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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133331
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 5:38am | IP Logged | 1
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Kirby comes across as being crucial to the success of the company, but increasingly embittered when he saw Stan's financial success and what he saw as a lack of proper credit.•• When ancient Rome honored one of its citizens with a Triumph, so the story goes, it would be the special task of one individual to follow the honoree around and constantly whisper "Remember thou art mortal!" Over the years, there seem to have accumulated around Jack Kirby a clutch of people who took exactly the opposite approach, constantly stroking his ego -- which was no shy and shrinking thing to begin with -- and praising his contributions above all. Above Stan, above Joe Simon, above everybody. Eventually, Kirby himself ended up believing it. Given the degree of bitterness he clearly experienced, it probably didn't take much to get him there.
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Glen Keith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 July 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 851
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 7:09am | IP Logged | 2
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Nothing against Kirby, but I do sometimes wish I could see the alternate universe where Joe Maneely was the artist on the Fantastic Four.
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 7:30am | IP Logged | 3
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Over the years, there seem to have accumulated around Jack Kirby a clutch of people who took exactly the opposite approach, constantly stroking his ego I've read alot of articles over the years and many of Kirby's defenders don't even like Kirby's comics. He's a big name that they can hitch to in order to discredit the "Big Corporate Comic Companies" that they feel take advantage of creators. They basically gravy train his issues with Stan Lee by making Stan the bad guy for being a company man. We've all seen numerous times that Stan has given not just Jack Kirby but other artists alot of credit but these people ignore those instances. I think the book doesn't make Stan look like the bad guy other than the fact that he wanted to do more than comics. I DO think that the author goes a little overboard with his praise of creators like Englehart, Gerber, and Starlin and I feel that he glamorizes them more than the guys who really built the company.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133331
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 7:44am | IP Logged | 4
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I DO think that the author goes a little overboard with his praise of creators like Englehart, Gerber, and Starlin and I feel that he glamorizes them more than the guys who really built the company.•• They probably represent "his" Marvel, as "my" Marvel is really the "generation" before those guys.
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 8:06am | IP Logged | 5
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Agreed, just as MY Marvel consists of you, Walt Simonson, Frank Miller, Chris Claremont, Roger Stern, JRjr, and others. I felt he kind of short changed that group a little bit.
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Brian Skelley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 February 2012
Location: United States
Posts: 231
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | 6
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Shawn Kane wrote:
| I think the book doesn't make Stan look like the bad guy other than the fact that he wanted to do more than comics. I DO think that the author goes a little overboard with his praise of creators like Englehart, Gerber, and Starlin and I feel that he glamorizes them more than the guys who really built the company. |
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I really got the impression (I haven't finished the book as other things have popped up as they always do) that the writer was more interesting in the conflict than the normal day to day, as that wouldn't be as interesting a story. Doesn't make them better artists/writers than the other group. It does make it a bit more interesting talking about a group of guys that found ways to screw with management than they guys that didn't.
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Shawn Kane
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 November 2010
Location: United States
Posts: 3239
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| Posted: 02 February 2013 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | 7
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I agree that the conflict makes the book interesting but I guess my problem with how he presents those guys is pretty much that they just got stoned and wrote comics. While I'm sure the drugs had some effect to what they were doing, the good stuff that came from those guys was still solid work. At the same time, Kirby and Ditko created the stuff that they did without being baked (I assume please correct me if I'm wrong). In a way, he makes Gerber and company sound pretty unprofessional. One thing that he mentions but doesn't say a whole lot about is people like Steve Englehart and Roy Thomas taking shots at the Byrne/Claremont X-Men. I would have liked to have read more in depth why those guys made the comments that he quoted.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133331
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| Posted: 03 February 2013 at 6:20am | IP Logged | 8
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One thing that he mentions but doesn't say a whole lot about is people like Steve Englehart and Roy Thomas taking shots at the Byrne/Claremont X-Men. I would have liked to have read more in depth why those guys made the comments that he quoted.•• Where would be the fun it that? Why, he'd lose the whole "Let's you and him fight!" angle!
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DW Zomberg
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 June 2012
Posts: 444
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| Posted: 03 February 2013 at 8:42am | IP Logged | 9
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Re: the X Men comments--I thought they were summing up the X Men after Byrne had left, that the title was running on steam from the stories JB had made major contributions to.
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Steve Bryant
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 11 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 60
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| Posted: 03 February 2013 at 8:44am | IP Logged | 10
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Shawn Kane: "... I guess my problem with how he presents those guys is pretty much that they just got stoned and wrote comics. While I'm sure the drugs had some effect to what they were doing, the good stuff that came from those guys was still solid work. At the same time, Kirby and Ditko created the stuff that they did without being baked (I assume please correct me if I'm wrong). In a way, he makes Gerber and company sound pretty unprofessional. "
I think you're confusing your Steves here. Howe makes a point of saying that Steve Gerber wasn't stoned while working. The picture painted by Howe is that Gerber was against drug use and was skeptical of the entire counter-culture movement.
From page 134, paragraph two, "Amazingly, this was all conceived without the help of psychedelics. 'He [Gerber] was one of those guys who was militant about not altering his consciousness,' said Steve Englehart. 'Gerber's weirdness came directly from his id.' In his early twenties, in St. Louis, Gerber had been on the sidelines of the hippie culture, an observer. 'I was always too academic, too conscientiously critical, to throw myself into it totally. There seemed to be a certain shallowness of philosophy, somehow, and beyond that, even, there was a lot of violence associated with that culture.' This outsider perspective meant that no ideology, left, right, or center, was safe."
I can't speak to the veracity of the book (I follow the philosophy of a wise man who reminded us to ask, "Vas you dere, Charlie?"), but I feel that Howe attempted to present balanced representations of most of the creators covered in the book.
I know that Rob Liefeld has disputed some portions of it, stating that he wasn't interviewed, and that he's easily accessible. Did Sean Howe contact you, JB?*
* I apologize if the question was asked before. I've followed the thread since it started nearly four months ago, but can't remember if it was covered in that time. I did a cursory review of JB's posts in the thread and didn't find a statement on if Howe reached out to him.
Edited to correct spelling of the word "weirdness" in paragraph 3...my transcription chops are failing me!
Edited by Steve Bryant on 03 February 2013 at 8:46am
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Jason Czeskleba
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2004
Posts: 4623
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| Posted: 03 February 2013 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | 11
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Shawn Kane wrote:
| One thing that he mentions but doesn't say a whole lot about is people like Steve Englehart and Roy Thomas taking shots at the Byrne/Claremont X-Men. |
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I don't recall what Roy is quoted as saying, but my recollection is that Englehart's comment was a criticism of early 80's Marvel, not Claremont and Byrne. Basically what he says is that things had gotten more regimented at Marvel to the point where creativity was stifled. He thinks that X-Men was so acclaimed because it stood out relative to the mostly inferior other stuff Marvel was publishing at the time.
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David Ferguson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2007
Location: Ireland
Posts: 6782
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| Posted: 04 February 2013 at 7:57am | IP Logged | 12
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Marv Wolfman commented on the book that the parts about him were 85% true and nothing worth writing to the author about correcting. He said that some of the contributors did not have the full story as they weren't in the office all the time (he was). That and peoples' memories being different.
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