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

[lordbyroncomics]

Yeah, some of the 'arguments' to facts here are really bizarre and sound emotional. "Kirby's comic strip wasn't a success! Wahh!" Uh, at least- as far as we know- Jack didn't start a fake phone call and letter writing campaign from his wife to boost interest in his comic strip like Stan did. (Helpfully documented in Alter Ego) 

It's like.. emotional people who get defensive when you do the horrible sin of bringing up Stan Lee facts always say stupid nonsense like "Kirby can't write dialogue!". Well- okay. But he's still doing FOUR ONGOING BOOKS with dozens of ongoing concepts and characters and imagination. They don't want to see that. They just want to do the dialogue thing. It gets predictable. No one is dissing Stan's talents. People are pointing out that Jack Kirby hasn't gotten the due credit. There is no way to argue it.

We *could* do the 'comparison' game between Jack and Stan... but why? Again, it's just about Stan getting undue credit. Nothing more.

Oh, and Bill Everett- who had a Blind daughter- is who brought the blind aspect to Daredevil. The origin of Iron Man- which was plotted by Jack- is very similar to Jack's Green Arrow origin retcon- which, interestingly, is the origin they've used since, even on the popular television series. Jack really does have a wide influence and people still don't realize and recognize it.

[bluechip]

The problem with trying to talk to extreme partisans is that they tend to default to writing "NOTHING" and "ALL" (caps theirs), which should be your first first clue they are extremely partisan, and potentially well nigh full of the "venom" they claim so stridently not to be speaking from.  Try to have a conversation with Kirby Absolutists and you may quickly find it is very difficult to satisfy them:  ("You have to acknowledge Kirby was co-creator!"  "Yes, he was co-creator."  "How dare you?!?!?  He did EVERYTHING!!!) 

I love Kirby's art, but the only creations or co-creations of his that I have ever thought to be transcendant of the form were those he did with Joe Simon and Stan Lee.  

I recognize Lee's limitations, but the creations and co-creations he did which I found to be transcendant of the form include his collaborations with not just Kirby, but also Ditko -- and Don Heck, and Larry Lieber, and Gene Colan, and John Buscema... to name just a few of the many folk whose work with others rarely, if ever, reached the same levels of they all did in the period in which they were overseen by and collaborating with Lee.

People who've actually been in creative sessions with Lee will, overwhelmingly (meaning with very few exceptions), tell you the man was a meteor shower of ideas (great ones, good ones, okay ones, lame ones and some that downright stank) and knew his way around the mythos and the structure of nearly every genre of story. Only those who never knew him, and/or those with an axe to grind, will shriek in all caps things like "Stan did NOTHING", etc).  

Some, perhaps, just don't understand how collaborative the creative process is and how very few -- if any -- ideas in a group-generated IP actually come bursting from the head of just one person in the process, while the others merely watch, mouths agape at the genius they could only ever dream to be.  It just ain't so.  One person says something which sparks a thought in another person, and it goes round and around until the sum of their combined creative energies far exceeds what either, or any in the group, could have done alone.  Sometimes, of course, that same process can remind you of "too many cooks" or the old joke that "a camel is a horse put together by committee."  The person in charge of the process, be their title editor, director, showrunner, or CEO, is usually X-factor that determines whether you have a classic or a dud.  And Lee was the head creative honcho during Marvel's silver age, which is virtually unsurpassed as a creative run.  

(I have recently seen people attempting to portray Walt Disney as a guy who got lucky with his partners, as if Ub Iwerks was involved not just in the creation of Mickey Mouse but everything (wait, make that EVERYTHING) else.  And, as if the company's creative standards didn't, following Disney's death, full suddenly and decisively off a cliff from which it didn't emerge for many years)

Curiosity about who did what is one thing.  But this unbridled "ALL" or "NOTHING" extremism is tiresome and makes all comic nerds appear to be silly people.

