Artists Assemble!

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Alex Buchet

The Vision; art by John Buscema and George Klein, caption by Roy Thomas

May 2015 will see the release of the film Avengers: Age of Ultron, Disney/Marvel’s sequel to their wildly popular 2012 blockbuster, The Avengers.

These films are, of course, based on comic book characters; and it behoves us to remember that the latter did not arise spontaneously from some corporate swamp, but were created by flesh-and-blood artists and writers.

We give these creators their due credit below.

The Avengers were created in The Avengers 1 (September 1963) by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Cover art by Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers.

Thor was created by Jack Kirby, with script by Larry Lieber, in Journey into Mystery 83 (August 1962). Cover art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott.

The Hulk was created by Jack Kirby, with script by Stan Lee, in The Incredible Hulk 1 (May 1962). Cover art by Jack Kirby.

Iron Man was created by Don Heck (art) and Stan Lee and Larry Lieber (script) with a costume design by Jack Kirby, in Tales of Suspense 39 (March 1963). Cover art by Jack Kirby and Don Heck.

Captain America was created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (both sharing script and art) in Captain America Comics 1 (March 1941). Cover art by Jack Kirby.

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch (at far right in the cover illo below) were created by Jack Kirby with Stan Lee on script in X-Men 4 (March 1964). Cover art by Jack Kirby and Chic Stone.

Hawkeye was created by Stan Lee (script) and Don Heck (art) in Tales of Suspense 57 (September 1964). Cover art by Don Heck.

The Black Widow was created by Don Rico (script) and Don Heck (art) in Tales of Suspense 52 (April 1964). Cover art by Jack Kirby and Paul Reinman.

Ultron was created by Roy Thomas (script) and John Buscema (art) in The Avengers 55 (August 1968). Art by John Buscema and George Klein.

The Vision was created by Roy Thomas (script) and John Buscema (art) in The Avengers 57 (October 1968). Cover art by John Buscema.

The Black Panther was created by Jack Kirby with Stan Lee script in Fantastic Four 52 (July 1966). Art by Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott.

The same team introduced the Panther’s homeland of Wakanda in the same issue (see below illustration).

Nick Fury, agent of S.h.i.e.l.d, was created by Jack Kirby with script by Stan Lee in Strange Tales 135. Cover art by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia.

And, last but not least…Baron Strucker was created by Jack Kirby with Stan Lee scripting, in Sgt.Fury and his Howling Commandos 5 (January 1964). Cover art by Jack Kirby and George Roussos.

Obviously Jack Kirby deserves the lion’s share of creative credit…but the unjustly forgotten Don Heck also merits plaudits.

See you at the multiplex!

Avengers Assemble! The American Novel Since 1950

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Chris Gavaler

As a kid reading comics, I loved when superhero teams scrambled their rosters. For The Avengers No. 137, “We Do Seek Out New Avengers!,” Vision and the Scarlet Witch left on their honeymoon, Yellowjacket and Wasp rejoined, and Moondragon replaced the recently deceased Swordsman, leaving Hawkeye’s spot (he went off in a time machine to find the Black Knight) to be filled via an open call at Shea Stadium, where only the Beast showed up. Sounds easy, but when the Defenders televised a similar recruiting call three years later, the team was inundated with 23 would-be members, from canonical crushers Captain Marvel and Iron Man (cover appearance only) to inspired backpagers White Tiger and Prowler.

The Defenders No. 62 cover features team leader Nighthawk holding his apparently throbbing head and roaring at the impressionistically pint-sized heroes buzzing around him. Which is how I feel as I juggle the roster for a would-be course on the recent American novel. Even my open call “I Do Seek Out American Novelists!” attracts trouble, since that Canadian crusher Margaret Atwood showed up in the Shea Stadium of my brain (so does that mean I have to add “North” to the course title?). I already sent her Nobel-winning countrywoman Alice Munro home on a technicality (“Novel” not simply “Fiction”), which still leaves over twenty superpowered authors buzzing across my cover.

