MOSHER: I believe that Image's 1993 series "1963" was not intended for the usual comics demographic. They were published and marketed to press the buttons of guys who were kids (like we were in those days) to buy for their own kids or for themselves. So it's appropriate two guys who were eight years old in 1963 should analyze and dissect them.

YACO: Fair enough. But in doing so, I bet we'll inevitably end up toasting and talking about the masters of the milieu in which 1963 parodistically trods, Stan Lee & Jack Kirby. Starting with this "1963" character "U.S.A. (Ultimate Special Agent)", he's obviously a parody of Mighty Comics' Shield, right? And this "Horus" guy is obviously Charlton's Son of Vulcan, as scripted by Roy Thomas, nu?

MOSHER: Madame Nhu...? What? Now you're talking non-Marvel comics, which are admittedly pretty hard to remember. You don't think "Horus, Lord of Light" is a straight Thor rip-off? "N-Man" cops the Hulk?

YACO: Oh yeah, but it's boring to stop there since almost every one of the Marvel characters has a counterpart at one of the other companies of the era. This either points to the archetypal quality of these characters or the lack of over-priced lawyers under the Marvel roof at that time. I would like to think that the creators of 1963 were thinking more broadly than just in terms of Marvel parodies. Everybody had a patriotic character like U.S.A.

MOSHER: So these titles are meant to convey to us not only the Marvels we cherished but the lame second-string comics we tolerated and purchased when we had to fill out an entire dollar given to us by our parents? Peter Laird created a Kirby parody called "Stupid Heroes" for Next Comics and it came across like a mediocre '60s book from a company like ACG. Gad, what must it have been like to toil in the mines of those second-string companies in the sixties...? I think these are not onlypurely Marvel take-offs, but take-offs on Marvel artists. "Johnny Beyond" with his thin, angular Doc Strange beatnik hallucinations is clearly supposed to be an homage to Steve Ditko.

YACO: Then tell me, why is Johnny Beyond lettered in EC-style LeRoy lettering?

MOSHER: A lettering balloon has its own comics voice to you. Almost like a recognizable actor being dubbed with a different actor's voice. Not only are 1963's creators giving us knowing asides about specific Marvel motifs but they are playing with the mixing and matching of various letterers, pencillers, inkers, writers, editors, as if re-writing the entire comics history of the sixties. Which is hard for already very stylized artists like Melinda Gebbie-creator of some of "1963"s pin-up pages-to pull off, with charming results.

YACO: As if EC had gone on to do serial hero adventure and Ditko had worked for them. Is that the subtext? They're trying to cast the peculiarities of Marvel from that era into high relief by contrasting it with elements one would not expect in that context, i.e. LeRoy lettering.

MOSHER: Don't you think that "Mystery Incorporated" is very obviously the Fantastic Four?

YACO: At the core yes, but in the finessing, no. For instance, Kid Dynamo is not just the Human Torch. The usage of "Kid" calls to mind DC's Kid Flash. Bear in mind that Plastic Man precedes Marvel's Mr. Fantastic, and I think, the Elongated Man, and Jimmy Olsen, the Elastic Lad.

MOSHER: So was it all a metaphor for changing ethnic identity in the sixties?

YACO: Oh, come on. We'll get to ethnicity, I have thoughts on that, believe me. But let's take a look at the writing, something for which Image comics are not especially celebrated. Remember that the early Marvels sprang out of the monster milieu and they often had the same "Fin Fang Doom" formula. Captain Beefheart-sounding titles like "The Terror of Tim Boo Ba". Instead of some professor on a sabbatical on a South Sea island discovering a weird monster, it would be Mr. Fantastic discovering a monster and being chased around yelling, "Woo, I'm a'skeered!"

MOSHER: They were the lumpy, clumpy monster titles of about 1960 which, when reprinted in Marvel "annuals" and "specials" and discovered by us in the mid-sixties, appeared simple and crude. "Orrgo the Unconquerable", a froggy alien mindbender who ended up getting bonked by a hungry circus gorilla.

YACO: All the monsters looked like they were made from modeling clay.

MOSHER: Clay stuffed into wet paper bags. Monster stories which, for some reason, Marvel chose to reprint in the '90s under the title "Monster Menace".

YACO: Right, and note how they were written. Some of those early sixties Marvels may have been self-contained in three act development but they were more constrained than even the most formulaic EC. But they quickly got beyond the formula and by the time the Red Ghost was creating an evil Fantastic Four out of apes, we not only had some bizarre high concept stuff going on but we had the backbone of story. It's like the difference between early jazz improvisation and sixties improv. Early improv would have signposts where their would be changes like going back to the head, returning to the main theme. In later improv, they just GO and quickly concepts of tonality and structure were broken down and "proven" to be arbitrary. Freedom is a wonderful thing but I don't think that breaking down structure really gives you more creativity or complexity, it reduces it. And when you reduce complex plot structure, you end up with a one act play instead of a three act play.

MOSHER: All the more reason that I was so disappointed when book six of "1963", "The Tomorrow Syndicate", degenerated into a 1990s comics-allusion-besodden mess, ending up rendered in that characteristic unattractive, overworked creamy Image style. Who cares what happens after the apocalypse? In the halcyon, Merry-Marvel-marching days there was a sense by a Marvel book's creators that we all cared about this extended family of characters. Uncle Stan and Uncle Jack assumed the readership had a great attention span, which they would then enable with footnotes that directed us to "See ish #157, where we last saw Wyatt Wingfoot with a stone in his shoe."

[Go Part Two]