Spider-Man 3 should introduce Gwen Stacy as a trans woman to incinerate freeze-gamer brains

  • Vncredleader [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Ditkoā€™s objectivism is oversimplified and overstated. The reality is really telling. Kudos to an amazing piece of journalism by Jack Elving. So it seems Stan was the one who introduced a young Ditko to Rand. On top of that, Ditko really didnā€™t put his politics into Spider-Man, most of that comes later AFTER he leaves Marvel for exploiting him.

    The revelation that Stan Lee was a fan of Randā€™s fiction and that that it was he who, indirectly, plunged Ditko into the vat of acid of Objectivism has been available since 2011 when Bell published his book though curiously it has not gotten much or any commentary. Perhaps because it unbalances the binary of the Ditko Randian/Liberal Stan idea. Itā€™s well established that Stan Lee yearned for a literary career and kept up to speed with latest fads and crazes. So Randā€™s fame and success would not have escaped his attention. In light of Riesmanā€™s biography, Lee being partial to Randā€™s ideal of individual self-reliance and assertion, and the concomitant self-righteousness she vicariously espouses on behalf of big business, is no great shock.

    ā€¦All this is to say that until the 1960s and 1970s it was possible to be a Rand fan without being a Randian. The question is whether we understand Lee as a Rand fan or a Randian? Someone who liked the popular fiction of Rand without taking any purchase of her ideas, as opposed to Ditko. Thereā€™s evidence for both.

    ā€¦According to Mark Evanier (based on conversations he had with Kirby), Jack originally intended for this storyline to represent his take on the Objectivist philosophy. What Jack had read of Ayn Rand and had explained to him had gotten him to thinking about the philosophy and its pitfalls (some, of course, will dispute that there are pitfalls in it and that is their right), which led him to do a story about it. Jack probably did not consciously think, ā€œHereā€™s my answer to Ayn Randā€; his primary goal was, as always, to just write a good story. But in Jackā€™s original story, the scientists are well-intentioned, with no evil plans. They are attempting to create a being totally self-sufficient, intellectually self-reliant; not encumbered by superstition, fear, or doubt; in short, a being based on Randā€™s absolutes. Of course such a being would be totally intolerant of those who created him; a truly Objectivistic being would not cope with the flaws in others. Whatever the case, according to Evanier, when Stan received the first part of this storyline, he felt that changes had to be made. Perhaps he found its content too negative to a given philosophy, politically-based, or simply confusing to him. Stan didnā€™t notice any villain in the story and almost always felt that every story had to have a bad guy, so he had to come up with one. He could only choose between the being or the scientists and it was simplicity to just go the ā€œMad Scientist/Sympathetic Creatureā€ route; it worked for Frankenstein, right? During these years Stan would have photostats shot of Jackā€™s artwork, to be sent back to Jack so that he could remember his plot continuities in these multi-part stories of his. These photostats would have Stanā€™s dialogue intact to show Jack how Stan was interpreting the stories. When Jack received the photostats to issue #66, the first part, he wasnā€™t pleased at all. His storyline had been corrupted; the entire reason for the story had been gutted, replaced with a standard comic book plot; and he was now (due to the fact that this issue was going to print) forced to change the rest of his story to support Leeā€™s version. Jack may have intended for this story to be longer, but after seeing this, the story would be ended with the next issue. In short, Stan Lee censored an anti-Rand satire from Jack Kirby. Gartland allows Lee a benefit of the doubt in that this wasnā€™t directly political but simply a case of not understanding the motives, and thatā€™s likely. But thereā€™s enough grounds to presume that Lee didnā€™t want to attack Rand or critique her ideas even indirectly, and that suggests personal bias. If thatā€™s the case then that does imply a degree of commitment on Leeā€™s part to Randā€™s reputation and fame. Some have argued that this was done out of consideration for Ditko, but by 1967, Ditko had left Marvel for more than a year. So thereā€™s little reason to presume that peace in Marvel office was any reason to uphold this. Lee moved to censor an Objectivist satire after Ditko left the building so to speak, right before the publication of Mr. A established Ditko as an objectivist.

