Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Rewriting History for Fun and Profit

Coming up just before this year's 9/11 anniversary is a Showtime feature called DC 9/11: Time of Crisis that claims to show what George W. Bush did on the day the planes hit the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. From all advance reports, the film deviates from reality in order to ignore some of Bush's more questionable actions during that crisis, so you can expect to see a lot of articles like this one in The Village Voice.

As I mentioned here before, I have very little respect for the man behind this film. And as noted, you can see the actual video of Bush when he got the news over at this website.

• Posted at 11:56 PM · LINK

Vegas Trivia

Which are the five oldest hotel-casinos that are still open and operating? This article will tell you all about them.

• Posted at 11:27 PM · LINK

More on Kirby in The Times

Just noticed that the New York Times piece on J. Kirby is accompanied by a slide show of Kirby illustrations. Here's a link to it. For some reason, it includes a photo of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, as if Kirby had ever had anything to do with that character.

By the way: The self-portrait there of Jack at his drawing table has a bit of history to it. It was the very first Kirby drawing that was ever inked by Mike Royer, who later became Jack's main inker. Not bad for a first effort, eh?

Also, here's a companion article in the Times about comic books. A former reader goes back to see how the neighborhood has changed. I'm told there's another piece that's either in the paper or soon to run about adult comics, but I haven't found it yet.

• Posted at 11:16 PM · LINK

Stan the Man

While I'm on the subject of Lee and Kirby, I should mention that I just received my copy of Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, a new biography of Guess Who by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon. I was sort of afraid to open it because I have way too many opinions and knowledge about Stan, especially with regard to his relationship with Jack, and...well, Jordan and Tom are good reporters but that's no guarantee. It could have been a book where I'd feel compelled to condemn its conclusions, issue corrections and challenge the authors to fisticuffs. Happily, that does not seem to be the case. After an (admittedly fast) read, I found my quibbles with their factual recital to be minimal.

There are a few minor facts that don't coincide with mine, and a number of minor value judgments, but it's beyond the realm of possibility that anyone could write about Lee and/or Kirby and not have that happen. I don't even agree with all that I've written about them in the past.

The book seems to be a well-researched, even-handed effort, with what strike me as some very perceptive comments about much of Stan's life and career. No one book could capture everything but I was pleasantly surprised with how much they crammed into a little more than 300 pages. They successfully avoided and even debunked a lot of nonsense that has been published and commonly believed in the past. I'll probably write a real review for somewhere once I have the time to give it a slow read, but I wanted to say it'll be a positive review. And I also wanted to post this link in case you want to order a copy from Amazon. (That's where I got mine. They promised delivery in 6-10 days and it was here in two. Your mileage may vary.)

And to answer those who keep asking me when my biography of Jack Kirby will be out: It'll still be quite a while. It's presently about the size of the Encyclopedia Americana (unabridged) and there are still questions being answered. I can't begin to think of publishing it until the trickle of data ceases, and it doesn't show any sign of drying up yet. So please be patient and in the meantime, read the book by Raphael and Spurgeon.

• Posted at 9:33 PM · LINK

Long Live the King

It is rare when I feel Jack Kirby has gotten too much credit for something. Over the years, I've often felt my friend (and one-time employer) was not properly hailed as a creative genius, and I've winced as he went unmentioned or damned with faint praise during talk of his many co-creations.

But this article in tomorrow morn's New York Times comes close to overcompensating. In a discussion of The Hulk, Fantastic Four, X-Men and Thor, Stan Lee goes almost unmentioned. And, yes, plenty of articles have erred in the opposite direction, and the scale isn't close to balanced...

...but we all know what two wrongs don't make. Particularly excessive is that the article is illustrated with a drawing of the X-Men — not by Kirby, not featuring his version of those characters, and not noting that the current, money-making version is a couple of revamps removed from what Jack helped bring into the world.

(And a small point: Jack left Marvel and went to DC in 1970, not 1971.)

The quotes from Michael Chabon and Jules Feiffer are spot-on, and Jack deserves every ounce of praise for his unbounded imagination. As much as he brought to comics, I don't think we even got 50% of what he had to give. Still, it would be nice if we could sing his praises without turning his collaborators into mumbled asides.

• Posted at 9:04 PM · LINK