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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132137
Posted: 29 March 2007 at 8:47am | IP Logged | 1  

This morning I was clicking thru some of the commission pieces in the Gallery -- a little exercise I occasionally perform to "psyche" myself up for the next commission -- and I paused on the one with Spider-Woman, Ms Marvel, Tigra and She-Hulk. It got me thinking about the oft invoke sanctity of "author's intent".

Now, me, I am a big fan of "author's intent", and I think that whenever possible writers coming to characters after the creator has departed should keep in their minds what that creator meant the characters to be. Likewise stories. Little is served by digging into some old story and turning it inside out. "Everything you know is a lie" is a solid approach, but only if used sparingly.

Anyway -- where my mind ended up drifting as I looked at this particular commission piece was back to the days when Ms Marvel was only a glint in Stan Lee's eye -- and the character was intended to be Jean Grey! (Logical, right? Marvel Girl becomes Ms Marvel.) Thoughts about resurrecting the X-Men's title put the kibosh on Jean getting her own book, but her presence in UNCANNY X-MEN leads to another divergance. Roger Stern has told the story of interviewing Chris Claremont back when he was the new kid on the block who had only just picked up the X-Men assignment. Roger remembers having to correct Chris from time to time, as he spoke of his plans for the characters and kept mixing up Jean and Lorna.

Elsewhere, Madrox, the Multiple Man was originally going to be called Xerox, until Marvel's lawyers decided the name had not become quite that generic. Frank Miller, in BATMAN: YEAR ONE, was setting up a gag in which Jim Gordon waxed rhapsodic about his unborn "son", the punchline being the birth of Barbara -- until someone up at DC did the math, and noted this would mean Barbara was younger than Dick Grayson! This is how Barbara suddenly ended up being "adopted".

It's stories like this that make me chuckle when some fans get just a wee bit too intense about the "creator's intent" -- like the ones who wrote in to ask if MAN OF STEEL was "what Seigel and Shuster intended". So much of what we "intend" never gets anywhere near the printed page.

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Flavio Sapha
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 9:28am | IP Logged | 2  

Random thoughts:

- "Marvel Girl" always sounded "off" to me.  Perhaps because in Portuguese it´s translated as "maravilha", same as "wonder"...with WW and Wonder Girl already established, it gives Jean an aura of redundancy (in fact she ended up being called Garota Marvel in Brazil...what, she´s related to the Captain?).  BTW, "Wonder Man" sounds terrible to me, as if he were intended to be WW´s male counterpart. 

- In Italy they had RANXEROX, the junkie android, drawn by Liberatore. Recommended for cyberpunk fans (or comics readers who don´t mind drug scenes and mild porn).  Xerox did sue. 

- Talk about a big disappointment.  The birth of Gordon´s male baby was very anti-climatic.  The one weak point of Year One. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 10:42am | IP Logged | 3  

The "baby goof" underscored something I found very significant with DC and their fans. One of the most repeated phrases I heard when I did MAN OF STEEL was "That's not right!" (or, more often "That's wrong!"), yet I heard almost none of such comments about YEAR ONE or DARK KNIGHT. Frank changed origins, changed character relationsips, changed chronologies -- and except for the baby, no one said "That's wrong!"

It struck me as odd that Batman, who was the "cool" character, seemed to have attracted fans who were far less anal (or far less informed) than Superman's fans.

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Patrick T Ditton
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 10:42am | IP Logged | 4  

...Wolverine being a psycho / loner
...Batman being a detective

intent like that?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 10:52am | IP Logged | 5  

Wolverine is a good example.

Len intended him to be 18, the claws in the gloves.
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Patrick T Ditton
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 10:57am | IP Logged | 6  

Len intended him to be 18, the claws in the gloves.

*************

From the READER'S viewpoint - we were never told this, were we?  Was this just "writer's intent" scribbled somewhere for the "creators" at Marvel?

Similary with Marvel Girl, Madrox, etc.?  How are WE the fan supposed to know what the true (initial) intent was in some cases?




(edited for spelling)


Edited by Patrick T Ditton on 29 March 2007 at 10:58am
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Greg Reeves
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 11:12am | IP Logged | 7  

It seems that the more I find out about how a character was originally intended, I find myself glad that they turned out the way they did.  Some of the original ideas for Star Wars characters are horrid IMO.  I can't imagine (or simply don't like) the sound of Wolverine as an 18 year old with costume claws.
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John Mietus
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 11:15am | IP Logged | 8  

 John Byrne wrote:
[Y]et I heard almost none of such comments about YEAR
ONE or DARK KNIGHT. Frank changed origins, changed character
relationsips, changed chronologies -- and except for the baby, no one said
"That's wrong!"


You weren't listening in my direction, then.
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Greg Kirkman
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 11:23am | IP Logged | 9  

It struck me as odd that Batman, who was the "cool" character, seemed to have attracted fans who were far less anal (or far less informed) than Superman's fans.

++++++++++++

My theory behind that is that the Superman mythology had been fairly consistent since the Weisinger days. All of those elements were pretty much ingrained in people's heads (Jor-El with the headband and the sun on his shirt, the super-pets, and so on). Thus, when Man of Steel rebooted the character (and swept away many of those old barnacles), people were unaccustomed to the revised mythology.

Batman, on the other hand, had gone though some radical reinterpretations over the past few decades. The character went from the look and style of the "goofy" era of the 50s, to the "New Look" 60s, to the O'Neil/Adams "Darknight Detective" in the 70s, to the Marshall Rogers/Jim Aparo era in the late 70s and early 80s.

I think the amount of flux that had been in the Batman books for the past 30 or so years made fans of the character more open to change and different interpretations.

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Glenn Greenberg
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 11:24am | IP Logged | 10  

<<You weren't listening in my direction, then.>>


Or mine!
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Jacob Reyn
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 11:26am | IP Logged | 11  

Without the wonderful arbitrarily coincidental changes that our majestic universe has bestowed upon the creation and changes to the comic magazine characters of our time, I don't think we would have become so lucky as to gain the heroes we have now.
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Ron Farrell
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Posted: 29 March 2007 at 11:27am | IP Logged | 12  

Or mine.

I was far more accepting of MOS than YEAR ONE.

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