    Abraham Riesmanā€™s biography sheds far more light on Stan Leeā€™s personal moderation in politics. And the image is someone who was far more of a middle-of-the-road player. When describing footage of an attempt at a talk show Lee tried to launch in the late ā€™60s, Riesman observes: ā€¦However, whenever heā€™s confronted with radical ideas, he is swift to denounce them from his point of view as a liberal member of what he calls ā€œthe Establishment.ā€ The war in Vietnam? He finds it ā€œindefensible,ā€ but ā€œthere are too many other things involvedā€ for it to just end right away. What of the agony of the African American population in an era of racist candidates calling for ā€œlaw and order?ā€ ā€œI just donā€™t think the solution is to throw bricks in windows or to say ā€˜If the law doesnā€™t satisfy us and it doesnā€™t make everything perfect, then letā€™s abandon the law or letā€™s make up our own lawsā€™ ā€ is Stanā€™s conclusion. By the end, heā€™s more or less throwing his guests entirely under the bus: ā€œI donā€™t think you fellas have the answer because, while I think your objectives are right, I donā€™t think you have the objectivity which is required, which I think will come later,ā€ he says.

    Now obviously, Stan Lee has every right to be as liberally centrist and cautious as he personally felt. Certainly it must be acknowledged how novel and radical it was to even discuss and address political issues in superhero comics of the 1960s, or to have a major comics publisher espouse views that arenā€™t default right-of-center. We can perceive that much as Ditko had an arc, we can see a similar arc with Stan Lee. Both Ditko and Lee have one thing in common, they reinvented themselves. Ditko reinvented himself into a Randian hermit after being a artist-writer who graciously opened himself to the fans. Stan Lee by contrast was a suburban 50s ā€œman in the grey flannel suitā€ who reinvented himself into a toupee wearing groovy ā€œWith itā€ cool uncle. Take a look at the images of Stan Lee in the 1960s as a bald bank clerk, which was his look during his collaborations with Ditko and Kirby, and the gent of the late ā€™70s which is recognizably the ā€œStan Leeā€ of the cameos that led him to becoming Marvelā€™s mascot.

    ā€¦The big question of the Marvel Method has always been how in-synch Ditko and Lee were in terms of characters/art/attitude. Thereā€™s evidence of some friction but in terms of individual examples ā€” in this scene is this Ditkoā€™s pencils with notes indicating the dialogue that Jameson should be saying, and Stan Lee punching up Ditkoā€™s characterization? Or is it Stan Lee and Ditko agreeing that Rand made sense as an explanation and Stan willingly putting Randian ideas into Jameson? Short of getting Ditkoā€™s original art with his notes to Lee on every issue, weā€™ll never know. We know that Ditko and Lee were both fans and admirers of Ayn Rand, but in 1963 when this issue came out, Lee had a longer history with Rand than Ditko did, who was just getting started. So who is Randian here?

    cont

    • Vncredleader [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      One thing we do know is that Jamesonā€™s confession attracted real-time 1960s Objectivist commentary, but in a way thatā€™s quite at odds with how this scene has been interpreted: The first hint of Objectivist philosophy infiltrating Marvel came buried in the letters page of Spider-Man #21 . Given the lead time required in putting a comic book together, most letters commenced on material three or four months old. Here, however, a letter from an obvious Rand follower commented on the story from eleven mont0hs earlier, in issue ten. It referenced J. Jonah Jamesonā€™s three-panel soliloquy attacking Spider-Man as being a manifestation of his own deep-rooted insecurity. The letter writer, John Bailey, took issue with Jamesonā€™s portrayal in the book: ā€œMoney is not a tool of the looters or the moochers; it is a tool of the producers. I ask by what standard may J.J.J ., a producer, be said to be less moral or even immoral in comparison with Spider-Man? How can J. Jonah Jameson, who has provided work for hundreds or thousands and news for millions, be said co be immoral? Why has a man that has amassed a fortune solely through providing the news faster, cheaper, more concisely, and more accurately than any other source accept a standard of morality that holds his production, his virtue to be evil?ā€

