This week's The Year In Comics piece is up at Sequart. I hope you might consider popping over and taking a look. It's a discussion of Steve Gerber, Gil Kane and Joe Sinnot's collaboration on the first issue of Marvel Two-In-One from January 1974. I've always been fascinated with how the meaning of comics change with time, and that's never been so obvious to me as when I returned to Vengeance Of The Molecule Man!. It's a comic-book which I read and adored at the time, for even as an 11 year old I had the sense to think highly of each of the leading creators involved, and I must have enjoyed coming back to it a dozen times or more in the almost 40 years since it was first published. For that reason, I thought it might be interesting to write about how such a well-thumbed story reads in the light of 2012, but what I found was quite perplexing. For in several fundamental ways, I simply couldn't find the tale that I remember having once read.
Everything that I recall of the story and art was still there, of course, and yet where I once saw an admirable superheroic lead and a warmly compassionate story, now I felt that I was looking at something else entirely. By this I don't mean to suggest that Marvel Two-In-One #1 is in any way a depraved book, or that 2012 is a time with far more enlightened social values. It's just that the two eras don't always share the same ideas about how the business of heroism should be portrayed, or the lack of it excused. It's a business which once again helps me realise how differently we frame the whole business of what a hero is and isn't in the super-people book today. Often, as we've discussed here many times before, the modern-era superhero comic presents its costumed protagonists as heroic when their behaviour is patently anything but. Yet the story co-plotted by Gerber and Kane in MTIO # 1 makes no attempt to justify or even excuse the Thing's less admirable thoughts and actions at all, as so many of today's books would if they were showing such a line-leading character behaving so very badly. (*1)
*1:-The thought only comes to mind as I write this, but the only modern-day book I can think which works in quite the same way as MTIO here is the wretched Superman: Earth-One. I wish the piece for Sequart wasn't already finished and up, because I ought to have referred to JMS's comic as being one which does share a tradition with MTI0 #1. Ah, well.
It's hard for me to imagine a tale produced by Gerber, Kane and Sinnott that I can't adore, and yet now I find that Vengeance Of The Molecule Man! is far more a curate's egg than a Pop pleasure. Even Kane and Sinnott's artwork now seems in places to be the result of two partially incompatible styles. There are wonderful panels, of course, such as the one which I've scanned in above. I wonder how many other artists could've have created such a striking shot in only a third of a page from the idea of an antagonist riding a road surface like a great wave? Yet Mr Sinnott's inks are so controlled and detailed that they often diminish the kineticism of Kane's energetic anatomy while also on occasion accentuating how odd the penciller's figures actually are. Their collaboration seems more mannered than flat-out four-colour exciting, and for all its pleasures, the pages feel crowded and stilted. Similarly, the entrance-level competence of Gerber's script reminds the reader of how brief his period of excellence was as a writer at Marvel in the Seventies. It wouldn't be until the autumn of the year that he really hit his stride with Man-Thing and then, a few months later, in his quite wonderful runs on The Defenders.and Howard The Duck. It remains a tragedy of comics that Gerber's high summer at Marvel would last for just a few more years, before in-fighting and corporate politics led to his exit from what was once known without irony as the House Of Ideas.
You might think that I'd be sad to find that a beloved comic reads less well in the here-and-now than it once did, but nothing of the sort is true. It just seems to emphasise how wonderful the work of Gerber, Kane and Sinnott generally was. To note how fast Gerber developed his craft between MTIO #1 and the Man-Thing tales published in the August and September of the same year is absolutely inspiring. Similarly, to remember how brilliantly Kane and Sinnott combined with other artists more suited to each other's strengths and weaknesses just leaves me utterly grateful that we've been left with such a rich history of very fine comics from both men.
But in the end, it's the business of what was and what wasn't a hero, and what constituted the "hero's journey" too, which most interested me about this 38 year-old comic-book. And it's a piece about that matter which Sequart have been so kind to publish on their site this morning.
The Year In Comics No 3: On Gerber & Kane's Marvel-Two-In-One # 1 (1974) can be found here.
The Year In Comics No 2: On Brennert & Aparo's Brave & The Bold #182 (1981) is here.
