Quarter Bin #11 "Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating..."

At a time when Marvel is attempting to breath new life into its Ultimate line (or at least reinvigorating ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN) and DC has launched FLASHPOINT and announced a complete reboot of its regular line, now would be a great time to look at another famous comics remaining. Or rather, let’s just imagine…

Okay, whether that was actually clever or not, this week’s column is a look back at Stan Lee’s brief visit to DC from nearly a decade ago, and is prompted specifically by:

JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE’S SECRET FILES & ORIGINS
From March 2002.

JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE’S SHAZAM!
JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE’S BATMAN
JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE’S GREEN LANTERN
Circa 2001 and 2002.

Clearly, not the complete set of JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE CREATING…(which I’m surprised didn’t become a perennial reprint collection, or not), but the SECRET FILES & ORIGINS (have I mentioned before that I wish DC would continue publishing these?) covers the whole field, and gives plenty of reference for the rest of it. I’m not here to argue that these comics are classics, but that they are certainly interesting material, and part of my own interest in them comes from the fact that they were originally released during the 1999-2004 period where I wasn’t reading comics regularly, though I was at least following important developments from a distance. Anyone familiar with the rivalry between DC and Marvel, and Stan Lee’s own prominent role in that feud, will be as surprised today as they were a decade ago that these books happened at all (or maybe not as much, with the increasingly desperate-to-participate Stan working on all kinds of crazy projects in recent years, and only Boom! seems to have been smart enough to temper it).. Fact is, true believer, they did. Excelsior!

Unlike he’s sometimes liked to popularly acknowledge, as Jack Kirby and Steve Dikto might attest, Stan worked very prominently with a battery of famous artists on these books. SHAZAM! was done in collaboration with Gary Frank (slightly ahead of the curve that eventually brought Frank to his greatest heights with Geoff Johns and Superman), while Joe Kubert worked on BATMAN and Dave Gibbons on GREEN LANTERN. Similar blockbuster collaborations could be found in the rest of the set. I chose the particular ones I did because they particularly interested me, Green Lantern simply because through just about every incarnation (including the Tangent Comics variation with the Chinese lantern) never really disappoints, Batman because he seems the least likely to fit the Marvel mold, and the other version of Captain Marvel for reasons I can no longer clearly remember (I ordered these comics last fall, and that’s when I originally read them).

I feel compelled at this point to ruminate a little further on some of those points. What exactly separates a DC concept from a Marvel one? No one but Stan Lee could possibly understand that better, and that’s a little of what made this experiment so interesting. Movie patrons this summer have been getting a crash course, too, even if they haven’t always realized it. I’m thinking right now of the relative failure of GREEN LANTERN versus how audiences have generally embraced, say, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, which to me is a travesty of justice, and here it’s not even specifically a matter of comic book publisher partisanship. The difference in quality and depth, to me, is clear, the actual execution and worth of the films undeniable. GREEN LANTERN is superior.

How do I reach that conclusion? Everyone’s been talking about how socially relevant FIRST CLASS is, whereas GREEN LANTERN comes off almost like a generic geek offering, suitable only for fans, impenetrable otherwise. (What a pity it is that Ryan Reynolds was already a known commodity! Anyone else in that performance would have been a breakout, and this is coming from someone who admired Chris Hemsworth’s turn in THOR, but there is no comparison in terms of how valuable these star turns are as complete packages.) But where FIRST CLASS is a constantly flawed film, GREEN LANTERN is in full control throughout its running time. Even the apparent flaw of villains can easily be explained if you care to. Where Parallax turns out to be the ultimate test of will, Hector Hammond is the test of character. Without either of these opponents, Hal Jordan’s arc would be incomplete, just as he needs his friends Carol Ferris and Tom Kalmaku to support him. There are so many storytelling echoes in this film, so many affirmations of what the audience is supposed to take away from the experience. Where FIRST CLASS is ultimately hollow and functional, GREEN LANTERN is immersive and soulful.

In other words, where FIRST CLASS pays lip service to its intentions, GREEN LANTERN is well-rounded; it does exactly what it sets out to. How this translates to my perception of the difference between Marvel and DC is simple enough. Stan Lee, and his collaborators, famously created a whole world of superheroes defined by their flaws existences, and that has always been interpreted as more relatably human than the larger-than-life figures DC introduced earlier, the archetypes too distance from everyday experience to be continually relevant.