      Now in this case, I think Blake Bell, the author of a fine book on Ditko, has misread the evidence (and in any case I thank him for presenting his claims fairly so that readers can look over his shoulder and draw other conclusions). Bell is using this scene to identify the rise of Objectivist ideas in Spider-Man, but all this letter from ASM#21 reveals is that ASM counted Objectivists among its readership. More importantly, the Objectivist reader sees the Jameson monologue and wonders why itā€™s critical of Jonah. To me what this indicates is that to an Objectivist audience, Spider-Man comics would be more sympathetic to Jonah than otherwise. And from what we see of Ditkoā€™s run, Jonah remained largely the same crusty curmudgeon and comical buffoon from start to finish. That said, Stan Leeā€™s slangy response about nobody in the bullpen being ā€œanti-moneyā€ and about his reader being a philosophy major is certainly him reading his reader as a Randian, which does confirm a Randian familiarity on his part.

      This letter presented by Bell complicates what we understand to be ā€œObjectivist readingā€. Steven Attewellā€™s reading of Ditkoā€™s Randian view of Jameson excerpted above stands at odds with how this scene was received. Anti-Randian Spider-Man fans see this scene and think Jamesonā€™s resentment at Peter is like Toohey wanting to strike at Roark but Objectivist readers see a denigration of businessmen. From the point of view of denigration of businessman, we cannot neglect to mention that it was Ditko who presented Norman Osborn far more unsympathetically than Stan Lee. Maybe the scene with Jameson is sorta Objectivist but itā€™s not clear what itā€™s trying to communicate about Objectivism, and it implies if anything that perhaps both Lee and/or Ditko had an imperfect understanding of Objectivism at the time.

      So far weā€™ve covered Ditkoā€™s run in the early and middle stretches, now we turn to the end. In terms of biographical narrative, it makes more sense that the final issues of Ditkoā€™s run turned in by late 1965 (and printed in mid-1966) ought to reflect Randian elements, especially given Mr. A came out in 1967.

      For instance, in ASM#36, Ditkoā€™s third-from-last issue, he introduces a one-and-done villain called ā€œThe Looterā€. Looter is a term that Rand used to describe enemies of objectivism. Thereā€™s the question of who came up with the title of the villain: Ditko or Lee? Is it Leeā€™s Randianism or Ditkoā€™s? Either way the villain, a typical mad scientist, doesnā€™t resemble at all the usual Randian concept of looter (think ā€œwelfare queenā€).

      The biggest get for the Objectivist Interpretation is of course the protest scene of ASM#38. Ditkoā€™s last issue.

      The scene is a single page, a 8 panel grid. It shows Peter walking alone past campus while Flash, Gwen, Harry who are Peterā€™s bullies in his college era in the Ditko run comment on the sides. The protestors are an all-white group, and they are specifically listed as ā€œprotesting tonightā€™s protest meetingā€ in other words itā€™s a non-political protest event. Symbolically of course the entire scene portrays college protests as somewhat frivolous so it can be seen as mocking, though as stuff goes itā€™s pretty mild. We also have Gwen, Harry, Flash attacking Peter because they think heā€™s joining the protests but then they make fun of him for being too spineless to march which attacks the hip posturing involved in performative activism.

      Now as drawn and plotted by Ditko, this is a mild bit of comedy showing how the college social scene is different from the high school era but at the same time, Peterā€™s still misunderstood and made fun by Flash. The dialogues by Stan Lee (perhaps following Ditkoā€™s indications), portrays a studiously non-political protest. Now you might see this as implying that all college protests are frivolous but for me, it shows this protest as frivolous in content, rather than showing protesting as being frivolous in essence, such as Robin Wrightā€™s Jennyā€™s ā€™60s hippie arc in the movie Forrest Gump which shows the counter-culture era of the ā€™60s as a downward arc for the girl who tried to escape her family and ultimately get AIDS, and whose main legacy is leaving behind a kid with the ā€œgood olā€™ Southern Kidā€ (who descends from KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest ā€” yep that movie didnā€™t age well). One of the protestors when attacking Peter for not joining in says he listens to ā€œLawrence Welkā€ i.e. a 60s entertainer known for ā€œchampagne musicā€. So this isnā€™t exactly about political attitudes. A close reading of this scene finds it lacking in teeth, and it doesnā€™t seem anything that Lee or Ditko gave any time or mind to in the charting of this issue. Which stands at odds with the mountain of commentary that this protest scene has gotten.

