If you're not familiar with Lennon's short but brilliant solo career, I'd recommend checking out John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band...Walls and Bridges...and Imagine first—and then diving into the rest.
Here's one of John's greatest songs, recorded a few months after he left the Beatles...
So, speaking of John Lennon...Star Wars and comic books.
ReplyDeleteAS you probably recall, since you go back and study every post I have ever published her, I once made an observation about the Beatles, and generations. That each generation has one, just not always music. For instance, Millennials have the Simpsons, and Gen X has Star Wars.
I submit, that those elements shaped how comics have taken form.
Baby Boomers have the Beatles, but it is not just the Beatles is it? It is all the music of the era wrapped together. Music is the must defining medium for Baby Boomers, and it is why comics are how they were and are under them. Subconsciously.
In the 70s, when Baby Boomers started writing comics they were happy to play with genre. Not just because mainstream comics had more genres, they were mixing and matching.
Tomb of Dracula is a horror comic, but there is a but of the idea of Dracula as a supervillain. Dr. Strange did not just fight magic villains, he went into his own soul. Swamp Thing was a horror comic, except he was totally a superhero. Daredevil was a sci-fi comic, cosmic comic, spy comic, and pulpy street level guy all in the 70s. Shang-Chi was a kung-fu was a kungu fu comic, but also a superhero, but mostly a spy book. Allegedly sci-fi books were getting mixed with magic and sword and sorcery. and just so much more
It was not unlike the music of the 60s, which mixed and mashed genres all the time.
The mere structure of the books were influenced. One thing that happened once in a while were a a single panel, and then a wall of prose. Like how a song might get your mind to focus on one thing with the music and one with the lyrics.
Captions started becoming filled with more purple prose to build atmosphere, or get into the mind of main characters. Or, just becoming the main character's thoughts narrating, all common in songs.
Ten there was the very structure of comics. Panel design would get more creative in how to tell stories, like using music in a song to express things the lyrics can't.
It was also the birth of the run. Sure, Stan and Jack had a run on Fantastic four, but...not really. It seems like that was more of a retroactive assignment to silver age Marvel.
These runs would be full of individual stories, that would thematically run together. Plot lines that would connect, but not be necessary to understand the story. Like songs on an album. They were even the first to start doing intended endings to runs. Like a blackout sing.
The comics were mostly about character, with plots either serving that, or being somewhat clearly not what the writer was interested in. Like how the most popular songs are the ones that connect the listener and performer through human emotions. Having a beat you can dance to is nice, but the ones that emotional connect with people are what gets it remembered. The toe-tapping beat is the plot in this
Even at one point had a common practice of creators going and having fun in 7 page stories in Eerie and Creepy. Like both a single, or a member of a ban going off and putting out a solo album. The latter fully realized by indie comics
continued...
(Jack)
Now, on to Gen X, who didn't really get a chance to make comics until the 2000s. At least not in any huge way. And just like with the Beatles, it is not really just Star Wars, but the whole movie making scene that followed in it's wake.
ReplyDeleteMovies are ind of the medium Gen X is most connected to, and my god, did comics start looking like movies.
First and foremost, many got their start in indie comics or Vertigo, like many film directors of the generation.
Thought balloons completely disappeared. And captions got a lot more brief, until mostly fading away. And why not, movies don't have that, except old movies and indie films with voice overs. And those are used sparingly when used at all
More showing and not telling. We did not get to see a characters inner thoughts, their actions showed us, or other characters spelled it out.
Page structure hanged again. Where as previous iterations of say...New York would be busy, like a city. Now, it was sparse, like when you see people walking in a movie. Backgrounds as a whole has less going on. That is not realistic.
However, it is all what movies do to prevent extras and background details from drawing focus.
The panels were more like sets. There would even be a common practice of having essentially the same image with no or almost no change in the character as they talked. Because movie have that element. different panels were now a way to show minor time passages.
Dialogue started to get snappier, like in a movie-film. Which is done to keep the story moving and draw attention. And there was so much less of it. Because movies are told visually.
bigger panels to show it off, and hold it like a shot in a movie
And of course this all led to decompression. After all, movies are not short. Movies are like..two hours. So we get six issues story, that weave you into a larger point.
