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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

As the tale is told, the shrinking number of panels came about from Kirby asking for a raise, and the bean counters telling him to draw bigger panels so he could produce more pages at the same rate.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

There is a simple test to determine how much Stan contributed: read the stuff Jack wrote on his own.
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Darin Henry
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

That makes sense. So with 1/3 fewer panels per issue, a story that used to happen in 20 pages, now required 60.   You could almost say that Kirby started “decompression” before it was cool. 
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Greg Kirkman
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Well, I read CASE FOR KIRBY. While I found some of the claims very extreme (Lee added NOTHING??), I was quite surprised by his "FF#1 was actually a repurposed story" argument... I thought he made some good points and called attention to details I'd never noticed before. 
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Exactly my take. A ridiculously-biased work (note that the actual weblink title of the e-book is “Case_Against_Stan_Lee.PDF”), which also contains some interesting observations and provocative nuggets of truth.
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Greg Kirkman
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Much as I love EVERYTHING Kirby did on the FF, my preference is for the early work, the time when I was an active reader. Heavily influenced by nostalgia, no doubt, but that was when the characters and stories felt "real" to me.
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Ditto. The first dozen issues are my personal sweet spot, partly because I had the first FANTASTIC FOUR Marvel Masterworks book when I was a kid, but didn’t have access to much else from the Lee-Kirby run, aside from a very small handful of single-issue reprints.

The creative apex of the book came later in the run, but those first issues are just full of magic. You can literally watch Marvel as we know it being born, piece by piece, issue by issue. And it’s amazing. Even the hiccups and changed premises of those early stories (the shift from plainclothes to costumes, the changes in Ben’s speech pattern, etc.) are charming.
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Wallace Sellars
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

There is a simple test to determine how much Stan contributed: read the stuff
Jack wrote on his own.



Jack Kirby was an incredible talent. His art was (IS) powerful, and he
introduced ideas that are truly awesome! There is nothing the King
produced without Stan Lee that comes close to entertaining me in the
way that his work with the Man does.
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 5:30pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Stan Lee collaborated incredibly with several (incredible) artists other than Jack Kirby. His work with Kirby was both their peaks, but that doesn't detract from what Stan achieved without Jack (or vice versa). And it certainly doesn't mean that Stan Lee contributed little to nothing in his work with all those other artists, as if this were all some massive conspiracy in support of a Stan Lee Mythology. 

Also, excepting I believe the Silver Surfer, I'm not aware of any of the major Marvel characters originating thus: an artist comes to Stan Lee with the conception of a superhero and asks Stan to script it. As far as I know, it's always been the other way around: Stan has an idea, pitches it to an artist, sometimes likes the result, sometimes doesn't and pitches it to another (e.g., Spider-Man), and after that a full collaboration begins.

The Case for Stan Lee is his success with co-creating and developing characters and their storylines with many different artists.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

As the story goes, Jack included the Surfer because he felt a character as powerful as Galactus needed a herald.
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Jason Czeskleba
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

 Michael Penn wrote:
Also, excepting I believe the Silver Surfer, I'm not aware of any of the major Marvel characters originating thus: an artist comes to Stan Lee with the conception of a superhero and asks Stan to script it.


Doctor Strange.  Ditko plotted and drew the first Doctor Strange story on spec, and brought it to Stan who purchased it and dialogued it (and most likely came up with the character's name).  Both Lee and Ditko have confirmed this.  

As to the major Lee/Kirby creations (FF, Thor, Hulk, X-Men), it's unclear who originated the characters in the first place, since both Stan and Jack at times claimed to be the originator.  Stan generally says he came up with ideas and pitched them to Kirby.  Kirby says he brought character ideas to Stan.  So it comes down to who you choose to believe.


