Early Marvel Age x Silver Age

[Rene]

When I was younger, I had all the arrogance of the adolescent. You know, thinking that only modern stuff could be good. My dumb teenage mind thought the Beatles sucked and loved last week's new band. Same with comics. I knew of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's importance for comics, but the occasional old Marvel comic book I've read seemed, to my teen tastes, crude and ludicrous.

I eventually outgrew my teenage obsession with "coolness", and recently I've managed to find some "Essential Fantastic Four" volumes to read. I loved them. Fascinating to watch the MU beginning to develop, Lee & Kirby creating modern superhero tropes, and all those 60s things like the space race, the red menace, the pop thing, etc.

One thing really surprised me though. I've always heard old timers saying how, in the Silver Age, heroes were pure paragons of virtue. Some RPG books also have this oppinion (Champions, SAS), Champions says Silver Age games should be harmless, the heroes should be straight-arrows on the path of justice, etc.

I've found this NOT true of those 60 first Fantastic Four issues! That came as a shock to me. Not necessarily a bad one. Those issues had lots of crossovers, so I got to see how other Marvel Heroes behaved too, and it wasn't any better than the FF. Stan Lee's characters were *bombastic*, they had short tempers, they were impulsive and overconfident, they were more likely to treat other heroes as rivals than friends, they sometimes worried about fame (even though they were not obssessed with it), they had little patience with bothersome normals, they bickered endlessly, in short, they sometimes acted like brash godlings.

Yes, they usually did the right thing eventually and standed by each other when it was really needed. But they're a far shot of my idea of Silver Age paragons. If anything, the Fantastic Four version I was more familiar with (John Byrne's, in the 80s) has heroes that are more responsible and mature, and even more "heroic".

And I'm not talking about the temperamental heroes only, like the Thing, the Torch, and Spidey. Even the more level-headed characters are a bit like this. Reed Richards and Iron Man, for instance. The first two times the Avengers meet the FF, the two teams act like rivals, each one wanting to outdo the other. Reed himself is more short-tempered than I'm used to see him. Says several times he is going to *kill* Namor when the Sub-Mariner kidnaps Sue, even though Reed himself knows Namor would never hurt her. He is wont to snap at his teammates when he is irritated. He joins Johnny and Ben in boasting about how he'll defeat the Hulk in issue 12, etc, etc.

There are other differences between the comics and the "Silver Age" I thought I knew. For instance, villains aren't any less threatening than in the early 80s. There isn't much in the way of explicit bloody murder scenes, but people DO die. It's not completelly harmless play with goofy villains like is implied in the Champions rulebook.

So, I'm a little confused. When people talk of the "Silver Age", are they refering only to DC Comics's Silver Age? Or maybe their nostalgia (and disappointment with modern versions) makes them remember those characters as more heroic than they really were? And anyone here ever played or GMed a Early Marvel Campaign, as opposed to a "Silver Age" campaign?

[Trebuchet]

To some extent DC comics were always a better example of Silver Age than Marvel. Remember that in the early 60s Marvel was the "new, edgier" comic brand. It's always been a much darker universe with more abrasive (perhaps more human) characters, and that tradition continues to this day. The mutant persecutions would never have happened in DC.

However, I don't think Silver Age ever meant teams handed out milk and cookies to each other. Rivalry does not have to be lethal; look at high school and college football rivalries. Being on the same side doesn't mean you have to like each other; witness the famous and long lived rivalry between the Army and the Marine Corps. Nor do opponents have to hate each other even if they fight. As for Reed threatening to kill Namor, that's a not unreasonable hyperbole given the circumstances. Haven't you ever said "I'll kill you" to someone because they did something that made you angry without actually intending to murder them?

[Rene]

No, of course I didn't thought Reed would really try to kill Namor. I only meant to say that the way he acted in the story, allowing himself to have a fit of savage jealousy, is a far cry from what I always thought a Silver Age paladin of justice would be like. I couldn't picture John Byrne's Richards, denizen of the "Bronze Age", acting in this manner.

