Monday, February 5, 2007

Are comics art?

In Time Richard Corliss says yes and maybe a little no. Too bad he makes a couple of mistakes that also went right past the fact-checkers. For one, the first black superhero wasn't Luke Cage but the Black Panther (or possibly a couple of very obscure precedents). But there are two errors when Corliss says "Stan Lee dreamed up and wrote the Spider-Man stories, while Jack Kirby illustrated them...." Well it was Steve Ditko, not Kirby drawing Spider-Man. And it shows a complete ignorance of the Marvel method of writing where yes Lee did "write" the Fantastic Four and Kirby did "illustrate" them but the actual story was very much both their work.