Runs change as well. Now it is a planned from beginning to end. Whole story more or less planned. None of this, "I had a fun idea this month" stuff. Planned out with the editor (producer) from the beginning. Now runs are collected in trades, and when you read them all that feel more like a movie series, clearly inspired by things like the Star Wars trilogy. Just more parts
Then there are the stake. Stakes get less and less personal. They are more like the action movies of the 90s, where whole cities are going to be destroyed. But that was already common, you say.
Fair enough, but it is no longer Spider-man fighting DOc Ock in a warehouse, or the Avengers fighting Thanos on another Planet,or the F.F. in another dimension. It is right in the heart of a populated city. And where when that happened in previous generations there would be talk about the effect of the populace, now it is gone. Only the heroes are talked about, because in movies that gets it too cluttered, and might make those awesome visuals seem kind of depression.
And thus the cycle of company-wide events is born. Not because it is comic book like, but because those mini series are cinematic.
Now, you might be thinking, "WAIT A MINUTE! I'M A BABY BOOMER! and I was writing comics not awakening albums. And, I met a Gen X-amazoid back in the 90s for a few seconds, and he was not making a movie"
But that is not the point, Because music was the most dominant medium, and likely the one you most bonded with people over, it effected how your brain thought of structures. There were certainly literary and cinematic elements to many comics by baby boomers, they just were not dominant. And if they were, it was probably specific to one person...like Frank Miller.
Jack
Fascinating, as always, Jack. When are you going to write a book, gathering all these theories and insights between two covers?
DeleteAnother connection is the output style...
DeleteThe 70s, those baby boomers at Marvel had massive turnout of new characters. You probably don't even remember Monark Starstalker, the Woodgod, Killraven (Love that guy), the Man-Gods, Seeker 3000 (how did that not get a Dematteis continuation?), Mordred teh Mystic, 3D-MAn, or that MAn-Wolf had an ongoing series,and MOrbius had two at the same time.
LIke how musicians, especially that of the 60s and 70s, had a high volume of trying new things, even on the same album
Conversely, it is not just about movies with Gen X, it is about movies of a certain era. Mostly, the era of the franchise.
Jaws started as a singular movie, and balllooned to a series that had a ghost shark seeking vengeance and tracking a guy from New England to the Caribean.
Rambo was a story of the mistreatment of Vietnam Veterans that became a man freighting Vietnam. Rocky, Back to the Future, Terminator, Indiana Jones, you get it.
As Gen X came started making comics for the Big two there increasingly became a push for established characters.
Sure, some of that was the rise of indie books, and having the ability to retain control of your best ideas. Also, the fact that fans increasingly had a harder time accepting new characters.
But, still, there seemed to be more of a push for franchisees. DC at one point had 1/5-1/4 of their books being a part of the Bat-family. When Bendis revamped the Avengers, Iron Man and CAptain AMerica were relaunched to be more intertwined.
SPider-MAn moved in to Avengers tower, with the Angers. Avengers got second and third books .THe Avngers became the backbone of every event, in a series of planned stories that went on for for years.
While fan preferences certainly played a part, there is no doubt that the creative forces had a very real comfort with the idea of franchises, and using them to set up a vibe.
Also, another one, is the change i how comics work as a business.
AS I am sure you are aware, comics were not designed to make money from the sale of comics, They were supposed to make money off the sale of advertisements. Just like TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, websites, podcasts, and youtube.
However, at the same time Gen X started getting more contol, those ads got fewer and fewer. Oh, there were still ads...house ads, which of course make no money. Making the actual purchasing of comics be a bigger and bigger part of the pie.
Wait...
The money being made from the purchasing of how one experiences the entertainment. Most ads being for other projects by the producer.
Sounds a lot like a movie.
Jack
I'd actually love to see a major movie that's set against the backdrop of the comic book business. Something that's well-researched and realistic, as opposed to the distorted vision we get on the rare occasions when TV and film touch on the business.
Delete1. So, what are we talking here? A bipoic, or a fictionalized account with fictitious characters based on real people in a a setting set up to echo the reality of comic book history?
