True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee 6 6

[Ken Aldred]

36 minutes ago, Prince Namor said:

Ditko was a younger guy in the business, but based upon his work at Charlton (which anyone who's read it can see was superb), he was another great catch. Stan was very lucky indeed

Yup. He was clearly a young talent to watch and to poach from Charlton, where the stories he was given, certainly post-Code, were pretty much uniformly appalling, and he was being wasted there.

I believe opportunities had also slowed down a bit for Kirby over at DC, and time for a change.

Edited March 10, 2021 by Ken Aldred

[the blob]

9 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

Yup. He was clearly a young talent to watch and to poach from Charlton, where the stories he was given, certainly post-Code, were pretty much uniformly appalling, and he was being wasted there.

I believe opportunities had also slowed down a bit for Kirby over at DC, and time for a change.

He started in comics around 1953 and wound up at Atlas/Marvel by 1955 after a brief stop at Charlton, so yeah, he was not stuck at Charlton all that long. 

I'll be honest, I never cared much for him when I was younger, for all the same reasons his work dried up/slowed down in comics, but came to appreciate it a lot more as an adult. What's interesting about him is that his interiors were often a lot better than the covers.

[Robot Man]

5 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

Exactly. And there's no hero worship here... it's just trying to understand the true history of a hobby I've spent my entire life following. I AM curious as to what was said behind the scenes.

When I was 12, the fall of 1975, me and a friend of mine called the Marvel offices, not once, but twice. Once from my house and once from his house. (So we got in trouble from TWO sets of parents for the long distance calls). I was curious to talk to these guys who were creating these stories. Stan we talked to very briefly - obviously he had a lot going on - but John Romita talked to us for while on one call and Gerry Conway on the other. We asked them questions and probably said a lot of dumb stuff (I'm pretty sure we told them we didn't like Gil Kane's art), and Romita sent us each an autographed reproduced drawing (the one of him at the drawing table with all of the Marvel characters above him) that I still have to this day.

I just find it interesting. 

When we were kids, we went to NY with my parents. My brother and I begged my dad to take us to the MAD offices. He finally agreed. What a wonderous place. I was floored to actually been given a tour of the whole place. Got to meet Gaines and Feldstein and several writers and artists including Mort Drucker and Don Martin who were in the office that day. They both drew us sketches and everyone took a few minutes to talk to us and give us a few freebees. They didn't have to, but they really appreciated their fans even two wide eyed, snot nosed kids.

[thehumantorch]

7 hours ago, Ken Aldred said:

It’s a good point to focus on the product they created rather than maintain a largely delusional sense of ‘connection’ to someone that you barely know.   A good example is Rush’s lyricist and drummer, Neil Peart, an intensely-private individual who was very uncomfortable with how fans idolised him, and retreated away from contact, leaving that meeting-and-greeting to Lee and Lifeson.  A significant loss for me last year, but discovering that about him made me think that he has a strong argument; enjoy what was created, don’t get that fixated on the writer or artist personally, on a fallacy at a distance.

I’m pretty much following his strategy now; read the comics, have little interest in meeting the creators in person, even whenever that becomes possible again.

I still don’t mind learning new character traits or bits of history about the creators, iconoclasm, maybe, as here, or also maybe constructive, fleshing them out more three-dimensionally as real human beings rather than shining, flawless paragons.

I would have loved to meet Kirby or Stan Lee or Ditko or any of the great creators of the SA of comics.  That they are human and flawed, as we all, doesn't reduce my appreciation of what they accomplished and the universe and characters they created.

Stan Lee didn't write all the stories and didn't come up with all the ideas and the other creators deserve credit for helping to make Marvel what it was in the 1960s but Stan Lee was in charge.  He hired the creators and assigned them to titles and had the final say about each cover, each character, every page of art.   It all crossed his desk and he controlled the final product.  He wrote Stan's Soapbox, likely had a lot to do with MMMS, and he was the face of Marvel Comics.  His mistake was not giving the other creators credit every chance he got.

[thehumantorch]

29 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

When we were kids, we went to NY with my parents. My brother and I begged my dad to take us to the MAD offices. He finally agreed. What a wonderous place. I was floored to actually been given a tour of the whole place. Got to meet Gaines and Feldstein and several writers and artists including Mort Drucker and Don Martin who were in the office that day. They both drew us sketches and everyone took a few minutes to talk to us and give us a few freebees. They didn't have to, but they really appreciated their fans even two wide eyed, snot nosed kids.

