QUESTION 1: How much influence did Stan Lee's use of creative language (not his stories) affect the success of Marvel Comics?
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| Mephisto, Mesmero, Mysterio, Magneto! |
QUESTION 2: It is widely accepted that Watchmen was a bellwether book, but was the story great?
20 comments:
Short answer:
1.Yes
2.No
Longer answer to follow when I get done with a new student orientation event that's about to begin in my world.
Question 1. Wow, is that a tough question! I honestly never thought of that before. I suppose that coming out of the Code years when there was still a great deal of suspicion about comics, Stan Lee's style could have served to offset the "realism" of the Silver Age books by coming off so stilted and artificial as to leave no doubt that what was being depicted would confuse the kiddies that this was real life. It's hard to argue that children could be corrupted or ill-educated reading about a pagan Thor when the language was, I seem to recall, consciously designed to read like a bowdlerized Shakespeare. So in that sense, by helping skirt the concerns of parents and the CCA about the stories, the language could be given some credit for the success of the earlier books.
Question 2. I only read Watchmen once and that was about 25 years ago. I've never felt the need to re-read it, so that probably gives some indication of what I think of the plot. The story is meta and it's big, squiddy center is really just a MacGuffin. There are layers which reference the seedy, sexual side of early comics like Wonder Woman, or subvert later tropes like the Batman's invincibility and idealism. So if you like the idea that all narratives are just critiques of other narratives, welcome to your Disneyland. This has all the rides you love. If you find those rides too scripted, artificial or monotonous, however, you would probably have better off just picking up a copy of Sin City which came out around the same time.
Great questions!
1) Yep! I dug Stan's writing, soap box, etc,
2) I could not finish the Watchmen series...
Watchmen had a plot???
But seriously true believers, Stan's way out choice of language and ring-a-ding wordplay probably did have some impact on readers. His attempts at hip (or is that "hep"?) dialogue were straight from squaresville, but the sincerity came through; he was earnestly trying to connect with young readers instead of talking down to them and assuming that everyone who read comics was a duller version of Irving Forbush. That's probably why so many college kids were into Marvel in the 60s ... Stan was at least *trying* to grok their grooviness. (Man, it's exhausting to come up with that stuff ... how did Stan do it for so long?)
I actually held off on reading Watchmen for a long time because I'd heard it was so great, and I was afraid it might scare me away from writing. (SPOILER: it didn't.) It's certainly a dense story, with plenty of layers and cross-references, and meta-text ... but it's not so profound as to make me hear angels singing or whatever. I think its impact was so big because nothing quite like that had been done in comics before, whereas a certain amount of depth is almost taken for granted now.
Mike Wilson
1: A big, immense really, part of what made Lee's writing so distinct and memorable, and thus stories and characters so memorable in turn, was his creative use of language.
2. Yes, Watchmen is, among other things, a really great story. I've read 4 or 5 times so far and I've enjoyed it immensely every time, and always find interesting new aspects and food for thought each time.
It seems like thumbs down for the Watchmen story thus far. It is for me as well. I definitely see talent therein and I am sure in its time it was shocking, and I can't say that I didn't "like" it then. After reading it again I have a much different perspective (not that I ever had it in my top 20 must reads). There is an element that seems "anti-everything" and it bothers me that it has such an impact. As stated the story is dense and packed with nuance and criticism, but I don't feel I gained from it when I finished it. Calories without substance? Bleak critique masked as insight? A protagonist (or even an antagonist) that I can root for? Who should I relate to? It felt to me like a great outline, but one that was missing something important. I'm not even sure I can put my finger on it but something was amiss. I'm not sure the ending - beyond the cataclysm created by Ozymandius- was right. What was the conclusion? Nothing changed or everything changed? For me it was like drinking alka seltzer as a refreshing beverage.
Regarding Stan, my opinion is that the language was an extremely important aspect of Marvel's success. I feel that it preceded the bombast of the art. And many early plots were fairly pedestrian. But the language fueled a resurgence and reenergization of the form. The enthusiasm was contagious. Curious to hear more of your thoughts.
Thanks to all the new folks for piping in.
