Posted: 14 May 2018 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | 4
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I don't want to take sides on Lee vs. Kirby--I love them both...and Ditko too! But, just from a reader's point of view, some things seem more likely than others--
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.
Edited by Eric Jansen on 14 May 2018 at 7:33pm
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