The Avengers is the culmination of Marvel’s decades-long transformation of the ideas of individuals into sterile corporate IP. It is sure to be one of the highest-grossing films of all time, and Jack Kirby’s family won’t see a dime from it. Whatever the law may say, morally that is grand theft. The Avengers is an evil film.
A colleague from work, Jemiah Jefferson, turned to me at a party on Thursday and said, “A friend of mine has a beef with you.” That was a new experience, as I’ve been fairly lucky that, despite having strong feelings about comics and being foolish enough to share them on the Internet, I don’t think I’ve ever had a negative interaction with anyone because of anything I’ve posted to the blog.
I like to think that, for the most part, I get along with everyone I know in comics, regardless of our differing opinions or my feelings about their work. It’s a small business, and one simply can’t afford to be a jerk. I nearly shut down the blog entirely when I started at Dark Horse, since I wasn’t sure how much of a conflict of interest it was to write about the work of people I might encounter through my new job. It wasn’t long before I was assigned to projects with people whose work I had reviewed. I got a few thanks from people whose work I wrote up positively, but thankfully I never received any hard feelings from people whose work I had reviewed negatively. Either they were unaware of the blog (the most likely answer), or they didn’t mind a little criticism backed up with reason and directed solely at a book and not at them personally (also possible, as they were all nice people).
Over time I got more comfortable, redirected my focus to broader comics topics, event reporting and interviews, with only occasional reviews mixed in. My bosses were also very helpful in pointing out which topics and people were completely off limits, and with only one exception never objected to anything I alerted them that I planned to post.
So, the party. I’ve been relatively vocal about my support for the Stephen Bissette–instigated Marvel boycott (“relatively” meaning that I’ve used my microphone as best I can, but it’s not a very loud one) over the company’s continued refusal of proper credit or compensation to Jack Kirby’s family. I skipped this summer’s Marvel movies, all three of which were based on Kirby cocreations, vowed to no longer buy any Marvel comics that featured Kirby-derived characters, wrote a lengthy post in this space about the boycott, and for a couple months made “Boycott Marvel” my Facebook icon. I gather that what happened is I commented on something on Jemiah’s page, where my icon was seen by her friend, a penciler at Marvel, who clicked through and found the blog post, taking it personally. So let me tell him, and the Internet, what I told Jemiah:
I am boycotting Marvel. I am not boycotting you. I do not begrudge you your work for the publisher. Because a) making a living penciling comic books was my dream when I was a kid, and you are awesome for accomplishing that, and b) you’re not exactly getting rich off of Jack Kirby. Like everything else in America, there is a class issue at play here, and I don’t have a right to tell you that you should ignore the fact that you gotta eat. You probably make about as much as I do, and I don’t need anyone to tell me how hard it is to get by on what I make.
It’s the people who have gotten rich from Kirby’s work while denying his contribution that I am angry at. The people who through ignorance or dishonestly initially put a title card crediting Stan Lee, rather than Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, with Captain America’s creation in the first Captain America film. The people who put Stan Lee but not Joe Simon in the new Captain America film. Who could afford to pay royalties to Kirby’s family for reprints of his work or the use of characters he created or cocreated in Marvel’s films but choose not to. The, as Tom Spurgeon put it, “random lawyer sitting on Marvel’s board in 2000s [who] probably made more in bonuses over a two-year period off of Kirby’s creations than Kirby made in his lifetime.” Those are the people this boycott is aimed at.
It’s a tough thing in any kind of action against a corporation: how do you get its attention and hopefully affect it financially without hurting the people who work for it? I confess that I’ve been able to sidestep this a bit, because I don’t actually buy many single-issue comics anymore, so for better or worse I’m not affecting the royalties of writers and artists currently working for Marvel. Where my money goes to Marvel is the movies and collections like the Essential and Omnibus editions, often of Jack Kirby’s actual work. The last one I bought, which until things change is the last one I will buy, was the $75 Captain America by Jack Kirby hardcover (what can I say; you can afford stuff like that when you save by skipping monthly comics). In retrospect, a book like that is among the biggest offenders, as it not only stars a Kirby-cocreated character, but was actually written and drawn by the King himself, sold in large part on the basis of his name and rereleased in an expensive edition in time to coincide with a blockbuster film, all without any royalties going to his family. I confess that Marvel is not losing my business on a weekly basis, but they have lost a reliable customer of several of these $75–$125 books a year.
However, were I a regular buyer of Marvel’s monthly comics, I would stop that as well (as I have done with DC’s Superman comics as a result of that company’s shabby treatment of the Siegels and Shusters, despite my love of Grant Morrison’s writing). Then I possibly would affect royalties, and all I can say to that is that I wouldn’t feel good about buying the comics, but I do not begrudge the people making a living by writing and drawing them. You, Marvel penciler, and all the working-class people like you who are trying to make a name in this business, are not the people who have done this moral wrong. And it’s not my place to tell you that you shouldn’t work for Marvel. If you didn’t work for Marvel, someone else would, and the people listed two paragraphs back wouldn’t notice. So why would I attack you? I’m not upset at the people who need the penciling paycheck to live, I’m upset at the people who can’t live without reading the next issue of Invincible Iron Man.
I do wish the people with louder voices than either yours or mine would use them. Imagine if Brian Bendis, Matt Fraction, Jeph Loeb or another writer or artist of their stature at Marvel spoke out. That’s what got much of Kirby’s artwork returned to him when Marvel was holding it hostage in the 1980s. The top people in the business, including those who had made their names at Marvel, publicly stood with him because it was right and because them doing so was impossible to ignore. Where are the 2011 equivalents of those creators, with their much better compensation and treatment that is the direct result of the kind of agitation that was more common in the ’80s? Why are they silent on this issue at the same time as they praise the filmmakers they work with for capturing the feel of Kirby’s work?
I’m usually the last guy to complain about the fragmentation of media, but I wonder if the small field of comics, which took to the Internet so early and so completely, simply no longer has an outlet with the kind of audience or authority to draw the attention this issue deserves. During the fight over Kirby’s artwork The Comics Journal was a central institution, reporting on each development, providing a soapbox for the writers and artists who backed Kirby, and publishing the names of those who had signed the petition. Who can do that today?
The answer, as best as I can tell, is that we all have to do what we think is right and what we can do. Ultimately I realize that I am doing very little, but I wouldn’t feel good about myself spending my money that way and so I choose not to. People I work with and respect feel differently, but that doesn’t make them bad people, and I engage with them about this but don’t vilify their choice. Other people need that paycheck from Marvel and if they want to make it in this business then the boycott is not feasible for them. I’m okay with that. Some people directly and hugely benefit from the ill treatment of Kirby’s heirs, and I don’t know what their motives are, but I hope that by many people continuing to talk about this, those who benefit come to decide that it might not be worth it.
And ultimately that’s all we’re talking about. Sorry to anyone I offended last time out. I’m on your side.
