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When Grant Morrison was doing Fantastic Four:1234, he did some interviews in which he discussed a mood of sick delirium he had noticed in the first few issues of the Lee/Kirby issues, a mood he wanted to duplicate/pay tribute to in his own story.
After I read this I had to go back and read the issues in question and see what he meant. Sure enough, even though I had read these comics dozens of times in my life, I had never noticed it, but he was right. There is something very sick and appealing (in a low-level-hallucination-fever-dream kind of way) going on under the surface of those stories.
It reminds me of when I was a kid and would do cough syrup or morning glory pills when I couldn't find LSD. Unintentional to be sure--it probably results from the awkward transition from one-off monster stories to continuing characters. There isn't much of the humor in these stories that would soon define Stan Lee's style.
Does anyone else notice this alleged mood, or am I just seeing it cuz Morrison says it's there?
As for Sue Storm's relation to feminism, it's important to remember that the pictures and the dialogue in FF are often telling two different stories. In my opinion, Kirby always had a lot of respect for his female characters. Sue Storm seems to save the day a lot in those early stories, if I remember right, which would be part of the plotting element, which was Kirby's domain. Most of the sexism is in Lee's dialogue.
Kirby's women sometimes seem to defer on the surface, but from another perspective can be read as being just not as interested in violence. One of the dominant themes in Kirby's body of work (and his life)is a simultaneous celebration and critique of male violence. Many of his females function as a voice of reason, telling the men how stupid they are being. Kirby's version of Sue is a strong female force, the kind of woman he adored his whole life in the form of his beloved wife Rosalind. Lee was just not interested in this characterization, he wanted a female character that fit the expectations of his perceived audience of young boys.
This isn't meant as Lee-bashing, I fucking LOVE Stan Lee, but it is a perfect example of the two collaborators having visions that didn't quite line up. This happened more and more as the series went on.
Anyone really interested in this should check out a series of articles in the Jack Kirby Collector Magazine called "A Failure To Communicate". It compares the finished comics to the pencil art that K turned in with margin notes describing the plot, which Stan would often just ignore, much to Kirby's chagrin.
By the way, invisibility is not a wimpy or effeminate power, it is one of the deadliest and most versatile powers a fictional character can possess. |
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