1963 #1

[history79]

THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR: What exactly made those classic Marvel stories so revolutionary? Was it that the storytelling was more mature than DC?

ALAN MOORE: An extra dimension had been added to both the storytelling and the art. In a sense the DC characters at the time were archetypes to a certain degree. Archetype means they are one-dimensional. Stan Lee and his collaborators in terms of the story overlaid a second dimension of character. He gave them a few human problems. These weren't three-dimensional characters but they were of a dimension more than what we'd been used to, and something about the art kind of corresponded with that. With Kirby there was a level of attention to detail and texture and intensity about the art that seemed to give another dimension to the super-hero—to the comic book—than what was used at the time. It just seemed to be much more visceral, much more real. The Human Torch finding the Sub-Mariner in a bowery slum; that kind of had a visceral reality to it that was much more engaging.




8 pages of 24

Comments

[alicemacher]

"A viewer in the chamber would see two men appearing from the Flash"

I see what you did there, Accurate Al. :-D

[starwolf_oakley]

One of the stories in this miniseries mention the "glass is a very slow liquid" theory. Maybe it can be posted so we can figure out of it is true?

Alan Moore has some fun with disproved scientific theories in his stories.

[glimmung]

Glass is not a fluid, it is a solid. Old glass is just crap, and glaziers put the thick side down.

[wizardru]

"One of the stories in this miniseries mention the "glass is a very slow liquid" theory. Maybe it can be posted so we can figure out of it is true?"

Glass is not a liquid, it's an amorphous solid...basically having properties of both liquids and solids, to some degree. The old myth that it's actually an incredibly slow liquid, however, has been solidly debunked. The root of it was that many old medieval glass windows are thicker at the bottom...but only European ones. Windows from the Middle East, particularly Egypt, don't show any such behavior. It's still not conclusively known why it happens/happened, but we know that its not that.

[lordultimus]

We only recently debunked it.

[korvar]

It's a pity this series was never completed. Alan Moore feel out with the publisher, as is a common theme.

The Fury and Osiris were my favourites of these.