The Year In Comics No 1: On Crumb's Book Of Genesis Illustrated (2010) is here.
And next Tuesday, for whatever that's worth, there'll something very different indeed to any of the above.
Colin,
ReplyDeleteA very interesting review. It's too bad Gerber is not around to question about that story. I wonder, since this was the first Thing story he wrote, if perhaps he was struggling with the character. Reading the following issues he wrote may provide a clue. I did go back and re-read some of the Two-in-One stories a short while ago, and the Gerber issues were far more interesting than what came after, since he attempted to establish a continuity with the characters of Wundarr and Nita that later authors did not.
Re:inking. Joe Sinnott agrees with you. He never felt he quite fit with Kane's style, although there were stories and covers that I felt worked well at times. Oddly enough, Dan Adkins was one of Kane's better inkers, and he was very much in the style of Sinnott.
Thanks again for providing a very thoughtful article.
Hello Nick:- Thanks for the kind words. I too would love to speak to Mr Gerber about the issue, and just about everything he ever wrote as well. The following stories do see the book, as you suggest, taking a more recognisable "heroic" form. And yet there's a great deal elsewhere in the Marvel period where heroes behave terribly and the audience is simply expected to regard whatever they do as right. I say this, as I hope I did in the above & at Sequart, with all due respect. I'm not suggesting they were wrong, but that the framing of the stories simply occured according to different rules. There's quite alot of FF stories from just before this period where the characters in the costumes are excused a tremendous deal of indulgence and damage. And I recall an early Thor in which the guy in the winged helmet demolished a truck for no good reason other than a bad mood and Iron Man had to pay off the driver. The poor bloke must have been terrified, but the comic saw the world through Thor's eyes. I like those moments when we can see a different sensibility. What's the point of a past if it isn't different?
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that I wasn't being entirely unfair about the Kane/Sinnott collaboration. I worried that I was. Those artists have such high status with me that it's hard to say anything that isn't 100% cheering. I did enjoy Adkins on Kane too. I must go back and see that contrast between how he and Sinnott approached Kane's pencils. Thank you for the idea to do so.
(I tried to reply at Sequart but danged if I can remember any password I might have - I wonder if they might set up one of those 'sign-in-with-Google/Diqus/Facebook/Whatever systems.)
ReplyDeleteHi Colin! Interesting post, I've a vague memory of reading that as a kid and being distinctly unimpressed by the Thing's behaviour. The fact that we see the shopkeeper as a broken man after Ben comes calling heavily implies that Gerber is indeed asking us to judge Ben. Maybe we're expected to make the leap that he really has lost some of his humanity and only an encounter with Man-Thing can heal him?
I dunno! As an adult I hope I'd get to the page with the story premise - 'He's infringing my trademark, I'll moider da bum!' and give up on the book expecting to make sense.
Hello Martin:- You were a more observant child than I was, I fear. I wanted to keep the piece focused in a single comic, but there's a great deal of the Marvel of the period where super-people behave terribly and don't even have their behaviour excused. I take your point about Gerber's intentions. Yet that page seems to play the old man's despair as comedy relief, and the caption does say that Ben is just a little too severe here. I wonder if Mr Kane went further than Mr Gerber intended,but then, if he had, Gerber had every chance to sign it up. And the fact that the comic's resolution doesn't refer to Ben's excesses at all beyond the pity he feels for Man-Thing is odd too. There's no sign of any wider recognition of his problems. But you're right, it could have been the intention, and it could've been made to work with a single word balloon too.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the making sense issue. Cosmic rays, molecule men! But I was interested in the fact that the Marvel heroes of that period were sometimes different kinds of heroes in strange ways. It doesn't mean that today's super-people behave any more ethically in many cases. But they'd be unlikely to lack any kind of excuse for what they do.
Can I just say you've earned 100 points for the phrase "moider da bum"? Made me crack up :)
That is a really, really alien way of doing the characters - the nearest thing I can think of is the second Waid FF issue, where the Hulk and Torch do cause a lot of damage in their comedy-fight and neither care (Johnny is hitting on a woman whose store he's just wrecked) but in that case, we're meant to be laughing at the outraged urbanites. Having the store owner genuinely frightened is an odd move. This could be less an example of a different morality and more lax editing though; IIRC, the editing at Marvel got very laissez-faire during the 70s (until Shooter took charge).
