Oof. Bronze Age DC was just painful all around. The worst part is, Maggin was one of the better Superman writers: he was warned that Superman was really hard to write for, but Maggin took to him pretty well. Just make him a decent guy and don't overcomplicate things.
It's not a popular take, but I blame DC's editors, trying to emulate Marvel while still mired in their 1950s mindset. They honestly could not tell good writing from bad.
"If "Bronze Age DC was just painful all around"...why do you even like DC in the first place?"
Because there were still things I liked about comics. I liked the idea of people who used their remarkable abilities to help. I liked that a lot of stories were building to something good, even if the execution or the conclusion were often disappointing. I liked the idea of Earth-Two and we could see multiple generations of heroes at the same time. And I liked that, even if most issues of "The Brave and the Bold" were written by Bob Haney, every once in a while there'd be a story by Alan Brennert (and penciled by Dick Giordano or Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez) that made all the pain worthwhile.
So yeah, there was just enough good to keep me reading. But as to the bad, let me give you a good idea of what I'm talking about. Find the JLA / JSA crossover where Mr. Terrific is killed; the killer escapes (by possessing Jay Garrick and running off to Earth-Two (spoilers)) and the story should have ended on a note of somber determination. Instead it ended with Superman declaring victory, and my man Hal makes a way out-of-place joke and everybody laughs. WTF, DC? It really, really smells like an editor saw the story and said, "we can't end on a note of somber determination; the little SOBs would never understand it! The heroes have to win, so make them win! And make it funny!" BTW, I was 12 when this came out, and even as a little SOB I could understand tone and mood and fitting conclusions. I wish the editors had thought higher of me.
Post-Crisis was utter garbage for a long time IMHO; I went 100% Marvel for a while, that's how bad it was. Heroes were no longer defined by their virtues but by their vices. DC was trying a hundred new things, but they weren't trying to build on the things that had actually been working in the Bronze Age.
Taking my man Hal as an example - and he'd been treated pretty shabbily in the Bronze Age (turned into a petty whiner by Marv Wolfman) - in the Bronze Age we learned that he was fearless only because his ring was messing with his mind (thanks Peter David), he was a shiftless layabout who couldn't hold a job (thanks Steve Englehart), and he didn't have a problem with dating a physically-adultified teenager (thanks again Steve Englehart). Where was the brave noble hero capable of self-sacrifice? I get that Hal was a boring dud that writers had trouble knowing what to do with, but maybe don't keep crappifying him and hope the result won't be crap.
Writers seemed to think that "unheroic" equals "relatable"; even Marvel understood that the correct formula is "has relatable issues but is heroic anyway". Take Wally West: writers seemed to think the way to go with him was to make him less and less heroic, rendering his adventures all but unreadable. I'm not going to tell you that Cary Bates's long long tenure on Barry Allen wasn't a cautionary tale about letting a writer be his own editor, but at least I never had to doubt Barry's virtue.
I appreciate you going into such depth! I don't necessarily disagree with any of your points. I was pretty much a 100% Marvel reader (except for Batman) from 1986 to 1992, so I know what you mean.
What brought you back to DC (if something eventually did?)
Well, I liked the straightforward heroism of DC. I didn't want to see the FF bickering. I didn't want to see Spidey whinging about paying bills. I didn't want to see Tony Stark rassling with alcoholism. I sort of appreciated a lot of what Marvel was doing from afar, but it's not what i had a taste for.
I didn't want poorly written tales of heroism either, but sometimes the stars would align and DC would put out a story that, I felt, ran on all cylinders. (Will add that I felt a lot like that during the new 52 era, where there were a lot of stories that were ALMOST great but then they whizzed the ending. The Ulysses arc in Superman, or when the New Gods fought the GLC and destroyed an inhabited planet, spring immediately to mind. I mean, they had all the ingredients for great endings RIGHT THERE, and instead they gave us doggie-doo.)
They are. You may not have liked what they were doing with the characters and universe, but the plotting, dialog, and characterizations in the Bronze Age are objectively terrible.
Depends on the New 52 comic, but there were a lot I liked. I really liked Wonder Woman as another child of Zeus. I like that she won the day through kindness over and over; even my withered heart responds to how Wonder Woman "defeated" Siracca. They understood how to write Wonder Woman as defined by compassion.
