Hi Greg - interesting post... about a month ago (pure coincidence) I read the entire book you mentioned (all 300 pages) on an 11-hour flight and found it fascinating.  Your take on it was exactly the same as me—I was skeptical and then (frustratingly) I couldn't put it down, and some of the claims were very persuasive.

I really liked in the book how the author made very specific references to pop culture, dialogue and the timing of the release of certain stories.  I'm not saying it is all true, but I definitely found it a captivating read! 

I definitely think it is important to hear other people's opinions (and the author definitely has some opinions!) and I learned a lot about Jack Kirby (like other titles he worked on and some of the skills behind layouts, composition, etc).  I also love conspiracy stories so I do admit it was a guilty pleasure to read on vacation.

Jason you seem to be saying that it is unfortunate that the author has presented his ideas as fact, but you also just admitted that you haven't read the book.  You can agree or not on the arguments in the book itself (as would be expected), but the author states they are "making a case" for Kirby.  They are presenting what they see as evidence.  (The evidence is of varying degrees of quality, much of it circumstantial)—but they are not presenting their case as fact, and I don't believe they ever claim to.   

The very title of the book is "The Case For Kirby".  The author is presenting his ideas as speculation.  Not sure why you are disappointed in something you assumed (and is not the case)?  There are enough "real" issues in the book to disagree with, there's no point in making up new ones!

1. Stan was the company man and he was the editor overseeing the comics department and the main writer, where the ideas usually started (at least).  It just seems unlikely that a freelance artist like Kirby would have the carte blanche to start a whole new direction/approach for the struggling monster comic company.

2. The FF just has a lot of "Lee-isms": Timid Sue seems to be cut from the same cloth as Betty Ross, Jane Foster, and Betty Brant.  (Unfettered Kirby seems to lean more toward strong-willed amazons like Big Barda.)

3. Teen Johnny goes along with Peter Parker and Rick Jones (all about 16).  (Solo Kirby seems to concentrate on heroic men, but, if he brings in a kid, they're usually younger, maybe 12 or 13.)

4. The Thing's crush on Sue and bad attitude reminds of Prof. X's crush on teen Jean and the Hulk's bad attitude.  True, Kirby worked on those too, but I've seen these personality traits in too many Lee stories.

5. "Reviving" a Golden Age concept like the Human Torch also seems more like Lee.  True, he brought back Captain America and Sub-Mariner with Kirby, but he also gave us a Daredevil, Iron Man, the Angel, Ka-Zar, Black Widow, the Destroyer, the Falcon, Jack Frost, and probably more.  Not complaining about Stan rescuing defunct names, but it does seem more of a Stan thing than a Jack thing.  Kirby's names were often new, wild, and/or majestic.

6. Speaking of recycling, was Reed a re-do of Marvel's Thin Man?  And Sue of the movie version of "The Invisible Woman"?

Sure, it looks like Lee gave a lot of story control over to Kirby (on FF) and Ditko (on Spidey) pretty early on, but I don't think he did that with Don Heck and John Buscema on AVENGERS, IRON MAN, or SILVER SURFER which were all pretty entertaining as well!  Or with Gene Colan on DAREDEVIL or the SUB-MARINER feature either.  (Maybe he would have liked to have handed DAREDEVIL over to Wally Wood too; that would have been great as DD was a bit shaky for a while after Wood left.)  All the books worked together to create the Marvel Age of Comics, and they all had the same "spirit" which was personified in the snappy Stan Lee scripts on all the books, including the ones that Kirby and Ditko plotted.  Nobody should ever call Stan Lee a hack.

But I will also give credit to Kirby and Ditko.  Their DC work--without Lee's scripting--is pretty amazing too!  But not as successful as their work with Stan, and the scripting was not as good.  Stan proved himself with SILVER SURFER with Buscema and SPIDER-MAN with Romita.  But I love anything Ditko does, and Kirby proved his solo genius to me with his 70's run on CAPTAIN AMERICA, a personal favorite.

They're all geniuses and legends.  It's ridiculous to form camps.

That's the problem with the mentality of a lot of folks these days. People tend to have a viewpoint that if someone is successful, then it *must* have come at the expense of someone else rather than looking at it as both parties being successful (albeit to different degrees). It's all "us vs. them".

I'm currently reading the Challengers of the Unknown  Showcase collections. I'm surprised at how LITTLE I find it similar to the Fantastic Four. Sure, there are four adventurer exploring strange things. But the Challengers have pretty much interchangeable personalities. I don't even have a favorite. Whereas the success of the FF and the Marvel Age was largely due to characterization.

And though I wasn’t born until after Lee and Kirby split, I also prefer the earlier, plottier FF issues. Sometimes a single page contained three or four scenes so even though there were always lots of words per panel, the story still seemed to move quickly.