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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.

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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They probably represent "his" Marvel, as "my" Marvel is really the "generation" before those guys.

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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Where would be the fun it that? Why, he'd lose the whole "Let's you and him fight!" angle!