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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 15 May 2018 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

I really think a lot of writers about this stuff are revisionist about things. Okay, so you can look back at work made for hire as a bad deal for awhile now, well it was a bad deal then too... because comic books were in the bottom rungs of publishing (unless maybe you worked at Western/Dell or E.C.). You had the options of working for the better paying more respectable 'slick' magazines though, or heading to Hollywood where storyboarding and all kinds of related skilled areas might have been a good fit. As far as the publishing world of the past goes, comic book artist or writer was a step up from guys who 'creates' crossword puzzles and about par with freelance girly magazine funnies artists.There was absolutely no pretense of comic books being either literature or any kind of capital 'A' art (again I think Western/Dell and E.C. had at least a certain respect for a top craftsperson) it was crank-it-out-by-a-deadline for the most part, distributed in bales, actual ship ballast to foreign markets, and maybe the first hint of something more was the tongue-in-cheek Marvel Pop-Art Productions briefly appearing in 1965 and DC's 'Mod Go-Go Checks' not long after. There was some recognition for newspaper comic strips, and that was another place for a better payoff and recognition.

You had a set-up where an editor 'created' the work for freelancers to do. There weren't too many instances of someone creating a work and then taking it around to publishers. Where an editor was Sheldon Mayer at DC he could do his own Scribbly or Sugar & Spike comic, or Walt kelly at Western/Dell where he owned Pogo. Stan Lee was a writer-editor, like Bill Gaines at E.C. To say he or the company oppressed Jack Kirby or stole credit when Kirby was credited and paid is to say Kirby should just have not worked for them if he didn't like the set up. Disney paid very well with benefits for his situation with artists. The publisher puts up the money, the editor manages how what's available gets spent, and you either work for that or go someplace with other conditions. Did I only imagine all the bullpen bulletins and even cover blurbs hyping Jack 'King' Kirby? Hardly burying his contributions and talents.

The bad blood seemed to get serious in the '80s, when under pressure of Roz' medical bills original art was wanted, and there was an issue of if  the physical artwork was anyone's rightful property whose responsibility was it to get it to them, and then some Marvel people being jerks about that (maybe to try to cover up that a lot of it had gone missing). Legally Marvel owned the work the same as Westinghouse or Disney, even though they didn't pay anywhere near as well, but that's the bottom of publishing frankly, of ten or twelve cent priced retail items. People who tried to do other kinds of upscale comics hadn't been succeeding or making enough up to that point.

If you want to argue with that it's just arguing with history and the economics of the time. Comic books were practically junk and didn't have a large or devoted adult audience. As things changed Jack Kirby got dealt in, even having left the company once before, for a Fantastic Four tv animation project that paid well. If he had made himself more approachable and not less that might have helped, and if you really followed things Stan Lee was pretty much always very diplomatic about things he would say about Jack Kirby even though Kirby was less so.

I really wish people who didn't know either of these people at least would just can it by now though. A lot has been redressed, but there wasn't really all that much to redress. And I'm as tired of the demonization of Walt Disney for the most part too. There are much more positive and fruitful things to do, and I just wasted a couple hours catching up reading a lot of revisionist whinings which I could've done something better with. I read a lot of similar stuff twenty or twentyfive years ago and it's exasperating and even depressing that it's still going on (the internet gives an inviting platform for grievances and conspiracy theories though I understand).


Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 15 May 2018 at 9:50pm
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 16 May 2018 at 6:08am | IP Logged | 11 post reply


 QUOTE:
As to the major Lee/Kirby creations (FF, Thor, Hulk, X-Men), it's unclear who originated the characters in the first place, since both Stan and Jack at times claimed to be the originator.

What about the other Lee co-creations? Stan says he first brought the concepts of Daredevil to Everett and Iron Man to Heck, for example -- that's not clear? Other non-Kirby characters -- unclear? Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain Mar-Vell? Kingpin, Rhino, Abomination? Etc.?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 16 May 2018 at 6:17am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

The "Marvel Method" creates a lot of smudging and blurring when it comes to defining who created what. So does the serial nature of comics.

Consider one from my own experience, Kitty Pryde. I presented the character to Chris as a fait accompli. She was all there, name, look, powers, backstory, the works. Chris set about immediately turning her into a different character. Later writers continued the process. My Kitty is today nowhere to be seen. So who created the character?

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