Writer Steve Englehart and editor Marv Wolfman weighed a dozen factors when revising the Avengers in 1975. It must be hard tossing out fan favorites like Wanda and Vision, but see how they replaced them with another married couple? And notice how they improved gender distribution by swapping in Moondragon? (Though, okay, the female count plummeted back to one when Wasp gets hospitalized in her return issue). Of course you still want some of the old standards, Thor and Iron Man, while leaving room for an unexpected choice like the newly blue-furred Beast. And what happens when you put all these costumes in the same room? How do they get along?

Syllabus-assembling makes the same demands: are these powerful books, a balanced range, what story do they tell when they stand shoulder-to-shoulder? By balanced, I mean are half by women? Are half not by white authors? It’s not political correctness but good storytelling. If a course representing the last sixty or so years of the American novel consists mostly of Caucasian men, the story is: white guys write the best stuff. That’s a stupid story, so I know four of my roughly eight slots are going to be filled by women, and four by non-WASPs. Though that doesn’t reduce the swarm of authors in Shea Stadium much.

The Englehart-Wolfman Avengers range from the team’s oldest character (Henry Pym was buzzing around in 1962) to the two-year-old Moondragon (plucked from the 1973 pages of Daredevil). When I taught a 21^st century American lit course, I had about the same age range and so felt free to juggle the reading order by convenience and whim. But a span of sixtysome years requires a more disciplined time machine. Start in the 50s and bound forward decade by decade. That draws attention to gaps though, so suddenly distribution matters too. That’s one of many good reasons that Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony made my first cut, as a rep of my underpopulated 70s favorites (I prefer that decade’s short stories). It also means my overpopulated 80s is a problem, so DeLillo’s White Noise could be in trouble.

And what about genre types? In addition to two insect-sized humans, the 1975 Avengers include a mutant, an alien-trained telepath, a cyborg, and a god. So I should probably hit the key literary schools too. Pynchon is an easy pick for Metafiction, though Nabokov’s Pale Fire is even more fun. New Journalism’s “nonfiction novel” list is harder to prune: Capote, Mailer, Thompson, Didion, and of course my college’s beloved alum Wolfe. But if experimental memoirs are fair game, then I want Kingston’s Woman Warrior on my team (okay, maybe I do like the 70s). So maybe it’s better to swat away all things nonfiction?

I called my 21^st century fiction course Thrilling Tales and focused on the pleasant collision of traditional literary novels with the formerly lowbrow genres of scifi, fantasy and mystery. I could make the second half of the 20^th century an Old Testament to that thesis. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is an alternate future, and Morrison’s Beloved a ghost story. Chabon won his Pulitzer for transforming superheroes into literary subject matter, and what’s The Crying of Lot 49 but a riff on thriller conventions? Egan’s genre-splicing A Visit from the Goon Squad could cap it all, and, for a truly blue-furred freak, I could shoehorn Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen (I know, Moore’s British, but he was living in the States at the time of his very American collaboration, which, by the way, made Time’s ALL-TIME 100 Novels, thank you, Lev Grossman).

If you want to push the genre angle even further, swap out Flannery O’Connor for Patricia Highsmith. Or revise the subtitle to “Since World War 2” and open with Wright’s Native Son. Trade Pale Fire for Lolita and suddenly the course opens with a legion of supervillains: Bigger Thomas, Mr. Ripley, Humbert Humbert. Maybe I need to read Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho next? Baker’s The Fermata is a bound too far, though White Noise and its “Hitler Studies” is back in the running. I was thinking about Jones’ The Known World, but I just finished Whitehead’s Zone One, and all those zombies pair so well with the horrors of Beloved and the shadowy PTSD of Ceremony. Maybe the name of this course is American Monsters?

I was nine when I started reading The Avengers. My students are about nineteen, but they have something in common with my former Bronze Age self. Englehart and Wolfman mixed and matched their roster, knowing theirs was just the latest incarnation of a team other writers would continue to juggle for decades. But No. 137 was the first Avengers comic I ever saw. This wasn’t one version of an evolving team. This was THE Avengers. And for the students on my would-be class roster, this is the only American Novel Since 1950 course they will ever take.

