Articles with the Tag Stan Lee

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 27: Fantastic Four vol 03

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Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 3
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and friends
Reprints: Fantastic Four #41-63 and Annual 3-4 (August 1965 – June 1967)
Get this for: Lee and Kirby at the peak of their game — Five stars

Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 2 ended with the Battle of the Baxter Building, in which a powerless Fantastic Four, with the aid of a blind man, Daredevil, had to defeat their most dangerous enemy Doctor Doom. That was a great story to end the volume with and hard to top, yet Essential Fantastic Four Vol. 3 almost as strong with the return of the Frightful Four who kidnap and brainwash the Thing to use against his partners. That story leads into the wedding of Reed and Sue, followed by the coming of the Inhumans, spanning no less than five issues. But that’s just the start, as the FF have to immediately face the threat of Galactus and the Silver Surfer. Perhaps the best story Lee and Kirby ever did together, but the very next issue has another strong candidate for that title: “This Man… This Monster” in which an unnamed embittered scientist takes over the Things powers and learns just in time the true meaning of heroism — Stan Lee’s sentimental instincts honed to perfection. All this only takes us up to #51, with the rest of the volume also seeing the introduction of the Black Panther, the continuing struggle of Johnny Storm to rescue the Inhumans from their prison, the menace of Klaw, Doctor Doom stealing the Silver Surfer’s cosmic powers and more.

As I’ve said before, The Fantastic Four started out as relatively realistic series, in as far as a series starring an orange rock monster, a rubber man, invisible woman and a human torch can be realistic and then slowly started to abandon that realism for more grandiose, imaginative visions. You could already see this happening in the first two volumes, but here Lee’s and especially Kirby’s imagination has been completely unshackled. Great big chunks of the Marvel Universe are seen for the first time here: Galactus and the Surfer, the Inhumans, the Black Panther and his home country of Wakanda, Klaw, Blastaar, the Negative Zone and so on. All these would be further developed later on, both by Lee and Kirby themselves as by other writers and artists but the core concepts were created here.

With this enormous burst of creativity came an expansion in story length. Had earlier FF stories been either single issue or rarely double issue in length, here not only do stories run for three, four or even five issues, they flow into each other, with subplots being carried over and developing for the best part of a year or longer. It’s still possible to pick up a given issue and know what’s going, if only because of the inevitable recaps Lee gives at the start of each issue, but it definitively helps to have been reading the series for longer. Again it’s Lee and Kirby pioneering a style of storytelling that would become ubiquitous at Marvel in the decades since.

Also evolving because of the greater length, complexity and grandeur of the stories, is Kirby’s art. He started out subdued and realistic back in volume one, was already starting to experiment in the next volume but here he has unshackled his imagination. His old strengths are still there, but they’re now coupled to a sense of design that few since have equalled. His characters are fluid and constantly in motion, he’s still the master of fight scenes, equally adept at illustrating the more quiet scenes, but he really comes to live when he gets to create a new civilisation. Both the Black Panther’s Wakanda and the Inhumans great refuge are places of super science, but you could never mistake the one for the other.

In short, this is Lee and Kirby at their very best and if you can get only one Essential Fantastic Four volume, get this one.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 26: Essential Avengers Vol. 2

books and books review, Comix
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Essential Essential Avengers Vol. 2
Stan Lee, Don Heck, Roy Thomas and friends
Reprints: Avengers #25-46, Special #1 (February 1966 – November 1967)
Get this for: Avengers hitting their stride — four stars

Essential Avengers Vol. 2 starts where the first volume ended, with Lee and Heck getting into their stride and the Avengers themselves reduced to Captain America and his three juvenile deliquents: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. This combination worked much better than the original Avengers, who all had their own titles and didn’t mesh together that well. Of the New Avengers on the other hand only Cap had his own title, which meant there was room in The Avengers for some character development. It took a while for Lee to get a handle on the new team, but in this volume he has managed it.

The “kooky quartet” did not stay a quartet for long however; in the second issue collected here Giantman and the Wasp join the team, Giantman rechristening himself as Goliath. They’re not the only additions to the team: both the Black Widow (last seen in Iron Man) and Hercules (from Thor) drop by later in the volume and keep hanging around. In the King-Size Special things go even further, as a long running Avengers tradition was established as every Avenger but the Hulk and the Black Widow teamed up to defeat the Mandarin.

This volume is wall to wall action, with few issue to issue subplots, apart from the Black Widow’s problems with her old masters back behind the Iron Curtain. Lee doesn’t try to do anything difficult here with the Avengers, but just keeps throwing villains at them, from Attuma to Doctor Doom to the Living Laser to the Sons of the Serpents. It’s all very entertaining if a bit slight. things do pick up a bit as Roy Thomas takes over scripting duties, but here he’s not doing that much different from Lee.

