Stan Lee’s Dialogues

Bleeding Cool just published a long transcript of Stan Lee’s deposition about the emergence of the Marvel superhero universe back in the early 1960s, as part of a lawsuit between Jack Kirby’s heirs and Disney/Marvel.

Most of Lee’s deposition consists of stories he’s told before, in much the same fashion. I saw no surprises about the “Marvel method” of comics storytelling, the creation of specific heroes, or Lee’s long personal respect for Kirby as an artist. That doesn’t change how in the 1960s comic-book creators all signed work-for-hire deals.

One of the issues in the lawsuit appears to be how much dialogue Kirby might have composed in the margins of his artwork. Here’s a pertinent exchange from Lee’s deposition about the notes on one surviving page of original art:

STAN LEE: Well, that’s Jack’s handwriting. That’s the way he wrote them. Yes.

Q. And could you tell us, for example, in this instance I see that there’s a dialogue that’s actually in the different blocks. Tell us who did that dialogue. How was the process done?

STAN LEE: Well, I wrote the dialogue and the captions, but Jack would give me notes. For example, in panel 4 of that page, the next to the last panel –

Q. Right.

STAN LEE: — Jack wrote what he suggested the dialogue might be. “I will rule. My years underground will end.” That was to let me know what he felt the fellow should be doing or saying.

So I wrote, “My conquest will be complete. I, the Mole Man, banished from my fellow men half a lifetime ago, will return at last as Master of the Earth.”

Yeah, that’s the way Stan wrote them. And I suspect the published version had more exclamation points.

A similar deposition with artist John Romita, Sr., addresses the same question. Romita would pencil possible Spider-Man dialogue for Lee, with the result:

He invariably would not use them, and I asked him once “why wouldn’t you use — why wouldn’t you let him” — he said something similar. He said, “because I can’t speak in somebody else’s vernacular.” He says, “when I am writing my characters, I am writing in Peter Parker’s personality and Aunt May’s personality and I write the captions in my personality. If I start putting your personality in there, I am going to confuse the reader.” So he used to — he told me — he invariably did not use anything that was in the margins that was cleverly suggested by the artists, because he said he did not want to stray from his normal approach.

He had a dialogue going with the reader. Saying “dear reader, this is your editor speaking right now.” He used to do that. It used to drive me crazy. I used to tell him “you are puncturing the illusion.” It’s like opening a door in the theater and letting the sunlight in and everybody realizes they are watching a movie now. I said “you are ruining” — he said, “it doesn’t matter. I am talking to my readers.”

I think Stan Lee took the idea of a snarky conversation between the comic company’s “bullpen” and its loyal readers from similar messages in the EC comics of the early 1950s. It was certainly a hallmark of the Marvel superheroes comics he co-created in the 1960s. And that dialogue never punctured the illusion. Rather, it drew readers into a fun-filled conspiracy to suspend disbelief.

Bruce Wayne an Old Blue? Color Me Unconvinced

The latest Yale Alumni Magazine has three short articles—the longest by book designer, author, and Batman fan Chip Kidd—about indications that Bruce Wayne went to Yale. This possibility arose as part of a Yale Law School display on superhero comics last fall.

As an Old Blue and a fan of the Batman mythos, I should be among the last to object to this presentation. But its logic is so weak as to be embarrassing. It’s one thing to claim that Batman went to your college; it’s another to make that claim badly.

One piece of “evidence”: in the Batman TV show of the 1960s, Dick Grayson’s Aunt Harriet mentions that one of Bruce Wayne’s grandfathers founded Skull & Bones, the oldest of Yale’s secret societies. But where one of Bruce Wayne’s forebears went to college proves nothing about where Bruce Wayne went to college.

The second and compelling piece of evidence is a blow-up of a detail in one panel of the 1974 Batman story “Night of the Stalker,” penciled by Sal Amendola (shown here). In the background corner of one panel is a framed “Diploma of Law,” apparently in the name of Bruce Wayne, from “Yale University at Gotham / New Haven.”

