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Daily Breakdowns 011 - Feeble Solution
So I reviewed the latest issue of Fantastic Four a couple days ago. The first thing I noticed, as it's on page one, is that at the very bottom of the credits, series creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are credited as "The Final Solution." The reason they are credited at all is that it's Marvel's way of giving them respect without actually acknowledging them as the creators (and thus owners) of the characters, and the reason they're credited as "The Final Solution" is pretty clearly because the plot of this issue, or at least the set-up at the end for the rest of the story arc, is that Reed Richards is looking for a solution to everything, ie a final solution.
Of course, Hitler had his own Final Solution in World War II, which was the extermination of all the Jews, and as Stan Lee (Stan Lieber) and Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg) were Jewish, the affectionate, tongue-in-cheek credit is unintentionally offensive. It's unfortunate, and I thought as much, but do I expect a twentysomething assistant editor to know the context? Not really. I remember hearing Peter Murphy's 1985 cover of Pere Ubu's 1976 song, "Final Solution," and not connecting it to WWII until a couple years later, and I'm a fairly well-read guy, and that was over 20 years ago. It's not really a part of popular culture and even one who has passed high school history classes could easily have forgotten it. I was honestly a bit more offended by this V thread, which I read as a lot of kneejerk, overblown puffery. It's so clearly not intentionally offensive that, to me, it makes those pouncing on it look more foolish than whoever wrote the credit or the editor who doesn't have a degree in slur detection. The credit ends up being web currency for those who wish to appear right-thinking. "Hey, I know Lee and Kirby are JEWS--everyone should know that! So as JEWS, this is a terrible insult to them." Because on top of knowing a meaning for the final solution that is rather obscure in 2009, the modern comics reader/creator/editor is required to know that two great comics creators are/were Jewish. You know, the two who changed their names so as not to appear Jewish and almost never touched on Judaism at all in their combined 100+ years of comics work. There are only about 18,000 Marvel comics that might offend Lee or Kirby (if he was alive) purely on lack of craft or shameless imitiation, so absolutely let's focus on the one that actually wanted to throw them an affectionate, non-binding shout-out and happened to use a phrase that tied into the issue but had an unfortunate prior connotation.
Christopher Allen
August 28th,2009
Of course, Hitler had his own Final Solution in World War II, which was the extermination of all the Jews, and as Stan Lee (Stan Lieber) and Jack Kirby (Jacob Kurtzberg) were Jewish, the affectionate, tongue-in-cheek credit is unintentionally offensive. It's unfortunate, and I thought as much, but do I expect a twentysomething assistant editor to know the context? Not really. I remember hearing Peter Murphy's 1985 cover of Pere Ubu's 1976 song, "Final Solution," and not connecting it to WWII until a couple years later, and I'm a fairly well-read guy, and that was over 20 years ago. It's not really a part of popular culture and even one who has passed high school history classes could easily have forgotten it. I was honestly a bit more offended by this V thread, which I read as a lot of kneejerk, overblown puffery. It's so clearly not intentionally offensive that, to me, it makes those pouncing on it look more foolish than whoever wrote the credit or the editor who doesn't have a degree in slur detection. The credit ends up being web currency for those who wish to appear right-thinking. "Hey, I know Lee and Kirby are JEWS--everyone should know that! So as JEWS, this is a terrible insult to them." Because on top of knowing a meaning for the final solution that is rather obscure in 2009, the modern comics reader/creator/editor is required to know that two great comics creators are/were Jewish. You know, the two who changed their names so as not to appear Jewish and almost never touched on Judaism at all in their combined 100+ years of comics work. There are only about 18,000 Marvel comics that might offend Lee or Kirby (if he was alive) purely on lack of craft or shameless imitiation, so absolutely let's focus on the one that actually wanted to throw them an affectionate, non-binding shout-out and happened to use a phrase that tied into the issue but had an unfortunate prior connotation.
Christopher Allen
August 28th,2009
Posted by ChristopherAllen at 7:05 PM [Link to this post]
2 Comments:
Actually, I would say there should be far more awareness that Lee and Kirby are/were Jewish nowadays than there used to be, as there has been a mini-explosion of books and articles on the role of Jews in the history of American comics (possibly helped by Michael Chabon's fictionalization in "The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay"). Your remark that "there are only about 18,000 Marvel comics that might offend Lee or Kirby (if he was alive) purely on lack of craft or shameless imitiation" ignores the fact that Lee at least probably wouldn't give a crap about anyone's "lack of craft" or "shameless imitation" (have you read any of Lee's work of the past few decades?), and Kirby, a practical, working commercial artist unlikely to look down on other guys trying to make a living, might not have either. More important, comparing those "offenses" with what you call the "unfortunate prior connotation" of the phrase Final Solution is ludicrously out of proportion - or do you really think doing bad comics is comparable to genocide?
I don't doubt that no one intended the FF credit as to be as tasteless as it is. But if the Final Solution is an obscure term in 2009 (even to someone who considers himself "fairly well-read"), that says bad things about the teaching of history nowadays, not to mention the education of people working in comics writing and editorial. Besides, someone chose to use the phrase, so what did they think it referred to? Google the term and see what comes up.
Then again, I'm the 50-year-old son of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Austria, so what do I know?
Hi "O";
I appreciate you sharing your opinion here. I was being facetious about the "18,000" comics Lee or Kirby might have been offended by. I'd agree that although Kirby would rather someone do their own thing than imitate him, neither would want to get in the way of another writer or artist trying to make a living. My point was that this error was being blown out of proportion, just as you're now blowing my comments out of proportion to somehow use my comparison of bad comics to an unintentionally offensive credit that refers to an infamous genocide to comparing bad comics with genocide. Not fair.
The writer of the issue, Jonathan Hickman, admitted to the credit being his idea (via Twitter), and as I speculated, he says it was meant to refer to the "Solve Everything" storyline and that the connotation with Hitler's Final Solution was "incredibly unfortunate," which I think we can infer means unintentional, as I said all along. If you want to boycott him, or demand he and/or Marvel apologize, be my guest. I agree more of an apology than a tweet is required. Ignorance is no excuse to offend someone or many someones. And then let's move on.
Oddly enough, I've never talked more about Hitler than the last couple days, and for entirely different reasons (Pat Buchanan's "Hitler Didn't Want War" theory and the claims of President Obama lining up the three things necessary to be a Hitler-like dictator, according to Rep. Broun--I don't share either view, just to be clear).
That America is a lot dumber than even when I was going to college 20 years ago should be no surprise to anyone, but there you go.
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