I dunno about Byrne, Jim, but I heard it was true for Britton.

You hear Stan Lee talk (notably in 80-plus year old car salesman mode) and he is mind-boggled by how "good" the comics are now. What a load!

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That's just mind-reading. Perhaps Stan really does like what today's writers and artists are doing. I don't think it's fair to call him a liar just because you and I don't share that opinion.

I can't produce the quote, but Stan "wished he could have done comics like" Joe Q.

Barring Stan is just a company man doing his usual aggrandizement of the unfortunate spawn that his benign genius wrought, I think Marvel Movies are Stan's retirement package. Good for him, I guess, but too bad for progressively ill and bat-blind Gene Colan and cancer-ridden Dave Simons and Steve Gerber.

Gene Colan and Sal Buscema, and quite a few others, are Hall of Famers who deserve just as much recognition for their work as Stan Lee.

I think I'm being irrational when I think the only people who care about Buscema or Colan are men like myself, who remain in awe of them, along with the subba-culture of bloated "bachelors" with comb-overs selling the original art online and ready to jack the price the moment one or the other of them kicks off.

I love Stan Lee like he's the great-uncle who gets snockered at the Christmas dinner and ends up showing the kids how to piss their names in the snow. But no matter how you look at it--and you CAN look at like Gene Colan "should have managed his money better" as if to say he made anything more than a living-- I think these seminal artists who are still around deserve some monetary accruement for their decades of entertainment. A "retirement." A medical plan. Even janitors who work for high schools for decades get retirement.

I realize free-lancers were what those men were, and them's the breaks kid, and all that jazz. But come on...Erik Larsen probably made more money in his, what, 20 year career than Jack Kirby made in forty years-plus combined. Gene Colan probably didn't make more in all his years drawing Batman for DC Comics than Dan DiDiot makes in ONE year.

It's horrifying to consider how screwed over the Legends actually are.

For comics to go digital and remain comics in any recognizable way would make about as much sense as their clinging to their 10¢ cover price when other magazines started to up their prices. If comics are to march boldly into the 21st Century, they will soon cease to be comics as we know them.

I much prefer paper comics as we know them.  If in some future dystopian society there is no paper at all and comics can only be read on an iPod, etc., then I suppose I could live with it.  Just as long as we don't have to get plugged into the Matrix in order to enjoy them!  ;-)