ReplyDeleteHaving the story start over Ben being pissed at his name being pinched does seem like a very 60s/70s Marvel thing to do though. It's right in there with Spidey wanting to join the Four for the dosh and getting pissy with them when they don't take him, but with a more absurdist bent. (The second issue of the Milligan/Aldred X-Force used that very same motive for a fight with the old X-Force!)
- Charles RB
Hello Charles:- You're absolutely right to state that there's alot of different explanations for why the definition of heroism is so apparently awry in MTIO #1. That's something that I find fascinating about the whole business. How is it that similar issues arise in the FF issues of the year's beforem, in which a landlord with quite legitimate grievances against the FF is constantly treated as an antagonist, to take but one example? I suspect that there must have been a cultural willingness to allow heroes to behave as they like, and without excuses needing to be offered. Not as an absolute right, but as one of the options which creators had in their taken-for-granted toolbox. So, there's a series of reasons why creators made their decisions, but the cultural willingness to see heroism in that light is the constant. As such, we can both be right! It can be both a result of lax editing and different cultural expectations :)
ReplyDeleteI've by chance just read those Milligan/Aldred tales. Yes, book tokens for Christmas and birthday were invested in the Omnibus, which was an absolute pleasure to read. The first issues in particular are still absolutely splendid. You don't get too many books that are that smart and daring in the mainstream anymore. That brief moment of daring which came along with the Quesada/Jemas regime was one of the sub-genre's most wonderful moments. Over in just a few years too. A shame.
I wonder if maybe there's some sort of Marvel Method kind of thing at play. Not literally that, but one thing being intended with the pictures and another being intended with the words.
ReplyDeleteI'm also wondering if this era/type of comics could have served as some sort of inspiration for Dan Clowes. The loser-as-hero has long been a staple of alternative comics, but Clowes's comics are structured in such a way as one would structure a story around a hero, and this hero does self-centered, insensitive things all the time and only rarely has to suffer the consequences.
Also, I'd guess that the reason that Anonymous set off your spam filter was that s/he is a spambot. It's generic enough that, like astrology, it could apply to almost any blog post. The name links to some url that doesn't look very legit.
Of course, you were probably making a subtle joke and now I'm awkwardly trying to explain it... But even Dan Savage sometimes answers questions he knows are probably from teenagers with overactive imaginations, because if the answer can help more people, it's worth it to answer it. That's the point of advice columns, not helping that one person. So what I'm trying to get at is that without Anonymous, I would not have looked up and ordered Essential Marvel Two-In-One volume 1 collection from the library after the conclusion of this post.
Hello Historyman:- It's an interesting idea, that there might be a deliberate conflict between script and art, but the pages just don't bear it out. Which is not to say that it wasn't intended, but if it was, it was a hand that was badly played.
ReplyDeleteI certainly think that you're onto something with Mr Clowes's work. His work is something which I've only really started following in the past 6 months, as I believe I said, but within the mass of influences he brings to bear, there's certainly a suggestion that the contradictions in the comics of his youth have influenced his.
Ah, never josh with spam-bots, ah? I must have been tired to have thought there was any point in that. You can't be dry to a spam-bot, or adopt any other kind of tone for that matter.
But I'm now pleased that anonymous appeared, and I'm going to add a recommendation for Essential MTIO # 1 in the above. It's by no means a book of masterpieces, but it is great fun, and it does come from a period when Marvel had a great set of writers who were taking the Marvel formula and really doing radical things with it. Gerber's really great period occurs just after he leaves MTIO, but his work here is fun of the tension between a traditional approach and his more personal take on things. And the contrast between his work and the more journeyman stories which followed is really interesting. I hope it proves to have been worth your dimes :)
Colin -
ReplyDeleteToday's Ask Chris column (http://www.comicsalliance.com/2012/01/20/ask-chris-charles-atlas-vs-count-dante/) addresses another prime example of Heroes Acting Unheroically And Being Rewarded By The Narrative: the famous Charles Atlas advertisements. I do recall Morrison's Doom Patrol satirizing this with Flex Mentallo, and the words "Hero Of the Beach" floating around after him like a mindless, amoral totem.