And at the moment it looks something like this:

1955 Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

1966 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

1977 Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

1985 Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

1987 Toni Morrison, Beloved

1986 Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, Watchmen

1999 Michael Chabon, The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

2010 Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

2011 Colson Whitehead, Zone One

Thor vs. the Dark World of DC

Posted on November 10, 2013 by Chris Gavaler

According to the new Thor movie, every few millennia the universes line up for an anything-goes cosmic cross-over called the Convergence. Inhabitants of unrelated realms get sucked through portals and tossed together to defy the laws of physics. It happened for the first time in 2012. They called it The Avengers. Superheroes from all the Marvelverses were plucked from their disparate origin worlds to converge in a single, box office-defying blockbuster.

Physicists predict the next Convergence will occur in 2015—not once, but twice! Not only will The Avengers 2 draw the sequel-spinning franchises of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America together again, but Warner Brothers’ Batman vs. Superman has Gotham and Metropolis on a collision course—with Paradise Island and Starling City and other DC planets to be swept into the same Justice League gravity pit.

But which Convergence will come to define all of superhero reality?

In Thor: the Dark World, an evil dark elf wants to use the Convergence to remake reality in his own dark image. He’s played by former Doctor Who Christopher Eccleston, but his real name is Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight trilogy and the gray tones it casts over Man of Steel now define the DC brand. It’s a humorless void happier with the droning rumble of Christian Bale’s Bat-rasp than the giggles of a live audience.

The Dark Knight Elf wants to crush the world into a Black Hole. But Thor, with his lightning bolts and deadpan timing, is all about levity. He’s super-hunk Chris (not Christopher) Hemsworth in the credits, but his real name is Joss Whedon. The Asgardian—like his buddies Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and even the ever earnest Steve Rodgers—is a Comedian. He throws that mighty hammer at all kinds of monstrous bad-asses, but he it’s our funny bone he keeps hitting. I didn’t see Joshing Joss’ name in the credits, but I hear Mr. Whedon was responsible for major rewrites and reshoots—all part of his uber-duties as the overseeing Odin of the Marvelverses. He’s Captain Convergence, and he wants the world to end in a laugh not a rasp.

Of course the Whedonverse isn’t a flawless reality. There’s a moment in Thor 2 when a funeral barge sails over an Asgardian waterfall and hangs there a moment before dropping—a little like Wile E. Coyote after sprinting past the edge of a canyon. It would be pointless to criticize a Road Runner cartoon for its failure to follow basic laws of physics. And the same is true of Thor: the Dark World and the laws of plotting. The word “convenient” comes to mind, as does “inexplicable” and “far-fetched.” Director Alan Taylor is hoping we’ll be too busy enjoying ourselves to ask annoying questions like “How is it that a random convergence portal just happened to drop Thor’s girlfriend of all people into the exact spot where the Dark Elf’s reality-destroying superweapon has been hidden for millennia?” Comic worlds tend to cut corners. Do we really need to hear a ponderous explanation? Nolanland has plenty of those, and its’ still pockmarked with its own plot portals.

The Whedonverse—despite Whedon having literally majored in Women’s Studies—also can’t find much for Natalie Portman to do but look lovelorn and occasionally panic-stricken. This might be the result of the gender-challenged fabric of superhero reality, since DC can’t even turn a Wonder Woman screenplay penned by Joss Whedon into an actual movie. Apparently Hollywood executives think fanboys won’t buy tickets to see scantily-clad women in fight scenes. And yet the shirtless beefcake shot (Hemsworth provides a couple screamers) has become a staple of the genre (the clothing-challenged Stephen Amell flexes weekly on the CW’s Arrow).

This may or may not be why my wife surprised us both by saying she wanted to see the new Thor movie. I was so underwhelmed by the first that I was going to pass, but I’m glad she suggested it. I like dumb fun. I also like smart fun, but that combination has yet to Converge on a superhero universe. I’m hoping it won’t take a millennia.

