- So say Stan Lee starts saying certain sounds
should stick together with similar sounding sounds
starting with the same letter
to seem somewhat soothing to see on specific comics
to sync with your synapses.
All right, this alliteration is already amazingly annoying.
Let's learn this lovely little lesson.
Welcome to Alter Ego, I'm not Scott, I'm DK.
I know, I'm disappointed too.
Anyway, have you ever noticed the stunning amount
of alliteration in comics?
It's weird, right?
Scott Summers, Pepper Potts,
Miles Morales, J. Jonah Jameson the senior,
the junior, and the third.
And that's just to name a few.
The number of alliterative names in comics is ridiculous.
Now, you may notice that all of those examples are Marvel
when there are also plenty in the DC Universe
like Lois Lane, Lex Luthor,
and a bunch of other L's,
for whatever reason.
But the reason we're focusing on Marvel is because
Stan Lee, the godfather of comics himself,
is renowned for doing this with his character names,
and it's the same science behind both anyway.
There are a few reasons why Stan Lee
started giving his characters repeating initials.
He gives one explanation in an interview in the book,
Stan Lee Conversations,
saying that he made all his characters alliterative because
they sounded more fun,
and that's what he wanted to have.
Yep.
Honestly it seems like kind of a cop out,
but when we look closely,
Stan's fun is just a simple way
of looking at the neuroscience behind why
we like such soothing sounds
strung together so streamlined,
even if he didn't know about the science
when he created the characters.
Alliteration, that is repetition of initial sounds
in a string of words,
introduces a rhythm to names and phrases.
And our brains loves to recognize these patterns.
Alliteration in literature, much like symmetry in art,
triggers a positive response in the fronts of our brains
that reward us for recognizing patterns.
So let's break that down a little bit.
The rhythm forms something almost like a tune,
and our brain notices it and follows along,
working to the tune in unison,
like brooms sweeping to the music in Fantasia.
It's likely also why we dance.
Our minds hear a pattern, sync up with it,
and we try to express the pattern with our bodies.
A study, which is linked below,
shows that most sensory inputs
will activate this brain function,
as they said in the article, like a baseball bat cracking,
or, as I like to put it,
like Peter Parker thwiping his webs.
This activates the part of our brains
which is responsible for visual information.
This means that when our brains find
that rhythm in Bruce Banner or see the Scarlet Speedster,
it leads us to a positive association,
thus giving us more enjoyment,
kind of along the same lines as whenever
we see the word pow with a punch,
we perceive the hit as being more powerful,
despite it being a static image on the page.
So when we see or hear alliteration,
it's not much, but it does evoke enough brain activity
to make the names stick,
causing us to latch onto characters,
and eventually grow to care about their fates.
This works for villains too, in a pretty fun way.
So when we see a name like,
I don't know, Doctor Doom,
our minds register those alliterative D's,
and it engages us,
and if we're supposed to hate them,
it makes us hate them more,
essentially amplifying its purpose.
But back to Stan Lee.
Aside from the shear enjoyment of it all,
there's another reason why he decided
to give everyone identical initials.
You see, back in the day Stan was essentially
the only person actually writing Marvel comics.
He and the creative folks at the company
would use what would be known as the Marvel Method
of writing comics.
Stan would come up with a basic plot for a story,
hand it off to the writers
to draw it however they saw fit,
and then Stan would go in and add dialogue
to finish the comic.
The reason they did this was because Stan was
stretched way too thin
since he was writing literally everything.
And since Stan had to write an insane amount of characters,
he had to come up with some way
to easily remember them.
This is why Marvel has a bunch of alliterative names,
simple because Stan needed help recalling
all of the characters he was writing.
But how does alliteration help memory?
One 2004 study on childhood development
showed that alliteration had a positive effect
on children learning new material.
That rhythmic sound of alliteration
made the kids retain that information better.
So when you flip open a comic
and you meet Rocket Raccoon or encounter a new name,
odds are that the mind will create a mnemonic device,
allowing you to store the info
and associate it with this new character,
and making him more likable
or less likable, if that's his thing.
However, this would sometimes backfire on Stan.
Sometimes just because you know a character's initials
doesn't mean you remember his name,
which is why he made the mistake of calling Peter Parker
Peter Palmer in Amazing Spider-Man number one,
just a few months after the character had actually debuted.
Or when a similar thing happened
with the Hulk's alter ego,
accidentally being written as Bob Banner
instead of Bruce Banner.
They even retconned that last one,
making the character's full name Robert Bruce Banner,
but that is a fascinating story
for another episode of Alter Ego.
So there we have it, Stan Lee wanted us
to have more fun and make the character names
easy to remember,
and so do our brains.
And hey, special thanks to Powers Comics
in Green Bay, Wisconsin for letting us use their store
as a set because I don't have one.
Powers Comics has the largest selection
of comic books in Wisconsin,
so if you're in the area at all,
you need to check them out.
So who's your favorite alliteratively named character?
Mine is probably Matt Murdock or Daredevil.
He's just got all kinds of alliteration
going on, doesn't he?
Let me know what yours is down in the comments.
And if you liked this video and want more
about the names in comics,
and you can click this link here
to check out a playlist of this show, Alter Ego.
I highly recommend it.
Maybe I'm just partial because I'm on it,
but you know, whatever.
Also, if you wanna check out some more about Stan Lee,
we have a playlist on the living legend himself
right over here.
And hey, don't forget to hit that big ol' subscribe button
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coming your week every week that explore
the history, science, art, and philosophy
behind your favorite comic book superheros.
Once again, I'm DK, thanks for watching.