Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days – Page 9

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 11: Essential Spider-Man vol 2

Published on September 21, 2010

cover of Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2

Essential Spider-Man Vol. 2
Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, John Romita and friends
Reprints: Amazing Spider-Man #21-43, Annual 2-3 (Februari 1965 – December 1966)
Get this for: Lee, Ditko & Romita on Spider-Man– five stars

After finishing Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1 I needed to finish the rest of the Lee-Ditko run on Amazing Spider-Man, so onwards to Vol. 2 I went. This includes the last eighteen issues plus annual Ditko worked on the title, as well as the first few of John Romita as his replacement. The changeover from the stylistic mastery of Ditko to the much more conventional prettiness of Romita is jarring and when read straight after each other, Romita comes off looking the lesser artist, almost bland even. Not that he’s a bad artist of course, but he lacks the personal investment Ditko brought to Spider-Man.

The story of why Ditko left Amazing Spider-Man is well known of course: he objected to taking the Green Goblin and make him into somebody in Spidey’s supporting cast like Stan Lee wanted him to be as that would make for a better story, rather than having him just be a nobody as Ditko wanted as that fit his philosophy of crime (heavily influenced by Ayn Rand) better. Ditko quit with the issue in which Lee wanted the big reveal rather than compromise his principles, Romita was brought in and Spider-Man would never be the same again. So much of what would make Spider-Man Spider-Man later on was only brought in after Ditko left, the most important perhaps being a certain little gal called Mary Jane Watson! (One risk of reading these volumes back to back is having Lee’s speech patterns rub off on you. But that’s a risk I’m taking for you, the dedicated reader. (See what I mean?))

With Romita Spider-Man went even more into soap opera, lost some of the easy humour of the Ditko days as Peter Parker’s struggles were taken more seriously and the cast was expanded. For most of Ditko’s run there’s only a relatively small supporting cast: Flash Thompson and Liz Allen plus unnamed hangers on at Peter’s high school; Jolly Jonah Jameson, Betty Brant and Frederick Foswell at the Daily Bugle, plus of course Aunt May. Even Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy only come into the picture at the end of the Ditko issues. With Romita on board, the cast becomes bigger and more important. It’s quite a difference.

Moving back to why Ditko left the series, it has been interesting to see, knowing his reasons, how he had been weaving his thoughts on crime and the losers who commit in the series before. In the previous volume there was the crime boss The Big Man, who Spider-Man suspected was actually Jameson himself only for him to turn out to be Foswell, while this volume has the saga of the Crime-Master, where Spidey is again wrong in his suspicions, now thinking Foswell has gone back to his old ways when it turns out it’s somebody he actually never saw and nor did we. In both cases it turns out our ideas of who could be this big, important villain don’t matter as they turn out to be nobodies, which is what Ditko wants us to learn about crime. With the Goblin he had been careful never to show his face before and was on his way to repeat this trick, but Lee had other plans. A pity in one way, though Lee had a good case that storywise, it’s more satisfying to have the revelation of the Goblin’s identity be more meaningful. In the end, because Norman Osborn is only introduced a few issues before anyway, any shock value of his being the Green Goblin is slight.

One of the strangest stories in this volume is issue 24, where Spidey thinks he’s going mad because he keeps seeing hallucinations while some psychatrist has written an op-ed in the Bugle that he must be insane to be Spider-Man. It’s not the story itself which is strange, as the logic behind the premise. Even before Spidey sees things, the mere mention that a psychiatrist has declared him insane was enough for him to doubt his sanity. That’s the kind of childlike logic more suited to a Superboy story, where any autority is always immediately believed by the hero and his friends, no matter how ludicrous.

Ditko or Romita, Spider-Man is addictive. I have to imagine what it would’ve been like to read these issues straight from the newsstand back in ’65, having to wait a month to read the conclusion of the Master Planner story, Ditko’s zenith on the series. So good to be able to just flip the page and start reading.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 10: Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1

Published on September 20, 2010

cover of Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1

Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and friends
Reprints: Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #1-20, Annual 1 (August 1962 – january 1965)
Get this for: Duh Lee & Ditko on Spider-Man– five stars

The problem with talking about the stories in Essential Spider-Man Vol. 1 is the same as with talking about the first Fantastic Four volume. Many of the stories have been reprinted, recapped, retold so often that you think you know them, until you read them all cover to cover in one sitting again and discover that actually, Lee and Ditko were actually quite funny.

Not to take away from the superheroics of course, as so many classic Spidey villains are introduced here — The Vulture, Chameleon, Doctor Octopus, Electro, Mysterio, Sandman, The Lizard, Scorpion and of course Green Goblin — but the best thing in these stories is the soap opera that takes place around it. It’s all much, much less serious than it would be later on. Lee and Ditko delight in making Peter Parker suffer for being Spider-Man; if it isn’t his aunt May’s health and money problems it’s the kids at school thinking him a coward or Jolly Jonah Jameson’s latest editorial turnign the city against him again. But they don’t pile on the problems like later writers would do and always balance it with a sense of humour. Peter is still able to laugh at himself and his troubles. Some of the scrapes Spidey finds himself in are clearly played for laughs too, as with his teamups/ongoing rivalry with the Human Torch.