Unfortunately, there's no Marvel Two-In-One at the library, but I did order Essential FF #1, X-Men, and a few others. There's, sadly, not much Gerber available.
I didn't mean necessarily that there would be an intentional conflict between art and words - I was kind of thinking of a blog entry I saw about early Fantastic Four, where Kirby's drawings seemed somewhat at odds with Lee's story and dialogue, particularly in the action and treatment of Invisible Woman. Like, the picture would show Sue doing something strategic, and the dialogue would say "isn't that like a woman, running off to hide at the first sign of danger!" or something like that. I don't know, but I'll see when I get the Essential FF#1!
Clowes' David Boring addresses it somewhat, with his missing father being an author of B-grade superhero stories, but I never quite got what the point of including that element of the story was. But that was also not one of my favorite stories of his. Like a Velvet Glove Cast In Iron has a subplot of a video of people in masks having sex and then killing and burying each other, according to mysterious rules and instructions written by a child, and that almost feels like his take on superheroes.
But as you said, he brings many influences to bear. Isn't it so strange to think of what lines we will and will not permit our heroes to cross in terms of morality? Why would you, who read and enjoyed, and presumably, subconsciously absorbed this story as a child, still be repulsed by David Finch's lecher Batman?
Hello Historyman:- That's a good example from Mr C, although the runt-turned-bully in the Charles Atlas advert had at least been provoked. Ben Grimm just took his anger out on harmless middle-aged men.
ReplyDeleteEssential FF? Just the ticket. Those early stories now read as if they come from a terribly bleak alternative dimension. Great stuff.
I think there's very much a chance that Gerber and Kane were at cross-purposes here. What I think is interesting is that Gerber makes no effort to make Ben's behaviour any more excusable. He could have made those middle aged men rude to Ben, he could've given Ben a terrible toothache. He didn't. So he either didn't notice what he was doing or he was doing so on purpose.
One of the things I very much enjoy about Clowes is very much not being able to pin down what every element in his work means. There are some writers who can control the meaning of their tales so precisely that they avoid seeming unspontaneous. But I also appreciate those creators who often escape making literal sense.
Interesting point about the relationship between single issues and our morality as we developed. I've never believed that a single issue could have a substantial effect upon anyone who wasn't disturbingly psychologically suggestible. So a lifetime of dubious comics is drowned out by all the other influences. That's a process that's helped because the morality of MTIO #1 is one that hardly ever appears in any media of any sort. Unlike say lecher Batman - :) - whose values are reflected in a great mass of media, the Thing's selfishness in that issue was dead in the water as far as influence goes. It's the dubious examples which can help to reinforce dodgy and outright repellent ideas and values that most worry me. Ben's bad-hair day? Aw, I'm sure he was ill, and I'm sure he went back and apologised and made those folks feel like Kings. Sex-perv Batman, however, just hung around rooftops with his bat-googles, and his example just fed into the tidal wave of sexism which sees that as understandable and acceptable.
I'd like to set the Thing on him. He'd - as Martin says above - moider da bum.
Colin,
ReplyDeleteI think you hit on an important point when you mentioned that there was a different behavior apparent than in earlier times, which I suspect was more the direction of the writer than the artist. Those that came aboard in the early 1970s, Conway, Engelhart, Gerber, McGregor, to name a few, had a very different attitude than Lee and Thomas. In some cases, such as Conway, there was a downbeat feeling that seeped into the superhero fare, with little of the humor that Lee skillfully balanced. Gerbers work was quirky but had a personality (and humor) that worked more often than not, although here one has to question his take on the Thing.
