And that was MIGHTY MARVEL MAY!

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Mister Farrell

And that’s it! My top 30 favorite Marvel Comics character in minibust form. So many fun characters had to be left out (Sorry Blade! Sorry Kingpin! Sorry everyone in Power Pack! Punisher- you’re still a Spider-Man villain to me, and I didn’t have room for Norman Osborn, the ne plus ultra of Spidey villains, so you didn’t make the cut). Marvel has been publishing for more than 70 years, have thousands of characters, and occupied most of my childhood and young adulthood.

For all my love of this vast fictional universe, in this series I’ve tried to pay homage to the creators of these characters. It’s very easy to think of the Marvel Universe as an almost organic whole, and that these stories will be there every month without fail, but without Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, John Romita, Gene Colan, Steve Gerber, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, and so many more there would be no Marvel Universe. These people gave words and form to the imaginary heroes who have thrilled us. As a kid, I may have wanted to swing across a cityscape like Spider-Man or have the strength of the Thing. But as an adult I wish I could create something to inspire people the way Jack Kirby has.

‘Nuff said.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #28: BEN GRIMM/THE THING

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Mister Farrell

The ever-lovin’, blue-eyed idol o’ millions, Benjamin J. Grimm.

Reed Richard, Sue Storm, her brother Johnny, and Ben Grimm launched an experimental rocket into a cosmic ray storm and, crash-landing back on earth, were transformed into the superhuman Fantastic Four. Reed, Sue, and Johnny gained the power to stretch like elastic, to turn invisible at will, and to become a “Human Torch,” respectively, but Ben… Ben was permanently distorted into a humanoid pile of orange rocks. The Thing.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (1961)was the beginning of what’s considered the Marvel Age of comics. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s great breakthrough was the concept of superheroes with human vulnerabilities and flaws, who fought and reconciled like a family. In the Marvel Universe there were super-powers, but they came at a cost. Prior to that, superheroes usually had secret identities, mortal alter-egos they could retreat to when their adventures were concluded. The Fantastic Four did not; Ben Grimm couldn’t.

Always a tough Jewish guy from Brooklyn, Ben was now too tough for the small and fragile world around him. At home only with his surrogate family, Ben channeled his great strength into his adventures with the Fantastic Four. Reed, the greatest scientific mind of his generation, looked for a cure for Ben’s condition, but could never find one. Outwardly Ben put on a brave face, playing the same lovable lout he’d always been, waiting for the moment he can let lose and holler ”IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!”

Hope you’ll pass through this way tomorrow for another installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #26: PRINCE NAMOR, THE SUB-MARINER

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Mister Farrell

They say we like people for their good qualities and love them for their flaws. There may be no Marvel character who better exemplifies this principle than Namor, the Sub-Mariner. Appearing in the very first Marvel comic, MARVEL COMICS #1, in a story written and drawn by a young Bill Everett. (Namor’s title, the Sub-Mariner, is pronounced mr-nr, as in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” as opposed to as in submarine.)

From the beginning, Namor was a contradictory, angry mess. The offspring of a human sailor and an Atlantean mother, Namor was amphibious, with Caucasian skin tones (as opposed to his mother’s blue skin), pointed ears and elven eyebrows. He possessed superhuman strength and endurance, which made sense since he lived deep underwater and wore only tiny swim trunks, but he also had a feature unrelated to his human or Atlantean heritage: tiny wings on his ankles which allowed him to fly. It’s an entirely whimsical, Golden Age idea which makes no logical sense, even in a world where radioactive accidents grant more superpowers than they do cancer. But the strange detail made him master of land, sea, and air.

But there was no place Namor was truly at home. Although a prince by birthright, Atlantis considered him a half-breed, and the surface world wanted no part of him, either. So he was a belligerent brat, attacking Manhattan with tidal waves and monsters from the deep over perceived slights. When the US entered World War II in real life, Namor decided he hated the Axis most of all the airbreathers.

