Editor's Note: The following piece is an expanded version of Pierre's article "The Four Fantastic Phases of Silver Age Marvel" which features in the Sept 2000 issue of that excellent publication Comic Book Marketplace, also known as CBM. Without the constraints of the printed medium, we're able to present this fuller version. You might like to compare the two! - Nick
Author's Note: Regular visitors to this site will be familiar with the four phases of Silver Age Marvel's development described here, as they continue to serve as the theoretical basis of this writer's collaboration with Gregorio Montejo in our In-depth Reviews column. I first dreamed up the idea of dividing Silver Age Marvel's development into four phases in the early '90s, just before the completion of the original of this article around 1994. - Pierre
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Part 1: The Early, Formative Years
Measured against its impact over the last thirty years, Silver Age Marvel remains the single most important group of comics published by any company in that period. Although Silver Age DC reopened the market to super-heroes in the mid-fifties and led the way in certain innovations, it wasn't until Marvel recreated the image of the super-hero in a new mold that solidified the position of the costumed adventurer as the dominant element in modern comics, sweeping aside such older genres as romance, horror, western and war comics that still existed in abundance in the early sixties. In looking more closely at the development of Silver Age Marvel, an observer can see a certain progression of storytelling complexity as the company, helmed by editor Stan Lee, moved from an early determination to try something new, to a growing consciousness that it had stumbled onto something bursting with potential. This whole Silver Age period can be broken down roughly into four phases: 1) the Early, Formative Years; 2) the Years of Consolidation; 3) the later, Grandiose Years and 4) the Twilight Years. |
1) What is there to say about Fantastic Four # 1 (Nov 1961) that hasn't been said before? Here is the book that neatly divides the history of comics into two eras: everything that came before and the progeny of the Fantastic Four after. It was this book that redefined the parameters of the comic book and in order to survive, all others would eventually have to follow its lead. We all know the bits that went to make it up: the elimination of gadgets, the lack of secret identities, no headquarters, no uniforms, the bickering among its members and the personal tragedies strange powers sometimes bestow on people. But is it safe to assume that readers at the time recognized these elements and immediately flocked to the book, or were they simply regular readers of Marvel's monster titles drawn to the new book by its obviously familiar plot: a brilliant scientist and his friends rocket into space to be given strange powers by cosmic rays, return to earth and fall into battle with the Mole Man and his legions of giant monsters. It's difficult to believe that with the competition of DC's slicker, more attractive product that the crudely produced FF could possibly compete, especially sporting what seemed to be a lackluster Jack Kirby art job. In the first few issues at least, it seemed as if Kirby put more care in his westerns and monster stories than he did on the FF. Writer Stan Lee has always claimed that FF # 1 was Marvel's attempt to cash in on the latest comic book fad and in the process to finally apply some ideas he'd had for years of a new way of approaching super-heroes. If so, somehow fans did recognize these ideas through the conventional plot and gave Lee the chance he needed. At first unsure, except for this idea of unconventionality in approaching the super-hero, Lee would become more conscious of the larger potentialities of the new direction and eventually, the Fantastic Four would become the main vehicle for some of the most amazing advances (and adventures!) in comic book storytelling. |
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2) After marking time with FF # 2 (and receiving the first trickle of what soon would become a flood of mail), the decision was made to concede some elements of the new book to conventionality. And so, in Fantastic Four # 3 (Mar 1962) the heroes were given not colorful costumes, but featureless uniforms; a bathtub-shaped flying vehicle, not a souped up Batmobile and for a headquarters, instead of a hidden cave or secret satellite, the FF were given a very public suite in the upper floors of a skyscraper at the center of New York City! What's more, although Kirby had at first submitted completed pages with Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Girl sporting domino masks, Lee had inker Artie Simek remove them. The FF were to be public celebrities whose exploits and private affairs would be the subject of newspaper tabloids and gossip magazines. And they'd give plenty for the paparazzi to cover since no such dramatic changes as costumes and headquarters were made to the personalities of the four themselves. Part of the rage Ben Grimm felt over the bad luck that had changed him into the Thing was born of his frustration at not being able to compete with Reed Richards for the affections of teammate Sue Storm. "I want Sue to look at me the way she looks at you," he tells Reed, raising an angry fist. Meanwhile, Johnny is still the hotheaded teenager, thoughtless and cruel as so many young people can be. "My sister?? Don't kid yourself, Thing! She wouldn't go for you if you looked like Rock Hudson!!" "Why you crummy brat! I'll teach you to laugh at me!" "Why can't you control yourself, Thing?" asks Reed, unconscious of his own callousness when he refers to his friend as a thing rather than calling him by his rightful name. "Why must we always fight among ourselves?" moans Sue, "What's wrong with us?" But whatever was wrong with the team, was obviously right with the book's readers who continued to demand more of the same. After all, next to the heroes being at each other's throats half the time, this issue's fight with the Miracle Man and another giant monster looked pretty uninteresting! In fact, this issue ends the way it began, ("Oh, please! Don't start arguing among yourselves again!! I...I just can't stand any more!" complains Sue). In frustration and anger ("I had all the bossin' around I can take!"), the Torch quits the team and flies off leaving the others wondering if he might turn against mankind. Not your father's super-hero team! Fun fact: this issue also featured the strip's first letters page including one signed "S. Brodsky" which managed, very suspiciously, to mention the title of every comic Marvel published at the time!