Kidd’s article doesn’t mention how the word “Gotham” appears on the diploma, thus making it unlike any other known Yale diploma. That’s left to the usually thorough researcher Fred R. Shapiro, who also gives credit to the alums who dredged up the image. Shapiro concludes:

We can only speculate that, in the Bat-universe, Yale Law School has a branch campus in Gotham City. But whatever the case, the import of the plaque is unmistakable: Batman is a Yale alumnus.

Yale magazine editor Kathrin Day Lassila took the assignment of tracking down Amendola to confirm what he meant by that detail. He says about Bruce Wayne, “I thought Yale was a place someone like that would want to go. He wanted to develop himself as much as possible, physically and mentally.” Which could only mean Yale.

But I’m not convinced. There’s no mention of law school elsewhere in Wayne’s biographies, covering any and all versions of the character. Comics in the 1950s said he attended Gotham College (Batman, #96) or University (World’s Finest, #59), and later served on its board (Batman, #59). That history may or may not apply to the post-“New Look” Batman who still prevailed in 1974.

After the Crisis of 1986, Mike W. Barr’s “My Beginning…and My Probable End” in Detective, #574, shows Wayne pretending to be a lazy student deliberately coasting through an unnamed college while secretly studying the subjects he’s interested in; it’s not clear whether he graduates. The Batman Begins movie depicts Wayne dropping out of Princeton at some level to travel the world, and returning to Gotham in the role of a shallow playboy. Those Bruce Waynes wouldn’t have attended law school, particularly a high-level, visible one.

“Night of the Stalker” was published in a decade when DC Comics depicted Bruce Wayne as a respected philanthropist and social reformer; he even served as a senator for a while. A much simpler explanation for the diploma, therefore, is that it’s the symbol of an honorary degree the DCU’s Yale University gave Wayne to reflect his contributions to society, and Gotham in particular.

Finally, I was dismayed to see Kidd write: “when Robin finally came of age in the comics in the late 1960s and was allowed to go away to school, he went to Gotham University.” Dick Grayson went to Hudson University, in the small town of New Carthage, as shown in a series of stories in the 1970s; he managed to complete one or two semesters over the decade before dropping out. Dick attended and graduated with honors from Gotham State University in the DC Animated Universe established in the 1990s.

Boston Pops Seeks “Over the Rainbow” Videos

Yesterday someone from a certain local nationally-known orchestra contacted me with news about the its new Oz-related project:

To pay respect to the shared cultural heritage of the American Songbook, the Boston Pops is asking for video submissions of fans singing “Over the Rainbow” for inclusion in a video collage to be shown at Boston Pops performances throughout the season.

Voted number one on the RIAA and NEA’s “Songs of the Century” list, Harold Arlen [and Yip Harburg]’s “Over the Rainbow” is an American Songbook selection that unites generations and ties the 2011 Spring Pops Season together—from the Opening Night Judy Garland tribute to the finale “Triple Crown” performance celebrating America’s Heartland.

The signature Boston Pops sing-along has long been an audience favorite, so this year the orchestra is opening the sing-along to a national choir. Participants of all ages can submit video of themselves singing “Over the Rainbow,” by adding a video to YouTube and emailing a link and contact info to overtherainbow@bso.org.

Videos will be featured on the Boston Pops YouTube channel, on the Boston Pops website, and at Boston Pops performances throughout the season. All video submissions are due by Saturday, April 26, 2011.

The Pops’ season opens on 11 May with a tribute to Judy Garland featuring singer Linda Eder. Accompanied by the orchestra under the direction of Keith Lockhart, she’ll perform “By Myself,” “Me and My Shadow,” “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart,” and of course “Over the Rainbow.”

There Once Was a Verse Form Called Limerick

At World Wide Words this week, Michael Quinion puzzled over the term “limerick.” That type of poem started to appear in print in the 1820s, but it took decades before the label came along.

Among the earliest examples is this, from the picture book Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Young Ladies:

There was a young lady named Ryder,
She shrunk at the sight of a spider;
She once gave a scream,
And leaped into the stream,
When she saw one crawling beside her.