The only time Lee does add some depth to The Avengers is with the Sons of the Serpents story, in which the Avengers take on a KKK standin and reveal it to be led by … a foreign communist leader. This also has the first appearances of Bill Foster, one of the first Black supporting characters in a Marvel comic. Yes, he is largely used solely for a clumsy parable about the state of race relations in America, but at least Lee means well…

Don Heck handles most of the artwork in this volume and his sleek style started to win me over. In the previous volume he wasn’t at his peak quite yet, here he has a good handle on all the characters and especially seems to have fun to draw the ladies. It’s less flashy and more restrained than a Kirby’s or a Ditko, but it suits the less powerful Avengers team.

This is still not the classic Avengers, but it’s getting there.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 23: Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 1

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Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 1
Stan Lee, John Buscema and friends
Reprints: Silver Surfer #1-18 (August 1968 – September 1970)
Get this for: whiny Silver Surfer is whiny — four stars

The Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 1 is one Essential collection I dreaded rereading, because I knew that it collected the original Silver Surfer series of the 1960ties, written by Stan Lee and drawn by John Buscema. I also knew that in Lee’s hands, the Surfer’s personality was a bit … melodramatic and self-pitying, shall we say? Throughout the series he’s flying around the world, his noble brow creases with the sorrow of being exiled on Earth away from his beloved Shalla Bal, amongst a hopelessly primitive race of barbarians suspicious of each other and of him. Every other issue sees him get caught up in a fight not his own, as people respond with aggression, hatred and fear against him. It is somewhat tedious reading just one issue, let alone all eighteen of that first series.

Now I’m sure the story of how the Silver Surfer came to be is well known enough not to tell again; how when Stan Lee got the first pages back for Fantastic Four #48 with the first appearance of Galactus, there was a second figure there, a silver figure on a silver surfboard added by Jack Kirby, how Lee got enamoured of him and give him a bigger role in the story and brought him back a few times as a guest star. His solo series was a logical outgrowth of this: the Surfer had always been popular in his appearances and for Lee it was a chance to do something different, from the heart. This was a prestige project for Lee, which is also why the first seven issues were doublesized, 68 pages rather than the usual 32.

Sadly it failed however. The series was no success and with the eight issue became a normal, 32 page sized comic, but only lasted for ten more issues. Issue 18 would be the last, ending on a cliffhanger. The unusual — and expensive — format cannot have helped, but I think the general mopiness of the Surfer himself was the greatest culprit. He was just too depressed and depressing and much more so than any other Marvel hero, seemed to exist in a state of stasis, never catching a break and nothing ever changing for him. He alternates between wanting to be accepted by humanity and wanting nothing to do with us and it’s all a bit tedious.

What makes up for this, more than made up for this even, is John Buscema’s art. I love his late sixties, early seventies style, also seen on Fantastic Four and Thor after Kirby had left those titles. His figures are all bold and imposing, his heroes standing widelegged and ready for action, his villains looming and smoldering with hidden menace. And while the men are handsome or brutish, his females are all beautiful. Buscema’s best work on the series may have been issue four, which saw the Surfer being manipulated by Loki to take on the Mighty Thor. Buscema has great fun drawing all the Norse gods as well as the battle between these two heavyweights.

The switch back to the normal thirtytwo page monthly comics format did not do the series well. Lee had less room for his (unsually even for him) verbose stories, while with the pressures of a monthly series the art started to suffer as well. In the first seven issues John Buscema had been inked first by Joe Sinnott, then by his brother Sal Buscema, both enhancing his art. From issue eight however he was inked by Dan Adkins and that combination is decidedly weaker. I’ve never liked Adkins, who I’ve never seen do anything interesting either as a penciller or an inker. Here he weakens Buscema’s penciling, overshadowing it with his mediocre inks.

Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 1 is the collection of a flawed series, interesting as such if somewhat of a slog to get through and much redeemed by the great artwork.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 21: Essential Uncanny X-men Vol. 1

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Essential Uncanny X-men Vol. 1
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Werner Roth, Roy Thomas and friends
Reprints: Uncanny X-Men #1-24 (September 1963 – September 1966)
Get this for: The X-Men before they were famous — three stars

The X-Men debuted in the same month as that other Marvel superhero team, the Avengers. But whereas the latter team featured five heroes already known from their solo adventures, the X-Men, also with five members, had never been seen before. What’s more, unlike every other Marvel hero the X-Men had no origin, but where born with their powers, socalled mutants. From the start they were different, using their powers not to fight crime, though they did, but to protect the world from evil mutants, to find those mutants still unaware of their powers and to show normal people that mutants could be trusted. It was a far more science fictional approach than Lee and Kirby had tried in any of their other titles, even in the Fantastic Four.

I’ve read many of the earliest stories in this volume before and always found them a tad on the tedious side. This is sadly still the case now. The premise of the series is good, but how it’s worked out is not so much. As you know, there’s professor Xavier’s school, where he trains the X-Men and is on the lookout for potential mutants or mutant threats. The first eight-nine issues all follow the same pattern: some mutant menace makes himself known or is found by professor X, the X-Men try to defeat it but are outmatched, are rallied by Prof X and overcome it. So the first issue has the X-Men going after Magneto, in the second they tackle the Vanisher, in the third the Blob, in the fourth it’s Magneto again, with new allies the Brotherhood of Evil, followed with Magneto teaming up with Namor and so on.