As noted in Charles Hatfield's excellent new book, Hand of Fire, about the work of Jack Kirby, after Lee left the editorial post Marvel often was directed more by the writers than artists. Artists such as Sal Buscema and Bob Brown - who did not have the he plotting or inventive skills that Kirby or Ditko brought to their game, were in thrall to the directions of the writer, who usually thrived on continuity and ephemera. Their ideas of heroism were often in contrasat to the portrayals by Lee and company, and with the growing interest in horror related material the lines became more blurred. I was a teen at the time of many of these changes, and while I enjoyed quite a few books, in rereading some of the mainstream titles I've noticed a depressing atmosphere that permenated much of the Marvel line.
Hello Nick:- First off, thank you for recommending Mr Hatfield's book. If you think that it's excellant', then I shall be hunting it straight away.
ReplyDeleteThere definitely are a plurality of tones in the comics of Seventies Marvel, and that fecundity lasts from the early 70s to Shooter becoming E.I.C. In that, it's a wonderful period of authorial diversity, and yet the line never spirals into incoherence because of the reverance the writers all have for continuity. It's part of their professional DNA to respect their fellows and their contributions, to a lesser or greater degree, and that binds quite disparate talents and sensibilities together.
That darkness you mention seems to me to come into play in the post-Ditko Spider-Man issues, and more so with the passing of time. It's there in the Cap, Iron Man, Hulk and Sub-Mariner tales even while Stan is still not only in charge, but actively contributing. The soap overwhelmed the humour and the charged inventiveness of the early Marvels, and it seems to me that there's a case for suggesting 's style, for one,has his roots there. The post-Kirby FFs, for example, where Stan is still scripting, are very bleak indeed, and they're also massively melodramatic, and to a degree that makes Lee's mid-Sixties style seems positively subtle. (Wihout the good humour, the intensity of misery and hyped-up jeopardy is at times quite overwhelming.)It's much easier for younger talents to tap into such melancholia than it is to strike out into a different and more complex, challenging direction. Conway and Claremont both ran with the style, amongst many others. I adored Conways Spider-Man, but elsewhere his appeal largely escaped me. Claremont nailed the soap opera, but by the time Byrne had gone, the method was overwhelming the stories.
It's those writers who did manage to carry over the madness of early Marvel, that mixture of good humour and despair, over-seriousness and laughter, whose work I most love. Gerber and Englehart in particular were the leaders of the pack there, and their lineage seems to me to continue through later fine writers such as Brennert and Waid.
I hope you'll forgive me. I'm thinking aloud here. But I do think that the switch from an energetic mixture of the absurd and the serious to an essentially downbeat soap actually might be said to be the development which marks the end of the Marvel of the High Sixties.
Now. Off to find an affordable copy of Hatfield!
Some of the writers lost the tone or early-mid 1960s Marvel, not that I wanted a slavish replication of Lee's style, but the characterization and personality was often missing. Gerry Conway I believe most strayed from the tone, with downbeat, depressing storylines including the death of Gwen Stacy (and the Goblin),the break-up of Reed and Sue the death of Namor's father, on and on. There seemed to be an obsessive emphasis on violence and death which made it hard to balance out a story.
ReplyDeleteGerber was interesting in that he could juggle the downbeat and the absurd with great skill; Englehart had his own niche, concentrating more on Marvel lore and playing with the continuity, but keeping the characters true to themselves. Others, such as Len Wein, kept the status quo, but his stories made me feel like I had read them before. Most of the mainstream titles in the 1970s had that bland feeling, particularly Spider-Man, the Hulk and Thor, but others stood out, like Avengers, Captain America, X-Men and Dr. Strange, because they were invested with new ideas and different directions.
Anyway, I'm glad I can post again, as I was unable to for the past week or so due to some unknown glitches. Don't know if anyone else had this problem, but everytime I went to post a comment the page froze. The problem seems to have resolved ,though.
http://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/
Hello Nick:- Just to let you know, I found a copy of the Kirby book at two-thirds off yesterday off. A copy I could afford. I'm looking forward to it arriving.