More Superheroes, More Ideology

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Eric Berlatsky

Note by Noah: Eric posted a brief review of Dark Knight and other recent superhero films in comments. It seemed a shame to let his thoughts languish at the bottom of an old threat, so I’m highlighting them here.
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I liked DKR way more than the previous two Nolan Batman movies. It does seem pretty conservative in some ways…though…as it turns out…the “Bad Guys” are not really 99%’ers at all and are just manipulating political unrest and class division to take revenge. In some ways this is a copout (just another madman/madwoman bent on revenge or world domination), but in other ways it mitigates the conservatism of the film (which initially seems to take the side of the rich/status quo vs. the “crazy” poor and downtrodden). In some ways, one could read the film to suggest that it’s the mistreatment of the poor and mishandling of the economy that “primes” that (large) section of society to be manipulated by “evil.” That is, there is some suggestion that if we had a more egalitarian society, revolution/anarchy wouldn’t be necessary (or on the verge of happening). (Just as criticizing the results of the French Revolution in the short term doesn’t necessarily mean one is in favor of the ancien regime). For all those reasons, it’s an interesting film, that (to me, anyway) made more sense plot-wise than Batman Begins or Dark Knight…and had enough fun mindless superheroing and explosions to make it enjoyable. Anne Hathaway was also surprisingly good as Catwoman.

I also liked the new Spider-Man movie quite a bit. That one had almost no ambitions that I could see… I liked the return to Gwen Stacy, though, since I read about her in Ben’s book. Both DKR and ASM were better than Avengers, to my mind (which really made almost no logical sense…never mind the ideology).

Also…the fact that Bruce Wayne loses all of his money is meant to make him a more ambiguous figure (not clearly on the side of the rich). Instead he ends up in the same place as Bane—stripped of everything…at the bottom of a well…etc. I don’t think this really works to make Batman a “working-class hero” (it’s something to be, I here)… but that’s clearly the intent…and it adds an extra layer to any kind of ideological reading. To some degree, I agree that “it’s a mess”—but at least it’s an interesting mess…which is more than can be said for something like Avengers…which is both a mess…and completely mindless.

Bam! Pow! Superheroes vs. Ideological Critique!

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Ben Saunders

Editor’s Note by Noah: Ben originally wrote this on a thread at the Comics-Scholars listserv in response to what he called “the banal, tendentious, flat-footed, and largely comics-ignorant commentary of Manohla Dargis and AO Scott. I asked to reprint Ben’s piece here, and he kindly agreed. With his permission, I’ve edited his piece slightly so it can stand alone without confusing references to a conversation we’re unable to reprint in full. I’ve included ellipses to show where I’ve made deletions.)
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…as someone who can enjoy some superhero comics and films, and who can even find things to admire and teach in the work of superhero comic-book creators from the 1930s to the present, I have a mixed reaction to the (very common) ideological critiques of this material – that is, critiques that focus on the supposed racism, nationalism, and sexism of the genre.

Depending on the degree of intellectual subtlety and rhetorical talent of the critic, I can find such responses stimulating, informative, educational, and provocative; but I can also find them reductive, repetitive, self-righteous, and (occasionally) no less ideologically dubious than the material purportedly being “critiqued”. Most often, though, I just find ideology critique boring.

To be clear: I am entirely persuaded that the superhero genre as a whole is vulnerable to critiques in term of racism, nationalism, and sexism.

So is the genre of the Western. So is the Crime/Noir genre (in fact, I would say the problem of misogyny is far more fundamental to the crime genre as a whole than it is to the superhero genre; and I like a lot of crime/noir stuff, too). So is the SF genre. (Any Robert Heinlein readers out there?) So is the Romance genre. And on, and on, and on.

My point is NOT that “all these genres can be politically problematic, so why pick on superheroes.” (Although an honest, aesthetically searching discussion of why different genres at different times get cut all sorts of critical and ideological slack, while other get dismissed on such grounds – well, that might be worth reading.)

My point is rather that ideological critique can only take us so far. It tends to proceed as if works of art (or acts of representation, if you prefer) are best judged in terms of their political content and efficacy. In other words, the (generally unspoken) assumption of such criticism is that politics should serve as the primary evaluative yardstick by which the “success” or “failure” of a work of art (or act of representation) can be measured.

