As for my previous comment about Dr. Doom/Luthor/Joker, I didn't specify any time period/version though for some reason a few latched onto the pre-Crisis versions of the characters. I've read 70's books from both Big Houses and all three of these characters weren't very good, as most villains were back then. Dr. Doom may have had a more complex motivation but how could he not when he appeared in every Marvel book year after year. However, having him written by three dozen writers who just keep layering on various character traits doesn't make him the greatest villain. If that were the case for greatness then McDonald's would be the best restaurant in the world.

He's "a" great villain but honestly I think Magneto is even better than he is. As was pointed out earlier Joker and Luthor changed and evolved starting in the 80's - so what? Really. So what? Luthor is the force of man rendered as single-minded focus. Joker is the worst of human nature unfettered by conscience. Their renderings change with time, some better some worse, but that happens to any serialized character. Their inherent traits though simply makes them better villains than Dr. Doom to me.

These things just take a while (and rightly so. Who wants a lit class that teaches about 'The Secret'? )

why 500 years? why doesn't it happen to any significant degree now? right now, i am not even trying to make the point that it shouldn't (although we know i think that)... i am just wondering why lee fans think that it isn't happening...

does that make sense?

on an almost related note i did take an entire class on keanu reeves in film school. i do think that a lee class would make more sense than that did.

okay, fair enough, you think the answer is yes. i can't dispute that you think that...

...but it is interesting to wonder then... if you are right and stan lee's writing is of a quality that puts it in the same class as kerouac, ginsberg, twain, king, vonnegut, mailer, etc... it is interesting that the world has not caught on to this yet.

i ask you genuinely: why do you think academia hasn't recognized this yet? all of the author's you have named are considered noteworthy enough to be the subject of hundreds of classes, analysis, critical studies, theses, etc...

...I wonder why you think it will be 500 years before the world can see what you see?

Do you think it is *just* snobbery at the medium? Or do you think there is something special about Lee's writing that requires longer to understand and unlock?

Because independent of what all of our opinions are we would all agree that the academic community is not yet ready to agree with you re: lee's writing with respect to say kerouac or ginsberg. right?

"…does anyone here honestly believe that lee’s writing would hold up in any significant way? do you really believe that if i just opened up a little bit and put lee’s writing in context of the time that lee would qualify as a great writer of the 20th century?

i guess if you’re answer is “yes” then i have no point… "

My answer is "Yes." Lee is every bit as much a great writer as Kerouac, Ginsberg, or any of his other near-contemporaries, creating his own style of prose poetry that blended the Beat Generation's style with the American folk writing of Mark Twain or H.L. Mencken. His dialogue wasn't naturalistic, I'll agree with you there, but it's every inch significant, possibly one of the most significant contributions to American culture of the last 100 years. It wouldn't surprise me one little bit if 500 years from now, they were teaching the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and the Lee/Kirby FF in lit classes right alongside Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut (and probably Stephen King as well, I think history will look far more kindly on him than present-day critics do.)

None of this is to devalue his collaborators, of course--comics is a medium unlike prose, where there's a peculiar alchemy that comes about from the blending of words and pictures. Lee did his best work when working with talented artists like Kirby and Ditko, but by the same token, they did their best work with Stan Lee. It was an amazingly fertile time.

I'm also not devaluing his successors; Alan Moore produced his own stand-out work, and he'll no doubt get his own lit classes right there with Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller. (And maybe Warren Ellis. But I think Bendis is SOL. )

So, in short, to answer your conjecture, "i guess if you’re answer is “yes” then i have no point…" Not to be rude, but I guess I'm siding with, "You have no point."

you think i should do some history lesson reading on writers from the sixties? are you sure that is a good idea? the one thing that seems to be a shared consensus on this board is that lee was the best of the bunch from the silver age... and we know how i feel about lee...

it seems hard to stomach going back and reading more of that stuff when i have literally over a 1000 pages of unread peter david sitting on my desk... oh, and i haven't read any of ex machina yet... and i have only read the first half of Girls....

who should I read from the silver age that you think would trump that to-read list for you? i am asking genuinely, by the way....

You can't name a single other writer from the sixties? The whole Silver Age? From before the eighties?

Consider a break from the computer, dude. I really think you've got some reading to do.

Then after awhile they just started restarting guys with different backstory who otherwise acted more or less the same, and... I dunno. At that point, why bother if the originals are still running around?

I recall that for Heroes Reborn, Jim Lee's Fantastic Four pretty much just told decompressed versions of Lee/Kirby stories. I also recall that it sucked pretty bad compared to the originals, even for the early, really wonky FF stories. There was a certain energy that was lacking.

"Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of Gold and Silver Age stories that I’d be perfectly happy to see de-compressed and taken widescreen with an eye toward the older modern audience. I’d happily read a comic that promised to do just that. However, it is not exactly innovative."

Well, that's sort of what the Ultimates line is about, more or less...or was, at any rate. Updating the older characters with ipods, soul patches, and splash pages

oh my god. you guys are CRAZY. i can’t believe you are all so myopically nostalgic that you want to say stan lee wrote strong dialogue."