Great story.

[shadroch]

1 hour ago, the blob said:

He started in comics around 1953 and wound up at Atlas/Marvel by 1955 after a brief stop at Charlton, so yeah, he was not stuck at Charlton all that long. 

I'll be honest, I never cared much for him when I was younger, for all the same reasons his work dried up/slowed down in comics, but came to appreciate it a lot more as an adult. What's interesting about him is that his interiors were often a lot better than the covers.

 

Kirby had burned his bridges at DC and really had no other option but to return to Marvel. I think he was hip deep in litigation over his failed newspaper strip around this time 

Nothing any of them did alone compares to what they did together. 

The people who got lucky were we, the fans.  Kirby could have gone into advertising and made big bucks like his former partner Joe Simon and Lee might have written that novel he always wanted to and ended up on Hollywood Squares.

Edited March 11, 2021 by shadroch

[thehumantorch]

26 minutes ago, shadroch said:

 

Kirby had burned his bridges at DC and really had no other option but to return to Marvel. I think he was hip deep in litigation over his failed newspaper strip around this time 

Nothing any of them did alone compares to what they did together. 

The people who got lucky were we, the fans.  Kirby could have gone into advertising and made big bucks like his former partner Joe Simon and Lee might have written that novel he always wanted to and ended up on Hollywood Squares.

Imagine if none of the 1960s Marvel characters were created.  It truly would be a different world.

[shadroch]

A world without Stan is a world I'll pass on.

[marvelcollector]

55 minutes ago, shadroch said:

A world without Stan is a world I'll pass on.

Nuff said.

[Aman619]

apparently, Reisman was assigned to do a review of "Excelsior."  He misunderstood the assignment as one on Stan Lee, and did a lot of research, and found the pieces that told a very different story about Stan than the usual commonly held ideas that Stan "drew all the comics", and was a master storyteller who created everything at Marvel.  He had a shocking realization, and smelled a best seller.  Most of us have known all the stories, and Stan's exaggerations of his input, and how the Marvel method was basically unfair to the artists, but have long since put it all into perspective.  

So this book is an eye opener to a generation of people who only know Stan as that nice old guy in the cameos, you know, the "Walt Disney" of Marvel.  Frankly I haven't read it, nor most of the other Marvel books. But Im told Reisman is a respected writer...and didnt write a true "hatchet job". I just wish he'd never heard of Stan Lee!  Cause do we need another tell-all expose of Evil Stan?

[the blob]

15 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

apparently, Reisman was assigned to do a review of "Excelsior."  He misunderstood the assignment as one on Stan Lee, and did a lot of research, and found the pieces that told a very different story about Stan than the usual commonly held ideas that Stan "drew all the comics", and was a master storyteller who created everything at Marvel.  He had a shocking realization, and smelled a best seller.  Most of us have known all the stories, and Stan's exaggerations of his input, and how the Marvel method was basically unfair to the artists, but have long since put it all into perspective.  

So this book is an eye opener to a generation of people who only know Stan as that nice old guy in the cameos, you know, the "Walt Disney" of Marvel.  Frankly I haven't read it, nor most of the other Marvel books. But Im told Reisman is a respected writer...and didnt write a true "hatchet job". I just wish he'd never heard of Stan Lee!  Cause do we need another tell-all expose of Evil Stan?

This is something from a Washington Post article:

But the publishing company produced comics through a strange process now known as “the Marvel Method,” whereby, typically, Lee would have a conversation of some kind with his writer/artist to discuss a few ideas. The writer/artist would take that prompt and write the story in visual form by drawing the pages and placing clarifications and dialogue suggestions in the margins. After that, Lee would add the dialogue and narration. He virtually never wrote actual scripts. And tossing around concepts with a writer/artist is the task of an editor, not a writer. Given that the writer/artists — most notably Kirby and Ditko, but also such titans as John Romita, John Buscema, Wally Wood and Don Heck — actually constructed the story, they should be considered the true, primary writers, with Lee doing embellishment (however crucial such embellishment may have been to the work’s success).

