For information on stopping the spread of COVID-19, and on what to do if you are quarantined, have a look at the World Health Organization site.
I can't remember which book I read it in, though it might have been Ronin Ro's Tales to Astonish, in which was discussed the fact that in the mid-Seventies, after Jack Kirby had left the company, that Marvel reprinted a lot of his old work without giving him any remuneration. I think today's comic is one of these, as the series appears to reprint much of the original run of FF.
I've read a couple of things by scripted by Stan Lee over the last little while, and I think the thing that gets me about his writing is that he seems to lack faith in the abilities of both the artist and the reader. So much of his captioning is simply a character explaining what actions have just taken place, even though, through either visual clues or context, a reader really ought to have been able to figure it out themselves. "I've been thrown from the cavern" shouts a character, for example, even as in the previous panel we've seen them hurtling toward the cavern opening, and in the panel in which they're speaking, we seek them being thrown from the cavern. Any time that there's dialogue during action sequences, it's pretty much all description of what the artist has just shown us. And the artist is Jack-frickin'-Kirby, so we don't really need someone holding our hand through the action. Kirby is pretty good at communicating visually.
That said, the melodramatic dialogue outside of battle, the soliloquy-style thought bubbles, these are all excellent examples of where Lee is actually a pretty great writer. He elevates simple interactions to the level of icon, reminding us that the people we're reading about, despite Marvel's attempts to place their heroes on a much closer level than their Distinguished Competition, are in fact operating at iconic levels. These are gods in human guise who just don't realize that they're gods. I think Lee's scripting brilliance lies in that aspect. He knows that superheroes are role models, and that they operate in a much simpler reality than we do. So the hyperbolic language offers a similar tool as ancient Greek tragedies did, albeit in a much different format and millieu. I've spoken before about how when we read a Wolverine comic, the lesson is not that we should go and slice our enemies into little bits. It's that we should, and can, react to problems with the same resolve, sometimes the same savagery, but not with the same actions - at least in the case of the very violent actions we see in superhero comics. Instead, it's the passion, the placing of such importance on situations, that we should be taking away. If we apply ourselves to our own problems with the strength that Ben Grimm applies himself in this issue, we may find those problems, metaphorically, are flung away into the ocean, much like the Thing's enemies in this story.
I've avoided a lot of the early FF, mainly because I've always found Lee's writing off-putting. But I may give it another go from this perspective. Add to this iconic level of storytelling the fact that the four members of the team are elemental proxies, and all of a sudden the importance of these stories is amplified. We mock Lee's bombastic dialoguing, but what he's actually doing is channeling a different level of storytelling into a popular medium.
More to follow.
Further Reading and Related Posts
I had a lot of people ask me about Stan Lee when he died. Here's a post I wrote that says some things.
And, hilariously, here's a post from just over a year ago where I use almost the exact same opening line as I did in today's post. I need to be more original.
I've read a couple of things by scripted by Stan Lee over the last little while, and I think the thing that gets me about his writing is that he seems to lack faith in the abilities of both the artist and the reader. So much of his captioning is simply a character explaining what actions have just taken place, even though, through either visual clues or context, a reader really ought to have been able to figure it out themselves. "I've been thrown from the cavern" shouts a character, for example, even as in the previous panel we've seen them hurtling toward the cavern opening, and in the panel in which they're speaking, we seek them being thrown from the cavern. Any time that there's dialogue during action sequences, it's pretty much all description of what the artist has just shown us. And the artist is Jack-frickin'-Kirby, so we don't really need someone holding our hand through the action. Kirby is pretty good at communicating visually.
That said, the melodramatic dialogue outside of battle, the soliloquy-style thought bubbles, these are all excellent examples of where Lee is actually a pretty great writer. He elevates simple interactions to the level of icon, reminding us that the people we're reading about, despite Marvel's attempts to place their heroes on a much closer level than their Distinguished Competition, are in fact operating at iconic levels. These are gods in human guise who just don't realize that they're gods. I think Lee's scripting brilliance lies in that aspect. He knows that superheroes are role models, and that they operate in a much simpler reality than we do. So the hyperbolic language offers a similar tool as ancient Greek tragedies did, albeit in a much different format and millieu. I've spoken before about how when we read a Wolverine comic, the lesson is not that we should go and slice our enemies into little bits. It's that we should, and can, react to problems with the same resolve, sometimes the same savagery, but not with the same actions - at least in the case of the very violent actions we see in superhero comics. Instead, it's the passion, the placing of such importance on situations, that we should be taking away. If we apply ourselves to our own problems with the strength that Ben Grimm applies himself in this issue, we may find those problems, metaphorically, are flung away into the ocean, much like the Thing's enemies in this story.
I've avoided a lot of the early FF, mainly because I've always found Lee's writing off-putting. But I may give it another go from this perspective. Add to this iconic level of storytelling the fact that the four members of the team are elemental proxies, and all of a sudden the importance of these stories is amplified. We mock Lee's bombastic dialoguing, but what he's actually doing is channeling a different level of storytelling into a popular medium.
More to follow.
Further Reading and Related Posts
I had a lot of people ask me about Stan Lee when he died. Here's a post I wrote that says some things.
And, hilariously, here's a post from just over a year ago where I use almost the exact same opening line as I did in today's post. I need to be more original.
No comments:
Post a Comment