And so, too, is any attempt to cherry pick things like an instance wherein one person, or another, wrote or drew a "team" and that meant they, and they alone, created the FF.    All of the characters from the FF have precedents in prior comics.  Long before them was Plastic Man, Invisible Scarlet O'Neill, the Human Torch and many hapless guys who turned into monsters and hated themselves for it.  Stan and Jack together revisited all those tropey characters and made them unique and memorable in a "fantastic" way. 

Did Stan or Jack or Larry create Thor?  He was a Norse God long before any of them, and a comic villain in many issues.  He was also, in "Weird Comics #1" -- a book on which none (I'm sorry, I mean NONE) of those guys worked.

There were numerous "Spider Man" characters before Peter Parker.  One of them appeared in a Centaur comic (which became Timely which became Marvel) in 1938.  And before Ditko created the iconic Spidey suit, there were multiple versions of kids' Halloween costumes in the 1950s.  Take elements from several versions of that costume and photoshop them together and you'd have something which the casual civilian on the street would swear is an image of Peter Parker's alter ego. 

But none of that (Sorry... NONE OF THAT) substantially diminishes what either Lee and Ditko created.

I could go one with many more similar examples but I don't want to, and FFS, neither should I have to. 

If you can acknowledge and agree that collaborations are the melding of minds, not necessarily one person freeloading off another, and if you can agree that people get similar ideas all the time, and many similar ideas have been expressed by some people at some point in mankind's history... then can we stop with the "here's an image of a panel (MY HERO) did which proves that He alone created (INSERT NAME OF SUPERHERO), with no help from (THE DEVIL INCARNATE)"?           

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by bluechip

[lordbyroncomics]

I found this interesting- from the 'According to Kirby' blog of essays. I also don't completely agree- I don't think this dialogue is bad at all for an action story- but the authors quoted here are making a point that Stan has a formula of stating the obvious, for the most part. He didn't do that all the time of course. But he did it a lot. I'd love to do a same month comparison between Stan's dialogue and Jack's dialogue on his first New Gods books. Since Jack sucks so much.

 

“Lee’s input.”

Darrell Epp, The Marvel Method group, 20 May 2019: “ONE gene colan draws a road block. TWO lee forcibly inserts a caption box that says, “That is a road block!” 

Patrick Ford, same discussion: “Not only, ‘It’s a roadblock (sic).’ Also, ‘A barricade thrown across the road.’ Lee does this constantly. More often than any writer I can think of. This was described in the early ’60s by Jerry Bails who wrote that Lee’s Marvel Method writing consisted of Lee describing the action which was already evident to the reader, and making wisecracks. Perhaps the most succinct description of Lee’s writing ever. And done prior to Lee being canonized.

Jerry Bails: Captions must be limited largely to describing the action in the box, and dialogue must consist mainly of wisecracks, both of which can be added directly to the pencilled drawings.

[lordbyroncomics]

3 minutes ago, bluechip said:

The problem with trying to talk to extreme partisans is that they tend to default to writing "NOTHING" and "ALL" (caps theirs), which should be your first first clue they are extremely partisan, and potentially well nigh full of the "venom" they claim so stridently not to be speaking from.  Try to have a conversation with Kirby Absolutists and you may quickly find it is very difficult to satisfy them:  ("You have to acknowledge Kirby was co-creator!"  "Yes, he was co-creator."  "How dare you?!?!?  He did EVERYTHING!!!) 

I love Kirby's art, but the only creations or co-creations of his that I have ever thought to be transcendant of the form were those he did with Joe Simon and Stan Lee.  

I recognize Lee's limitations, but the creations and co-creations he did which I found to be transcendant of the form include his collaborations with not just Kirby, but also Ditko -- and Don Heck, and Larry Lieber, and Gene Colan, and John Buscema... to name just a few of the many folk whose work with others rarely, if ever, reached the same levels of they all did in the period in which they were overseen by and collaborating with Lee.

