ZYG FURMANIUK

On the Complex Dynamics of Theater and Woodblock Plays
in the Elizabethen and Jacobean Periods
(satirical fiction, faux scholarship)       

Prices paid for original printings of Four Fantastics #1.

1591: 1p
1617: £1
1669: £25/6
1723: £365 (for an incomplete version found in the remains of a York privy)

Source: Sotheby's

The Origin Story of the Origin Story

What is indisputable is that the block’s "Age of Timely-Marvels" began with the publication of Four Fantastics #1 in 1591. What is disputable is almost everything else. Stanislaus Lieber (known usually by his anglicized identity as Stan Leeds) would tell the story of a golf game between his uncle-employer Martin de Goodman and fellow printer Jack Wise as the origin of the woodblock plays (commonly called "blocks" as early as 1595) of Timely- Marvels.

In talking with the Gazette of Fandom, which proved popular enough on its own to launch other zettes as they came to be known, he said the following: "It was in 1591. Martin de Goodman greatly enjoyed the game of colf, as it was called at the time. He and Jack with whom he was a professional rival, but also a friend, were talking about the success Jack was having reprinting the art of the Continent and combining it with commentary. Martin came back to me and said 'Stanislaus, do something like that!' His business was in significant debt at the time and we dearly needed a popular seller that fit our license to publish. So Jake Kirby and I came up with the Four Fantastics."

There are a few problems with this story. The first being that there were no societies for the playing of colf/golf in England until James I and his entourage arrived from Scotland in 1603. The first golf course in England is regarded as Blackheath Golf Club, which has records dating from 1608.

The second being that Jack Wise in a different zette claimed never to have golfed in his entire life. Though this being the lone surviving copy of Timely-Marvels Letters and Correspondences of Devoted Readers #3 (1610), the incomplete and fragmentary pages make it unclear if the interview was genuine or a satire.

The third, less a problem than a lifelong obsession, Stan Leeds reworked everything in any tale he ever told, be it about the Timely-Marvels menagerie of protagonists or his own biography.

In another interview (recorded in Inigo Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent English Blockwrights), he stated this as the origin of Four Fantastics: "I had grown despondent at the prospects for my career as a playwright, which I had desired since grammar school. Working for Martin was merely a way to earn a living for myself and family in the land we found ourselves. I had determined to quit and return to the wool trade in Bristol when my wife said, 'Why don't you write the kinds of plays you want to write and publish those?' I had to acknowledge the simple wisdom in that question, so I proceeded with my artist friend, soon-to-be blockwright, Jake Kirby."

This statement is also problematical, for it is well known that Stan's wife regularly requested and later demanded his return home to Bristol (Civil Assizes, 1585-1595) and was placated only by the continual stream of funds from London that resulted when Stanislaus began the episodic stories that would make Timely-Marvels the first publisher of woodblock plays in English history.

What is also well-established is that Martin de Goodman's press was on several occasions the subject of civil proceedings in London and that until the explosive success of the blocks was regularly in danger of insolvency or liquidation.  Searching Goodman's name in the UK National Archives will result in several cases where he is sued by creditors between 1580 and 1592. The lack of such cases after 1592 attests to the prosperity of their innovations. In this context, the success of the blocks was nothing short of miraculous for both of them.

Historical Descendants or Antecedents?

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-96) exists in the same outer reaches of the imagination that permeated the blocks from the earliest days. Ancient Greece, Celtic magic, Elizabethan morays, and the animal kingdom all meet in one forest setting in one theater to make the point that romantic love is a roll of the dice as much as a roll in the hay.

It's also strange because, revolutionary as it may be, it abides by a classical unity of time, place, and action: one night (and a brief before and after), one forest (and its urban neighbor), intertwining plots of at least four couples and some minor characters. Face front, true believers, the Bard packed in action like a Jake Kirby panel.

One of Shakespeare's few original plots presented a unique mix at the time, a device not really used again (except constantly in the blocks!) until the blocks were reinvented on the eve of World War II as American comic books.

