YACO: Today these things will all be footnoted and cross-referenced but if you look up the cross-reference, you'll find that indeed, that character did appear in another series for three panels but his appearance did nothing to develop character or plot and that the footnote is just there to remind you that you should be buying all of these things for the sake of being a completionist. In the old days, if Spiderman and Daredevil met for the second time there would be a footnote reminding you of their first meet. If you check out their first encounter, you discover that they started out hashing it out and having a lot of personality conflict but over time learned a grudging respect for each other and that there remains a certain friction between the two of them but they are comrades-in-arms now. It gives you insight into the character development of the current crossover.

MOSHER: So they hurled buildings at each other with the appropriate "WHOOM" but emerged as respectful rivals. Meanwhile the comics themselves were also growing in social, sociological importance and respect. In 1966 Esquire magazine--the urbane way for a boy to learn about hip, style and names to drop--had an entire Annual College Issue with a Marvel Comics theme.

YACO: You learned to drop names like Thor and Ironman, Paddy.

MOSHER: Names like Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Ché Guevara. In this college issue, counterculture figures on various campuses were represented as superheroes in the Marvel style. It then talked about how college students around the country were taking the complex Marvel universe to heart and embracing Marvel as literature. For my money about 1967 Marvels reached the height of complexity. The Fantastic Four met Prester John who spun tales of various ancient civilizations he'd visited. The Inhumans were tragic, trapped in their bubble. There were romantic yearnings and personality clashes. There was this richness, this baroque architectural complexity, that stuffed a twelve year-old's mind sufficiently but had all these imbedded pointers to real literature and inroads into adult culture. I think Marvels served a purpose then. They--not Classics Illustrated!--were getting kids to read beyond comics. When those early ponderous monster comics got reprinted, including some of the superheroes' origin stories, they had such a plodding sketchiness to them that you realized that in the intervening years Stan and Jack and crew had grown much more deft in their craft.

YACO: Seeing the oldest issues with the crude drawings and the simplistic writing formulae gave one a sense of historicity and development and an interest not just the imaginary world of the comic but also in the medium itself. It exercised the mind and made you think about the dynamics of the creative process. Of course the development between the early monster issues and the sophisticated, psychedelic Fantastic Four of the mid- to late- sixties took five years. That's a lifetime in comics. And for the eight year-olds reading it, that's the greater part of their lives. But these days, five years can go by in comics without very much changing at all, I say with some cynicism. Those 1960s Marvels were a window on the world for the majority of readers who were white, middle-class, and lived not in heavy urban settings but suburban or even rural. Those comics were an eclectic blend of Biblical, literary, and historic references in which I think that those of us who grew up and started reading real literature probably have a lot of our interest in culture rooted. Stan and Jack used some very evocative concepts. Remember Black Bolt and his hidden city? His voice was something like the biblical trumpets of Jericho-- it brought down city walls. His words were powerful things.

MOSHER: Wasn't the Who working on a piece about a single, pure note that could do that as a follow-up to "Tommy"? Think of the importance of "the word" in the late sixties. George Carlin's seven words that the FCC wouldn't let you say.

YACO: The Beatles' one word-- "Have you heard the word? The word is Love."

MOSHER: The word in the sixties was either Love, or its multi-purpose profane equivalent applied to the Army or the Establishment...

YACO: In the Marvels, Stan spouted words, alliterated to excess, and created his attention-getting asides in back-slapping prose to create the sense of elevation to the inner bandwagon of Marveldom readership. A great attraction to nerdy eight- to twelve-year- olds. From here Stan Lee's self-reflectiveness, his use of alliteration and concern with form over content, seems like one more of the hallmarks of the literature and arts of the sixties. Stepping outside of the play, talking to the camera, direct address. Now, my take on it is that it's a very Jewish thing. The world of New York Jews was an entirely different culture. The kind of banter that verged upon abrasiveness but was actually quite loving was indicative of the Kurtzmans and Feldsteins and Stanley Liebermans (Stan Lee) and Jacob Kurtzburgs (Jack Kirby) of Madison Avenue who were producing these comics and, indeed, running the advertising industry. It was a very different mode of personal interaction and American culture than what we were used to in the flatlands. Far more colorful and exciting.

MOSHER: Very verbal, demonstrative, taking chances, cynicism, sometimes a slight bawdiness...

YACO: And a certain self-effacing quality. Ben Grimm could be just of mocking of himself as anyone. And all these characters were tortured. Reed Richards was always disturbed by the fact that he was so uptight and perhaps wasn't giving wife Sue the lovin' she needed. Johnny Storm was always having explosions of temper and afterwards suffered James Dean-like anguish and guilt. Spiderman could never decide exactly why he was Spiderman. Several times he threatened to turn his back on the whole megilla. Part of it is the urban culture, part is the immigrant heritage. But speaking as a Jew, I'm telling you, it's very Jewish! Speaking as an Irishman, what would you say?

MOSHER: I always thought there was a brawling Irish streak to Marvels. Yancey Street and all that...!

YACO: Of course, Irish was the acceptable version of Jewish. In that era whenever a Jewish screenwriter wrote a Jewish character, the studios would change it to Irish. Still ethnic, but acceptably so. Now days they would hesitate to make a character Jewish. But they'd quickly change a Black character to Jewish. Or maybe Blacks are acceptable in some situations, but not Hispanics or Arabs.

MOSHER: Always changed to the immigrant group one generation ahead on the escalator. Or when in doubt...cast Whoopi Goldberg! Interesting that Kurtzburg changed his name for business purposes to Kirby, another Irish name. I remember Kirby's self-portrait, pug nose, smoking a cigar. Stick a derby on him and you practically had Jiggs!

YACO: He...drew...himself...as...Irish! Good Lord (choke)!

MOSHER: Think of what the very year 1963 conveys-the final act and martyrdom of the Irish President. Johnny, we hardly knew ye. That may be the time that the Irish were finally acceptable.

YACO: Not only had you guys made it to the top, but the nation had to spend the next 30 years mourning the martyrdom of Kennedy. The Irish got a lot of mileage out of that one.

MOSHER: "1963"'s political humor in the form of the advertisements that seemed to appear in every publisher's comics throughout the 1960s may be the wittiest part of the series. Its art-study tests where you draw Kennedy or Kruschev, the USSR as a Big Daddy Roth dragster "Mommy's Commie, or the 6-foot-Stalin-as-Frankenstein are all the kind of mix-and-match appropriations of the Hey Kids! imagery our generation grew up with that the Los Angeles "fine" artist Jim Shaw has put into some marvelous museum installations. They prompt me to ask you, were the comics of that era all being drawn & written by warm-hearted Jewish liberals who had brothers & sisters who were Stalinists and Trotskyists?

YACO: No, just as Hollywood was populated by people who immigrated to New York and made gloves, the Stanley Liebermans came to New York and started printing. These people's politics went extended no further than their check books. The Solly Brodskys of this world were utterly apolitical. Socially, because of their immigrant background, they might have been Democrats, economically they were Republicans.

MOSHER: But look at the moral universe of the ECs, the humanism of Eisner...

YACO: The EC crew was more educated. Gaines had a grad degree in chemistry. Eisner had only a junior college art degree, but he was very well read. Stanley Lieberman was the proud possessor of a high school diploma. Marvel Jews were mercantile Jews. This is why I think they were better barometers of popular culture, because they were entrenched in a shopkeeper's capitalist reality, whereas Gaines ran his inherited comics company as a hobby horse. He always had the family wealth to fall back upon. Marvel to EC? I'd compare 'em as the shanty Irish to the lace-curtain Irish.

[Go Part One]