People who've actually been in creative sessions with Lee will, overwhelmingly (meaning with very few exceptions), tell you the man was a meteor shower of ideas (great ones, good ones, okay ones, lame ones and some that downright stank) and knew his way around the mythos and the structure of nearly every genre of story. Only those who never knew him, and/or those with an axe to grind, will shriek in all caps things like "Stan did NOTHING", etc).  

Some, perhaps, just don't understand how collaborative the creative process is and how very few -- if any -- ideas in a group-generated IP actually come bursting from the head of just one person in the process, while the others merely watch, mouths agape at the genius they could only ever dream to be.  It just ain't so.  One person says something which sparks a thought in another person, and it goes round and around until the sum of their combined creative energies far exceeds what either, or any in the group, could have done alone.  Sometimes, of course, that same process can remind you of "too many cooks" or the old joke that "a camel is a horse put together by committee."  The person in charge of the process, be their title editor, director, showrunner, or CEO, is usually X-factor that determines whether you have a classic or a dud.  And Lee was the head creative honcho during Marvel's silver age, which is virtually unsurpassed as a creative run.  

(I have recently seen people attempting to portray Walt Disney as a guy who got lucky with his partners, as if Ub Iwerks was involved not just in the creation of Mickey Mouse but everything (wait, make that EVERYTHING) else.  And, as if the company's creative standards didn't, following Disney's death, full suddenly and decisively off a cliff from which it didn't emerge for many years)

Curiosity about who did what is one thing.  But this unbridled "ALL" or "NOTHING" extremism is tiresome and makes all comic nerds appear to be silly people.

And so, too, is any attempt to cherry pick things like an instance wherein one person, or another, wrote or drew a "team" and that meant they, and they alone, created the FF.    All of the characters from the FF have precedents in prior comics.  Long before them was Plastic Man, Invisible Scarlet O'Neill, the Human Torch and many hapless guys who turned into monsters and hated themselves for it.  Stan and Jack together revisited all those tropey characters and made them unique and memorable in a "fantastic" way. 

Did Stan or Jack or Larry create Thor?  He was a Norse God long before any of them, and a comic villain in many issues.  He was also, in "Weird Comics #1" -- a book on which none (I'm sorry, I mean NONE) of those guys worked.

There were numerous "Spider Man" characters before Peter Parker.  One of them appeared in a Centaur comic (which became Timely which became Marvel) in 1938.  And before Ditko created the iconic Spidey suit, there were multiple versions of kids' Halloween costumes in the 1950s.  Take elements from several versions of that costume and photoshop them together and you'd have something which the casual civilian on the street would swear is an image of Peter Parker's alter ego. 

But none of that (Sorry... NONE OF THAT) substantially diminishes what either Lee and Ditko created.

I could go one with many more similar examples but I don't want to, and FFS, neither should I have to. 

If you can acknowledge and agree that collaborations are the melding of minds, not necessarily one person freeloading off another, and if you can agree that people get similar ideas all the time, and many similar ideas have been expressed by some people at some point in mankind's history... then can we stop with the "here's an image of a panel (MY HERO) did which proves that He alone created (INSERT NAME OF SUPERHERO), with no help from (THE DEVIL INCARNATE)"?           

 

This is very well said. By the same token, as extremely well written as it is it seems like anyone pointing out things is "all or nothing" or one or the other. I can see why it might seem like that as we have to keep sharing factual evidence and paper trails and a body of work, but... it's not like that on my posts, at least. I don't think Stan is the devil incarnate. I've said many times that Stan is really brilliant in his role and that we wouldn't have Marvel without him. But we wouldn't have Marvel without Kirby either. The best manager in the world couldn't make The Beatles a success if they didn't bring the talent and the ideas. The entire thing here is that Stan has been given too much credit- I don't know how to make it simpler. 

[shadroch]

23 minutes ago, Prince Namor said:

Quickly went bankrupt?

They created some of the biggest selling comics EVER. And they caught Crestwood publications under paying them for the work. 
Their studio was a success in the time they ran it. Not sure where you get the bankrupt idea from. 

Not sure what any of this has to do with how Stan STOLE credit for Jack’s work, but...