Note that the advent of the woodblock plays in 1591 with Four Fantastics #1 provided the opportunity scholar Julius Wellhausen (Prolegomena zur Geschichte Holzschnitt-Drama, 1878) needed to make the case that William Shakespeare could have borrowed the idea for the mythopoeic diversity from the Avenging Angels series with its pairing of Thor and Heracles in the Annual Supplement to Mysterious Journeys #1 (1594). No other drama up to that point was so heterogeneous an amalgamation. The blocks led the way.

Who ever expected a Norse-Greco-Roman mash-up? The English reading and theatrical public as it were.

In the modern comic books, Billy Batson's magic word to transform into Captain Marvel, SHAZAM!, descends from Greek and Roman mythopoeic figures and one Biblical Hebrew monarch (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury, from Whiz Comics #2, 1940). In our era, we never blink at the combination of high technology, diverse deities, and American self-adoration.

It is clear that Shakespeare did borrow almost all of his plots from others. His earliest plays are a reworking of a Roman comedy and history (Comedy of Errors and Julius Caesar), and his greatest tragedies are out of Raphael Holinshead. Of the history plays, we will soon have more to say.

His few completely original plots – A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-96), Love's Labour's Lost (mid-1590s), and The Tempest (1610-11) – are themselves very block-like (or comic book-y to use the modern term). Midsummer because of its mixing of eras and heroes, The Tempest because of its mages and monsters, and while LLL looks to be a basic rom-com of our era, its premise of swearing off women for study is one of the most comic book nerd-like premises ever. In modern parlance, the premise is: "I'd like to have a girlfriend, but I've got to really knuckle down on my AP Calculus, or I won't get into a good college."

Well-established in the theater and poetry, the Bard himself is so far not convincingly established to have drawn from the blocks. Geoffrey Bullough's Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (1966) contain no mention of woodblock play influences. The best arguments that he was influenced by them has been made by circumstantial evidence in Julius Wellhausen's Prolegomena. I quote: "Of course, Hamlet (1599-1601) as well takes on a great responsibility following the murder of his father. Prospero in The Tempest rules his island world as Sorcerer Supreme much as Doctor Stephen Strange. The journey from injured surgeon to magician mirrors the transformation from deposed Duke of Milan to wizard." The low esteem in which the blocks were perpetually held in some circles doubtlessly played a role.

Timely-Marvels Makes Its First Foray into the Theater

We know that Leeds never relinquished his theatrical ambitions and one way of organizing the history of Timely-Marvels is from his various attempts at achieving success in presentation venues.

Given the fantastic characters populating the blocks, a traditional theatrical experience was not possible throughout the 1590s. Man-Spider might reveal a depth of emotion, but the draw was both his inner turmoil and the violent set-pieces every issue proffered with his various antagonists, many of whom were enchanted creatures or clockwork mechanisms.

The earliest shows were puppet shows circa 1596. The "Stan's Pulpit" section (which always bore the motto "Preaching to the True Believers!") of all issues in 1596 proclaimed "Fantastic shows of your favorite characters being performed at Bankside! Come at twilight and prepare to be amazed!" These were surprisingly popular.

Facing budgetary constraints, Leeds took large cut-outs of the characters, mounted them on sticks, put them behind a screen with many lanterns projecting their shadows, and hired actors to enunciate the dialogue. Jake Kirby first attempted to employ the Timely-Marvels printers and artists to perform the scenes.  While exceptional at art and story-craft, they were all less than impressive as performers and by all accounts resented the employ.  Called Voices of Timely-Marvels, and attested to by surviving public broadsheets from 1596, the event started a smoldering enmity between Leeds and several creators. No one wished to participate in an uncompensated fashion when Leeds was clearly drawing income from the event to which their creativity and labor had certainly contributed. No contemporary accounts survive but the fallout from the event was attested in retrospect by several eye witnesses (see Vasari).

Carved, decorated, clothed, and most importantly three-dimensional hand puppets or marionettes were the usual expectation for audiences, and the popularity of these shows underscores the demand for stagings of the blocks. The same format would become very popular in the Le Théâtre D’ombres du Chat Noir in 1886 Belle Epoque Paris with much more impressive nineteenth century stage effects.

