What if there had never been a Marvel Age of Comics? - 12/20/18 04:31 PM
Once again, I have to give Eryk Davis Ester due credit and undying gratitude for making a casual observation that gave me a good idea!
Here's his post, made a couple days ago in this forum's "So when does the JLA get good?" thread:
And my reply:
Ergo, what I consider a fascinating alternate universe of possibilities.
My earliest thoughts:
- Jack Kirby would have gotten into animation about 20 years sooner than he did in This Universe. It's easy to forget that, at the beginning of the 60s, he was considered a pariah in the comic book industry (among other reasons, he was in a legal dispute with DC editor Jack Schiff,) and no one would give him work other than Stan Lee. I like to imagine that Kirby's accomplishments in mid-1960s animation would have rivaled those of Alex Toth.
- Stan Lee would have left comics and become a prose fiction writer. He probably would never have broken out of the paperback circuit, but he was a better writer than he gets credit for (I've said many time recently that I consider the first 11 issues of Silver Surfer a solid achievement,) and he'd at the very least have acquired a cult following.
- Steve Ditko would have struggled for a long while, but he was a tenacious sort, and would have hung in there until his more enterprising friends Wally Wood and Gil Kane had given him an opening for self-expression.
- Roy Thomas would have returned to being a schoolteacher after his legendarily unpleasant 2-week stint as Mort Weisinger's assistant, but remained active in fandom. He probably would have eventually broken into the biz sometime during the 1970s, not unlike Don Newton.
- John Romita would have become one of DC's best inkers (which was what he'd originally wanted to do by the mid-1960s. He has described himself as a reluctant, self-doubting penciller who sort of fell into the gig.)
- John Buscema...this is a bit of a stretch, but please bear with me -- for whatever reasons, DC turned him down in the late 1950s, even though he was really coming alive at that time with his work for Dell (the movie adaptations, the westerns.) If he had gotten in at DC right around the time the Silver Age of Superheroes was under way, I'd love to imagine that he'd have gotten plenty of work (even though he claimed to "hate" superheroes, he drew them beautifully.) Oh, the possibilities...
More thoughts to come.
Here's his post, made a couple days ago in this forum's "So when does the JLA get good?" thread:
Originally Posted by EDE
Interestingly, no monthly JLA series might've meant no Fantastic Four, and thus no Marvel Age of Comics...
And my reply:
Originally Posted by Annfie
Lately, I've been wondering if that might have been a good thing to happen (or not happen, as it were.) And I'm saying that as someone whose favorite superhero comics were published by Marvel between 1987 and 1994!
Ergo, what I consider a fascinating alternate universe of possibilities.
My earliest thoughts:
- Jack Kirby would have gotten into animation about 20 years sooner than he did in This Universe. It's easy to forget that, at the beginning of the 60s, he was considered a pariah in the comic book industry (among other reasons, he was in a legal dispute with DC editor Jack Schiff,) and no one would give him work other than Stan Lee. I like to imagine that Kirby's accomplishments in mid-1960s animation would have rivaled those of Alex Toth.
- Stan Lee would have left comics and become a prose fiction writer. He probably would never have broken out of the paperback circuit, but he was a better writer than he gets credit for (I've said many time recently that I consider the first 11 issues of Silver Surfer a solid achievement,) and he'd at the very least have acquired a cult following.
- Steve Ditko would have struggled for a long while, but he was a tenacious sort, and would have hung in there until his more enterprising friends Wally Wood and Gil Kane had given him an opening for self-expression.
- Roy Thomas would have returned to being a schoolteacher after his legendarily unpleasant 2-week stint as Mort Weisinger's assistant, but remained active in fandom. He probably would have eventually broken into the biz sometime during the 1970s, not unlike Don Newton.
- John Romita would have become one of DC's best inkers (which was what he'd originally wanted to do by the mid-1960s. He has described himself as a reluctant, self-doubting penciller who sort of fell into the gig.)
- John Buscema...this is a bit of a stretch, but please bear with me -- for whatever reasons, DC turned him down in the late 1950s, even though he was really coming alive at that time with his work for Dell (the movie adaptations, the westerns.) If he had gotten in at DC right around the time the Silver Age of Superheroes was under way, I'd love to imagine that he'd have gotten plenty of work (even though he claimed to "hate" superheroes, he drew them beautifully.) Oh, the possibilities...
More thoughts to come.