Edward Lear adopted the five-line form for his little-noted-at-the-time Book of Nonsense (1846).

Several Gaelic examples appeared in James Clarence Mangan and John O’Daly’s The Poets and Poems of Munster (1850), tagged to a melody called “The Growling Old Woman.” In his 1904 Pulse of the Bards, after the limerick was a recognized form, P. J. McCall translated “The Growling Old Woman” from the Gaelic like so:

Woman of the House—
I’ve no one to help with the churnin’,
Or bake a slim cake without burnin’,
Or get a bit ready for Nickeen an’ Neddy,
When hay in the meadow they’re turnin’;

That pig never stops with his squallin’;
The boneens go rootin’ an’ bawlin’;
The ducks an’ the hens lay away in the glens,
An' the roof of the cowhouse is fallin’.

The Household—
O, you growlin’ old woman!—
Be aisy—the neighbours are comin’!
Tobacco full ripe we will put in your pipe
To make your heart happy an’ human!

Woman of the House—
Our cow gives her milk to the fairies;
Our calf’s not as handsome as Mary’s;
My bonnet an’ bo are a shame an’ a show,
An’ my gown in the clauber conthraries!

My man takes his time fair an’ aisy;
The boys are light-headed an’ lazy,
The girls ever singin’, when washin’ or wringin’—
Enough to drive anyone crazy!

The Household—
Whisht! you growlin’ old woman!
Be aisy—the neighbours are comin’,
Tobacco full ripe we’ll put in your pipe
To make your heart happy an’ human!

A Neighbour—
Ould woman, I’m thinkin’ you’re jokin’!
You lie by the fire always pokin’,
An’, if any use, you give tons of abuse—
An’ the Ould Boy can’t bate you at smokin’!

Your man works the hardest in Erin;
Your boys are both brave an’ unfearin’;
Your girls are the sweetest, the quickest an’ neatest;
’Tis you are the pig by the mearin’!

The Neighbours—
Whisht, you growlin’ old woman!
Your conduct is most unbecomin’,
Tobacco full ripe—twice the full o’ your pipe,
Wouldn’t make your heart happy an’ human!

(The emphasis on tobacco suggests the Gaelic verse doesn’t go back earlier than the 1600s.)

Early last year scholar Stephen Goranson found a limerick published in the St. John [New Brunswick] Daily News in 1880 with the label: “Tune, wont you come to Limerick.” That’s seems to be the earliest link of the Irish city of Limerick, in the province of Munster, to the poetic form. But it comes with a musical mystery: that tune is a jig, and it’s hard to sing limericks to it. Goranson also documented many examples of “come to Limerick” to mean to surrender or settle differences, which may be totally unrelated.

There are also appearances of the phrase “Limerick rhyme” as early as 1880, without examples to show exactly what the writers meant. By the mid-1890s, however, a “limerick” was clearly the form we expect today.

The Phoenix Rises Again?

Yesterday the Boston Globe featured economist Ronald F. Ferguson in its “Bibliophiles” column.

He “never developed a habit of reading novels,” he said, but spoke of his childhood reading this way, with one title lingering in his memory:

I had one special summer, after second grade, maybe, when I joined a book club and they would send a book every couple of weeks. They were storybooks. One was called “The Phoenix.” I just remember the title. It was a story of one of these birds that is reborn every 500 years. That summer is the summer that I developed a love of reading.

Was the book Ferguson remembered David and the Phoenix, by Edward Ormondroyd? It’s the right vintage: the book was published in 1957, when Ferguson turned seven according to Wikipedia. It was a selection of the Weekly Reader Children’s Book Club. And the phoenix’s death and rebirth forms the culmination of the story.

Worldcat lists only a couple of other candidates from the 1950s: a reissue of E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet, and Marius Barbeau’s The Golden Phoenix, and Other French-Canadian Fairy Tales. Ormondroyd’s book stands out from those in being solidly grounded in contemporary American life.