And then you're surprised that people were put off by you right off the bat?

honestly if you read your last message you will truly see that it is much more of an attack, far meaner and ruder than anything i have written. other than starting off by saying people were crazy for liking lee and that i thought it was myopic nostalgia... neither of which sound very harsh to me... i have only been harsh in response to attacks.

and you make it sound like i am writing stuff "uhh d00dz lee sux gawd so bad ugh!" -- seriously, it's not like misspelling vaughan as vaughn is like madness.

and again remember as you read the following sentence that i am only responding to your flaming attack on me for my writing style... but for someone who wants to attack people's sentence structure you should really take a look at the last sentence in your first paragraph... not exactly "professional" unless you are a track star... get it? cause of the run on. nevermind, that wasn't funny. but you get my point. glass houses and all that.

honestly, my casual style is totally legitimate and is truly the appropriate way to express the kind of run-on thoughts that these comments require. when you go half-way towards proper grammar you end up with sentences like yours...

regarding not knowing other 60s writers, i don't see what the big deal is... and it's not like i was being crazy obnoxious about it... i started my answer to fourthworlder with "oh sorry..." because i hadn't addressed that issue yet... jeez louise...

remember my point is that stan lee isn't a strong writer. he could be the ONLY comic book writer i have ever read in my life and i could still make that point, right? and, of course, i have read a few other comics. i just wanted to be honest and clear that i am no expert... i mean compared to the average population i have read a lot of comics but places like this have the REAL experts... so i just didn't want to try and pass myself off as someone i am not.

i am not an expert on 60s comic writers. i can't really name anyone else from the time period and have probably only read a hundred or so comics from before the 70s. but that doesn't change the fact that the stan lee stuff i have just finished reading was awful. does it??

just to be very clear the first personal attack on this entire subject came from mark andrews and it went a little something like this "scott, you are being stupid. stop being stupid."

my confrontational tone with mark andrews seems like a pretty reasonable response given that... and again it's not like i am just ranting... if someone says something rude to me i am not afraid to make a point back... but i am not just obnoxiously attacking everyone in sight.
here is the real question for you hondo... how are my answers "boobish"?? i mean reallly? do you really think the arguments i am making are "boobish" ... or do you just not like my tone and are just trying to be mean? because i just don't see how admitting what i don't know but clarifying my point can be considered "boobish."

i really don't see how i am not playing by the rules. if you were to go back and look at the exact chain of posts you would find that i am very reasonable... have made logical arguments... and have actually only responded "like with like" when it comes to be confrontational...

You are being an annoying troll whether you mean to or not. Even if posters agree with your basic premise, or not, your lack of proper grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and etiquette in general, makes you look unprofessional to say the least and thuggishly combative. By at least exerting the effort to spell correctly, use English like most of us were taught in school and is used by professionals, whether they are writers, doctors, or whatever, and not constantly berate and degrade someone who may not agree with us, most of the rest of us on this board are respectful of each other's opinions and operate by the same rules of conduct.

I agree with everything Lynxara and I would say I'm surprised that you can't name another comics writer of the same time period that you can hold up as being better after being asked three different times, but I'm not. Your lack of addressing the issue upon being asked for logical specifics to follow up your statement, three times in a row no less, and your boobish answer only goes to further reinforce what has already been said about you. You offer nothing fresh or new and apparently are only hear to annoy, irritate and diminish others. The rest of us are adult enough to play by the rules, why don't you try it and see what it's like for a change ? Maybe you'd be surprised that others don't treat you like the punk you come across as.

"typing with capitals isn't so hard for..."

that is because you are awesome.

trust me, harping on grammar makes you look like a knob no matter what corner of the internet you are in. you are kidding yourself if you think otherwise. you didn't harp on them, someone else did, but it's still lame.

so i hear you on this idea that my point is obvious, trivial and uninteresting. but let's be clear here, i am not continuing this debate on and on because i am trying to convince you people that my point is genius. it's not genius. it should be obvious to everyone that his prose and dialogue aren't very good.

SO WHY ARE PEOPLE THROWING SUCH FITS AT THE IDEA?

this debate rages on not because i keep repeating myself into the void. it continues because people like mark andrews post a series of quotes from people that do not speak to the point and then they and misapply them to illogical arguments.

you seem to think that i showed up and said "stan lee's writing isn't very good" and people responded with "yeah, we all know that and got over it." go back and read the thread. that was not the response that i got. not by a long shot.

you may be bored of this debate. that's fine with me. move along. but if for some reason you can't stand the idea of it continuing on then why don't you try addressing mark andrews and others with "come on guys, scott is making a point that is obvious and we all agree with and have dealt with, let's just tell him how right he is and how awesome he is and be done with it." EXCELSIOR!!

