At the onset of Americas interest in the Nazi expansion across Europe a tall cigar smoking professional artist set about to come up with a patriotic hero in the vein of MLJs The Shield. What he came up with was design genius and together with his partner, a hard working artist and creator already seasoned through years of inbetweening for Fleisher studios, penciling and creating for Liberty, Fox Features, and freelancing with his former editor turned partner... what he came up with was Captain America. The duo took their character to Martin Goodmans upstart Timely comics, a company whose premier title Marvel Mystery/Marvel Comics featured an innovative concept about a fire encased hero, a half atlantean aquatic holdover from a never-made sequel to the Undersea Kingdom movie seriel, a Tarzan clone previously featured in Goodmans pulp magazines, and a host of derivative and unimaginative forays into sequential storytelling. Needless to say, the star spangled hero became the dynamic frontrunner for the company. Firmly established almost immediately, the third issue happened to contain a two page text filler which would be the first professional writing assignment for the owners nephew, a copy editor fresh out of high school and working in the family business. Over the course of the next two decades, that hard working artist expanded his craft, working alone and with his partner for nearly every company doing business in the field. Together and individually he created artwork, artistic styles still in use today, characters, concepts and genres which would sell millions... hundreds of millions of books for companies across the board. He came up with the most dynamic use of layouts, the romance comic which would go on to sell millions of copies a month, the boys group comic... a concept so successful that Gleasons premier title Daredevil would find its title character replaced by the boys group who had been supporting characters and would disappear from the title completely. Westerns, war heros, crime comics, superheros and others which can not be easily defined (stuntman?!?!?!) sprang from his creative imagination as did the fully realized and genius send up of the patriotic hero, the Fighting American. When it came time to risk it all and form a company of their own, this creative powerhouse and his partner did it, creating their own publishing company. But the timing was terrible and the otherwise wildly successful endeavor became a victim of the wide witch hunt against the media led by Fredrick Wertham. He lost his business, his life savings, but not his cyclonic creativity. Picking himself up he went on to work for National and gave them a totally fresh take on several of their seasoned characters, and created still others for the powerhouse company. Chief among these was the first original group (and first completely original heros) of what has become known as the Silver Age of comics. His creation was a quartet of semi-dysfunctional adventurers led by a scientist who were dedicated to protecting the world from monsters and otherworldly threats. As the decade passed, he found himself picking up side work for other companies, including Goodmans. Turning in monster stories on the side, he was soon released from his duties at National. Meanwhile, a seriously creative Objectivist with an eye for supernatural surrealism and expressionism had been creating concept after concept and character after character on his own. His work on the seminal horror title The Thing featured concepts and art which made LB Cole seem tame. Every month it seemed that this Objectivist surrealist creative dynamo would come up with a brand new character, concept, or creation. As the decade came to a close, and like the other creative dynamo already mentioned, he too ended up at Goodmans Marvel doorstep. Also meanwhile, the copy editor who had begun his writing with a two page text filler in Captain America spent his two decades honing his craft for his publisher uncle. He became a decent editor over the years, proved to be an excellent promoter for the product, and under explicit orders and by directive continued to write and produce only in response to what was actually selling for other companies. Not creative at all, of course, but it did keep the company in business after so many others had fallen victim to Werthams witch hunt. Then as the 1960s dawned, it all changed. In 1961, the blue collar dynamo who had created so much for so many simply stopped. All at once he stopped creating and decided to do only piece work at wage scale for his employer. Even more odd, at exactly the same time, the Objectivist surrealist decided to do exactly the same thing. They simply stopped creating and did only art. And the greatest miracle? The copy editor and promoter at that precise moment began creating new and dynamic concepts out of the blue. His first major foray into this skill he had suddenly developed at 40 years of age was a quartet of semi-dysfunctional adventurers led by a scientist who were dedicated to protecting the world from monsters and otherworldly threats. His other endeavors were many, including patriotic heroes, war heroes, and he developed an eye for an eye for supernatural surrealism and expressionism. Single handedly this man created some of the greatest, most dynamic, and most successful comic stories, concepts, and characters ever known. He continued to do so for much of the decade until the Objectivist left the company, followed shortly by the dynamic professional who had done so much earlier in life. And then the greatest set of miracles of all occurred. The copy editor turned creator simply stopped creating at exactly the same time that the other two started creating again. New characters began pouring out at a breakneck pace. The copy editor/promoter never again produced a truly dynamic or original character, it is sad, but the other two rewrote entire new mythologies for some of the most successful companies in the business. The hard working creator who had stopped so suddenly in the early 1960s never stopped again for the rest of his life and his legacy before and after this period is fantastic. Perhaps the oddest comic story of all is the one that is told of this time period during the 1960s, a story told during a deposition only a few years back when the estate of the hard working creator went to court to establish the truth. In the deposition of the copy editor, we get the following, and quite telling statement: Q: Now, typically who came up with the ideas for stories at Marvel during the 50s and 60s? A: In the 60s, the ideas for the new characters originated with me because that was my responsibility. ... I dreamed up the Fantastic Four,... The Hulk and the X-Men and Iron Man, ... Daredevil, ... Spider-Man, ... Regardless of how odd it sounds, and how strange a tale it may be, its the company line which was sworn to in a court of law, so it must be the truth.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 12:38:42 +0000
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