The shows featuring Man-Spider were by far the most popular. Leeds also wrote of "believers" singing the theme song (now sadly lost). Lady Margaret Hoby's diary includes an entry from 3 December 1600 expressing her typically Puritan disdain for the performances.

Leeds was almost always present, introducing the shadow plays and promoting coming stories in the blocks. It is probably because of his ease in front of an audience and perpetual hyping of the output that he began to become the sole public persona associated with Timely-Marvels. Commencing in 1957, he henceforth allowed the actors to take the show on tour through England subject to a licensing fee.

The two university towns in England were known to have had performances (likely off campus in defiance of the university authorities). The Chancellor of Oxford (Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset) attempted to sanction the Turf Tavern for providing access to "blocks in defiance of the Universite Deans and Sundrie Authorities" (Oxford City Records, Volume 3, 1605-1649).

While Leeds baldly stated that early in his career, he was writing material "for drooling juveniles and semi-cretins," his visits to taverns in both university towns shows that he increasingly cultivated more educated consumers who would eventually ascend to higher levels in English society (I Alone Invented Man-Spider!, Gazette of Fandom #15,1612).

Commonality of Tropes in Both Formats

Let us turn our attention to the nature of common elements between the Elizabethan theater and the blocks and by extension their American reinvention or rediscovery as it were (Action Comics #1, 1938).

Consider this plot: A woman of virtue disguises herself to fight for justice in a city rife with corruption, prejudice, and greed.

Is this Woman-Spider (first appearance 1607) from Timely-Marvels? Or Batgirl (first appearance 1967 in Detective Comics #359) from DC?

Either fit – but so does Portia from The Merchant of Venice (1596-98).

In a slightly different scenario, a woman with a secret identity falls for the paragon of order in her city, and someone else falls for her. A Catwoman, Batman, Harley Quinn triangle of the modern era? Or Viola, Olivia, Orsino in Twelfth Night (1601-1602)? or Namor, Richard Reed, Susan Storm from Four Fantastics #3 (1591)?

An amoral psychotic with an ax to grind plots the downfall of a prominent man of civic virtue. Joker/Batman or Iago/Othello (1603)?

A meditation on power – both personal and political – and how it may be used or misused in relationships and society. Richard II? Richard III? King Henry IV? In this case, I was thinking of Watchmen (1986-87).

The Four Fantastics never secreted themselves. It was Peter Parker who first assumed a covert identity, though the term of art was "disguise." His attempts to atone for his sin of omission in the death of his Uncle Benjamin necessitated he act in shadows. The device proved so popular other characters in the Timely-Marvels universe adopted it as a matter of course.

Secret identities, the dynamics of good vs. evil, and the depth of characterization that are required to plumb these depths of the human condition are common throughout world literature. There are similarities, but these are not convincing as long term influences. Let's look at a few other devices.

Violence Sold Everywhere, But Sex Was Only for the Theater

William Shakespeare arrived on a scene where Kit Marlowe was the alpha wolf of the playwright pack. Marlowe, educated at Cambridge and drawing liberally from classical sources, knew what audiences wanted. So, violence was perfectly acceptable. His Edward II (published 1594) concludes with the monarch's demise via "a red-hot poker inserted up the fundament."

Shakespeare learned from the best. Bloodshed filled seats. Of course, Shakespeare and Elizabethan plays in general have epic battles, intimate sword fights, and saloon brawls among other types of conflict. But that's kid stuff. Titus Andronicus (1588-93) has cannibalism; King Lear has an eye gouged out onstage; Hamlet has a crucial scene in a graveyard while his virgin-suicide girlfriend is being buried (Sir Laurence Olivier's 1948 film staged a fight IN the open grave). Cymbelline (c. 1611) has a severed head being carried on the stage (and this play is considered a comedy).

Any of these would have been right at home in a 1950s era horror comic book of the kind the US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency and Dr. Frederic Wertham devoted extreme effort to vilifying. But Elizabethans had to satisfy the Stationer's Office and not the Comics Code Authority.

There was little backlash against the violence in these lurid scenes. Given that executions were public and popularly attended, the citizenry of this period was remarkably well-adapted to dismemberment and gore.

