Keenan's Book Reviews

Kirby by Mark Evanier

1939 by David Gelernter

Howe, S. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. New York: HarperCollins, 2012.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Stan Lee by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon

Raphael, Jordan, and Tom Spurgeon. Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2003.

This biography of writer, editor and promoter Stan Lee is also a history of comics, particularly Marvel comics. Lee’s long career with Marvel, especially as its public face, has made them inseparable.

If you’re interested in the history of American comics, Lee’s career is worth considering. He started in the industry shortly after it became a popular media as a gopher for Captain America creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Soon he was editor of a line of comics, which he actively worked on for parts of four decades before moving on to becoming the public face of comics and less successful efforts in other media.

Lee is best known for overseeing a revolution in comics in the 1960s. He introduced characters that were as notable for their flaws and human frailties as for their extraordinary abilities. He took elements from genres a varied as romance and giant monster stories to create relatable superheroes. This sparked a creative revival for the both Lee and the industry.

Lee is a great promoter and salesman, and one of his most daring creations has been his own public image. Raphael and Spurgeon are careful not to be caught up in the hype while still recognizing their subject’s contribution to popular culture and particularly to the characters he oversaw.

One of the interesting things that come out of the book, though the authors don’t focus on it directly, is Lee’s place as a writer. He entertained dreams of writing novels and screenplays, but didn’t. He only wrote one full screenplay and seemed to think it was an onerous chore. During his creative heyday in comics, the Marvel method involved Lee writing story concepts and synopses that were fleshed out by the artists with him adding the dialogue to the drawn pages. The system worked well for Marvel financially and seems to have been Lee’s forte.

The authors recognize this in summarizing Lee’s career. They say he may have been the greatest comic book editor ever. His famous creative contributions were collaborative efforts with artists and he got consistent quality from lesser contributors. He kept a marginal comics publisher going through tough time until he and others were ready start a creative renaissance in their medium.

Editor can be an inglorious position. The title suggests a secondary position to the writer and artist, but at his height he was very directly involve in the creation of Marvel comics. His ability to manage a burgeoning, collaborative, creative enterprise made the Marvel revolution possible.

Lee’s contribution as a writer, editor, creator and collaborator are obscured by his career as the public face of Marvel. He is a natural promoter and, some might fairly say, glory hound. His rise to celebrity almost necessitated the minimization of others contributions, which lead to strained relationships with his friends and the industry he represents. His public persona has cast a shadow on his career that both darkens his reputation and obscures the real value of his creative work.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in these fictional takes on comics history
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Comic Book Nation by Bradford W. Wright

As you would expect from a medium that has survived decades, comic books have changed with time to adapt to changes in culture. In Comic Book Nation, Bradford W. Wright describes that history from the birth of comics as a new medium in the 1930s through the 1990s. Though the book was published a decade ago, it still provides a good perspective on where comics are. He mentions the advent of electronic publishing at the close of the book. I think it is fair to say that electronic publishing and distribution has not radically changed comics, though there may be potential for that in recent developments in the business of self-publishing comics electronically.

Bradford is an academic historian. Comic Book Nation is intended to be a cultural history of comics. Of course, Bradford can’t help but cover some the same ground that other writers cover, though this book predates many of the more academic or journalistic books on the subject. Some publishers, creators, and titles are just too important and influential not to mention. Even so, he tries to stick to his purpose and show how the times were reflected in comics.

I think it is fair to say that comics, and popular media generally, reflect cultures more than they influence them. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be popular. This reflection isn’t always simplistic, even in comics. Comics writers and artists, like other producers of popular media, tried to address the concerns and interests of their audiences, sometimes realistically, sometimes idealistically, and sometimes with cynicism.

Of course, it was Superman who sparked the immense popularity of superhero comics, and comics generally. That popularity spawned imitators, as it does today. The early Superman, created by Cleveland high school students Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was a reformer. He battled gangsters and crooked politicians. He was a New Dealer. Many comics supported New Deal policies to address the Great Depression.

Superheroes made the transition to World War II with ease. Writers had to address why the costumed crusaders weren’t enlisting or bringing the war to a swift end. They must have succeeded, because superhero titles were very popular, even among American soldiers. Comics were pro-war, and many costumed heroes were battling foreign menaces, especially the Nazis, even before America entered the war.