What about Stan’s failed newspaper strips and books? At least Jack had successful comics during that time. 

Yeah it sucks to not have a relative who owns the company you work for. 

Doesn’t change Stan stealing credit for what he didn’t do. Marvel eventually agreed after Jack’s death. 

Iron Man’s greatest success came long after Stan Lee. Daredevil’s greatest success came long after Stan Lee. And both involved evolving the characters. It happens. 

Yes, but thankfully they weren’t such attention whores that they had to steal the credit from Jack over it. 
 

None of this changes what we see in the work above.

KIrby didn't start Crestwood. He started Mainline, which lasted about two years and where he actually reprinted a story he had sold to Crestwood.

That is and was outright theft..

The credits on FF read Stan Lee&Jack Kirby.  Other early issues say story by Lee, art by Kirby.  In 1967, the Fantastic Four cartoon says by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Neither one of them made money off it, as far as I know. Growing up reading Stan's Soapbox and the letters pages, I had the impression the non-existent was a lovefest  and the koolest place to work in the world.  How great would it be to work for a guy who sings the praises of just about everyone and loves his job.

When Joe Simon sued Marvel over Captain America, did his former partner stand with him? Nope. He testified for Marvel.  All he ever seemingly cared about was his next paycheck.

[Prince Namor]

39 minutes ago, bluechip said:

The problem with trying to talk to extreme partisans is that they tend to default to writing "NOTHING" and "ALL" (caps theirs), which should be your first first clue they are extremely partisan, and potentially well nigh full of the "venom" they claim so stridently not to be speaking from.  Try to have a conversation with Kirby Absolutists and you may quickly find it is very difficult to satisfy them:  ("You have to acknowledge Kirby was co-creator!"  "Yes, he was co-creator."  "How dare you?!?!?  He did EVERYTHING!!!) 

Nobody here is saying Kirby did everything. 

Quote

I love Kirby's art, but the only creations or co-creations of his that I have ever thought to be transcendant of the form were those he did with Joe Simon and Stan Lee.  

That’s your opinion and your entitled to it. Doesn’t change the fact that Darkseid ended up a major villain in a movie 50 years later. 
 

Or that Jack created 100 characters in 2 years for DC, while Stan dried up pretty much forever. 

Quote

I recognize Lee's limitations, but the creations and co-creations he did which I found to be transcendant of the form include his collaborations with not just Kirby, but also Ditko -- and Don Heck, and Larry Lieber, and Gene Colan, and John Buscema... to name just a few of the many folk whose work with others rarely, if ever, reached the same levels of they all did in the period in which they were overseen by and collaborating with Lee.

What did he create with Buscema? I seem to remember his greatest accomplishments with Roy Thomas...

What did Stan create with Gene Colan? The Falcon. Ok. Captain Marvel. Hmm. Is that it? Weird how Stan’s creativity drys up pretty quick when Kirby isn’t involved. 
 

What did Stan create with Don Heck? Iron Man? Designed by Kirby and reworked to what we know know by Steve Ditko. 

Quote

People who've actually been in creative sessions with Lee will, overwhelmingly (meaning with very few exceptions), tell you the man was a meteor shower of ideas (great ones, good ones, okay ones, lame ones and some that downright stank) and knew his way around the mythos and the structure of nearly every genre of story. Only those who never knew him, and/or those with an axe to grind, will shriek in all caps things like "Stan did NOTHING", etc). 

Let me clarify - prior to the Silver Age Stan did NOTHING that would qualify as a successful comics career that would be seen in a historically important way - whereas Jack did PLENTY. 
 

My use of the word has NOTHING to do with his ability to edit and create in the 60’s or 70’s or beyond or his ability to come up with ideas or concepts. 
 

You can try and distort what I said, but I’m just going to correct you. 

Quote

Some, perhaps, just don't understand how collaborative the creative process is and how very few -- if any -- ideas in a group-generated IP actually come bursting from the head of just one person in the process,

Uh no... that’s pretty much EXACTLY the point I’m making. It DIDN’T all come pouring out of Stan’s head alone - OR Jack’s, but Jack certainly has shown an ability to be far more creative or the course of his ENTIRE career. 