The blocks of the time though were surprisingly less brutal than the theater. While violence certainly did occur and fights were rampant, little of it was as graphic as a normal citizen could see in daily life. The taking of a life in the blocks was almost always an accident, and never at the hand of a title character.

Steve Rogers became a de facto recruiting tool for the Royal Navy owing to the disproportionately noble and egalitarian environment Timely-Marvels portrayed as life aboard a ship. In a letter from Sir Richard Hawkins to the Privy Council, he reported: "Steve Rogers, The New World Captain, has done more to add to my crew than any press gang ever did and they come willingly!" (Avenging Angels #4, first appearance 1593).

None of this stopped the Puritan objections with the theater from being carried over to the blocks. The Reverend Richard Mather (1596-1669) made a mark early in his career attacking the blocks from his pulpits in and around Liverpool before he left for New England in 1635. His treatise Blockers in the Hands of an Angry God (1615) was marked by vivid imagery decrying the time wasted reading blocks when one could be engaged in Bible study. Significantly, the Reverend Mather used the term "blocker," which the readers used to refer to themselves, as opposed to "blockhead" the common term of derision in the Puritan community. This civility would later work to the advantage of both the Puritans and Jake Kirby when, angered at his treatment under Leeds, he worked with them to adapt Biblical stories in woodblock format. The result of this labor, would be his epic New Paradise saga, commonly called the Fourth World.

When printer William Gaynes also attempted to introduce mild eroticism with his block featuring the amorous adventures of a French actress named "Cherry Tart," drawn as lasciviously as authorities would allow (and in all probability far beyond it), his press was immediately impounded by the Stationer's Office and released only after a heavy fine and the promise he would never again portray naked flesh.

In modern parlance, we would say that this caused him to pivot to a humor magazine he called Madness, which has an history of its own as the template for later magazines.

One must ask why this dichotomy?

The most convincing explanation is that carnal encounters in the theater were ephemeral in live action and (given the Elizabethan strictures against women on stage) entirely fictitious.
Lads of the time could return anytime to view Mlle. Tart's fulsome depictions so long as they were careful to secret their issues in barn lofts or beneath mattresses.

Mademoiselle Tart's bosoms portrayed in permanent block illustrations were simply too much for the time.  Surprisingly few originals survive. The few which do are all in either the Folger Shakespeare Library or the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, either of which require special permission for access. There are however a wide range of reprints, copies, homages, and forgeries, catalogued in the Overstreet Guide to Collectible Woodblocks.

Following the defeat of Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Sir Hugh de Hefnyr would famously break this stricture and achieve both notoriety and a steady income independent of his manor and royal largesse. Citing John Milton's Areopagitica of 1644 and adding his own defense of freedom of expression in dealing with topics of "relations," Sir de Hefnyr began the publication of the Gentleman's Gazette in 1661. Featuring risqué prints which crossed pages alongside essays and fiction by notables of the era, the famous excuse for purchasing an issue later became "I wish to read Daniel Defoe's latest."

Sir de Hefnyr's Manor became an infamous destination among the notables of the era. Its proximity to Windsor Castle he always claimed was "mere coincidence."

No documentation links this storied bastion of hedonism to the founding of London's Hellfire Club in 1718 by Philip the First Duke of Wharton. However, at least two of the initial members (Wharton's lifelong friends the Earls of Hillsborough and Lichfield) were scions of well-known habitués of the Manor.

Prices for de Hefnyr magazines fell precipitously after the invention of photography. The exception to this is the first issue featuring Nell Gwyn.

Alliteration as a Way of Life

Alliteration, of course, is one of the hallmarks of Timely-Marvels' character names: Reverend Reed Richards, Matthew Murdoch, Poore Peter Parker (which gets extra points because it alliterates at both the beginning and the end of the words), Bruce Bonnie Banner, Scott Summers, Pepper Potts, Doctor of Doom, The Six Sinisters, The Four Frightfuls, The Battle of Baxter Borough, to name but a few of the most notable.