Ditko’s art is a great help with this: fluid and expressive, especially with faces. It’s his composition and exegerrated, elongated figures that tend to get the attention, but the way Ditko can show subtle emotions in his faces here is just as impressive. This is something that’s sadly been lost with Ditko over the years as he’s withdrawn in his Randroid fantasies and his art became somewhat of a parody of himself. But here it’s alive and well and never as developed elsewhere. Compare e.g. with the Dr Strange stories Ditko worked on at the same time, where soap opera and characterisation where much less important. The page on the right is the last page of Amazing Spider-Man #7, a nice example of how Ditko can portray both subtle and broad emotion on the same page naturally. It reads even better in black and white, where you’re not distracted by the colours.

On the whole I’ve found that Ditko is an artist whose work, even though meant for colour publication, benefits a lot from black and white representation, much more so than some artists (as do Gil Kane and Jack Kirby). Some artists depend on colour, work with it to give coherence to their drawings, while with Ditko his style is much more clear if left uncoloured.

I should not forget Ditko’s feel for action either. His fight scenes are great, with constant movement, figures jumping around, goons flying everywhere, punches thrown, Spidey ducking and weaving through four, five villains, caught mid-way through a jump, with the action always towards the reader. He creates a feeling of energy and movement few other artists can match while never using layout trickery or even much sound effects (something rare in Silver Age Marvel anyway). Lee meanwhile, of course plasters his dialogue all over this action, but does so without obscuring it or stating the obvious. It’s completely unnatural, but the way Lee brings it, it feels like the most normal thing in the world to comment out loud in the middle of a fight on what you’re trying to do and what your opponent is doing. If you want one example, go find Spider-Man #19 and Spidey’s and the Torch’s fight with Sandman and the Enforcers.

It is all great, great stuff and anybody should take the time to at least read through these — and the eighteen more Lee and Ditko would do together.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 09: Essential Conan

Published on September 19, 20101 Comment

cover of Essential Conan

Essential Conan
Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor Smith, Gil Kane and friends
Reprints: Conan #1-25 (October 1970 – April 1973)
Get this for: Barry Windsor Smith — five stars

Despite the fact the Conan series ran for decades there has been only one volume of Essential Conan, for the simple reason Marvel foolish dropped the license to print Conan stories a while back and Dark Horse took it over. Though long out of print, that sole volume is worth searching out as it contains the complete run of Barry Windsor Smith Conan stories. It was through these stories that he forged his reputation as perhaps the greatest fantasy artist to work in American comics.

And the writing, in the capable hands of Roy Thomas, isn’t bad either. He managed to capture the essence of Robert E. Howard’s character, if toned down a bit for mainstream comics. At the same time he established a rough continuity for Conan that mixed the original published stories, with those published after Howard’s death, various unfinished fragments and his own original tales. He did this btter than L. Sprague deCamp did for the prose Conan, in my opinion, especially in these earliest stories with Barry Smith.

It must have been quite a big risk, back in 1970, to acquire the rights to a fairly obscure character created by a writer who died more than thirty years earlier. Sure, there had been reprints and continuations of Conan since, but except amongst fantasy fans, Conan was hardly a household name. To than have a relatively unknown artist like Barry smith on it, then largely known for a few fillins on the likes of X-Men and still somewhat of a Neal Adams clone was a double gamble. But it worked out well for Marvel: Conan was one of the first, if not the first comics series to succeed through fan appeal. It was also one of the first series not to have Stan Lee writing the first few issues, a clear sign of the old order changing.

Now Marvel had kept on publishing non-superhero titles all through the sixties while Lee and Kirby and Ditko and Heck revolutionised superhero comics, but Conan was the first high profile new Marvel title not to feature the long underwear crowd. You can see Roy Thomas struggle with this a bit in the first few issues, getting away from the Lee style of plotting. There are a couple of traditional expositionary dialogues in the first two issues that could just as well have been put in a Spider-Man story for example. As Thomas grows more confident he finds his own voice — at the same time Barry Windsor Smith gets more say in the stories as well. His art is dropdead gorgeous from the start, even in black and white and fits Roy Thomas’ writing perfectly and as Thomas gains confidence in him you can see that they become more than the sum of their parts.

It’s that combination of Smith and Thomas that makes these stories standout. There would be other great artists on Conan, with John Buscema providing the definitive Conan, but the series was never quite as creative and sparkling as it was in the first twentyfour issues.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 08: Iron Man Vol. 1

Published on September 18, 20101 Comment

cover of Essential Iron Man vol 1

Essential Iron Man Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Don Heck and friends
Reprints: Tales of Suspense #39-72 (March 1963 – June 1968)
Get this for: Don Heck at his best — three stars

Having done Captain America’s run in Tales of Suspense yesterday, it’s no more than fair to feature the guy Cap was sharing the title with today: Iron Man. Iron Man got his start in #39; this volume brings us roughly halfway through his run, to issue #72. Interestingly, Iron Man was one of the few Silver Age greats in which neither Ditko nor Kirby had much of a hand developing him. Instead Don Heck is the principal artist throughout this part of his Tales of Suspense run. Heck might not be quite as good as those two, but his suave, streamlined style works quite well here.