It’s been a depressing time to care about comics. Between Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment fighting long and ugly to deny the heirs of Superman co-creator and writer Jerry Siegel money they are legally entitled to, Disney and Marvel Entertainment (boy, not as many companies with “Comics” in their name as there used to be) fighting long and dishonest to deny the heirs of Marvel universe co-creator Jack Kirby the money and credit they are morally (and perhaps legally) entitled to, Marvel’s hypocrisy in the wake of Gene Colan’s death, and surely even more things I’m forgetting, I can’t remember a time it’s been this hard to feel enthusiasm for this field that I’ve loved since I was 11 and which I later chose as my profession.
I’ve often referred to the treatment of Siegel and artist Joe Shuster over their creation of Superman as comics’ original sin, and it fits the bill, in that it’s not just a terrible injustice, but one that has loomed over the field ever since and still, over 70 years later, occasionally rears its head to bring us all back to that time. This has been on my mind since the release of Action Comics #900, when I noticed a caption thanking me for my “support” of the series. While I’ve no doubt that this copy was thoughtlessly inserted by an editor or assistant editor to mark the anniversary, not a call for me to support DC and Warner Bros., Superman’s current owners, in their fight against his creators, it nonetheless got me thinking, coming as it did during the increasing acrimony in that fight, about what I was supporting, and that’s what matters. Because I can’t do it anymore.
Back when I wrote about that, I said that I didn’t think I could read Superman comics anymore, but I wasn’t sure if I was really the type to call a boycott. Fortunately, someone with greater moral conviction than myself has done just that on a related matter. Following the recent summary judgement for Marvel against the Kirby estate, Steve Bissette put out a call to boycott all Marvel products derived from the massive portion of its holdings derived from creations or co-creations of Jack Kirby.
Why now? DC has been denying the Siegels and Shusters their due for years, and Marvel has systematically diminished Jack Kirby’s role in the creation of its empire while refusing his family any royalties for nearly as long. What is different today? Nothing, really, but we’ve had a wake up call. These legal cases have been fought at the same time, with the latest decisions in each (allowing Warner to use stolen documents in its case against the Siegels’ lawyer, the summary judgement against the Kirby Estate) so close together, during the same summer that three movies based on Kirby characters have been so successful. We should have been angry all along, and many were, but this summer has been a perfect storm, so it should come as no surprise, really.
I’ve been deeply heartened to see Bissette receive a good deal of attention, at least within the comics world, for his call to arms. In an environment where fans denounce the creators of their favorite characters as greedy leeches for asking for a fraction of their due, and when even major comics websites ridicule Alan Moore for his legitimate distrust of DC (most recently when he rejected the publisher’s offer to return him his rights to Watchmen so long as he agreed to make those rights worthless by ceding his authority over whether sequels should be made to DC), I admit I was far from confident that Bissette would receive any better treatment. The boycott is far from being a movement, but it has picked up more momentum than this sort of thing usually does.
At the same time, I’ve been saddened by the intelligent, thoughtful, moral people I know who don’t seem particularly troubled. The people, not much older than me, who tell me that creative fields always work this way, that the talent always gets screwed, that this is the way of the world and not worth missing an issue of Iron Man over. They think it’s a damn shame, but what can anyone do about it? Essentially: “Forget it, Brendan. It’s comics.”
I’m 27. I feel it when I talk to people. I’m on that precipice, around 30, when half the people who don’t feel like I do insist that I’ll grow up and become jaded and get that this is just how it is, while the other half wonder why I haven’t already, how I can still be so naive as to think it can be any other way. Hopefully I’ll continue to disappoint them.
I’ve been thankful the last few weeks for the knowledgeable people who have helped me understand what the actual cases are about. I got that in the case of the Siegels and Shusters the law changed in the 1970s and this was why they could try to reclaim Superman now, but I didn’t really know what the nature of the change was. Here’s my understanding now: When the Copyright Act of 1909 was passed the term of copyright was 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. The reason it wasn’t simply a single term of 56 years was to allow, in the case of copyright transference, for the original owner to renegotiate the deal when it was time to renew. This was a protection for the original owner if the creation they sold turned out to be worth much more than either party realized. However, buyers of copyrights began to include an automatic right of copyright renewal without renegotiation into contracts, defeating the purpose of the renewal. The Copyright Act of 1976 sought to correct this by making explicit the right to renegotiate or take back the copyright during the renewal period. That is what the Siegels filed for and won in court a few years ago. Warner Brothers and DC have spent the years since attempting to get around the fact that they no longer have any legal right to the Siegels’ half of the copyright to the original Superman stories and will soon lose the Shusters’ half as well. Their behavior has been disgraceful.
The Siegels won their initial case because Superman was not created as a work for hire. The original story was completed by Siegel and Shuster and then offered to several publishers. Eventually DC bought it for $10 a page and the copyright was transferred to the publisher. I get upset when people arguing DC’s side take the position that, “Well, some people are bad businessmen. That’s how it goes.” I confess that I don’t know much about Siegel and Shuster’s business acumen, but I don’t think that it matters very much, since that doesn’t come into play when all the power in a deal rests on one side. When the people sitting on one side of a desk have bills to pay and children to feed and the people sitting on the other side have access to the printing press, the deals tend to come out one-sided.
Unlike Siegel and Shuster, Jack Kirby co-created the majority of the Marvel characters that still dominate its publishing line without a contract, just a page rate and a series of verbal promises. He had no doubt seen what had happened to people like Siegel and Shuster, and he asked repeatedly for better credit and better compensation. The recent Kirby Estate lawsuit attempted to follow the Siegel strategy of filing for termination of copyright because there actually is a case to be made that he did not initially do the work in what we would recognize as a formal work-for-hire situation. None of the extra money or credit he was promised ever materialized, and when the Marvel lawyers realized in the 1970s that the characters weren’t protected by contract, they made signing retroactive work-for-hire contracts a condition of getting paid for work that had already been done. In Kirby’s case, the longstanding fight to reclaim his original artwork became a factor as well. He believed he was owed his artwork and he had a family to feed, and so he signed. It’s far from an open-and-shut case, and the verdict in Marvel’s favor probably didn’t surprise anyone, but Tom Spurgeon has put it best when he’s lamented the fact that it had to come to a lawsuit at all. Kirby and his family should have been properly compensated in the first place. Even if Marvel ultimately doesn’t have a legal obligation to do it, it is the right thing.
I get it. Capitalism is about profit, not the right thing. But companies are run by people, people in this case whom I hope care about comics and understand the debt that they owe to Jack Kirby, without whom they would not be in the position that they are. The company compensates Stan Lee with an honorific title and a sizable stipend (he’s surely due more, but it’s enough to provide the kind of comfort that makes fighting for more less appealing than simply enjoying being Stan Lee). True, he had to fight for that in court, but with that precedent in place, it would cause the company no pain to extend the same to the Kirby Estate.