Back in 2006 I quoted from an essay by Prof. Gerald Early, two years younger than Ferguson, about his fondness for David and the Phoenix. Once again I wonder if what I saw as a flaw in the story—the lack of specific traits for the young protagonist David—was actually a virtue for young African-American male readers in the 1950s like Early and Ferguson. They might have been able to imagine themselves in David’s shoes when few other stories were as welcoming.

A Month of Robin-Related Interviews

The past fortnight brought four notable web articles featuring scripters’ comments on past and present Robins. These being publicity interviews, all the writers are enthusiastic about us buying the next product, but amidst the marketing they make some interesting points. In particular, all talk about how mainstream superhero comics are a collaborative creation stretching back decades, so they have to work with other people’s ideas, sometimes on the fly.

Newarama had an essay examining the enduring appeal of Tim Drake. The article jumps straight from the company’s somewhat desperate introduction of the character in 1989-1991 to Tim’s dark period, starting with Identity Crisis and War Games in 2004.

But weren’t the intervening years part of building the character’s lasting appeal? There are no quotes, furthermore, from Chuck Dixon, the writer who scripted the Robin miniseries of the early 1990s and the first hundred issues of the comic book that followed—perhaps because he’s not working for DC Comics today.

DC’s own blog put the spotlight on Tim’s relationship with his successor as Robin, Damian, following their resentful team-up in Teen Titans. Scripter J. T. Krul spells it out:

Red Robin wants to show that he can treat Robin just like any other member of the team - bringing the tactical leadership and detachment that Batman seems to master so easily. But more importantly, or rather more personally, Tim wants to show (and perhaps even convince himself) that he doesn’t feel threatened by Damian - that he doesn’t fear being replaced in the eyes of the titans. As for Robin, he wants Tim to see that he can do just as good of a job as he ever did - that he can be a team player when needed. In other words, he wants to show his big brother that he’s no child.

On the surface, both Tim and Damian are seeking to convey the same notion - that they don’t care what the other one thinks about them - When the opposite is actually closer to the truth.

Ah, sibling rivalry.

That dynamic informs the page from Teen Titans, #92, shown with the essay. note how Krul and artist Georges Jeanty make the bottom panels into mirror images, visually conveying that these Robins are more alike than they’d care to admit. Krul’s essay seems unusual in spelling out his character motivations, but it comes at the end of a story arc, and thus isn’t giving any part of that story away, just reinforcing what’s already on paper. Did Krul or the company feel that we fans needed some extra explanation? Or do they hope that understanding the two characters in this way will make us more interested in following their relationship over the next few years?

Comic Book Resources ran a publicity interview with Judd Winick in advance of his issues of Batman and Robin, which bring Jason Todd back after his odd appearance in Grant Morrison’s issues of the same magazine. And by “odd appearance,” I mean that he literally appeared odd.

The first Jason Todd had red hair, which he eventually dyed black to please Bruce Wayne and DC’s licensees. The second Jason Todd had black hair, even when he was living rough on the street, walking the world half-dead, and living undercover. On coming back to Gotham, he also had a streak of white to symbolize his trauma.

Yet Morrison presented the character a redhead once again, talking about dyeing his hair—yet there was still that streak of white. Jason’s his new Red Hood costume was based on the original Red Hood in Detective, #168; I think that when even the Joker has abandoned a costume as too flamboyant, it’s time to move on. Normally I enjoy Morrison’s continuity syncretism, but I hope Winick can fix those details.

Since this interview comes at the start of a story arc, however, Winick says very little about future developments. He does, however, state:

Jason is a bad guy. I do Jason as a villain—a villain with very, very close ties to the home set which makes him way more difficult, and also heartbreaking.

I think of Jason as a troubled antagonist, rather than a villain, but of course in the superhero genre the people whom heroes fight must be either villains or very special guest stars.

In the Teen Titans page noted above, Damian uses the word “motif,” which I can’t imagine any ten-year-old doing. Winick echoes that point, saying:

Damian is not like any 10-year-old kid who ever lived! Damian is very much like a little adult, and I think Grant set the tone; it’s just a matter of following in Grant’s footsteps. He really has a terrific voice.