Quote

while the others merely watch, mouths agape at the genius they could only ever dream to be.  It just ain't so.  One person says something which sparks a thought in another person, and it goes round and around until the sum of their combined creative energies far exceeds what either, or any in the group, could have done alone. 

Completely agree. Even in the context of Stan and Jack’s work relationship I completely agree. 

Quote

Sometimes, of course, that same process can remind you of "too many cooks" or the old joke that "a camel is a horse put together by committee."  The person in charge of the process, be their title editor, director, showrunner, or CEO, is usually X-factor that determines whether you have a classic or a dud.  And Lee was the head creative honcho during Marvel's silver age, which is virtually unsurpassed as a creative run.  
 

Again, completely agree. 

Quote

Curiosity about who did what is one thing.  But this unbridled "ALL" or "NOTHING" extremism is tiresome and makes all comic nerds appear to be silly people.

Except... no one here is saying Stan did nothing in the Kirby/Lee work relationship. Not sure why this is your focus because no one here is claiming that. 

Quote

And so, too, is any attempt to cherry pick things like an instance wherein one person, or another, wrote or drew a "team" and that meant they, and they alone, created the FF. 
 

Didn’t say that. DID say it seems weird that Stan would say HE created it all on his own. 

Quote

  All of the characters from the FF have precedents in prior comics.  Long before them was Plastic Man, Invisible Scarlet O'Neill, the Human Torch and many hapless guys who turned into monsters and hated themselves for it.  Stan and Jack together revisited all those tropey characters and made them unique and memorable in a "fantastic" way. 
 

Yep. Agree. 

Quote

Did Stan or Jack or Larry create Thor?  He was a Norse God long before any of them, and a comic villain in many issues.  He was also, in "Weird Comics #1" -- a book on which none (I'm sorry, I mean NONE) of those guys worked.

There were numerous "Spider Man" characters before Peter Parker.  One of them appeared in a Centaur comic (which became Timely which became Marvel) in 1938.  And before Ditko created the iconic Spidey suit, there were multiple versions of kids' Halloween costumes in the 1950s.  Take elements from several versions of that costume and photoshop them together and you'd have something which the casual civilian on the street would swear is an image of Peter Parker's alter ego. 

But none of that (Sorry... NONE OF THAT) substantially diminishes what either Lee and Ditko created.

I could go one with many more similar examples but I don't want to, and FFS, neither should I have to. 

If you can acknowledge and agree that collaborations are the melding of minds, not necessarily one person freeloading off another, and if you can agree that people get similar ideas all the time, and many similar ideas have been expressed by some people at some point in mankind's history... then can we stop with the "here's an image of a panel (MY HERO) did which proves that He alone created (INSERT NAME OF SUPERHERO), with no help from (THE DEVIL INCARNATE)"?           

 

Where was this argument when Stan was hogging all the credit and he was saying it was him who did it all?

Did you read his deposition statements in the Kirby case?

I’ll summerize: “I, Stan Lee, came up with all of the characters and concepts and stories and then assigned the artist I thought would work the best with it.”

Edited April 6, 2021 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

5 minutes ago, shadroch said:

KIrby didn't start Crestwood. He started Mainline, which lasted about two years and where he actually reprinted a story he had sold to Crestwood.

No. Mainline created work for Crestwood. He reused a story he did for them for someone else and they refused to pay for it. In the course of investigation it was found they had under paid Simon and Kirby $130,000. That’s about 1 and a quarter Million in today’s dollars. 

5 minutes ago, shadroch said:

That is and was outright theft..

The credits on FF read Stan Lee&Jack Kirby.  Other early issues say story by Lee, art by Kirby.  In 1967, the Fantastic Four cartoon says by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Neither one of them made money off it, as far as I know. Growing up reading Stan's Soapbox and the letters pages, I had the impression the non-existent was a lovefest  and the koolest place to work in the world.  How great would it be to work for a guy who sings the praises of just about everyone and loves his job.