I happen to disagree, strongly, with this assumption (although that does not mean that I do not have an interest in and cannot learn from or do not sometimes practice ideology critique!).

One serious problem with the “superhero movies are racist, nationalist, sexist” arguments (and I use the term advisedly) of Dargis and Scott is that it insults those members of the audience who consider themselves to be anti-racist, anti-nationalist, and anti-sexist. I would number myself in that crowd.

And do I really need to add that there are in fact quite a lot of women, people-of-colour, and non-Americans, who enjoy superhero fantasies? How are they supposed to respond to the “arguments” of Dargis and Scott? “Oh my, you are so right! What a fool I have been for enjoying the propagandist “entertainments” of my oppressors! Would you please supply me with a list of approved movies and books so that I may become as enlightened as a New York Times journalist – for surely there is no one wiser or kinder on God’s green Earth!”

I suppose one could make some argument about false consciousness in order to “explain” the phenomenon of, say, a woman-of-colour who just enjoyed the heck out of, say, The Avengers. But personally I find such arguments deeply patronizing, and self-evidently inadequate.

A more productive line of reasoning (to my mind) would be to ask what it is about superhero fantasies that attracts so many people (across lines of race, gender, and generation), DESPITE the ideologically troubling aspects of many of those fantasies.

Isn’t it possible – just possible – that there is something genuinely emotionally compelling and even aesthetically powerful about the best examples of this genre? (Just as there is about the best examples of the Western, the Crime genre, the Romance genre, and so on?) Isn’t it possible – just possible – that sometimes people are responding to those compelling and aesthetically powerful aspects of these narratives (and not just, say, giving in to their inner fascist)?

It might also be worth pointing out that it is possible to be aware of the ideologically poisonous aspects of an art work (or act of representation) such as, say, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice or (to take a more recent and perhaps even more disturbing example), The Birth of A Nation, while also considering those artworks important enough to be worth teaching, and even defending in terms other than the political.

And BTW, I don’t find a movie like The Avengers to be anywhere near as troubling as D W Griffith’s racist version of history, or even Shakespeare’s The Merchant. I’m not arguing for some sort of equivalence between these texts – I’m arguing that ideology critique is, at best, an opening move, in critical terms. To my mind, you have to have more things to say about a movie or book than “it’s racist/sexist/homophobic” if you are really engaging with it as a professional critic. Of course, you don’t HAVE to engage with any text critically if you don’t feel like it or think it’s worth it. But if you aren’t engaging in that way, don’t pretend that you are.

Scott and Dargis, I submit, fail this basic test of critical engagement when it comes to the superhero genre… Scott and Dargis just come off as art-movie-snobs, and their attitude is all too lazily familiar. But hey, we already knew that the NYTimes doesn’t have much of a clue about pop culture. This is the same NYTimes that just criticized Comic Con for being too serious, after all. (And they say superhero movies are stupid and incoherent!)

For those of you who might be interested, I’ve found Jonathan Dollimore’s book, SEX, LITERATURE & CENSORSHIP to be very smart and useful when it comes to parsing out the vexed relationship between aesthetics and politics – and in moving beyond the more knee-jerk tendencies of ideology critique. Dollimore’s work is definitely somewhere in the back of my mind as I write all this, and it seems appropriate to give him a nod.

Rorschach, Superstar

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Noah Berlatsky

A bit back, Sean Michael Robinson talked about a production of the Diary of Anne Frank that interpolated the music of the Carpenters. Sean noted that the production was wonderful, moving, inventive…and also illegal.

Anne Frank’s words, however, and the translation of her words on which we were relying for much of our text, were a different matter, as was the authorized play (Diary of Anne Frank), which provided much of the rest of the text. All of these elements are still under copyright, and will continue to be so for several years. (In fact, copyright in the theater is more restrictive than in almost any other field. You can, after all, read a book or listen to an album any way that you wish once you’ve purchased a copy–but to publicly perform a play one must conform to a dizzying array of limitations set out by the author or the author’s agents–usually, that every word of the play will be performed, i.e. no cuts or insertions without permission, and that the appearance, gender and even staging etc will honor the stated intentions of the author regarding the script and contract.)