I don't understand what the article is getting at. It is trying to take credit away from Lee for story ideas and the actual writing of the comics, but it seems that he was pretty important for that stuff, even if the artists were too. What made Marvels of that era enjoyable vs. DCs were the stories and dialogue and narrator boxes and all that and the art too, sure, though I can't say the art at Marvel was always better. By the late 60s DC had made a lot of progress, but, of course, by then Stan Lee had really stopped writing.

Let's be serious, was Lee all out writing with no assistance 20+ titles a month? Probably not.

Edited March 11, 2021 by the blob

[Aman619]

well. I think his point, and its one that strikes those new to the idea of the Marvel Method, is that if you always knew Stan as the WRITER, you pictured him typing away and artists waiting for the -script to arrive to start working.  Its a fair assumption, right?  writers write, artists draw. So learning how the process actually worked especially as the Marvel Age got going strong, well, its kinda like "wait a gosh darned minute there Stan!"

Of course given the time it was happening, and the low rent and zero respect atmosphere of comics in general, this was the solution Stan came up with to get it all done on time. He was lucky to have such resourceful and talented artists who could -- and would -- take on the plotting. (Some prospective bullpenners refused the extra workload of working for Marvel).  Stan as creative leader at Marvel, and Editor, ran the shop and did a lot of the heavy lifting that created Marvel.  But its true that he didnt do it the way most people imagined it was done. So it's a "scandal".  For me the lowest point in Stan's self promotion was the intros to the Fireside reprint trade paperbacks. No doubt they were written from the point of view from Stan that the public would be most excited about. But sure, If I were one of the artists Ive be po'ed too.  Nobody owned the characters, and as Marvel succeeded, credit was the one thing everyone involved wanted, but it was spoken for already in the effort to build the Marvel brand, led by the "incredible one-man genius". Stan was clearly willing to play the role.  And in my mind, he earned it. Everyone else was doing their piece, (Kirby of course doing 1000s of pieces!) but he alone was steering the ship. 

One interesting thing I've been told that's included in the book was the fact that Kirby against the Marvel "universe" of inter-related characters and crossover stories. Which, as we know, WAS the killer app/idea of Marvel Comics over DC and all the rest. That was Stan's doing.

[Prince Namor]

1 hour ago, the blob said:

This is something from a Washington Post article:

But the publishing company produced comics through a strange process now known as “the Marvel Method,” whereby, typically, Lee would have a conversation of some kind with his writer/artist to discuss a few ideas. The writer/artist would take that prompt and write the story in visual form by drawing the pages and placing clarifications and dialogue suggestions in the margins. After that, Lee would add the dialogue and narration. He virtually never wrote actual scripts. And tossing around concepts with a writer/artist is the task of an editor, not a writer. Given that the writer/artists — most notably Kirby and Ditko, but also such titans as John Romita, John Buscema, Wally Wood and Don Heck — actually constructed the story, they should be considered the true, primary writers, with Lee doing embellishment (however crucial such embellishment may have been to the work’s success).

I don't understand what the article is getting at. It is trying to take credit away from Lee for story ideas and the actual writing of the comics, but it seems that he was pretty important for that stuff, even if the artists were too. What made Marvels of that era enjoyable vs. DCs were the stories and dialogue and narrator boxes and all that and the art too, sure, though I can't say the art at Marvel was always better. By the late 60s DC had made a lot of progress, but, of course, by then Stan Lee had really stopped writing.

Let's be serious, was Lee all out writing with no assistance 20+ titles a month? Probably not.

Because Stan didn't write stories. He did an editor's job. He had a conversation with the artist on what the story would be. That could be his idea, or the artists idea or a combination of both. Then the artist went and wrote the story, breaking it down into pages. The artist deserves credit for writing the actual story.

A synopsis isn't a book. And a story idea isn't even a synopsis. Someone actually has to write the story. At Marvel, that's what the artists did.

The difference in how it worked at DC, was that the editor had that conversation with the writer (and sometimes the artist), then the writer wrote the -script, and then the artist drew from it. Even if the editor had to sometimes change the dialogue of the story (as Stan did for Kirby and Ditko both), the Editor's at DC STILL never took credit for 'writing' the story.

By doing this, Stan was able to make his salary as the Editor AND get paid as the freelance writer, while the artist, who didn't even get plotting credit for the story wasn't paid for anything other than drawing it. This is what made Kirby leave, Ditko leave, Wally Wood leave, Stan Goldberg leave, etc. Stan had his strengths for sure, strengths that were better than anyone else in the business, but there isn't much proof that it's actual 'writing'. 