"Grayson" was another one, Dick Grayson in a spy agency, doing things the Dick Grayson way. I clapped and giggled like a toddler every time Dick would use a gun like a Batarang.
But there was a lot I didn't like, for sure. Superman was way off-model for almost the whole New 52, except for one appearance in "Jonah Hex" of all places. That's why they introduced that "Convergence" Superman, who was Superman the way people actually like. New 52 Superman was a surly reluctant hero with a bad haircut, riding a motorcycle in a world that hated and feared him. That's right, New 52 tried to turn Superman into Wolverine.
And it's honestly incredible how not a single writer could get Green Arrow right. Anne Nocenti's run was the most hilariously deranged, though Ben Percy deserves credit for trying to teach Ollie about being a minority by turning him into a werewolf. Because apparently Black people are both feral and contagious.
Just came across this thread and figured I'd add my two cents. Back in the '70s, I thought Elliot Maggin was a decent writer -- not my favorite, but he turned out fairly solid stories overall. And, yes, his Superman prose novels were terrific. From time to time, a friend and I still fondly recall a scene where Superman lies down on the ground and just...listens to the entire world, with all of the sounds blending into a massive symphony. Good stuff.
BUT... The most important thing about Elliot for me was that he turned out to be the cousin of a friend of mine. He'd sent an original Superman script to his cousin -- the first actual script I ever held in my hands. And then, when I was 13, Elliot took a handful of us on a tour of DC. My first time seeing original art (a Grell Legion issue), meeting people like Julie Schwartz, Cary Bates, and Jack Abel (who'd become a friend years later when I was writing for Marvel), and on and on. It was an amazing day, and it was the reason why I later paid it forward by bringing kids to see Marvel or DC when the companies were still in NYC and I had access. But that's a story for another day.
Well, Sholly, if Elliot inspired YOU to become a comic book writer, then I dismiss any of my own criticisms of him, but that alone is greatest contribution to the medium I can imagine!
I’ve never read a Sholly Fisch comic and not enjoyed it!
That said…
My opinion on Bronze Age super-hero comic book writing echoes yours, Scipio. There are big exceptions, mostly smaller from Marvel (Tomb of Dracula, Howard the Duck, Warlock, Master of Kung-Fu…. Claremont & Co on X-Men was their best “big” title, but it started out as a mid-list series). DC had its war books, Swamp Thing, Jonah Hex, and Warlord. Other than that, you had a lot of writers who took their cues from Stan Lee and Roy Thomas. Steve Englehart’s Batman stories might have been the best-written DC super-hero comic, and that lasted less than a year. Oh, and Goodwin/Simonson on the Manhunter strips. I know you don’t like Kirby, but I love his 4th World material. I think the themes and depth transcend the admittedly clunky prose.The combination of bombast, bad humor, forced relevancy, and arrested development that was Bronze Age Big 2 writing did comics no favors.
There were flashes of higher quality in the early ‘80s- Levitz & Giffen on Legion, Alan Moore on Swamp Thing- but DC didn’t have much in the way of good writing between 1970 and 1987.
Aw, shucks, guys. Thanks for the kind words. But if you really think I can do no wrong or you've never read one of my stories that you didn't enjoy, then... (a) I can only imagine that there are a couple of my stories that you've never read, and (b) I should introduce you to my wife. :) Sholly
About Kirby's Fourth World stuff, I find it works best if you think of it as a morality play but with modern archetypes. I look at how bigotry is on the rise again, not just in the US but all over the world, and I think of Glorious Godfrey delivering his sermon to the crowds:
“Though Life is ever filled with those who threaten us, it is Anti-Life which gives us the power to eliminate them! The holocaust is coming! The day of Apokolips on Earth! The day of Darkseid, who brings this power only for us to use! Yes, it is his gift to us, friends! The cosmic hunting license! The The right to point the finger or the gun!”
Kirby wasn't a prophet, but he remembered what lies under the surface with mankind.
23 comments:
He's definitely in my Top 5 of "how did s/he get that job?"
Oof. Bronze Age DC was just painful all around. The worst part is, Maggin was one of the better Superman writers: he was warned that Superman was really hard to write for, but Maggin took to him pretty well. Just make him a decent guy and don't overcomplicate things.
It's not a popular take, but I blame DC's editors, trying to emulate Marvel while still mired in their 1950s mindset. They honestly could not tell good writing from bad.
- HJF1
"DC's editors, trying to emulate Marvel " Hear, hear.