3) The drama continues in Fantastic Four # 4 (May 1962) as the three remaining members continue to argue among themselves about who was to blame for the Torch's abrupt departure. "It's your fault that he ran off," Reed tells the Thing, pointing an accusing finger in his direction. "Sure! Sure! Everything around here is my fault!" Despite their differences, however, they decide to find the Torch and bring him back. "...and when I do find ‘im, I'll teach him to run off on us that way!" growls the Thing, breaking up some furniture. "Oh, Reed! If he harms the Torch…" says Sue; and this early in the run, what reader wouldn't have doubted that the Thing, now drawn by Kirby as a bulky creature with the roughened hide of a dinosaur, was capable of it? After an early brush with the Torch, the four lose his trail again and when readers spot him next, he's hiding out in New York's Bowery district. There, he finds a bed in a flop-house and a bedraggled, bearded "stumble-bum" catches his attention when he effortlessly disposes of half a dozen tormentors. Using his flame, Johnny gives him a shave and haircut and readers are given their first glimpse of a character not seen in comics for a decade. Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, was Marvel's first revival of a character from the company's "golden age" of the 1940s, the Fantastic Four's first true super-villain and the first of a long line of bad guys whose personalities would be given enough wrinkles to prevent readers from completely hating them, if not sometimes sympathizing with them. With Namor being the first, he also served as the template: wishing only to return to his undersea people, he discovers that Atlantis is long deserted, destroyed in fact, and permeated with radioactivity. Blaming the surface people, Sub-Mariner vows revenge. "You young fool!" he shouts at the Torch. "For returning my memory, you have signed the death warrant of the human race!" Swallowing his pride, the Torch signals for his former teammates and when they arrive, the first thing they do is criticize him for using the signal when there wasn't an emergency. But of course, there is, and together again, the four stop the Sub-Mariner's initial attempt to destroy mankind. An unintended side-effect of this encounter creates a new wrinkle in the Reed, Ben, Sue triangle when the Sub-Mariner asks Sue to marry him! She agrees under duress, but Namor refuses to have her if she thinks she's being forced. "I'll be back! Do you hear? I'll be back!" he swears, returning to the sea, defeated but not vanquished. Namor would return again and again in future issues (helping to create the sense of continuity and realism that became two of the main reasons readers were attracted to Marvel like a magnet) until the rivalry between he and Mr. Fantastic over the Invisible Girl was eventually settled in FF # 27.