And yes, hero/hero rivalries were never lethal. Early Marvel heroes (and even most anti-heroes like the Hulk and Namor), don't kill. It's just that everything was very different from what I'm used to hear about "the Silver Age", and I got to wonder why, and specifically why RPG supplements (like the Champions book) and other "tribute stories" don't reference this.

[Hermit]

Interesting points. I think Silver Age in DC is definitely different from Silver Age Marvel... and I know at least one book mentioned that. Marvel was trying to create characters we could relate to, DC was trying to continue with characters that awed us. Now, sometimes both over lapped, but that's the way it seemed to go.

Another cool thing, is that ages don't quite break up into nice even chunks. Ask some comic book buffs when the Silver Age REALLY starts and ends, and you might get quite the lively debate. I think, frankly, that the Bronze age and Silver age shoot jagged lines through each other. You can see where the writers pushed at their restraints, or tried to go back to the roots.

The Fantastic Four, in particular, were family first, heroes second. In fact, they're considered by most the epitome of the family comic. Lee and others who followed felt pretty free about showing the tensions that could develop in a family. I read somewhere that many early marvel books were more soap operic because the writers had a lot of practice on romance comics before hand. So the characters could teach Shatner lessons in emoting

[st barbara]

Well of course heros didn't kill in the "Silver Age" ! One of the reasons for this was the Comics Code. I can't find my old reference book that includes the code but, from a quick look on "the net" the code DID say that "excessive depiction of gunplay" and so forth wasn't allowed. It also said that (basically, I am paraphrasing here) the heros had to win in the end. This caused a number of problems when "Marvel" in particular was fond of creating villains who, if used with any intelligence at all, would have left a swathe of dead heros in their wake because their one "trick" was deadly ! This led to sme pretty inept villains running around in those days .

[lapsedgamer]

You're describing the reason why I always prefered Marvel to DC back then. Marvel had a little more depth and darkness. I always thought that the DC characters and situations were kind of insipid by comparison. I think the Champions view of Silver Age stuff is more related to that DC mindset, though the early Marvel stuff was a little lighter too. If the death of Gwen Stacy and the Speedy as junky storylines were the turning points of each line, I belive Marvel got there first. I only started to appreciate DC after they started the Vertigo imprint. Watchmen and 80's Teen Titans were other high points. I just never could get into Superman pushing the Earth around and dealing with the dozens of flavors of Kryptonite. Alan Moore's Supreme really shows some of these conventions in an entertaining, yet erudite way. Is it posssible for knowledge of comics to be called erudition? I guess it doesn't matter since he so obviously knows about so many other things.

[Allandrel]

I only started to appreciate DC after they started the Vertigo imprint. Watchmen and 80's Teen Titans were other high points.

What about pre-Vertigo titles like Moore's Swamp Thing and Gaiman's early [/i]Sandman[/i]? Pretty dark stuff.

Patrick J McGraw

[lapsedgamer]

I stand corrected. For some reason, I thought that those edgy DC titles came after the start of Vertigo. In my mind, I include early Hellblazer in that group too. Is that about right? My head for dates is not great, but I remember being in the last two years of high school, or early college, like 1985.

[Supreme]

Personally, when talking about this stuff I always distinguish between the Silver Age and the Marvel or "Atomic" Age. The styles of the two were always significantly different in virtually every measurable way. DC's characters were always respectable professionals in their thirties who lived in imaginary cities. DC's stories were always "cleaner" because they got the most heat during the McCarthy-era Kefauver hearings which eventually led to the comics code authority, as well as Wertham's book "Seduction of the Innocent." Charges of sadism and homosexuality were primarily directed at Superman and Batman, not Captain America and the Human Torch. The powers-that-were at DC have also always felt that they needed to maintain an air of "respectability" for their characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman as they are often seen as "American Icons."

The "Silver Age" is primarily the DC line and started with the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash in Showcase #4. During this time Marvel doesn't have a single super-hero title. They have only Atomic-Age horror monsters and teen romance comics. When DC released the new Justice League in 1959, it was a huge hit. Fans have always gone bonkers for crossovers. According to legend, the heads of DC and Marvel (I don't remember either of their names, sorry) were playing golf and the Marvel guy was regaled with tales of how well JLA was selling.

