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Glenn Greenberg Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6746
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | 1
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<<That's very interesting. What would Spider-Man have been like if Stan
had left and Ditko stayed?>>
For one thing, we probably never would have seen Mary Jane's face. Ditko
supposedly felt that strategically hiding her face was a running gag that
should never have ended.
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Glenn Greenberg Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6746
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | 2
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<<So by the time we got to the 80s, Spider-Man was a pretty dull book.
No Spider-Man comics from that time are remembered as fondly by
fandom as a whole as Miller's Daredevil.>>
Uhhhmmmm... Roger Stern and John Romita Jr.?
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Jason Fulton Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004 Posts: 3938
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | 3
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Stan stopped the characters from aging in all of the MARVEL titles around the same time.
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Rob Hewitt Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 May 2004 Location: United States Posts: 10182
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | 4
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But I bet there's a lot of folks who remember things like the mystery over the Hobgoblin's identity or the outstanding two-parter involving Spider-Man, Will O' The Wisp and The Tarantula quite fondly.
***
Or Kraven's Last Hunt. Or the early Venom stuff. or the Saga of the alien costume. or the McFarlane stuff.
Miller was abl;e to do radical things with a "failed" character like Daredevil. You couldn;t do such things with a successful character like Spider-man. Miller's Daredevil was a giant change in character
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Stephen Robinson Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 5835
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 5
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Quote:
Spider-Man by Lee & Ditko was great because they refused to stick to the "rules". They took chances, they made changes, they let him age, they gave the best cast of villains ever. There was no "illusion of change" when Stan & Steve were at the helm. | | |
This is what people miss. Lee & Ditko's changes were the ultimate in the "illusion of change," similar to JB making the Invisible Girl the Invisible Woman. It seems momentous but when you step back and think about it, it doesn't change the dynamic all that much -- unlike having Peter Parker get married or Aunt May discover his secret identity.
Peter "aged" -- though arguably no more than most comic book characters did (even in the Silver Age, you'd get comments from Superman and Batman about having fought a villain "years ago" or started their careers "years ago" -- with a high school student, though, "years ago" is quite a lot of time*). However, he was still a teenage student who lived with his aunt (even if he was a college student). The first step in the wrong direction was when he moved out his aunt's house -- then the dynamic was changing (though, even that can be the illusion of change, because he can always move back for any number of reasons).
Aunt May deciding to move to Florida in ASM 400 "writes her out" of the book just as much as killing her but the former is the "illusion of change" because she can come back. The latter is distinct, irrevocable change.
*Spider-Man is one of those characters who really shouldn't have "years of experience." The current character is written that way yet is supposed to still be the hard-luck hero who makes mistakes. Huh? He's not Batman or Captain America. I would prefer if his career spanned "months" rather than "years" myself.
Of course, if I had my way, the X-Men would still be the "strangest teens of all."
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Steve Jones Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 25 August 2004 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 548
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | 6
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Miller was abl;e to do radical things with a "failed" character like Daredevil. You couldn;t do such things with a successful character like Spider-man. Miller's Daredevil was a giant change in character +++++++++++++++++++++++=
Which I think describes the problem exactly. Spider-Man's success meant that no one felt able to do anything risky with him. Now I understand why it happens as Marvel wanted to keep what they had and not do anything stupid but you end up with drift with that mentality. To keep the franchise fresh and healthy, it needs spicing up every now and then, giving the reader's something out of left field just to keep them interested, otherwise you end up with what happened with Superman where you need reimagings on a wider scale.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133274
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:47pm | IP Logged | 7
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You would think if Ditko was anti-aging, and Stan pro-aging, when Ditko left, Stan would have kept aging. Instead, he stopped it right where it was-with Peter in college.**** Okay, see, this is the part where you have to pay attention to all the words. Like the ones that refer to the illusion of change becoming the model when Stan realized the book was going to stick around for a while.
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Victor Rodgers Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 December 2004 Posts: 3508
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | 8
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Which I think describes the problem exactly. Spider-Man's success meant that no one felt able to do anything risky with him. Now I understand why it happens as Marvel wanted to keep what they had and not do anything stupid but you end up with drift with that mentality. To keep the franchise fresh and healthy, it needs spicing up every now and then, giving the reader's something out of left field just to keep them interested, otherwise you end up with what happened with Superman where you need reimagings on a wider scale.
******
Your argument falls apart when you realise that during Millar's run on Daredevil that Roger Stern was doing fantastic work on Amazing.
Edited by Victor .R. Rodgers on 06 January 2006 at 1:49pm
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133274
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | 9
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Miller's Daredevil was a giant change in character**** Was it? Frank certainly changed the tone of the book, and layered in a great deal more to Matt's backstory -- adding Stick, for instance, for which there was much complaining from DD fans at the time -- but nothing he did actually changed who Daredevil was. That's something too many current writers simply don't get -- and it goes right to the whole point of "illusion of change".
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005 Posts: 133274
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 10
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Aunt May deciding to move to Florida in ASM 400 "writes her out" of the book just as much as killing her but the former is the "illusion of change" because she can come back.**** But it doesn't satisfy the sick f**ks who want to see a harmless old lady die. (Wow! If only they could have raped her first! That would have been Keeeeewl!!)
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Glenn Greenberg Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004 Location: United States Posts: 6746
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | 11
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<<To keep the franchise fresh and healthy, it needs spicing up every now
and then, giving the reader's something out of left field just to keep them
interested, otherwise you end up with what happened with Superman
where you need reimagings on a wider scale.>>
The problem that occurred with Superman was that there was TOO MUCH
coming out of left field, all to keep things interesting, and all this stuff
ended up taking away a lot of what made Superman so special in the first
place.
Superman was supposed to be the sole survivor of the planet Krypton,
with powers and abilities far beyond those of a normal human.
But over the years we got:
Supergirl
the Phantom Zone villains
Krypto
The bottle city of Kandor (an entire CITY of surviving Kryptonians!)
Supergirl's parents
And that's just scratching the surface, I'm sure. But the point is, not only
was Superman no longer the only survivor of Krypton, it seemed like the
only Kryptonians who actually died were Jor-El and Lara!
And Superman became more and more powerful, to the point where
everything came easy for him, and there were no real threats to him,
which made him a fairly boring character.
That's why JB's reboot was such a breath of fresh air.
But all this stuff is finding its way back into the books today. What was it
that was said about those who do not learn from history?
Edited by Glenn Greenberg on 06 January 2006 at 2:00pm
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Paul Greer Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 18 August 2004 Posts: 14191
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Posted: 06 January 2006 at 1:57pm | IP Logged | 12
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As far as the 80's Spider-Man goes, I'll add in my two cents that DeFalco and Frenz had some pretty good stories produced in that era as well.
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