Although it had a pretty positive consensus, a number of celebrated writers and critics had some big problems with Thor. I couldn't help but find most of these cases to be astonishingly petty and spiteful, as if they disliked it for no other reason than they had to dislike the summer's biggest blockbuster. It was interesting to see such respected figures react with such personal bile and glibness; I wonder what going on in their heads as they saw the movie belied such insecure, venomous lashings-out.
Did I mention it had Anthony Hopkins with an eye-patch and a black dude in gold armor? 'Cause
that happened. It was awesome.
And now onto what this post was supposed to be about: the King of Comics.
If you know anything about superhero comics than you're familiar with Jack Kirby. He is perhaps the single most acclaimed and influential figure in the medium (the only person I can imagine coming close is Will Eisner) - Grant Morrison has equated him to the William Blake of comics. There's a reason he's called the King. I'm not going to delineate his incredible accomplishments or how he formed, innovated, REVOLUTIONIZED!! everything about the industry; hundreds of others have done a more comprehensive job at that than I ever could. But I am going to touch on one thing that I feel most people have missed.
Jack Kirby defined the DC and Marvel Universes.
Okay, so that's a very flippant way of putting what I'm trying to say, let me explain. We all know that Kirby created or co-created most of the Marvel Universe, and we know that his groundbreaking Fourth World saga became a cornerstone of the DC Universe, but I'm talking about something bigger. When people debate why Marvel is better than DC or vice-versa, they're not really arguing whether or not the Hulk is cooler than Superman; both worlds themselves are utterly distinct on a foundational level, and have their own unique aesthetic properties. These two worlds appeal to people in very separate ways, and I'd argue that is what fanboys battle over in the greasy, pathetic cesspools below the Android's Dungeon.
So what makes Marvel and DC so fundamentally different, and how did the King shape those fundamental differences? It all comes down to the baddies. What makes villains so important in superhero comics (besides the whole causing the story's conflict thing) is that they illuminate some aspect of the hero that would otherwise be left obscured. They serve to contextualize the hero, providing added dimensions to the ideas they embody: all great supervillains riff off of and further explore an element of the superhero's thematic core, either as twisted parallels or antitheses. We learn more about what Batman represents by juxtaposing him with the Joker or Two-Face; pitting Spidey against the Vulture and Doc Ock helps shed light on what our hero's all about. Kirby was the first to advance the conceit that superheroes and villains - like the figures of classical mythology - are heightened, abstract personifications of universal ideas, their battlegrounds the stages where they play out grand debates...WITH PROTON BLASTS!
It's Spring, 1966 and the Marvel Universe is still getting bigger and bigger, ever-expanding after the Big Bang that was Fantastic Four #1 five years ago. Stan Lee is content with things the way they are, with simply continuing to add new faces and circumstances to Marvel's ever-increasing batch of (lucrative!) icons. The rest of the bullpen, however, feels confined under Lee and have trouble reconciling their current situation with their loftier artistic/philosophical ambitions. Steve Ditko's starting to devote himself to Objectivism in all its forms; he'll leave Amazing Spider-Man in August. Kirby's work now can barely contain his cosmic imagination, which pushes the medium past what it was capable of at the time to craft a Space Age mythology. He wants to give a greater meaning to this universe he has created, and he thinks to himself, "if I can use a supervillain to contextualize a superhero, I can create a supervillain big enough to go up against all the heroes and contextualize their entire world!"
AND LO, MORTAL, SO DAWNS THE COMING OF GALACTUS...!
In Fantastic Four #48, Kirby introduced Galactus, the Big Bad of the Marvel Universe. He ain't the final boss of MvC3 for nuthin'. The fabulous image above is from Lee/Kirby's Thor #169 (Oct. 1969), and it pretty much lays out Galactus' shtick. He's the Devourer of Worlds, a tremendous Godlike being above myth, a legendary force of nature beyond reproach or opinion, beyond our mortal conceptions of good and evil. He survives by eating planets, so he comes back again and again to menace the heroes of Earth when it comes time to feed. What's important is that he's not doing it out of malicious intentions - he's not some diabolical monster like Loki or the Red Skull - it's just that a guy's gotta eat, right? You can't fault him for being self-interested and not wanting to starve to death, can you? Lee puts it really well in this splash page: "The puny survivors flee! I shall make no move to stop them! For I am indifferent to their fate!"
There it is, Galactus as the embodiment of indifference, of our natural inclination toward selfish inaction and apathy. That's the archenemy of the Marvel Universe. The MU isn't really concerned with the dichotomy of good vs. evil (which is why Mephisto feels so out-of-place in it), nor is it particularly conscious of it's own myth-making or iconography. Marvel was always considered the more naturalistic and grounded of the Big Two - that's what differentiated it from boring old DC Comics in the 60s, the flawed characters and real-world problems and all that revolutionary jazz - so it's appropriate that the MU is framed around a social reality affecting our society. The Marvel heroes stem from a tradition of social activism; at their very essences, all of them are taking a big stand against indifference.