4) Expanding the arena for his new ideas, but at the same time staying within the familiar genre of the monster yarn, Lee came out with a whole new title six months after the debut of the FF. In the meantime, he had both compromised and forged ahead with his more realistic heroes. The FF had since donned costumes, received a headquarters and got some gadgets, but with a twist. The costumes were strictly functional jumpsuits of the type worn by aircraft workers with no masks, their headquarters was located on the top floors of a midtown skyscraper in New York City and their gadgets included a flying bathtub. Despite the fans' desires for some of the conventions of the super-hero genre, Lee insisted on keeping his heroes in the real world. That real world infringed painfully on the life of Bruce Banner who became one of the truly tragic characters ever created for comics. In Incredible Hulk # 1 (May 1962), teenager Rick Jones parks his car on a bet at a nuclear test site somewhere in the American southwest just as Bruce Banner's new gamma bomb is about to be tested. Rushing onto the field to rescue the boy, Banner is himself caught in the blast and as a result, turns into the Hulk, an almost mindless brute of incredible strength who becomes a virtual walking id. As a reader once pointed out, the Hulk was the true existential man! At first Banner would change into the Hulk with the rise of the moon, but the idea was quickly abandoned for another that relied on the emotional level of either identity to trigger the change, a circumstance more in keeping with the primal nature of the Hulk. With the creation of the Hulk, Lee had come up with the perfect vehicle for his new ideas of what it actually would be like to have super powers in the real world. And Kirby's chunky, monster style art was here smoother and more energetic than it was over in the FF. Unfortunately, the blurred line between hero and villain didn't catch on with readers and the Hulk was soon canceled.
5) Blurring line between hero and villain was becoming an increasingly important point of exploration for Lee and Kirby. It began as early as the introduction of the Mole Man in FF # 1, continued with the reintroduction to the comics world of the Sub-Mariner in FF # 4 and eventually reached its grandiose culmination in the introduction of Dr. Doom in Fantastic Four # 5 (July 1962). To be sure, in this first appearance, Doom's motivations were not explained, but the reader is told, through the voice of Reed Richards, of a young science student named Victor von Doom who combined scientific knowledge with black magic. It was a lab accident involving the two that left Doom's face horribly disfigured. Sending himself into self-exile, he was last known to be wandering the Far East in search of still more dark secrets. From this sketchy origin, the story of Dr. Doom would grow, (with a full length origin story appearing in FF annual #2), until the readers came to sympathize at least in part over the reasons for his melancholy. With genius to rival that of Mr. Fantastic but without his sense of morality, Doom easily became the most dangerous man in the growing Marvel universe. Unfettered by notions of right and wrong and bounded only by his own needs, Doom became the personification of ruthlessness. Through him, the reader could perhaps glimpse the internal forces that had moved men of such historical villainy as Hitler and Stalin. Lee and Kirby would later play Doom like a harp, giving readers private moments showing his finer sensibilities and then veering him off into brutal villainy. In the blurred line between hero and villain, Doom was easily Marvel's most complicated creation.
6) Virtually in the same month as FF # 5, Marvel introduced a new character that was destined to eclipse even the groundbreaking Fantastic Four in importance. As the story goes, Amazing Fantasy was a book on the verge of cancellation and with nothing to lose, Lee decided to throw in an idea for a character he'd had kicking around in his head for a while. Spider-Man would be the culmination of all the non-traditional super-hero ideas Lee had been exploring for the past year or more. In him, Lee would present a character even closer to reality than either the FF or the Hulk who were still too far removed from everyday life for the readers to really identify with. With Spider-Man, Lee would finally break all the barriers. He'd make him an unpopular teenager, a science wiz in high school whose interest in his studies alienated him from his classmates; an orphan being raised by a loving but too doting aunt; he'd have girl problems, money problems and even identity problems. Nothing would come easy for him and in fact, each issue of the later Spider-Man comic would end in a panel listing all his problems. As a hero, Spider-Man would have to wash and sew his own costume, pay for his own transportation to where the villains were, endure scathing attacks by the media and the fear and distrust of the public in general and his fellow super-heroes in particular. It all began in Amazing Fantasy # 15 (Aug 1962) with the pencils of Steve Ditko who was Kirby's polar opposite specializing in the common man and the anguished faces of ordinary people undergoing the full range of human emotion, a talent that would prove of crucial importance in the conveying the realistic world of Peter Parker. Coupled with Lee's flair for writing naturalistic dialogue, the story of Spider-Man's origin is told neatly in 11 pages as Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider, gains incredible insectoid abilities and allows a crook to escape a pursuing security guard. It was this last incident that would provide the book with its motivating factor as Peter arrives home one night to discover how wrong he could be in believing that stopping the escaping crook was none of his business. With his beloved Uncle Ben dead at the burglar's hands, Peter learns that "...with great power, there must also come great responsibility." A lesson that has since become one of the most hallowed in comics.
the next six... |
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