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| Never fear, Ant-Man's here! From "Fantastic Four" #16, by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers |
This week's post in The Year In Comics series over at Sequart Publishing's site - find it here - discusses the misadventures of Henry Pym in the earliest years of the Marvel Revolution of the 1960s. It's a piece which asks why the Ant-Man and Giant-Man stories in Tales To Astonish often seemed so very ill-suited to the company's line of books during the period. I hope you might consider popping over and taking a look.
It's possible that there might appear to be a theme linking recent posts in the series, and that's because there is. I'm taking the opportunity to spend some time in the company of Marvel earliest super-books, as preparation for something which I might be taking a crack at later in 2012. As such, the next few weeks will see a couple more essays about the period which began with the arrival of the Fantastic Four and ended with the debut of Daredevil. After that, I'd like to take the opportunity to discuss some entirely costume-free comicbooks.
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But what if you've popped in and you've no interest in a link to a post about poor old Henry Pym in the Camelot era? Perhaps I might offer you, by way of the compensation of a moment's admittedly-trivial distraction, ten of my favourite examples of Silver Age daftness from the Ant-Man strips of the 1962-3 period, just as a mark of my gratitude for your having dropped by in the first place.
However it might appear, I always loved the early-60s Ant-Man stories.
1. Ant-Man As The Tiny, Helmeted Stranger
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| Several of Ant-Man's adventures end with him being portrayed as the equivilant of the mysterious stranger from Western lore. Having ridden into New York City to sort out its problems with disorder, Ant-Man's then shown riding his trusty steed into the distance. The problem is, of course, that he'd be too small to be seen clearly by anyone looking on. It's a moment when the intrusion of any real-world context destroys the romance of his vulnerable back being turned trustingly towards the folks he's saved while he and his ant disappear together into the distance.(TTA#36) |
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| Furthermore, ants don't tend to amble onwards as horses do, which means that Pym is either really bobbing away at great speed, or deliberately moving so slowly for effect that it'll take forever to leave the room. (TTA#40) |
2. Ant-Man's Secret Ant-Base
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| Ant-Man's "secret-room" is a wonderful confection, perfect for a kid's plastic playset. Quite why a genius like Pym didn't build himself a small jet-pack to get around with is by the by, of course, given that Ant-Man wasn't about logic, but innocent fun. The catapult that fired him into action was of course only able to deliver Pym to a relatively constrained series of locations, which meant that he was in trouble if the Reds attacked NYC from the direction of behind his house. Still, it's all a lovely, absurd business. (TTA#36) |
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| But how can the catapulted Ant-Man land safely? The solution, according to Stan Lee's plots, was to direct an army of ants to form a nice soft landing strip. As a technique, it relies on Pym's catapult being so powerful and accurate that he'll never get blown off target, and it also depends on a huge number of ants being incredibly quick to gather in a huge mass.(TTA#37) |
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| Disaster nearly occurred in TOS#40 when the catapult failed to work perfectly, but those wonderful ants actually anticipated Pym's angle of arrival and got to the point of his impact early enough to ease his arrival too. (Q. How smart are these ants? A. Very smart. Later on, they prove themselves able to debate the chemical composition of alien invaders.) |
4. Key Ant-Man Fighting Techniques No 1975: Sock Invasion
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| In a story that reads as if Lee and Heck were playfully deconstructing the sub-genre even as the modern-era super-book was still being created, Ant-Man escapes a destructive stamp through the technique of cutting into an alien's boot. The fact that the off-worlder was wearing socks on his mission of inter-galactic terror is charming enough, but the idea that they're rather pungent too shows a serious attention to the detail of world building on Ant-Man's creators' part. (TTA#41) |
5. Key Ant-Man Fighting Techniques No 329: Arm Up Your Ant Army With DDT Spray
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| From the perspective of 2012, the very idea of DDT being readily available is somewhat shocking. The idea of an army of ants collaborating in its use against another army of bugs is simply bizarre. (TTA#39) |
6. Key Ant-Man Fighting Techniques No 56: Distribute Your Ants Throughout The Villain's Truck In Anticipation Of A Desperate Punch-Up