And that’s why we’re where we are today. Because if DC made right by the Siegels and Shusters and Marvel made right by the Kirby Estate, they wouldn’t be quite as profitable as they possibly could, but it would be by such a relatively small degree for, let’s not forget, subsidiaries of the first and second largest media companies in the world, that their continued refusal to make good adds considerable insult to injury.
But that isn’t their instinct. Just as the artists with no power weren’t necessarily bad businessmen, the publishers with all the power weren’t necessarily good businessmen. When he bought the rights to Superman, Harry Donenfeld had no more idea than Jerry Siegel or Joe Shuster that the character would go on to earn billions. He just had the instinct that many businessmen have of own everything, keep everything. Disney/Marvel isn’t denying Kirby credit and compensation because it would ruin their quarterly reports, Warner Bros./DC isn’t holding up justice for the Siegels because it would go out business. In both cases it’s that the corporate instinct to own everything, keep everything dies hard. They have to have another reason to change.
Which is the other reason we’re here. These companies will never do the right thing on their own. It will only happen if they suffer the right combination of bad press and the threat of a loss of profit large enough to make them blink. And that’s hard to accomplish, especially with a fandom that can’t imagine not buying the next issue of The Avengers or Superman, has never not bought the next issue, but it’s not impossible. It doesn’t have to be enormous. A movie doesn’t have to fail. It just needs to be the difference between a #1 weekend opening and a #2 weekend opening. What do we have to lose?
I don’t kid myself that there’s any bravery in not buying a comic book or not going to a movie. But something doesn’t have to be brave to matter. It just requires clear vision and a goal. If we want publishers to stop denying talent what they are owed, we need to make it clear that they have more to lose by doing the wrong thing than by doing the right thing. At any other time, I would be ecstatic that my favorite superhero writer, Grant Morrison, will be relaunching Superman, the character that he has spoken of having a vision for for years, and which he wrote in the greatest superhero comic of the last decade, All Star Superman. But with the current treatment of the Siegels and Shusters and after the bad taste left in my mouth by Action Comics #900 thanking me for my support, I would feel terrible if I bought that. I was looking forward to catching Captain America: The First Avenger and next year’s Avengers in the theater, but now I will be skipping both. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself if I went.
(I’m disappointed in Grant Morrison. He’s clearly an ethical writer and an ethical person, but I think he’s badly off the mark in his reaction to the current situation. I don’t know (who outside of DC can?) if part of the impetus behind the DC relaunch really is to diminish the Siegels and Shusters’ share of Superman by claiming the new iteration is a new, derivative character, but this is still an even more dubious time than usual to take over the property. When asked about the legal case over Superman, Morrison punted, getting into his theory that the character is older than most of us, and will probably outlive all of us, and so is bigger than a dispute between its creators and owners. I take Morrison at his word that he believes the character transcends and is not simply compromising himself for the chance to take his dream writing job. But his answer is wrongheaded enough and surprisingly callous enough that it’s another reason for me to have nothing to do with his take on the character. It will be the first series written by Morrison I’m skipping in over a decade.)
Will it make a difference? Probably not. I hope so. But I’m with Caleb Mozzocco. That’s not the only reason we do this. We hope others will join, and we hope it’s enough, but we have to live with ourselves, and we have to do what we believe is right. I’m in this for real now—I am done with Marvel superhero comics and movies, and despite DC’s much better track record with giving credit and compensation generally, their unconscionable treatment of the Siegels and Shusters means I am done with Superman as well. And despite my earlier hesitancy to do so, I am now joining the hopefully growing chorus to ask others to do the same. I don’t know if it will make a difference, but I can tell you that not buying a comic book, not going to a movie is such a small sacrifice, so why not do it? More than any attempt to change the behavior of media companies, I am doing it because I wouldn’t like what it said about me if I didn’t do it. I hope that if you consider these issues you’ll come to the same conclusion.
As Steve Bissette suggests in the post that started this all, go to your comic book store and let them know what you are not buying and why, and buy something else instead. If they’ve ordered something for you and will lose money if you don’t buy it, go ahead—maybe you need a last goodbye issue—but after that choose something else and tell your retailer that you are buying it instead of a Marvel Kirby comic or a Superman comic, and that’s what you plan to do until things change. I’ve been picking up Kirby Genesis to get my superhero fix and am trying new creator-owned series like Terry Moore’s Rachel Rising instead of the comics that make me feel gross.
Will missing the next issue of X-Men really hurt that much?
This week: Hanging with the King on Read Comics in Public Day, raining on the Internet’s parade, and What I Read.
I READ COMICS IN PUBLIC ON SATURDAY. LIKE USUAL.
I FORGOT ABOUT Read Comics in Public Day until I was walking home from Powell’s Books with a copy of Matt Kindt’s Revolver under my arm. Deciding whether I felt like stopping to read it in the park across the street from my apartment or inside, I remembered the event commemorating Jack Kirby’s birthday. Since the King was the inspiration for the choice of date, it seemed appropriate that I read something of his, so I stopped inside and brought out two issues of 2001: A Space Odyssey along with Revolver (I also cheated, finishing a George Saunders short story collection in between the two).
During the time I was out and about earlier in the day, I didn’t see anyone else participating, but having forgotten, I wasn’t paying attention, so who knows. There didn’t appear to be anyone else reading comics with me in Jameson Square by my apartment, so I took a space on a bench and jumped into 2001.
To be honest, it didn’t feel all that momentous. I read comics in the park all the time, and don’t feel any judging eyes on me when I pull out an issue of Batman on the bus. The realization that this wasn’t particularly different from any other lazy weekend when I felt like lying in the park made the whole occasion feel somewhat dated and defensive. If the notion is that a day in which a lot of people are spotted outdoors reading comics normalizes the sight, I think that train has already left the station. We’re well into the era where, at least in cities like Portland, no one cares if you’re reading comics, largely because they don’t care about comics at all.
Of course, Portland could be exceptional in that regard. Certainly comics are a major subculture here. Which is why I certainly don’t condemn the holiday, and I did participate afterall, even if it’s just as likely I’d have read Revolver or other comics in Jameson Square whether I was asked to or not. On Journalista, Dirk Deppey ridiculed the event for its lack of perspective, “Team Comics boosterism,” and its encouragement that fans “[act] like sheep.” While he’s completely right that it’s shameless boosterism, Deppey seems to have lost perspective himself slightly if he’s actually that annoyed.
I doubt I could be convinced an event like this is necessary these days, and it does have the usual defensive ring to it, but I have a hard time being bothered by it, as it’s clearly harmless and judging from the many photo galleries online people enjoyed themselves. Seems like that’s enough.
And now a message from the “Brendan hates fun” department . . .
