This book is a history of Marvel Comics, which is to say that it is an institutional history and not the history of the comics themselves. It is less worried worth a critical look at the work, the art form, or the philosophy of comics, and is really a story of the business of comics, and the history of the company in question and its employees. In focusing on Marvel, Sean Howe is able to illuminate wider trends and movements in the industry, using one of the "Big Two" to do so.
This is not to imply it is boring; quite the contrary, this was a fun read for me. Even better than its insightful narrative is the author's willingness to cut through the company line, the public stories, the versions offered from official sources and legends to find out what really and truly went on. Stan Lee is still the merry, happy man at the top, but in this book is a much more nuanced character; he perpetually longs to escape the art form that he is synonymous with, and his changing relationship with the company is a common focal point for the book's wider story. Jack Kirby remains the persecuted genius, but Howe is careful to probe at the edges of the image, analyzing how Kirby's own approach and feelings about his characters changed over the years. Again and again Howe dissects the gossip, shop talk, and official news to find the more complicated story below it all. No writer comes off as persistently good or consistently right, but all the characters are complex and flawed - which actually serves to humanize the whole history and make you look differently at your favorite funny books.
Running throughout the book are consistent themes, themes which might be a diatribe from the blog of a disgruntled comic fan if Howe was not so eloquent and well-versed in the sources, and if his prose were not as consistently entertaining. One theme is the problems of management. Repeatedly, businessmen and corporate raiders disinterested in the form and the field came into Marvel, trying to leverage it into great profitability and make a killing in a new way with comics, all the while denigrating the books and dismissing them. An endless parade of magazine moguls, entertainment lawyers and venture capitalists manage to foul up the industry at every opportunity, yet it persists on the strength of those devoted to it. A second theme is the boom and bust cycle of the business, which almost reads like a perpetual ant and the grasshopper morality tale. People get fired, laid off, or pushed out in bust periods, and then new people rush back in for the boom and don't prepare for the inevitable bust. A third theme is the persistence of comics; born in an age of pulps and dime novels, this form somehow manages to adapt, change and move with the items to now coexist with video games and interactive media. As I said above, it is not a history of the characters or books themselves, but you can feel the power of the character radiate off the page simply because they manage to keep so many fans. Yet another recurring theme is the power of intellectual property rights, which chain so many men and women to the success or failure of this enterprise, far after their day in the sun has passed.
I think the theme that I came away most convinced of, perhaps erroneously, was that comic creators as a group were both dysfunctional and key to the form's success. The best parts of Howe's book borders on gossipy tales of office melodrama, but with an air of importance and seriousness key to the overall structure of the book and coupled with a keen exploration of the key tensions. Namely, many of these artists felt so strongly about their form, their characters, and their work that it became a struggle born of love and frustration. Reading of the conflicts between Shooter and his staff, Claremont and Byrne, and others often reads like children arguing over who loves their mother more. These people are so intimately tied up in the world they have created and the jobs they do that you can't help but admire them. The righteous anger of Steve Gerber and quiet defiance of Roy Thomas and the doomed nobility of Mark Gruenwald all leap off the page, men who, quite frankly, give a damn about these comics and what they mean. They cared so deeply that they would develop rivalries and alliances, cut each other's throats and make realpolitik moves - all in the name of the characters and world they care about. A more cynical reader may see this as base workplace Machiavellianism, but the author's depiction of the authors turns them into a group of tortured artists and genuinely invested caretakers competing and cooperating in turn, all bound up in what is, in truth, a rather strange enterprise. As a comic fan, I could not help but feel kinship with the writers, editors and artists who get engaged in furious quarrels over imaginary people, as I often have. But this is where one almost gains a feeling of hamartia, that the fatal flaw of these creators is their deep entwinement with the characters, the form, the imaginary world, the field, the industry, which leads to the aforementioned problems in earlier themes and the disastrous consequences for many of them. Simultaneously, their success is both the result of this flaw and a source of legitimization; their passion and involvement produces work that produces sales and critical response, meaning that the same ambitions and excitement that make their professional lives so melodramatic are also key to the success and power of the form.
My own strong feelings stirred up by this book would suggest I should award it five stars, but it has two significant drawbacks that restrict me from bestowing such a rating. One issue is that the first chapter, covering the creation of the company, is a little light on the drama and excitement of later chapters and is mostly a re-hash of previous histories, offering little in the way of new insights, at least for a long time comic fan such as myself. Similarly, the book begins to seriously thin into the early 2000s, and important developments that would be important in framing the long term story of certain creators is missing. For example, Frank Miller ends up as a firebrand and critical success in the book, which largely overlooks his transformation in the last 10 or so years into what some would call self-parody, a descent into jingoism and old forms that has left many fans cold. Very important industry developments that have ramifications for Marvel seem to be lost because of this truncated recent period as well; the discussion of Marvel Knights and the rise of Quesada leaves out the pressures exerted by DC's critically successful Vertigo imprint as a motivating factor. Because it only hints at the success of Bendis, Brubaker, et al, it misses out on an important renaissance of sorts occurring now in the industry, one driven by people who have to make their reputations in the creator owned world before making it to the big leagues. Overall, the rehashed early period and the truncated post-90s bust period seem to pale in comparison to the lively discussion of especially the 70s and 80s. The book feels like it begins to tail off as it approaches the 2000s, which is a problem.
My second issue with this book is that it occasionally smooths over important points. For example, Rob Liefeld's loss of Captain America during the Heroes Reborn fiasco is mostly indicated to be a result of inside politics at Image and deadline problems, overlooking the critical drubbing it took and Liefeld's generally poor work on the titles. The rivalry with DC is essentially a flat, distant thing, a source for jobs when people leave and a competitor, but never an influence. Wizard magazine is brough up as a player, but its incredibly power and influence in the market is only hinted at, and its interplay with Marvel seems limited. The power of the internet is gestured at, but the rise of instant news sites and forums as arenas of opinion formation and comics discourse never seems to come alive. This is not by any means frequent; it is a typically accurate book that pulls no punches with its subjects.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book. I do not think it is a book for a beginner to the world of comics, however. If you are a former fan, a lapsed fan, or a current fan you will find it very, very entertaining, especially if you know the big names of yesteryear and want to see the conflicts you always heard rumors of brought to life. But it does presume a sort of understanding of the prevailing narrative that Marvel sells of itself and the traditional story. Watching a cable program on the history of comics first might be a good way to see how effectively this book undermines some the myths we hold about the Marvel world. I had just finished reading Grant Morrison's Supergods before this book, and I think it is a good companion piece. Morrison focuses on the art and the critical side of comics, while this focuses on the business and institutions, and together provide a very nice insight into the last 50 years of comics.
