On the creation of superheroes as gradual development versus instantaneous inspiration

I've been thinking a lot about where exactly new superheroes come from over the course of the last few months, thanks largely to some of the books I've been reading: Annie Hunter Eriksen and Lee Gatlin's picture book biographies of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Douglas Wolk's All Of The Marvels and the late Lou Mougin's Secondary Superheroes of Golden Age Comics. I've also been thinking about the subject because of what I've been blogging about lately, like the Thunderbolts* movie, with its cast of characters created by almost 25 writers and artists over the course of some seven decades, and, of course, the related issue of who, exactly, created The Sentry and how.

Mougin's book, an exhaustive survey of Golden Age super-comics, rounds up the scores of characters created by over a dozen different publishers in the years following the first appearances of Joel Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman comics (and some of the more distinct characters to follow in his immediate wake, like Batman, Wonder Woman, The Human Torch and Captain America).

Given the pace at which this army of superheroes appeared and then disappeared from the pages of the comic books of the time, one imagines that most were created on-the-fly by the guys who wrote and/or drew them. 

When a modern reader thinks of how someone might have got the idea for a Cat-Man or a Crimebuster, a Wizard or a Boy King, a Daredevil or a Black Hood, a Mother Hubbard or The Face, it's easy to imagine that sort of out-of-the-blue, lightning bolt-style of inspiration, a deadline-driven act of creation that rushed from an image in someone's head to the drawing board to the printed page (For the more unique characters, anyway; a lot of these heroes seemed to come from artists doing their own riffs on a Superman, or trying a different animal theme for a Batman, or rearranging the stars and stripes on a costume to get their own Captain America).

As for the heroes of later generations, though? 

Well, they had these Golden Agers (and their peers from the pulps and radio and film serials and comic strips) as a vast reservoir of inspiration. Not only could later creators find various templates among the biggest  successes of those early years who are still starring in their own comic books today (Superman, Batman, Captain America, etc), but also the heroes I would consider the true second stringers (the characters who ended up on the JSA, for example, and those of publishers Fawcett, Quality and maybe MLJ). And then the more random-sounding also-rans that fill Mougin's book, like White Streak or The Conqueror or The Blue Bolt or Magno or the guys named The Reckoner, of whom there was more than one. 

Many of the later heroes of the late 1950s and 1960s created for DC and Marvel and Charlton and others could be traced back to Golden Age ancestors, and contemplating such second-generation heroes now, it's actually kind of hard to think of a character whose name, power or gimmick doesn't have Golden Age antecedents of some sort. (Seriously, try it!) 

But still, there are some. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee's The Thing, for example, seems to be born more of monster comics than old superhero comics, and wow, where did the idea for the Silver Surfer come from exactly, you know? 

Anyway, some bits of Wolk's book that I found particularly interesting were the examples he gives when discussing the creation of certain characters. 

In the weeks since I read All of the Marvels, these examples seemed to only become more resonant, as I thought about Lee's work with Kirby and Ditko on the first wave of Marvel heroes while reading those picture books and then later reading of the avalanche of superheroes of the 1940s in Mougin's book. 

Very early in Wolk's book—page 5, actually—he mentions that the "Marvel's narrative," the focus of his book, "has a peculiar relationship with his authorship": 

Legally, it's "maker" is a corporation, one that's gotten bigger over time as its body of intellectual property has changed hands. In practice, it was made by a specific group of people whose names we (mostly) know, and whose particular hands are (usually) unmistakable on any given page. But it's also almost always been created collaboratively: if you think any one person is the sole creator of a particular image or plot point, you're probably wrong, which is why it's a mistake to think of any one person who's worked on a Marvel comic book as it's "author."

This passage then leads to an extensive footnote, during which he notes the difficulties involved in untangling who created what.

This can obviously be a contentious subject that fans and sometimes the creators themselves have argued about over the decades, be it how much (or even if) Stan Lee might have contributed to those early Marvel heroes with his collaborators Kirby and Ditko, or the later disagreements regarding the creation of Wolverine and Ghost Rider (the latter of which went to court), or the current issues with The Sentry. 

Wolk writes:

Even the question of who created Marvel's best-known characters is also often more complicated than it looks. It's easy enough to assess who came up with Marvel's first superheroes of the 1960s, the Fantastic Four: Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. (Except that the Human Torch's name and basic design had been created by Carl Burgos back in 1939).

