Brian Cronin

by Was Superman a Spy?

  As an interesting side note to the whole affair, a few years after the cartoon ended, the California studio where DePatie-Freleng Enterprises produced its shows was destroyed. How was it destroyed? The building burned to the ground.

  ONE AMUSING THING about pop culture is that it often outlives the references it makes. One such example is the Fantastic Four’s the Thing, who Stan Lee made purposefully reminiscent of Jimmy Durante, a popular entertainer of the time (although by 1961 Durante had been famous for decades). Durante, like Ben Grimm, was from a working-class New York background, and talked like it, saying things like “dis” and “dat.” Durante passed away in 1980, so the Thing’s dialect has long outlasted Durante. The other influence on the character of the Thing was his cocreator, Jack Kirby, who saw a lot of himself in the Thing. Ben Grimm was Jewish, like Kirby. However, it took a while for him to get there.

  For the first forty-plus years of the Thing’s existence, his religion was never expressly stated. Stan Lee has mentioned in the past that he never gave it any real thought, but that was not the case for Kirby. He always considered the Thing to be Jewish, and, in fact, Kirby once portrayed the Thing wearing the traditional Jewish skull-cap and prayer shawl and holding a prayer book. The drawing hung in Kirby’s home. After Lee and Kirby left the book, a few stories showed the Thing celebrating Christmas (and he appeared on the covers of various Marvel Christmas celebrations), but his religion was never specifically mentioned.

  Finally, in 2002, in a fill-in issue of The Fantastic Four, writer Karl Kesel asked permission from editor Tom Brevoort to do a story about the Thing’s past and expressly refer to his Jewish heritage. Brevoort consented, and the issue, Fantastic Four #56, was a lovely examination of the Thing’s background (which echoed Jack Kirby’s, right down to growing up on the Lower East Side of New York and a brother who died far too early, plus the Thing’s name is Benjamin Jacob Grimm—the first name is Kirby’s father’s, and the middle name Kirby’s birth name).

  In the story, the Thing is protecting an elderly Jewish pawnbroker from a villain when, during the battle, the pawnbroker is injured. Not knowing what else to do, the Thing begins to pray the traditional Shema, the Hebrew confession recited at deaths. The pawnbroker survives but asks the Thing why he never told anyone about his religion. The Thing explains that the Jews have a hard enough time without everyone knowing that a monster like him is Jewish. It’s a nice reminder of the tragic life of the Thing and the great humanity he contains within his monstrous exterior.

  5

  SPIDER-MAN

  In Amazing Fantasy #15, the very last issue of the series, Peter Parker, the Amazing Spider-Man made his debut. Very quickly, he gained his own magazine, and soon after that, he was not only the single most popular Marvel character, but he was one of the most popular comic book characters period, rivaling the popularity of even Batman and Superman.

  Amazing Fantasy #15 was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and the pair would team up to produce a notable thirty-eight-issue run of the ongoing Amazing Spider-Man title, during which time they would introduce pretty much every notable Spider-Man supporting character and villain, including Doctor Octopus, the Green Goblin, Aunt May, and J. Jonah Jameson.

  The Spider-Man series was notable for the time because of how much of an everyman Peter Parker was—this was not some millionaire playboy, nor was he a successful reporter. He was a young adult trying to make his way in the world and failing as often as he succeeded. His trip to becoming a hero was filled with the sort of tragedy that makes great men. After being bitten by a radioactive spider, Parker gained remarkable abilities. Rather than use these powers for good, he first uses them to become an entertainer, and when a crook runs by him, chased by the police, Peter does nothing to stop him. Later, however, he learns the folly of his ways when that same crook murders his beloved Uncle Ben. From that moment on, he resolves to use his powers for good, in honor of Uncle Ben’s memory.

  Spider-Man was soon popular enough to have both his own animated series (with a notable theme song: “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can”) and be one of the first Marvel characters to receive a spin-off title. At one point in the 1990s, Spider-Man was juggling four monthly titles, a distinction shared only with Batman and Superman.

