LANGSTON BELTON: From Stan Lee's legacy to an exclusive debut
character profile from Marvel's Avengers,
we are celebrating 80 years of Marvel history.
Hey.
I'm the confetti cannon. Poof.
I'm Lorraine.
I'm coming out of your cake.
I'm Langston.
This is an Earth's Mightiest Show special celebrating
Marvel's 80th anniversary.
A lot has happened here at Marvel over 80 years,
so let's dive right in.
Hey, here is 80 years of Marvel in 80 seconds.
Enjoy.
LANGSTON BELTON: 80 years ago, Marvel started surprisingly
small when publisher Martin Goodman emboldened
Timely Comics to print the very first
issue of Marvel Comics # 1.
More comics followed, celebrating
war heroes, women with jobs, westerns,
and yes, Super Heroes.
Two decades and many issues later,
the company took on the name of the one and only Marvel Comics.
During the 1960s, Super Heroes boomed, welcoming the Fantastic
Four, Spider-man, the Avengers, and the X-Men,
as well as countless other heroes and villains.
As time progressed, so did Marvel characters
from Miss Marvel to Black Panther and Monica Rambeau.
Marvel has always portrayed the world outside our windows
and with it, the world's diverse peoples.
And as we saw more of people on earth,
we also began to see the universe
expand to include new walks of life and of the cosmos.
As the Marvel universe grew, so too did Marvel fandom.
And with it, Super Heroes began to appear
on screens large, small, and everything in between.
In fact, Super Heroes are practically
everywhere you can imagine.
Marvel has grown from a single comic book
to a worldwide phenomenon, but how?
Quite simply, because of you--
you who shared our passion.
After all, Marvel fans of yesterday
have become the people who comprise Marvel today.
And fans of today will become Marvel's future.
Marvel's 80th anniversary is a celebration of your spirit,
of your heroism, and yes, your universe.
That was a packed 80 seconds, because so much
has happened in our history.
But it does mean a lot to me, because we
were just Marvel fans before we started working here.
And that continues today.
It's true.
Yeah.
And the fans of today get to be the creators
of tomorrow, inspired by the stories of the past.
So time is--
It's a big wheel.
It's fun.
It's a big old wheel.
But when we're looking at the past,
you really can't help but look forward to Marvel's future.
And this next piece includes one of Marvel history's
most storied characters.
Yes, who just happened to be coming in the future
to the new game, Marvel's Avengers.
So without any further ado, here
is the exclusive debut of the Captain
America character profile from the upcoming
game, Marvel's Avengers.
Oh, yes.
I cannot wait for this game, Lorraine.
It looks like it's going to be epic.
Oh, well, if you're excited, then you
should definitely stay tuned to the official Marvel's Avengers
channels for more character profiles in the coming weeks.
Yes.
Listen-- and you can check out Captain America in Marvel's
Avengers coming May 15th 2020 to Playstation 4, Xbox
One, Google Stadia, and PC.
Oh, and speaking of Marvel's storied history,
Captain America was actually created in 1941
by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and it's actually Jack Kirby's
102nd birthday this week.
Yes.
All right.
So to celebrate the king of comics,
we are taking a look back at the legend's legacy here
at Marvel comics with resident historian and executive editor
Tom Brevoort.
I think Jack Kirby is the pinnacle.
He's the most important creative force
that comics have ever seen and are likely to ever see again.
Jack Kirby is one of the foundational creators
of the Marvel universe, starting back
in the very, very early 1960s.
Jack-- along with Stan Lee, and Steve Ditko,
and a number of other folks-- created pretty much all
of the characters and all of the stuff that we think of today
as the Marvel universe--
Thor, Iron Man, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four,
dozens and dozens of characters and concepts
that came out of Kirby's drawing table in his basement
and Stan working in the editorial offices.
Kirby's art stylings-- approach to art
changed comics not once, but a couple of different times.
In the 1940s, doing Captain America in particular,
the way he would depict action, the way
he would break up a page using odd
shaped almost like puzzle piece panels
that kind of fit together.
Everybody in the field started aping
Kirby's approach to this stuff.
A Kirby crackle is a term that was given to a particular way
that Jack would, in a stylized fashion,
depict this sort of cosmic energy.
It's made up of essentially all these overlapping
dots that give it this crackle.
And what Kirby is actually illustrating there is not
the dots, it's the negative space--
the negative space that he's not drawing in
is really what the crackle is.
And it was a little bit of the language of comics
that he just invented kind of on the fly.
It became kind of a signature of his work.
As he grew as an artist, and became more sophisticated,
and did different things, he had an impact
on the rest of the field.
