Thursday, April 12, 2018

Starlin's Thanos - Early Influences

With Avengers Infinity War coming out soon, I thought I'd trace the origins and development of the character of Thanos. I'm only looking at the character as developed by his creator, Jim Starlin and Starlin's influences.

Things began back in the 1930s when an English professor at Oxford invented a new word and decided to write a book to go with it. The word was "hobbit" and the professor was J. R. R. Tolkien. His book, The Hobbit was a great success and his publisher pressed him for a sequel. It took over a decade but Tolkien eventually produced The Lord of the Rings, the best-selling book of the 20th century and the 3rd best seller of all time. It was originally published in 1954-55 (spread over three volumes which were released months apart). It really took off in the late 1960s.

Now, we jump from that to Jack Kirby. Kirby, along with Stan Lee, created the backbone of the Marvel Universe. Over his career, Kirby seldom stayed in any one place for more than a few years but he'd spent the 1960s at Marvel. While his collaboration with Stan was legend, Kirby was becoming uncomfortable. One issue was creator's rights. Marvel was a fairly small company at the time and didn't have enough money to pay royalties for characters created (and the idea that these characters would eventually be worth billions was preposterous at the time). Marvel took the position that Kirby was doing work for hire and that anything he created belonged to Marvel. They had a special 50-page contract for him that dealt with creator's rights.

In addition, Kirby's relationship with Stan had soured. One reason was the Silver Surfer. For Fantastic Four #50, Stan and Jack decided to introduce a new character who was an order of magnitude more powerful than the standard villain. This was Galactus, the world-eater. The two of them agreed on a plot, Kirby drew the pages and sent them back to Stan to add dialog. Stan got about half-way through and hit a character they hadn't discussed - a naked, bald guy on a flying surfboard. "Who's this" Stan asked. "I figured anyone that powerful would have a herald," Jack answered. The Surfer quickly became Stan's favorite character and he was very possessive of him. When the Surfer got his own comic, Jack was not assigned to it. They also disagreed on the Surfer's origins. Kirby wanted him to be space-born but Stan wrote him as a humanoid who became the Surfer through an act of self-sacrifice.

The Marvel-style of creating comics created its own problems. For most of the 60s, Stan wrote most of the comics. The traditional way of doing a comic book was for the writer to create a finished script with plot and dialog broken down by page. This would be given to the artist to draw. Stan didn't have time for that so, instead he and the artist would have a story conference where they decided on the general plot. The artist would decide the pacing and was free to add other flourishes (like the Silver Surfer) as long as it was close enough to the original plot for Stan to add the dialog to.

Somewhere along the way, Kirby started putting dialog in the margins. In his mind, he was doing the complete comic and Stan would copy his dialog from the margins to the word balloons and take credit for them. Stan insisted that Jack's dialog was clunky and dated and that Stan ignored it except as an occasional guide to what was going on in the panel.

In 1960, Kirby approached DC Comics about a job. They were thrilled. The rumor in the industry was that Jack did all the work while Stan took all the credit so they expected to get a stable of characters comparable to Marvel's. They were also able to offer a better deal on creator's rights.

Kirby was given free reign to do anything he wanted. He launched his "Fourth World" - three comics with intertwined plots.

This is where the Lord of the Rings comes in. Kirby loved to adapt outside influences. In the Fantastic Four they did takes on The Prisoner and a mash-up of 1930s gangsters and gladiators. So Kirby took the idea of a trilogy and the middle part of the Lord of the Rings where the Fellowship has broken up into three different groups, all working against the common enemy.

In the Lord of the Rings, the villain was Sauron, a powerful character who would become unstoppable if he recovered the One Ring. Even without it, his armies threatened the world.

Kirby's version of this was Darkseid (pronounced dark side). He was a large, stone-faced being powerful enough to defeat Superman. He ruled a post-apocalyptic world (named Apokolips) which was dominated by fire pits and populated by his slaves and soldiers. Fighting him were the New Gods and the Forever People from New Genesis and Mr Miracle, an escape artist on Earth. It was strongly implied that the New Gods were the survivors of the Norse Ragnarok who built a new civilization.

Years earlier New Genesis had a war with Apokolips. This came to an end with an exchange of prisoners - the first-born sons of the two leaders. Mr. Miracle was the hostage from the New Genesis. He was raised as an ordinary dog soldier, not knowing his parentage. Eventually he escaped to Earth, unwittingly ending the truce. Darkseid's son was raised to be the champion of the New Gods.

While there were several skirmishes, Darkseid's goal was to discover the Anti-Life Equation. Just as the One Ring would give Sauron control of the other rings and their bearers, the Anti-Life Equation would give Darseid control over all free will.

It was very exciting. Kirby started the story in the middle and filled in the background over the next several months. The New Gods protected the Earth as Darkseid tried to make it a beach-head for a new attack on New Genesis. The Forever People (essentially hippie gods) protected the Anti-Life Equation and Mr Miracle escaped a lot and married a hot woman with super strength.

Kirby also took over Jimmy Olsen, Superman's Friend and had some cross-overs there, too.

There was one big problem with all of this - Kirby wasn't a very good writer. His dialog often sounded like it came from the 1940s and the idea of starting in the middle and filling in the pieces later confused people. His Fourth World only lasted 59 issues (spread across four titles) and he'd backed off of the war against Apokilips before the end.

But one big fan was a kid in high school who was a natural artist named Jim Starlin.

too be continued

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