| Posted: 07 July 2014 at 7:54am | IP Logged | 12
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You have to understand the media: it (both media producers and consumers) feeds on the concept that a SINGLE PERSON heroically did it all.
It's like the Olympics, everyone remembers the gold medal winner but not the silver and bronze.
And who was the second man to walk on the moon again?
Lee's fame outside of comes comes from his native ability (and probable desire) to be liked. When has he ever demonstrated his actual skill or creative process during an interview? I can say the same about Isaac Asimov, an absolutely brilliant and funny man, who was barely given 30 words of air time to demonstrare his abilities.
Lee and Asimov, as far as the media is concerned, are just figureheads good for a blip in viewership.
As to what Stan seems to have contributed, consider this: he was getting finished, wordless pages from Ditko without plot discussion. He had to figure out what was going on in the art in front of him, remember what had gone one before (not his plots but Steve's plots) and he had to dialogue and caption all that in the Marvel Tragicomedic style.
That's hard enough to do when someone sends you a image with an invitation of "Caption this!"
Stan has a unique ability to give each character its own voice. Johnny Storm and Peter Parker are the same age, both teenagers, but they do not sound alike. Dr. Blake does not sound like Tony Stark.
Yeah, I think Stan got too big a share of the limelight relative to Jack and Steve but that is the media's fault: the media loves the idea that the charming dude was doing it all for the same reason that many comic book fans wanted to believe that Bob Kane was doing it all. The media loves to promote and sell heroes that are loved by the camera.
And, let's face it, Jack Kirby would never win any prizes for his glib charm and personality. And Ditko refuses to be interviewed or have his picture taken. Of the three, Stan is the one that came the closest to having star power. Or to be exploited by the media, take your pick.
And, these guys grew up in the great depression where it was dog-eat-dog to get by. Children reared in this climate would hardly develop a reflex of generous full disclosure on the secret of their success.
When Simon & Kirby were running Mainline, they were no diffirrent than any other editors at the time.
What remains to be uncovered is whether Stan had let the idea of "speaking to management about giving you a piece of the pie" float around to Jack and Steve, as a means of inciting their best efforts.
I have read somewhere that both Steve and Jack had expected some sort of reward for their efforts beyong work for hire.
I have also read that at one point Martin Goodman tried to lower Jack Kirby's wages, feeling that Jack was getting paid too much. Now, either Goodman was a blistering moron or Stan had NOT communicated the value of Kirby to Goodman ... again, take your pick.
But if you choose to think that Stan had not disclosed the full weight of Kirby's contributions to Goodman -- clearly a very bad risk to the company -- then you can draw further conclusions about what Stan would be willing to share of Kirby's contributions to the rest of the world.
And then there was that Stan interview (in Search of Steve Ditko?) where he admitted Spider-Man might not have been as successful without Ditko's contributions and then immediately expressed regret at having made that admission.
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