In the late 1960s, the size of the original art
that comics were drawn on was reduced for production issues.
Jack suddenly could approach the entire page as a unit,
because you could see the entire page at once.
And that meant that suddenly he would
design across the entire page rather than a portion.
Kirby also was fascinated by using other media in comics.
He was always interested in kind of pushing
the boundaries of what you could do with comics,
and one of those was collage.
They're amazing to see, these bananas vistas that he creates.
They were kind of interesting and fascinating.
And it was a way that Kirby was kind
of using other media to expand on the language of comics.
I imagine that if he had access to the kind of graphics
that we have today--
Photoshop or whatnot-- he would've been all over that.
And he'd be doing things with it that you wouldn't
even believe were possible.
Kirby was a storyteller.
He came from a storytellers tradition,
a storyteller's background.
And the stories he made, and the visuals that accompanied them,
have just permeated out into the landscape of the culture.
It's sort of impossible to quantify Kirby's impact
on the world of pop culture, partly
because it's not finished yet.
The work he created is continually
finding new audiences and new expression
in the world of comics and in all of the ancillary worlds
that grow out of that.
Everything that he touched had some idea in it
that still works and that still speaks to people today.
I love getting to talk to Tom.
He knows so much.
It's bananas.
And honestly, it's impressive, because Jack
Kirby's legacy is life changing to the Marvel universe.
It would not be the same place-- comics wouldn't
be the same without Jack Kirby.
Yes.
Happy birthday Jack.
Yeah.
And thank you Tom Brevoort, who is a walking
Marvel database.
Frightening in some ways.
And while we are celebrating this week,
we also can not ignore a great loss of an iconic creator
this year.
Yes.
The merriest member of the Marvel
Marching Society, Stan Lee.
To celebrate Stan Lee's great legacy,
I had an idea to get together some of us Marvel staff here
at the Marvel New York offices and have them read one
of Stan's classic Soapboxes.
For anyone who doesn't know, Stan's Soapboxes
were special letters to Marvel readers
in the backs of your favorite classic comics
where Mr. Stan Lee imparted his opinions and worldly wisdom
as only he could.
And so, here is Stan's Soapbox read by the people of Marvel.
This is Stan's Soapbox from November of 1968.
Let's lay it right on the line--
Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills
plaguing the world today.
But unlike a team of costume super-villains--
They can't be halted with a punch in the snoot--
Or a zap from a ray gun.
The only way to destroy them is to expose them.
To reveal them for the insidious
evils they really are.
The bigot it is an unreasoning hater.
One who hates blindly--
Fanatically--
Indiscriminately.
If his hangup is black men, he hates all black men.
If a redhead once offended him, he hates all redheads.
If some foreigner beat him to a job,
he's down on all foreigners.
He hates people he's never seen, people he's never known--
With equal intensity--
With equal venom.
Now we're not trying to say it's unreasonable for one
human being to bug another.
But although anyone has the right
to dislike another individual--
It's totally irrational--
Patently insane--
To condemn an entire race--
To despise an entire nation--
To vilify an entire religion.
Sooner or later, we must learn to judge
each other on our own merits.
Sooner or later, if man is ever to be worthy
of his destiny--
We must fill our hearts with tolerance.
For then, and only then--
Will we be truly worthy of the concept--
That man was created in the image of God.
A god who calls us all--
His children.
Pax et Justitia.
Stan.
It was such a pleasure to record
that with the Marvel crew.
It felt really special, Lorraine, so
thank you for that.
I like it when we feel like we're part of something.
It feels good. - Yeah.
Go back and read more of Stan's Soapboxes
being printed in various Marvel comics
currently running right now. - They are so good.
They're so moving, too. - Oh, yeah.
So good.
Oh, and a special shout out to all of the creators who
have brought to life so many characters and story
lines, from Steve Ditko and Joe Simon in our early days
all the way up to the creators of today.
Oh, many of whom you can check out in Marvel Comics
1000 and Marvel Comics 1001.
Yes.
Both of the new comics feature 80 pages
with 80 epic creative teams.
Look out for Marvel Comics 1000 available now
and Marvel Comics 1001 out on September 25th.
They're so good.
There's still so much more to celebrate from Marvel's 80th
anniversary, as well, so go over to marvel.com/marvel80 for all
kinds of stories, retrospectives,
cool deep dives, and even more of Marvel's mighty history.
Yes.
Check it all out.
Tell us what piece of Marvel history
has meant the most to you in your life
and hashtag it #earthsmightiestshow.
Yeah. We'll see you next time.
I'm Lorraine. - And I'm Langston.
And this is Marvel.
Your universe.