WHEN IMITATION IS NOT FLATTERY
LESS HARMLESS is the unrelenting culture of homage in comics. The prevalence of homage in comics of all kinds is no surprise when nostalgia is such a force in comics generally and the largest companies still depend on decades-old characters for survival, but the reflexive way it is embraced is still unfortunate.
The most recent example is the “Joker and Lex” story in Superman/Batman #75, one of a number of two-page strips filling out the extra-sized anniversary issue. The Internet pretty much peed itself over the story, with several comics sites reprinting the story and writing it up in pieces that said little more than that the story existed and was awesome. So, homage mission accomplished. But putting aside the tiredness of the Calvin and Hobbes parody and the cynical way it hides a weak punchline behind a conceit sure to play on readers’ nostalgia, when reading this I couldn’t help but wonder how Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, might take the story.
Not well, I suspect. Watterson was an outspoken critic of what he saw as a lack of creativity or ambition in newspaper comics, and it’s hard to imagine him being all that amused by a writer and artist riffing on his characters using a set of even older characters. It’s hard for me to see this much differently from the bootleggers who made Calvin and Hobbes merchandise when Watterson himself chose not to.
All of this is before even mentioning that Lex Luthor and the Joker are characters from the superhero genre, about which Watterson said this in the The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book: “You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a ‘graphic novel,’ but comic books are still incredibly stupid.” So would Watterson be impressed by a genre he hated “homaging” his creation to squeeze a little extra nostalgia out comics fans? Not likely.
That’s one of the things that bugs me about the culture of homage in comics culture. It’s so ingrained that it’s basically assumed to always be flattering. Comics creators and fans alike seem to have lost the ability to tell when an homage is appropriate and when it might actually be insulting. I’d like to see a lot more consideration before these sorts of things are published in place of original stories. I expect I’d see a lot fewer homages in general if that happened.
READ THIS WEEK:
The “next issue” box says it will reveal more about the Star Children, but in the meantime, Kirby is really taking his time exploring variations on the themes of 2001, so I’m glad to get to read these relatively fast compared to their original, monthly schedule. I’ve begun to think of Kirby as an early practitioner of what we now call decompression in comics storytelling, probably because he wanted to let his cosmic style breathe. Just compare the number of splash pages and double splash pages in his 1970s Marvel work to the work he was doing with Stan Lee in the ’60s.
It’s also been interesting to read through the letter columns in these issues. So far, a few people are asking where the series is going and why it doesn’t progress, but none seem upset by the relatively relaxed pace of the stories within each issue (still quick by modern standards—these two issue arcs would likely be longer today). If anything, they seem concerned that it’s coming out too fast. A letter in issue #6 complains that 2001 and a few other contemporaneous Marvel series debuted monthly, rather than the tradition of starting out bimonthly and speeding up once sale warrant it. I had no idea this was ever something that bothered people.
Images from 2001: A Space Odyssey © MGM, I guess. Rights issues are why this hasn’t been reprinted, right? Let’s say MGM. Images from “Joker and Lex” © DC Comics. But come on. Really. Images of Subarashii Sekai (What A Wonderful World!) © Inio Asano. Nice and simple.
Learning on the job how to do a weekly thing! Try to be short, try to be pithy! Working on it (though one of next week’s items will be long). Try to be interesting . . . that one might take a bit longer.
This week: Why I’m getting back into single comics . . . DC’s digital announcement . . . Jack Kirby talks about his work . . . What I read, with notes on some.
Next week: Why Garth Ennis’s Punisher is not a force of nature, and prose features in comics.
SINGLES: APPARENTLY I LIKE THEM AGAIN
UNUSUALLY LARGE WEEK FOR ME AT THE COMICS SHOP; bought seven single issues, including two not on my pull list. I’ve traditionally preferred trades for all the usual reasons: complete story, no ads, bookshelf-friendly. But it’s not the only format out there, and lately it’s seemed silly to do so much of my comics reading in only one format regardless of content.
I’ve always been unable to wait for collected editions of a few people’s work, especially Grant Morrison (who is represented twice—sort of three times if we believe the marketing—in the “Read” section below), but a few years ago I’d have read Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four in trade. But lately I’ve rediscovered some of the joy of serialization (though down the line I likely will trade the singles for the trade). And keeping up with it, anticipating what will happen next, discussing it monthly with people at work, has been a lot of fun. The water cooler aspect is probably a big part of it. Before going into comics as a field, few of my friends were comics people.
I’ve also come to realize over time that some things don’t really need to be on my bookshelf. It’s easy to lose sight of that fact when virtually everything gets collected these days, but most of this stuff is disposable entertainment, which isn’t such a bad thing. It’s equally weird to me how virtually all television shows seem to make it to DVD now.
Despite the $1 savings I’d have enjoyed getting the Marvel Divas paperback rather than the issues, I think I’m content to have read it and put it away; no need for a permanent edition. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it. I’m a Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa fan and really liked Tonci Zonjic’s art, which was nothing like the covers the series had. Several coworkers found it amusing that I was the only person they knew buying the series, but I did end up lending it to a few of them, who generally agreed that it was a fun trifle, with a pretty decent action-y ending.
So, looks like I’m back in the singles habit, after a bit of a lapse. Just in time for digital to kill the format.
UNORGANIZED THOUGHTS ON DC’S DIGITAL ANNOUNCEMENTS
HOW ABOUT THAT for a segue? Bam!
Digital comics are a weird thing for me. I believe the digital format is essential for comics if we hope they’ll sell beyond the current market, and that there’s no denying this is how many people want to read today. On the other hand, I’m not one of those people, so I find myself in the position of being a passionate proponent of something I myself don’t particularly want. It feels a bit weird, but there’s no denying the future.
DC’s entrance into the digital comics market seems to have been pretty successful in terms of both its particulars and its unveiling. It’s true that they didn’t make much noise up until they were ready to announce, but it’s good to see that any potential concern that DC was sitting it out until someone else established a model were unfounded. Other companies announced first, but between the amount of material that was immediately available and details like the retailer incentive program, it’s clear that this announcement has been in the works for quite a while.
I was very impressed that DC was ready to do simultaneous release of a series on day one, and after hearing some of the rationale for choosing Justice League: Generation Lost, I think beginning with a biweekly series makes a lot of sense. After all, most of the podcast I subscribe to update once a week or more (I think the only one I do that’s monthly is the New Yorker Fiction Podcast). Makes me think that Marvel’s three-times-a-month Amazing Spider-Man might also be a good choice, moreso than an Iron Man comic debuting months after the movie.
The price being the same online as in stores might make sense for the convenience of instant gratification. However, with printing costs removed (though these aren’t as significant a part of the budget of monthly comics as some commentators seem to think) and distribution costs diminished, I’d like to see DC and Marvel eventually embrace the Internet model of volume over price and go lower. Regarding the $2.99 price point, does anyone actually pay that in stores? Every comics shop I’ve ever been a regular at has had subscription boxes offering between 10% and 20% discounts, so I’d love to eventually see a digital subscription option with a comparable discount.
The other weird thing that came out of this was Marvel’s reaction to DC’s royalties announcement. We now know that Marvel has a system too, or is in the process of implementing one, but having never mentioned it before, it was strange how they took issue with DC’s claims to be the first to announce a royalty plan. Whether Marvel already had one or not, either way DC did in fact announce a plan first. Marvel can hardly blame DC for making hay of being the first to announce such a plan when Marvel was so tight-lipped about their own.
I don’t own an iPad and I have no plans to get one (though the same was true of the iPod up until I suddenly had to have one and the iPod touch until one came with my computer), but this is something I’ll continue to be a fascinated spectator to, even if it won’t immediately impact how I read.So that’s round one done, now for everyone to improve on each other.
JACK KIRBY IN HIS STUDIO (1993) @ YOUTUBE
I DON’T THINK I’ve ever seen video of Kirby before. Less than a minute, but there he is, that little, gruff guy you hear about; equal bits artist and tough guy.
First he talks about how his art connects with regular people, which is an intriguing thing for him to emphasize. He’s right: it’s straightforward and powerful, and easy to understand. But at the same time the content of his work is so far from the common man, getting bigger and more cosmic with every story as long as he lived. An interesting little paradox I hadn’t thought about that before.
I can’t help but wonder what question he’s answering in the second half. Very diplomatic talk about the popularity of science fiction in movies and the more widespread acceptance of the kind of themes found in Kirby’s work. Felt very restrained coming from a guy who felt so ripped off all his career, and whose New Gods is a huge uncredited inspiration for the biggest SF franchise of them all, Star Wars.
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Images of Fantastic Four and Marvel Divas © Marvel Characters, Inc. Images of Superman and The Authority © DC Comics.
WOW.
“Even Gods Must Die” and The Hunger Dogs, both reprinted in Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus vol. 4, are nothing short of astounding. Together, they represent a very different ending to the Fourth World saga than one might expect. Kirby’s interests were clearly different so many years later, and his growing physical frailty shows in his linework, but his inventiveness is as strong as ever. The pages look and read unlike anything I’ve seen before. Compositional elements that used to be part of costumes or machinery now hold entire pages together. Kirby plays with reading direction and panel shapes like never before, and he never runs out of new ways to make characters look like they’re leaping from the page.
Completing his epic years later, Kirby shows different concerns than before, with old age and fear of obsolescence playing a big role. Unable to end with the deaths of many characters after they’ve been integrated into the DCU, he also manages to surprise with the ending while feeling thematically consistent. Orion shocks by choosing love over war and Highfather ends the long struggle with Darkseid not through destruction, but retreat into the next great unknown, leaving Darkseid to deal with insurrection from within. It’s great stuff and a must read. For more, check out John Hodgman’s excellent review in the New York Times Book Review.
Inspired by Kirby’s completion of the story, I’m taking one last look at the many Fourth World revivals, Jim Starlin’s just-completed new ending to the saga, The Death of the New Gods, which has the misfortune of coming out around the same time as Fourth World Omnibus vol. 4 and inevitably fails by comparison. Below I attempt to review it on its own merits:
| The Death of the New Gods By Jim Starlin with various inkers DC Comics – 8 saddle-stitched @ $3.50 |
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The Death of the New Gods is a strange animal. On one level it does exactly what it says on the box, while on another it’s tough to know what its larger goals are. Its ending certainly has the feeling of finality that the title implies, with no caption exhorting the reader to read the conclusion in Countdown. In fact, from what I’ve read, the ending is completely contradicted by the ending of Countdown, which came out around the same time, and the contradiction continues in last week’s Final Crisis #1. So, the obvious answer is to ignore all those other series and view this as a self-contained, semi-canonical send-off of the classic vision of these characters before Grant Morrison evolves them in Final Crisis, right?
Except not quite. While the ending seems to detach itself from outside goings-on, the opening picks up a story already in progress, presumably from Countdown. As the series begins, Jimmy Olsen sneaks into a hospital to view the remains of Sergeant Willy Walker, The Black Racer, and exclaims, “Just like with Lightray and Sleez!” It’s not hard to pick up what’s happening from context, but someday when this is a hardcover and its connection to Countdown is forgotten, it will be disconcerting to see the book begin with the mystery already afoot and characters not explaining how they know what’s going on or why they’re involved.
The series is also notable in that it continues some of the trends of previous Fourth World revivals. The first chapter features an image of Highfather recounting the origins of the Fourth World, as the page quotes both the words and pictures of Kirby’s The New Gods #1. On the next few pages, writer-artist Jim Starlin does his best Kirby impression. It might just be because this is meant to be their final outing, but virtually every character from the Fourth World puts in an appearance. When doing their version of the Fourth World, writers and artists seem unusually compelled to try and use everything, to directly homage the source material, as if they are extra aware that it is the creation of a personal, singular vision by an artist at the top of his game. By the same token, DC Comics has seemed conscious of trying to recapture that feel by giving the characters to single writer-artists more often than they do other series, most recently with John Byrne on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World and Walter Simonson on Orion. Bringing in Jim Starlin signals an attempt to finish the same way.
As for the story, the deaths––gross and painful-looking outward chest explosions––keep happening, and a team is assembled to find their source. New Genesis sends Orion, while Superman and Mister Miracle (who now for some reason possesses the Anti-Life equation) join him after Big Barda’s death in chapter one. From Apokalips, Darkseid takes an interest and begins looking for a way to turn the situation to his advantage. Along the way, everyone becomes suspicious of each other and fights amongst themselves. Eventually the Source, the cosmic element connecting all of Creation, reveals itself and becomes a player.
While there are some effective scenes and appropriately epic moments, Starlin fundamentally mismatches his approach with the subject matter. The New Gods exist to battle, but most are dispatched quietly and alone, only to be discovered by others, and the entire conceit of a murder mystery seems to miss the point in this context. Furthermore, the mystery itself is artificial, as Darkseid suspects what is going on from the start and Metron learns it soon after, both simply withholding the information for flimsy reasons, even in their own narration. Darkseid’s narration is particularly troublesome, since he loses all sense of menace once we’re inside his head, something that isn’t helped by how pedestrian and Earth-colloquial his observations are––at one point, sounding like nothing so much as Stan Lee’s captions, he introduces Mister Miracle and Barda thusly: “On Earth, a certain loving couple continued their mundane existence, unaware of the vast drama unfolding around them.”
Once the Source is brought in, the story drifts further off-course. The New Gods are a pantheon, so when the Source’s actions cause Mister Miracle to question his beliefs, it’s a reminder of what an awkward place a story featuring polytheism is for working through questions of monotheism. Allowing the Source a single sentient entity––and it’s amazing how quickly characters begin referring to a floating sphere as “He”––diminishes it from thing of mystery to run-of-the-mill (lowercase “g”) god. Its place in a hierarchy above the New Gods diminishes them as well, making them just slightly more powerful superheroes. The addition of so many new elements also requires voluminous exposition, making the whole story, including the final battle, incredibly talky. This talkiness forces Starlin to shoehorn in action where he can in scenes like an early fight between Superman and Orion, which is outed as unnecessary by Mister Miracle’s narration in a way that draws attention to it, rather than adding levity.
Starlin’s characterization is strong both in the writing and art, but it’s hard to overcome the wobbly narrative it’s stuck in. Some details, like Dark Mister Miracle, just don’t work, his circus costume looking silly in black and purple (I felt that Barda mourning Miracle would have been more interesting, though it’s possible there wouldn’t be as much distinction between Orion and Barda as Orion and Miracle). Several of the mystery’s twists are poorly plotted as well, as when Superman suspects Orion, forgetting that the two were together during some of the murders.
Where Starlin succeeds is including all the characters a reader would want to see one last time in a way that feels organic. His figure drawing, if a bit stiff, helps tell the story by presenting everyone visually in a way that pays homage to Kirby’s vision while saying something about them as characters. Orion is appropriately hulking and bestial, Metron looks atrophied from all the time on his Mobius Chair, early renditions of Miracle and Barda capture his playfulness and her power (though she probably shouldn’t be so much slighter than him). Starlin’s Superman looks clearly different from the celestial characters, but still walks comfortably among Gods, going back to Kirby’s original “Superman in Supertown” ideas.
Page layouts and panel compositions are powerful, though for a single writer-artist, Starlin occasionally has trouble leaving enough room for his own words, as in this sequence where Takion’s eulogy of Barda overlaps the panels until she is completely cremated, then jumps back to a point before the flames begin. The only other visual problem is that the colors and visual effects sometimes overpower the art and crowd the compositions, particularly in space scenes and when elements like skulls fill the borders.
On the whole, it’s a less than satisfying read, with a number of worthwhile moments, but a tendency to lose those moments in a mess of a story and themes. Affection for the source material carried me through early chapters, but the convoluted and off-track approach eventually overpowered it, and problems in the coloring and lettering sealed The Death of the New Gods’ fate as a series that I won’t want to read again. As a modern Fourth World revival, Walter Simonson’s Orion is much more highly recommended.
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Kirby Continued part 4
AS I SAVOR Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus vol. 4, which concludes Kirby’s original saga, I am continuing my look at some of the many followups to it DC Comics has produced. Here’s the third installment in the series:
| Orion: The Gates of Apokolips By Walter Simonson and various DC Comics – softcover, $12.95 |
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Unlike the previous two installments, which featured a Jimmy Olson tribute and a sitcom approach to Mister Miracle, respectively, Walter Simonson’s Orion is a direct continuation of the New Gods storyline. The Gates of Apokolips collects the first five issues of the series, which ran for two years. The story is explicitly reminiscent of the original, as Darkseid returns to Earth looking for the Anti-Life Equation, “the outside control of all living thought,” and Orion follows to confront him.
In tone, Gates of Apokolips feels like a “’90s Vertigo” New Gods, opening on a rural American town possessed by the Anti-Life equation and preying on travelers. The chapter titles are even lines from “America the Beautiful,” recalling the many “dark side of America” stories to come out of the imprint during that decade. (The color scheme, a not-entirely-appropriate palette of washed-out earth tones and cool tones, also looks Vertigoesque.)
Gates of Apokolips is made up of an interesting mix of elements. On one hand, it is more straightforward and plot-driven than Kirby’s original New Gods, focusing less on big symbolic moments than on intrigue and double-crosses. On the other hand, it is in some ways more similar to classical Greek myth, with husband and wife gods plotting against each other, and questions of paternity (The Greek gods spent far more time cuckolding each other than being involved in adventures).
The mythic tone is enhanced by the inclusion of backup “Tales of the New Gods,” most notably “Nativity,” depicting Orion’s birth and “Goodness and Mercy,” filling in Granny Goodness’s early years. Such stories could easily feel redundant, but Simonson and, in the case of “Nativity,” Frank Miller on art, bring the kind of big moments and epic proclamations that add weight to the main narrative. Once Orion is born, a midwife whispers, “Milady… your son. He is trembling… in fear.” “No,” Orion’s mother, Tigra, replies. “In fury.” It’s dialogue that would sound over-the-top coming from mortals, but the setting and characters are big enough to match them. Just as significant as Orion’s birth, “Nativity” reveals the origin of the prophesy pitting Orion against his father, as Tigra declares, “Thus will Darkseid forge the tool of his own destruction.” Miller’s intense, high contrast art is a perfect match for the material and his depiction of Orion’s birth through Tigra’s changing shadow against a wall is masterful.
Other backup stories take us away from Orion to fill in what other characters, such as Lightray, are doing during the main story. The format is effective, though some editorial hand-holding crops up when a caption follows some of Lightray’s dialogue with “Details in next story.”
As the story unfolds, we’re reintroduced to one of Orion’s original Earth allies, Dave Lincoln, as well as Police Sergeant Turpin, and even the Newsboy Legion. Whenever the New Gods are revived, the impetus seems to be to include as much of the extended cast as possible, be it Funky Flashman in the 1980s Mister Miracle, Simyan and Mokkari in “The American Evolution,” or Billion Dollar Bates––whose cloned brain is channeling the fragments of the Anti-Life Equation found in hundreds of humans’ minds to simulate access to the complete equation––in Gates of Apokolips. The odd thing here is that most of the long-untouched characters who show up do so simply to serve as spectators to the action, with Orion and Darkseid the story’s only real prime movers. They become literal spectators in the fifth chapter, which consists of a sustained battle between the two. Several returning human characters are also too blasé about the presence of gods among them, making the story a bit more pedestrian than it would otherwise be.
Not at all pedestrian is Simonson’s art in the main stories. Sketchy and blocky, it’s an acquired taste, no doubt, but Simonson is in good form here. He makes no effort to emulate Kirby’s figures or compositions, but he achieves the necessary power to carry the New Gods. His pages are smartly designed and exciting, especially in the issue five battle between Orion and Darkseid. Large sound effects highlight the scope of the action, and add visual interest through their clever integration into panel compositions.
As a continuation of The New Gods, Orion is flawed, but smart and entertaining, among the better Fourth World followups. It has an appropriately epic flavor, even if the plotting tends more toward intrigue than grand gestures and symbolism. An incomplete story, it’s hard to tell exactly where it’s going; I assume that the aftermath of Darkseid’s defeat and the question of whether he is really Orion’s father are resolved in later chapters. I would be happy to see the rest of the series collected, and it’s a shame that hasn’t happened.