If "Bronze Age DC was just painful all around"...why do you even like DC in the first place?
"If "Bronze Age DC was just painful all around"...why do you even like DC in the first place?"
Because there were still things I liked about comics. I liked the idea of people who used their remarkable abilities to help. I liked that a lot of stories were building to something good, even if the execution or the conclusion were often disappointing. I liked the idea of Earth-Two and we could see multiple generations of heroes at the same time. And I liked that, even if most issues of "The Brave and the Bold" were written by Bob Haney, every once in a while there'd be a story by Alan Brennert (and penciled by Dick Giordano or Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez) that made all the pain worthwhile.
So yeah, there was just enough good to keep me reading. But as to the bad, let me give you a good idea of what I'm talking about. Find the JLA / JSA crossover where Mr. Terrific is killed; the killer escapes (by possessing Jay Garrick and running off to Earth-Two (spoilers)) and the story should have ended on a note of somber determination. Instead it ended with Superman declaring victory, and my man Hal makes a way out-of-place joke and everybody laughs. WTF, DC? It really, really smells like an editor saw the story and said, "we can't end on a note of somber determination; the little SOBs would never understand it! The heroes have to win, so make them win! And make it funny!" BTW, I was 12 when this came out, and even as a little SOB I could understand tone and mood and fitting conclusions. I wish the editors had thought higher of me.
- HJF1
So did you think post-Crisis was an improvement?
Post-Crisis was utter garbage for a long time IMHO; I went 100% Marvel for a while, that's how bad it was. Heroes were no longer defined by their virtues but by their vices. DC was trying a hundred new things, but they weren't trying to build on the things that had actually been working in the Bronze Age.
Taking my man Hal as an example - and he'd been treated pretty shabbily in the Bronze Age (turned into a petty whiner by Marv Wolfman) - in the Bronze Age we learned that he was fearless only because his ring was messing with his mind (thanks Peter David), he was a shiftless layabout who couldn't hold a job (thanks Steve Englehart), and he didn't have a problem with dating a physically-adultified teenager (thanks again Steve Englehart). Where was the brave noble hero capable of self-sacrifice? I get that Hal was a boring dud that writers had trouble knowing what to do with, but maybe don't keep crappifying him and hope the result won't be crap.
Writers seemed to think that "unheroic" equals "relatable"; even Marvel understood that the correct formula is "has relatable issues but is heroic anyway". Take Wally West: writers seemed to think the way to go with him was to make him less and less heroic, rendering his adventures all but unreadable. I'm not going to tell you that Cary Bates's long long tenure on Barry Allen wasn't a cautionary tale about letting a writer be his own editor, but at least I never had to doubt Barry's virtue.
- HJF1
"in the Bronze Age we learned that" - whoops, I mean "in the post-Crisis era we learned that". etaoin shrdlu
- HJF1
I appreciate you going into such depth! I don't necessarily disagree with any of your points. I was pretty much a 100% Marvel reader (except for Batman) from 1986 to 1992, so I know what you mean.
What brought you back to DC (if something eventually did?)
etaoin shrdlu Don't see THAT much any more.
Well, I liked the straightforward heroism of DC. I didn't want to see the FF bickering. I didn't want to see Spidey whinging about paying bills. I didn't want to see Tony Stark rassling with alcoholism. I sort of appreciated a lot of what Marvel was doing from afar, but it's not what i had a taste for.
I didn't want poorly written tales of heroism either, but sometimes the stars would align and DC would put out a story that, I felt, ran on all cylinders. (Will add that I felt a lot like that during the new 52 era, where there were a lot of stories that were ALMOST great but then they whizzed the ending. The Ulysses arc in Superman, or when the New Gods fought the GLC and destroyed an inhabited planet, spring immediately to mind. I mean, they had all the ingredients for great endings RIGHT THERE, and instead they gave us doggie-doo.)
- HJF1
Maggin's two Superman prose novels, Last Son of Krypton and Miracle Monday, are brilliant.
OK, you lost me with the New 52 thing. You really think those stories were better than the Bronze Age?
They are. You may not have liked what they were doing with the characters and universe, but the plotting, dialog, and characterizations in the Bronze Age are objectively terrible.
Depends on the New 52 comic, but there were a lot I liked. I really liked Wonder Woman as another child of Zeus. I like that she won the day through kindness over and over; even my withered heart responds to how Wonder Woman "defeated" Siracca. They understood how to write Wonder Woman as defined by compassion.
