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Things I Learned From Stan
2007-10-03 18:14:52

The Master

Or, rather, things I learned indirectly from Stan Lee. When I started working for Marvel at the end of 1989, I began to inherit an accumulation of knowledge about certain particulars of the comic book business, and about Marvel in general. Here are a few of these salient tidbits:

1) REED DOESN'T STRETCH HIS NECK. This one's been largely abandoned over the last ten years, but it was a guiding principle for Mister Fantastic for decades. As a more serious, intellectually-minded individual than other stretchy heroes such as Plastic Man or the Elongated Man, it was felt that having Reed stretch his neck (or his eyeballs, or his ears, etc.) would look too undignified.

2) THE STRIPE DIRECTLY BELOW THE CENTER STAR ON CAPTAIN AMEICA'S COSTUME IS RED. This was the way Cap's costume was approached for the longest time--though, again, certain artists in recent years have done it differently. Similarly, Captain America was the one Marvel character who possessed a cleft chin.

3) THE SPIDER EMBLEM ON SPIDER-MAN'S CHEST HAS FOUR LEGS UP AND FOUR LEGS DOWN. This one changed over time. When first designed by Steve Ditko, Spidey's symbol had all eight legs on either side of the torso, and that's the way it was drawn for years. However, at some point in the early '80s, somebody—probably John Romita—realized that actual spiders are situated a bit differently, and changed Spidey's chest symbol to the four-up-four-down design we still use today. I can remember getting bitched out my first month or so on the job for sending a licensor Spidey shots out of the pick-up art file that had the uncorrected old Spidey symbol on them.

4) SUPER HERO IS TWO WORDS; SUPER-VILLAIN IS TWO WORDS WITH A DASH. This all goes back to the joint trademark that Marvel and DC have on the terms super hero and super-villain—in their case, it's super-hero and super villain. (The one exception is Marvel Super-Heroes, which was trademarked as a title with the dash still in place.) Why? Because that's the way the trademark applications were filled out way back in the '70s. And as a conclusion to the Mark Gruenwald mantra by which I learned all this, superhuman is one word.

5) STAN DOESN'T LIKE GREEN COVERS. This was one of those notions that became fact over time, propagated mainly by longtime Marvel cover colorist George Roussos. Apparently, at some point in the past, George had done up a color scheme for a cover with a green background, and Stan hadn't liked it. And based on whatever conversation he and Stan had over it, George walked away with the unshakable belief that Stan had made using a green background verboten. In fact, what Stan wanted was a cover color scheme that worked for that particular cover—but all the way through to the middle of the '90s it was always a fight to use green on a cover.

6) THE FACE OF THE LOGO SHOULD BE A COMPLEMENTARY COLOR TO THE BACKGROUND; THE DROPSHADOW SHOULD BE A SUPPLEMENTARY COLOR. This is a simple formula by which, if you follow it, your logo will always "pop" on the stands and be readable and eye-catching. Also, as a general rule, K-tones (gradations of black) don't work on covers and especially logos, and will always muddy up and get dark when the covers print.

Today's column is dedicated to Stephen Wacker, who gets to learn this stuff every day for the first time from me.

More later.

Tom B

This Column was Amazing
and I mean that.

Posted by carpbunny on 2007-10-04 00:27:35

Great!
Awesome posting... A real fun look into the guidelines at Marvel...

Posted by beta-ray on 2007-10-04 01:32:14

Self imposed limitations
My favorite tidbit was the first one about Reed Richards. I love that he doesn't stretch in certain ways. Obviously he could if he wanted to, so if he doesn't, it's because of a quirk of his personality. Like how some people cross their arms when thinking or pace when nervous, but others don't.

Self imposed contradictions are fascinating to me. The fact that Superman was so powerful but needed to maintain a normal life. Or that classic Hulk always got into fights, but really just wanted to be left alone. I think a character really doesn't feel human until he does certain things that seem like contradictions to everyone else but make perfect sense to his own internal logic.

Posted by CodeGuy on 2007-10-04 04:11:30

Reed
As a long-time FF fan, I've been alternately frustrated with Reed's lack of stretching. I've always felt that as a massively intelligent person who is always torn between a hundred projects that demand his time, he is bound to be terribly impatient. Which would then suggest that he would use his stretching powers, especially after so many years, in the most efficient ways possible.

True, if he really utilized them he would end up looking quite freakish to anyone looking at him. But does he care? I'm a little confused, though not ready to directly contradict, about the idea that he is too dignified to appear a little odd while at his work. I would also think that, as a person - myself - who can get totally emmersed in their own work that DOESN'T affect the planet at large, that he would eventually forget anyone else exists while he is at his work and might not even realize that he was stretching parts of him that would make him look largely inhuman.

In the most recent issues I've noticed he has maintained a very normal posture nearly all the time, and it seems like a waste of potential for someone whose sole superhuman (no spaces there) ability is to stretch himself further than anyone else.

Yes, in the end it really doesn't matter, and perhaps the rule about stretching his neck/eyes is more of a meta-decision than anything else. In other words, people reading the comics would take Reed as a less serious/dignified person if they saw him stretching, even if he's completely alone while doing it.

Still, frustrates me.

Posted by PseudoSherlock on 2007-10-04 11:06:23

Well...
I'm not sure why being intelligent would imply that he wouldn't care about other people's opinions. I've never noticed intelligent people having any more or less thought about their appearance than anyone else. Some are slobs that don't care what others think, others put a lot of effort into appearing dignified. That doesn't mean that every intelligent person in the world wants to appear dignified, but there's certainly nothing wrong with saying that this particular character would.

And whether he's alone or not doesn't really matter. If someone doesn't want to scratch his !@!@&!&@ in public, he's probably not going to do it a lot in private, either. How a person acts is largely a matter of habit.

Posted by CodeGuy on 2007-10-04 12:36:37

sorry guys
is Mister Fish around ?

Posted by notapotatoe on 2007-10-04 16:21:18

Re: Reed's stretching
I think it might have been in FF/Iron Man: Big In Japan, but I seem to recall a recent appearance where Reed sort of "enlarged" his eyes to see further. That always seemed kind of awesome to me.

Posted by carpbunny on 2007-10-05 03:50:58

hey do you have
any sway with Legal. a few years ago there was this wonderful little game called x-assault, it was a trivia fighting game. i loved it. so did a large number of x-men fans. granted the guy who made it was giving a free game with marvel licesnsed characters... but man it was just so much fun. much better than my FF4 game i dropped 50 bucks on for my x-box a few years back. It would be great if you could play it on marvel. com, pay the guy a few bucks and let him sign the game over to you. I would come to marvel.com and play everyday, right after i read your blog.

Posted by jsoweidy on 2007-10-06 00:44:42

Logo Colors
WTF is a supplementary color? seriously.

Posted by shuya2 on 2007-10-11 16:33:26

Stans cool
I still remember when I was kid and I would watch Spiderman and his amazing friends and after the Hulk. Stan would always give an intro to the episode and I would be like "who is that talking? whos Stan Lee? yet I would be strangely pulled in by his voice, there was a sense of Adventure, energy, danger in his voice and that just made it more intising to watch. Watching that show on Saturday mornings was like my little ritual. Thanks Stan for bieng there!

Posted by terciera on 2007-11-15 08:49:26

Array

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About this blog:
Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."

About the author:
Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four.


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