He goes on to cite a few other relatively easier ones, like Captain America (Kirby and Joe Simon) and Doctor Strange (Ditko), before showing how quickly it can get rather convoluted.

Iron Man? That's a little trickier. Lee plotted his first story, but Larry Lieber wrote its dialogue; Kirby drew the first cover and designed the character's initial costume (which barely resembles the familiar rend-and-gold one, designed by Ditko a bit later); Don Heck drew the initial story and invented what its protagonists Tony Stark and Pepper Potts look like.

So the Marvel Universe hadn't even been around a year yet, and there was already a character who seemed to have at least four primary creators, whom Wikipedia lists under "created by" in its article on Iron Man. (As for Ditko, who Wikipedia does not cite as a creator of the character, where does he fit in? Is a redesign considered an act of creation? If it comes some time after a character's debut, is it seen as somehow less important? Does it matter if that redesign becomes the primary, default one?)

The next example is more complicated still. Writes Wolk;

Daredevil? Well, now you're running into trouble. Lee wrote the first story, and Bill Everett drew it, but the cover was drawn by Kirby, who might have designed Daredevil's original costume, too, although the much more familiar red costume was first drawn by Wally Wood starting in the seventh issue. When you talk about the now-familir look and feel and mythology of "Daredevil," though—the tormented Catholic romantic who leaps around the shadows of Hell's Kitchen and fights ninjas and Wilson Fisk—you're mostly talking about what Frank Miller added to the character in the '80s, along with his artistic collaborators Klaus Janson and David Mazzucchelli. (Except that Wilson Fisk had been created by Lee and John Romita Sr. fifteen years earlier.) And so on. 

Wolk doesn't mention it at all here (this is just a footnote, long as it is, of course, and this is outside the purview of his book), but it's worth noting that Marvel's Daredevil, who debuted in 1964, was preceded by another comic book hero named Daredevil from an entirely different publisher. 

The two-toned, boomerang-wielding Daredevil of Lev Gleason Publications, whose creation is credited to Jack Binder and Don Rico, debuted in a 1941 issue of Silver Streak and his own title ran 134 issues, not being canceled until 1956. (This is the character who, long since lapsed into the public domain, one might have seen more recently in the pages of Savage Dragon as "The Dynamic Daredevil" or in various Dynamite Comics as "The Death-Defying 'Devil".)

Mougin does mention the possible relationship between Lev Gleason's Daredevil and Marvel's Daredevil in his book:

The legend goes that publisher Martin Goodman wanted Stan Lee to do a comic based on [longtime Daredevil writer Charles] Biro's hero, in 1964. Since Lee admired Biro's work, that may not be unfounded. But, instead, Lee, Bill Everett, and Steve Ditko created a new Daredevil, switching the original DD's muteness for blindness and subbing a billy club for a boomerang. 

Does that not sound plausible to you? If not, well, Mougin did say "legend", didn't he? (I am curious about his mention of Ditko here, as Wolk doesn't mention Ditko at all when he discusses the creation of Marvel's Daredevil.)

The sense I got while reading this very early bit of Wolk's book was that rather than being created by a single artist or a single writer or even a single writer/artists team, sometimes it's more of a group effort, a creation by committee. That certainly seems to been the case with Iron Man, for example.

As for the Daredevil example, it shows not only that sometimes it's a team or a staff (or, in Marvel's case, a bullpen) that might create a superhero character, but sometimes it can take multiple creative teams and multiple years—hell, here some 20 years!—before a corporate character like Marvel's Daredevil reaches what will ultimately be considered his essential, perfected form.

Far later in the book, in a chapter entitled "Good is a Thing You Do" that is devoted to the debut and early issues of the current Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan and to Ryan North, Erica Henderson, Derek Charm and company's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (the latter of which was built around a 1991 character designed and originally drawn by Ditko), Wolk gives an even better example of a character being developed into creation, I think. He does so while also illustrating how newer Marvel characters are dependent on older ones, and how even their earliest antecedents can be traced back to still earlier, pre-Marvel ancestors.

"Kamala Khan is yet another of Marvel's collective creations, her real-world origin too complicated to be attributed to a single originator," Wolk writes.

