A Brief introduction to
Marvel Comics
in the Silver Age
Reviews and Analysis by
Pierre Comtois and
Gregorio Montejo
There can be little argument regarding Silver Age Marvel's impact on the comic book world since the inception of Fantastic Four #1 in 1961.
The definition of the super-hero as human being, encumbered with all of the same problems and challenges as ordinary people, stemmed from editor Stan Lee's personal vision and was translated into pictures by artist Jack Kirby. From there, it was the mutually supportive contributions of both men together that combined to reinvent the super-hero genre. But important as the work of these two men was in that creation, artist Steve Ditko, perhaps lacking Lee's facility with language and Kirby's dynamic artistry, nevertheless displayed a certain synthesis of both when he helped to create the single most fallible (and popular) of the Marvel stable of characters.
None of this, however, sprang whole from the brow of any single man, Lee, Kirby or Ditko. On the contrary, we believe it began almost by accident, and developed more or less unconsciously through 1963 until, after a gradual realization of the potentialities inherent in this new twist in super-hero writing, a more deliberate approach began to be taken.
As a result, the whole process, the rise and fall of Silver Age Marvel, can be broken down into four distinct parts:
| | The early, formative years (1961-1962) when characters began to be infused with the humanism that would become the hallmark of Marvel and the first steps were taken that would later reshape Marvel's entire line of books into a single coherent universe, |
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| | the years of conscious consolidation (1963-1964) when editor Lee set the policy of infusing the new humanism into every character (and creating whole new books such as Daredevil and the X-Men based entirely around the concept) and solidifying the Marvel universe with increasing cross-over events, |
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| | the grandiose years when the consciousness of a deliberate humanism in the Marvel line resulted in comics written and conceptualized for adults as well as children (1965-1969), |
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| | ...and the twilight years (1970-) after Lee, Kirby and Ditko's creative energies seemed to have spent themselves and a new generation of creators succeeded them, prolonging Marvel's Silver Age in a new guise into the mid-seventies. |
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Here's
the
4th
of our weekly
reviews:
on-line
23 Jan
2000 |
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The Mighty Thor
# 176
May 1970
Cover: Jack Kirby & Bill Everett
"Inferno!"
Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Vince Colletta |
Past reviews
are archived
in the
REVIEW INDEX
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Produced as their historic partnership was coming to an end, The Mighty Thor # 176 is probably not a comic most would compare favorably with earlier achievements by the writer/artist team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
With only two more issues of Thor to go, it's very likely that by this time, Kirby had already ceased having anything to do with Marvel and Lee had given up much if not all of his previous participation in the plotting of the book. In addition, Thor #176 was also plagued by many of the production problems endemic of the rest of the Marvel line at the time: lackluster coloring and the much-hated half pages in the middle of the book.
 But despite these drawbacks, Kirby at least, was professional enough to turn in an art job that still pulsed with the excitement and power that had marked the maturation of his craft since Fantastic Four #1. This issue's splash panel (at left) for instance is a masterpiece of brooding menace while the depiction of a wrathful Surtur on page 14 (below, right) still manages to convey some of the awesome power of Asgardian entities. Unfortunately, with recent, and devastating, revelations regarding Vince Colletta's work habits, there's no telling if the sparse and uninspired nature of the remaining pages is the fault of a demoralized artist or a careless inker. 
The script is perfunctory with the plot all too familiar to long time readers: Loki has seized power again from an absent Odin and with the Odin Ring on his finger everyone is bound to obey him no matter what. (For a race that's supposed to be so advanced as to be godlike, why haven't they discovered the blessings of democracy instead of a blind, senseless obedience that defies reason?) Meanwhile, Asgard is under attack (again!) this time by Surtur the fire demon.
Throughout Kirby's tenure on Thor, the title was indisputably the most mythic of his Marvel books. And here, in the twilight of his legendary ten years or so at the company, it's perhaps most appropriate to take a closer look at not only the meaning, but the method of his mythopoeia.
Maybe the best way to start an examination into the mimesis (the attempt to capture the perfection only found in the realm of ideas) of Kirby's mythos is to point out that the Greek word mythos means story or plot. For Aristotle, the first and best expositor of the narrative arts, mythos is best expressed through praxis, or the action of characters. Not merely the depiction of the outward motion of bodies, but of internal states as well. Praxis reveals the movements of the soul as well as the body. In the words of the Aristotelian scholar S.H.Butcher:
"The praxis of the drama has primary reference to that kind of action which, while springing from the inward power of will, manifests itself in external doing. The very word...indicates this idea. The verb...is the strongest of the words used to express the notion of doing; it marks an activity exhibited in outward and energetic form...the characters are not described, they enact their own story and so reveal themselves."
Here's a key concept 'energetic form,' that needs to be explained. Perhaps it can best be understood as actualization, the function of form. The opposite, but necessary, Aristotelian term is matter, or potentiality, which is an innate tendency or potency straining towards some active form. Everything in creation is a union of these two, anything inert would cease to be, and any mere potentiality, matter without form, could never come into existence. Their massiveness denotes their potency. Kirby's visual universe therefore, is continuously coming to be. Its dynamic principle, of potential power enacting itself in energetic form in order to actuate itself fully, is a cosmos; a Greek term which denotes an ordered, harmonious totality. In this sense Kirby truly was a cosmic visionary.
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