Finally, Comic Book Resources had a publicity interview with Art Baltazar and Franco about their assignment writing a Young Justice comic book alongside the Cartoon Network series. That series has an overarching narrative about the team’s dynamics, membership, and leadership, and the individual teens’ development. The comic book stories have to fit into that same narrative without giving too much away; it’s the tail, not the dog. Baltazar explains:

The first issue we have kind of takes place between scenes of the episodes on TV. Our comic almost fills in the blanks of what you don’t see on the show. . . . We’re writing really closely to the episodes, and we’re anxious, too, because when we write an issue, we'll know it fits between episode four and five or whatever.

Franco and Baltazar run ideas for using versions of other DC characters past the TV producers, and get approval, guidance, or veto based on plans for the cartoon.

I really like the Super Friends villains—you know, the Legion of Doom. So, so far we’ve been throwing Solomon Grundy and Bizarro at them for every issue. And they know that by the time it’s time for us to write the next issue, and they go, “Who do you want for villains?” we’ll go, “Solomon Grundy and Bizarro.” And they're like, “It’s the same thing we told you last time.”

So it doesn’t sound like we’ll see Bizarro soon in the Young Justice comic. (I suspect the explanation may lie in the series’ exploration of Superboy as a clone, and the current similarity between Bizarro and Match.) And I imagine Baltazar and Franco’s assignment will become even tougher when DC rolls out Young Justice on Ice! in arenas everywhere.

The Gorey Enigma

Yesterday I visited the exhibit “Elegant Enigmas: The Art of Edward Gorey,” at the Boston Athenaeum. It was at once familiar and strange, which seems appropriate.

For the familiar, I’ve written before about how I first saw Gorey’s work at a young age, and recognized his distinct style the covers of what seemed like perfectly acceptable books. As a result, I didn’t realize that he’d been a “cult figure” until years later.

One reason Gorey was so recognizable is that his drawing style was very consistent through his career. Envelopes he decorated while he was a Harvard student in 1948 are immediately recognizable as his work and no one else’s. They look very much like the drawings for The Unstrung Harp, his debut book from 1953, which in turn look quite like the illustrations in his posthumously published books four decades later. Perhaps connoisseurs know the hallmarks of “early Gorey,” “high Gorey,” and “late Gorey,” but I couldn’t have sorted the items in time without the labels.

A more surprising source of familiarity is that Gorey drew at the same size as his drawings were printed. (I measured a sketch from The Hapless Child against the images in a printed edition to be sure.) All those thin lines, that intricate hatching and cross-hatching, that hand-lettering, was done in “real space.”

I spotted only one drawing with remnant pencil lines (aside from those used for positioning). There are several examples of paste-on additions, but relatively little painting over unwanted marks with white.

The exhibit includes some sketches in a looser style as Gorey worked out ideas, experimented with layouts, or sketched for the theater. Also on display are some manuscript pages, showing him at work on his verse. “The Osbick Bird,” for instance, is typed as “The Something Bird” while Gorey tried to think of the best nonsense word, and a preliminary sketch uses the Carrollian “Jubjub Bird.”

I would have liked to see more items showing how Gorey produced his drawings: intermediary or unfinished examples, art tools, video of him at work. But what was on display was delightful enough.

“She Never Slapped Her Hippopotamus”

This is a passage from E. Nesbit’s “Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger,” a story collected in The Book of Dragons. It introduces one of the main characters, a little princess.

She was always kind to her pets. She never slapped her hippopotamus when it broke her dolls in its playful gambols, and she never forgot to feed her rhinoceroses in their little hutch in the backyard. Her elephant was devoted to her, and sometimes Mary Ann made her nurse quite cross by smuggling the dear little thing up to bed with her and letting it go to sleep with its long trunk laid lovingly across her throat…

Alas, a few paragraphs further comes an explanation that erases the visual image this passage alone provides. But it’s delightful while it lasts.