She emerged from conversations between editors Sana Amanat and Stephen Wacker about Amanat's experience growing up as a South Asian Muslim in New Jersey, as well as writer G. Willow Wilson's interest in creating a teenage Muslim superhero ("Sana and I initially had very modest expectations for this book," Wilson wrote five years later. "Our goal was to get to ten issues.") Artist Adrian Alphona came up with the images of Kamala and her supporting cast, although her costume was designed by Jamie McKelvie. 

Wolk also cites the particular creative choices made by colorist Ian Herring and letterer Joe Carmagna as distinct and important, each further defining and differentiating the initial Ms. Marvel comic book series from others in Marvel's line.

We could also note that while McKelvie designed Kamala's costume, a significant component of it, the lightning bolt-shaped symbol, was taken from Dave Cockrum's redesigned costume for the previous Ms. Marvel Carol Danvers dating back to the '70s.

And, of course, the superhero codename "Ms. Marvel" also came from Danvers, who was created, as Danvers, by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan in 1968, but made into the superhero Ms. Marvel by Gerry Conway and John Buscema in 1977.

And, just to make this into a game of superhero telephone, the original Ms. Marvel was a distaff version of the male hero Captain Marvel (created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan in 1967). He took his name from the Golden Age Fawcett Comics character Captain Marvel (created by Bill Parker and C.C. Beck in 1942), and that Captain Marvel was based on Siegel and Shuster's Superman...or at least, the company then known as Detective Comics was sure enough that he was that they took Fawcett to court, accusing them of copyright infringement (The case was eventually settled in 1953, in large part because, in Fawcett's estimation, superhero comics had by then ceased being profitable enough to fight over).

And thus we get from 2014's Ms. Marvel Kamala Khan all the way back to the very first superhero in 1938. 

Anyway, both Wolk and Mougin's books are very interesting reads, and ones that should be of interest to anyone who reads superhero comics. I'll be formally reviewing them in the future, but I wanted to touch on this idea of superhero creation as a process of development in a post of its own. 

On Annie Hunter Eriksen and Lee Gatlin's marvelous comic creator biographies With Great Power and Along Came a Radioactive Spider

In 2021 and 2023, writer Annie Hunter Eriksen and artist Lee Gatlin released a pair of children's picture books through Page Street Kids, both unauthorized biographies of two of the three primary comics professionals who created what we now think of as the Marvel Universe, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko (the third, Jack Kirby, appears in both men's stories, but doesn't didn't get his own book...at least not yet).

Attracted both by Gatlin's highly idiosyncratic, cartoonistly work, which I was familiar with from his posting on social media (where he posts great drawings of The Thing and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), as well as curiosity about how a writer might go about reducing such men's complex careers into something short and simple enough for a picture book, I recently brought them both home from the library. 

As a grown-up and a long-time comics reader, I liked them both well enough, and I would certainly recommend them to anyone in that same demographic. As far as the intended audience of children goes, well, I'm afraid I can't really imagine how these would go over, as it's hard to imagine anyone young enough to be read to really being too terribly interested in Stan Lee or Steve Ditko. They do seem to be serviceable first biographies on the men, though.

The first, With Great Power: The Marvelous Stan Lee, tackles the most famous figure American comics history has ever produced, whether rightly or wrongly. With just 30 pages to work with, most of which could only support a sentence or two in addition to the images that will dominate them, Eriksen would zero in on Lee's career as a would-be novelist who stumbled into the writings of comics and then hit the big time when he wrote some heroes who were extremely popular in the 1960s, heroes who would eventually become movie stars in the 21st century.

In fact, there's a jump in time from mid-1960s to the turn in century, with an image depicting Lee walking down a red carpet, leading Spider-Man and the Avengers characters, most of whom are drawn wearing sunglasses (Except for Black Panther, whose all-black garb  wouldn't look right with them, and a tiny, too-small-for-them Ant-Man, shown running to keep up with the long strides of the regularly-sized heroes). 

The focus is mostly on Stan Lee as a youngster (appropriately enough, given the target audience), and his time working for Timely/Atlas/Marvel, until he co-created The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, at which point Stan Lee really becomes the Stan Lee we now imagine when we think of him (For a significant portion of the book, he will be balding, his face looking naked without his signature glasses and mustache).