But I've traditionally hung out in corners of the internet where people assume no caps and txt msg abbreviations mean you're a stupid troll. CSBG happens to be one such forum. Now, I'm not saying you're a stupid troll, mind, but it's like posting anonymously: people make assumptions about why you're doing that when no one else is, and it would take maybe five minutes of effort to realize most people on this site type in a mostly correct fashion. So, no, nitpicking spelling online doesn't make you look like a knob in this particular forum. You, however, are looking very unobservant.

Now, personally, I don't care what you do or who you are or what you write (if it's for TV, I can promise you I haven't seen it). People who bring up "you can't discuss writing craft unless you're a REAL WRITER omg" annoy the living hell out of me, and the moment that comes up discussion degrades into a miserable ad hominem morass. So I'll address your other issue: Stan Lee's prose.

The thing is, you're harping on the quality of Stan Lee's dialogue and prose when just about [i]everyone[/i] into his work usually admits that Lee's dialogue hasn't aged well. It's severely melodramatic and B-movie-ish when conceits like that have long since passed out of fashion. Even at the time it would've been considered "glorious trash" at best, it was shamelessly lowbrow material.

Some people argue that Stan Lee's writing has a lot of lyrical power if you get into the singular cadence of his work, but that hardly means no one in the world has thought "man, this is clunky." Instead, approaching it as a product of the sweatshop-like environment of a 1960's studio, complete with inability to print periods, they decide to deal with it as an indelible element of the work or to simply not read it.

By showing up screaming "STAN LEE'S DIALOGUE WASN'T VERY GOOD", I'm afraid you're not really enlightening anyone or coming up with a major revelation. You're screaming the equivalent of "HEY IT'S SILLY NOBODY REALIZES SUPERMAN IS CLARK WITHOUT GLASSES" and then wondering why no one thinks you're awesome. No, you're just... kind of declaring the obvious, and not stating anything useful besides that.

(Other than "modern writers are easier to read!", which is like... duh. We have printing technology that can create [i]periods[/i] now. Of course that allows for a richer selection of dialogue modes to choose from.)

The problem is the rest of us have long since gotten over that and either decided we can deal with the weird dated dialogue or not. It seems you had a hard time with it, but also that you may not have sat down with Lee's work and any sort of reasonable expectations or historical context. Your realization is not singular, and other people have had this issue. At this point you can choose to deal with it or to read something else, but you're not contributing anything new to any conversation about comics or writing by just bluntly stating that it's easy to view Lee's dialogue and prose as poor.

so i am no historian, but the first time that i noticed that comics could be literature... the earliest stuff i have read that makes me think wow, this is great prose/dialogue was moore and gaiman... what is that... mid-80s?

i'm not saying there wasn't anything great before that... but that is the first that i have exposure to...

What comics writer of the mid-60's do you prefer to Stan Lee?

Can you answer?
Or are you saying that there was no good writing in the 60's comics? No good writing in comics until.... until when specifically, I'm curious.

And have you read the Thor issues from 1964 - 67?
Those Asgardians required a pretty special scripting touch, I think Thor was some of Lee's best work.

"It amuses me you can't spell my name."

Calling you "Mike" when your name is "Mark" is less about not being able to spell it and more about not really caring...

...thanks for teaching me how to spell Vaughan. Yawn.

I hate beating you over the head with logic but, uh, Vaughan (woohoo! spelled correctly! YES!) praising Lee's sense of originality doesn't address the quality of his writing... if anything it seems like a side-step to me. Like Vaughan doesn't want to be rude so instead he praises the originality. Also note how Vaughan specifically references nostalgia as one of the reasons why Lee is still a hero to him. Hmmm.

Moreover, no one is disputing that Lee came up with brilliant characters. If the debate is about the value and importance of his ideas then we would probably be agreeing but it's not... it's about the quality of his dialogue and prose.

Same thing with the Bendis quote. He's talking abotu Stan Lee's IP... about his character CONCEPTS... about his near-genius ability to create original characters that have and will most likely stand the test of time. He is NOT TALKING ABOUT LEE's DIALOGUE OR PROSE.

Why are you having such a hard time with this simple distinction?

"It's entirely possible that Brian Bendis and Vaughan know more about writing than you do."

Well, actually, you might be surprised. I have no idea what you do, and you very well may be a more successful writer than me, but I doubt it. And, ironically. while I think Vaughan and Bendis are both better writers than I am, Bendis failed at getting traction in my medium and Vaughan only recently became a peer of mine. And maybe even funnier is that you are probably a fan of my work.

...just for the record, professional writers are comfortable enough with grammar, sentence construction and punctuation to worry about it when they're in the middle of a comment war -- nitpicking about spelling makes you come off as kind of a knob and definitely an amateur. fyi.

Lee was imitated because he was successful. Even if he was a terrible writer, he would have been copied due to his sales (and putting a serious dent into DC's super-hero dominance). It happens in every creative field. Just look at how many terrible bands arose in the early 00's following the success of Limp Bizkit (ugh) and Creed (*shudder*). Just look at how many careers were launched doing half-assed Image-imitations (I'm looking at you, Mike Turner).