  In 2002 Spider-Man made the leap to the big screen, in one of the most successful film franchises in movie history, setting box-office records with the first film that were broken by the second film. Currently, there are plans for a fourth Spider-Man film, although details have not yet been released.

  AS TOUCHED ON earlier with the creation of Batman (see pages 33-34), sometimes identifying who should be considered the “creator” of a fictional character can be extremely difficult. If an editor tells a writer, “Write me a character involving turtles,” and that writer creates Turtle-Man, who is the creator? Couple such loosely defined creatorship with an artist with an often poor memory and a bit of ill will, and you get a situation like Jack Kirby claiming that he and Joe Simon were the creators of Spider-Man.

  Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had a long-lasting partnership, from their days at Timely in the 1940s, where they created Captain America, to their days at DC, where they produced one of the company’s most popular wartime comics, Boy Commandos, to their independent days, when they cocreated the very first romance comic book. By the mid-1950s, however, comic sales had slowed to the point where it was not economically feasible for the two to shop themselves as a pair, so they split up, with Simon going to work in advertising and Kirby going to work at DC Comics.

  The pair had one last hurrah, though, in 1959, when the publishers at Archie Comics, just like Martin Goodman at Marvel Comics, saw that DC was having success bringing back its superheroes. Archie enlisted Simon to launch a line of superhero comics, and Simon turned to his former partner for the project. Among the concepts they worked on was a hero they had discussed a few years earlier called the Silver Spider. The Silver Spider was a young boy who wished upon a ring he found in a magical spider web and was transformed into the adult superhero the Silver Spider, who would fight crime with a gun that would shoot webs (similar to the web shooters that Spider-Man wears around his wrists). At the time, Jack did not like the name Silver Spider and suggested they use the name Spider-Man. Simon even worked up a mock logo for the title. While they abandoned the project then, they brought it back up when Simon was given the call from Archie to do the new line of superheroes. Ultimately, Simon would change the name of the character to the Fly, but otherwise the concept stayed the same. Kirby drew the series, which, like the other titles in the Archie line of super-hero comics, did not last long (although the Fly did survive for thirty issues).

  Fast-forward a few years, and Stan Lee is looking for a teen superhero for Marvel Comics. He asks Kirby to come up with some ideas, and Kirby remembers the Silver Spider/Spider-Man story and pitches it to Lee. Lee is interested and asks Kirby to work up a proposal. Lee determined that the superhero Kirby came up with was too traditional, so he gave Kirby’s proposal to Steve Ditko, who remarked to Lee that the premise sounded an awful lot like the Adventures of the Fly series from Archie. Lee concurred and asked Ditko to change it around, so Ditko eliminated the web gun, the costume, and the whole wishing-upon-a-ring premise, leaving the character as Peter Parker, the Spider-Man readers know and love.

  So who created Spider-Man? After years of disputes with Marvel, Kirby at one point claimed that he created Spider-Man, but Kirby’s memory was not always the greatest, and he would tend to go along with whomever he was talking to at the time. If the interviewer said something like, “So you created Spider-Man?” Kirby wouldn’t contradict him. However, when asked about it later, Kirby clearly stated that he considered Ditko to be the man who developed Spider-Man. Stan Lee agrees, and ultimately, that is likely the fairest call, although it sure makes for an interesting argument.

  AN INTERESTING ASPECT of the human memory is that it can often play tricks on us, making us reme
mber hearing what we never actually heard. For instance, during the three seasons of the original Star Trek television program, Captain Kirk never says, “Beam me up, Scotty.” Never in Casablanca does Rick tell Sam to “Play it again, Sam.” We think we heard those phrases said, so we remember them being said. A similar situation occurs with Amazing Fantasy #15, which is famous for the quote from Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” He never actually says it in the comic.