It's not a bad way to frame Lee's career, really, and certainly focuses on what is perhaps most significant to the broader, mainstream world beyond the comics shop.

The opening, thesis-like two-page spread is pretty great. Eriksen writes:

Stan Lee didn't have hulking strength.

Or fantastic flexibility.

Or catlike reflexes.

His superpower was creating heroes who did.

Each of these sentences is illustrated by an image of Lee as we usually imagine him now, with the shaded glasses, mustache and full head of gray hair, exhibiting one of these powers. 

So there's an image of a huge Stan Lee holding a coffee mug pinched between the fingers of a massive hand, the other one pinching the knob of a door that he's accidentally torn from its hinges. And then one of his left arm stretching into loops before returning to write on the yellow pad of paper he held in his other hand, as Mister Fantastic might be able to. And then one of him dressed in Black Panther's costume, complete with cute cat ears, the cowl open to reveal his familiar, grandfatherly face. And, finally, an image of him with his feet up on a desk, a lightbulb appearing over his head, while he raises a finger in a "Eureka!" like pose.

From there, Eriksen rewinds to his childhood: "But back when he was Stanley Lieber, a kid growing up in New York City, he didn't feel super." After a few pages on his childhood, the young protagonist lands a job in publishing: 

Luckily, a magazine called Timely Comics was hiring. With this gig Stanley could get his foot in the door in the world of writing. But for now, he would be Stanley Lieber: Errand Boy!

Eriksen doesn't mention a fact that tempers that "Luckily"; Lee's cousin was married to publisher Martin Goodman, a relationship which likely had something to do not only with his hiring as an errand boy, but also with his becoming an editor while still a teenager, after the famed comic book team Joe Simon and Jack Kirby quit Timely. 

She does detail Lee's work on that team's most famous creation, Captain America, which is when Stanley first became "Stan Lee," writing a filler story for the superhero under the pseudonym, wanting to save "Stanley Lieber" for his future great American novel. (Unfortunately, the story isn't clear that Captain America was Simon and Kirby's creation; the character just sort of exists here and is a steppingstone in Lee's transition from errand boy to writer.)

Gatlin's illustrations for the momentous occasion are pretty cool, though, with one page showing a cartoonish Captain America—none of the many Marvel heroes depicted within the book have the big, muscular, dynamic figures one would expect to see in an actual Marvel comic book—standing before a Hollywood-like chair labeled "Cap" and holding a script, saying, "Line? Line?...This is blank" in comic book dialogue balloons.

On the facing page, we see Cap and Bucky in action, battling the Red Skull and his men, while a young Stanley picks at a typewriter in the foreground.

That's soon followed by a scene in which Stan's wife Joan suggests he "finally sneak in a story he'd always wanted to tell," resulting in his "teaming up with Jack Kirby" and creating the Fantastic Four.  And then, "Stan furiously drafted while artist 'Sturdy' Steve Ditko drew the perfect design until a new face peered back at them: Peter Parker... The Amazing Spider-Man!"

After that second hit, his publisher's ask Stan, "What other superheroes do you have up your sleeves?" 

And this then leads to an image of a smug-looking Stan pulling at one of his sleeves, from which emanates a gusher of colorful stars, lightning, and Marvel ephemera (Mjolnir, pumpkin bombs, ants, Doctor Strange's cloak and so on). It's followed by a two-page spread featuring The Hulk, Thor, Silver Surfer, Iron Man and Doctor Strange. 

The contributions of Kirby and Ditko (and Don Heck and Larry Lieber) aren't mentioned here.

It's a certainty a version of the creation of Marvel's most famous characters and the creation of the Marvel Universe that Stan Lee himself would have like! 

Granted, the creation and development of these characters has been something that the men who made them and the fans who loved them have contested and debated endlessly over the years and have long since been the source of high-stakes controversy. While Eriksen and Gatlin obviously include Kirby and Ditko as collaborators (at least on the FF and Spidey), reading this book, it does seem to suggest that Lee did the heavy lifting in the process. 

I don't think this is necessarily a sin on the part of the book's creators. I mean, how nuanced can we expect a book intended for a pre-literate audience to be, after all? And how much controversy should there be in a book serving as a first introduction to Lee's career? Still, adult readers (like me), are sure to notice these aspects, and to raise an eyebrow here and there. 

