Wednesday, October 11, 2017
What of Magna Carter? Did she die in vain?
The trust is insulting generations of Bristolians by instructing us to begin viewing Colston in a totally different way from the one we have all grown up with.
The Colston Hall is part of Bristol's historic fabric. We've lived happily with it for centuries. We have no problem with it. The tiny majority that do, presumably not Bristolians should obviously clear off and go and live somewhere else...
There is therefore only one that the decision to change the name of the Colston Hall can be reversed, and that's by replacing the present Bristol Music Trust with a board of true blue Bristolians who value their city's heritage and will forbid any change...#
Bristol, speak up! Make your voices heard by the council and put a stop to this preposterous nonsense once and for all.
if you don't then I'm afraid you deserve everything you get."
(Anon)
Edward Colston did much to improve the lives of those living in Bristol in those very different times (no welfare state) and...he shouldn't be judged by today's standards....
No reasonable person could condone slavery, but you can't change history by changing a name....
(Slaves) were captured by their fellow countrymen and sold in chains, hundreds at a time, for money or trade goods. Without these slavemasters as they were called, there would have been no slave trade. So who was to blame?
P Collins
Saturday, October 07, 2017
The Biggest Surprise of the Season...
I had a big argument (1) with Steve Ditko, who was drawing the strip at the time. (2) When we had to reveal the identity of the Green Goblin, I wanted him to turn out to be the father of Harry Osborn, and Steve didn’t like that idea. (3) He said, ‘no, I don’t think he should be anybody we’ve seen before.’ (4) I said ‘Why?’ He said ‘Well, in real life, the bad guy doesn’t always turn out to be someone you’ve known.’ And I said, ‘Steve, people have been reading this book for months, for years, waiting to see who the Green Goblin really is. (5) If we make him somebody that they’ve never seen before, I think they’ll be disappointed — but if he turns out to be Harry’s father (6), I think that’s an unusual dramatic twist that we can play with in future stories.’ And Steve said ‘Yeah, well, that’s not the way it would be in real life.’ And I said ‘In real life, there’s nobody called The Green Goblin.’ And so Steve was never happy about that (7) but since I was the editor, we did it my way. (8)”
(1) When is this conversation supposed to have taken place, given that, for the final months of his tenure on Spider-Man, Steve Ditko and Stan Lee were not speaking to one another?
(2) Ditko is relegated to illustrator of Stan Lee’s work; even though he was at this time credited as “plotter” and even though Lee says he is happy to regard him as co-creator. Anyone who is not well versed in comic lore would take “drawing the strip at the time” to mean that Ditko was one of a number of hired hands who had illustrated Stan's words. And in any case... Ditko was not drawing the strip at the time the Green Goblin’s identity was revealed. John Romita was.
(3) Stan Lee presents himself as putting forward plot ideas, and Ditko as challenging them. But by Lee’s own account, Ditko was by this point coming up with plots completely without input from Lee. And any way...under the Marvel Method, Ditko wouldn't have needed to argue with Stan. Artists could and did simply ignore plot ideas which they didn't like.
(4) Lee was perfectly happy for Electro and the Crime Master to turn out to be “no-one we’ve seen before”. (On both occasions, Spider-Man remarks on how different real life is from from whodunit stories in which the Butler always turns out to have Done It.) Why would Lee have put his foot down over the Goblin, particularly if he knew it was likely to be a deal breaker when he had relented on two previous occasions?
(5) The history of Spider-Man printed in Marvel Comics' in-house FOOM magazine in 1974 (less than a decade after the events) concurs that Lee and Ditko disagreed about the identity of the Green Goblin, but states that Lee still wanted him to be an Egyptian mummy, and Ditko wanted him to be, not an anonymous figure, but Peter Parker’s love-rival Ned Leeds.