But Timely-Marvels scripts never stopped with character names. Credit often was given to "Splendid Story by Stan Leeds, Delicious Drawing by Jake Kirby, with Luxurious Lettering" as in Four Fantastics #39 (1595).  With its Daring Devil character crossover and its image of Doctor of Doom over Baxter Borough, it remains a favorite among collectors.

Given the fascination of Leeds with drama, the alliteration of the York Realist would seem the most likely source for his predilection for the device. But the York Corpus Christi Cycle was last performed in 1569. Born in 1571, Stanislaus Lieber could not possibly have seen them. Moreover, no record exists of him ever visiting York although he may have seen similarly-inspired and structured mystery plays elsewhere in England.

The persistent alliteration of Beowulf (700-1000 CE) could not have played a role in influencing Leeds and Kirby as the work was lost until 1786 and not translated into Modern English until 1805. It is tempting to make the connection between alliteration and a fight story between a hero and a monster, but no such causal link can be found as of this writing.

Golem Smash! Man-Spider Swings!

Emboldened by the success of his shadow plays, Leeds opportunistically found a semi- permanent company made of professionals from other companies to stage The Golem.

John Hemingway, a stagehand of the King's Men – who was deemed "so tall and fit as to make all other actors minute in comparison" – made a career portraying several Timely-Marvels' characters, but the Golem was his most notable. Like most stagehands of the era, Hemingway was a former sailor in the Royal Navy. Sailors' experience with ropes and rigging made them invaluable backstage. The accounts for the performances include more than three times the usual allocation for "green ceruse."

The troupe's property master developed the system in which sets and objects appeared destroyed, but were reused in the next performance.

The plots were constantly recycled and based off The Tales of Robin Hood with Bruce Bonnie Banner wandering into town where enragement at injustice turned him into The Golem. An extended fight scene followed with as much mayhem as could possibly be portrayed on stage. Banner would then run back to the forest.

The show's several versions ran for years in venues throughout England. The character's famous recurring line "Golem Smash!" might well have been a review of the show itself. Until late in his life, this production remained Leeds's most notable theatrical success, as measured in receipts.

Leeds's most notorious mid-life production came in a different fashion. The Six Sinisters of Man-Spider fame were famously the subject of a court case by Stan Leeds against Ben Jonson's production of Volpone (1605-1606). Claiming that the Six often arrayed against Man-Spider – Hunter, Vulture, Octopus, Sandman, Warlock, and Shock – were copied from a group in Volpone, whom Leeds kept referring to as "Fox-Men."

Jonson's group – Mosca (Fly), Voltaire (Vulture), Corbaccio (Raven), Corvino (Crow), and Nano the Dwarf – certainly have a superficial similarity to the Leeds-Dixon Six Sinisters although we cannot discern a one-to-one correlation by any means. Nevertheless, the scandal and innuendo increased both the demand for Man-Spider issues and Volpone performances.

Without evidence, Vasari speculated that both parties colluded to achieve this result, but it is also well-known that Jonson despised Leeds and "would sooner drowne [him]self than sit in a roome with him."

The matter was settled amicably when The Admiral's Men staged Man-Spider: The Dark Night for Leeds. Well-received for its action sequences involving human acrobats, the production ran in repertoire from 1606 to 1608. The demands on the acrobats, however, caused many injuries and led to a theatrical superstition against joining any company performing it.  Eventually, no English acrobat would say Man-Spider in a theater. Performers also would refuse to buy any issues of the block.  

The play's success resulted in Stephen Dixon filing a suit seeking recompense for the plot of the play which hewed closely to his own plot involving the Six Sinisters (Dixon v. Timely- Marvels).

The case was resolved with an undisclosed payment to Dixon who produced two more Man-Spider blocks before leaving Timely-Marvels and working on the first independent blocks. Dixon’s final script for Man-Spider had him attacking a bust that looked like his antagonist, dubbed "Lee" in the text. Remarkably, Stan Leeds either let it pass or failed to catch it.

Looking Ahead: Knowledge and Power

Jan Kott made the point that Shakespeare's plots looked ahead to the Twentieth Century Cold War, much as the comics of the 1960s dealt with the topic.

