Marvel's Green Lantern 76?

[bronze johnny]

Green Lantern 76 and its run up to issue 89 has the distinction of being the first superhero themed comic book based on the realism and issues encountered in our society and the world. Is there a specific Marvel superhero issue that first applies the "76 method" to storytelling? If so, then what is Marvel Comics GL 76?

 

John

[bababooey]

If you're boiling down GL 76's "76 method" without any reference to the creators then I'd say for addressing drug use - ASM 96-98 came closest from that era.

 

The comparable Marvel extended story "Adams run" that comes to mind for me was the Kree/Skrull War in Avengers 93-97. That run always seemed to be held in high regard & there are key issues that have always been broken out in Overstreet.

 

[bronze johnny]

Thx bababooey. Interesting that ASM 96 came out approximately one year after GL 76. Interesting, especially since the two companies kept close tabs on one another when it came to developments and/or changes.

[jools&jim]

 

I don't think there is a strict early '70s Marvel analog for the "sociopolitical topic of the month club", which seemed to be the template for the O'Neil-Adams books (and whether or not their approach qualifies as "realism" is debatable -- to me, it's more like a borderline preachy extended polemic grounded in a familiar point-of-view).

 

Over the course of its 13-issue run, the GL/GA series dealt with roughly that same number of controversial and/or "current" subjects: race relations, corrupt business practices, youth culture/cults, oppression of Native Americans, ecology, overpopulation, feminism, drug abuse, etc., etc. The art is fantastic and I admire the chutzpah, but reading it today is...wearying.

 

At one point or another, certain Marvel books from that same period probably touched on many or all of those issues, and certainly Amazing Spider-Man is as good a candidate as any (given that the protagonist was a college-aged superhero). But with Stan Lee and John Romita more-or-less at the helm (off-and-on) through the early '70s, ASM was generally more conservative, and usually treated controversial or topical material (e.g., Vietnam, prison riots, college unrest, etc.) much more obliquely.

 

Marvel didn't get REALLY subversive until after Stan had split for the Left Coast and some truly serious hippies & weird-beards (Gerber, Englehart, Starlin, et al.) slipped in through the side door and basically went nuts. The O'Neil/Adams stuff is positively quaint in comparison...

 

 

[Dale Roberts]

Green Lantern 76 and its run up to issue 89 has the distinction of being the first superhero themed comic book based on the realism and issues encountered in our society and the world. Is there a specific Marvel superhero issue that first applies the "76 method" to storytelling? If so, then what is Marvel Comics GL 76?

 

John

 

 

Marvel didn't really need a GL #76, at least not nearly as much as DC did. Marvel comics were set in the real world. Marvel characters had flaws and were set in a flawed world. Marvel Comic had racial diversity (at least to some extent), dealt with characters with rage issues, inferiority complexes, heart problems and other physical infirmities, and even touched on bigotry with the X-Men.

 

DC had perfect characters living in imaginary cities fighting ridiculous creatures/villains. How many times is Batman on the cover of a comic fighting space aliens who are robbing a bank? huh? Where is he going to spend that money? And who could forget the imaginary stories? uh, aren't they all imaginary stories? (Even though these did give rise to the great Elseworld stories).

 

Don't get me wrong, I love DCs. But when Neal Adams started doing his tremendous run of cover work for DC, that is when the books started to look and feel like more modern comics, and had more of a Marvel feel to them.

 

 

[Ebel 1911]

Marvel didn't really need a GL #76, at least not nearly as much as DC did. Marvel comics were set in the real world. Marvel characters had flaws and were set in a flawed world. Marvel Comic had racial diversity (at least to some extent), dealt with characters with rage issues, inferiority complexes, heart problems and other physical infirmities, and even touched on bigotry with the X-Men.

 

DC had perfect characters living in imaginary cities fighting ridiculous creatures/villains. How many times is Batman on the cover of a comic fighting space aliens who are robbing a bank? huh? Where is he going to spend that money? And who could forget the imaginary stories? uh, aren't they all imaginary stories? (Even though these did give rise to the great Elseworld stories).