In the 1960s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revived the Sub-Mariner, initially as a villain, when the Human Torch found Namor living as an amnesiac vagrant in a flophouse. Although he hadn’t aged, years on dry land had erased his memory, but one good dip in the ocean set him back to his petulant, pompous self.

Constantly vacillating between mankind’s defender and its greatest foe, Namor is somehow nonetheless an engaging character. Like a beloved drunk who gets violent when he’s had too much, Namor’s friends in the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, all embrace him when he calms back down.

I depicted Namor with gills, which John Byrne introduced in his Namor series of the 1990s. He also eliminated the wings and suggested too long in either environment triggers Namor’s mood swings, which struck me as over-explanation. The Hulk is the repressed, raging id of a bookworm scientist, unleashed with the force of an atomic bomb. Namor? He’s just moody.

I hope you’ll swing by for tomorrow’s installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY!

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #24: THE HULK

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Mister Farrell

Doc Bruce Banner,
Belted by gamma rays,
Turned into the Hulk…

Stan Lee has said that the Hulk, co-created with artist Jack Kirby, is based on Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, the good man who becomes a monster, and also on Boris Karloff’s version of Frankenstein’s monster, the misbegotten, persecuted creature. Those influences are fairly evident. What is absent from all but the original versions of the Hulk are his Cold War origins. Doctor Bruce Banner was a meek, bookish man who used his genius to build weapons of mass destruction and, caught in the blast of one of his bombs, became one himself.

The Hulk is Banner’s alter-ego. When angered, Banner becomes a seven-foot, thousand-pound, musclebound, lime-green, simple-minded version of himself (in most versions: he originally changed at nightfall, was gray-skinned, and merely terse, not simple). As he grows angrier, he gets stronger,often proclaiming “Hulk is strongest one there is!” After the anger has faded, he reverts back to a scrawny Bruce Banner by the side of the road somewhere, his clothes in tatters, barely able to remember what he’s done.

In the 1980s, writer/artist Barry Windsor-Smith proposed a story which would reveal that Bruce Banner had been physically abused as a child. The revelation would suggest that the Hulk was not merely Banner’s repressed anger, but a physical manifestation of the anger of an abused child, to some degree explicating the Hulk’s childlike demeanor. Marvel ran a version of the story, but without Windsor-Smith (and interesting account of the behind-the-scenes story of how Marvel passed and then ended up using the story anyway can be found here).

The Hulk’s adventures both permit us to worry for Dr. Banner, the victim of violence who perpetuates violence without meaning to, and vicariously enjoy the demolition when he transforms and bellows “HULK SMASH!”

I hope you’ll return for tomorrow’s installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY even if tomorrow’s installment isn’t very nice.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #20: CHARLES XAVIER/ PROFESSOR X

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Mister Farrell

The greatest mutant mind on earth.

The opposite number to his former friend, mutant supremacist Magneto, Xavier seeks peace between mutant and humankind. Where Magneto formed a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Xavier founded a School for Gifted Youngers. He also created the X-Men, a mutant strike team, because Xavier believes sometimes ideology is not enough.

Generally depicted as a protagonist with good intentions, Xavier has always had a Machiavellian streak, present since his first appearance in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-MEN #1. Physically handicapped but gifted with telepathy from an early age, Xavier can easily read minds, cast illusions, and rewrite memories, and if he feels justified, he will with little provocation. He’s not only headmaster of his school, he often takes an authoritarian role with all mutantkind as well. As his student Kitty Pryde (whose parents’ memories of the school’s true nature he erased) once put it “Professor Xavier is a jerk.”

Xavier’s complex morality defies simple black and white characterization. He often does terribly things, such as sending a team of X-Men to their deaths and covering it up before recruiting a new team, for the best reasons. In service to a dream of peace and brotherhood, Xavier often pushes his basic humanity aside for the good of all.

I hope you’ll return tomorrow for another shining installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY!

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #19: MAGNETO

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Mister Farrell

Hero, villain, freedom fighter, terrorist… The mutant master of magnetism: Magneto.

Created in 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby as an antagonist for the X-Men the first issue of their comic, Magneto spent his early years as a standard archvillain, going so far as to call his organization The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. At first we knew little about Magneto’s past or motivations, and Jack Kirby’s helmet design for him even disguised his age.