After the story ends—not with Lee's sad last years, nor his death, but with him standing in a crowd of cosplaying fans and declaring "'NUFF SAID!"—there's a two-page spread of mostly prose, followed by a bibiliography of sources (Not included? Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon's 2003 Stan Lee and The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book from Chicago Review Press, which I'd personally recommend over some of those cited instead). 

There are three short sections across this spread, one on Stan Lee's cameos in Marvel movies, another on his collaborations with other creators and one on his "Stan's Soapbox" column. That second section, which appears under the heading "Friendly Neighborhood Bullpen", does mention Kirby, Ditko, Heck, Lieber and Bill Everet ("Like any good hero, Stan teamed up," Eriksen writes). 

This section also briefly details "The Marvel Method" of making comics (as opposed to the assembly line way they were mostly created previously), which allowed for greater collaboration between writer and artist...but, as an unfortunate side effect, likely contributed to the historical disagreements over who deserves credit for what (As I've understood it, artists working in "The Marvel Method" like Kirby and Ditko did with Lee are more properly understood as co-writers and artists, not just artists). 

Eriksen and Gatlin's next book, the wonderfully titled Along Came a Radioactive Spider: Strange Steve Ditko and the Creation of Spider-Man, seems to have been born, at least in part, by Eriksen's own dissatisfaction in the limited role Lee's collaborators played in the first book.

In fact, her bio on the back cover flap, begins with the fact that she 

realized while writing With Great Power: The Marvelous Stan Lee...that she, like most people, was overlooking Steve Ditko's role in the Spidey origin story, which inspired her to create the biography he deserves (even if he would totally hate the attention).

It's true that Ditko doesn't get the credit Stan Lee does for creating Spider-Man, but then, much of that is likely due to the two men's very natures. Stan Lee craved the spotlight and spent much of his career in pursuing it and then nurturing the fame his comics work brought him (I think it's safe to say that the various producers and directors didn't have to twist Stan's arm too hard to do all those movie cameos he's now so well known for). 

Ditko, on the other hand, was Lee's polar opposite. He eschewed the fame his creation brought him (as Eriksen's bio alludes to) and eventually gained a reputation for being something of a recluse.

So yeah, the late Ditko likely wouldn't have wanted to see this biography about him, as flattering as it is. That said, it's a good one, and I enjoyed it more than the Stan Lee one that it followed, probably because, unlike Lee, I've never read an actual biography of Ditko, and, in fact, couldn't tell you anything about him other than maybe rattling off a list of comics characters he created, and what I've seen of his work.

The word the Eriksen and Gatlin team attach to Ditko is the one in the sub-title, "strange," and which, given the name of his second most famous Marvel hero, naturally has something of a double meaning. 

"There was absolutely nothing strange about comic book artists Steve Ditko," Eriksen writes in the book's opening, the format of which is an identical, four-part two-page spread to that which opened With Great Power. "His life was an open book!" 

This ironic statement comes above Gatlin's drawing of an annoyed looking Ditko shouting "No comment!" and trying to close his front door while a grinning, generic-looking reporter leers around it, and various arms holding cameras, microphones and notepads are seen on the other side. 

This continues into two more similar situations, in which the prose narration contrasts with Gatlin's cartoon-like illustrations (It's worth noting that this book is a much funnier one than the first), culminating in Eriksen relenting over an image of a smiling Ditko holding a pencil and seated at a drawing table, an image of Spider-Man in one of the panels on the big piece of paper before him.

Okay...so Steve Ditko wasn't really like the rest of the artists at Marvel Comics, but the same could be said about his—yes, Steve's!—most famous creation: Spider-Man. 

The next two-page spread details the strangeness of Spider-Man, and how greatly he differed from the typical superhero, a strangeness accentuated by Gatlin's particularly thin, angular and, well, spidery version of Marvel's flagship hero which, despite adopting a variety of famous poses, looks more weird and alien than ever (Honestly? After reading this, I think Gatlin's is one of my favorite portrayals of the hero; it's easy to see how civilians would be creeped out by this Spider-Man, and how J. Jonah Jameson would viscerally recoil from the strange figure Gatlin draws here).

