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| Image copyright MARVEL COMICS |
The final panel of The AVENGERS #1. Look at The HULK, standing up straight between IRON MAN and THOR - and he's smaller than them. Great as JACK KIRBY was, he was never entirely consistent with characters' sizes in relation to each other. So clock up another Kirby 'Kock-Up'!
And hey - a wasp is much bigger than an ant, so if ANT-MAN is ant-size and The WASP is wasp-size, then how come HANK (and his ant) is still bigger than JAN?
Jan is farther away than Hank, but probably not far enough to account for the size difference. There was probably just an assumption that the guy would be bigger than his girlfriend. If they are insect-sized, though, they are both too big in relation to the other characters. And having the Hulk shorter than Thor and Iron Man is an obvious goof.
ReplyDeleteWell, the pair of them are supposedly meant to be more in the foreground than the other three, hence their seemingly bigger relative size, TC. However, in regard to the size of Hank and Jan, it was quite common for whichever artist was drawing them to have Jan smaller than Hank when they were both insect-size - even when they were standing together. Obviously it would've looked kind of silly to have Jan several times larger than Hank, so we'll have to assume that she was called The Wasp not because of her size, but because of her wasp-sting (although that came later.) Guess I'm just too pernickety.
ReplyDeleteIt's a slightly odd panel, 'I pity the the guy who tries to beat us!'. Oh really hulk, and what's your take on the current political climate? What's he gonna do next, get a gig as an after dinner speaker?
ReplyDeleteIron man's just as bad, 'We fight together...' or maybe not depending if circumstances permit cooperation, so we might--you know, do it on by ourselves occasionally--yeah that's some snapee prose there. Does it end on a recto with an extra page of ads on the verso because, from the abrupt dialogue and rough artwork, I'm thinking this was clipped together at the last moment.
I think the dialogue's all right, DSE - for the kind of comic it is. It's for kids, it's a team book, it's got to tie-up properly at the end - and the dialogue does that. You're just in a bad mood because Lynda Carter fancies me instead of you, admit it.
ReplyDeleteHow strange that The Avengers TV show began in 1961 and The Avengers comic-book in 1962 - was it a total coincidence that they had the same name or could Stan Lee have heard of the UK TV show and copied the name, thinking that nobody in America would ever hear of an obscure British crime drama ?
ReplyDeleteTrue.
ReplyDeleteIt's not entirely impossible that Stan heard the name (from the show) and decided it'd make a great name for a comic, CJ. However, I'm not entirely sure when The Avengers was first broadcast in America, so the name could just have been a coincidence. Will we ever know for sure I wonder?
ReplyDelete******
Treat yourself to a wee drinkie as a reward for humouring me, DSE.
AFAIK, The Avengers was first broadcast in the US some time around 1966-67, with the in-color episodes, and with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. Of course, that doesn't mean Stan couldn't have heard the name from a British acquaintance, or read about it in a magazine article or something. (I'd heard of Doctor Who from sci-fi magazines like Starlog and Fantastic Films long before I ever saw any episodes.)
ReplyDeleteThere was that now-classic in-joke in an Avengers issue (#83?) in 1970, when they showed up at the Halloween party in Rutland, VT, and someone asked which one was Mrs. Peel.
Marvel also published The Invaders, The Champions, and The Defenders, all of which, whether intentionally or coincidentally, had the same titles as TV series.
And Stan's wife is English, and would've known what was happening in Britain through relatives. I remember buying that Avengers issue back in the early '70s, although I no longer have it. (I do have a reprint of it in a Masterworks volume 'though.)
ReplyDeleteI guess some names just cry out to have something built around them, TC.