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| In all three captions, past tense words have been amended to present tense. E.g., 'raised' to 'raises', 'flew' to 'fly' and 'flies', 'tried' to 'tries', etc. Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
Something has always niggled the back of my mind about Fantastic Four #1. The writing, or to be more precise, the scripting. It doesn't quite seem like Stan Lee's usual style and I wonder if Jack Kirby (or someone else) initially scripted it, only for Stan to redo some segments to imbue his 'voice' into it. Sheer speculation on my part of course, but I've got to provide something for all you panting Crivvies to read, so I thought I'd indulge myself with this subject.
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| 'Raced' to 'race', 'seized' to 'seizes', 'came' to 'come', 'blazed' to 'blazes', 'melted' to 'melts'. Note also the last 4 lines of the end caption appear to have been altered, suggesting that the story was perhaps originally intended for a different mag |
Stan normally scripted in the present tense, yet there are quite a few obvious examples of lettering amendments to transform past tense words into present tense ones. Some past tense words remain in an earlier segment of the tale, but that's a flashback so it's entirely appropriate to have done so. Take a look at the following examples and see what you think. The amendments are pretty obvious so I won't spell them all out (except in the 'footnotes') as there's no point in overkill, but I can't help but wonder exactly what happened in this instance.
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| The 'eyes' have it! Have what? Don't seem to have their heads in panel 3 |
FF #1 is a peculiar issue as it's filled with contrived introductions of the four characters and inconsistences in the art. For example, Reed has two left hands in one panel (not shown, but see here), and Ben Grimm's attire switches from peaked cap and windcheater-type jacket in a couple of panels (above) to slouch hat and overcoat in others (below). Note also that in the third panel of the above tier, there's no room for the monster's three heads behind the eyes - it's almost as though they're disembodied and floating in mid air.
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| Note Ben has four fingers and a thumb in panel 1, and it's unclear whether a finger has been added to his right hand in panel 3. And his left thigh seems far too thin in the middle panel |
13 comments:
Kid, I cannot find Reeds two left hands, but the 'Things' extra finger on the last panel, could be his side palm before the wrist. The glove issue is either a mistake, or a clever detail, that he actually wears regular gloves to help hide his disfigurement? One thing for sure, he goes from budgie smugglers to boxers, and what looks to be an hair piece....I hope that I've not made it worse for you? (You might not get past his pants, ever again!)
His two left hands were in an earlier panel not shown in this post, but featured in one of its own a good while back. I was just mentioning flaws in the mag in general (like the introduction of the characters) without actually showing them all this time round. As for The Thing's pants, trust me, he's got nothing under them that I'd want to get past them for.
To be precise, the two left hands panel comes after the tier with the three-headed monster, but earlier than the tier with The Thing in his raincoat.
I think the three pairs of eyes are only meant to represent the monsters' eyes in the dark and they aren't actually on top of each other as it seems in the panel.
What you're saying, CJ, is that they're 'symbolic', but was that really Jack's intention or was he just being lazy and not thinking things through (again)?
It may have been a bad drawing day, or somebody was filling in for the original artist? 'Keen eye you have there Kid!'
Hard to tell with the scripting, but there is Stan's favorite phrase: "The die is cast". Never knew what that meant when I was a little kid, I just thought it meant everyone's gonna die, lol.
Probably just got too much time on my hands, AAW.
Sadly, everyone IS gonna die (eventually), RH. I'm just wondering if Stan scripted it, gave a couple of pages to his brother Larry to finish off, then had to edit them to keep the tenses consistent. We'll never know, of course.
I'm not going to die Kid! I'm going to transistion into a Magical Unicorn, and float away like stardust. 'There I go! Believing the mainstream media again'.
A unicorn? You horny li'l devil, you.
How FF 1 was put together is a mystery, to say the least -- as I think we've discussed here previously IIRC.
Suffice to say, to my eyes the breakdowns look like nothing Kirby every did before or after, suggesting it was a monster of a collage which is to say heavily edited.
As for Lee's scripting, it was that bad in other places at the time so if Lee 1961 doesn't sound like Lee 1963, to me it means nothing.
And as to the scripting (or editing if the first draft of the script was Kirby's border notes as became SOP later), there's this: https://vintageinkwell.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/The-Case-for-Kirby-by-Chris-Tolworthy.pdf
Personally, however much I agree with the theory there, the buck script-wise stops with the editor who's job is to do the publisher's will.
To be honest, I see nothing untoward about Kirby's breakdowns in FF #1, even IF there was a bit of chopping and changing. As for Lee's scripting, it was always leaps and bounds better than Kirby's, which was stilted and unnatural, and usually just described what we could see in the pictures. And if the editor is doing the publisher's will, then maybe the buck should stop with the publisher?
I took a look at the link, but I'm afraid it's largely conjecture based on Tolworthy's own biases, wherein he assumes to be true that which he seeks to prove. Interesting in places, but unconvincing as a whole. I'd claim it's a simple fact that every Jack Kirby drawn comic read better for Stan Lee's scripting than when Jack scripted them himself.
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