Sorry Edo -I missed your comment before I sent mine. Can I ask a question - and I am not being facetious at all -in Watchmen do you think the creators want us to side with Rorshach or Nite Owl or the Comedian? Or nobody at all? I don't think all art tries to relay a perspective, but I felt that Watchmen was trying to - I just don't have a grasp of what that was supposed to be. Was it deconstruction for deconstruction sake - do you think? Or if I knew nothing about comic history, was it telling a broader story? Or was it more of an exploration of politics, power and the Cold War? I feel it hints at many things but never feel it really gets there. But I may be missing something significant and really want to hear your opinion.
1. Lee's voice definitely shaped the Marvel vision for a long time, but that influence has been gone utterly since at least the late 1980s.
2. The story is fine (certainly better than 85% of superhero books, to arbitrarily pick a numer), but to focus on the story of Watchmen is akin to saying Moby Dick is about whale-hunting. Well, sure, but. . . A story (by which I take you mean plot ) is only a part of what matters in a text and sometimes it is the least important part. Most genre stories are predictable variations of a well-worn tropes, it is how they are presented that matters more than what their stories are.
Oh and to answer Matinex's question to Edo: I think at different times were are meant to root for different characters depending on the particular circumstances, but ultimately there are no "good guys," just flawed people among whom are some relatively pretty "bad" guys.
Just got back from taking my dog on her pre-bedtime walk, so I'm just getting to this now and found that Osvaldo sort of beat me to the punch.
Anyway, Martinex, in my view Watchmen is just a brilliantly structured and wonderfully-written novel rendered in sequential art. As for who we're supposed to identify with, well, Moore presents us with a number of well-formed, complex characters and kind of puts us into their heads at various points, and like Osvaldo notes, there really aren't any strictly 'good' guys (although I will say unequivocally, as it seems at least initially some people were unclear on this point: Rorschach is *not* an aspirational character).
One criticism I often see of Watchmen is that it's "just a deconstruction" of superhero comics or something similar. Yes, it was, but I don't think that was Moore's sole intention and not the exclusive point underlying Watchmen. I think he wanted to tell a certain type of story first and foremost, a rather dystopian alternate history, and in the process he did indeed deconstruct many of the conventions of the superhero genre, but he also critiqued US and world politics in the waning years of the Cold War, and found opportunities to rather harshly portray right-wing conspiracy theorists (as topical now as it was back in the 1980s) and poke fun at the effete hippie types who often wrote for Rolling Stone and other music magazines, and even write a sort of tribute to EC comics in the form of that pirate comic being read by the kid at the newsstand. And of course, that's just scratching the surface. So I've never came away from reading Watchmen and feeling unsatisfied, quite the opposite in fact.
By the way forgive any potential lack of coherence on my part in this comment; it's well after midnight over here and I'm going to crash pretty soon...
Watchmen strives to elevate the art form, as it almost gets there. It has aspirations that transcend the medium, but in the end those aspirations are hampered by the medium. The story is layered, genius, complex, and audacious. It is also self satisfied, tangential to the point of ridiculous, and the reader gets lost in its non-linearity. And the art is too scratchy for my tastes.
Yoyo
Having basically learned to read from Marvel comics, I fear my speech and thought patterns may be somewhat imprinted by Stan's Lee's far-out lingo.
I guess I just gotta hang loose and face front.
...uh, and oh yeah, excelsior.
Melancholy M.P.
Oh yeah MP, I feel ya, I too have been influenced by the bombastic style of Stan Lee. I do feel that a good portion of Marvel's early success was due to Stan's style of language. You can tell he was excited to write those early stories, and the readers noticed that too.
Watchmen? This is gonna sound sacrilegious but I've never read it!
- Mike 'Excelsior, true believers!' from Trinidad & Tobago.
Thank you for writing that. You explained exactly why I quit hSlf into it. Perhaps in a monthly instead of a TBP I could have stayed with it???
Thanks all for your input. Dr. O and Edo, thanks for sharing your thoughts on Watchmen. I can appreciate your perspective. I myself was always distracted by the meandering approach which led to my question (and comments) today. I always thought it could have benefited from some editing as I found the newsstand sections and the pirate ship sections distracting rather than enlightening. But who am I to say... I didn't like Moby Dick either. Ha. Probably says more about me than the literature at hand. Nuff said. (See how I brought that full circle).