ReplyDeleteConway'sn work was astonishingly bleak at times, wasn't it? I'm still fond of the Spider-Man run, and that's in part because he slowly rebuilt Peter's life after Gwen's death. The lovely scene between Peter and MJ at the airport prior to his flying to Paris is one of the most subtle romantic moments in superhero comics. But I'll agree that the FF tipped over the cliff in terms of misery with him. It was already almost there. Lee, Godwin and Thomas had all produced highly strung stories - if I can put it that way - but Sue leaving Reed was such a downer. But then it came after Thomas had left Johnny in tears with Crystal leaving him for Pietro, so it was a cumulative process. And there were some fine Conway stories. The back of the 50s story was charming, as was the Ramona Fradon drawn New Year's tale. And I was touched over Thor's private tears for Loki over in Thor. But overall, it was indeed depressing.
I do agree with your opinions on the writers of the period. I certainly agree about LW, who was obviously a fine technician with some great stories such as Swamp Thing to his name. But, a few Hulk stories aside, I was never grabbed by his Marvel work. Compare his Hulk to Engleharts and there's a great deal of soul missing. Mind you, it was nothing compared to the flattening out of the work which was to come on a company-wide basis in just a few year's time.
I'm sorry to hear that there was some problem with posting. I have heard from a few folks that there was such a problem, and I even found myself sending a few pieces out as attachments. It's a relief to know that that's over.
I liked some of Conway's stories, but found the Spider-Man series to be flat, and with the institution of Ross Andru as penciller, who, if I may borrow your line, was a fine technician, but his style had a rigid quality that was diametrically opposed to Romita's, and certainly Ditko's, who possed a depth of emotion to their characters. Also, such fare as the "Wedding of Aunt May and Doc Ock" (which look very much like a DC comic cover gimmick) and the Spider-Mobile (which I understand was foisted upon him)were low points in the series. The final straw for me, in many ways (although I continued to read the Spider-Man titles every month, yes, even Marvel Team-Up. Ah, youth!), was Peter PArker, the Spectacular Spider-Man as a monthly title. Ostensibly the book waas created to focus on Peter and company, something Lee, Ditko and Romita were able to bo quite easily in the monthly Amazing for many years.
ReplyDeleteI'd have to look back on the last year or so of Stan's tenure writing, since I don't recall the stories being that downbeat. I do recall Stan was repeating himsself quite a bit, with characters such as the Air-Walker and the Overmind; nice looking characters designed by John Buscema, but without the creativity and passion of Kirby to bring them to life.
Sorry for rambling on so, but you got me discussing a favorite topic, and I enjoy hearing your point of view. Isn't it nice to have civil discussions?
Hello Nick:- And checkmate! Yes, absolutely, the wedding of May and Doc Ock is indeed something of a stinker.The Spider-Mobile ... well, I'm rather fond of that story. And it does appear in the Slott/Templeton Spider-Man/Human Torch mini, which means that, whatever we might agree on, it led to some undeniable good :)
ReplyDeleteI'm terribly fond of Ross Andru's Spider-Man. I accept fully that his isn't either the quirky wonder of Ditko or the graceful hero of Romita, but there's a loneliness and strange counter-intuitive energy in his work. His New York is one of the few depictions of the city in the Seventies which reflects the city as it was at the time with any accuracy. And some of his storytelling was wonderfully innovative. It's all personal opinion, of course.
But I will agree with you that Spectacular Spider-Man diluted the property. But then, for me, Spidey's first run of 'best-days' was over by then.
I could be misremembering the downturn into miserablism in the later years of Lee's fulltime writing career. I too will return to the source material.
There's no rambling on your part at here, I do assure you. Yes, civil discussions are good things to have. After all, fan-wars have broken out over the Spider-Mobile :)
Dear Colin
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely piece of writing. It's probably a fancy on my part to suppose that some of the obvious freewheeling exuberance of Gerber's script cloured your piece, but I found it hugely enjoyable.
I think the context you initially sketch out explains a lot about the story's elements that alarm and dismay you - and I love your chracterisation of Shooter as a "great epoch-destroying mass of world-killing space rock." (I suspect Shooter himself would get a kick out of that.) As he describes over on his blog, the Marvel Shooter inherited was a shambles. The books were chronically late and none of them seemed to make any sense. As examples, he cites a (I think) Champions story in which Hercules tows Manhattan island out into the Atlantic, and a story in which the attempted take-off of a rocket ship was foiled when the platform beneath was removed so that the rocket had nothing to push against. Writers on slave wages were feverishly busy hacking away to pay the rent and keep the presses rolling, so we shouldn't be too surprised to find stories, by even superior writers like Gerber, lacking moral and logical coherence.