This is part of the reason Stan had such a hard time in Hollywood. He never had any writing to show anyone. He was an 'idea' man, in a town FULL of 'idea' men. If he actually wrote a -script or a book, something to show people - really that's how most creative types get into movies - then he could've possibly gotten somewhere with it. Instead he had to wait 20 years for (again) someone else to visualize his ideas, this time for the movies.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

 

I’ve gone back and reread Stan’s first story(which you can read here :  https://monomythic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/stan-lee-first-gig-fill-a-couple-of-captain-america-pages/)

it’s a very uninspiring story. Hard to know if it’s because it’s his first, and the creative juices flowed more freely later, or because it lacks the “team approach” set out in posts above this one. I suspect it’s a john Lennon/Paul McCartney deal, where they sparked off of each other and the sum was simply greater than the parts.

does anyone else know of any stories written solely by Stan?  Maybe all of them before the early 60’s Marvel stuff? Anyone have opinions about those?

[Prince Namor]

2 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

I’ve gone back and reread Stan’s first story(which you can read here :  https://monomythic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/stan-lee-first-gig-fill-a-couple-of-captain-america-pages/)

it’s a very uninspiring story. Hard to know if it’s because it’s his first, and the creative juices flowed more freely later, or because it lacks the “team approach” set out in posts above this one. I suspect it’s a john Lennon/Paul McCartney deal, where they sparked off of each other and the sum was simply greater than the parts.

does anyone else know of any stories written solely by Stan?  Maybe all of them before the early 60’s Marvel stuff? Anyone have opinions about those?

Two things to consider when looking at the 'writing' career of Stan Lee:

1) Who he worked for. Stan came into the business as a 17 year old, going to work for an Uncle-in-Law who he mostly was intimidated by (understandably so). Martin Goodman's method of operation was 'rip off and duplicate'. If Superheroes were popular they'd do superheroes, if westerns were popular they'd do westerns, etc. His three biggest hits of the Golden Age were all created outside the Marvel offices and brought TO them - Simon and Kirby's Captain America, Carl Burgos' Human Torch and Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner. 

Stan created 'The Destroyer', a cool looking Nazi battling hero, that didn't make much of an impression at the time. Not a lot of Golden Age 'writing' was considered... 'great'... it was meant to entertain on a low brow level, but the stories by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby seemed to sell and be popular wherever they worked. Goodman cheated Kirby and Simon out of royalties on Captain America and they quickly moved on.

2) Stan's focus through most of the years after the war was humor. Jack's was action and romance. THERE is Marvel's Silver Age m.o. to a tee. Lots of Action and Romance, mixed with a wise guy sense of humor. On his own in the late 40's and 50's, Stan's 'writing' style was right out of a two line joke book. Read any of these humor and romance books of that Atlas period and it gets old very quick. Stan found his first collaborator, who he could sign his own name to the artwork with in Dan DeCarlo. DeCarlo would leave and go on to great acclaim at Archie Comics. 

You can see from some of the examples below, the dialogue is dime store joke book quality, but DeCarlo's art was a stand out. Most of these were signed 'by Stan Lee' or 'by Stan and Dan'. Millie the Model, My Friend Irma, Homer the Happy Ghost, My Girl Pearl... this is what 90% of Lee's output was for 15 years, from 1946 to 1961

Most of the occasional horror that Stan did at the time was the 6 page, standard 'Car breaks down, a woman helps me, I go to her house and find out she's a ghost' twist ending cookie cutter type of material. There's really nothing in this period that would show signs that Stan Lee would write heroic adventures loved the world over.

Until Kirby and Ditko showed up in late 1958.

Captain America's success (selling a Million Copies of the 2nd issue) would continue wherever Kirby and Simon went after leaving Goodman and Lee. They would go on to co-create the Boy Commandos (again breaking the Million Copies mark - DC's 3rd best selling title), the Newsboy Legion (another hit) and the Manhunter (for DC Comics), as well as successfully revamp the Sandman. After serving in World War II, the pair would create more heroic adventure for Harvey Comics, before finding their greatest success in creating the Romance genre for comics. Young Romance and Young Love sold over a million copies a month for the duo and spawned plenty of copycats.