  The phrase itself has an interesting history in the sense that no one has been able to determine definitively where Stan Lee came up with it. It is certainly possible that Lee came up with the line on his own, but is seems more likely that a line that classic was most likely taken from some older source. No one has yet definitively identified the quotation, although there have been many famous quotes that mirror the intent of the phrase, including Winston Churchill’s “the price of greatness is responsibility.” And presidents Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt both came close. Franklin: “Today we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility.” Theodore: “I believe in power; but I believe that responsibility should go with power.”

  In any event, while Peter credits this philosophy (which is the central theme behind his being Spider-Man) to his Uncle Ben Parker in later issues, and in the films the Uncle Ben character says it to Peter, Uncle Ben never actually says it in Amazing Fantasy #15. Instead, after Peter delivers Uncle Ben’s killer to the police, as he realizes that Uncle Ben would still be alive had he acted responsibly in stopping the crook when he had the opportunity, Peter walks away while a caption box says: “And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility!”

  So Spider-Man learned this lesson in his first issue, but he did not learn it from his Uncle Ben.

  ONE OF SPIDER-MAN’S greatest enemies is the Green Goblin, who is the main villain in the first Spider-Man film. The relationship between Spider-Man and Green Goblin is poignant—Spider-Man knows that the Green Goblin is Norman Osborn, father to his best friend, Harry, but neither Harry nor Norman know the truth (the split-personality Norman becomes the Green Goblin during psychotic breaks). It is an interesting dynamic, but a dynamic that Spider-Man cocreator Steve Ditko was strongly against.

  When he debuted, the Green Goblin was a total mystery, even to the readers. This was not the first time that Stan Lee and Ditko had introduced a villain with a mysterious identity that was revealed after he had been a thorn in Spider-Man’s side for a time. In the early 1960s, there was a mysterious villain trying to take over the New York mob. He was known only as the Big Man. Eventually, his identity was revealed to be Frederick Foswell, a reporter that Peter Parker knew from his job as a photographer for the Daily Bugle.

  Ditko seemed to be fine with this revelation, but when it came time to reveal the secret identity of the Green Goblin, he and Lee disagreed vehemently over who the Green Goblin should turn out to be. Ditko argued that it simply did not make sense that the Green Goblin, a criminal with absolutely zero ties to Spider-Man before Spider-Man starts trying to keep the Goblin from committing crimes, would just happen to be someone that Peter knew in his real life. It was one thing for one criminal mastermind to be someone Peter knew personally, but another? Ditko felt that it strained the readers’ suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

  Lee, on the other hand, felt that if you were going to spend the time to build up to revealing a major character’s identity, you simply could not have it be someone who no one has ever seen before. Yes, it would be more realistic if Spider-Man pulled off the Green Goblin’s mask and said, “Who are you?!” But since this is already a comic book where the hero dresses in red and blue tights and has powers like a spider, realism is not the main priority.

  Whichever argument was more convincing, the point was made moot when Ditko left the title with Amazing Spider-Man #38. In the next issue, Green Goblin was revealed to be Norman Osborn.

  STEVE DITKO’S DEPARTURE from The Amazing Spider-Man is one of comic’s greatest mysteries while being at the same time not so much a mystery at all.

  The mystery is, why did Steve Ditko leave Amazing Spider-Man? And it is considered a mystery because Ditko both (a) does not do official interviews and (b) has made statements in the past to the effect that his reasons are his own, and he won’t tell anyone what they are. This was actually the basis for a recent BBC documentary by Jonathan Ross, which tried to get a definitive answer from Ditko on the topic. So yes, if not having a definitive answer from Ditko qualifies as something as an unsolved mystery, then this would be a mystery. However, there is enough information out there that Ditko’s reasons for leaving are not really that mysterious. It is more a question of what specific straw broke the camel’s back.

