I was going to put up competing lists of popular catch phrases and well known sayings from both DC and Marvel characters. And to my surprise, DC had very few of note. I mean sure, Perry White was always yelling “Great Caesar’s Ghost!” And there were some exclamations like “Great Krypton!” and “Great Scott!” but not really a lot to sink your teeth into. I suppose there’s always “Shazam”, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish. About the greatest written addition to the DC pantheon is the Green Lantern oath:
“In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight,
Let those who worship evils’ might,
Beware my power, Green Lantern’s light!”
—It’s a helluvan oath. The best, as far as oaths go.
No, for battle cries and rallying cries, really, just about *any* dialogue with zing, one must turn to Marvel and Stan Lee in the 1960’s. Right off the bat with the Fantastic Four, whenever the chips were down, Johnny Storm shouted “Flame On!” and became the Human Torch. Whenever the Thing was mixing it up, he’d usually yell “It’s Clobberin’ Time!” and take care of business. Both battle cries still in use to this day, in fact.
And maybe the mother of them all, only strengthened by the MCU films, even after 60 years….”Avengers Assemble!”
Even now, a couple years after Endgame, when the gang’s all together, Cap gets the hammer, and utters those magic words……..Oh, I’m just feeling waves of chills and tingles just thinking about it. For a non comic fan, it’s difficult to explain just how huge, how all encompassing that moment is. Jeez, I gotta watch that again. Here, you can watch it NOW…
Where was I? Yes, memorable battle cries, etc. Yeah, DC never really nailed a good one. In the early ’80’s, Teen Titans comic, Wolfman and Perez tried out “Titans Together!”, but honestly, it always kind of fell flat for me. Didn’t have that flow.
Sometimes, maybe it’s down to syllables. Avengers Assemble is 3 and 3. Titans Together is a 2 and 3. For some reason, it doesn’t mesh as well. I would have gone with a 2 and 2, like say, bad guys are coming, Robin’s in the forefront, and issues the order–“Titans: Take ’em!” Him giving the command is more like Cap giving the Avengers Assemble call, as opposed to all the Titans screaming Titans Together!
They *could* have gone with “Teen Titans Together”, but that sounds a bit unwieldy and even more like a kid’s show and they were trying to play down the “Teen”.
Stan really had a way of picking out just right power words to suit the needs of the story. With a character like Thor, who was very much in the Shakespearean speech mode, Stan really went nuts with little ditties like “For Odin, for Asgard, for the REALM ETERNAL!” Because the almost operatic scenario could warrant that.
He could also go hog wild with Dr. Strange as well, making up sorcery stuff:
By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!
The Flames of the Faltine!
The Crimson Bands of Cytorrak!
It sounded so important, so official!
Sometimes, it was the little bits, like the Silver Surfer summoning his other half “To me, my board!” The Surfer was another case of Kirby coming up with a crazy character that shouldn’t have worked but did. That was a particular talent Stan had — some silver nut on a surfboard sounded like bad fan-fic by a 9 year old, but somehow, Jack’s images and Stan’s dialogue turned him into one of the most nuanced, tortured, powerful characters in all of comics.
It really makes you wonder how the New Gods would have been received if Jack had done them with Stan. But I digress…
And of course, there was the casual, familiar end of Marvel, where Stan came up for nick-names for the heroes to call each other. “Wing-head, Shell-head, Goldilocks, Web-head, Stretch-o, Match-head, Horn-head, Green-jeans, High-pockets”, etc. These guys battled in the trenches together and this was an excellent way of showing they were comrades. It was about a decade after Marvel was outselling DC when they decided to try and loosen things up by having Green Arrow get a radical redesign and started calling his JLA teammates by nick-names like “Supes” and “Bats”.
At one point it struck me that for the last several decades, we’ve lost a lot of that magic. Basically, all the best sayings, catch phrases, etc. the best stuff with built in longevity, were created by Stan and his style of writing. Things like “Friendly neighborhood Spider-man” and “With great power, there must come great responsibility” and “Avengers Assemble” have really stood the test of time.
All this is not to say Stan was perfect as a writer. Many a time, he’d throw in a lot of unnecessary dialog to explain actions we could plainly see happening in the panel. A lot of it was who he was working with — I think he’d get inspired by the pencils he’d receive. When you already know the basic plot, then you get 20 pages of art by Kirby, it would definitely get your scripting juices flowing, and you’d want to deliver words to match the visuals.
I know times, themes and the world itself changes and there’s perhaps a level of corniness to Stan’s style–his stuff was absolutely perfect for maybe only the ’60’s. But there was an energy to those words, a power there, that was every bit as potent as Jack’s pencils. And sometimes, it was just top notch, amazing literature.
Sometimes it’s just nice to look back.
True believer.
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