Having said that, I think there is a moral context to be found lurking in here, perhaps darker and more sour than the more obvious moral context you attribute to his other superhero satires like Man-Thing and Howard the Duck. Perhaps it would take a darker and more sour individual than yourself (eg. wretched me) to recongnise them and find them legitimate. The victims of Ben Grimm that you find to be blameless seem to me to be legitimate targets for the firebrand Gerber's wrath. The officious bus driver is a jobsworth and a beaurocrat, self-importantly trotting out the party line and official regulations but quick to backslide and become a simpering sycophant under his little hat when challenged by a determined antagonist. The shopkeeper is an even more juicy target. A man to whom "a good man" and "a religious man" are synonyms. Back on Shooter's blog, he tells about a heated discussion with Gerber during which Gerber, "started lamenting the fact that he was prohibited from doing the kind of things he wanted to do in Marvel Comics—sex and violence." It incensed Gerber that any kind of authority was imposed upon his work, censorship seemed to him almost a personal affront. And according to Shooter, Gerber was, "dead set on jamming his philosophy down the throat of mainstream comics publishing. " The shopkeeper's protestations to the menacing Thing are just as unedifying as the backsliding bus driver's grovelling climbdown. "You mean--it's unwholesome? B-but that can't be! I don't allow such--" The shopkeeper here cast as a self-appointed moral guardian, for forty-one years not allowing literature that conflicts with his own pious moral philosophy to pass through his agency into the hands of his customers. Gerber would certainly have seen any agent of censorship as fair game. Looking more closely at the panel, is that an editor's visor the shopkeeper is wearing?
I hope you'll correct me if I'm wrong, I offer these jaundiced insights with all due humility and appreciate the challenge you throw out to your guests to try and think a little more deeply. Some of us have rather gotten out of the habit of doing that.
Leaving aside any moral context, the story looks liked terrific fun. I had a good laugh at just the few panels you showed us, and I'll be casting around to find a copy. And I get misty-eyed just thinking about Gil Kane.
Thanks for another fine piece of analysis.
Hello Marco:- Thank you for your kind words, and I'd have to be an even worse person than I sadly suspect I am to consider such a civil discussion in any way objectionable. Certainly when I'm in particular writing the pieces for Sequart, I'm well aware that I'm putting together something which is by its very nature one-sided. For example, to take one comic even as a possible sign for a different cultural attitude to heroism is in itself a profoundly dodgy idea! Yet I'd not considered that idea of changing definitions of heroism before writing about it, and so even there I was nudging into an area that I was unsure of. By which I mean, I think everything that's in there is up for debate, if anyone should want to do so. I was conflicted throughout writing it myself. Thank you for engaging with it.
ReplyDeleteI've written about Shooter's time at Marvel before, and the truth is that he's got an excellent case for needing to sort the Marvel of the period. (The Hercules story was from Marvel Team-Up #28, actually, which I say only because it makes me smile to remember that I bought it at the time as a boy. I can recall the newsagents near Matthew Arnold School and looking at the double-splash of Hercules and Manhattan and thinking it was, even at my age, a touch unlikely. It was also, I think, a Gerry Conway script, which might explain why JS was so keen to mention it, GC being a predecessor of Shooters as EIC. Yet it was a comic released about 3 years before Shooter rose to the throne, as it were, so I wonder why that one stuck in his mind?)
I wouldn't disagree with your twin contentions that hard-worked writers and freewheeling characters can produce work which can be too easily judged in retrospect independent of their circumstances. And I was trying to discuss the fact that the story has, to my knowledge, never made the slightest wave as the key area of interest. I'm much less interested in why it was written than in the fact that it appears to have passed by without notice. By which I don't want to appear to be saying that your counter-points aren't both relevant and interesting. But it's more that I'd hoped to sidestep seeming to be critical of SG so much as interested in what might have been a somewhat different culture. Having said that, I obviously was critical of his work, which I find a difficult thing to be, for Gerber has always been a comics hero of mine. I'm pleased that you're taking his part. I would have wanted to if somebody else had written this piece!