So the Marvel head when back to his head-writer of the time, Stan Lee, and told him to write a team super-hero book. This was odd because the JLA, like all other team books before it, was composed primarily of pre-existing characters who appeared in their own titles. Fortunately, Stan and his buddy/colleague Jack Kirby had a source of inspiration.

Stan and Jack had recently attended a party of a scientist named Reed Richards who was doing work on something called "unstable molecules." Seeing the dysfunctional dynamics of Reed's "family" which consisted of him, his fiance Susan Strom, her brother Johnny, and his old friend, ex-boxer Ben Grimm, gave Stan and idea. He would write a comic about a dysfunctional family of super-heroes who would fight each other as much as they fought super-villains. That was 1961. The rest is comics history.

[Doug McCrae]

IMO Marvel and DC have *always* had unique and differing styles even going back to the Golden Age when Marvel was Timely. The first year of Supes and Bats excepted, DC's output was always cleaner, more family-oriented where Marvel was red-blooded and two-fisted.

The first superhero vs. superhero battle was the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch in 1939 (I think). For 60+ years Marvel has consistently been known as the company where two superheroes, on meeting for the first time, always have a fight.

In the Golden Age DC didn't have as much of the sex, violence and outrageous racism against the Japanese as other publishers. Have a look at some of the America's Best covers on Ben Samuel's site if you want to see some stuff of that nature. I certainly do.

Admittedly Wonder Woman was outrageous filth. Somehow it seemed less overt though.

[loraxxx]

....Admittedly Wonder Woman was outrageous filth. Somehow it seemed less overt though.

although i agree that there were strong elements of bondage, domination, and submission in early WW comics "outrageous filth" is bit harsh....

it was the 40's and bound and gagged heroines were the norm back then--this was the generation of writers and artists, mostly men, who had grown up watching PEARL WHITE in THE PERILS OF PAULINE.

so the idea of having your young heroine bound and in peril was accepted as a standard element of the genre, something that was found EVERYWHERE in adventure fiction of the period....

please believe me when i tell you that WW was NOT the only female adventure character from that era who spent a disproprtionate amount of time trussed up like a turkey--hell, i don't think MARY MARVEL will every get the taste of cheap cloth out of her mouth, and don't ask DALE ARDEN about her experiences on the planet MONGO.....

WW was a stand out in that, in most cases, if she got tied up, she didn't sit helplessly, pose seductively, and wait to be rescued by STEVE TREVOR, she either rescued herself or was rescued by her female associates, most often THE HARVEY GIRLS or her mother, QUEEN HIPPOLYTA....

maybe not the most "PC" role model for girls, but far from the worst--and a long way from "filth...."

[Eyendasky80]

The Fantastic Four were inspired by real people of the same name? Is that BS? What source are you citing? Pardon me if this is common knowledge but it's news to me. I seem to remember reading a blurb somewhere about something similar. I think the project was titled "Unstable Molecules" but I took it for a joke or what if? type thing.

[lapsedgamer]

I was kind of interested in that FF as real people story too.

[Rene]

The Fantastic Four were inspired by real people of the same name? Is that BS? What source are you citing? Pardon me if this is common knowledge but it's news to me. I seem to remember reading a blurb somewhere about something similar. I think the project was titled "Unstable Molecules" but I took it for a joke or what if? type thing.

Supreme got confused by a mini-series called "Unstable Molecules", written and drawn by independent comic book artist James Sturm. Sturm creates a very convincing, you-almost-had-me-there-for-a-moment, "real life" counterpart to the Fantastic Four, explaining the comic book FF as being inspire by these real people.

I was fooled myself for a moment, until my excitement was dispelled by reading some interviews with Sturm and discovering that he really based his "real" FF on the superhero versions, and not the other way around. A pity.

It's quite similar to several books by, for instance, Philip José Farmer, where the writer mantains the pretense that there was a real Tarzan and Burroughs created something based on him, and now the writer is finally showing to us the "man behing the myth", etc.

[Eyendasky80]

I thought as much. I remember that mini-series, never picked it up though.