Marvel's Founders share a lost title

-

After nine issues writing, editing and drawing his last work at Marvel, Machine Man, Jack Kirby, co-creator with Stan Lee of blamed near the entire early Marvel Universe, left the comics field for animation. Funny thing is, when the title came back the next year, the artist was now Stan's co-creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, i.e., the rest of the early Marvel Universe!

Marv Wolfman was going for a pure literary tone mixed in beneath the images of an adventure, so while he wasn’t sure where to take MM maybe, he could focus on one and done stories with some philosophy adults might appreciate, since it’s science fiction in origin. It was the fact that it wasn’t more of a “super hero” comic and didn’t have any guest appearances by other Marvel denizens ‘till the book was nearly through that contributed to MM remaining a bimonthly B-lister in sales until its cancellation with #19. Whereas Kirby tended towards larger panels and splash pages spread throughout, Ditko's always been an economy guy, regularly depending on his nigh-trademark nine panel grid, sometimes, even more. This is only one point of difference between these two early masters.


from Machine Man #16. Art: Steve Ditko
The agility of Spider-Man comes alive in Ditko’s Machine Man, whose telescoping limbs did so at every opportunity. It’s just fascinating to read the one comic featuring the primary artists of elementary Marvel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Star Blazers

-
Image
"I cannot bear to see what has become of Earth. Once green and growing with blue lakes and silver streams, great rivers and mighty seas... Now all gone. Only day and burning desert left. Radiation everywhere." -Captain Abaraham Avatar Myebook - D'n'A Comics #1 As promised: the online version of DNA #1!!!Fifty cents for a complete, nuanced, spine-tingling sixteen page story, written and drawn by us. STAR BLAZERS For the record: Marc Kane’s an adult female of the species, talking to Lue, an adult male. This should be read, picturing our mouths moving along with limited motion that doesn’t synch up, occasionally with our lips not shown so the long sentences can finish while you’re looking at the top of our hats or something. LUE: So what was your first impression of STAR BLAZERS? MARC: Mine? Ok, well…we won’t count when I was sleepy! When it first started, I was looking at it critically: I didn’t like the dress on Nova---but the uniform with the
Read more

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition- this day, 1985!

-
Image
Thirty three years ago, today! (That is, August 27th, 1985) Oh, the stories these opened up for me. Alphabetically, fans could find every character still living who'd made at least three appearances, as well as many brand new lights. Origins, major life events, stories from twenty-five years of great Marvel continuity. You could even find out how tall, how heavy, or what color eyes the character should have, which sort of personalizes them and makes them all the more easy to imagine. You could find some description of every single power a character has, and often, see an Eliot R. Brown- illustrated blueprint for their best known weapons, vehicles, and acoutrement. But what could ever be more fuel for debate than : STrength Level! I was eleven when the series started, so of course I still found this part cool and interesting. Fans have been debating the strength levels of their favorite heroes and villains since comics began, so here was the sometimes controversial but
Read more

Lost World of Apes: the Bili and Mangani

-
Image
Mangani is the name of a fictional species of great apes in the Tarzan novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and of the invented language used by these apes. In the invented language, Mangani (meaning "great-ape") is the apes' word for their own kind, although the term is also applied (with modifications) to humans. The Mangani are represented as the apes who foster and raise Tarzan. Dr. Peter Coogan wrote a page on the synthetic language created for the Mangani and Tarzan, provided here in pdf: http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Mangani.pdf The language of the great apes of Africa that Edgar Rice Burroughs depicts in the Tarzan novels is not some simple, made-up collection of sounds substituting for English. It is a representation of a deeply structured, complex linguistic sign system with a grammar and syntax of its own. This grammar has never been worked out because its last living native speakers (with the exception of Tarzan himself) went extinct in the last century. Unfor
Read more