At the beginning of comic book publishing, the businessmen behind the companies had close to zero respect for the content of the publications and even at times some of their practices could be described as outright criminal.
WARNING: Very long.
The evolution of the American comics industry and the people behind it is an incredibly complex subject. It was a skeevy business from the outset, run on the slimmest of margins by a few ambitious men long on chutzpah and short on ethics. It's impossible to underestimate how important "cheap" was to the way comics developed. John Santangelo (Charlton) provides a perfect example: it was cheaper to print comic books than to let his presses stand idle. Even back when a dime bought a slice of pie, the profit on a comic book, perhaps a penny or less, was minuscule. The only way to make money was to keep production costs as low as possible and to sell a lot of copies. Big sales weren't guaranteed. Keeping costs low was more manageable. Hire kids and old-timers needing a paycheck.
Looking back you realize that early comics were shaped by larger-than-life figures like Donenfeld, Fox, Arnold, Liebowitz, Gaines, Hughes, Biro. Some were more honest than others but all were ambitious, hard-headed hustlers who cut corners when they could and ran their businesses with an eye to eking out as much profit as possible.
The big change in the industry began in the mid-to-late sixties. Marvel was the catalyst and Stan Lee played a huge role. (Please withhold the catcalls until I finish.) Stan Lee was the last of the larger-than-life comics pioneers. Over the course of many years, through endless self-promotion and backroom shenanigans, he succeded in making himself the face of Marvel Comics. With the exception perhaps of Bill Gaines and EC no one man has been so closely associated with a comics brand. By the time Marvel entered the big time it was "Stan Lee's Marvel Comics." No one else could match that. It wasn't "Carmine Infantino's DC Comics" or "Pat Masulli's Charlton Comics." Comics were pulling in real money for the first time and Lee was perfectly positioned to ride the gravy train.
Martin Goodman's sale of Marvel/Magazine Management in 1968 was the company's first step from the Marvel Age into the Corporate Age. It was also the first step in Stan Lee's increasing irrelevancy. Marvel wasn't the first to go the corporate route. DC had been sold to Kinney the previous year. To be fair that company had always had a more corporate, suit-and-tie environment than its competitors.
Stan Lee was still valuable as Marvel's human logo, but that's all. Lucky for him he'd set himself up in a position to live off his legend for quite a while. Successive editors tried to become the new Stan--heaven knows Jim Shooter gave it everything he had--but there was no room for a Big Guy in the new comics world. Successive buyouts by ever larger entities made Marvel Comics less and less important to its owners until now it's owned by the ultimate corporate machine, The Disney Company. DC followed a similar path, and today comics are primarily seen as a source for characters and storylines to be used in the
important media, movies and TV/Streaming.
Currently the US comic industry seems to be at a creative dead-end, endlessly repeating a few themes
And here we are. Disney and Time/Warner are immense cancers which have metastasized throughout popular culture. Especially Disney. If you want to blow your mind, look up the chart listing everything Disney owns or controls throughout the world. The most familiar names--Marvel Comics, Star Wars/Lucasfilm, The Muppets, Pixar, The Simpsons, Hulu, ABC Network, Fox Networks, 20th Television, ESPN, National Geographic--are just the beginning.
The corporation employs an infinite number of accountants and algorithms tasked with feeding its endless appetite for growth. The corporation makes an obscene amount of money. To what purpose? To make Bob Iger richer? A thousand Bob Igers couldn't burn up a tiny portion of the loot. The corporation must bring in as much money and pay out as little money as possible because that's what corporations do.
Inevitably corporate products will be retreads, sequels, re-imaginings, remakes, re-hashes, of stuff that made money before. That's how accountants think. The risk of running with a really new idea--if such exists--scares the pants off them. The new ideas come from outside creators who come up with a successful property. The corporation buys it up, absorbs it into the corporate mass, and begins producing the endless spinoffs, sequels, etc.
ad infinitum.This doesn't mean that creators can't produce quality stuff within the machine. A good writer and artist (or director, producer, etc) can turn a tired old sow's ear of a property into a shiny silk purse. But the point is that it's still the seventy-fifth reworking of an existing property. Zombies, magic, dystopias, etc. have sold well, so let's have zombies and magic in a dystopian world in which only The Absent Minded Professor can save humanity.
This has already run on too long, but I want to address one more point. If we fans have a weak spot, it's our need to identify bad guys and good guys. The more passionate the fan, the stronger is their insistence on
either/or and the lower their tolerance for
both/and. In Stan Lee's case there's powerful pressure to label him as either the good guy who's being trashed unfairly despite having built the Marvel Age, or the bad guy who leeched off the creators who
really built the Marvel Age. The trouble is,
both characterizations are true. Stan Lee profited mightily by taking credit for his staff's groundbreaking work
and the Marvel Age of Comics wouldn't have happened without him.
Consider this: if the Marvel Age comics were so great only because of the quality of the work of the Kirbys and Ditkos, these creators should have had equal or greater success elsewhere. That didn't happen. Kirby had been turning out great stuff for decades and continued turning out his unique work for years after leaving Marvel, but only at Marvel was he "King." Similarly Ditko continued inventing new characters and stories long after severing ties with Lee. None clicked. What was missing? Stan Lee.
Now consider: if the Marvel Age comics were so great because Stan Lee was such a good writer/character creator/whatever, he should have been able to create a second Marvel Age somewhere else. That didn't happen either. In fact his subsequent projects were minor to the point of embarrassment. What was missing? Kirby, Ditko
et al.My point is this: Stan Lee was an egocentric blowhard who skated to stardom on other people's creations.
And Stan Lee was a tireless promoter whose unceasing ballyhoo pushed Marvel into the public consciousness. Yes, Stan was a sonuvabitch.
And his hype and hucksterism
were the secret ingredients that built the Marvel Age. Kirby, Ditko and their comrades were great creators but they weren't promoters. If somebody like, for example, Dick Giordano had been Marvel's editor, the company would still have turned out fine books. But I'll bet Marvel would have remained just a company that published good comics. It took an egomaniacal pitchman like Stan Lee to convince a wide new audience to forget their scorn of "funny books" and give Marvel comics a look. When they did look, they found stories and art which captured their imagination.
I repeat: this isn't an either/or. Lee was a less than scrupulous man who capitalized on other peoples' work.
And without him there wouldn't have been a Marvel Age and comics today would be very different.
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Topic: I Want to Learn to Draw Golden-Age Art (Read 4653 times)