  Ditko’s experiences in many ways echoed Jack Kirby’s on the Fantastic Four. In both cases, the attention in the media was spotlighted on Stan Lee more than it was on either Ditko or Kirby. This was partially because of Lee’s engaging personality, partially because he was the editor in chief of Marvel and therefore more public of a personality, and partially because Lee was the one common element between the various notable creations. So it would appear that he was the x factor. As with Kirby on The Fantastic Four, as Spider-Man went on Ditko did more and more of the writing. In 1964, about a year and a half before quitting, Ditko made a bold request from Marvel that certainly seemed to highlight his displeasure with his current situation. He wanted credit as the plotter of the book; he wanted the extra money that would come from being at least the cowriter of the comic; and, most notably, he did not want to have to speak to Stan Lee at all. The Amazing Spider-Man was a good seller, so Marvel made the deal, but when one asks specifically not to have to talk to his cowriter/editor, it certainly does not bode well for his future on the title, does it?

  Meanwhile, while Ditko and Lee were not speaking, Ditko was still consistently angry over Lee’s writing for Spider-Man. Just as the two differed over how to handle the revelation of the Green Goblin’s identity, Ditko was also upset over how Lee saw Peter Parker, period. Ditko was an objectivist, a follower of Ayn Rand, and he believed people were either good or evil, so he was bothered that Lee consistently portrayed Peter Parker as what Lee considered an “everyman,” someone who had bad sides to his personality as well as good. Ditko wanted Parker to be a clearly defined good guy.

  Around that same time, Stan Lee was purposely having Spider-Man guest star in the pages of Daredevil to see how artist John Romita would be able to handle Spider-Man if need be, so it is not as though Lee was not already planning for a world without Ditko.

  Soon before Ditko quit, Marvel announced that it was releasing a series of animated television adaptations of its comics, and the cartoons would actually be roughly animated versions of the comic drawings. While Spider-Man was not part of this first wave of animated programs, it was clear that he would soon be featured on a television program too (and he was, the following year), so Ditko would be working on a book with a man he was angry at (to the point of not even speaking to him), in which he disagreed with how the main character was being portrayed, while also knowing that a character he helped create was most likely going to be turned into a television program from which he would not make any money.

  Is it really a mystery, why he quit? Ultimately, it really does not matter what specific occurrence broke the proverbial camel’s back—he clearly had more than enough reasons to quit.

  AS MENTIONED (see page 67), the Comics Code Authority had strangely strict guidelines for what was allowed in comics. Sometimes these seemed to run counterintuitive to the messages one might think people in positions of authority would want to deliver to children. Never was this more evident than with the story line for Amazing Spider-Man #96 through #98 in 1971.

  In the early 1970s, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare approached Stan L
ee. It requested that he write a story line in Amazing Spider-Man addressing drug use. The department felt that Spider-Man (one of the highest-selling comics in the industry) would be an excellent platform for getting an antidrug message across to children. Lee was willing to go along with the request, but he was hamstrung by a simple rule set down by the Comics Code Authority: you could not have drug use in a comic, no matter how it was depicted. Marvel approached the Comics Code Authority with the information that they were specifically requested to do the comic by the U. S. government. However, the Comics Code Authority refused to bend on its position. In a bind, Lee approached Marvel publisher Martin Goodman and asked permission to bypass the Comics Code for this story line. Goodman approved, and for the first time since the code was created, a comic book appeared without its seal of approval.

  While it was a big risk, and it could have led to the comic not being sold in a number of locations, the sales for the issue were fine, and Lee ultimately got more praise for it than criticism. This finally led the Comics Code Authority to overhaul its guidelines and allow story lines with negative depictions of drugs.

  Soon after the code overhaul, DC did a story line in its team-up title Green Lantern / Green Arrow with a dramatic drug-related plot. In the Spider-Man story, Spider-Man’s best friend, Harry Osborn, has a problem with pills. What sort of pills Harry was using, the reader does not know, but we know that they’re bad! In the Green Lantern / Green Arrow story line, Green Arrow’s teen sidekick, Speedy (appropriate name, no?), is feeling neglected by his mentor, so he turns to using heroin!