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| In a plot-twist too obscure to follow, Ant-Man orders a crack team of ants to set an armoured truck's windscreen wipers going because ... he just might have got himself into a fight and be standing near them. File under "hyper-planning". (TTA#40) |
7. Key Ant-Man Fighting Techniques No 56: Tying Up A Master Villain's Shoe-Laces
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| The speed and gentle care with which Ant-Man could work was astonishing. In the above, Pym manages to swiftly untie and then re-tie the laces of the seated, menacing Comrade X., and without him noticing either.(TTA#36) |
8. Key Ant-Man Fighting Techniques No 5962: In Anticipation Of Gun-Fights, Carry Swiftly Honey-Secreting Honey Ants Into Battle With You
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| There certainly are honeypot ants, but I suspect that Pym has trained a crack squad of the fastest-moving, most swiftly-secreting of the creatures in anticipation of moment such as this. The speed that these ants would have to work at is a testament to Pym's skills as a ant-trainer, and possibly ant-breeder too.(TTA#35) |
9. Key Ant-Man Fighting Techniques No 17: Make Sure You've An Army Of Ants To Carry Full-Sized Weapons And Ammunition Into Battle When Space Monsters Threaten
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| Part of the absurd wonder of these earliest Pym tales lies in the way that they encourage the reader to imagine how such fantastic scenarios would work. Didn't anyone see this parade as it slowly made its way through New York City? (TTA#44) |
10. And Finally, Do You Remember The Time Ant-Man Asked A Woman He Barely Knew To Be His Partner, Gave Her Super-Powers And A Costume, Brought Her To A Showdown With A Giant Alien Invader, And Only Then Properly Explained How Her New Abilities Worked?
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| "You will find" says Pym at the very last moment, remembering that he hasn't taken Janet Van Dyne through her new super-powers yet. Fisti-cuffs first, self-orientation second. (TTA#44) |
This week's post in The Year In Comics series can be found here.
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Excellent work, Colin!
ReplyDeleteI was heartened to see your repeated comparisons between Pym and the Human Torch; surely an analysis of the Torch's solo book would also be illuminating as while it isn't as notorious as Ant-Man/Giant-Man (note the snark reserved for them in the Slings & Arrows guide), I think they're of comparable quality and neither really fit with the aesthetic Marvel was developing; either feature could have been published at DC or Archie and seemed to belong.
I do love the childlike innocence of Kirby's early Ant-Man strips, which you've captured above. Beyond that, Heck could be counted on to draw an attractive Janet. I was also taken by the Trago issue, where one of Pym's ants gives his life for the heroes; Pym mourning the ant's death lies somewhere between pathos and unintentional comedy.
When Fred Van Lente rewrote Pym's origin for Marvel Adventures, he hit on the interesting idea of making Pym a failure in the eyes of the world, but a champion to the civilization of ants. It was a warm, funny idea to "fix" the character by essentially making him a Pixar hero.
You've already noted how Iron Man wasn't initially someone with many personal troubles, but was gradually reworked into a true Marvel hero. The same could have easily been done with Ant-Man: we have a scientist ridiculed for his theories, haunted by his wife's death and constantly fighting communists. Taking a page from I Was a Communist for the FBI, what if Hank Pym had been blacklisted by the scientific community because his dead wife was branded a communist spy? Rendered guilty by association, Pym would redeem his scientific prowess by becoming Ant-Man and redeem his patriotism by fighting the real communist threats, but no matter how much good Ant-Man does, somehow it doesn't reflect back on Hank Pym. Now that I think of it, he'd be a little like Eel O'Brien in Cole's Plastic Man, using his reputation as a communist sympathizer to worm (ant?) his way into the schemes of Comrade X, el Toro, the Beasts of Berlin and Egghead. Problem solved! Now send me back to 1962 so I can present it to Stan & Jack...
Hello Michael:- Thank you! A difficult afternoon is made all the more worthwhile by your kindness and as-always interesting comments. And of course, this period is far more yours than mine, so ... cheers :) I do like trying to write about the period because - as you've mentioned many times - it's such a chaotic time at Marvel. It's only in retrospect that there seems to be a clear path from the FF to DD, from first steps to the emergence of what appears to be an ever-more-fixed Marvel model. And then, of course, that model starts to fracture alot faster than its often given credit for.
DeleteYour point about Archie and DC being able to host the Torch and Pym strip is a well made one. I wish I'd said that instead of "Silver Age", but it didn't cross my mind to be so tellingly specific. Yes, you could imagine these books coming out from Archie, which is not meant as a Rumpish complaint.