      The protest scene of ASM#38 shows the dialogue by Stan Lee as unsympathetic to the protestors exactly as the art indicated by Steve Ditko. To the extent there were clashes between them it had nothing to do with that scene. Obviously, the revelation of Leeā€™s own fascination with Rand and his libertarian moderate leanings happened after 2007, under Blake Bellā€™s biography in 2011, and Riesmanā€™s biography in 2021, so Gaiman canā€™t be faulted for not having access to the freshest research. But one can well argue how a person so intelligent as Gaiman, so nuanced and learned, failed to commit the close reading to support his claim. Gaimanā€™s quote in the BBC documentary which aired in 2007, thanks to his great prestige and fame, legitimized the notion of the dichotomy between ā€œLiberalā€ Stan Lee and Objectivist Ditko.

      By doing so he gave voice, and prestige, to a critical sport that Iā€™d like to call ā€œDitko-Bashingā€ which is to say Objectivism is only ever invoked in connection to Spider-Man to attack Steve Ditko and praise Stan Lee, with the implicit undercurrent that Spider-Man was saved from Ditko by Lee. Take NerdSync, who in 2021 released a video on their YouTube Channel, ā€œWhy Spider-Man used to suckā€ and discusses Ditkoā€™s Randian influences between 34-38mns. The reading of that scene, the title of the video, and his screed against Ditko is more heat than light [9]. The subtext is again Ditko was wrong, Stan was right. And somehow Ditko and Ditko alone, is held to task for his political opinions, in NerdSyncā€™s opinion, for implicitly making Spider-Man a supporter of the Vietnam War and against the Civil Rights, which literally has no textual support.

      With regards to Vietnam why is Ditko the one singled out for blame for an apolitical scene that covers about 8 panels in a 40 issue run, when Stan Lee featured far more explicit pro-war scenes in comics of the time? It was Stan Lee who sought to situate Iron Man as a Cold Warrior capitalist superhero whose origin had him in Vietnam selling arms to the South before being attacked by communists. As much as the comic is about Stark as a reformist arms dealer, the origin paints the communists as outright bad guys. Ditko had nothing to do with Iron Manā€™s origin. His contribution, the red and gold armor look came later. When Ditko stepped down, Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. had Flash Thompson enlist in service and ship off to Vietnam for a tour of duty. The scene of Flash leaving for war in ASM#47 shows his friends as supportive, without any voice against the war or any quibbles about the justification for fighting. Obviously Stan Lee would never have Spider-Man enlist, but he was willing to have a prominent supporting cast member, and Spider-Manā€™s #1 fan enlist. As Riesmanā€™s biography attests above, privately as the war was becoming unpopular, Lee was willing to cop to his young audience that it was a mistake but he was not committed to pulling out of Vietnam either. As Spencer Ackerman points out, publicly Stan Lee always took a neutral attitude to Vietnam in the pages of Marvel Letters, as opposed to Jack Kirby: ā€œOver the years weā€™ve received a zillion letters asking for the Bullpenā€™s opinion about such diverse subjects as Viet Nam, civil rights, the war on poverty, and the upcoming election,ā€ Lee wrote in the September 1968 Stanā€™s Soapbox. ā€œWeā€™re phantasmagorically flattered that our opinion would matter to you, but hereā€™s the hang-up: there isnā€™t any unanimous Bullpen opinion about anything, except possibly mother love and apple pie!ā€ (By contrast, here is Jack Kirby, a combat veteran of Pattonā€™s Army who abhorred tyranny and war: ā€œI didnā€™t like that war. I thought it was crazy. And of course, that had an effect on a generation of young people who just couldnā€™t understand it.ā€)

      • Vncredleader [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        With regards to college protests, some people have claimed that Stan Lee showed college protests more sympathetically after Ditko left. The evidence does not exist.