Delete2. If we are are giving a list if things we think should happen involving the comic book industry, well...
One of the reasons that Manga is so much more popular than American comic books is because of the connection to Anime which went semi-mainstream in the 1990s.
There is a whole channel...well, half a channel...dedicated to adult oriented animation, which even includes anime. Invincible has done pretty well.
They should start looking towards animation as a more viable route for adaption. I hear Batman: Caped Crusader sort of does that, but it is still too close to home.
DC could do a Swamp Thin animated series, or Jonah Hex, or dive into their Vertigo back lot, or a Milestone series based around Icon and HArdware. Quite frankly, Sandman SHOULD have been an animated series on Adult Swim
Marvel could do Man-thing, Or Tomb of Dracula, or Killraven, or adapt an epic based around Starlin's Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock, since the films leapfrogged over that.
Then there are the indie comics...after all, Walking Dead was a smash...like Godland, Fatale (a great Lovecraftian horror Noir), Dreadstar, or any number. Even do a Conan one.
You could actually copy unique art styles, introduce more people to both comics, and how wide the world is, and probably increase sales, and push the Big Two into publishing more diverse stories again.
3. Since quantum physics increasingly states that all things are happening at all time, and the human brain just has trouble conceiving it (in a drastically simplified explanation), does that mean if someone died in 2032 they could be reincarnated in 1923?
Jack
I'll take that last point a little further: If this is all a dream, as many mystical paths say, then reincarnation itself is a dream.
DeleteAs for the movie idea: A Kirby-Lee biopic would be amazing. But a fictionalized comic book industry, ala Kavalier and Clay, would be welcome, too.
Well, Kavalier and Clay has been has been in development Hell since 2006. There was an interesting book I bought a year or two ago called Secret Identity, which is about the comic industry in the 70s...but ti also veers into genre fiction beyond that.
DeleteAs for the Lee-Kirby biopic, I am sure one is coming eventually, but I don;t think you will like it.
The nature of that relationship has become so divisive over the years, there is almost no chance it will be accurate. Mostly because comic book readers are bad, and I say that as one.
You are probably saying, "No they aren't, well some, but not most."
And perhaps that false belief of yours is somewhat true, but on this topic my statement is accurate.
It is either Stan did everything, or he stole everything from Jack Kirby. It is a very childish view of things, and comic fans...mostly those not old enough to have read those runs as they came out... refuse to shake the realities of collaboration.
And it gets ugly sometimes. I recently saw one that made the claim Le did not want the Black Panther, because he did not want Black characters in his books. Which is absolutely ridiculous, if you just look at how many Black characters he put in books he was writing without Kirby.
Also ridiculous because Gabe Jones was already in comics written by Lee, on a book Kirby abandoned before the first year was up/
That is how bad it gets.
There is also the problem that both Lee and Kirby has bad memories. And that they were both bullshit artists.
I AM NOT CALLING EITHER A LIAR. I am however saying they embellished stories, and comics fans don't understand that.
For instance, KIrby claimed he liberated a concentration camp...and that id provably wrong. He claimed he landed a week after D-Day, when it was actually over two months afterwards, and two weeks after the combat died down. The first two weeks after D-Day were intense.
And comic sand say he just got confused. And he did not, he was embellishing stories that he never thought would be published. Which is fine, but that needs to be understood.
Why does that matter? Because it would assuredly be used to make Lee look bad. That is how Hollywood works.
Personally I think a biopic about Jerry Siegel, Bill Everett, or Jack Cole's lives would make great movies.
But, truth be told, I think it would be best to take parts form all of them (Lee and Kirby too) to create new Characters than can reflect them all in a realistic setting. Because then you don't have to worry about the P.R. from families.or accidentally tarnishing people.
Jack
My take on the Kirby-Lee debate is simple: When I hear folks give Stan all the credit, saying Jack was "just" the artist, I rush to Jack's defense. When I hear people say Stan did nothing but sign his name, and Kirby did all the work, I rush to Stan's defense. There would have been no Marvel as we know it without both of them.
DeleteIf you haven't already, check out Tom Scioli's graphic novel biographies of both men. They're pretty interesting and, taken together, pretty fair.