Character wise, especially at the start the old prof is the most annoying character in the series: either the deus ex machina that solves every difficulty at the end of an issue, or the distant trainer/mentor exhorting his pupils to do better. The focus on the X-men’s training in the first seven issues or so doesn’t help either. Another annoying character is Scott Summers, pining for fellow student Jean Grey and whining endlessly about his deadly powers and how he needs to keep his self control.

Things liven up a bit when the The X-Men move into the double figures. In issue ten the X-Men find the Savage Land and meet Ka-Zar, in issue eleven the Stranger, followed by the introduction of the Juggernaut in a fine two part story. The introduction of the Sentinels comes straight after and takes no fewer than three issues to be told. This shift towards longer, multi issue stories works well for the X-Men: they’re much more fun. Gone is any pretence at the original mission of the X-Men though.

What also works out well for the X-Men is the shift in artists, from Jack Kirby to Werner Roth. Roth’s art style is somewhat cruder than Kirby’s, but suits the X-Men better. Kirby never seemed to get a good handle on them. His artwork is always no worse than good, but doesn’t gel the way it does with e.g.
the Fantastic Four. Roth’s artwork doesn’t have the same technical proficieny of Kirby’s, but his fluid lines do seem to work better here. Another newcomer, Roy Thomas, gets to handle the writing duties from issue twenty, which also helps to freshen up the series. Unfortunately they’re only just starting to get up to steam together when the volume ends…

The X-Men was never the best Marvel Silver Age title and this is certainly not an essential volume. Interesting enough to read, but I won’t reach quickly for this again.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 19: Captain America vol 02

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Essential Captain America vol 02
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Captain America #103-126 and more (July 1968 – June 1970)
Get this for: Steranko and the old guard changeth — Four stars

Essential Captain America vol. 2 starts where the first volume left off: with slam bang action by Lee and Kirby. They put poor old Cap through his paces, fighting the Red Skull and his band of Nazi cutthroats, Batroc, the Swordsman and the Living Laser, a robot double of himself, the mighty Trapster and his own worst fears manipulated by Dr Faustus. Lee and Kirby fit a lot in every issue, but keep the subplots to a minimum, the only continuing storyline being the romance of Cap and Sharon Carter. You feel they have a formula here for old Cap that, while not as original as Fantastic Four or Spider-Man could be kept up indefinitely. But then everything changes with #110, when Jim Steranko comes aboard.

You could call Steranko the first Image artist, the first one to make his art more important than the story. If you look at Kirby, even his wildest experiments here or elsewhere are always in service to the plot, with even the splash pages determined by it. With Steranko this is no longer the case. In his just four issues of Captain America he has more splash pages almost than Kirby had over his entire previous run, all more concerned with the Rule of Cool than the demands of the story. In fact, in some cases they work actively against the story, as with the Big Reveal in his last issue. But damn if it doesn’t look gorgeous.

Steranko gets away with that sort of stuff because he’s such a good artist. You remember his covers and his splash pages, but his other pages are gorgeous too. Much more than Kirby or any other artist working back then he also consciously designs his pages and panel layout as a whole. So in the opening page of issue 113, he translates the recap of the previous issue into a television report on the death of Cap, with a page filling shot of the camera man and reporter, a line of inset panels in the shape of tv screens through the middle. Later on he has Madame Hydra recalling her origin, with one big panel at the top of the page showing her in control of HYDRA, followed by a quick succession of smaller panels closing up on details of her face as she looks at the horrifically scarred right hand side of her face (only hinted at), to explode in the last panel, short but wide, as we see she has shattered the mirror. Steranko is great at establishing mood this way, using cinametic influences on the comics page in a way that nobody else does at the time. It brings a grandeur to these somewhat silly stories not seen before or since.

Not that the artist coming after him are bad. There’s two fill in issues by John Romita and John Buscema respectively, before Gene Colan takes over, another great mood artist. He stays around for the rest of the issues reprinted here, which means he’s around for the introduction of the Falcon, another pioneering Black superhero and actually the first proper African-American superhero. He’s introduced here without fuzz, without calling out his Blackness, but just as an ally for Captain America at his very lowest, with the Red Skull holding the reality warping Cosmic Cube, having swapped bodies with him and dropped him back on Exile Island, where his old Nazi “friends” are itching to kill who they think is the Skull. Falcon rescues Cap, Cap returns the favour by training him into a superhero and together they defeat but the Nazis and the Skull…

On a certain level these stories are on the dumb side, pure entertainment without the sophistication of Marvel’s flagship titles. To me that’s part of their charm though. About the only thing that really annoys me here is Cap’s attitude to Sharon Carter, his love interest and SHIELD field agent, who he wants to give up her dangerous work to protect her from suffering the same fate at his old partner Bucky. Male chauvenist pig.