Sean’s prescription — with which I agree, is that we need to rethink our insanely restrictive copyright laws in order to make it possible for people to reimagine older works, and create new ones, without having their asses sued off.

This does bring up a rather uncomfortable issue for me, though. Mainly…if I think that art is built out of other art, and that the copyright laws should reflect that, then what exactly is the deal with my recent article on Slate, where I discuss my deep disgust with DC’s Before Watchmen? After all, as Jones pointed out with his usual logician’s obsessiveness, Alan Moore has ripped off everybody from C.C. Beck to H.G. Wells, and probably other people whose names begin with A, X, Y, and Z as well. If I think high school kids should be able to mash up Anne Frank and the Carpenters, and I think that Alan Moore should be able to mash up Dorothy and Wendy and Alice (which is probably not the best word choice there, but onward), then what exactly is the problem with having DC put out a new! Watchmen! prequel! — or for that matter, a Watchmen toaster? Isn’t there some moral inconsistency here?

Possibly. But let me try to think through the differences.

— First, it’s useful to remember the purpose of copyright. According to our Constitution, the purpose is not to protect creators. The purpose is to encourage art. Copyright is supposed to give creators a monopoly on their own works so that they will have a financial incentive to create those works in the first place. If as soon as you write something, everybody else can publish it under their name, then you’re going to limit the people who will write to hobbyists who don’t need the money. (Not that there’s anything wrong with hobbyists, he says as he writes for free on his blog. The point is just that ideally you want to encourage other kinds of writing as well.)

However. Giving someone an infinite monopoly on their work also limits creation. It makes it hard to comment on older works, or to remix them, or to use them as inspiration for newer works. That’s why copyright is limited; so that works will eventually enter the public domain where they can be used by other artists with no strings attached to make things like League of Extraordinary Gentleman…or what have you.

The point is that there’s no particular contradiction between arguing that, on the one hand, Alan Moore is being screwed, or that, on the other hand, basing a work on Bram Stoker — or even on C.C. Beck — is okay. I’m personally in favor of a copyright of about 50 years from date of publication — which would mean Watchmen would still be under copyright, but that a lot of works Moore has lifted from would not be. A fifty year copyright would also put Anne Frank out of copyright…though not the Carpenters.

— Second, even when works are under copyright, I think there needs to be a vigorous fair use provision. Such provisions can include, for example, flat fees for using music (like the Carpenters) without giving the creator veto power over how or where that music is used (which, yes, would mean that idiotic republican presidential candidates could use Bruce Springsteen’s songs if they wanted even if the Boss objected. I think that’s a reasonable price to pay for a vigorous public domain, personally.) I also think that in situations where there is no profit, as in Harry Potter fan fiction, for example, most bets should be off.

Soooo…again, how is all of this different than DC publishing Before Watchmen…or than Marvel using Jack Kirby’s characters (which are certainly on the verge of my 50 year timetable) without paying him?

Which brings us to my last point.

—The issue with DC and Marvel is not that they are creating new work using somebody else’s characters. As I’ve suggested, artists do such things all the time; it’s a big part of how art is made. Without it, we wouldn’t have Shakespeare, much less Alan Moore.

So the issue with DC and Marvel isn’t use of the characters. The issue is, specifically, lousy business practices. Moore and Kirby never got to exploit the copyright for the characters they created; instead, Marvel and DC used crappy contacts, evil industry practices, and disproportions of power to gain the benefits of the law for themselves. So it’s not that Marvel and DC shouldn’t use those characters. It’s that they shouldn’t be able to reap a monopoly windfall for using those characters based on dubious business practices.

And, in a bitter but by no means isolated irony, the excessively insane draconian provisions of our copyright law mean that the creators are actually much more extensively screwed than they would be if copyright were reasonable. If copyright were only 50 years, Marvel would be in the process of losing its rights to its properties one by one — which would mean that anybody could make a Spider-Man movie or an Iron Man movie, which would make Marvel essentially worthless, which would mean it would go out of business — which wouldn’t benefit the Kirby family financially, of course. Still, you’d think his ghost would at least get a kick out of it.