From there, we get a fairly linear version of Ditko's story, just as we did Lee's before. Ditko also grew up poor in the Great Depression, and he was also attracted to the fantastic, which, for him, meant comics. 

There's a great spread devoted to his work at Marvel and the difference between him and editor Stan Lee, and his reaction to a new character that Lee and Jack Kirby were cooking up (Gatlin draws a great Kirby; his sole appearance in this book looking somewhat bored as he works, a cigar clamped in his jaws). 

It wasn't strange when Stan and The King teamed up yet again for their new story: a boy, a magic ring, and a transformation into the grown-up hero named "Spiderman."

Ditko's job was to illustrated the new comic, but "Spiderman was just another repetitive brave and brawny hero!...Steve itched to break the mold in the best way he knew how—by making Spiderman strange."

We see just how wide the gulf in the two Spidermen was through Gatlin's drawing of Kirby's version, a large, muscular figure sporting a more classic costume and wielding a web gun, and Ditko's version, which we are now all familiar with (Even if the artists that followed Ditko, starting with John Romita Jr., pretty quickly transitioned the hero into a bigger, better-looking, more heroic and, well, less strange figure). 

In this book, Eriksen has Ditko do the heavy-lifting with the development of the character, not just coming up with the desigsn and elements of the secret identity, but creating the book himself: "Suddenly, Steve found himself writing and drawing Spider-Man—a comic book history first."

The book concludes with a passage in which we see Ditko retreating from his own fame, dodging young fans and, in one great illustration, questions, as Gatlin draws Ditko, a pencil behind his ear, in a leaping pose, while a half-dozen dialog balloons, each containing a single question mark, go flying and bouncing all around him. 

The final spread shows a happy Ditko at a drawing board, surrounded by a colorful collage, and a dramatically posing new but familiar character. "So he did what he did best: got to work," Eriksen writes, concluding of his latest work, "The comic was out of this world...and his most fitting work yet! Steve named him DOCTOR STRANGE."

Throughout the book—which gives a shorter, more streamlined version of Spidey that sidesteps some of the questions regarding contributions from Lee, Kirby and possible influences from past characters—Gatlin draws not only the aforementioned comics creators, but also Peter Parker, Spider-Man and some of the hero's foes (The Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Mysterio, The Sandman and The Scorpion) but, somewhat surprisingly, Captain Marvel and Batman (as well as obscure Simon and Kirby creation Captain 3-D, and Captain Battle, who I didn't recognize*). 

As with With Great Power, this book ends with a short prose section and bibliography.  Here, that section offers a more detailed biography of Ditko, including dates and reference to some of the controversies that wouldn't really fit in a picture book, including aspects of Spider-Man's creation and Ditko's departure from the comic. 

"Steve Ditko Would Hate This Book," reads a headline-like label to one part of this feature, which briefly notes his post-Marvel career (namedropping The Question and Mr. A) and just how media-shy he was, including how few photos there are of Ditko (which did make me curious as to how Gatlin went about developing his Steve, which must have been much harder than drawing Stan Lee, whose look has at this point become almost as iconic as that of some superheroes), his dislike of the "poison sandwich" biography Blake Bell wrote of him and the "rule" imposed by Ditko upon those meeting him: You don't talk about it.

Regardless of what Ditko might think of the book, though, I liked it, and I wouldn't mind reading similar biographies from this particular pair of Kirby, Simon or other famous and influential comics creators in the future.

*Thanks to Anthony Strand for identifying him on Bluesky for me!

Meanwhile...

Today at Robot 6, I have a review of Steve Ditko's Monsters Vol. 1: Gorgo, a Craig Yoe-curated collection of all the Ditko-drawn portions of Charlton's 1961-65 series, based on the pretty terrible giant monster movie that was the subject of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

As I mentioned, I was looking for any Objectivist subtext in any of the stories, but came up empty. The only politics of any kind came in this one story, wherein--well, check this panel out:

Talk about a one-issue party! Death to Gorgo and his mother! I wish I knew the name of their pary: The Death-to-Gorgo-crats? The Gorgo Death Party...? What?

Earlier in the week I reviewed Barry's Best Buddy, Renee French's new Toon Books book, at Good Comics For Kids.

Also at Good Comics For Kids this week, I participated in a roundtable discussing Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli's Ultimate Comics Spider-Man Vol. 1.

