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A cornerstone. He worked in collaboration with Stan Lee AND, much as the more maniacal Kirby-boosters would wish it otherwise, it was SPIDER-MAN that put the company on that map. And, again, much as some would wish it otherwise, Kirby had nothing to do with that character.

+++

No other single creator comes close to how much valuable he has been to Marvel or the whole industry.

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Spider-Man. Steve Ditko. Remove these from the equation, and do we still have Marvel?

If there is one thing that infuriates me more than perhaps any other swill I see and hear from some corners of fandom, it is this eagerness to erase Steve Ditko. Perhaps it is because Ditko had the same "deal" with Marvel that Kirby had, but, unlike Kirby, has accepted (albeit bitterly) the situation as it is, not tried to wish it into something it never was.

So Ditko MUST be ignored, or the house of cards built by Kirby's supporters quickly falls apart.

••

Kirby, Ditko and STAN LEE.

The system as it existed at the time wasn't anything I'd have worked
under but it was what it was and if you wanted work in comics that
was what you lived with. Thankfully it has been changed, but to go
back and impose the attitudes of today on it seems like an exercise in
frustration.

QUOTE: Kirby, Ditko and STAN LEE.

And don't forget the fourth cornerstone Martin Goodman, love him or hate him there would have been no Timely, Atlas, Marvel without him.

For years Jack was the one that Marvel and Stan was the major driving force of the company and characters. Now popular opinion sees it the other way.

***

This reminds me of one of my favorite Steve Martin skits from SNL, "Common Knowledge," a trivia game where facts are not the correct answers, but misheld "popular opinion."  Hulu it (because work won't let me link to it)

The flaw in Kurt Busiek's analysis is that he is applying contemporary notions of "work for hire", rather than historical notions that were in effect in the 1960s.  Although, today, work for hire requires that there be a signed agreement*, no such written agreement was required under the language of the 1909 Copyright Act that was in effect during Kirby's heyday.  The 1976 revisions to the Copyright Act added the written agreement requirement to create a more artist friendly environment.  Consequently, and this is explained by the Court, the written agreement requirement does not apply to the Kirby lawsuit.  The existence of a work for hire relationship fell on whether Kirby worked at the "instance and expense" of Marvel, meaning Marvel retained the right to control his work and Marvel bore the risk of financial failure in the work.  The district court determined that the unrefuted evidence was that Marvel met these elements.*

The case is not over, though.  The Estate will have the opportunity to appeal.  The best argument they have is that his work was not produced at the "expense" of Marvel because he was not paid for completed, but rejected, pages and that he provided his own tools.  The appellate court is going to take a careful look at this issue as it has never had the chance to consider it before. It is possible that they could reach the oppossite conclusion from the district court and send this case back for trial to a jury.  The primary hurdle that the Estate has to overcome is that Kirby was paid regardless of whether the books succeeded or failed.  Marvel-that-was bore the risk of financial failure after they paid Kirby.

*Courts are split on whether the agreement has to be signed prior to the start of work.

**The Estate's primary failure was not having evidence from witnesses who were there at the time to refute the Stan Lee, Roy Thomas and Larry Lieber version of Marvel-that-was.  The Estate creatively tried to rely on Mark Evanier as a "historical expert", but the gambit was doomed to fail.  Evanier himself was merely a child at the time, had no first hand knowledge of the events, and was not an "expert" in the legal sense. 

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AKA Wikipedia.

••

A little matter I addressed years ago, when I coined the term "Creator's Wrongs" as a pun on "Creator's Rights".

Mostly, it was in response to Steve Gerber's HOWARD THE DUCK suit. Where, I asked, was his suit for ownership of OMEGA THE UNKNOWN? Or did he not wish to remind anyone that book had tanked, and therefore COST Marvel money?