 

Don't get me wrong, I love DCs. But when Neal Adams started doing his tremendous run of cover work for DC, that is when the books started to look and feel like more modern comics, and had more of a Marvel feel to them.

 

Great description! That's how I always viewed Marvel and why I've always been more drawn to Marvel stories and characters.

[Zonker]

Marvel didn't really need a GL #76, at least not nearly as much as DC did.

 

I think that's right. My thinking about the early 1970s DC innovations was they were a response to the sales momentum shifting to Marvel. Though Superman was still outselling the Marvel titles at this point, the gap was rapidly narrowing, and with the cancellation of the Batman TV show, the associated artificial sales bump for the Bat-books was already a thing of the past. Putting O'Neil & Adams first on Batman and then on GL/GA, luring Kirby away from Marvel... these were all attempts to out-Marvel The House of Ideas and cater to an older readership.

 

But it didn't work commercially, and Marvel took over sales leadership around 1972 and never looked back.

[bronze johnny]

Good point Zonker- if Marvel didn't need to have a GL 76 then are we saying that this book's influence is much less limited? Are we also saying that GL 76 is merely another experimental attempt to keep DC ahead of Marvel's innovative methods to storytelling?

[otherworldsj33]

The .25 cents/.20 cents pricing debacle only hastened Marvel's taking the number 1 spot. DC wasn't even first with the drug issue. I do think that GL did it better then Spider-man though.

[otherworldsj33]

Doing a bit of a horizontal Segway, is it far to say when speaking of company dominance via a combination of creativity and sales between DC and Marvel, that DC was ahead of Marvel in the golden age and atomic age, Marvel dominated most of the silver age and the bronze age, and the copper/modern ages are a toss up?

[bronze johnny]

- Thanks Otherworlds. If my memory serves me correctly, DC's SA books outsold Marvel up until the mid to late SA. True that the 11/71 "25 Cent PF- 20 Centers" marked the turning point where Marvel pulled ahead of DC in terms of sales.

 

- While not exclusive, Marvel's newly achieved dominance can also be attributed to the rise of superhero diversity that occurred and peaked during the BA. Heroes that represented a more diversified society made comics attractive to readers who could now identify with characters with similar racial and ethnic backgrounds. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans could look to Marvel heroes like the Black Panther, Luke Cage, Omega the Unknown, Black Goliath, Shang Chi, and Red Wolf - who were each given their own titles. America was changing and the comic book was to some degree a representation of these changes. Marvel led the Bronze Age of Diversity right to the apex of the 1970s comic book, Giant Size X-Men 1, the most diverse superhero team ever. The significance of what Marvel did in terms of bringing diversity to the next level in the history of the American Comic Book during the BA cannot be understated, especially for the newer diversified generation of Americans who now had someone they could identify with. The interest in this new level of diversity gave Marvel the edge over its rival. And it wasn't until 1977 that DC decided to give its second African-American superhero his own book - approximately 6 years after introducing their first Black superhero in the series started by Green Lantern 76! I've written about the Bronze Age of Diversity on these boards and never underestimated the changes made during the 1970s - changes that continue to this day as characters representing the newest Americans are added to the Superhero spectrum of the American Comic Book.

 

Respectfully,

 

John

 

 

 

 

[Comicopolis]

I don't think there is a strict early '70s Marvel analog for the "sociopolitical topic of the month club", which seemed to be the template for the O'Neil-Adams books (and whether or not their approach qualifies as "realism" is debatable -- to me, it's more like a borderline preachy extended polemic grounded in a familiar point-of-view).

 

Over the course of its 13-issue run, the GL/GA series dealt with roughly that same number of controversial and/or "current" subjects: race relations, corrupt business practices, youth culture/cults, oppression of Native Americans, ecology, overpopulation, feminism, drug abuse, etc., etc. The art is fantastic and I admire the chutzpah, but reading it today is...wearying.

