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Doop (xdoop) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-06-10 23:36:00

Entry tags:

char: snapper carr, creator: dennis o'neil, creator: dick dillin, creator: murphy anderson, group: justice league of america, publisher: dc comics, title: justice league of america

Snapper Carr: The Judas Contract

This is from Justice League of America #77, by Denny O'Neil and Dick Dillin. The cover is by Murphy Anderson.

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	jlroberson 2009-06-10 11:39 pm UTC (link)
	You and everyone else. The glorious DC Silver Age. Sheesh. Some of the most retarded storytelling in comics. And this is Denny O'Neil, for god's sake! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Mod hat rabican 2009-06-11 04:09 am UTC (link)
	Please don't use ableist terms like "retarded" here at s_d. Thanks! (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Mod hat jlroberson 2009-06-11 07:08 am UTC (link)
	My apologies, no offense intended. I'll be more precise. Some of the most slipshod, needlessly convoluted, dashed-off plot device multiple orgasms passing for storytelling that ever degraded and lobotomized comics, much as Hanna-Barbera did cartoons. Now that's offensive but for the correct reasons. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Mod hat

psychop_rex
2009-06-11 11:29 pm UTC (link)

Oh, honestly, don't be hatin'. The Silver Age was far from the happy comics wonderland that some writers seem to think it was, 'tis true, but it also came up with a good deal of memorable characters, interesting set-ups, and humorous nonsense, not to mention defining a good deal of the backstory of the DCU up 'til the present day. I'm not saying it was perfect, but without it we wouldn't have Zatanna, Batgirl, the Green Lantern Corps, Swamp Thing, the Floronic Man, Poison Ivy, the JLA, the Riddler, the Legion of Superheroes, Dial H for Hero, Adam Strange, the Planet Thanagar, Supergirl, etc., etc. The storytelling may not have always been up to modern standards, but without the Silver Age, a lot of what we think of when we think of comics would simply not be there. (Although, to tell the truth, I generally prefer the Golden Age, but that's another story.)

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	Re: Mod hat jlroberson 2009-06-12 02:10 am UTC (link)
	Oh, I'm not disputing it as a SOURCE of ideas, much like dirt and other crap can fertilize a fine tree. But looked at objectively, the fact is that DC in the Silver Age is an example of how much damage the code could do. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: Mod hat psychop_rex 2009-06-12 02:27 am UTC (link)
	I think it had more to do with the influence of various editors over the writers than the code itself - Marvel had to deal with exactly the same things, after all, and they turned out very differently, as did other comics companies. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

Re: Mod hat

jlroberson
2009-06-12 05:03 am UTC (link)

Marvel did not have the same deep relationship to the governance of the Code as DC, or Goldwater Publications(Archie), had. Didn't get to write some of the rules, for instance, including banning words that eliminated many competitor's titles. (As an analogy, suppose DC could have banned the words "mutant" or the letter "X" from being on a cover in 1980. That's kind of what happened to EC) And even more importantly, DC owned the main distribution apparatus, thus able to limit the number of titles Marvel and others could put out, which is the reason so many characters had to share books with others.

Marvel was therefore forever testing the edges of those rules to weaken them, particularly once DC no longer could limit their titles. Point is, when you're talking about DC and the Code(or Archie and the Code), you're not at all talking the same power relationship.

This, however, especially

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Re: Mod hat

psychop_rex
2009-06-12 04:16 pm UTC (link)

OK, so DC was a much more powerful entity than its competitors when it came to the code. I confess, I did not know that. Still, I think the influence of various editors had quite a lot to do with the general 'house styles', as it were, because if you look at them analytically, you can see the fingerprints of these guys all over them. Mort Weisinger, for instance - the man ruled over the Super-titles with an iron fist; you can see his influence on them a mile away. He was a misogynist creep who, it was later discovered, actually really hated the Superman character, and the stories written under his editorship are filled to bursting with condescending and unpleasant attitudes about women and situations where Supes loses his powers, gets humiliated, or is otherwise diminished or degraded somehow. Then there was another guy (I THINK it was Robert Kanigher, but I won't swear to that) who was very fond of the cover-first method - that is, he had the cover artists come up with an interesting image with a good 'hook' to it - for example, the one where Green Lantern is selling power rings on the street - then he'd hand out the covers to the writers working under him and say 'there - build a story around that!' And so on - if you look at the output of DC through most of the Silver Age, you can generally say 'oh - this was written under such-and-such'. I therefore continue to assert that the editors had more to do with the Silver Age style of writing than the Code did - the Code limited what they could do, of course, but the editors shaped what they DID do.

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