Comics--Why Dialogue Matters

 There's an ongoing controversy, thanks to a new biography of Stan Lee, about collaboration in comics--who is primarily responsible for the creation of new characters and concepts (and their commercial and esthetic success), especially in the so-called "Marvel method," where the artist works from a rough plot (either supplied by the writer, worked out by the writer and artist together, or done entirely by the artist) and then the writer fleshes it out with dialogue and narration after the art is done.

There's a large part of the comics fan community that supports the idea that the artist is the primary mover...the "real writer and creator" of stories and characters. But, to my mind, this suggests that plot is more important than characterization and that visual appearance is the primary source of success. Let me give an example of where I think that supposition is dead wrong.

It is generally accepted that Stan Lee's plot for the famed "Galactus Trilogy" (Fantastic Four ##48-50) did not include any character like the Silver Surfer, that the Surfer was added visually by Jack Kirby. I do not disagree--visually, the Silver Surfer was entirely Kirby's idea. But is it solely the visual image--striking as it may be--that made the Surfer such an immediate success?

I think not. What made the Silver Surfer a great character was the dialogue Stan Lee wrote for him, the inner dilemma the Surfer confronted between his loyalty to Galactus and his new-found admiration for the human race. While some of that may be reflected in Kirby's art and his notes thereon, it is Lee's putting it into words that makes it real, that makes the Surfer into an interstellar Shakespearean tragic hero.

Looking at Kirby's own attempts at writing dialogue, on the New Gods and other "Fourth World" material, as an example, you can see that, no matter how much emotion and pathos he tried to convey in his art, he could never bring it to full life with dialogue that matched.

If plot were all that mattered, then Kirby would have been a masterful writer; but characterization, as created by dialogue, is just as important...maybe more important. It has been said, after all, that there are only three great plots in all of fiction: Man against man, man against nature, and man against himself. It is the characters and what they do in those situations that make great writing.