Cheers all!
I think there's a place for works like Watchmen, The Killing Joke, or the Dark Knight. I'm a fan of all of these works, but I'm also a fan of the carefree, innocent goofiness of how comics used to be. For example, I love the old goofy (Shazam!) Captain Marvel stories, (talking animals!) and the Superman who was just a really nice guy. Or DeFalco and Frenz's Thor, an homage to the old Lee/Kirby days.
I think it's a bit sad that the former started bleeding into the latter. This Superman they've been showing in the films lately is unremittingly dark, angry and violent.
That ain't right. I would recommend the Watchmen film to anybody, it's a great film, but for me Chris Reeves is my favorite Superman.
M.P.
Very late to this party, but wanted to check in before I fade away into sleepy unconsciousness.
1. Yes, Stan's patter was integral to the Marvel experience for the first two decades, at any rate. It really served to set Marvel apart as something starkly different from what was found at DC. Think of DC's house ads during the mid 60's, and the "go go checks". DC's 'hipness' really seemed forced, and off kilter. Anyone remember Super Hip from the Bob Hope comics?
2. I found Watchmen to be extremely satisfying as a read, and as an artistic endeavor. Difficult to read, at times, troubling, but definitely thought-provoking. Really need to read that again.
Redartz, don't remember the Bob Hope comic (just a tad before my time), but I've come across a number of comic bloggers, etc. who have sang its praises in the "so bad it's good" or perhaps "so WTF it's good" sense.
Charlie Horse's comment has got me thinking about the best way to read Watchmen; I only ever read it in its collected, tpb form (the first time in the late '80s, when a fellow comics fan in my college dorm loaned me her copy), and I think that's how it has to be read. I can't imagine what it would be like reading each chapter as a monthly installment, but I'm certain the effect of the overall story would be blunted.
By the way, for those of you who like podcasts, I highly recommend this excellent discussion of Watchmen on the equally excellent Radio vs. the Martians podcast from just over a year ago: http://radiovsthemartians.com/blog/2015/06/18/episode-20-youre-gonna-like-this-its-got-g-gordon-liddy-in-it/ (otherwise, I highly recommend everything done by the Radio vs. the Martians guys - check out the main site for their episode archives and various other podcast projects).
Stan Lee had the best conceptualizers and visualizers in comics on his team. I'm thinking particularly of Kirby and Ditko but also of Don Heck. With them he had NO worries over how the Marvel world was going to come to life on the page. He was freed to concern himself only with the distinct dialogue, snappy repartee and deft
characterization he did so well via speech and narration. YES, his varied yet instantly identifiable language was instrumental in Marvel's rise! It got attention because he AND his artistic collaborators created something young readers couldn't ignore.
WATCHMEN...and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS...well, I read them years after they came out. Moore had already deconstructed the superhero, and better, in MARVELMAN. The earlier strip was much more like an imaginary or Elseworlds tale that need not affect other worlds, other heroes. Great and self-contained. WATCHMEN and its better brother DARK KNIGHT led the fall of the more or less simple superhero into the reality-TV quicksand of questionable decision, motivation and behavior where the concept now lives. A shame, as there's some really good writing in both.
As someone who was indeed reading WATCHMEN as it come out every month (actually, bought the first three issues at the same time off the rack at Geppi's Comic World in Silver Spring-- it was their last remaining copy of #1), I can tell you that it was darned near impossible to recall the threads of the previous installment(s) every. . . single. . . time. The subtleties of the narrative are simply washes away with the passage of real life between installments. By the time we got to the whole fake giant space octopus, I had completely lost track of the clues for it that had been laid months before. And the pirate story caught me flat-footed every time we returned to it.
Doesn't mean it was bad, and that I didn't engage with and appreciate (if not exactly enjoy) the book. But as noted above, I was also left with a "so now what am I supposed to do? Or think? Or take away from this?" conundrum once we got through the last page. A very valid question for a reader to ask is, Why is the author telling this story? For that matter, what is the compelling case that this story must be told at all? Although I'm a fairly articulate fella, I'm not particularly deep-- and always had the nagging feeling that I was missing something with this book that other more-discerning readers were picking up on. . .
(I did like the art, myself--)
HB
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