Read Online Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sean Howe
Tags: Non-Fiction
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veterans. “The Human Torch” was passed like a hot potato, finally landing with an artist credited as Joe Carter.
Joe Carter’s real name, it turned out, was Jerry Siegel. The co-creator of Superman had been reduced in the late 1950s to pleading for assignments from Superman’s copyright holder, DC Comics, and toiling under the abusive watch of editor Mort Weisinger for little pay. (According to industry legend, Weisinger once said to the meek Siegel, who was seated in his office, “I have to go to the can. Do you mind if I use your script to wipe my ass?”) In the early 1960s, Siegel started making noise about a Superman lawsuit, and, bracing for DC’s wrath, began looking elsewhere for employment. How could Lee not give work to one of the creators of the industry?
Unfortunately, Siegel’s earnest, old-fashioned scripts didn’t meet Lee’s standards. Nor, it seemed, did anyone else’s. Lee started seizing back “Iron Man” and “Thor” and “Ant-Man.” Despite the substantial plotting contributions of Kirby and Heck and Ditko, when it came to the narration and dialogue, he trusted only himself.
Desperate to catch up on deadlines, Lee got Goodman’s approval to hire George Roussos, who could ink two dozen pages in a day, for a staff position. But Roussos, wary of Goodman’s hiring-and-layoff cycles, passed. Lee had better luck finding an assistant—a “gal Friday,” in his words—to at least help with the administrative work. In March 1963, a temp agency sent over Florence Steinberg, a button-cute, bouffant-sporting twenty-five-year-old in pearls and white gloves who’d recently arrived in New York from Boston. Steinberg, a former art history major, was every bit as upbeat and outgoing as Lee—she’d been student council president in high school and later volunteered for campaigns of both Ted and Bobby Kennedy. Now stationed at a desk next to Lee, she answered fan mail (hundreds of pieces arrived every day), called freelancers, and shipped pages to the printer for sixty-five dollars a week, while he sat atop a stool and pounded away on his typewriter, or greeted visiting artists for story conferences.
Their office mates at Magazine Management, including future Godfather novelist Mario Puzo, scoffed at how frantically Lee and Steinberg and Brodsky were starting to work. But for Lee, something magical was happening. As the breakneck pace of new character introductions continued—Steve Ditko single-handedly developed the arrogant-surgeon-turned-benevolent-magician Doctor Strange for a backup feature in Strange Tales * —the existing characters began to generate synergistic relationships with one another. A two-page sequence in Amazing Spider-Man #1 showed the web-spinner attempting to join the Fantastic Four (he was greatly disappointed to learn that group membership didn’t include a salary); the same month, the Hulk (whose own title had just been canceled) * showed up in The Fantastic Four #12. Doctor Doom battled Spider-Man; the Human Torch spoke at an assembly at Peter Parker’s high school; and Doctor Strange ended up in a hospital under the care of Dr. Don Blake, the alter ego of Thor. When Ant-Man showed up in Fantastic Four #16, accompanied by an alluring new heroine named the Wasp, a footnote explained all: “Meet the Wasp, Ant-Man’s new partner-in-peril, starting with issue #44 of Tales to Astonish !” * It was canny cross-promotion, sure, but more important, it had narrative effects that would become a Marvel Comics touchstone: the idea that these characters shared a world, that the actions of each had repercussions on the others, and that each comic was merely a thread of one Marvel-wide mega-story.
It all set the stage for The Avengers , which gathered an all-star team of Marvel’s marquee names (except for Spider-Man, fated to remain a sulking lone wolf). Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Thor, and Hulk joined forces to defeat Thor’s enemy Loki, and decided that they should get
Joe Carter’s real name, it turned out, was Jerry Siegel. The co-creator of Superman had been reduced in the late 1950s to pleading for assignments from Superman’s copyright holder, DC Comics, and toiling under the abusive watch of editor Mort Weisinger for little pay. (According to industry legend, Weisinger once said to the meek Siegel, who was seated in his office, “I have to go to the can. Do you mind if I use your script to wipe my ass?”) In the early 1960s, Siegel started making noise about a Superman lawsuit, and, bracing for DC’s wrath, began looking elsewhere for employment. How could Lee not give work to one of the creators of the industry?
Unfortunately, Siegel’s earnest, old-fashioned scripts didn’t meet Lee’s standards. Nor, it seemed, did anyone else’s. Lee started seizing back “Iron Man” and “Thor” and “Ant-Man.” Despite the substantial plotting contributions of Kirby and Heck and Ditko, when it came to the narration and dialogue, he trusted only himself.
Desperate to catch up on deadlines, Lee got Goodman’s approval to hire George Roussos, who could ink two dozen pages in a day, for a staff position. But Roussos, wary of Goodman’s hiring-and-layoff cycles, passed. Lee had better luck finding an assistant—a “gal Friday,” in his words—to at least help with the administrative work. In March 1963, a temp agency sent over Florence Steinberg, a button-cute, bouffant-sporting twenty-five-year-old in pearls and white gloves who’d recently arrived in New York from Boston. Steinberg, a former art history major, was every bit as upbeat and outgoing as Lee—she’d been student council president in high school and later volunteered for campaigns of both Ted and Bobby Kennedy. Now stationed at a desk next to Lee, she answered fan mail (hundreds of pieces arrived every day), called freelancers, and shipped pages to the printer for sixty-five dollars a week, while he sat atop a stool and pounded away on his typewriter, or greeted visiting artists for story conferences.
Their office mates at Magazine Management, including future Godfather novelist Mario Puzo, scoffed at how frantically Lee and Steinberg and Brodsky were starting to work. But for Lee, something magical was happening. As the breakneck pace of new character introductions continued—Steve Ditko single-handedly developed the arrogant-surgeon-turned-benevolent-magician Doctor Strange for a backup feature in Strange Tales * —the existing characters began to generate synergistic relationships with one another. A two-page sequence in Amazing Spider-Man #1 showed the web-spinner attempting to join the Fantastic Four (he was greatly disappointed to learn that group membership didn’t include a salary); the same month, the Hulk (whose own title had just been canceled) * showed up in The Fantastic Four #12. Doctor Doom battled Spider-Man; the Human Torch spoke at an assembly at Peter Parker’s high school; and Doctor Strange ended up in a hospital under the care of Dr. Don Blake, the alter ego of Thor. When Ant-Man showed up in Fantastic Four #16, accompanied by an alluring new heroine named the Wasp, a footnote explained all: “Meet the Wasp, Ant-Man’s new partner-in-peril, starting with issue #44 of Tales to Astonish !” * It was canny cross-promotion, sure, but more important, it had narrative effects that would become a Marvel Comics touchstone: the idea that these characters shared a world, that the actions of each had repercussions on the others, and that each comic was merely a thread of one Marvel-wide mega-story.
It all set the stage for The Avengers , which gathered an all-star team of Marvel’s marquee names (except for Spider-Man, fated to remain a sulking lone wolf). Iron Man, Ant-Man, the Wasp, Thor, and Hulk joined forces to defeat Thor’s enemy Loki, and decided that they should get
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