One to Watch For

I’m looking forward to Advent, by James Treadwell, the first in a new fantasy trilogy to be published in the UK by Hodder in 2012. The agent’s website explains:

1537. A man hurries through city streets in a gathering snowstorm, clutching a box in one hand, breath rapid, casting frightened glances over his shoulder. He is Johann Faust, the greatest magician of his age. The box he holds contains something unimaginably terrible. After the storm abates, Faust will never be seen again, and in time men begin to tell stories about him – that he made a pact with the devil, and that the devil claimed his due.

London, the present day. Fifteen-year old Gavin Stokes is boarding a train to remote Pendurra in Cornwall, to stay with his aunt. His parents need a break from him. Gavin has just been kicked out of school; he’s always in trouble, not because he’s naturally disruptive, but because, as his parents tell him, he makes mistakes about things. He sees strange-looking people, when really there’s no-one there at all. He wakes up at night because he can hear things fluttering around in his bedroom. And then there’s Miss Grey, the silent old woman who has been Gavin’s companion for as long as he can remember.

Okay, James Treadwell is Godson’s Father. He’s also a great fellow with a keen love of literary fantasy and science fiction. The photo on his website makes him look Lilliputian, but he’s really more Brobdingnagian.

Dwayne McDuffie, Static, and Clarence Thomas

Early last month I caught up on Static Shock: Rebirth of the Cool, a collection of two miniseries from the last two decades featuring the young superhero Static. With his smart mouth, nerdy real life, and lack of a millionaire crime-fighting mentor, Static is much more like Spider-Man than like other teen heroes I could name, but I’m trying to sample all the basic literature.

Static was one of several characters that writer Dwayne McDuffie co-created for Milestone Comics, founded in the 1990s to feature superheroes of color. Static became the best known through an television cartoon. More recently DC Comics bought the Milestone properties and, in its syncretic way, incorporated McDuffie’s city of Dakota into the DC Universe. McDuffie scripted the Justice League for several months, and Static worked with the Teen Titans.

McDuffie died unexpectedly last week after heart surgery. That produced an outpouring of rue and remembrances from comics pros and fans. Several people linked to McDuffie’s 2000 essay about learning that Justice Clarence Thomas enjoyed Milestone comics:

He really liked Hardware, he said, but his favorite was Icon, a title that featured a character who is, like himself, a black conservative. There was more to the conversation but I missed most of it due to the small stroke I'd just had.

The thing is, while Clarence Thomas likes my stuff, I most decidedly don't like his stuff. Look, I'm politically to the left of… well, everybody, actually. On the other hand, Justice Thomas is a truly uncommon creature, a black political conservative. Now, if you only see black men on cable news talk shows, where all black men are conservatives (Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Alan Keyes, Armstrong Williams) you probably don't think this is unusual. Well trust me, it is.

It's really quite difficult to find an African-American who (like Justice Thomas) was alive during Jim Crow, who actually saw the Voting Rights Act end legal discrimination at the polls, and who is the successful beneficiary of Affirmative Action (but now says that he's against it). It was easier to justify my character Icon having those beliefs; he's also a space alien who can fly. . . .

The real problem didn't come to light until I sat down to write the next script for Icon.

And couldn't.

Every time I started to write dialog for Icon, I froze. "What will Clarence Thomas make of this?" I'd think, "Am I unwittingly aiding the black neocon movement?" Fortunately, I was able to get back into the game in a few weeks (and fill-ins by Kurt Busiek and Jackie Ching kept the book on schedule until I got my chops back).

Thomas mentions his childhood fondness for comics in his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, specifically mentioning “Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt, Outlaw, the misunderstood western heroes,” as well as “superhero comics, particularly Superman, Green Lantern, Flash and Spiderman [sic].” That book doesn’t suggest that he maintained the hobby as an adult, however.

Also worthy of note: McDuffie’s 1989 memo at Marvel about young black superheroes on skateboards. (Static rides around on some sort of flying manhole cover instead.)