In any case, the point is: the creators working on Before Watchmen are not despicable because they are using someone else’s art to make art, because that’s what all artists do. They’re despicable because they are knowingly helping DC exploit a monopoly that was obtained by fucking over the people who created it — and because one of those fucked over creators has verbally erected the equivalent of a picket line. Hughes, Straczynski, Cooke, et. al. are not thieves. They’re scabs. I hope that’s a comfort to them.

I For One Welcome Our New Superhero Overlords

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Alex Buchet

Okay, I’ve just seen The Avengers, Marvel’s and Disney’ latest blockbuster superhero movie, and first I want to state: yes, Jack Kirby does get his name in the credits.

In a half-assed way.

The credit line states: “Based on the comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.”
True enough, as far as it goes. A more honest credit would have read: “The Hulk, S.H.I.E.L.D., The Avengers and Nick Fury created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; Thor and Loki created by Larry Leiber and Jack Kirby; Black Widow created by Stan Lee, Don Rico, and Don Heck; Captain America created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.”

(And justice would further be served by the additional line: “Iron Man created by Stan Lee, Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Don Heck; Hawkeye and the Black Widow created by Stan Lee and Don Heck.” Don Heck was never a fan-favorite, and has been dead for some years; there’s no constituency for his memory; but his contribution should not be slighted.)

The problem is, as the dominant paradigm now has it, individuals don’t create; only corporations create. And Marvel/Disney would rather slit their entire management’s throats than acknowledge that this fiction, the source of their billions, is based on a lie.

Well, I shan’t continue in my grumpiness — after all, I was hypocrite enough to ignore the boycott of the film initiated by Kirby family supporters such as Steve Bissette.

So how was the movie?

Alan Moore, when asked his opinion of the first Image superhero comics, made an interesting analogy.

He said an old-style superhero comic (say, a Dick Sprang ’50s Batman) could be compared to coca leaf: a mild stimulant. The powerful superhero comics of the seventies, like those drawn by Neal Adams, would be the equivalent of refined cocaine. And the Image comics were the equivalent of crack.

To steal his simile: The Avengers is the crack cocaine of superhero movies. It will stimulate the comics fan into a near-fatal geekasm.

That’s not a criticism, actually; this flick’s an exceptionally well-made distillation of its genre. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like, to quote Abraham Lincoln. It hits all the right notes. Superheroes beating the shit out of each other? Check. Cool, sexy super spy? Check. Neat-oh futuristic equipment and weaponry? Check (The rise of the Shield helicarrier from the ocean to the skies invokes genuine awe.) Nasty-ass aliens, supercilious super villain, awesome costumes (Loki finally gets to see action in his bitchin’ horned helmet), tons of death and destruction, and Cap instructing old Greenskin: “Hulk, smash!”? Check, check, check, check and check!

The film isn’t lacking in non-infantile pleasures, either. The dialogue is crisp and witty — although poor Thor and Captain America are handicapped by having to wax solemn or anguished while the rest of the cast are given all the zingers. The best lines go to Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark (Robert Downey Jr); one scene between the two makes one think more of Noel Coward than of Stan Lee.

(There are plenty of physical laughs, too, mostly coming from the Hulk. After an incredibly snotty divine put-down by Loki, Greenskin educates him with a beat-down that looks like a violent gag from a classic Popeye cartoon.)

Ah, Loki. An adventure tale is only as good as its villain. The classically-trained British Hiddleston plays the part with such relish that one only sees in hindsight the nuances he brings to the character: there is an under-layer of pain and anguish to his posturing. And, true to both the comics Loki and that of Norse mythology, he relies as much on cunning and the psychological manipulation of his foes as upon brute force.

(I won’t tell why, but the funniest line in the film is Loki’s “I’m listening.”)

Downey somewhat unbalances the flick: as some wags put it, a better title would have been ‘Iron Man III, co-starring the Avengers’. Not that I’m complaining — it’s always a delight when he takes the screen, especially when out of armor.