To quote Kott in Shakespeare Our Contemporary Blocksmith (1966):

And what is a sorcerer or wizard but the prototype of a mad scientist? Merlin was the Dr. Strangelove of his day, with direct access to the main political actors and a voice in policy. Alternately we could imagine economists and policy "wonks" as the wizards or shamans of our day. Like an Atomic Bomb, Macbeth existed only to kill. If we quickly summarize the plot of the Scottish Play: Macbeth comes in from killing (So fair and foul a day…), is rewarded for killing, goes home to his wife, talks about killing, has dinner, does some killing, gets crowned, gets found out, gets to more killing (…in blood Stepp’d in so far), realizes he's in too deep to stop killing, and goes down killing. He was the robotic Strangelovian ideal incarnate – a device only for killing.

Was this too ravenous a hunger of the imagination? Undubitably.

Did it point out some subtle commonalities between the Bard and the Blocks? Also, undubitably.

The Ur-Hamlet of 1589 is regularly regarded as a possible inspiration for the Leeds-Dixon Man-Spider iconic moral credo. The original quote is so iconic I cannot help but violate the long-standing tradition of rendering block quotes in modern spelling to quote the original from Amazing Timely-Marvels #15 (1592): "For Poore Parker had divined that with mightie power there needs be as welle mightie responsibilitie."

Perhaps Shakespeare took the blocks as a starting point, for what is King Lear (1606) but the story of a man who loses a loved one and finally realizes that with great power there must also come great responsibility? Though in Shakespeare, the revelation comes as a hard-learned lesson. In Timely-Marvels, the character must undertake a trauma of initiation to apprehend higher purpose.

In contrast, when this trope was recycled for the origin of Kid Flash (Flash #110, Dec. 1959-Jan. 1960), it was reduced to the banal level of a 1950s Father Knows Best episode. Father figure The Flash solemnly intones, "Your new speed is a priceless gift, Wally, but it is also a great responsibility!  To deserve it you must use it only to help those in need, to combat evil, and never for your own gain."

Wally obediently responds, "I understand, Mr. Flash! I, I promise!"

The reinvention of Timely-Marvels as Marvel in 1961 would return to the deeper levels of the story.

"Band" was the Elizabethan blocks word for what we now call a "team." Jake Kirby once used the word "table" in allusion to the Round Table (Avenging Angels #4), but Leeds won out with "band" in deference to Robin Hood and his Band of Merry-Men.  Oddly, the blocks and the English tales of Arthur and Robin Hood seem to be the only instances of teams in literature between the prototype of Jason and the Argonauts and the modern era when the trope blossomed.

One of the defining elements of Timely-Marvels was the creation of groups of heroes in these bands – the first being the Four Fantastics, quickly followed by the Avenging Angels and in quick succession the X (so-called for the sigil they left scrawled after their adventures). The portrayal of an assemblage of people outside the traditional structures of church or state would be one of the most revolutionary acts of Timely-Marvels, all while Stan Leeds took care at every turn to champion the political order, which became one of the main sources of friction he had with Stephen Dixon on Man-Spider. Dixon learned Italian specifically to read Machiavelli's Il Principe (not translated into English until 1640). Dixon's politics were beginning to permeate Man-Spider in ways that Leeds found difficult to control and impossible to sanction.

The class structure of England was always a lightning rod. Almost the entire Timely-Marvels paddock were recent immigrants to England. Timely-Marvels took care to elevate characters in lower classes although rarely in social status.

In Man-Spider #13, published soon after the death of Elizabeth I, Auntie Parker would briefly assume the title of Lady Parker when married to Lord Jameson, a constant antagonist of Man-Spider. We cannot yet determine what more incensed authorities – that a Lord might marry a commoner or that no one in the blocks considered it a problem.

Under pressure from the Stationer's Office the storyline was dropped and dealt with as a dream sequence. Of course, once the Office allowed that plot point to pass anything was fair game as long as a character awakened to their former station.