Superhero titles floundered after the war, but other genres did well. Comics generally supported American policies of intervention in smaller nations and containment of Communism. The medium reflected the post-war hopefulness that there could be peace and international cooperation with America leading as a benevolent superpower.

The post-war years had troubles, too. People feared the misuse and spread of nuclear weapons. The Korean War was a doubtful venture that many felt lacked the clear and good purpose of World War II. This applied to Viet Nam, too, where the additional problems of guerilla warfare challenged notions of heroism.

Comic books faced other challenges. The excesses of crime and horror comics brought about industry-operated censorship. Television competed for the time and money of children.

Much of the latter part of the book shows how the comics industry found a way to survive these problems. The 1960s introduced a resurgence of creativity and superheroes, especially the flawed fantasy men of Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics. New models of distribution were introduced in the 1980s. Electronic media has the potential to reinvigorate comics.

Because my adolescence was in the 1980s, I’d like to mention a few things about it. Unlike some comics historians, Bradford spends a fair amount of time on that decade, especially in a book that covers more than 60 years. He provides a pretty good description of how Frank Miller and Alan Moore challenged the superhero model and brought a lot of new interest to it. If anything, Miller and Moore were too influential. A lot of comics are still derivative of their best works. Imitation of success is common in comics, and too often the imitators do not have the skill or understanding of the masters.

What I’d really like to mention is that Bradford acknowledges John Byrne’s contribution. Byrne was a very popular writer and artist in the 1980s. He did some pretty good stuff, too. He also indulged in excesses that presaged the excesses of the 1990s, but at least he did it with a self-aware wink. Byrne brought fun back to comics. Then as now, I like comics with a good dose of fun.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Wright, Bradford W. Comic Book nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

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Saturday, April 7, 2018

Stan Lee by Bob Batchelor

Stan Lee is the face of comic books to many and has become a sort of celebrity in his more than 70-year long career as a storyteller. He began to hone his image on the college lecture circuit in the 1960s while he created a new type of superhero, typified by the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, in collaboration with artists including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. It was a role Lee was ready for; he had been trying out ways to promote comic books and himself since the 1940s.

Bob Batchelor presents Lee’s life in Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. Though not a long biography, it starts with Lee’s childhood in New York City and runs through his 95^th year, when he is still producing ideas for comics and television.

Lee was present nearly at the beginning of comic books. He started as an assistant to Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain America. When they moved on after contentions with Timely Comics, a forerunner to Marvel, Lee stepped up to become editor while still a teenager.

Lee was ready to quit comics by the time the 1960s. He craved to work in a respectable field and was tired of chasing trends. The right combination of opportunity and encouragement from his wife pushed Lee to write the kind of comics he would want to read, and it became a sensation.

Though Lee will always be associated with Marvel comics, by the 1980s his focus was shifting to television and film. It was a rough transition for Lee, but he had some success, especially in the production of animated adaptions of Marvel characters that were popular in the 1990s.

Lee has stumbled some in his post-Marvel career, notably the debacle of new media company Stan Lee Media. He seems to have recovered somewhat with POW! Entertainment.

Lee has detractors, which Batchelor acknowledges. Batchelor doesn’t refute those detractors, but his take on Lee is overall very positive. Lee appears to be someone who tries not to be tied down by his past, neither dwelling on his failures nor being content with many successes.

Lee was a central figure in creating some of the most popular characters and stories in the world. Well into his 90s, he is still working and coming up with ideas that find their way into print, television and the Internet.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

In Memory Yet Green by Isaac Asimov

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

Spider-Man

Batchelor, Bob. Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Kirby by Mark Evanier

Jack Kirby, born Jacob Kurtzberg in 1917, picked up the nickname King when he was young. That is not the only reason Mark Evanier applies the title to him in Kirby: King of Comics. Kirby was one of the most influential creators in comics over the course of his long career, beginning in 1938 at the Eisner-Iger shop, which began in the early days of the medium.

Kirby is a coffee table book, full of images from Kirby’s work. Though Evanier’s biography of Kirby is interesting, I suspect these images, some of them large, full-page reproduction were always conceived as a major selling point of the book. Kirby was a professional artist, mostly in comics, his entire career, which was long, so it only makes sense that you need to see a selection of his drawings to understand why he had such an impact on comics.

You can see Kirby’s influence everywhere in comics, especially superhero comics. He worked for both Marvel and DC at different times, and had a hand in creating or co-creating many popular characters and settings.

