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Category Archives: books
re: Stan Lee: My Life As A Face-Fronted, True Believer
In my new book on the Black Panther, I say this about Stan Lee and Marvel:
Growing up as a superhero-obsessed tyke in the 1970s, I saw the 1967 Spider-Man animated series (the one often called Spiderman, mistakenly without the hyphen between “Spider” and “Man”) and the Batman and Superman live-action series every weekday in second-run syndication and watched every version of The Superfriends every Saturday morning on ABC. I even devoured those gawd-awful Spider-Man live-action specials on CBS, as well as the two almost-as-bad Captain America and Dr. Strange movies that aired on that network. The fact that CBS aired quality live-action superhero shows like The Incredible Hulk and, in its second and third seasons, Wonder Woman (a refugee from ABC) almost made up for those terrible also-rans. And of course, I loved Superman: The Movie.
During that decade, I slowly discovered comicbooks. Marvel became my favorite. I think that was due to my all-time favorite characters, The Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer, with Captain America as a runner-up. (I count the FF as one character.) My fifth-grade teacher had a copy of Bring On The Bad Guys, the third volume of the Simon and Schuster trade paperbacks that reprinted early Marvel stories with writer Stan Lee’s introductions. That’s where I discovered the FF, The Surfer and Cap in separate epic tales.
I still remember my shock when I found out that my favorites had been animated! Hanna-Barbera decided to syndicate, as a weekday “wheel,” all its 1960s Saturday morning superhero-action fare. Hanna-Barbera’s World of Super-Adventure, as the syndication wheel called itself, became my all-time favorite animated series, right next to Marvel Men, the second-run syndication of the 1966 Marvel Superheroes animated show (happily, Cap was a feature), and Superheroes!, the syndicated daily run of the Filmation 1960s DC animated cartoons of the same time. The H-B series, I quickly found out, had a Fantastic Four cartoon! I sat in front of the television every weekday, waiting to see if The Fantastic Four would come on. I was often disappointed, but I learned about great Hanna-Barbara superheroes like Space Ghost, Birdman and other characters. When I saw the FF and my other all-time favorite character, The Silver Surfer, fight some giant named Galactus, in front of another giant named The Watcher, I lost my mind and became a one-person [San Diego Comic-Con] Hall H, a certified Marvel Zombie. I never looked back.
*****
But there was more. A few years after that, into the ’80s, I enjoyed Stan’s narration of “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends,” Marvel and NBC’s answer to DC and ABC’s “Superfriends.”
And then there was that time in 1990, when, now the ripe old age of 22, I wrote a Star-Ledger feature on the first Todd McFarlane Spider-Man issue. I interviewed The Man himself on the phone. Being new to the pressures of daily journalism, I actually asked him to slow down while he was talking! He said directly that if I couldn’t keep up he wouldn’t continue the interview. That was GREAT training for me, for at the end of that conversation, I learned how to take notes over the phone. He sent me a form letter after the article appeared that of course I cherished.
I really, really, really wish he had stopped being in denial about standing idly by, playing innocent, while his cousin-in-law, Martin Goodman, cheated and reneged on Jack Kirby. I really wished he would have asked Jack to use the Silver Surfer, instead of taking it from him. Although I think many people forget that Stan was Jack (and Steve Ditko’s) boss, I think these questions are more than fair, and should not be shunted out of politeness.
Stan, along with Jack and Steve, were responsible for three out of every five of my childhood smiles. That is how I will always remember all three of them.
Book Mini-Review: The Artist Is Human, And Black Too
An American Odyssey: The Life and Work and Romare Bearden.
Mary Schmidt Campbell.
Oxford University Press, 464 pp. $34.95.
