand to see the creator of Superman unemployed. Stan's a good guy at heart I think.

It is astounding though how much Kirby got screwed. But then he made a huge mistake taking Marvel's side on the works for hire issue for a $7500 bribe.

Btw I'm so surprised this book doesn't get more discussion here.

[jackolover]

There is a certain ordinariness to the Marvel production of comics. It could be any factory in the USA. The politics are so familiar, we were surprised that it wasn't more extraordinary. I myself, thought it had a magical excellence of ease and commeraderie, producing these wonderful stories each month. But to read the bare bones of the process, and the legal standing of its staff being so uncertain, was a shock to me. I had no idea the magazine industry was so mercenary. When you come to think of it, we, as the buyers, want a product on a news stand, or comic book store shelf. We walk to these stores, and every week they appear ready made nice and fresh ready to be taken down and put in comic bags. But the reality of how it got from the writers pen, to the comic bag in our hands is a very benign process, as thousands of similar products are made monthly, with, hopefully, the intelligence of the creative process there as the hook.

[taem]

I found this mind blowing:

"Bill Sarnoff, at Warner Publishing, DC's parent company, had called Shooter to say that although DC's superheroes were making a killing in licensing, the comics were losing money. Sarnoff asked if Marvel would be interested in licensing and publishing seven of DC's titles. Marvel began negotiating for the rights to Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, New Teen Titans, The Legion of Superheroes, and Justice League of America."

Plan was derailed not by DC coming to its senses, but a third party lawsuit vs Marvel alleging monopolistic practices in the industry, which made the suits shy from making Marvel an even bigger gorilla just then.

This is in 1983. So the best of DC could have inhabited the Marvel Universe. That would have been interesting. The Sentry arc would have been amazing if that had been Superman. Fallen Son would have been so emotional.

Also, a piece in NYT a few days back about Werthem falsifying his research. Werthem is the guy who in the 50's was the chief expert arguing that comics were bad for kids, which led to horror and crime comics dying and DC characters becoming cardboard cutout good guys and the creation of the Comics Code.

What I'm most enjoying is getting a sense of the personalities behind the talent. John Byrne, one of my all time faves, seems like a great guy. Starlin, a guy I loved in the early 80s, seems like a big d*ck.

Shooter's Big Bang approach seems to have won out (reboot everything every 4-5 years)' sans the deaths.