Many years later writer Chris Claremont revealed aspects of Magneto’s history that underlined why he used his powers against normal humans who would oppress mutants: Magneto’s family had been killed by Nazis and he barely escaped with his own life. When his powers emerged and he was once again part of a persecuted minority, this time he had the power to fight back.

Once a friend to fellow mutant and X-Men founder Charles Xavier, Magneto rejected Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence with humans. Magneto felt there could only be peace if mutants ruled, and for that to happen rivers of blood had to flow.

Magneto reformed for a time, tempered by Xavier’s influence, he even assumed a position as headmaster of Xavier’s school in his absence. But eventually his anger and frustration got the better of him, and he realized that without the extremes he represented, the more moderate Xavier would never be heard.

Although he often wars with humanity, Magneto’s motivations are easily understood by anyone who’s felt powerless in the face of injustice an wished they could reverse the polarities of power. Although a villain, Magneto’s relatable anger make him all too human.

I hope you’ll be back for tomorrow’s extra-special installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #18: IRON MAN

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Mister Farrell

Most of you are probably familiar with the story of billionaire playboy inventor Tony Stark, a munitions maker injured by (in most versions) his own weaponry in the field. With a shrapnel precariously close to his heart, a makeshift electromagnet is all that keeps him from death. He escapes captivity and saves his own life by making himself a weapon: Iron Man.

Originally created by old standbys Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, in a story scripted by Larry Lieber and drawn by Don Heck in TALES OF SUSPENSE #39 in 1963. Iron man gets periodic updates to his origin, which originally took place in Vietnam and has been moved to Afghanistan, and to his armor, once “powered” by transistors. He’s always remained ahead of the pace of even real-world science.

Although Tony Stark’s identity as Iron Man was secret for most of his career, in recent years he’s gone public with it. An autocratic technocrat, Tony tries to make the world better with his inventions, at the same time steadfastly guarding against people who would misuse it. He often fails to recognize any authority but his own, which sometimes puts him at odds with government and other superheroes (although Tony was thoroughly pro-government in the CIVIL WAR miniseries which pitted brother superhero against brother superhero). Tony has also hit bottom a number of times, such as in the “Demon in a Bottle” storyline, in which his alcoholism costs him the Iron Man armor and even his company.

Constantly teetering between progress and self-ruin, human and machine, Iron Man perfectly represents the nature of technology. And he does it with style.

Iron Man’s look is always evolving, too. After the initial, bulky, robotic Kirby design, Steve Ditko created the first version of the more iconic, streamlined yellow-and-red armor. Although the version I’ve done, inspired by artist Adi Granov, is not his favorite, I dedicate this piece to Iron Man fan Steve Bannister, who’s as resolute (and right more often) in his opinions as Tony Stark himself.

Tomorrow I’ll present a very attractive character for MIGHTY MARVEL MAY.

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #16: DOCTOR DOOM

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Mister Farrell

When you think “arch villain,” no one fits the bill like Doctor Doom. Originally an adversary of the Fantastic Four, also created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Doom grew to be one of the main antagonists in the Marvel Universe.

Victor Von Doom was a college student from the European kingdom of Latveria when he met Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, who would later become Mister Fantastic and The Thing of the Fantastic Four. Doom was Richards’ greatest scientific rival. When Richards tried to correct Doom’s faulty equation on an experiment, Doom’s hubris kept him from listening. The experiment literally blew up in Doom’s face; he blamed Richards.

Now scarred (Lee preferred Doom’s face be ruin in the accident; Kirby wanted to reveal only a tiny cheek scratch which to the egomaniacal Doom would amount to the same thing), he donned an iron suit, studied super-science and magic. He declared himself Doctor Doom (because, after all, he never graduated college) and returned home to conquer Latveria.

If Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor is a cutting edge supercomputer in human form, Doom’s armor is a Panzer tank. With no less than the entirety of Latveria’s resources, and endless supply of lookalike “Doombots”, and one of the most formidable intellects on earth, Doom has set out to conquer the world many, many times. And he even succeeded once.