Yeah. Why wouldn’t he? They do most of the work putting the story together and he gets paid for writing. I’d love those guys too. 
 

Then he spent decades saying HE did it all. 

5 minutes ago, shadroch said:

When Joe Simon sued Marvel over Captain America, did his former partner stand with him? Nope. He testified for Marvel.  All he ever seemingly cared about was his next paycheck.

Sure. And Stan looked out for all of them in the end. Yeah, ok. 

[kav]

I've never said kirby didnt plot or wasnt awesome.  My singular point is Stan wrote the dialogue-that's it.  

[lordbyroncomics]

Men, all of this is leading to the inevitable here: are we going to form a Comics Club or not??! 

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

Cant tell if I should send fan letters or hate mail.. 

[lordbyroncomics]

26 minutes ago, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Cant tell if I should send fan letters or hate mail.. 

send fan-fiction. it'll make you seem a lot more creative and tormented with girls

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

1 minute ago, wisbyron said:

send fan-fiction. it'll make you seem a lot more creative and tormented with girls

So instead of Dear Abby do a Dear Stan?

[lordbyroncomics]

30 minutes ago, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

So instead of Dear Abby do a Dear Stan?

My friend, you may be on to something..
 

 

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

7 minutes ago, wisbyron said:

My friend, you may be on to something..
 

 

Typing one up now.. 

[kav]

13 minutes ago, wisbyron said:

My friend, you may be on something..

FTFY

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

Just now, kav said:

14 minutes ago, wisbyron said:

My friend, you may be on something..

FTFY

[lordbyroncomics]

Dear Stan,

My marriage is falling apart. Please, I implore you- help!

Signed, Desperate in Downtown~

 

"Hey there, True Believer!

Awww, who says this isn't the age of real frantic fidelity problems in the Marvel Age of marriage?? Hey, it beats being hitched to Irving Forbush!

Just know your barnstormin' bullpen is on the case! If ya really wanna save that marriage Herbie, you'll buy a copy of the latest and greatest nutty mag from the mixed up and harried House of Ideas: Stan puts more captions on still photos!! Only married members of the mighty marvel marching movers can show the extent of their dutiful devotion by picking up this latest and greatest and bestest and boldest perverted periodical! And you think you've got problems! I think I should get an oscar for the cameo! Item! Didja' know there's a Welcome Back, Kotter comic?! Neither did I! Look for my upcoming book 'Grand Nephews of Origins' wherever Marvel is sold, pilgrim! 'Nuff Said! Excelsior!"

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

7 minutes ago, wisbyron said:

Dear Stan,

My marriage is falling apart. Please, I implore you- help!

Signed, Desperate in Downtown~

 

"Hey there, True Believer!

Awww, who says this isn't the age of real frantic fidelity problems in the Marvel Age of marriage?? Hey, it beats being hitched to Irving Forbush!

Just know your barnstormin' bullpen is on the case! If ya really wanna save that marriage Herbie, you'll buy a copy of the latest and greatest nutty mag from the mixed up and harried House of Ideas: Stan puts more captions on still photos!! Only married members of the mighty marvel marching movers can show the extent of their dutiful devotion by picking up this latest and greatest and bestest and boldest perverted periodical! And you think you've got problems! I think I should get an oscar for the cameo! Item! Didja' know there's a Welcome Back, Kotter comic?! Neither did I! Look for my upcoming book 'Grand Nephews of Origins' wherever Marvel is sold, pilgrim! 'Nuff Said! Excelsior!"

First.. 

But you would more likely just get this as a reply. 

[lordbyroncomics]

16 minutes ago, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

First.. 

But you would more likely just get this as a reply. 

holy s#*t, I don't know what to say! This is the happiest day all week (so far). Thanks Amigo!

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

1 minute ago, wisbyron said:

holy s#*t, I don't know what to say! This is the happiest day all week (so far). Thanks Amigo!