Eleven Things You Can Learn From Tales of The New Gods

The recently released Tales of The New Gods trade paperback is a pretty well-timed collection of short stories dealing with the characters created during Jack Kirby's late-seventies experiments with pop mythology for DC Comics.

With Death of the New Gods putting the characters front and center in the current DCU line, and that big, gorgeous, multi-volume Kirby omnibus project making sure the original stories are readily available, the New Gods iron is probably as hot as it's ever going to get.

Tales of the New Gods consists almost exclusively of short stories highlighing different characters and different eras of their fictional histories by different creators. Most of the stories are either written and drawn by John Byrne or written and drawn by Walt Simonson, as the bulk of the material comes from bits and pieces of Byrne's Jack Kirby's Fourth World and Simonson's Orion, but there's a real who's who of talent involved.

The list of those providing art is as varied as Erik Larsen, Arthur Adams, Howard Chaykin, Dave Gibbons and John Paul Leon. There are some real "gets" in terms of creators, like a short Frank Miller-illustrated piece, and a never before published story featuring Darkseid and his court written by Mark Millar (presumably from back in the day when he was doing whatever DC work he could get) and drawn by Steve freaking Ditko.

I was actually a little surprised there wasn't more in it, as it doesn't really strive to be a complete collection of short-pieces featuring the Fourth World characters. For example, I remember there being a tale of the young (and suprisingly hot) Granny Goodenss meeting Darkseid for the first time in a Secret Origins 80-Page Giant*, and if I were putting the thing together, I would have been sure to include the few pages of "Lost Pages" from Grant Morrison's JLA that appeared in 1998's New Gods Secret Files and Origins #1. Not because it was any good at all—it's just a couple of pages, and read like a scene cut from a movie to steamline it—but simply to add one more big creator name to the credits.

How worthwhile the reader will find the book will ultimately depend on how interested he or she is in Byrne, Simonson and/or Kirby's Fourth World characters. Personally, I didn't really need to see Darkseid and Desaad as young men, for example, or Mister Miracle and Metron hanging out in the Old West disguised as cowboys. I think the book's major value is in its ability to satiate a reader's curiosity over how well various creators tackle the Kirby characters.

And its educational value, of course. You can learn a lot of things from Tales of The New Gods.

At least eleven different things.

For example...



1.) That if anyone could make a Mister Miracle comic really work, it’s Steve Rude and Mark Evanier. Seriously, Tales of The New Gods is worthwhile for the nice reprint of their 1987 Mister Miracle Special alone.

Check out some of Rude's art from the story:


(Above: Big Barda in her action bikiki, plus Oberon and Scott performing at the circus. Quick rule of thumb: Rude + the circus = awesome)



(A full-page spread of Scott thinking on his past while locked in a safe that's about to be run over by a steamroller driven by a clown)



(Mister Miracle vs. a robot in a trap-filled funhouse erected by Granny Goodness and Darkseid)



2.) Mister Miracle had a previous wife, who had the unlikely name of Fancy Goodbody. And, despite her funny name, she was from England, not Planet Kirby



3.) That John Workman really is the greatest letterer



4.) How much sillier Darkseid’s outfit looks when, instead of a big, gray, craggy-faced, rock-looking guy, there’s a normal, human-looking dude in it:


(Byrne's drawing of the big D's brother, rocking Darkseid's look)



5.) Why Kanto dresses like someone from a medieval court



6.) The secret origin of Kanto’s moustache. Come on, you know you've always wondered.



7.) How long the Forever People have been wearing those particular outfits



8.) Just how bad a combination of John Byrne art and computer-generated graphics can look:





9.) That the whole evolution of Frank Miller’s art style seems to have been in service to drawing the most perfect Darkseid visage of them all:





10.) Baby Orion’s first utterance was “RAAAA!”



11.) If the Jeph Loeb and Rob Liefeld team can do Kirby’s creations any justice. Here's a hint:





*Update: I have it on reliable authority that the Granny Goodness story from that comic, "Goodness and Mercy" by Simonson, Jon Bogdanove and Bill Reinhold, was reprinted in the trade collection of Simonson's Orion, which may explain why it wasn't re-reprinted here, despite it fitting in so well with the contents of this collection.