••

My little fantasy is in no way to be taken as a negative comment about Dick Ayers! I am a big fan of his inks from that period, and far from "sloppy" I thought he brought a richness to Kirby's pencils -- which, as we can tell from the Chic Stone inks of the same vintage, would have been more akin to what we'd call breakdowns today. Unlike Stone (whose work I also liked), Ayers did much more than merely "trace" over Kirby's line. He brought shading a texture to the panels, and a good deal of depth.

I think it stands as a pretty solid endorsement of Ayers' inks, in fact, that it was many years before I realized Sinnott had actually inked some of the figures on the second page of the sixth issue of FF.

Stone's inks are so simple and unadorned, in fact, that I have often contemplated printing out some large, faded copies, and trying my hand at inking them. They are, after all, very close to what Kirby's pencils must have looked like then.

Altho a strip, not a comic book, this SURF HUNTER sample gives us an idea of what Kirby's pencils most likely looked like in his 10-books-a-month days at Marvel. And the Wally Wood inks show us what a really good inker/finisher was able to do with them! (Two different dailies, obvious!!)

My little fantasy is in no way to be taken as a negative comment about Dick Ayers!

And my humble apologies if my post was taken as such. 

••

From that vintage, no, tho I have inked Kirby on later works.

• When Chris Claremont told me he and Dave Cockrum were planning to write Wolverine out of X-MEN, I'd say "Fine by me."

• When Chris told me Jim Shooter was ordering Phoenix to be "taken to a prison asteroid to be horribly tortured for all eternity" I'd say "Okay."

• When Dick Giordano asked me to "audition" for the job of rebooting Superman, I'd say "Thanks, but I'll pass."

••

You'd lose a few stories, but I genuinely believe you would gain a generally healthier comicbook industry.

(Oh, and I'd shoot Phil Seuling before he had the chance to invent the Direct Sales Market!)

  What do you think would have happened with Wolverine if he had be written out of X-men back then?

••

He'd probably have become a character who popped up in other titles from time to time. He did have a degree of fan popularity, and there might have been a "demand" for him, but back then I can't see him getting his own title, so he'd probably join the likes of Jack of Hearts on the backmost back burner.