Another way to say that, as the movies bear out, at least as I see them, is that Marvel is really good at origins, while DC sets its characters on journeys. Think about it: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is an origin movie, just like BATMAN BEGINS was, or even SPIDER-MAN, or GREEN LANTERN. What do you really get from this experience? You watch the pain that creates Magneto, the ambitions of Charles Xavier, and the alienation of your regular batch of mutants, and how all these elements colliding produces a clash of philosophies. That’s great and all, but in the meantime you also get some generic villains (I love Kevin Bacon, too, but even he couldn’t possibly salvage a group of baddies that also included a wooden Emma Frost and Nightcrawler stand-in with no personality). In other words, there’s no story here, just some points that need to connect, like watching mad Norman Osborn transform into Green Goblin, just so Spidey has a villain to physically defeat. That’s the kind of storytelling that may look “great” in live action at the movies, but it’s also what makes most people find it very hard to respect comics in general. And what’s more, they begin to associate that kind of work as inherent to superheroes, and they reject anything that contradicts it.

Time and again, you see a Marvel character with only a semblance of future potential after the origin has gotten out of the way. Why do you think it’s so hard for a good Hulk movie to be made? Because once you get past the origin, you basically end up exactly with the kind of stories the TV show had to do, a version of THE FUGITIVE. The Hulk isn’t really a hero at all. The only thing interesting about him is Bruce Banner. Without Banner, you basically have a villain, or a mentally handicapped superhero, who can’t help himself inflicting all kinds of mindless destruction all around him. “With great power comes great responsibility,” but aside from the moment he realized he should be a superhero, Peter Parker has nothing to separate himself from the villains he eventually pursues, and even after that, he only barely seems to realize the gravity of the role he has assumed. He spends most of his time avoiding that responsibility, actually, when you think about it. Most Spider-Man writers don’t, naturally. Captain America is a steroids metaphor, but I guarantee you won’t see Steve Rogers presented like Barry Bonds in his new movie. Where do you go with a character like that and actually be honest about it?

The reason the X-Men movies are now repeating themselves is because without that rivalry and that social metaphor, the writers have constantly demonstrated that there’s very little else to do with them. They can’t be seen as regular heroes, which otherwise they obviously are, so they have to either become painfully generic and dull down the impact of the same stories, or they have to repeat themselves. There’s nothing different about FIRST CLASS than the first X-MEN, expect a greater focus on Magneto, and even less probing look at Xavier. Everything has to fall in place without a lot of examination or everything falls apart.

GREEN LANTERN, on the other hand, represents a DC comic book just as perfectly. The origin is just another step in the development of that character. Why is Hal Jordan such a perfect selection to represent the Green Lantern Corps? Because even before he received the ring, he had his own problems. Bruce Wayne wasn’t just a spoiled little rich boy, but the son of a philanthropist, who looked for real solutions to the problems he saw all around him. Putting a suit of armor on him wouldn’t make him Iron Man. (Part of the charm of the Robert Downey, Jr. superhero experience is that it subverts as much as supports the Marvel method, actually, something that’s a little more apparent in the second film.) Superman’s home world was lost, and he was adopted by very humble humans. His journey isn’t just about the cape, but about coping with a whole existence that is ripe with storytelling potential. Hal lost his father early on, and never really came to grips with it. His story is ably depicted in the movie, and the superhero layer just another excuse for character growth. “You have the ability to overcome great fear.” It’s just a metaphor. He doesn’t believe in himself, but he’s been proving himself wrong all his life. He just needed other people to believe in him.

To then see what Stan Lee, who comes from a completely different school of thought, work with something like that is fascinating in its own right. Stan sticks by his own formula pretty religiously, but it’s clear he works with a few more tools than he’s used to. These are comics worth revisiting for that reason. They’re at once instantly disposable and compelling at the same time. Just imagine someone else working with this stuff, they seem to say, without anyone involved realizing it. More than the Green Lantern variant, it’s Batman who is most revealing. In many ways, it’s Stan grafting the idea of Spider-Man onto Batman. Can the two coexist? Well, just imagine…