More than that, he had an influence on the style and visual language of comics that writers and artist still used today. He was one of the first comic book artists to break away from strip layouts (carried over from newspaper comics) to designing for a full page. His characters busted through the panels. His drawings were dynamic and suggested powerful motion; this is a striking characteristic of his work that is discussed by nearly everyone who writes about Kirby. I find his drawings can seem strangely flattened out and dimensional at the same time.

Because Kirby worked for so long, on so many comics, for so many publishers, and had such an influence on the artists who grew up reading his work, you’ll still see many Kirby touches in current comics. I see them in the depiction of technology, the design of characters and costumes, the framing of action scenes, and even the continued use of Kirby dots (especially at DC, no doubt because they just look so cool).

He was an innovator who introduced new types of images into comics, such as collage, and new genres, such as romance. He even foresaw the future of the comic books, pushing his publishers for better quality material and printing, new formats, longer stories, and new ways to market and sell comics. Publishers balked at the cost of such innovations at the time, but many of the changes Kirby predicted and sought for the industry eventually came to pass.

Kirby is known mainly as an artist, but he was also a writer. It may be fair to say that Kirby couldn’t leave a script alone and regularly modified scripts he was adapting to drawings. His solo writing was packed with big ideas and wild concepts and sometimes had trouble finding large audience in his day, though these comics have often done well when collected and reprinted. I do not think it unfair to say that some of his best work was collaborations with other writers. For much of the first half of his career, he partnered with writer Joe Simon, with whom he created Captain America and romance comics. In the 1960s, he collaborated with Stan Lee at to co-create much of what is now the Marvel Universe.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Evanier, Mark. Kirby: King of Comics. New York: Abrams, 2008.

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Amazing Fantastic Incredible by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran

When a book is entitled Amazing Fantastic Incredible, Stan Lee must be involved. That is the title of Lee’s graphic novel memoir, co-written with Peter David with art by Colleen Doran, about his long career in comic books.

Lee has a career in comic books going back the Golden Age. He started working in comics soon after they became a popular medium. Few people have had a career in comic books as long as Lee’s, partly because he is still working. No one has been the public face of comic books, or a spokesman and promotor for the medium, as much as Lee.

Because Lee’s career in comics is well known, at least among fans, some of the more interesting parts of the memoir deal with other aspects of his life. He depicts himself as being crazy in love with his wife, Joan, even after decades of marriage. He recalls himself as a lonely kid during the Great Depression, who took refuge in books and the world of his own imagination. He retelling of his army service during World War II, mostly serving as a writer stateside, is mostly humorous.

I suspect Lee’s humor has a lot to do with his popularity. He comes across as self-aggrandizing with a self-deprecating wink.

Even so, Lee’s status as a comics celebrity has sparked criticism in some circles. He was the face of Marvel Comics, and so has taken the heat for the way the publisher treated the artist who worked for him (comics publishers treated artists shabbily for decades). Maybe he could have done more for the artists who worked for him, and maybe he would have been unemployed if he tried. Lee doesn’t get into this matter much, but when he does he shifts the blame to publisher Martin Goodman.

Lee addresses some of his most famous characters and the artists who co-created them. Some might see his recognition of co-creators as a defense against detractors who say he has claimed too much credit. I think the book presents the situation the way Lee would like to remember, and the way he would like others to remember it. I think he genuinely liked and admired many of the people he worked with. Throughout the book, Jack Kirby is depicted as handsome, powerful and dynamic, almost like a superhero, even when there was a rift if their personal and professional relationship.

This is a memoir, not an autobiography. Lee and his collaborators do not attempt to independently confirm memories, though they straightforward about some memories being fuzzy. A few scenes a clearly constructed to present information in a manner more interesting than direct exposition, though they may have had some root in an actual event. Lee’s conversations with his boyhood self are plainly fictional; I thought they tended to be the weakest parts of the book, though they were functional.

Fans of Lee will probably enjoy the book. Someone who wants a brief and easy history of comics, and isn’t too concerned about the lopsidedness that would naturally come with Lee’s perspective, might also like it. Lee would know, he was there.

Stan Lee also wrote Spider-Man with Steve Ditko. Peter David also wrote Writing for Comics with Peter David.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil

Kirby by Mark Evanier

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore