Tagged: Jack Kirby

Review: “After the Golden Age” by Carrie Vaughn

Carrie Vaughn is best-known for her “Kitty Norville” urban fantasy series — about a radio talk-show host turned reluctant werewolf — but she’s also written other things. Just last year, for instance, she came out with [[[After the Golden Age]]], a superhero novel about Celia West, the completely unpowered accountant daughter of the two most popular and powerful heroes of Commerce City.

So, the first question is: what comes after the Golden Age? Whether you’re Hesiod or Jack Kirby, the obvious answer is “The Silver Age.” And After the Golden Age is a quite Silver Age-y book, full of gangsters (organized into teams, with spiffy nicknames, and I would not be at all surprised if many of their gangs had dress codes) who politely kidnap Celia repeatedly in the vain hope of using her as a shield against her parents. (This is seen to never work, but — in best Silver Age fashion — the gangsters keep doing it, because they need to follow the essential Weisinger plots or else they are nothing.)

This is lucky for Celia; if this were an Iron Age story, she’d be in pieces in the fridge before page ten, and we wouldn’t have much of a novel. But she does live in a more genteel age, with defined standards of behavior for both heroes and villains, and so her kidnappings tend to just disrupt her schedule and horribly frustrate her.

(Vaughn lampshades the inevitable question: Celia doesn’t leave Commerce City because she doesn’t want to — sure, she has no relationship with her parents, and has a career that usually takes young public accountants through extensive travel around the country for the first few years of their careers, but, by gum! she’s going to stay right there in Commerce City because the plot requires it no villains will drive her out!)

The rest of the book is agreeably muddle-headedly Silver-Agean like that: Celia starts dating a young police detective, Mark Paulson, whose father is the city’s Mayor, with the usual obvious parallels between their parents. Celia’s ur-kidnapping was by the Olympiad’s (her parents’ superteam) greatest foe, the Destructor, as a young teen, and she ran away to join the Destructor’s gang not long afterward, in a fit of teenage pique at sixteen. (And this is endlessly brought back up throughout the novel, as though this was a superhero world in which no one had ever made a heel or face turn even once — let alone dozens of times a year, as in the modern era.) Celia is given primary responsibility to build a forensic accounting case against the Destructor (even though he’s old, possibly senile, and has been locked up in not-Arkham for a while now) as part of a major criminal case against him, for no obvious or specific crimes, and even though her multiple conflicts of interest would make any opposing counsel salivate at the thought. The whole plot, in fact, is entirely second-hand: it’s all standard superhero furniture that seems to be in this novel because it belongs somewhere in a superhero story, and not because Vaughn had specific reasons for wanting any of it.

Vaughn keeps it all going with her narrative voice, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if you spend any time thinking about it. But, remember: in the Silver Age, stories aren’t supposed to make sense. Celia has more than the recommended level of angst, and is batted around by events — she’s supposedly driven and responsible, but her accountancy work isn’t dramatic, so Vaughn just mentions it now and then, and it really doesn’t add up to much.

Celia bounces off the supers of her hometown — her parents, Captain Olympus and Spark; Arthur Mentis, the telepath who was a late addition to their team; Annalise, aka Typhoon, a water-powered hero her age — as she slowly learns about the requisite sinister plot. And, of course, she gets kidnapped in the furtherance of that plot, but it all turns out all right in the end — city saved, true love found, the whole nine yards.

After the Golden Age is a pleasant if slightly musty-feeling superhero story; it’s based on several-decade-old tropes and doesn’t bear a whole lot of resemblance to what superhero stories look like these days. (Of course, superhero stories have looked horrible for much of the last two decades, so not looking like that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.) Vaughn makes it entirely an enjoyable read, but this isn’t a book to think too deeply about motivation or realism as you’re running through the pages.

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Marc Alan Fishman: To The Digital Age and… Beyond!

For as forward-thinking as I’d like to position myself as being, I am a comic book luddite. Where I was like the rest of my generation – adopting the the MP3 over CD, and taking to the cloud the second I had the opportunity – I have never been lured by the siren’s song of digital comic book reading. That is until I was gifted some not too long ago. And here I am to report on whether I’m slowly turning towards the horizon of sequential fiction.

First off, you should know what prey-tell I was gifted. DC’s Justice League Beyond, as pitched to me by Mike Gold, was “…perhaps the best straight-forward action team book being put out today.” Well, given Mike’s pedigree and tastes, I was willing to bite on that. And with no more pretense than that single line of praise, I tore through 12 digital issues. At the tail end of them, I’m happy to report Mike is very close to right with his kind words.

JLB is an extension of the animated Batman Beyond Universe, birthed by our lords and saviors Bruce Timm and Paul Dini and brought to us by the writing, penciling, and inking team of Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs. And much like Dini and Timm’s futuretoon, the digital book appears light as a feather in presentation, but its looks are truly deceiving.

Beneath the veneer of simplistic art and truly light prose, comes a world-shattering tale worthy of the Justice League. Backed by a few “secret origins” to break up the main story, a solid hour of reading gave way to lasting moments of truly memorable scenes and concepts. Case in point: Fridolfs and Nguyen are able to create a New Gods story that is near Kirby-level in its weight and presentation. If that isn’t cause enough to pause, well, I don’t know what else is.

From the visual standpoint, I’m less than thrilled. I get that the appeal of the book ties directly to its parent animation. But in the realm of comics, there’s far more to do than just replicate someone’s style and call it a day. Call me crazy, but I’d like to see them reach a bit further visually then what DC delivered. Without knowing anything beyond what I was reading, the books ‘looked’ just the teeniest bit phoned in. It could be the stylistic choice of editorial to match the show so closely.

The truest compliment I can lay out though comes in aforementioned origin issues. Meant as breathers between the main “War to end all wars” arc, here we get glimpses into the backstories of two characters that never struck me as more than filler bodies. Warhawk and Aquagirl are each given a backstory treatment that would shame the king of origins, Geoff Johns. Delivering real pathos, enhanced by a few Easter egg nods and winks to the comic historians amongst us. And for those (like me) that lived-ate-and-breathed the Dini/Timm-Verse? Well, this whole series is like a trip back to a better time. And better than that, they took the time in both cases to try a different visual approach. Loose and simple still, but with enough of a change to allow to enjoy the stories on a higher level.

But the crux of the matter to me was in the enjoyment. Did I have as good a time e-flipping through the pages as I do with normal comics? Sadly, no. To be fair, I tried reading the files both on my large iMac screen and my wife’s iPad – which is as close to the size of a single comic page as one can get digitally. The book itself is cut in odd places. It was hard to tell if it was built in “standard” format akin to be eventually printed, or if it was always intended only for digital consumption. Given what I saw, I believe it to be the latter. And that in and of itself isn’t a dig. For the longest time, I enjoyed DC’s Zuda line of web comics mostly due to its formatting being suited for the screens at the time. Here though, the digital books read just a bit wonky to me. Some pages are portrait, others are landscape. And although each issue is 20+ pages, in some issues there’s barely six or seven actual pages worth of content.

I am all for the idea that the comic companies shoot to create all digital publications; it’s the future whether or not I’m an adopter. But the key here needs to be the same as it in print. That is to say the final product need not short the reader with content, just because its home is on the backlit screen of a retina-display.

At the end of the day, I know that this initial pass into the non-inky realms was not enough to lure me over permanently. That being said, I would be more prone at this point to enjoy digital titles should they wholly separate entities built specifically for the medium. And if they are significantly less money than the printed counter part (akin to the music or TV episodes), then I’m even more likely to consider incorporating it into the fabric of my e-life.

Most important though is that the quality is no different on screen than it’d be on the page. When you have to make art that is only 72 DPI, it can be tempting to become chinsy with the deliverable (both in words on the page, and the stories delivered per issue, as I was noting in the over-before-they-got-started JLB issues). The comic brethren must remember that the digital music and movie media eventually made their way to HD.

With all of those pieces in place? I can rest happy that my son may end up collecting his longboxes on a hard drive instead of a basement. Assuredly though… this digital-aged bearded bloke will still be bagging and boarding his wares until they stop putting them in the stores.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

 

Dennis O’Neil: Who Are You?

You don’t exist. So I can advise or even scold you without worrying that something I say will, down the line, cause you to hide behind a therapist’s couch and whimper. (Yeah, I know that the Bhagavad Gita tells us that we have no control over the outcome of our actions. Stop showing off!)

You don’t know who you are? Okay, I’ll tell you. You’re a young comics artist (albeit a wholly imaginary one) and you’re trying to make your way – that is, get work. We’ve all been there. And someone has told you that you must establish your “brand” and you guess that this means you should make many people – hordes! armies! – aware of your existence and of the kind of work you do well. (Who’s your idol? Kirby? Kelly? Adams? Who would you pray to if you believed in prayer?) So, you suppose, you’ve got to get out there, raise your head above the foxhole (where, trust me, someone will shoot at it), clamor, shout, even grandstand like Tom Sawyer walking that fence for an admiring Becky Thatcher.

Since we can assume that you can’t afford television advertising, full page ads in the New York Times, or a great big billboard smack dab in the middle of town, you’ve got to work the internet, Get busy tweeting, Facebooking, all that cyberstuff.

But be aware that there’s a downside, here. No, not the cyberstuffing per se. Though I find such behavior slightly distasteful, believing, like other greybeards, that a gentleman does not call attention to either himself or, especially, his achievements, there is considerable precedent for tooting one’s own horn in the arts. I mention Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and Freddy Nietzsche and invite you to complete the list.

But here’s what I wonder: Do you have enough time for both the self – promotion and the learning of your craft, particularly the storytelling aspects? (We know that you’re already a maestro of the number two pencil and the india ink bottle.) That can be tricky, that storytelling, and while it’s not rocket science, it is something that should be thought about and practiced. If a course is available in your area, take it. If not, find some books – and look at how your favorite predecessors managed the job. And will you have time to do that learning and still bask in the glow of the computer screen? You can network and tweet until your fingerprints vanish and you can tell yourself that your just doing your job.

The basking puts your own ego at the center of the enterprise, which is where the ego loves to be. What should be there is the work. The late, great Alfred Bester said it best: “Among professionals, the job is boss.”

I think that one reason our legislative apparatus is so shabby is that to acquire public office you’ve got to be a full time politician – that is, a good politician – maybe the most ego demanding of professions and one that requires a different skill set from being a wise and just governor. It’s a treacherous and vastly complicated world out there and to make decent laws for it you should be curious and well – read, anxious to be of service, and willing to learn, and not merely a gladhander and fund raiser with nice haircut.

Good politician, meet bad comic book artist.

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

Mike Gold: Passion and Wonder

Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s death last week at 82 brings to mind… well, an awful lot of stuff. If I were to put it all in one folder, I would name that folder “Passion and Wonder.”

Passion is the binding force of our lives. Wonder is what keeps us moving forward, what propels us into the future. Passion and wonder combine to create the most vital force in nature.

Passion plus wonder is a formula. Passion plus wonder equals H.G. Wells. Passion plus wonder equals Alice Guy-Blaché. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Nicola Tesla. Bessie Coleman. George Washington Carver. Ray Bradbury. Jack Kirby. Terry Gilliam. Michael Jordan. Sinead O’Conner. Alan Moore. Passion plus wonder equals Harlan Ellison. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Passion plus wonder equals Neil Armstrong.

If not for passion and wonder, our 21st Century would look exactly like Galileo’s father’s 16th Century. Most of us would be living in small villages, never venturing more than 25 miles from the place of our birth. Not that it would be boring; avoiding boredom requires a sense of wonder.

Our culture tends to encourage and, upon occasion, even honor creativity. We are very lucky – previous generations received less support… if any. If you have the passion and the sense of wonder to go out there and create, you have the obligation to do so – both to yourself and to society.

Pursue your passion and create.

It does not take courage. Courage is a retroactive designation for the act of putting one foot in front of the other and finishing something. It’s not up to you to determine its ultimate value. Your job is to pursue your passion, employing your sense of wonder. Posterity is in the eye of the next generation.

Neil Armstrong already stepped on the Moon. You must step into the future.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil – You Don’t Exist

Michael Davis: Milestones – African Americans In Comics, Pop Culture And Beyond, Part 3

Please read parts one and two before this installment.

The Comics Code Authority (CCA) tried its best to stop EC from publishing a particularly offensive (to them) comic book. The book they were trying to stop was Weird Fantasy #18 (April 1953); the story was called “Judgment Day.”

What was objected to was not a gory scene of a space monster under orders from a criminal ripping to pieces an earth girl who, clad in scant bra and panties, was an obvious sexual tease for 50s era yikoung boys.

What was objected to was the main character, an astronaut, was revealed on the last page in the last panel to be a black man. Wow, who knew that the Tea Party was alive and well in 1953 under the name Comics Code Authority?

Why am I surprised at this? The GOP thinks that a woman can’t get pregnant and everyone knows that’s science fiction but (sorry Peter) I digress…

The CCA demanded the story removed or the last panel changed to a white boy. ECs editor William Gaines, the publisher of Weird Fantasy, responded to that demand with “Fuck you.”

Three years later, Gaines reprinted the story in the final issue (#33) of Incredible Science Fiction.

William Gaines was gangsta.

Like Branch Rickey, the man who brought Jackie Robinson to professional baseball, William Gaines was a civil rights pioneer. Both were white men and although Gaines rarely gets any kudos for his civil rights stance, certainly not the way Rickey is remembered.

That shot fired in 1956 started a war in the comic book industry over black story lines, black characters and black creators and that war continues today. A war not nearly as difficult as it was in 1956 but a war nevertheless.

1956 meet 1993 meet 2012…

In 1993 Denys Cowan, Dwayne McDuffie, Derek T. Dingle, Christopher Priest and myself founded Milestone Media.

Milestone was a worldwide phenomenon making history with its ground breaking deal with DC Comics. At the time the deal with DC was the biggest joint venture deal ever done in comics.

The deal was not the reason Milestone was heralded. Milestone was rocketed in front of the public because the founders were four African American men. We were four because Christopher Priest left the company before Milestone published.

In the almost 20 years since Milestone came on the scene the company is still thought of as the penultimate African American comic book company.

That’s good.

That’s bad.

It’s good because Milestone accomplished something that was a long time coming. Milestone put black content on the map. Black creators, black characters and black story lines were propelled to the forefront of the American comic industry. Never before in comics long history has African American content captured the imagination of fans, retailers and the press.

It’s bad because Milestone is almost 20 years old and still the penultimate African American moment in comics. As a founder of Milestone that gladdens me as an African American creator it also saddens me.

Where is the next wave?

Within the African American comics’ community there exists splits’ that mainstream comic book readers for the most part are not aware of. Among most black creators Milestone is respected, but there are some young black creators who see Milestone as sellouts, Uncle Toms or worse. Some in the black comic book community have gone so far as to brand Milestone, House Niggers when discussing our groundbreaking deal with DC Comics.

This is the state of the very real divide within the black comics community.

There is a thriving independent group of young black creators who are doing bold and wonderful work. They publish with small indie houses or they self-publish. The stories they are creating are mostly Afro-centric, mostly positive but there are some which are anti-establishment, a.k.a. anti-white.

On the flip side of that there is a contingent of black creators who reject all other forms of publishing unless a major publisher publishes them and by major publisher I mean the two big boys, Marvel and DC. Lastly there are those black creators who would not publish with Marvel or DC if their lives depended on it, seeing both companies as comic’s answer to plantations.

With all the seemingly inexhaustible black talent out there I ask again…

Where’s the next wave?

Why is a new black anything (comic, creator, character) at Marvel or DC still seen as a breakthrough 20 years after Milestone and 58 years after Judgment Day?

Case in point, Marvel’s new half black, half Latino Spider-Man. That was a huge story, which captivated numerous news cycles. The recent cancellation of DC Comics’ New 52 Static Shock after only six issues sent shock waves (pun intended) throughout the industry.

The outcry from fans on the net went from, oh no Static was cancelled to Static was cancelled because he was black.

Here’s what Denys Cowan and I, co-creators of Static Shock and both black creators think, Static was cancelled because this hit, cool, teenage hero was fighting a giant fish.

Up until now there has been no serious attempt to showcase African Americans and the creative excellence, which has been a mainstay of the industry for as long as comics have been an American art form. Unfortunately at the beginning of the American comic book business, African Americans were depicted most often as horrible stereotypes.

I’ve seen that movie; Milestones: African Americans In Comics, Pop Culture And Beyond will not be that kind of show. 

Yes, there will me a nod or two to the depiction of those sad and hurtful images. However, this show will be about the vast talent and wonderful innovation that came from or were influenced by African Americans.

From the faceless contributions of those like William Gaines almost 60 years ago to the constant search for African American talent by Mike Richardson to the acknowledgement of contributions by people like Jenette Kahn, Marv Wolfman, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby this show will embrace the totality which is black comics.

Make no mistake; the overwhelming focus will be on black creators and their art. But let’s face it there would have been no Static Shock without the Black Panther.

It’s my hope that the show will feature not just the work of mainstream black creators but also work from those who consider themselves outside the mainstream as well as those who want nothing to do with the mainstream. I’d like the major comic book companies like Marvel, DC and Dark Horse to have sections devoted to them and their efforts to level the racial playing field but also let’s learn from the mistakes they made.

Independent and new companies will be invited to participate as long as the work from that company is quality. Let’s face it; some independent publishers simply suck.

I don’t care if you are the son of Malcolm X. If your work sucks you will not be represented in the show and I’ll keep you out by any means necessary.

Damn, I’m witty!

Writers from within and outside the comics industry will be called upon to write essays and reflections on the fight for acceptance and the triumph of arriving and exceeding expectations.

In America it’s no secret that African American culture is pop culture so it’s my objective to showcase that. I may fail, I may not be the guy that should have been chosen for this wonderful event but from the bottom of my heart I swear I will do the best I can.

If I fail, it’s my fault…and the Tea Parties…what?

WEDNESDAY: Mike Gold, Passion and Wonder

 

Happy Birthday, Jack Kirby! Here’s How To Celebrate!

Today marks the 95th birthday of the all-time king of comics, Jack Kirby. In the comics racket, that makes today a national holiday. The influence of superhero comics on our popular culture has never been greater, and, therefore, Jack’s impact upon our society has never been stronger.

To help celebrate, Jack’s 16 year old granddaughter Jillian has teamed up with our friends at The Hero Initiative on the Kirby4Heroes initiative.

To quote The Hero Initiative press release:

The Hero Initiative, the charitable organization dedicated to helping veteran comic creators in medical or financial need, is celebrating the birthday of Jack “King” Kirby on August 28 with a little help from The King’s family.

Hero has recruited 100 artists to get up on the morning of August 28, 2012 to simply “Wake Up and Draw.” This new event is a way for artists to limber up, get the creative juices flowing, and celebrate the day by drawing and sending a “birthday card to Jack.” All 100 drawings will be featured in a special gallery at ComicArtFans.com, and fans can follow the action through the day on Twitter searching hashtag: #WakeUpAndDraw. All drawings will be auctioned to benefit Hero Initiative at a later date! Neal Kirby, son of Jack, and artist Tim Seeley are featured in a special YouTube video on the event here. 

And Jillian Kirby, Jack’s granddaughter, has spearheaded the “Kirby4Heroes” campaign. Jillian has recruited a number of comic stores to donate a percentage of their sales to Hero on August 28, and encourage their customers to make donations as well. Fans can donate via the PayPal link at www.HeroInitiative.org, and type in “Kirby4Heroes” in the special instructions box. Jillian has teamed up with Seth Laderman, head of production from the Nerdist Channel, to produce a video spotlighting the campaign. Check out Jillian’s YouTube video on the event here. 

 “Though my grandfather Jack unfortunately died the year before I was born, I am surrounded by books, artwork, and of course family stories and anecdotes so much that I feel like I’ve known him my whole life,” said Jillian Kirby. “Even though I never had the opportunity to know him personally, I have learned my grandfather was a very giving and charitable man. I know my grandfather would have been the first to lend the Hero Initiative his support.”

Neal Kirby adds, “By supporting the Hero Initiative through the ‘Kirby4Heroes’ campaign and ‘Wake Up and Draw,’ comic book fans can honor my father on his 95th birthday in the same manner that he would have.”

 

Mike Gold: Creators’ Rights… And A Big Wrong

My original First Comics partner Rick Obadiah, who is not prone to outrage (I took care of that part), sent me an email a couple days ago expressing his pissed-offness at a piece in last Sunday’s New York Times.

For those who don’t have time to click-through, the Times essentially gives credit for the whole creators’ rights movement to Image Comics, now enjoying their 20th anniversary. I have no axe to grind with Image and I don’t think Rick does either; this is another case of typically sloppy reporting from the fantastically over-important New York Times.

In his email, Rick correctly points out that the stuff attributed to Image Comics started with First and with the other so-called independent publishers of the time: Eclipse, Comico, Now, Malibu, and others too numerous to name. I won’t quibble with the definition of “independent” – back in those days the term really meant “not Marvel/DC.” The Comics Buyers Guide even listed Disney Comics as “independent,” and that was the day I stopped using the term.

As I pointed out nearly 30 years ago in the pages of sundry First Comics, the creators’ rights movement on a publishing level started with Denis Kitchen and his fellow “underground comix” providers. The actual creators’ rights movement pretty much started on Day Two of the comic book industry when folks like Will Eisner, Bob Kane, William Moulton Marston and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby negotiated their own deals with the existing publishers and retained certain rights and/or received cover billing and/or creator credit and/or royalties.

But we – First, Eclipse, Comico, Now, Malibu, and the rest – took all that several steps further. Creators received certain ownership rights, cover billing, creator credit and royalties. Perhaps that was tame by today’s standards, but in 1983 this was akin to torching the Great Teat. We paid a price for this: all of those companies are now extinct, although some lasted nearly two decades – a good run in publishing. But we had nothing to take to the bank in terms of actual ownership when times got rough, when distributors went out of business and when investment-mania boiled over.

Once we started offering fair deals, DC and Marvel pretty rapidly started offering some of these rights under certain circumstances. That didn’t make them competitive on the creators’ rights front, but they provided acceptable safe haven to creators when times got rough on the independents front. And that includes me, and I am not ungrateful.

Did Image take this one step further when they went into business a decade later? They goddamn well should have and, yes, of course they did: the company was started by a half-dozen of the top writers and artists in the field. But Image isn’t a publisher in the traditional sense – to its credit, it’s more of a vanity press without the negative connotations of that term.

Image – and Dark Horse and more recently IDW and Dynamite – were built on the shoulders of the founders of First, Eclipse, Comico, Now, Malibu and the rest, and on our investors and our creative talent who took big risks breaking from the clutches of DC and Marvel without any guarantee those doors would reopen for them should the desire arise.

Again, I do not blame Image in the least. I blame the lazy, self-important “journalists” at the New York Times for having a historical point of view that fails to go beyond recently emailed press releases.

Here’s a secret. It is well known that the New York Times has never run comic strips. But this was not because comics were too lowbrow and well beneath their dignity. That was just their typical arrogant posturing. The New York Times didn’t run comic strips back when Pulitzer and Hearst started the medium because they couldn’t afford the fancy color presses. The paper of record, indeed.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil and the God Particle

SDCC 2012: Eisner Award Winners 2012

SDCC 2012: Eisner Award Winners 2012

  • News
  • July 14, 2012

An updated and corrected list — congrats to all the winners.

Best Short Story
“The Seventh,” by Darwyn Cooke, in Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition(IDW)

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)
Daredevil #7, by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, and Joe Rivera (Marvel)

Best Continuing Series
Daredevil, by Mark Waid, Marcos Martin, Paolo Rivera, and Joe Rivera (Marvel)

Best Limited Series
Criminal: The Last of the Innocent, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Marvel Icon)

Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 7)
Dragon Puncher Island, by James Kochalka (Top Shelf)

Best Publication for Kids (ages 8–12)
Snarked, by Roger Langridge (kaboom!)

Best Publication for Young Adults (Ages 12–17)
Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgol (First Second)

Best Anthology
Dark Horse Presents, edited by Mike Richardson (Dark Horse)

Best Humor Publication
Milk & Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad, by Evan Dorkin (Dark Horse Books)

Best Digital Comic
Battlepug, by Mike Norton, www.battlepug.com

Best Reality-Based Work
Green River Killer: A True Detective Story, by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case (Dark Horse Books)

Best Graphic Album – New
Jim Hensons Tale of Sand, adapted by Ramón K. Pérez (Archaia)

Best Graphic Album – Reprint
Richard Stark’s Parker: The Martini Edition, by Darwyn Cooke (IDW)

Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Strips
Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse vols. 1-2, by Floyd Gottfredson, edited by David Gerstein and Gary Groth (Fantagraphics)

Best Archival Collection/Project – Comic Books
Walt Simonson’s The Mighty Thor Artist’s Edition (IDW)

Best U.S. Edition of International Material
The Manara Library, vol. 1: Indian Summer and Other Stories, by Milo Manara with Hugo Pratt (Dark Horse Books)

Best U.S. Edition of International Material – Asia
Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, by Shigeru Mizuki (Drawn & Quarterly)

Best Writer
Mark Waid, Irredeemable, Incorruptible (BOOM!); Daredevil (Marvel)

Best Writer/Artist
Craig Thompson, Habibi (Pantheon)

Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team
Ramón K. Pérez, Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand (Archaia)

Best Cover Artist
Francesco Francavilla, Black Panther (Marvel); Lone Ranger, Lone Ranger/Zorro, Dark Shadows, Warlord of Mars (Dynamite); Archie Meets
Kiss (Archie)

Best Coloring
Laura Allred, iZombie (Vertigo/DC); Madman All-New Giant-Size Super-Ginchy Special (Image)

Best Lettering
Stan Sakai, Usagi Yojimbo (Dark Horse)

Best Comics-Related Journalism
The Comics Reporter, produced by Tom Spurgeon, www.comicsreporter.com

Best Educational/Academic Work (tie)
Cartooning: Philosophy & Practice, by Ivan Brunetti (Yale University Press)
Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby, by Charles Hatfield (University Press of Mississippi)

Best Comics-Related Book
MetaMaus, by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon)

Best Publication Design
Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, designed by Eric Skillman (Archaia)

Hall of Fame

Judges’ Choices: Rudolf Dirks, Harry Lucey
Bill Blackbeard, Richard Corben, Katsuhiro Otomo, Gilbert Shelton

Russ Manning Promising Newcomer Award:
Tyler Crook

Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award:
Morrie Turner

Bill Finger Excellence in Comic Book Writing Award:
Frank Doyle, Steve Skeates

Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award:
Akira Comics, Madrid, Spain – Jesus Marugan Escobar and
The Dragon, Guelph, ON, Canada – Jennifer Haines

Blame it on Stan Lee

  • News
  • June 13, 2012

The subject of Creators’ Rights in Comics has been catapulted into the limelight in recent years with the sudden surge of blockbuster, comic related films taking in billions of dollars for the corporations that own the copyrights and trademarks while the creators or the estates of creators that conceived and created these gold mines,  struggle to get screen credit, let alone, some type of monetary compensation.

The current success of Marvel’s characters in all popular media has made Jack Kirby the posthumous poster child for numerous creators who are now victims of the comic industry’s tradition of work-for-hire agreements.

Stan Lee, Marvel’s long-time, imperial ambassador and co-creator on many of these characters, stands accused of benefitting enormous financial gain while failing to defend the rights of his various creative partners, most notably, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko who many contend deserve more than just art credit for their contribution to the actual creation of the characters that they are associated with.

Stan has and always will be, first and foremost, a company man having been brought into the business as a gopher at the ripe old age of 17 by his cousin-in-law, Martin Goodman, the publisher and former owner of Timely Comics. Timely evolved into Marvel under the stewardship of Stan who took over as editor, replacing Joe Simon who left Timely with Jack Kirby  in 1941. Nepotism goes a long way in comics and Stan Lee, since, has always been “taken care of” for his role as a stalwart, corporate soldier.

To be fair Stan Lee is  much more than the average, Marvel Monkey Boy. He is, unequivocally the Voice of Marvel Comics. The head cheerleader. The band leader of the Mighty Marvel Marching Society. Stan Lee, in many ways, has made himself into a Marvel character as epochal as any Spider-man, Avenger or X-Men. He has done so with a silver tongue, a witty pen, relentless salesmanship, unbridled enthusiasm, and a revisionist memory that defies the continuity strangled editorial policy of Marvel itself.

Stan Lee and his relationship to Marvel is his own greatest creation and he gets paid handsomely for it. Stan’s net worth is reportedly $200 million! This staggering figure infuriates co-creators and their heirs as well as comic fans focused on creators’ rights who all argue the unfairness that Stan Lee continues to acquire great wealth while his former collaborators are rewarded zilch. Most of them can’t even get a free ticket to see a movie featuring the character they created.

Is there, however, any evidence that Stan Lee is gaining that wealth from any type of royalty paid to him for his act of co-creating those characters either? If Stan got even a fraction of a cut from all the Marvel films and associated merchandise featuring a character that he is credited as a co-creator of , that $200 million would be a drop in the bucket.

Stan gets paid for being Stan the Man. Stan gets paid for being Executive Producer. Stan gets paid for his gratuitous cameos. Stan Lee has made himself famous. He is the Kardashians of the comics world and he is making himself rich, still, at 89 years old with the same vigor he had in 1961 when the Fantastic Four first hit the stands.

So why does Stan Lee catch so much heat when the subject of creator’s rights comes up if he is probably a victim of the same corporate greed, himself?

Well, it’s his own damn fault.

While Stan was creating a marketing atmosphere that sold Marvel to it’s readers as one big happy, zany Bullpen, he took it upon himself to make stars out of his creators by giving them credits with merry monikers that were intended to stick in the minds of the legion of fans that was growing faster than even he could have imagined.

As Marvel Mania grew, Stan boasted and told all. He was very open about who he collaborated with and happily shared the details of the now famous Marvel Method of creating comics. Not only did he talk; he wrote it down in his own words so that even if his memory would one day be awry, there would be a very clear paper trail.

In 1974 Stan Lee authored Origins of Marvel Comics followed the next year by Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. The success of these two books led to The Superhero Women and Bring on the Bad Guys. These books all detailed his perspective of his creative relationships with the artists in the Bullpen especially his dependancy on his numero uno illustrator, “Jolly” Jack Kirby.

Stan seemed to do all this with an intention of elevating the appreciation of comic creators with both the public and the industry. He assesses that the writing in comics prior to the inception of the Marvel style “…left just a little bit to be desired.”

To make his point he writes:

“Who were these people who actually created and produced America’s comic books? To answer that burning question we must be aware that comics have always been a high-volume low-profit-per-unit business. Which is a polite way of saying that they never paid very much to the writers or artists. If memory serves me (and why shouldn’t it?), I think I received about fifty cents per page for the first script I wrote in those early days. Comics have always been primarily a piecework business. You got paid by the page for what you wrote. the more pages you could grind out, the more money you made. The comic book writer had to be a comic-book freak, he had to be dedicated to comics; he certainly couldn’t be in it for the money. And unlike most other forms of writing, there were no royalty payments at the end of the road… no residuals…no copyright ownership. You wrote your pages, got your check, and that was that.”