 

At one point or another, certain Marvel books from that same period probably touched on many or all of those issues, and certainly Amazing Spider-Man is as good a candidate as any (given that the protagonist was a college-aged superhero). But with Stan Lee and John Romita more-or-less at the helm (off-and-on) through the early '70s, ASM was generally more conservative, and usually treated controversial or topical material (e.g., Vietnam, prison riots, college unrest, etc.) much more obliquely.

 

Marvel didn't get REALLY subversive until after Stan had split for the Left Coast and some truly serious hippies & weird-beards (Gerber, Englehart, Starlin, et al.) slipped in through the side door and basically went nuts. The O'Neil/Adams stuff is positively quaint in comparison...

 

 

Great post

[Comicopolis]

Green Lantern 76 and its run up to issue 89 has the distinction of being the first superhero themed comic book based on the realism and issues encountered in our society and the world. Is there a specific Marvel superhero issue that first applies the "76 method" to storytelling? If so, then what is Marvel Comics GL 76?

 

John

 

 

Marvel didn't really need a GL #76, at least not nearly as much as DC did. Marvel comics were set in the real world. Marvel characters had flaws and were set in a flawed world. Marvel Comic had racial diversity (at least to some extent), dealt with characters with rage issues, inferiority complexes, heart problems and other physical infirmities, and even touched on bigotry with the X-Men.

 

DC had perfect characters living in imaginary cities fighting ridiculous creatures/villains. How many times is Batman on the cover of a comic fighting space aliens who are robbing a bank? huh? Where is he going to spend that money? And who could forget the imaginary stories? uh, aren't they all imaginary stories? (Even though these did give rise to the great Elseworld stories).

 

Don't get me wrong, I love DCs. But when Neal Adams started doing his tremendous run of cover work for DC, that is when the books started to look and feel like more modern comics, and had more of a Marvel feel to them.

 

 

Another great post - spot on.

[comic_memories]

the "method" is owned by Marvel, DC was always playing catch up........ Marvel broke down the Drug barrier that by the time DC did a 'copy' they had comics code approval thanks to Stan's Lee's foresight into using drugs to teach . so yeah... it was a copycat, excellent story line of course but following Marvels lead

[bronze johnny]

Marvel took the lead in so many ways during the BA. So while Green Lantern 76 has its place in the history of comic books, I sometimes wonder whether this was DC's "last stand" before Marvel dominance took over. Moreover, perhaps GL 76's historic influence needs to be reassessed? Especially when there is a perspective expounded here suggesting that GL 76 had a much more limited influence- exclusive only to DC.

 

Thanks for the insight everybody!

 

John

[Chip Cataldo]

I'm late to the party, but I have a short answer - Fantastic Four #1.

 

Peace,

 

Chip

[namisgr]

I think of Conan #1 as being Marvels' GL #76 in a few ways, although obviously modern realism isn't one of them.

 

It was the first ish of a game changing title. It appealed to adult readers more than any other Marvel title of the time, and was unlike anything that had come before it. And, along with Kirby's departure, it signaled the end of the SA of Marvel comics and the start of something new and distinctly different.

[jimjum12]

I think of Conan #1 as being Marvels' GL #76 in a few ways, although obviously modern realism isn't one of them.

 

It was the first ish of a game changing title. It appealed to adult readers more than any other Marvel title of the time, and was unlike anything that had come before it. And, along with Kirby's departure, it signaled the end of the SA of Marvel comics and the start of something new and distinctly different.

 

 

.....yup. GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[Phicks]

Perhaps the closest Marvel book to GL 76, from a collector's point of view, is Daredevil 158. It is an expensive back issue compared to the issues on either side of it, simply because it is the first issue in a legendary creator run on the book. But it is really no better than the subsequent issues of the same title.

 

Why is the first Neal Adams GL worth more than any of the others, while all of his issues of X-Men are priced the same? It makes no sense to me. I'm just glad I picked up a mid-grade copy a few years ago for $150.

[bronze johnny]

- Actually, Adams did do the cover to GL 63.

 

- Is Daredevil 158 that more valuable than 168?

 

One thing's for sure- the 1970s started and ended with two influential books- GL 76 at the beginning of the BA while Daredevil 158 finishes up the 1970s.