        Take ASM#68. Unlike Ditkoā€™s last issue that came 30 issues prior, Lee and Romita represent an actual political protest with students. Rather than an all-white group we have a mixed group led by prominent African-American students. This issue in fact introduces Randy Robertson, the son of Joe Robertson. Randy is represented as the more firebrand son of his Dad, reflecting somewhat the split between the older Civil Rights generations and the younger activists (think MLK and Black Panthers, though neither Joe nor Randy are quite as radical as either of those two). Randy falls under the influence of an older African-American student whoā€™s implied as a more ā€œrock-the-boatā€ type. Then thereā€™s a scene where the students ask Peter to join their protest against the Dean. And Peter says, ā€œOkay, thatā€™s your side of the story! What does the Dean say?ā€ and then he walks away leading the protestors to call him a chicken. Itā€™s virtually the same comic thirty issues later but unlike Ditkoā€™s brief 8 panel grid which is a side gag to larger story, ASM#68 is explicitly about student politics as a major subplot, featured on the cover and the title ā€œCrisis on the Campusā€ and we have Peter walk away from solidarity from an African-American led protest. Where Ditko satirized a protest as frivolous in content, Lee and Romita satirize protesting as frivolous in essence. So the question is why does this scene written and drawn after Ditko left, not subject to scrutiny of any kind? Abraham Riesmanā€™s biography on Stan Lee is the major exception. He spotlighted this comic: Stanā€™s dialogue played with fire, putting words like,ā€™ ā€˜Uncle Tom,ā€™ and ā€˜soul-brotherā€™ into black charactersā€™ mouths and depicting Peter as telling them to see the administrationā€™s side of the story and yelling, ā€˜ ā€Anyoneā€ can paint a ā€sign,ā€ mister! ā€Thatā€ doesnā€™t make you ā€right!ā€ā€ Thereā€™s no real resolution to the political questions posed by the comic, merely a bizarre deus ex machina in which the protest leaders are arrested on the false belief that they were linked with the Kingpin, something the reader is supposed to see as a positive event because the courts will surely exonerate them. Even jail is a bonus, muses Peter: ā€˜And theyā€™ll ā€allā€ have a chance to ā€˜cool off!ā€™

        So with regards to politics, there was more consensus between Stan Lee and Steve Ditko than most allow. Now of course, this doesnā€™t mean that thereā€™s no nuance in Leeā€™s engagement with politics (thatā€™s a topic deserving of its own post), and it doesnā€™t mean that Ditko didnā€™t in fact become an Objectivist. The point to emphasize is that Randian interpretations in Spider-Man is too over-determined and disproportionate in focus.

        ā€¦More recent is Al Ewingā€™s Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1 where he has Spider-Man admitting that he read Rand in college and spent a week thinking he was John Galt and yelling at protestors. Al Ewing is a very smart writer with a deep knowledge of Marvel continuity and yet this is a case of over-cleverness, with Gaimanā€™s narrative clearly clouding his judgment over his close-reading. Because Peter doesnā€™t in fact yell at protestors in ASM#38, he merely seethes silently and walks away.

        The Randian interpretation of Spider-Man has mostly served as a vehicle to attack Ditko. Itā€™s a way to distance Spider-Man from his major creative voice. Itā€™s not concerned with asking real political questions about Spider-Man as a comic and concept, of which thereā€™s a lot. Itā€™s not concerned with gauging Spider-Man in the context of Ditkoā€™s life and career and his biographical trajectory. Itā€™s not concerned with contextualizing Spider-Man with other Marvel creations of the time, by Ditko and others.

        Itā€™s not concerned with actual history.

        There is a lot more in the article, especially about Dr. Strange and I would highly recommend people check it out https://elvingsmusings.wordpress.com/2022/06/07/ditko-rand-the-objectivist-spider-man/