There's some terrific Kirby material on those Ant-Man strips. They're clearly of a kind with his DC Green Arrow strips in alot of ways, but then, those shorts were terrific good fun in their own right, weren't they? The Whirlwind/Giant-Man two-parter remains really vigorous stuff. As for Heck, the man could even make an alien sock entertaining, while I think I took the death of one of Pym's trusty ants perhaps a touch more sentimentally than even you.
I fully intend to read that Van Lente tale, the premise of which sounds wonderful.
I would certainly send you back to 1962 to pitch your idea if I could. I'd love to read that. Pym's sidechanging powers would actually suit a life in which he every bit as much as his costumed alter-egos were constantly at risk. The idea of the Red Barbarian and the Actor sitting down to tea with Pym-the-double-agent is a beguiling one. Of course, right through this period, the reader keeps wishing that something of what was being tried elsewhere in Marvel's line would be put into place with Pym's adventures. Re-reading how Maria and Janet Van Dyne are introduced in the same tale is the comics equivilant of watching a short-circuit occur. Yours is a - shall we say - more radical plan than was typical of the day, but if you've got yourself an afternoon in the NYC of 1962 - go for it!
I hope you're well, Michael. Thank you for popping by.
The more I learn about early Marvel, the more chaotic it becomes; many of us know the story of how the Silver Surfer - a crucial element in the Galactus trilogy as we know it - just happened to wander into the tale via Kirby's muse. On the other hand, I only recently learned about how Bill Everett's inability to make his deadline on Daredevil#1 resulted in the creation of the Avengers. When you see these stories packaged together into Official Handbooks & Indexes or retold by Stan Lee in an Origins book, you assume it was all according to some overarching plan. It's probably a fallacy amongst companies who have tried to create a shared universe since then (New Universe, Ultraverse, Crossgen) that there has to be a plan behind the universe, even though the Marvel Universe was never intended to be such - it was just a happy fluke by some creative people.
DeleteI think my comparison to Archie is coming primarily from all the 1964 Shadow comics I've been reading; many come with advertisements featuring the Fly, whose own sidekick Fly Girl had beaten the Wasp to the punch, but the series was later remade into "Fly-Man" and the hero given the power to grow in size, all in a seeming effort to mimic the ...success? of Giant-Man. Just another instance of Archie trying to copy the Marvel revolution but failing to understand what was going on (but hindsight is, after all, 20/20).
Again regarding the Trago issue, I had ideas about how Trago could return as a protagonist; he was, after all, not really evil and as much under the spell of his own instrument as any of his victims. The concept of a mystical beatnik hero was appealing to me... then I read 1963 and saw Alan Moore had already done it with Johnny Beyond.
The Van Lente comic is Marvel Adventures Super Heroes#6, collected in the Marvel Adventures: Thor Featuring Captain America, Dr. Strange & Ant-Man digest.
Hello Michael:- I didn't know that BE's deadline problems led to the Avengers! I knew that he was improbably late with DD, but not of anything beyond that. That's a smart way of responding to a problem, isn't it, and it shows how chance and design working together can really pay off. I wonder if anyone raised a glass to Mr Everett, who really didn't have anything of an easy time of it, and thanked him not just for his purposeful contributions, but for his accidental ones too.
DeleteYour point about the in-part ad-hoc creation of the MU and the light it throws on all the "deliberate" superhero continuities is an excellent one. I'm not sure how any modern-era editor/publisher could consider not being hands-on with their line of books, but it's obviously a shame that they're obliged to micro-manage. There's not been a top-down universe that ever "worked" in the way it was expected to, either in terms of profit or art. I tend to think that even DC, for example, tended to be more interesting prior to 1985/6's Crisis, although the two years which followed were admitedly wonderful years.
Of all the top-down universes beyond the Big Two, I think there's some irony that Valiant worked the best for awhile in terms of how it served the market. Yet a model less like Marvel-as-was it's hard to imagine. Valiant seems to have been a version of Marvel as understood with hindsight. To say that isn't to suggest that such a POV didn't work in some ways. Merely that the make-it-up-as-we-go-along development of Marvel was anything but so carefully planned.