I think your reading of the two middle-aged men as authority figures is very probably correct, but I'd agree with you also that the evidence is 'lurking' rather than clear or indeed fair. I don't think that the bus driver is a jobsworth; he's working to the terms of his contract, keeping to times set and so on. To stop for everyone whereever they want would make a ruin of schedules etc. I don't think he was backsliding; I think he was terrified. I can't see anything in his behaviour which any employee of such a company wouldn't follow, and he wasn't rude to Ben. Similarly, the shopkeeper was undoubtedly a conservative chap, but he was civil and polite and entirely helpless. If he objects to racy or even secular material in his store - and my personal position is obviously v. different to his - then it's his right. If Gerber really is considering these folks the enemy, then I'd suggest that he's being tremendously unkind, and that Ben is behaving like an appalling bully. I can understand exactly your reading and while I sympathise with those counter-cultural values, the text itself doesn't legitimise Ben's behaviour. Or at least, it doesn't in my opinion.
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ReplyDeleteBut what do I know? It's worth mentioning that my response to this point is founded in a certain role schizophrenia in my own adult life, in that I've always been - for want of a shorthand label - a secular humanist, and yet my almost-two decades as a teacher involved me being a strict authority figure who did use power when it was judged to be necessary. (Do I feel comfortable with all my decisions? Gawd, no, especially those taken as a young man with too little experience and perspective.) I'm also reaching an age in which I'm even closer to the shop-keeper and the bus-driver's years than even Grimm's, in eternally-youngish Marvel time. So, my feeling is that if those two men are the enemy in Gerber's text, then he's declared war on the wrong guys and in the wrong way. Ben's ends and means are distinctly unheroic in that context. Those blokes offer no threat, present no challenge, carry no power. I absolutely accept how passionately they might be associated them with small-time and illiberal minds. But even then, Ben's methods are nothing but that of the brute. Elsewhere in Gerber's work, it's folks such as Ben in the context of his behaviour here who are the enemy.
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Your points about Gerber's disagreements with Shooter over morality are telling, aren't they? Gerber did want the freedom to express his beliefs, and for all that that was naive in the context of the comics business of the period, I regret that he didn't have the freedom that he wanted. There's nothing wrong with naivety, and the principles he wanted to present weren't naive at all. And Shooter can hardly complain about Gerber forcing his opinions down other people's throats, when his own values became Marvels during his tenure as EIC. The death of Phoenix, for example, resulted in Shooter deciding that his own morals over-rode those of the work of Claremont and Byrne. That both Claremont and Byrne have, if memory serves, said that the story became stronger because of that dictat doesn't change the fact that Shooter worked from the assumption that his values trumped everyone else. Is that the job of an EIC? Yes, but the range within which difference could be expressed seemed to narrow considerably across the line as a whole while he was in power.
I hope you won't mind me debating with you as I have. I really don't disagree that it's possible that both older men in MTI0 #1 were associated with the dregs of The Man, but I do feel that would be a sign again of how heroism is re-written across the ages. It's unlikely that anyone today would see Ben's behaviour as being a "fair and appropriate" response. Now, of course, YOU DIDN'T SAY IT WAS!!! :) I'm not saying you're supporting that, or that I'd object if you were. But I do think it would've been mean-spirited of SG and a sign of - in comic's terms - Ben acting for the wrong side of the hero/villain divide.
I do love the idea that Gerber was seeing editor's visors in the script. 1974 seems a touch too early for him to be falling out with Marvel, but then, what a daft idea that is! Why shouldn't he and GK have had a specific or general target in mind? All those lost questions. As Marty Pasko said in a recent Tweet, we need Steve Gerber today to be satirising modern politics. And, on a minor level, to be letting us know about his work too!
Thanks for challenging the reading I stumbled into. I think it really is a very workable hypothesis that those men were being associated with a class of folks who in their own way stand in the way of freedom. I just think that the story, if grounded in that stance, doesn't give the evidence for us to take Ben's side against their's. But whichever side we might take, there really must have been different concepts of devils and angels around!