Shakespeare's MCU: Monarch Continuity Universe

Shakespeare's MCU, also known as the History Plays, tracks the machinations of the rulers of English society from King John to Henry VIII. Spanning the twelth to the sixteenth centuries, they feature as title characters men chosen by a Judeo-Christian deity to wield supreme executive authority. They contain memorable characters in both major and supporting roles and intertwine them through ten individual works created over more than a decade of effort. These memorable protagonists and anti-heroes are the true inspiration for the longevity of Timely-Marvels stories.

Later, it would take a small army to produce the MCU of the twenty-first century whose one-day take of global box office receipts would have kept the entire London theater community in comfort for their lifetimes.

In between the Elizabethans and the present day there was La Comédie humaine by Honoré de Balzac, which included ninety-one stories, novels, and essays (not including the uncompleted works) that aimed to inject realism into the novel and survey all of French society in the periods between 1815 and 1848. Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen used four interlocking dramas, harkening back to ancient Greek models, but its relative brevity, in this context, excludes it as a candidate for “how utterly mammoth can we build this fictional, agglutinative universe?" (WWV 86).

But it appeared earlier than that. One thing that we cannot deny Leeds is that as editor he was meticulous in the chess game of character placement and continuity. If the Golem was abducted by higher powers in one issue, he was then absent from the Avenging Angels for the duration of the adventure. If the New World Captain returned to England, his duties in Virginia were attended to by his aide Buchanan. 

Given the pace, volume, and complexity of the blocks, some errors were found by alert audiences who informed Timely-Marvels. To reward these mavens of the blocks, Stan created his famous Knighthood-Not-At-All Award, which would be mailed to devotees. Ever after, the famous "No-Knights," as they became known, were much sought after by fanatics.

Shakespeare started it, but Jake Kirby and Stan Leeds learned rapidly that a continuous fictional history had its own power and advantages. Starting with Four Fantastics #48 (1596), spanning the cosmic-scale Gargantua saga, and eventually ending in the microscopic kingdom of Corpuscula, the miniseries structure would become a key ongoing requirement for the blocks. This occurrence had two major consequences: one of which being an ever-engaging panoply of action and character, the other of which being crossover sales and an endless stream of issues.

Natural Philosophy and the Blocks

The fandom the blocks inspired led to a robust set of "accumulators" of the blocks and a healthy market in older copies. The woodblocks might be reused (and frequently were) – but the printing was, because of the very nature of moveable type, constantly replenished and renewed.

In Leipzig, Germany, a thriving market appeared for blocks and unlicensed or unauthorized translations on the Continent at least as early as 1599.  Issues of the blocks themselves appear to have been traded at market days and on occasions when larger town fairs were undertaken.

As with the later passion of stamp collecting, there were clever though unethical people who would produce their own versions, leading to forgeries. Blockers being a community that celebrated its own ingenuity rapidly developed experts who put together their own zettes describing the individual particularities of the moveable type, the specifics of imperfections in block prints, and the particular paper used in individual issues. This robust market kept the blocks alive through the various attempts to censor and thus extinguish them.

Our primary record of the early collector fairs are the Dutch Notebooks of Jan Jansz Stampioen, tutor to young Christiaan Huygens, who credited both his tutor and Timely-Marvels for his fascination with the "endless possibilities of natural philosophy." This journal provides a unique view into both the secondary careers of the blocksmiths and the impact of the blocks on other areas of English and Continental culture, specifically the sciences.

Stampioen, visiting London, stopped at the Southwark Fair off Borough High Street. He recorded the following in his journal:

September 1646

I was amazed that Stan Leeds, Jake Kirby, and Eliza Cary were all present at a table signing tattered blocks lovingly clutched by devoted fanatics. A line had in fact formed. I later learned Mistress Quickly of the Boar's Head Tavern had made a career of managing crowds of fanatics in such situations. While none of my private collection had accompanied me on my travels, I readily found another vendor who was able to sell me a copy of one of my personal favorites (Four Fantastics #48) in exceedingly good condition for two pounds. Given the opportunity, I was willing to part with a sum that would have readily bought two or three bound volumes of natural philosophy or mathematics, yet which I was happy to pay under the circumstances that I would never likely see these personages again. I could not wait to bring the newest editions of the group's adventures back to young Christian who devoured them as eagerly as I.