Let's start with Spider-Man, since he's both the most obvious example and the most enduringly popular Marvel character. After he gets his powers, Peter Parker uses them to rake in cash as an entertainer. Selfish, perhaps, but...well yeah it's a pretty damn selfish way to use superpowers. Then he witnesses a robbery and, thinking there's no reason to get involved, does nothing to stop the burglar as he runs by Peter. This is something the movie screwed up big time: it gave Peter a reason to let the burglar get away. In the comics, he is simply predisposed to inaction, and that was the entire point. He pays for it when that same burglar ends up murdering dear old Uncle Ben that very night. "With great power there must also come -- great responsibility!" From that point on, Peter abandons his selfishness, vowing to never make the same mistake again - as Spider-Man he now fights against the pervasive apathy that led his uncle's death.
Next we have...how about Captain America? He was the first Marvel superhero after all, barring Namor and the original Human Torch. Cap punched Hitler in the jaw a full nine months before the US entered World War II, at a time when public sentiment was entrenched in isolationism. While the rest of America sat idly by, choosing not to intervene in the systematic execution of millions, scrawny Steve Rogers enlisted in the Army and volunteered for an incredibly dangerous super-soldier experiment. He refused to be crippled by the same inaction that plagued his beloved country, and inspired others to do the same (both in the comics and out of them). The Cap movie messed this up, too, but that movie messed a whole lotta things up. He and Bucky thwarted Nazi saboteurs and spy rings long before Pearl Harbor allowed them to thwart actual Nazis on the front lines.
We find a similar thread in the Fantastic Four's origin story. In the original tale, we're at the beginning of the Space Race. Those damn dirty Soviets got the heads-up on us and we've got a lot of catching up to do. In the Marvel Universe, America just can't get its act together, we're all too listlessly complacent to get anything done while those zany communists are up there making a space cannon or something. It's up to Reed Richards to build his own private rocket and put our flag on the moon before the cosmonauts get there. The story's been updated again and again, but every time the principle is still the same. Now it's Reed discovering an anomaly in space heading towards earth and saying, "hey these cosmic rays I'm seeing could be pretty dangerous, we should probably take a closer look at this or something," to which his colleagues, the government and the general public respond with a resounding "meh." As we know, Reed and his true believers get the last laugh when those cosmic rays give them all cool powers.
It's interesting to note that, at the climax of Galactus' first appearance, the Four scare him away with the threat of mutually assured destructing, bringing the greatest social concern of the Cold War to the attention of cosmic beings. Just sayin'.
The Hulk came next in Marvel's publication history; he, too, fits the mold. We're introduced to Bruce Banner as the head physicist for a modern-day Manhattan Project -- think of him as Oppenheimer without the humanity. He's aloof, reserved, emotionally withdrawn; about as indifferent as a person can get. He's also the man behind the gamma bomb, a WMD that makes Fat Man look like a spitball. And. He. Doesn't. Give. A. Fuck. So it's poetic justice that, after he's suddenly struck with conscience, Banner gets blasted with his own doomsday device and transforms into a furious, angst-ridden monster, a giant green cautionary tale on indifference toward human suffering. The same idea applies to Tony Stark, who didn't care that his career amounted to providing the world with tools for death and destruction...until it got him kidnapped and stuck with a battery for a heart. So to save the world from his own disinterest he becomes Iron Man! As Stark put it in the movie, which this time got it completely right, "I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero-accountability...I came to realize that I had more to offer this world than just making things that blow up."
Alright, who's left? Thor? Yeah, he definitely needed a lesson in humility, but the real reason daddy banished him was because he was set against the status quo (great link, btw): a non-aggression pact with the fucking Frost Giants, fer Chrissake! When Thor comes back he's no longer arrogant, but set against the complacent order of things more than ever. Doctor Strange? Same deal as Tony Stark, but with medical billing instead of weapons manufacturing and magic instead of a robot suit. The X-Men? For all the people who sling hate-filled "muties!", there must be many more who simply aren't invested in the issue enough to bother with mutant equality; it's a lot like the big problem facing gay marriage legislation outside of the South, I imagine. Daredevil? Indifference enshrouds his world like a fog. The Kingpin became as powerful as he is simply because no one bothered to try and stop him, and now his omnipresent influence can only be casually accepted as The Way Things Are. No one really cares about anything Daredevil does because they know he can't be anything more than a nuisance to the Kingpin's untouchable crime empire. Yet in spite of it all he continues to fight the good fight...and if anyone arsed themselves to look, including ol' Mr. Fisk, they'd discover what a difference he's actually making. It's all spelled out pretty explicitly in Born Again.
Have I covered all the bases yet?
As you can see, this theme always lurked just underneath the surface of Marvel's foundations. But that's all it was, a recurring idea buried deep within each individual mythos, only loosely connected to a greater whole. Kirby was perceptive enough to recognize this thread and, with the introduction of Galactus, brought it to light. Solidified it. Through Galactus, this cosmic God of Indifference constantly in the back of every other character's mind, Kirby was able to thematically unite the shared universe in a way never before seen; solely by the virtue of the character's existence he formally cemented the struggle against inaction as the core, fundamental tenet of the Marvel Comics world.
Tune in next time for Part II, when I do the exact same thing with DC. Fun stuff, I know!
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