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Underground > Comic Books >

Comic Book Industry What If---The Sequel

  
 
Crestmere
08:33 / 20.03.06
1960.

Atlas Comics publisher Martin Goodman is on the gold course with DC publisher Jack Liebowitz. He tells Goodman about the success of Justice League of America, a superhero book with well known heroes at the time. Marvel, at the time is not publishing any super hero books.

Goodman returns and tells Stan Lee and Jack Kirby that he wants to see a superhero book. They create a comic called THe Fantastic Four.

The first issue hits the stands.

And it tanks. NO one buys it. The idea of a superhero team made of characters that no one cares about is simply too much for comic fans that are used to well known heroes and monster books.

What happens then? You decide.
 
 
This Sunday
09:14 / 20.03.06
Lee & Kirby rechannel the energy through the monster-comic aspects already all over the first issue of 'Fantastic Four' to to the point where it lasts another thirty or so issues, becoming a classic home for giant destructive lizards and fiery rockmen the size of buildings later to be revealed to be high-tech alien overlords whose fans are insulted by the notion they might stuff innocent superheroines down their pants.
Marvel succeeds against DC by way of Lee's unabashed huckster sells and the dynamic artists applied to various books, that develop a brand sensibility distinguishing it from the Distinct Competition and vitally ignoring any other publisher as often as possible.
'Fantastic Four' is revived several times, including at least one variation by John Byrne which recasts the whole deal against twenty-plus years of continuity, reintroduces all the major players, including a bit about how Gormu and the third monster from the right on the cover of the original issue #18 are in fact cousins, because they share the same haircut. This series is mostly ignored, except for Gormu, The Mud That Walks Like A Man (of Mud), who is made a Skrull in a fan fave miniseries by Kurt Busiek and some guy addicted to static-posed photo references.
And the only place you can find information like this little history of a little-known and oft-maligned book, is in internet postings, like this one.

Alternately, the book is entirely forgotten, except for the title, which is mocked at random, and whole storylines and fiats are developed to explain it, in the same manner as 'Night Nurse'.
 
 
Mario
10:44 / 20.03.06
Jack Kirby returns to DC 10 years early, and uses some of his X-Men ideas on a new Doom Patrol title. Fast forward 40 years, and EiC of DC Joe Quesada is promising to reduce the number of "Doom-books", while Joe Straczynski, in Challengers of the Unknown, is hinting at the return of Orion.

And NOBODY talks about the "Blue Beetle Clone Saga"
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
15:10 / 20.03.06
No matter how crappy a day I am having at work Barbelith cheers me up with stuff like this.
 
 
praricac
00:47 / 21.03.06
no FF movie, hence one less dvd making of in which stan lee appears, claiming to have invented the known universe (probably)
 
 
John Octave
19:44 / 21.03.06
Well, from the stories I'd heard, Lee was frustrated with comics and was going to quit teh biz if Fantastic Four didn't do well. "As long as I'm going to leave comics anyway, I might as well go out with a bang," but it turned out to be a surprise hit. Assuming that this is true and not Stan retconning his own past to play up the drama, here's how it could have gone down:

FF tanks, Stan quits, Martin Goodman gets some other guys to do what DC did and revive their Golden Age heroes in a team book (which, for Romantic purposes, we'll call THE INVADERS). So it's Captain America and Bucky, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, and maybe Miss America, all of it set in the present day with no reference to 40s stories. Like the DC revamp, these are "new" heroes with no ties to the old ones. World War II is never referenced; the "new" Captain America got his powers to combat communism.

But Marvel's Golden Agers don't have the same iconic appeal as DC's, and Goodman wants the misfit Torch and Namor to be written as upstanding DC heroes. Kirby's doing fine work, but there's no momentum and no one challenging him to do anything new or adventurous, so the distinctive Kirby style never develops to the same delicious extent. The Invaders book peters out in sales, and Goodman goes back to the practice of doing comics about whatever is popular in the cultural zeitgeist. In the 50s it was horror and westerns, and in the 60s it's...

SPY COMICS! Cashing in on the James Bond superspy trend, most of them are about as forgettable as the old western and romance comics. Captain America is retooled as a spy and loses the costume but keeps the shield, but the series is on the whole unremarkable. Steranko comes along and does something similar to his Nick Fury series. Goodman tells him to rein it in at first, but the series becomes an unexpected hit among older audiences (college students) due to the ingenuity of its visuals. The press starts talking, "Can comics be for adults, too?" The spy fad, however, passes eventually, and the spy comics line closes down. Mainstream monthly comics never flirt with "credibility" again.

Underground comix still exist, however, and are more high-profile in the media as a result of not having a superhero-heavy mainstream comic industry to compete for attention with.

Around this time, Ditko draws a Star Trek ripoff at Marvel as a vessel for the kind of visuals that never made their way into Dr. Strange (it's even possible that this book is a retooled Fantastic Four). It is also very popular on college campuses, but Star Trek is cancelled and Ditko's comic is as well.

Kirby goes to DC. He becomes the artist on Batman during the 60s television run and draws incredible stories but nobody knows his name. (Around the time of the Batman show, Marvel comes out with an Invaders special in the campy style of the show, but it flops.) He has an idea for New Gods but doesn't have the kind of pull necessary to get it greenlit.

Charlton doesn't even bother.

No one challenges the comics code and you don't get 70s horror comics. Another Invaders revamp is tried again and fails after only five issues. The comics market declines in the 70s and Marvel's so unstable that it goes under. DC buys out the company's characters and sticks them on Earth-M (or possibly T for Timely), but they're only used very occasionally.

Crisis on Infinite Earths never happens, as comic book continuity has never been a real issue for anyone. Superhero comics are unchallenged as children's subject matter and DC Comics are basically Archie Comics with powers. Clean, unchallenging stories that never alter the status quo. In 2006 they are still available on every drugstore newsstand in the America for $1.50 and Superman sells 500,000 copies every month.

Alan Moore never writes a superhero comic in his life. He writes V For Vendetta, but it's never made commercially available in America.

Grant Morrison does something similar to his run on JLA in a self-published comic full of Justice League analogs. No one reads it and he writes and draws something like the Invisibles as a series of British underground graphic novels.

Frank Miller really would like to do something noirish like The Spirit, but doesn't think there's a large enough market for it underground comics and becomes a filmmaker instead. Sin City or something like it came out years ago and is a cult hit on the order of the Evil Dead movies.

Kevin Smith movies after Clerks never find an audience.

That was fun but I spent waaay too long on it.
 
  
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