Doom is a complicated character, conflicted by his own desire to be the best, most noble, greatest man and his own selfishness. Ashamed of his Gypsy heritage, he fought and succeeded to make himself a king. His intellect matched (and exceeded) only by Reed Richards, Doom seeks to destroy him. But like many egotists, Doctor Doom is his own worst enemy. He is just as often undone by his own self-sabotage as by his enemies.

Please return tomorrow for another touching installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY!

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #13: BEAST

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Mister Farrell

Hank McCoy ought to be the poster child for mutants. As created by stalwarts Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in X-MEN #1 in 1963, Beast was a hirsute, agile man, with oversize hands and feet, but recognizably human. His brutish exterior was at odds with his eloquent, erudite manner and genius intellect. Seeking the genetic cause of human mutation, Beast transformed himself into a blue-furred, apelike creature (courtesy of writer Gerry Conway and artist Tom Sutton. He also got a great Gil Kane cover out of it!). He could no longer hide his mutation from the world.

More gray than blue on this great Gil Kane cover. And more people need to work “lo” into sentences.

Far from withdrawing from society, Hank became a celebrated member of the Avengers and continued his work as a scientist. He was a quirky, verbose, well-adjusted guy. Years passed and Hank mutated once again. This time the mutagen was writer Grant Morrison’s mind.

Morrison and artist Frank Quitely redesigned the X-Men for the 21st Century beginning with NEW X-MEN #114. “Increased sunspot activity” was blamed for secondary mutations around the world, and Beast was now a blue-furred, catlike humanoid who felt “like a Hindu sex god.” While rebuffing an ex-girlfriend, he also alluded to being gay, a revelation which was hastily retracted by Hank himself a few issues later (I’ve always suspected the change was mandated by Marvel’s management, who realized Beast action figures were sold at Walmarts around the country and feared a conservative backlash). Hank’s shifting orientation was not as controversial as his shifting appearance. Although many embraced his leonine look, which he has to this day, others wished for a return to his earlier, more apelike appearance.

I like both looks. My guess is that Quitely was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s Beast in La Belle et la Bête. I went with this version because I haven’t seen it represented in 3D as often.

With luck, you’ll be back for another edition of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY tomorrow!

MIGHTY MARVEL MAY #11: BLACK PANTHER

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Mister Farrell

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby probably weren’t trying to make a political statement when they created the first major black superhero, but when they did, they decided to make him a king: Black Panther, a.k.a T’Challa of the mythical African nation of Wakanda.

Wakanda’s culture seems, at first, to be a primitive tribal stereotype, yet it’s actually highly technologically sophisticated culture, has never been successfully invaded by another nation, and is one of the only sources on earth of the element Vibranium. It is a fictional pastiche of “Africa” as Doctor Doom’s Latveria is of an imagianry “Europe”: it represents no real place or people on earth.

Appearing first in FANTASTIC FOUR #52 in 1966, T’Challa is the latest Black Panther, an honorific held by the king (although born a prince, T’Challa still had to defeat the previous Black Panther in ritual combat to earn the title). Armed with little more than enhanced human abilities like Captain American (who was defeated by a previous Black Panther during a misunderstanding during World War II), Black Panther is also a mechanical and tactical genius. At various times he’s been an ally of the Fantastic Four and a member of the Avengers, all while ruling a country.

Black Panther is simply one of the coolest-looking characters around. His black catsuit might be too understated for most other characters but he’s allowed because he did it first. It will sometimes be adorned with a high-collared ceremonial cape or gold adornments, which I find incredibly gaudy and ugly. Whenever he wears those I feel like someone decided he was “Too black. Too strong.” Interestingly, the name “Black Panther” predates the Black Panther Party by a few months. Once again Lee and Kirby were ahead of the curve.

Please come back for a gem of a character in tomorrow’s installment of MIGHTY MARVEL MAY.

JFsculpts

Art by Jesse Farrell

Tag Archives: Jack Kirby