Sir Isaac Newton is similarly cited in one source, possibly unreliable since it was recorded in 1734. His half-niece, Catherine Barton to whom his papers passed upon his intestate demise, mentioned Sir Isaac being enrapt at the stories wherein Sir Richard Reed "corresponded with Galileo on methods of measuring temperature, on building optical devices, on characterizing the atmosphere," with William Harvey "on the circulation of vital fluids," and Sir Reed's own "confidences in the proof of the Copernican system" as well as delight in Timely Marvels. Sir Reed's expertise on such complex and technical matters gave him access as a trusted advisor at Court, exactly the same path Sir Isaac eventually followed into the Mint and Parliament where Timely-Marvels became also widely discussed.

The blocks had dedicated readers and collectors (to use the modern term). Their dispersion probably meant no single fanatic or group of fanatics felt the need to collect them into the equivalent of the First Folio. Timely-Marvels did reissue and reprint earlier stories on a regular basis.

Every Ending Implies a Resurrection

On one point, Stan Leeds never prevaricated – and any financial records which have surfaced have corroborated it – that is, he boasted of making the most money of anyone out of the blocks.

Land records show Martin de Goodman purchasing an estate in Coventry in 1598, as well as the herd of cows upon it, and the employ of several local women as milk maids. He died before completing his application to the College of Arms.

Records of Stan Leeds's wife show she moved into their house near to both their presses and St Paul's circa 1611. The Churchyard in St. Paul's being the center of the book trade made it the logical place for a lifelong printer.

Timely-Marvels' demise coincided with the Great Fire of London in 1666. The Timely-Marvels print shop was devastated in the conflagration. The moveable type melted into slag. The woodblocks, which had been preserved and frequently reprinted at the orders of Leeds, were reduced to ashes. Vasari recorded that "fanatics continued to search the smoldering ruins for days."

Fortunately, this occurred after the acquisition of the properties of Timely-Marvels by the French theatrical company Cirque d’Isigney. Leeds finally achieved his goal of full theatrical production at the cost of selling all rights and interests to a foreign performance group.

Cirque used a Stan Leeds figure in papier-mâché head with his well-known grey hair, spectacles, and mustache to introduce the intricate puppet and live-action shows. Leeds would make les trios coups with a brigadier and leave the stage. In each production, the same character would appear in one scene, usually in a comic relief role.

It is poetic justice that the final, most lucrative successes of Timely-Marvels would be in their theatrical productions. Leeds, Kirby, Dixon, all would be remembered through their signature tales, yet achieve no recurring revenue from them. Though popular, lavish, and profitable, they were by all accounts devoid of the inspiration that the blocks held.

The spectacle was all the public came for, but the impact of Timely-Marvels on European culture had already become immeasurable. Despite their eclipse in the Enlightenment and the Victorian Era, the heroes of Timely-Marvels were in some sense reborn as superheroes of the 1930s. This fact directly led to the Marvel Comics reinventions of the 1960s, leaving one with the realization that perhaps they never really vanished at all.

References

Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. Oxford UP, 1923.

Harrison, W. "The Description of England." The Renaissance in England: Non-Dramatic Prose and Verse of the Sixteenth Century, Heath, 1954.

Howe, S. Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Harper, 2012

Kott, Jan. B.T. Shakespeare: Our Contemporary. Anchor, 1966.

Morrill, J.S. The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain. Oxford UP, 1996.

Oxford City Records. Volume 3 1605-1649.

Rothman, N. M. The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. Oxford UP, 1995.

Royal Blackheath Golf Club. "History," royalblackheath.com/history

Shakespeare, G. B. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Columbia UP, 1957.

Smith, E. The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare's First Folio. Cambridge UP, 2016.

Vasari, G. "Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite De’ Più Eccellenti Pittori, Scultori E Architettori (1550 and 1568)." Fifty Key Texts in Art History, Routledge, n.d.

Victoria and Albert Museum. A History of Puppets in Britain, vam.ac.uk/articles/a-history-of-puppets-in-britain

Wellhausen, J. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. Druck und Verlag von G. Reimer, 1905.

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