"Grayson" was another one, Dick Grayson in a spy agency, doing things the Dick Grayson way. I clapped and giggled like a toddler every time Dick would use a gun like a Batarang.
But there was a lot I didn't like, for sure. Superman was way off-model for almost the whole New 52, except for one appearance in "Jonah Hex" of all places. That's why they introduced that "Convergence" Superman, who was Superman the way people actually like. New 52 Superman was a surly reluctant hero with a bad haircut, riding a motorcycle in a world that hated and feared him. That's right, New 52 tried to turn Superman into Wolverine.
And it's honestly incredible how not a single writer could get Green Arrow right. Anne Nocenti's run was the most hilariously deranged, though Ben Percy deserves credit for trying to teach Ollie about being a minority by turning him into a werewolf. Because apparently Black people are both feral and contagious.
- HJF1
Just came across this thread and figured I'd add my two cents. Back in the '70s, I thought Elliot Maggin was a decent writer -- not my favorite, but he turned out fairly solid stories overall. And, yes, his Superman prose novels were terrific. From time to time, a friend and I still fondly recall a scene where Superman lies down on the ground and just...listens to the entire world, with all of the sounds blending into a massive symphony. Good stuff.
BUT... The most important thing about Elliot for me was that he turned out to be the cousin of a friend of mine. He'd sent an original Superman script to his cousin -- the first actual script I ever held in my hands. And then, when I was 13, Elliot took a handful of us on a tour of DC. My first time seeing original art (a Grell Legion issue), meeting people like Julie Schwartz, Cary Bates, and Jack Abel (who'd become a friend years later when I was writing for Marvel), and on and on. It was an amazing day, and it was the reason why I later paid it forward by bringing kids to see Marvel or DC when the companies were still in NYC and I had access. But that's a story for another day.
Thanks, Elliot.
Well, Sholly, if Elliot inspired YOU to become a comic book writer, then I dismiss any of my own criticisms of him, but that alone is greatest contribution to the medium I can imagine!
Sholly Fisch!! You have my permission to write any comic or comics you so please.
- HJF1
Hear, hear. I have always said Sholly Fisch is the only comic book writer who can do no wrong.
I’ve never read a Sholly Fisch comic and not enjoyed it!
That said…
My opinion on Bronze Age super-hero comic book writing echoes yours, Scipio. There are big exceptions, mostly smaller from Marvel (Tomb of Dracula, Howard the Duck, Warlock, Master of Kung-Fu…. Claremont & Co on X-Men was their best “big” title, but it started out as a mid-list series). DC had its war books, Swamp Thing, Jonah Hex, and Warlord. Other than that, you had a lot of writers who took their cues from Stan Lee and Roy Thomas. Steve Englehart’s Batman stories might have been the best-written DC super-hero comic, and that lasted less than a year. Oh, and Goodwin/Simonson on the Manhunter strips. I know you don’t like Kirby, but I love his 4th World material. I think the themes and depth transcend the admittedly clunky prose.The combination of bombast, bad humor, forced relevancy, and arrested development that was Bronze Age Big 2 writing did comics no favors.
There were flashes of higher quality in the early ‘80s- Levitz & Giffen on Legion, Alan Moore on Swamp Thing- but DC didn’t have much in the way of good writing between 1970 and 1987.
- Mike Loughlin
Aw, shucks, guys. Thanks for the kind words. But if you really think I can do no wrong or you've never read one of my stories that you didn't enjoy, then... (a) I can only imagine that there are a couple of my stories that you've never read, and (b) I should introduce you to my wife. :)
Sholly
About Kirby's Fourth World stuff, I find it works best if you think of it as a morality play but with modern archetypes. I look at how bigotry is on the rise again, not just in the US but all over the world, and I think of Glorious Godfrey delivering his sermon to the crowds:
“Though Life is ever filled with those who threaten us, it is Anti-Life which gives us the power to eliminate them! The holocaust is coming! The day of Apokolips on Earth! The day of Darkseid, who brings this power only for us to use! Yes, it is his gift to us, friends! The cosmic hunting license! The The right to point the finger or the gun!”
Kirby wasn't a prophet, but he remembered what lies under the surface with mankind.
- HJF1
I bet it was the "etaoin shrdlu" that brought Sholly in here.
Post a Comment