I accidentally got this DVD at a market when I was 11 and my
Dad thought it was the new Spiderman movie, I used to watch it just to watch
the art work, the artists at work and look at the Marvel theme park. How naive
I was. This rare insight to the creation of all our modern heroes looks at how
they are evolved through the decades is inspiring. Interviewee’s include Stan
Lee, Neil Adams, Dave Gibbons and many more legends of the industry, explain
how they came up with the ideas for these heroes and how they have been shaped
and changed through decades of storytelling. The film looks in great detail
into how the very first superheroes came to be, how Superman was created from
two Jewish boys in 1933, the same year Hitler came into power, how he
represents everything a young Jewish boy could ever hope to be, with a very
similar story.
The documentary goes on to discus how Captain America’s
invention during world war two was a symbol of hope and patriotism for the
children and families of America as their parents and siblings went of to war,
how he soon became more than a superhero, and rather than just a story, it began
to hit home with the families, and heroes like Captain America and Superman
were used as war bonds. It describes first hand how the comic code came in and
nearly killed it. However from the ashes Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s
collaboration rose and changed the industry forever. The Fantastic Four, The
Incredible Hulk, all these ‘Marvellous’ new superheroes who were created by
‘Gamma Rays’ or ‘Cosmic Rays’ that Lee admits were just terms he didn’t
understand, but sounded cool and the audience seemed to like it.
It goes on to explain how the films started to come out of
them, like ‘Superman’ and Tim Burtons ‘Batman’ would lead the way into the film
industry, with X-men coming soon after, swapping the yellow and blue spandex
for black leather, how the superheroes are once again changing to suit the
modern world. Many people praise the VFX industry for being able to now create
these films, and creators for thinking up such fantastic character like
Galactus, a being who literally goes around eating planets, someone so
powerful, Explaining how only Jack Kirby and Stan Lee could come up with those
characters.
I think some of the most interesting points of the film is
how Marvel came to be, and Stan Lee describes the difference he tried to make
between his characters and DC’s being that he tried to make the characters
personal lives just as entertaining as their super hero adventures, how he made
the monsters the heroes, but gave them all very human emotions, (The Hulk, The
Thing, etc.)
Lee makes a very interesting case on when he was asked by
Washington to do a strip on the dangers of drugs, and how the comic code would
not allow it, so he printed it anyway, without the code. Should comic be
blissfully oblivious to any problem in the world? Or should they show the
heroes disapproving of dangerous misdeeds? In order to teach and encourage
children to stay away? The comic code is long forgotten now, with rape and
violent murder being common subjects in modern comics, I am not a fan of the
code, I think it was horribly restricting on creativity, but perhaps some of
these latest themes are stretching the subject too weather the books are for adults
or not, children will always want to read superhero comics, and should an
parent who doesn’t read them expect that content? Questions are raised also
about how explicit the violence now is, and as one artist states, its not the
violence that bothers him, it’s seeing his hero do something horribly brutal,
soaked in blood yet show no remorse, to carry on like nothing has happened, its
almost serial-killer like. So it is not the violence that’s the problem it’s
the fact that it happens, but none of the characters recognise it has.
They also talk of why most superheroes live in New York, and
why that Is the perfect location for them, how Stan Lee already knew the place
names, so it was easy for him to get his fact right. How the architecture looks
so dynamic from angles, and even if Super heroes do not live there, they live
in cities based upon it, Gotham, Metropolis, ect.
Artists and writers also talk of how if you put Spider-man
on his feet you are wasting the character, how he needs to be on a wall, or in
the sky, they describe how the pages all always look dynamic, and how
everybody, every artist in the business learnt from Jack Kirby. There are so many great tips not only for
artist but for storytellers’ in general, there is an opportunity here to learn
from the best, to see how to build them around current times and how to make
them relatable for a target audience.
This documentary is now twelve years old, and I would love
to see a similar film done now, with the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe taking
cinema by storm, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Avengers, Guardians of
the Galaxy all dominating the silver screen in recent years and the years to
come. With the studio producing some of the biggest blockbusters in recent
years, and seeing what the creators think of the new films, as they keep the
same atmosphere the comics provide.
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