Look Dematteis, I am with you 100%
DeletePartially because I understand how collaboration works, and partially because... well, I have read their works apart. There are similarities and differences that pop up.
As you may recall, I even, on this very site, tracked the Lee-Kirby arc on the F.F.. Pointing out the first 30 issues were clearly Lee leading the charge, but KIrby's influence growing with each issue. The book's golden age, #31-60-ish, being both men working in tandem, then the 30 after that being increasingly more Kirby. AND I LIKE A LOT OF THOSE ISSUES. The gangster-Skull story? Come on, that was awesome.
I have pointed out Kirby needs far more accolades Thor, which he was actually..probably...doing most of the heavy lifting on. But that his idea for the Silver Surfer was not very strong, and Stan saved the character.
Truth be told, I don't even think they knew for sure who did what, because that is how collaboration works. Be honest, you probably are not positive of everything that was your idea or GIffen's on JLI.
Sure, something probably stand out as ideas of your or some., "oh, that was classic Keith." But there was also probably a lot of throwing things back and forth, so it got blurry moments as well.
This is all obvious if you remember they were people...not fictional characters in a comic book. That is why despite the clear falsehoods in Kirby's military accounts, I don't consider him a liar. Just a guy who liked to tell a tale.
The problem is, many comic fans stopped forgetting they were people. Instead opting to view them as just as mythic as their creations, so they have to be heroes or villains, or it has to be the element of pure genius that was one man personified.
That is dumb.
You can look at real life comics creators Will Eisner and Jim Starlin.
Will Eisner was friends with Stan, and once employed Kirby. If any of the accusations of one man were true, he would have said something.
What he DID say was, "Kirby wanted to think himself a writer, but he was not so much a writer as a creator. Stan wanted to think himself a creator, but he wasn't so much a creator as a writer.
Jim Starlin, was maybe the most devote Kirby acolyte ever. He also worked for Stan, and mocked him in one of his Marvel comics. And he still points out it was both.
Going back to the generations thing, it does seem this view of them having to be mythic figures started in the 80s and 90s. Seems like before that people were pretty comfortable with the collaboration angle.
It is weird, and even a bit disturbing that so many comic fans cannot accept that.
I think you see something similar with modern views of American history. There seem to be two distinct camps that either believe everything done in the name of America until the 1990s was perfect. That the founding fathers were perfect saintly figures, devoid of sin, and proper judgement from the start.
Or that every historical figure was a monster, who should be hated and derided. And any good deed they did was stumbled into by accident.
Neither one of those views on U.S. history are correct, but it seems like that mentality is the same as with the Stan and Jack conversation. Because that is what it should be, a conversation, not a debate.
As for the Tom Scioli book, I saw it at the store, but I got too angry when it reminded me Godland is no longer being printed and put it back in disgust.
Ooo...what about this for out comic business history project that will never get made...
It is like a mini series, with a Golden age artist dying in like 2006, and it starts at the wake. Creators from all eras show up and share stories. Then when they leave they remember other stories they don't want to share. It could act as a framing device.
Jack
Here is a thought… or several.
DeleteYou mentioned reality being a dream. Many times in many place.
What if the reason people keep saying we are in a simulation is because they feel that, but are less inclined to think that way. They are contextualizing it into their terms.
But…what if saying it is a dream is doing the same to a concept beyond full human comprehension?
Jack
We'll all find out eventually.
DeleteFor instance, let's imagine something truly insane. There was a hippie comic book writer, born in the early to mid 50s, from Brooklyn. Let;s say he became a professional comic writer.
ReplyDeleteNow, let's pretend years later he started a blog. And had mentioned people like John Lennon, Walt Disney, and Orson Wlles influenced his creative output.
However, he seems to mention John Lennon a lot, as much as his comic book idols...but not nearly as much the cinematic folks.
Obviously an insane work of fiction, but sounds plausible, no?
Jack
Frankly, I think it's ridiculous!
DeletePlastic Ono Band is an amazing, daring, vulnerable, very personal album. Of the Beatles, only John could have made it, just as only George could have made All Things Must Pass.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more, Batocchio!
Delete