You do get the feeling however that Iron Man, no matter what he became later, was a second tier title to Stan Lee at least. His writing misses the sparkle it has on Fantastic Four, Spider-Man or even Captain America. Evidence of this is also the use of scripters, with Lee only doing the plotting. It results in a run of stories remarkably less complex than the top tier Marvel Silver Age titles.

Most of the stories revolve either around rivals of Tony Stark using their own inventions to become supervillains in order to put him out of business or a communist saboteur doing the same. Apart from the Mandarin there are no recurring villains here; even classic Iron Man villains like the Melter only appear once. Soap opera wise there’s not much going on either, apart from the love triangle between tony, his secretary Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan, his chauffeur. They’re not bad stories, just a bit samey after a while.

On the art front, Don Heck starts out decent and gets better over the volume, establishing a look for Iron Man and his armoured villains like the Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man that would be used by every artist after. Heck is a somewhat underrated artist, but if you do want to see him at his best, this is it.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 07: Captain America Vol. 01

Published on September 17, 2010

cover of Essential Captain America vol 1

Essential Captain America Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane and friends
Reprints: Tales of Suspense #59-99, Captain America #100-102 (November 1964 – June 1968)
Get this for: Classic Captain America — five stars

Believe it or not, Captain America is my favourite Marvel superhero, largely due to Mark Gruenwald’s long run. What I like about Captain America is how leftist a patriot he is, a Roosevelt democrat and man of the people, punching out Hitler a year before America entered the war, always representing more the ideals of America than its government, in as far as a four colour hero can represent anything when he spents most of his time fighting leftover nazis, grotesque monstrosities wanting to rule the world and other sci-fi menaces…. Captain America is one of those characters who, like Spider-Man or the Thing always make a story better, almost as if writers try extra hard when they are working with them.

Essential Captain America Vol. 1 reprints Captain America’s complete run in Tales of Suspense, plus the first three issues of his own title. None of this I have read before and I therefore had no idea what was in store. Silver Age Marvel comics can be a bit hit and miss, especially the split titles like Tales of Suspense so I wasn’t expecting too much, but this was excellent. It’s clear Stan Lee has an affinity for Cap, as does Jack Kirby, who provides the majority of the art here, with only short spells by John Romita, Jack Sparling and Gil Kane interrupting his run. Inkers on the other hand change much more, from Chic Stone to Frank Giacoia to Dick Ayers to George Tuska to Joe Sinnott to Syd Shores, each making their own interpretation of Kirby’s pencils.

Artwise, what makes this volume extraordinary is the evolution in Kirby’s art. At the start of the volume he has already moved on from the clean, slightly slick understated look it had in e.g. early Fantastic Four comics, with more exagerration in movement and typical Kirby poses. By the end it’s full on Kirby, weird ultracomplex machinery, impossible anatomy, hunched poses, odd viewpoints, Kirby Krackle and all. Inbetween you can see one style mutating into the other. At each point along the way the same boundless energy slams from the page. Captain America is an action orientated strip even more so than the usual silver Age Marvel title and Kirby delights in showing Cap dodging bullets, slamming into villains and sprinting across the page to defuse a bomb in time.

The first issue is a case in point, in which Lee and Kirby introduce Cap to a new audience. Cap is minding his own business at Avengers Mansion, when a gang of toughs decide that this is the one night thye can rob the place with impunity, Cap being just a “glorified acrobat”. What follows is a quick demonstration in how tough, fast and strong he is. It’s great stuff.

Storywise Captain America took some time to find its feet, the first couple of stories being rather pedestrian, before Lee puts Cap back into World War II for ten issues, then moving back to the present for the first of several Red Skull storylines, this one featuring the menace of the Sleepers, rather silly looking giant robot menaces schaduled to wake up on Der Tag, tweny years after the end of WWII. Which rubbed my face in the strange fact that more time has now passed since these stories were first published than had passed between WWII and them. Captain America as a revived World War II hero was a much different idea when the people creating his stories had lived through it themselves than it is now. Back then the idea that Cap could regularly run into people who had remembered him from seeing him in action in France or Germany back during “the Big One” was quite natural, while by now Marvel’s floating timeline has progressed so far that you could’ve had the same effect by making him a veteran of the First Gulf War!

One of the things I feared starting this volume was that every other story in here would feature either Baron Zemo or Red Skull as the villain, which fortunately is not the case. Zemo only appears twice, while the Red Skull is used more, but each time he appears is special. Other villains include Batroc Ze Leaper, the Tumbler, the Adaptoid and Super-Adaptoid as well as the menace of Them, not to mention A.I.M. and MODOK. Cap’s allies include Nick Fury (and quite a few shared storylines with his own title in Strange Tales), the mysterious and lovely SHIELD Agent 13, Rick Jones and the Black Panther.

Great fast paced action, clever plotting and even some subtle (and not so subtle) characterisation — all that and Kirby at his peak, what more do you want?