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| From X-Men 17, by Lee, Kirby, Roth & Ayers |
There's a new post in The Year In Comics series that's just gone up at the Sequart Publishing site, and it focuses on Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Werner Roth's work on The X-Men between 1963 and 1966. It's one of a series of posts I'm working on as part of the run-up to a book on the first wave of Marvel superheroes that I appear to have agreed to write. I hope you might consider visiting Sequart - here - and taking a look at a post that touches on Greenwich Village beatniks, the stifling pressure to conform in early to mid-Sixties America, and the quietly radical nature of The X-Men in an industry that had been emasculated by Senate Sub-Committee, Seduction Of The Innocent, and the Comics Code Authority just a few years before.
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| A panel from X-Men 14 which shows that the censors at the Comics Code Authority weren't always protecting the nation's young as they ought to have been doing. For, yes, the "chick" who's "meltin'" the "bongos" of the beatnik on the far right did indeed declare that Bernard The Poet's verse was doing "wonders" for her "libido". Scandalous. |
Apologies to anyone who's popped in here to kill a dead moment of the day only to find that this is a far briefer Tuesday post than usual. Deadlines, dentists and family gatherings have eaten into the day to a detrimental degree, but the Tuesday TooBusy post will, for whatever its worth, be back to normal next week. However, there will be a couple of new posts up here tomorrow, including a Wednesday List inspired by the contents of the earliest X-Men issues. Should you find yourself with a stultifying second in the day that can't possibly be filled in any other way, then you'd be very welcome to come and waste away your time here instead.
I love the early Werner Roth X-Men. Virtually all but forgotten now, is Roth.
ReplyDeleteHello Karl:- Not forgotten by thee and me. No-one ever succeeded in making a young woman such as Jean Grey as beautiful as he did while avoiding any trace at all of objectivisation. His style didn't play well with the worst sillinesses of the post-Lee issues, but in issues such as Thomas' Mimic and Cobalt Man stories, Roth was brilliant, wasn't he?
DeleteThe challenge - thought it would be soooooo easy. Failing. Will get back to you.
DeleteHow ironic (choke).
In other news, great piece, Werner Roth was great - and I loved his Lois Lane.
Hello Martin:- It was, in retrospect, an unkind choice in the Lois Lane sense of a post. The closest I could think of in a Superman family way was the old Legion cover with them reduced to tots.
DeleteI know NOTHING - shamefully - of Werner Roth's Lois Lane. But I shall know more very soon ...
Colin,
ReplyDeleteYour perceptive comments about Marvel's early hero line are some of the best I've read online lately. Like many of Marvel's early heroes, the X-Men felt subversive, especially in comparison to the squaky clean, boyscout heroics at DC. Lee, Kirby and Ditko's stories had a darker quality, aided, I believe, by the inking of Dick Ayers and the moody coloring of Stan Goldberg. The X-Men, like the Hulk, Spider-Man and the early FF, were outcasts, despised by society. Characters on the fringes that didn't fit in. These middle aged men somehow touched on teenagers fears and alienated feelings, creating a style that would fashion the industry. for better or worse.
Werner Roth was a fine storyteller. His work for Atlas in the 1950s, which he inked himself, was very attractive, particularly on Lorna, Jungle Girl (he was great at drawing females), as well as westerns, war and horror. I always enjoyed his work on the X-Men and believe his work is underrated. Like Heck, he was a bit too low-key for superheroes, but it was solid craftsmanship, and his later work on Lois Lane and Romance stories was very good (I believe Wally Wood inked him on one romance story).
Hello Nick;- Thank you. I'm very much trying not to discuss anything more than the matter of how the X-Men might have been read in this one specific context. I don't want to come across as having any broader interests here, there are historians of the period who are far better suited to that that. But the politics of the X-Men are in themselves an interesting business because, as you say, the Marvel line did often feel subversive, and the X-Men were in their own a very odd book. But then, as I've been writing today, the book should in many ways have felt stranger, but it did lack both focus and the kind of weirdness which prime-time Ditko, for example, could bring. Yet the very idea of these WASP kids who couldn't grow up to be conforming WASP adults was challenging. I recall in the late Sixties how the X-Men felt ... dangerous in a way that no other comic did in the mainstream. They couldn't ever belong, and yet they could pretend to belong. In such a way did Lee and Kirby create a way in teenage experience linked to a broader social context; the lives of teenagers, with their social divides, could be seen in certain key ways to reflect the broader world. And of course, that became more and more of the book's method of working as the decade rolled on. As you say, it's remarkable that two middle-age men could do that, and it's telling that Roy Thomas, who was of course far younger, struggled to create anything of the urgency of the best Lee/Kirby X-tales for a good many issues.
DeleteI'm grateful for the background on Mr Roth's art. If I know little about the 60s, then I know less about the decade before. As you obviously do, I rate his work on the X-Men highly. His Super-Adaptoid tale is one of those issues when he seemed to be really generated a Kirby-esque head of steam. No, his work did lack the dynamism of some other Marvel creators of the period, but when his work allowed him to portray the X-Men as private individuals, he produced some of the best work that the title has ever seen.
And I'd love to read that Wood-inked romance story!
I agree about the characters as civilians. there was a warmth to Roth's teenagers, and this was very much coming from the artist. I had the pleasure of corresponding with his son Gavin a few years ago for my article on his father in Alter Ego (Gavin has unfortunately passed away since then), but it was wonderful to get a sense of the man. He truly seemed to be a nice person who genuinely liked his work. That comes out in his depictions of characters, from the Apache Kid to Lois Lane and Jean Grey.
ReplyDeleteHello Nick:- I'm not at all surprised, though I am respectfully pleased, that Mr Roth snr was a nice person who liked his work. Though a person's art can very often lend a misleading impression of the artist's personality, Mr Roth's work always transmitted a fundamental decency and I'm glad to hear that it did reflect the man himself. It's something which can be seen, for example, in the way he drew Jean Grey, making her beautiful without ever objectivising her. I really must follow up the strips you mention and discover more about his work. I first came across it in the Power Comics reprints of the X-Men in the mid-to-late 60s, and then again in the post-Thomas/Adams issues of the X-Men which contained bi-monthly reprints of the Roth issues, and I've never lost my respect and fondness for that artwork.
DeletePardon my asking, was that Alter Ego #42?
Hi Colin,
Delete# 42 it was.
Pardon me for jumping in, Colin, but it is indeed #42 - I've just bought it digitally for the princely sum of £1.92. Can't wait to read it!
ReplyDeleteHello Martin:- Thank you! I shall be investing £1.92 myself in it myself this very day!
DeleteApologies for my last comment and thanks for keeping it to yourself.
ReplyDeleteHello Peter:- I've no knowledge of another comment, let alone a memory of keeping anything to myself. It must have been lost in the ether. Seriously! If I was concerned about something, I'd just DM you and let you know my concerns :) Whatever it was you'd written, it's between you and the deep blue sea, though I'd be more than happy to receive it and consider what you've got to say.
DeleteAs always!