And of course Archie in the early 60s is one of the prime examples of a company which didn't grasp the super-book at all. Good to see, however, what a strong grasp of its own purpose the company has now. An admirable operation, it has to be said.
Johnny Beyond's DNA stretching back to Pym's adventures? Oh, I like that :)
Thank you for the reference. It shall be chased down. I can't help but find Pym a fascinating idea - or rather boatload of them - and Pym Hero Of Ants sounds enticing.
Ah, the ever-reliable Ant-Man and his winsome Wasp; how I adored them back then. Marvel was so innocent back then. I have the Essential Ant-Man/Giant-Man and its an absorbing read, one of those early Cold War paranoid superhero archetypes that was very innocent and playful and hinted at dark things under the surface. Pym back then always did have his manic side and his early tales well represented this, but not into overdrive like they do today. Loved his kooky villains like the Whirlwind and Black Knight, very in the vogue of the Flash's Rogue Gallery.
ReplyDeleteTotally recall the Fly and Fly-girl also.
Hello Karl:- You and Michael are, I must admit, far ahead of me on the matter of the Fly and Fly-girl. The former I barely know, the latter not at all. My knowledge of Archie is not a strong suit.
DeleteThere is indeed a strange mixture of innocence and darkness in those early Pym tales. The world seems to be a terrifying place. It's all very odd, as if America is going to fall in a moment to Reds/Aliens/Radioative Monsters. I wonder what the comics of 2012 will suggest to folks fifty years hence about how our age saw the world.
I dread to think.
And you're right, there is a manic edge to Pym. It's as if all involved are trying to make him interesting by presenting him as exceptionally tense - at best - at every possible opportunity.
I absolutely love Ant-Man's secret base and had a good laugh at your critique of its efficacy.
ReplyDeleteThe precise nature of the Marvel "secret formula" is a bit hard to pin down, isn't it? If you ask the average member of the rump, then you will immediately get the answer that Marvel was more "realistic" because their heroes did not get along. The comic industry has spent much of the last fifty years in pursuit of just that sort of realism and (in the process) has ground most of the joy out of the average superhero tale. Very few modern creators would risk the mockery that a modern version of Ant-Man's catapult would produce.
To me, that suggests the belief in "realism" is ill-founded, or at least more limited than it seemed 25 years ago.
What seems closer to the truth is that the early Marvels had a wonderful density. They were packed full of antagonists, supporting players and ideas. DC titles were, by contrast, much thinner fare. Their supporting casts generally consisted of a love interest and/or a side-kick. By and large, the side-kick was a derivative character. The antagonists certainly included science villains, aliens and communists, but they generally were fairly generic mobsters. Marvel gave its readers a much stronger dose of the good stuff.
The reason is fairly straight-forward: Marvel had a limit on the number of titles that it could produce. Titles, like Ant-Man, were blocking the next thing. Hank Pym had to change, or give way. He ultimately did both.
Hello Dean:- I found myself imagining what a toy version of the Ant-Base would be like while out walking the other day. That's a sign of being TooBusyThinking. I was trying to work out if the catapult could come with a mechanism which allowed it a greater range of direction, and then I ran into a neighbour and tried to look as if I were worried about the economy.
DeleteThat business of grinding out the joy of the superbook is a remorseless business isn't it? And there's rarely any sign of someone knowing how to reverse the trend. At times Grant Moorison has managed to turn back the clock, as have the usual blessed subjects, from Cornell to Gillen to Simone and so on. But on the whole, it's all so ... blokeish and dull.
The density of those early comics is something which can shock when reading through a silly old 12 pager which still manages to be more satisfying than an all summer-long event. I can't see why that quality of density can't be merged with the modern era approach, but then, I can't see why human beings of all nations can't live together in peace and harmony ....
That's a really intriguing point about the competition for resources in a line which has a limited of spaces in it. I wonder how much harm was done to Marvel when it got the chance to produce more and more comics. Less pressure for resources, less competition, less ruthlessness towards adequate books ...
Of course, in the mid-Seventies, that huge number of books permitted a great many odd little books to sneak out. Already, I see flaws in my hypothesis ...
I am not sure that is a contradiction.