As the third decade of the 21st century swiftly approaches, it might be difficult for some fine artists under 35 to understand a time when the self(ie) was not unapologetically at the center of the artistic experience. The first biography of Bearden in almost 20 years, and clearly the fullest, Campbell–who knew the author, trading letters with him going back to the 1970s–has crafted a quality book about 20th- and 21st-century Black ritually- and visually-based aesthetics through American history’s prism. (The fact that, as Campbell writes, “Bearden seemed to delight in exploring the use of color” has a acute, and subtle, significance.) With a lack of dangerous 20th century socio-political action and adventure to reconstruct, Campbell, president of Spelman College and a former leader in the New York City artistic community, must go around and through the topic, briefly profiling the many artists in his orbit, such as Aaron Douglas, Charles Alston and Augusta Savage. She documents well, and with great care, his artists’ organizing efforts, his many important writings and his forgotten early-political cartoonist career. What was most important to this reviewer is her detailed, and thoughtful, placement of Bearden at the slow-but-perfect storm of the development of 20th century American media, technology, popular culture and racial struggle. Although Campbell’s theme of the Black American Odysseus is sound, this book is actually about how someone fed on the European art classics and the organic African-American experience (of Harlem and Pittsburgh) slowly realizes something when the latter becomes in vogue in the 1960s (perhaps not-so-coincidentally), allowing him to ultimately collage his being fully as both an artist and a Black man: that being and presenting one’s Black self in New York City, the then-new center of the art world in the center of the century, forever seeing and remembering, is more than profound enough.
Book Mini-Review: Galactic Improvisation
So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized History of Battlestar Galactica.
Mark A. Altman & Edward Gross.
Tor Books. 718 pp., $27.99.
No, it wasn’t the record-breaking-rated, universally-loved show it is now seen as, almost ten years after it ended. No, it wasn’t unconditionally loved and cherished by its network–until the awards and critical acclaim came in, and the showrunners announced that the fourth season would be its last. From its beginnings 40 years ago as an often ill-fated attempt to bring the visual and spiritual power of Star Wars to ABC primetime screens every week, to its let’s-kill-every-rule-Star-Trek-ever-had-and-hold-up-a-mirror 21st century Sci-Fi (now SyFy) Channel revival during the post-911/War on Terror years, Battlestar Galactica was almost always an acquired taste, a pleasant, almost-mainstream discovery. But how powerful the concoction! Altman and Gross, who interview as many cast and crew members that a human mind can absorb on a given page, take us step by step through the mythology as it developed, the last three words being key; perhaps the biggest shock of the book–practically its thru line–is how much of the new version was editorially done on the fly, and how its showrunners, Ronald D. Moore and the series’ often-unsung hero, David Eick, trusted its writers to fly Galactica–a complex series about race/identity and its connection to current politics, ancient Earth history and world religion–to a powerful, albeit controversial to many, end. What a great way for Altman and Gross to end a trilogy (four books, technically) of fan-favorites–Star Trek, then Buffy/Angel, and now BSG. These kind of books, especially with its oral history formats, take the rabid deep into the rabbit(-ears) whole, allowing the reader to see into the experience, and stay there. For a BSG fan, this is essential, since the series presented much but purposely answered little.
Book Mini-Review: A Sci-Fi Novelist’s Sophomore Effort Shows The Symmetry Of Imbalance
Temper.
Nicky Drayden.
Harper/Voyager.
385 pp., $19.99.
What a “Nicky Drayden sci-fi novel” is is, for now, solidified with this fine second inning. Set in a land that might be South Africa if you want it to be, this tale of twins, dark magic, African god possession and the horrors of boarding school really takes command after a too-long set-up. Secrets pile and spill, characters switch identities and loyalties and–in what is now Drayden’s style–monsters are shown, from the inside out, as all too human. What is important about Drayden as a novelist is two-fold: first, she seeks to destroy public (gender) identity’s use as a lazy marker of someone’s totality, and second, in this novel particularly, she shows that true balance is achieved by serving every side of imbalance. Definitions built, then crushed. Religion and science at odds, or working in harmony? Waaayy too simple. And Drayden delights in her humorous genre- and character-mashups. Like her first novel, “The Prey of Gods,” this is not your father’s fantasy Africa or Africans, and nor is it meant to be; it is another fully realized narrative from an author who refuses to see and satisfy any pre-supposed expectations or limitations.