(6) As we have seen, a figure who looks like Norman Osborn is introduced in issue #23, and appears several times thereafter, always as a member of J.Jonah Jameson's businessman's' club. Harry Osborn is introduced (as an antagonistic character and wing-man for Flash Thompson) in issue #30. Norman Osborn is only introduced by name, and revealed to be Harry’s father in #37. Jonah refers to him as "my fellow club member" in issue #37, so he is clearly meant to be the same guy. In #37 and #38 Norman Osborn is specifically trailed as character with a secret -- #37 signs off with the promise of ”more on the mysterious Mr Osborn " in a future issue. In issue #39, Ditko quits Marvel (seemingly without even finishing his last cover). The very next issue confirms that Osborn is the Goblin. Either we are to believe that Ditko obeyed Stan Lee’s instructions to foreshadow the big reveal but walked out in preference to drawing the unmasking scene itself; or else the argument must have been about whether Norman Osborn should turn out to be the Goblin, or have some entirely different secret. (If we can spend three issues foreshadowing Foswell as the Goblin and then reveal that he’s Patch the informer, there is no reason why we couldn’t have spent thirteen issues foreshadowing Osborn as the Goblin only to reveal that he’s Baddie McBaddieface.)
(7) Again, a casual reader would think this meant that Steve stayed on the book for some years, grumbling about the Goblin; in fact, in left before the revelation happened and never spoke to Stan again
(8) It is hard to see how Stan’s editorial fiat could have been implemented, since (by his own account) all he was doing at this point was adding words to finished artwork. I suppose he might have demanded that Ditko redrew certain pages (although it isn’t clear how he could even have done this if they weren’t talking).
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Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.
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Wednesday, October 04, 2017
Amazing Spider-Man #26 and #27
+ Bring Back My Goblin To Me
Chronology
The story follows directly after last issue: Aunt May hasn't had time to put the costume in the trash can. Peter eats breakfast and heads straight to the Bugle before school; he must go to the costume shop after school has finished. (Either Jameson works very long hours, or Parker gets to the office after the night shift is coming to an end.) All the other events are said to happen "minutes" after each other. Peter tells Aunt May he has no school the next day. The action of the story must take place between 3.30PM and early evening on the last Friday before graduation.
Observations
26/2 Parker has ditched his red pajamas, and now seems to be sleeping in his trousers and a white t-shirt.
The Beatles were touring the USA in the summer of ‘65, still sporting their “mop top” haircuts.
26/2 “It could only happen to me!”
Is Aunt May under the impression that Peter is going to walk all the way to Madison Avenue, or does she think that buses are drier than subways?
In 1954 a Brooklyn Halloween costume company is known to have been selling costumes which looked a little bit like Ditko’s iconic Spider-suit. In 1964, Marvel licensed the same company to make official Spider-Man Halloween costumes - the first piece of Marvel Comics merchandising. Was Ditko obliquely referencing this by showing Spidey suits on sale in a costume shop?
There is also a Green Goblin mask on display.
Actually, Frankenstein is the name of the scientist who created the monster, not the monster itself.
“It sure feels good to be back in action again! I feel like an eagle that’s been let out of a cage! I might as well face it… Being Spider-Man is just plain habit forming! It’s like going out with girls…I can’t give it up!”
It is no more than twelve hours -- or nine pages -- since Peter Parker last went into action, but from the reader’s perspective a whole month has past. In issue #18 being Spider-Man was a matter of fate, or destiny; here it is an addiction. Parker comes close to admitting that there is something sexual about it — at any rate, that it’s to do with adulthood and manliness.
26/19 “Now, while you are still groggy, I’ll finish you with one carefully thrown stun-bomb!”
Spider-Man was not knocked out with gas, but with the Green Goblin's stun-bomb.
Everloving is a generic intensifier (c.f “Ever-lovin’ blue-eye Thing!”) It may originally have been a circumlocution for God (”the Ever Loving Father”) or more vulgarly a euphemism for motherfucking.
Once again, Spider-Man regards a very specific situation as evidence that the universe is out to get him. On the next page, when the police arrive (because they have been tipped off by Patch) the narrator tells us that this is “the stroke of luck that Spider-Man had hoped for".
(”Oh, but Andrew: if Peter is Jewish, as you keep saying, why would he quote the King James version of the Bible?"
"Because the standard Jewish Publication Society English translation of the Tankah followed the American Standard Bible very closely, which in turn generally followed the Authorized version.")
As a matter of fact, Peter saw Betty only this morning, and they shouted at each other.