After Atlas (Marvel) restarted Captain America, the pair countered with Fighting American - by the 2nd issue it became a satire of the superhero genre, the first I'm aware of to do this. They ran their own publishing for two years before splitting up and as the Wertham scare was under way, Kirby actually freelanced for Atlas/Marvel - 20 stories from late 1956 to fall of 1957 - writing his own work we know on 'Yellow Claw' and no writer listed for his other work. Primarily though he was working for DC Comics, where he (at least heavily co-)created 'Challengers of the Unknown', a Fantastic Four prototype that featured ideas that would be used to create 3/4ths of the Marvel Universe.

That's when he came back fully to Atlas/Marvel, where things weren't looking so good. Jack ramped it all back up with three #1 issues to hit the stands in September of 1958 (Strange World's #1, Tales to Astonish #1, and Tales of Suspense #1).

Lee, who had stopped signing the DeCarlo 'Millie the Model' work (for unknown reasons), but continued to sign his name all over the place on Al Hartley and Stan Goldberg and Dick Ayers work - didn't sign his name to Kirby and Ditko's early work either... except for the occasional Western that Kirby would draw. He is ATTRIBUTED as the plotter for the Marvel Monster books of this period, with his brother Larry as the scripter - and it's assumed he came up with the colorful names of the monsters - but those stories were pretty much an extension of the work that Kirby was already doing at DC.

So even for the period of 1958 to 1961, based upon what he was signing 'by Stan Lee', his work was mostly cheesy humor and regurgitated westerns.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Prince Namor

[the blob]

13 hours ago, Prince Namor said:

Because Stan didn't write stories. He did an editor's job. He had a conversation with the artist on what the story would be. That could be his idea, or the artists idea or a combination of both. Then the artist went and wrote the story, breaking it down into pages. The artist deserves credit for writing the actual story.

A synopsis isn't a book. And a story idea isn't even a synopsis. Someone actually has to write the story. At Marvel, that's what the artists did.

The difference in how it worked at DC, was that the editor had that conversation with the writer (and sometimes the artist), then the writer wrote the --script, and then the artist drew from it. Even if the editor had to sometimes change the dialogue of the story (as Stan did for Kirby and Ditko both), the Editor's at DC STILL never took credit for 'writing' the story.

By doing this, Stan was able to make his salary as the Editor AND get paid as the freelance writer, while the artist, who didn't even get plotting credit for the story wasn't paid for anything other than drawing it. This is what made Kirby leave, Ditko leave, Wally Wood leave, Stan Goldberg leave, etc. Stan had his strengths for sure, strengths that were better than anyone else in the business, but there isn't much proof that it's actual 'writing'. 

This is part of the reason Stan had such a hard time in Hollywood. He never had any writing to show anyone. He was an 'idea' man, in a town FULL of 'idea' men. If he actually wrote a --script or a book, something to show people - really that's how most creative types get into movies - then he could've possibly gotten somewhere with it. Instead he had to wait 20 years for (again) someone else to visualize his ideas, this time for the movies.

who wrote the punchy dialogue and all that?

[Prince Namor]

2 hours ago, the blob said:

who wrote the punchy dialogue and all that?

Stan did.

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

There’s just so many things that set Marvel apart from the others, but the punchy dialogue blew me away as a kid.  Here I am 50 years later still amazed at the stuff Thing would say to the Human Torch

[Prince Namor]

4 hours ago, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

There’s just so many things that set Marvel apart from the others, but the punchy dialogue blew me away as a kid.  Here I am 50 years later still amazed at the stuff Thing would say to the Human Torch

For sure. I was the same way with Spider-man, though Gerry Conway did a pretty good job at imitating that style, as well. 

I wasn't a fan of Marvel's over pontification at times - but Stan's sense of humor, through his dialogue and his Soapbox or ads, made Marvel so much more enjoyable to read vs DC or anyone else. 

[Prince Namor]

Ok so, I've read A LOT of these Comic History books and spent a great deal of time on this subject, so... I was surprised by a. number of quotes and information available in this book that'd I'd never read before, and I thought I'd share some of them for those too busy (or lazy) to read the book. Some of you won't like it, because it's not always flattering - but... it's just interesting to hear creators talk openly about this time period (to me anyway). 

I'll split them up into individual posts in case anyone wants to discuss an individual one.