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Kirby Continued part 3
WELL, Amazon may have e-mailed to tell me that, though they’ve been taking preorders since last year, they suddenly don’t know when they’ll be getting in copies of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World vol. 4, but my look at later additions to Kirby’s saga continues:
| Mister Miracle vol. 2 #6 By Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatteis and Mike McKone DC Comics, 1989 – saddle-stitched, $1.00 |
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Justice League Special #1 Featuring Mister Miracle By Keith Giffen, Len Wein and Joe Phillips DC Comics, 1990 – saddle-stiched, $1.50 |
While last time’s review was of a special Kirby tribute, these two Mister Miracle issues fit into the character’s regular status quo circa the late-’80s, early-’90s. At the time, that status quo seems to have been largely dictated by Miracle’s membership in the Justice League International, and appropriately these are both plotted by League mastermind Keith Giffen, with scripting and pencils on Mister Miracle #6 by JLI’s J.M. DeMatteis and occasional JLI artist (including the famous “Justice League Antarctica” story from JLI Annual #4), Mike McKone. I have a lot of affection for Giffen and DeMatteis’ “bwahaha” League, and readers and editors of the day must have liked it, too, because the series had pretty much stopped having serious plots by this point and, boy, did everything else they touched around the time get the same treatment.
Launching two years after Mister Miracle––AKA Scott Free––joined the JLI, I can only assume that this series came about because of the connection. Kirby had always set up Scott and his wife, Barda, as rejecting roles in the war between Gods, content to stay on earth and devote themselves to Scott’s life as an escape artist. Here it’s taken even further, with the two living a domestic life in the suburbs, trying to keep their new life and Scott’s role in the Justice League as far apart as possible. Now retired, Scott runs a repair shop, using New Genesis technology to fix people’s appliances. Barda appears to be a housewife.
It’s pretty much a sitcom premise and, while it’s hard to get a sense of the series from an issue by fill-in writers, from a glance at the letters column and next issue blurb, the series takes that approach even when Giffen and DeMatteis aren’t writing. For their issue, they do a “wacky friend comes to visit” plot, with the League sending the annoying, dog-like Green Lantern, G’Nort, to help them out when the mob targets their small town. It’s about as cheesy as you might expect, with both some painful jokes and some pretty funny jokes. Some of the funniest material comes from the incongruity of Big Barda confined to homemaking, as when she stands in the living room telling Scott, “I would have picked them apart––then fed their carcasses to the vultures!” When she later calls Scott to tell him she’s been attacked by a mobster trying to send him a message, Scott’s first response is, “My God––Is he all right?!”
G’Nort is a fairly one-joke character. He can work in small doses, but taking center stage as he does here shows that he doesn’t have much going on. His repeated listing of all the ways people have rejected him gets tired, though his mix of human and dog characteristics can be funny, as when he apologizes to Oberon for having chewed on his slippers. I’m always amused by Mike McKone’s depiction of him––his face is mostly dog, but with a long human-like nose. McKone’s work is strong as always. He and fellow League artist Kevin Maguire are very gifted when it comes to facial expressions, giving life to even some of Giffen and DeMatteis’ corniest jokes, jokes that would fall flat with different artists. Other than that, he recognizes that this is a book driven by verbal comedy and gets out of the way, keeping page layouts clear and maintaining interest in extended dialogue scenes.
Six months later, Scott is back in the escape artist game, with a world tour kicking off in Justice League Special #1. Despite the title, it’s really an extra Mister Miracle issue guest-starring the League, so it gets a script and pencils by the book’s regular team of Len Wein and Joe Phillips, working from Giffen’s plot. 
Unlike Giffen and DeMatteis’ Mister Miracle #6, it doesn’t stand alone, incorporating plot threads from both JLI and Mister Miracle, and introducing new storylines to each.
I can’t remember if Scott actually had much of a role in the League at this point, between his busy schedule of fixing toasters and putting on performances––not that the League is all that busy, either, spending most of the issue attending Scott’s show, and later facing (that is, talking to) Manga Khan, the intergalactic bargainer who has shown up to add some cosmic stops to Scott’s tour. Whereas he had previously kidnapped Scott, this time he gets his participation through a sneaky contract. It’s not particularly urgent stuff, feeling mostly like set-up. More entertaining are the usual character moments from this incarnation of the League, though Wein’s one-liners aren’t as snappy as DeMatteis’.
Of greatest historical interest is the presence of Funky Flashman, a huckster introduced by Kirby in the original Mister Miracle #6, and appearing to be a parody of Stan Lee. If that was ever really in question, it certainly isn’t here, with Funky referring to most everyone as “Faithful One” or “True Believer.” How much of this is the need many creators who work with Fourth World characters seem to have to include as many obscure characters as possible and how much is Wein, the third editor-in-chief of the Marvel heroes line, razzing his predecessor, I have no idea. He’s written a tad flatly, but nice visual bits of business like spreading caviar on Oreos help give him more character––though a little static, Joe Phillips’ art is pleasant and full of this kind of attention to detail.
Of all of Kirby’s Fourth World characters, Mister Miracle and Big Barda are the ones that have most often been removed from their original setting. With abilities more in line with standard superheroes and living on Earth, it’s not hard to see why this has been done, but they lose something stripped of context. As deserters in the war between New Genesis and Apokolips, they are most interesting when existing in contrast to those still fighting it. Placed either in the Legaue or a sitcom, they’re more pedestrian, simultaneously too much like everyone else and a bit out of place. These two issues are amusing, and if you like this era of the Justice League like I do, you won’t be able to help but enjoy them (though neither are among the better issues of the time), but viewed against other Fourth World revivals, they’re less successful than those that have stuck with their milieu and depended less on the rest of the DC Universe.
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Kirby Continued part 2
THE FINAL VOLUME OF Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus has arrived. I don’t have my copy yet, but with the release of the sort-of-ending-but-really-not, it seemed like a good time to dig out follow-ups to Kirby’s Fourth World material and see how well they hold up. I’m not exactly sure how many reviews this will include, since I have to look around for what I have and figure out what counts, but it’ll be at least three.
In part one, Mark Evanier, Kirby’s assistant while he was creating the Fourth World, scripts from some leftover Jimmy Olson plots. It’s a project with a few goals in common to Fantastic Four: The Lost Adventure, through probably less historical interest, but is ultimately a more satisfying read.
| The American Evolution! (Legends of the DC Universe #14) By Mark Evanier, Steve Rude, and Bill Reinhold DC Comics, 1999 – Saddle-stitched, $3.95 |
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According to Mark Evanier’s afterwards to previous volumes of Fourth Wold Omnibus, Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olson wasn’t an assignment that Jack Kirby took a lot of pleasure in, especially with all of the editorial interference he suffered. Nonetheless, he managed to come up with more stories for the series than he ended up fitting in. In his capacity as Kirby’s assistant, Evanier was privy to the details of these stories, and “The American Evolution!” sees him joined by Steve Rude and Bill Reinhold in telling one more story of The Project and its dark twin, The Evil Factory.