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's Sandpiper came out in the spring of 1965, so maybe that's what May and Peter go and see. It could conceivably have made Aunt May cry, but it is by no means a remake.
Final page, Amazing Spider-Man 26: note awkward placement of caption. |
First page of Amazing Spider-Man #27: note stiff poses. |
Splash page, Amazing Spider-Man #24 |
Amazing Spider-Man 26 (panel 7 page 2) note use of fore, middle and background. |
The unmasking of the Crime Master is done according to Ditko’s model. It isn't quite true to say that he is “no-one important” or “just some guy”. We are told that Lucky Lewis is a powerful and infamous gangster. It’s just that neither Lee nor Ditko has bothered to put him in the story up to now. It would have been a much bigger cheat, and a much bigger disappointment, if Spider-Man had pulled off the Crime Master's mask and discovered that he was, say, Liz Allan. That kind of thing is just a cheap way of creating the appearance of a clever twist without going to the trouble of setting up a clever puzzle; of giving your villain an importance he hasn't earned. (A decade later, Gerry Conway "revealed" that the Jackal was in fact Peter Parker's old science teacher Prof. Warren. It didn't make him any more interesting.)
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Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.
Please do not feed the troll.
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
the headmistress described it as a "thoroughly nasty business".
you may not ply your trade in the boys toilets or behind the cycle sheds, and you may demand fifty quid a time rather than a bag of sweets from the tuck shop, but if you make your living writing university style essays and selling them to students to pass off as their own, then you're still engaged in a thoroughly nasty business.
so if you work for one of these disgusting companies can you please stop using the comments section of my blog to swindle gullible and dishonest people out of their cash.
it really isn't any more convincing if you say "Gee [Andrew] I am a big fan of [Doctor Who] although I have never watched it and I really like what you say about it" before the "come and look at my website" part.
i can't call in the deputy head to whack across the knuckles but I can systematically delete all your nasty little messages.
Friday, September 22, 2017
Amazing Spider-Man #25
Catchphrase of comedian Marty Allan
Amazing Spider-Man page 25, page 4 panel 2: the whole story in a single panel |
Once Smythe has been introduced, we pause for about a page. (When you are telling a story over 20 pages, you can afford to pause for a page.) Ditko adds an additional layer to the story before it has even got off the ground. Spider-Man being chased by a silly robot would doubtless have been fun. The Terrible Threat of the Living Brain (#8) was great fun. (I always assumed that Smythe’s robot was green because the Brain was green and because it was coloured green on the cover of the UK reprint. It is actually gunmetal grey. There is a precedent for gun metal gray things turning out to be green. I like green better.) We can see that the robot is ridiculous; Jameson can see that the robot is ridiculous; Parker can see that the robot is ridiculous. So it is Peter Parker who persuades James to hire the obviously useless piece of hardware. So when the robot really does come after Spider-Man; and when it turns out to be very dangerous indeed, he has only himself to blame. Much has changed since Amazing Fantasy #15, but one thing remains constant: Peter Parker is a dick.
It may be, as Betty says, that Jameson has a reason to hate Spider-Man. But we have long forgotten what that reason was, and so has he. Jameson wants to capture or beat or defeat Spider-Man to get his revenge on him for making a fool of him the last time he tried to capture or beat or defeat him. And Peter, at some level, is getting off on this. He wants Jameson to hire the useless robot “to get even with him for all the trouble he’s caused me in the past."
Boys chasing Peter, Robot also chasing Peter, bystanders chasing robot. |
Note that Mary Jane has traveled some distance to see Aunt May. She may be the niece of Aunt May’s neighbour, Anna Watson, but she evidently lives in another part of town. Any suggestion that she was literally the girl next door while Peter Parker was growing up is a later accretion.
If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider supporting Andrew on Patreon.
if you do not want to commit to paying on a monthly basis, please consider leaving a tip via Ko-Fi.
Amazing Spider-Man was written and drawn by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and is copyright Marvel Comics. All quotes and illustrations are use for the purpose of criticism under the principle of fair dealing and fair use, and remain the property of the copywriter holder.
Please do not feed the troll.