Daredevil Message Board

[Gloria]

I thought you might find this interesting:

In Ferran Delgado's Blog you can see some images of preliminary sketches by Wally Wood for Daredevil (Vol. 1) Issue 9. It is fascinating to see this first stage of storytelling.

The Spanish text gives some background about Wood at Marvel, in cluding his not being comfortable with Stan Lee taking main credit for the stories, or Wood's collaborators at the time (who held similar complaints about Wood, semingly)
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Gloria
Devuélveme el rosario de mi madre y quédate con todo lo demás

"Para la cuesta arriba quiero mi burro, que la cuesta abajo yo me la subo"

[james castle]

Another interesting fact about Wally Wood is that later in his career he started producing more and more "dirty" cartoons; the most famous of which is a large piece starring almost every Disney character you can think of doing just about every naughty thing you can think of.

As for his beef with Stan Lee: isn't it pretty settled that, at the time, Lee's "writing" would consisted of him coming into an artist's office and saying "yeah, yeah and then Daredevil goes to space!" and then running out? I think that would at least partially explain why Lee hasn't produced anything of any worth for decades.
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JC

So why can't you see the funny side?
Why aren't you laughing?

[Gloria]

[Pete]

[Neilan]

[Pete]

I actually think that most DC characters have some inherent quality that makes them superior to a lot of the Marvel stable. It's just that following on from FF#1, their books may as well have been produced in black and white when compared to the psychedelic explosion of Lee's imagination and the sheer quality of his artists storytelling techniques. The work of Lee, Kirby, Ditko, Colan, etc has influenced everything that has come along since. We're still playing in Lee's playpen, even here on this board. DC were left behind for a very long time, either out of lack of imagination, lazyness or stubborness, or being set in their ways.

Things do come full circle sometimes, however. I can't really comment, not reading many books at the moment apart from DD, but there is a train of thought that sees DC as nowdays being the innovators and the ones doing anything remotely daring. From the little I've seen, I'm inclined to agree

[Gloria]

Thinking about it all... I wonder how many writers write the Lee (basic plot first, then drdrawings, and dialogues later) way nowadays : most writers I'm aware appear to send a full script to the artist (Alan Moore, for instance , writes very intrincate, detailed and exacting scripts)

We saw in DD#100 a sample of script-to finished page procedures, so the plot & dialogue seems well defined before the artist even starts pencilling.

I wonder if the old Lee system has been substituted by writer/artist feedback prior to the finished version of the script.
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Gloria
Devuélveme el rosario de mi madre y quédate con todo lo demás

"Para la cuesta arriba quiero mi burro, que la cuesta abajo yo me la subo"

[Pete]

But as an artist, Glori, given the choice, surely you would revel in the freedom provided by the Lee method. Now a good comic book artist, by definition a good storyteller, would use that freedom to not only provide good looking distinctive visuals, but to impose their own stamp on the story. This is something denied when a completed plot/script is provided beforehand.

Comic books are a visual medium. Lee realised that and played to its strengths.

I've no idea what the predominant way of doing things these days is. Even 25 years ago, writer/artists like Bryne and Miller made such a debate meaningless anyway.

However, given the chance, I'm sure any comic book artist would jump through hoops to work with Alan Moore anyway, whatever way the collaboration worked out.

[james castle]

There's no doubt that back in the day Marvel was innovative but I think the amount to which Lee contributed is an open question. No doubt he had a particular talent for hiring great artist who had a knack for storytelling and I think that might have been his biggest contribution. If all he did was suggest very generaly plots then I'm not sure that he deserves all the credit he usually gets. To be fair, his general plots were innovative as well. It's pretty clear that at some point Lee said "let's make heroes teenagers and/or young people and let's focus more on their secret identities and their everyday problems". That was a master stroke. But when it gets to the details things get a little murkier. Adding "real life problems" was a good idea. The only problem is that his "real life problems" were basically love triangles. Foggy/Karen/Matt. Scott/Jean/Prof. X....and so on. Not the most indepth stuff.

The fact that Lee is unable to produce comics these days suggests he had one big idea and that was it. Plus, he doesn't even seem to get the characters he did create. Whenever he talks about DD he goes on and on about how he's blind and has to deal with that handicap; entirely ignoring that DD can "see" and appreciate the world much, much better than anybody else.
_________________
JC

So why can't you see the funny side?
Why aren't you laughing?

[Gloria]

[Pete]