However, Marvel showed great judgment when they chose Joss Whedon to direct. Whedon has extensive experience in comics and feature films, but I’d wager that he was chosen especially for his experience in television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where he proved his ability to handle large ensemble casts in fantastic milieus. The script perfectly characterizes every role, far better and more subtly than the comics ever did. It’s a masterpiece of psychological clockwork.

Two of the minor heroes particularly stand out: Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). There are hints of dark, complex, anguished pasts for both of them. I get the feeling Whedon would have been more than happy to have centered the film on these two.

One surprise, on the other hand, is how overshadowed Thor (Chris Hemsworth) emerges. Frankly, he cuts a poor figure compared to the dashing Stark, the brutish Hulk, the glittering Loki. In Thor, he towered; here, his cape looks tatty, and his previous vikingly cool beard makes you think now that he was too rushed to shave that morning.

The fights, the Hulk-smashing, the repartee are all top-notch. In sum, if you want a summer blockbuster where “you can check your brains in at the door”, this is for you.

But we never can do that, can we?

Art by Jack Kirby and Frank Giacoia

The Avengers has special place in my nostalgic pantheon: issue 5 was the very first Marvel comic I’d ever purchased, back in spring 1964, when I was 9 years old. Sure, I was aware of the marketing hook behind it — “Your favorite heroes TOGETHER!”– and didn’t care a whit. Yeah, I’d already seen it with Justice League of America from DC. Loved it there, too.

Looking back, there were troubling aspects to this comic. The Avengers were the élite, and pretty much also the tools of the élite. They were bankrolled by Tony Stark, comics’ epitome of the military-industrial complex; they lived in a mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York — the swankiest address in the world. ( Of the great mansions built there by the “robber baron” capitalists of the 19th century, only the one housing the Frick Collection remains.) They fought commies and aliens and worked with the government. And they were self-selected: the aristocrats of the superhero world.

They resembled nothing so much as an elite private club, like the Yale or Century clubs, floating high above hoi polloi.

The film carries this conceit to the next step, arguably an even more sinister one.

The last half-hour of the movie shows a gigantic battle between the Avengers and an army of extraterrestrial invaders in the streets of Manhattan. And my childish, fannish joy in these shenanigans was overlaid by a feeling of dread — of appallment.

I realized why halfway through: it was the location of this mass destruction that roiled me. A ten-year-old taboo had been shattered, one dating to 9/11. It’s now acceptable once more to depict buildings in New York, and the people inside them, being destroyed.

And this is where my unease was compounded. This iteration of the Avengers wasn’t the old “gentlemen’s club,” obnoxious though that be.

This one was conceived from the start as the auxiliary of a tremendously powerful secret American government defense agency. This élite cadre of superhumans, following the orders of a wise leader, Nick Fury, was there to protect us from unreasoning, fanatic aliens bent on flying into our greatest city and toppling its skyscrapers.

From Space Al-Quaeda.

So that’s my reading of The Avengers. Its subtext, hardly subtly advanced, is the glorification of Homeland Security and of the current security state. Why, even the Hulk, that powerful adolescent fantasy of revolt against authority, meekly goes along with the program. Who are we to gainsay him?

Hmm… maybe I really should’ve checked my brain in at the door. Then again, maybe I did, and just forgot to check it back out…

P.S. I saw this film in Paris, where it was released on April 25; it won’t be in general release in the States until May 5. Such divergences between international release dates are less common than they once were, for two reasons: a) the studios want to discourage piracy, and b) cultural globalisation. It’s only in the past twenty years that France adopted summer as a movie blockbuster season, as it has always been in America: before, summer was given over to b-films and re-releases. (Hey, if you were spending the summer in France, would you want to waste it in a movie theatre watching Hollywood fare?) And gone are the days as recent as 1989, when Warner Brothers had to launch a whole campaign in advance of the Tim Burton movie explaining who Batman was to the French. The crowd I saw Avengers with was wholly familiar with the characters. La coca-colonization culturelle n’est pas morte, helas!

Spoiler alert:

The usual post-credits closer reveals who Loki’s mysterious alien ally is. Yep, it’s Thanos.

The Hooded Utilitarian

a pundit in every panopticon

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