4 November 1970 /Stan Lee is Shakespeare

Well, the time has come to speak of many things. In the main, we should start off by telling you what you won't see if you continue to invest your time (wisely) in this column. You will not see a review of the MIT Dramashop performances of the Friday prior to Princeton Week. This is because I was unable to attend them, and I dislike reviewing things I haven't seen.

By the By, if you want to compare my style of reviewing with your own opinions of an event, you can see Scenes from American Life in Kresge Little Theatre sometime between tonight and Sunday night, and then read my review next week (make that the week after, since we don't publish next week). Turning to more important things, we reach the real guts of this week’s column: a stunning analysis of COMIC-Format Magazines

Do you really know what a comic book is; he queried? Probably not. Probably, you think of Donald Duck or Superman, or Millie the Model, if you think anything at all. Well, do not think things like that. That is like judging the LP record format on the basis of the Archie's Sugar Sugar. It's not the format, it's the content that counts (It's the message. not the medium).

Of all the messages expressed in the medium, I of course have my favorite style of delivery and content. That is Stan Lee's Marvel Comics Group, as those of you familiar with the lore of comicdom could no doubt have guessed.

Without a doubt, if there is a Shakespeare of comic-magazines, Stan Lee is the leading contender for the title, on the basis of over 20 years of continuing lofty contributions to the medium. But why read comics? Of what import are they? Why waste time in this column on them? I don't consider it a waste of time, any more than I consider any other form of entertainment a waste of time. I believe that comics are important as an alternative form of written entertainment which is all too often ignored or minimized simply out of Blind Prejudice, rather than an examination of the facts. Their importance as portrayals of a view of life is probably minimal, and this is of course a major function of most “quality” written entertainment (or literature if you will). But when it comes to fantasy and science fiction in which the story's "statement" is a more or less "secondary" part of the content, Illustrated Fiction (as comics are on occasion known) takes a back seat to no art format.

This occurs in spite of an Industry demon known as the "Comics Code Authority", which is a rather thinly veiled attempt to make everything in the Comics field as bland as Daffy Duck. For example, the entire line of gothic horror magazines produced by EC Publications (Mad magazine when it was a comic book was part of this group) was driven from the stands by the code, and Mad was forced into a magazine format. For years after the code's mid-fifties introduction, the entire field of Illustrated Fiction was stagnant, until the arrival in the early 60's of The Fantastic Four, bravely titled "The Worlds Greatest Comic Magazine!". After a few months the title seemed a little less brave, because the magazine nearly was the world's best at the time

If the above does not seem to fit the flow of this column very well, that’s because it cannot and does not fit naturally. Suffice it to say that you can’t understand why comics have been so totally ignored until now until you know about the Comics Code, and Stan Lee, and the new “Golden Age of Comics,” and the Marvel Comics Group which should soon (or perhaps now has) make comics acceptable and respectable.