We all know that Stan Lee values credits highly and was sure to plaster his own name on every Marvel comic. Stan Lee Presents and Stan’s Soap Box were as much of the part of the Marvel experience as anything else. His famed sign-off,“Excelsior!”, still brings a giddy rush to a generation of comic book fans. In an effort to instill some added pride to the work of the comic creators in the Bullpen, Stan began putting credits of all the creators in the comics Marvel produced.

“…I’ve frequently mentioned Jolly Jack Kirby as our most ubiquitous artist-in-residence. He wasn’t christened Jolly Jack –– sometimes he wasn’t even that jolly –– but I got a kick out of giving alternative nicknames to our genial little galaxy of superstars, mostly for the purpose of enabling our readers to remember who they were. You see, prior to the emergence of Marvel Comics, the artist and writers who produced the strips, as well as the editors, art directors, and letterers, were mostly unknown to the reader, who rarely if ever saw their names in print. In order to change that image and attempt to give a bit more glamour to our hitherto unpublicized creative caliphs, I resorted to every deviceI could think of –– and the nutty nicknames seemed to work.”

Joe Rosen

And it did work! Joe Rosen, a letterer in those days said in COMICS INTERVIEW #7, “That’s why I admire Marvel. By instituting credits, they made you feel prouder of your work. And by being so successful they revamped the industry and launched so many titles that they made it possible to have a professional career.”

Stan knew that to be successful you have to make those around you successful. He did this by giving credit and creating work. Most of which went to Jack Kirby.

Throughout the Origins series and, actually, most of his career, Stan always spoke very highly of Jack Kirby and his creative contributions. Some of those very telling remarks have been posted on the Kirby Museum website in Robert Steibel’s Kirby Dynamics but I have to refer to a quote in Son of Origins where Stan Lee completely asserts Jack Kirby’s role:

“Jack was (and still is)* to superheroes what Kellog’s is to corn flakes. When such fabulous features as The Fantastic four, the Mighty Thor, and The Incredible Hulk were just a-borning, it was good ol’ Jackson with whom I huddled, harangued, and hassled until the characters were designed, the plots were delineated, and the layouts were delivered so that I could add the little dialogue balloons and captions with which I’ve spent a lifetime cluttering up the illustrations of countless long-suffering artists.”

(*This was written during a period when Jack Kirby had left Marvel and gone to DC, unhappy because he was not being paid for what he considered “writing” at Marvel according to Carmine Infantino in his autobiography The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino. Kirby no longer wanted to be “second fiddle” and even declined an opportunity to collaborate with Joe Simon for the same reason though the pair did do a single issue of Sandman together.)

Stan recognized that his greatest resource was his talent pool and, short of finding ways to give them ownership in their creations, he looked for other ways to keep them happy. Stan was even the first president of The Academy of Comic Book Arts that he started with Neal Adams. The ACBA was to be the start of a comic creator’s union of sorts but did not last long.

Stan Lee has been in the comic book business for seventy-three years, probably longer than anyone else alive. He has done more for crediting comic creators than any editor who had gone before him, revealing his greatest sin. With his eye focused on glamour and recognition he failed to affect righteous residual compensation for the efforts of Marvel’s comic creators. His compliance with the business tradition that he himself recognized as insufficient destined generations of creators to teeter on poverty while their creations reaped gold for Marvel.

The victims of this industry-wide practice blanket the entire comics landscape, some tragically. Most recently Robert L. Washington III co-author of Static which is currently owned by DC Comics died of a heart attack in abject poverty at the age of 47. His contribution to the Heroes Initiative is a heart wrenching window into the reality of too many comic creators.

Stan, we love you man, but we need you now, more than ever, to stand up for comic creators or you will be always be cursed with the blame for Marvel cheating the same creators that you personally paraded as stars. You can still make a difference. It’s time to put an end to an archaic, unjust work-for-hire practice that keeps talented people impoverished while a soulless corporation bloats over the spoils of their creative efforts.

You have stood at the helm of a company that has created heroes your entire life. Be a hero to those that depended on you the most, the ones that helped you build that fabled “House of Ideas.”

Celebrating Thirty Years of Comics History!

Gerry Giovinco

As an added Bonus here’s a link to Neal Kirby’s FATHER’S DAY tribute to his dad that ran on this site last year.

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