DeleteMarvel found a new source of talent in the 70s in the form of the letter hacks. The titles expanded dramatically, but there was also a wave of skilled (and new) creators to fill them. If Marvel were still raiding the ranks of other publishers to fill its expanded publishing slate, then I suggest that the 70s would have been vastly worse for the publisher.
Moreover, that new wave of talent had a clear model that had been ruthlessly honed. The second wave of Marvel characters expansions and elaborations of conventions that arose during that period. Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Ms. Marvel and Ghost Rider all emerged from the templates laid down through the winnowing process of the sixties.
Hello Dean:- If I had oodles of cash, I would happily pay astonishing large amounts of it to you to have you on retainer. In essence, the possible harm done by the increase in Marvel's output was compensated by the influx of able and on-side creators. That makes sense, though of course, it raises the problem of what happens if that pipeline of creators dries up and/or finds itself in conflict with editorial and managerial decisions. I suspect part of the success of that second - of three! - great periods in Marvel is that the Gerbers, Engleharts, Moench's and so on were all grounded in the old Marvels as well as the conclusions which had been drawn from them. The further the industry gets in time from a childhood familiarity with those first dense, inclusive Marvel comics, the worse things get. A general point, of course, with many exceptions, but I think it's some merit.
DeleteThanks, Colin.
DeleteThe problem with editorially-driven comics in the current market is that editors are managers and not creators. A good mid-level manager is a given a standard by senior management and works to maximize that standard. They produce it faster, cheaper or better. However, they are producing to a standard.
When there is a clear standard in place, editorially-driven comics work just fine. The Jim Shooter regime produced some wonderful comics to the classic Marvel standard. He had a stable of creators (i.e. John Byrne, Walt Simonson) that knew that standard and could work effectively within it. Silver Age DC had an even clearer model.
Like the second, the third period of greatness was also marked by an influx of talent into Marvel. The crucial difference was that the new talent came from raiding other publishers. Grant Morrison, Ed Brubaker, Stuart Immonen and Mike Deodato came from DC. Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Frank Quietly and Bryan Hitch all came over from Image and/or Wildstorm. None of the talent was coming from outside American comics.
Also, there was no mechanism to winnow down the options. Marvel did chose between the Morrison/Quietly X-Men, the Millar/Kubert X-Men or even the Claremont/Larocca X-Men. They chose "all" and when the chance came along to toss the Whedon/Cassaday X-Men into the mix, they brought that out as well. Those are mostly worthy and wonderful projects, but it is not any way to build a new model, or standard for its editors to apply. Nothing got proven other than "people like The X-Men" and "there are lots of ways to tell X-Men stories". Therefore, the product varies based upon the whims of the least creative person in the process. The only legacies of that wonderfully creative period are some ideas about color and a commitment to decompression.
Still, DC is in even worse shape. At least Marvel had a surplus of talent running around when they were tinkering with their model after the collapse of the speculator bubble. Marvel was able to hire most of those people because DC alienated them, along with Alan Moore and his America's Best Comics cohorts. For a while, they were able to lean on Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Geoff Johns. While none of them were artists, at least they knew and loved DC Comics. Somehow, three of that foursome are gone. Only Jim Lee has replaced them in the DC brain trust.
Hello Dean:- The issue is whether the editors are actually up to the job, if I may be forgiven the crudity of the idea, and whether they can work together in a common cause. But what is a good editor? I wouldn't even say, as is often presummed, that an editor has to be able to be a top-rank writer too. Mark Waid said on Twitter yesterday that Steve Wacker's the best editor he's ever worked with, and to my knowledge SW's never written a major book. I can't imagine Waid getting such a point wrong! As a bloke who was an editor himself, I think his recommendation expresses how hard it is for we outsiders to know what is and what isn't a good editor.
DeleteI'm digressing there, rather than disagreeing with a point you never made!
The Shooter regime only really worked with the top and second rank creators, and even there, Miller jumped ship by the 83. Shooter certainly made sure that the comics were more consistent, but they were often ... distinctly average. By which I mean, and again I'm digressing, there's a limit to what consistent editorship can achieve. All too often, the blogosphere becries the lack of good editorship, as I shamefully have myself. And yet quite what the editor does, and quite what the limits of the editor's capabilities are, are matters less often discussed.