Except for the Newsboy Legion, it’s all here: Jimmy, Superman, Dubbilex, The Guardian, Darkseid, Morgan Edge, even the Whiz Wagon. The team captures the feel of Kirby’s Jimmy Olson stories well, despite some differences. Evanier’s plot is a little tighter, though not as full of ideas. It’s less madcap and a little more coherent, likely a product of different standards of pacing between the ’70s and the ’90s, as well as his advantage in having 56 pages (Kirby could take it slower when he had more space, as seen in the 2001: A Space Odyssey Treasury Edition). His dialogue is less earnest, with more schtick, but mostly captures Kirby’s urgent quality. The effort to make the story simultaneously harken back to the Kirby era and not disturb post-Crisis continuity is mildly distracting, establishing an uncomfortable middle-ground when, as a one-shot, it could have ignored present continuity. Being unaware of the circumstances of Superman comics circa 1999, I couldn’t help but notice the differences from the Kirby material, like Clark and Jimmy knowing Morgan Edge but not working for him.
But overall, it feels like a Kirby plot. The Fourth World Saga, for all its focus on raw power, was a product of the Vietnam era, and had a deep ethical concern with the view from the ground, splitting issues between the battles of gods and the dramas of the human characters caught in the crossfire, some of whom only appeared for an issue. It’s no different here, with Superman and The Guardian battling Darkseid’s attempts to devolve Metropolis into apes, while the human drama revolves around Jimmy and Daily Planet doorman, Bernie Sobel, who does his best to not get involved in other people’s problems, even as the building starts to come down around him. His arc has more stabs at comedy than I imagine Kirby injecting, but his discovery of courage under fire fits in with the other human characters of The Fourth World.
Steve Rude does an interesting job pulling off a tough challenge, homaging Kirby’s style while maintaining his own. For the most part, characters have Rude faces and Rude builds, but he pulls off some convincing Kirby-style panel compositions and extreme perspectives, and draws some pretty admirable Kirby-tech. Bill Reinhold’s inking is spot-on, melding Rude’s grace with some Kirby weight and textures, making those chunky lines sit comfortably on Rude’s figures. Together, they do a stellar job of homaging Kirby without aping him.
I’ll be honest: If it weren’t for the Kirby history and homage, I don’t know how interested I’d be in “The American Evolution!”’s somewhat boilerplate story (of all of Kirby’s Fourth World work, I’m not sure if fans were really screaming for more Jimmy and The Project). However, the obvious love Evanier et al have for the material shines through, and touches like Bernie’s transformation, parallels between the fear Darkseid and Edge’s underlings have for them, the many excellent monsters and machines, coupled with great art, push it beyond mere nostalgia artifact to genuinely enjoyable read.
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Kirby Continued part 1
| Jack Kirby: Storyteller Produced by John Mefford On Fantastic Four 2-disc Special Edition – MSRP: $26.98 |
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When DVD started to take off about ten years ago, it brought new life to the art of the Director’s Cut… then killed it. In the new competition to have more extra minutes of material than other discs, studios have replaced director’s cuts with something called Extended Editions. These are made without the participation of a film’s director and generally restore any completed scenes that have been cut from the film for any reason, without regard to pacing or relevance, all in the name of “added value.”
Such is the case with the new extended edition of Fantastic Four. The new version is 20 minutes longer and with a little more care could have contained a decent director’s cut within it, through the reappearance of scenes that more fully flesh out the characters and tighten the plot slightly. However, these scenes are balanced out by the inclusion of redundant scenes, such as two nearly identical versions of Reed and Sue’s date coming back-to-back, and embarrassing moments that were rightly cut, as when Alicia Masters erotically dusts The Thing.
No, the reason to own this DVD over the original release is the material on the second disc, specifically the documentary on Jack Kirby, entitled simply Jack Kirby: Storyteller. There’s also a documentary about the history of the Fantastic Four comic book called The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine, but it suffers from too strong a feeling of official history, highlighting the same eras and creators that any Marvel Comics history of the FF would. The amusing sequence in which it’s plainly apparent that John Byrne must have refused to cooperate and his run is described through captions uses nearly the same wording to describe his time on the series as the back covers of the Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne series. The highlight is Walter Simonson describing some of his artistic choices from when he was FF’s writer/artist, but the film is largely skippable unless you’re new to the Four.
Not so Jack Kirby: Storyteller. Considering the acclaim that Marvel DVDs to date have given Stan Lee, it was about time The King received the credit he’s due as well. At just over an hour, this documentary provides a satisfying overview of much of Kirby’s career and stature in the industry, told in an alternately reverent and thoughtful manner by some of his contemporaries and many of the artists he influenced. It was fascinating to hear how many were at first “freaked out” by Kirby before coming to appreciate his work (Grant Morrison admits to the same in his introduction to The Fourth World Omnibus volume 1: [Page 1] [Page 2]). Kirby’s work can seem off-putting to a contemporary audience, but I had no idea so many of his peers initially found his work so strange.
Details like that kept me interested, even though the general story was familiar. The documentary finds a good balance between discussing the appeal of Kirby’s work (Neal Adams admits that Kirby’s anatomy may not be right, but challenges other pros to match his power), different stages of his career, his personal life and place in fandom and even a tribute to Roz Kirby, his wife, partner, protector and partial inspiration for Big Barda. That last section is both amusing, when fans describe Roz taking away art that Jack had absentmindedly given them, and touching in its description of her place in fandom after Jack died. As one of the only places music appears in the film, it gets a bit cloying, but convincingly relates Roz’s importance in Jack’s life and work.
The biggest surprise to me, given the company line feel of The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine, is the inclusion of controversy in Jack Kirby: Storyteller. While Marvel has generally been happy to credit Stan Lee as the architect of its universe, the documentary challenges that claim. A few of the artists interviewed broach the subject, with Barry Windsor-Smith going so far as to say, “You think Stan Lee could have created the FF? No!” Since the questions of adequate credit and compensation run through Kirby’s biography, allowing the documentary to get into controversial territory adds considerable depth to the film’s narrative. Interestingly, no defense of Lee is included.
The only real problem with Jack Kirby Storyteller being included on a Marvel DVD is that it limits how much of Kirby’s career can be discussed in depth. The filmmakers make an effort to include every era of his career and certainly mention his time at DC and other publishers both before and after his famous Marvel period, but they’re given short shrift, presumably because the filmmakers only have rights artwork from his Marvel years. Some very early Kirby work shows up, but no art from, for instance, his time at DC in the ’70s is included. With nothing to put on camera, the film understandably speeds through Kirby’s later non-Marvel work.
I enjoyed Jack Kirby: Storyteller and learned things that I didn’t know. It’s not a perfect portrait and couldn’t be as long as Kirby’s entire career didn’t receive equal attention, but it’s the best film effort I’ve seen to date to give The King his due.
Highly Recommended.
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