That's a typically compelling new Dean way to view the short-lived, final great age of Marvel. I suppose that there's grounds to wish it were possible to ask everyone involved their opinion of why that period ended. Your view is certainly compelling. Did those creators run out of gas? That level of diversity relies on there being a range of creators all firing, all willing to hang around and keep the franchises alive. Did the company start to impose specific demands across the line? I'm rather fond of the "let a thousand flowers" bloom moments in comics history, and yet they do seem to quickly run out of steam. In a sense, you seem to be implying that too much diversity - no matter how fine - runs the risk of beaching itself unless the publisher can impose a consistent regime. And yet in doing that, individual creativity gets suppressed.
But it is worth noting that Marvel is letting some distinctly individual books out at the moment. Hawkeye, Cpt Marvel ... Perhaps the wheel is turning, perhaps the company is trying to create more books which are more individual and less bound to Events.
I couldn't agree more with you about DC. The company has a fantastic capacity to shoot itself in the foot, head and just about everywhere else. Each post-87 year has seen the company being kept creatively alive by a relatively tiny number of creators, and great chances are continually thrown into touch. The four-man proposal to revive Superman - Waid, Millar, Morrison and - was it - Peyer? - circa 2000 was one chance to really step forward. Without the creators, there's little that a company can do, and DC doesn't seem to know how to keep a strong core of top-rate creators.
I guess it won't surprise if I say that I've been hugely disappointed by the New 52. A few good books and a great deal of tat. With even Grant Morrison on the way out, I'm baffled at how the company thinks it can progress.
There is something utterly strange about those panels - not the fact they're happening, the fact they're played straight and not for laughs or deliberate absurdism. The hero playing gunslinger on an ant? Surely even at the time, that was seen as silly? You can see how Grant Morrison was created if he read comics like this...
ReplyDelete- Charles RB
Hello Charles:- It's a very good point you raise. Didn't anyone notice how daft these stories were? I'm sure that lots did, but I suspect that most didn't. I didn't until I was far further past the age of starting Secondary School than I'd care to admit, and writing these posts at Sequart has shown me that a great deal of what went on in those first three or four years of Marvel somehow passed me by even up until now.
DeleteMy old Psychology teacher self has started whispering about the ethnomethodology of it all, but then, he would ...
Ah, the Astonishing Ant-Man! long a favorite of mine, it has a quirkiness and charm all its own. I probably first discovered Henry Pym when he was reprinted alongside Lee-Ditko Spider-Man, Thor and the Human Torch in Marvel Tales. I have a soft spot for the Scarlet Beetle tale in particular, but all the absurdities you point out, such as the honey in the gun and the tied shoelaces added to its personality. Jack Kirby once said that he never had the time to develop Ant-Man, but those early issues are fun and are filled with imagination.
ReplyDeleteMarvel took time to grow and gain an identity, and while attention was devoted to strips such as FF and Spider-Man, Lee only was able to provide plots for characters such as Ant-Man, Thor, the Torch and Iron-Man early on. The Marvel personality did not become a cohesive whole until Lee was able to script all the super hero stories, and while not all of them went on to success, Lee often found a way to incorporate characters into existing series such as the Avengers. To his credit, he kept trying to make characters like Ant-Man and the, early, unsuccessful, Hulk work.
Hello Nick:- I was hoping that the frames I posted and discussed above would transmit my fondness and indeed admiration for those early Pym tales. As I said about the Ant-Base, "a lovely, absurd business".
DeleteI find the process of how Marvel was constantly striving to make strips "work" fascinating, as evidently you do too. And there were stories, such as the Lee/Kirby Whirlwind two-parter, which I ADORE, which did seem to be finding both a unique identity and a Marvelesque tone.
The Avengers was beyond the reach of this particular piece. However, your point is - of course - a fine one. The way in which Marvel could create new situations out of old and less successful characters was one of the marks of the company's success in the period.
Colin,
ReplyDeleteAnother though comes to mind concerning Ant-Man. What was wrong with having a character that was competent, straightforward and had a relatively "normal" life (as normal as someone riding on an ant can be)? Perhaps one hero not burdened with problems would have been an interesting contrast to the rest of the Marvel heroes. Where I think Ant-Man failed as a feature was in not developing his world, or including a supportng cast beside Janet.
If Lee and Kirby could have found a way to make the character work and develop his world, its possible that Henry Pym could have survived. The change to Giant-Man did nothing for the character in terms of innovation or dramatics, and, in my opinion, was a (giant) step in the wrong direction.
Hello Nick:- Absolutely nothing wrong with Pym being a Silver Age paragon kind of superhero. I have, as I'm sure you know, a great love for the early Silver Age characters such as the Flash and his fellow DC stars. I think the problem was the context of the time and the context of the Marvel line. With Marvel, Pym represented qualities which were ill-mixed with the Marvel approach. It meant that he occupied a berth which another feature could more productively fill. In terms of the time, the tide was turning away from the early Silver Age standards of "normality", which meant that Pym would've suffered by 65/6 even if he were at DC.
DeleteBut I say that as an expression of own beliefs and not as any attempt to pretend to expertise, to fan-objectivity.
And I would like to be able to read an Essential which contains the Pym tales from an alt-Earth where the character was given the supporting cast you mention and allowed to flourish. Pym was, up until the Shooter-debacle, one of my very favourite super-heroes. I still look at those old covers - from TTA and The Avengers and even the FF - and feel a sense of my boyhood regard for the character.
Colin,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I enjoy about the early Silver Age Marvel stories that are not quite on the level of FF and Spidey is the crudeness and wackiness that was on one level a bit like DC (perhaps because Lee was using writers like Robert Bernstein, who wrote Superman, Jimmy Olsen and other DC product)yet in other ways very much a distinct product. Iron-Man, Thor, the Torch, Ant-Man, even the Hulk, all had quirky stories that were mired in an earlier time. Criminals, monsters and communists (oh my!) were the standard villains, and the plots were mainly standard fare. It was not until Lee took over the plotting and scripting that most of those strips began to conform to the Marvel style of witty banter, characterization and soap opera theatrics. Lee didn't always get it right, though, and with Ant-Man and the Torch in particular he struggled. It also seemed that when he did not have a strong or sympathetic co-plotter he suffered as well. Some, like Dick Ayers, were not particularly suited to super-heroes, others like Bob Powell (an excellent artist) didn't mesh well with Lee. When Kirby and Ditko were co-pilots these issues were rarely in evidence, and it would be a few years before a John Romita, Gene Colan or John Buscema could have come along to perhaps imbue these strips with the needed punch. It only shows that nothing was created out of whole cloth, or mapped out overnight. It was an ongoing process that became tighter and more sophisticated by the mid-1960s, and folks like Roy Thomas certainly helped as well.
Hello Nick:- One point that you've made me think of is how much the Marvel style relied not on plot, but on the script and the Lee-pizzaz which he could pour into it. By which I don't mean that a Lee project with him on both plot and script was inevitably a winner; your words show that that's not so. But there is a clear difference in quality in the projects - and even the less successful ones - when Lee is doing the full scripting. After all, the plots for many of the least-apparently Marvel-like comics were all from Lee's pen, or at least mouth, so it can't be that Lee's plots themselves were always so fine. It was, of course, also the skills of the artist and the finished job that Lee could do at the end of the process. The Cyclops tale in Giant Man, for example, is a SL set-up. Yet, as you imply, that great dislocation between early Silver Age - and even Bronze Age - plots and the Marvel style gets filled to a greater or lesser degree when Lee's doing the whole job. That certainly raises for me the question of how much of the Marvel style was actually Lee's. It's often said that other creators were far more important, and yet, when Lee was missing from their work in all but plots in the period, no-one shone as they might have when he was more fully in the mix. By which I don't mean - as I'm sure you'll know - that I'm trying to allocate an artistic order of merit and achievement. The High Sixties at Marvel - which for me begins to decline when both Ditko and relative newcomer Wood depart - was obviously the product of a great many talents, with of course the front rank belonging to - in alphabetical order - Ditko, Kirby and Lee.
DeleteAs you say, the lack of an absolutely top-drawer artistic collaborator to take Lee's scripts and run with them also showed the limitations of the system. Even with Lee on full script on the Pym feature, there was an obvious shortfall in quality when compared with the best of Marvel in the period.
I find the traces of smart thinking, improvisation and struggle in the period to be so inspiring. The work of Lee and all of his major collaborators become all the more impressive when it becomes obvious that there was no simple method, no straight-forward grand plan. That these creators were producing so much work under such incredible pressure and thinking constantly on their feet seems far more an impressive business than the image of there being a Marvel way of doing things. The Marvel way was to dare, over-reach, trip up, improvise, reverse, experiment, and, over and over again, succeed.
To have been a fly on the wall ....
Colin -
ReplyDeleteYou've made many excellent points. Lee did his most inspired work when he was collaborating with creators who could bring all the storytelling elements together. One can get an idea of who he favored by observing what strips he dropped as his workload lessened. Kirby,Romita,Colan,Buscema were on top of the list. Its also worth noting that Daredevil is not far removed from the earlier Ant-Man or Torch plots. The difference is that Colan was such an exuberant arist and storyteller that the weaknesses are not as noticable (and Lee appeared to have mote fun dialoging Colan's stories)
It only emphasizes how important the right artist was to the process,but that was always the case with Lee, dating back to Syd Shores and Joe Maneely.
Hello Nick:- Thank you :) I love the idea that we ought to track Lee's preferences in collaborators. I assume that we ought to try to work out what made these particular artist's work admired by him. What qualities did they have in common? How did those differ from those to be found in the work of less favoured artistic partners? There's a topic for a long, long essay ...
DeleteOf course, one of the differences between that second generation of artists and the first - in the context of the 60's super-books - is that Lee was in an position of considerably greater authority with Colan and John Buscema than he was with Ditko and Kirby. That's a potential problem, of course, because I suspect that Lee was less likely to be surprised in a challenging way by his later collaborators. (And when he was, he seemed to feel he had more authority with the likes of Buscema than with Kirby or Ditko; you'll know better than me, but I doubt either JK or SD would have been dealt with as JB was over that Asgrad issue of Silver Surfer.)In the end, that creative tension - or even the existence of incredible surprises - was part of the mass of challenges which made the High Sixties books so creative, and no matter how gifted JR and JB were, they rarely seemed to spark off SL as Ditko and Lee did.
I've never thought of looking at the DD issues in the way you suggest. In truth, I've tended not to return to the post-Wood issues. I now have a good reason to do so.
Your last point is - of course - a pointer towards the fundamental problem with the Marvel method. The final product requires every member of the team to be brilliant. With the likes of Maneely and Kirby, Lee had an Atlas to rely upon. But such talents are few and far between.
The difference between artists like Romita and Buscema (and they have pretty much said as much in interviews) is that they were superior craftsman, but Kirby and Ditko were creative powerhouses. Your point about Lee's having more control over those artists is a good one. The creative tension did not exist as it did under Ditko, Kirby or Wood. Lee would often be surprised over their contributions, and this likely pushed him to do his best and keep up with them. Romita certainly, would often go along with Lee, while Ditko would challenge any ideas that came his way. Too, Buscema, Romita and Colan did not have the ability to create new characters with the ease that Ditko, Kirby and Wood did. Those were big shoes to fill.
ReplyDeleteI think Lee's choice of collaborators were those who understood what he wanted re: storytelling, dramatics and pacing. They had to be able to fill in the blanks. Everyone I've spoken to and interviews I've read made it clear that Lee knew exactly what he wanted, and conveyed that to everyone from Herb Trimpe to Marie Severin. The Marvel style had to be larger than life and theatrical, and some artists could not convey that message or were too subdued. Those were the people Lee tended to avoid or pass on to other writers.
http://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/
Hello Nick:- I do appreciate you taking my hypotheses in the spirt they're intended. There's a world of difference between wondering and knowing, and I hope I always fall into the group of people who are doing the first.
DeleteYou're so right to emphasise how tough it must have been to step into Ditko, Woods and Kirby's shoes. John Romita - whose work I admire greatly - has spoken of how he felt when he first stepped into Ditko's shoes and then, on the FF, into Kirby's. Of course, he did wonderfully well, and I wouldn't want to suggest anything else. It's just, as you describe, Kirby, Ditko and to a significant degree Wood, who never loved the super-book, were great "powerhouses" as well as terrific artists.
I think Lee's ability to know what he wanted and push for it has - amongst a great many other things - been sadly under-estimated. Those who'd have Lee reduced to a knock-it-off plotter and carnival barker scripter miss a huge amount of what he brought to Marvel. And yet, it does appear that he did his very best work in situations where he couldn't insist on what came back to him, and where what he on occasion received must have completely surprised him.