Marvel comic art with Stan Lee handwritten -script notes 0

[comicwiz]

Just wondering, what are the earliest comic art pages out there that show the "Marvel Method" with Stan Lee's handwritten scripts/notes on the border/margins, or even revealed after a stat peeled off? Do pages with his handwritten notes experience any value enhancement? 

[J.Sid]

Are those Stan's notes in the margins? Or Jack's?

I always assumed Jack put them there before Stan rescripted the dialogue exchanges.

[lobrac]

Marvel Method, the later years...

[Sean I]

1 hour ago, J.Sid said:

Are those Stan's notes in the margins? Or Jack's?

I always assumed Jack put them there before Stan rescripted the dialogue exchanges.

In the new True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee book there are quotes from both of them related to the margin notes: 
 

Stan: “Y’know, it’s funny,” he says. “Historians always write about Jack’s notes. They never write about the notes that I put in, because I’d always erase them once the strip was done.”

Jack: “Stan Lee wouldn’t let me fill in the balloons. Stan Lee wouldn’t let me put in the dialogue. But I wrote the entire story under the panels,” he said, referring to his narrative margin notes. “I never explained the story to Stan Lee. I wrote the story under each panel so that when he wrote that dialogue, the story was already there. In other words, he didn’t know what the story was about and he didn’t care, because he was busy being an editor.”

[J.Sid]

 

He would go back and spend time erasing his own notes in the margins? Why bother? They're in the margins, right?

But he would not erase Jack's notes?

When does he do this? After the pages are inked and lettered? 

Weird.

 

[bluechip]

Stan's handwriting is very distinctive and easy to spot once you know it.  His notes can be found in the margins and on the backs of many silver age art boards. 

Kirby's handwriting is also distinctive and easy to spot.  Same with Romita Sr, Don Heck, Buscema, et al.  Once you clarify it's their handwriting on one piece, you can pretty much spot it on another.  Stan's handwriting was apparently the least legible.

Much handwriting in the margins ended up getting erased and some was cut off when they trimmed down the boards.

A lot can be gleaned from reading the notes. 

But margin notes alone are unlikely to reveal with any certainty who suggested which pieces of action or sample lines of dialogue in whatever conference or story session may have predated the art itself.  Neither can outlines or even scripts, for that matter.  Everything was a team effort to one extent or another. 

[glendgold]

38 minutes ago, bluechip said:

Stan's handwriting is very distinctive and easy to spot once you know it.  His notes can be found in the margins and on the backs of many silver age art boards. 

Kirby's handwriting is also distinctive and easy to spot.  Same with Romita Sr, Don Heck, Buscema, et al.  Once you clarify it's their handwriting on one piece, you can pretty much spot it on another.  Stan's handwriting was apparently the least legible.

Much handwriting in the margins ended up getting erased and some was cut off when they trimmed down the boards.

A lot can be gleaned from reading the notes. 

But margin notes alone are unlikely to reveal with any certainty who suggested which pieces of action or sample lines of dialogue in whatever conference or story session may have predated the art itself.  Neither can outlines or even scripts, for that matter.  Everything was a team effort to one extent or another. 

Nicely said.

There's a fairly traceable progression with Stan and Jack (with an asterisk): if you start with the earliest silver age superhero stuff, you'll see two kinds of Stan's notes in the margins - brief phrases describing action in a panel, and production notes that can be more extensive, asking for corrections.  A few times there are stick figures he draws for editorial suggestions.  Later, around 1965, Kirby's margin notes started appearing - it looks like he might have begun doing that when he was doing layouts, to explain what was going on, and then migrated that to his full pencil work.  Stan's notes continue to appear, but they're almost 100% production-oriented.  (This is for Lee/Kirby stuff -- I'm unfamiliar with Lee/Romita and other collaborations.)

The asterisk is word balloons. I've seen both Stan and Jack's handwriting in word balloons in pre-hero and western books, but what that means about authorship is up for grabs. Later, Jack's handwriting never appears in word ballons, and Stan's frequently does. I can't think of having seen Larry Lieber's handwriting anywhere.

No early pages really suggest the Marvel method versus a full -script, but I've sometimes wondered if Stan's brief description back then of what was going on in a given panel reflects a conversation he had when Jack was dropping off the pages.  Maybe?  I'd say Kirby's later extensive margin notes suggest that he was authoring the bejeesus out of those stories by then, and Marvel was methoding up a storm. 

This is my favorite piece of Stan's margin notes - you see all that Artie Simek writing on this page?  Stan's handwriting is in blue all over this page. When Gene turned in the story, Stan had genuinely no idea what he was looking at, and the notes reflect his exasperation. 

 

[glendgold]

There are a lot of reasons to hope FF 1 pages show up - geekily, I'm in it for the margin notes. I am of the opinion that Jack wrote -- and dialogued -- the origin sequence as part of a presentation to Martin Goodman (along with the pin ups that appeared in later issues), and then Stan wrote the opening afterward. This is based on the narration in that flash-back sequence shifting from past to present tense a couple of times. I think Kirby wrote it in present tense and then Stan went in and changed it. This theory is based mostly on coffee and having too much time on my hands.  I bet the margin notes for that sequence will have Stan explaining the cuts he made. Because the theory includes him cutting one or two pages out of the flashback. 

[bluechip]

18 minutes ago, glendgold said:

Nicely said.

There's a fairly traceable progression with Stan and Jack (with an asterisk): if you start with the earliest silver age superhero stuff, you'll see two kinds of Stan's notes in the margins - brief phrases describing action in a panel, and production notes that can be more extensive, asking for corrections.  A few times there are stick figures he draws for editorial suggestions.  Later, around 1965, Kirby's margin notes started appearing - it looks like he might have begun doing that when he was doing layouts, to explain what was going on, and then migrated that to his full pencil work.  Stan's notes continue to appear, but they're almost 100% production-oriented.  (This is for Lee/Kirby stuff -- I'm unfamiliar with Lee/Romita and other collaborations.)

The asterisk is word balloons. I've seen both Stan and Jack's handwriting in word balloons in pre-hero and western books, but what that means about authorship is up for grabs. Later, Jack's handwriting never appears in word ballons, and Stan's frequently does. I can't think of having seen Larry Lieber's handwriting anywhere.

No early pages really suggest the Marvel method versus a full ---script, but I've sometimes wondered if Stan's brief description back then of what was going on in a given panel reflects a conversation he had when Jack was dropping off the pages.  Maybe?  I'd say Kirby's later extensive margin notes suggest that he was authoring the bejeesus out of those stories by then, and Marvel was methoding up a storm. 

This is my favorite piece of Stan's margin notes - you see all that Artie Simek writing on this page?  Stan's handwriting is in blue all over this page. When Gene turned in the story, Stan had genuinely no idea what he was looking at, and the notes reflect his exasperation. 

 

That splash blurb is hilarious.   When I was a kid I wondered why, sometimes, the captions would seem to make fun of how long a sequence was taking, saying "before you start wondering if you mistakenly picked up a copy of 'Tom Brown's School Days, don't worry, there's web-slinging action coming up!"   Later, I realized it was Lee himself getting impatient.

 

Edited April 28, 2021 by bluechip

[glendgold]

Just now, bluechip said:

That's hilarious.   When I was a kid I wondered why, sometimes, the captions would seem to make fun of how long a sequence was taking, saying "before you start wondering if you mistakenly picked up a copy of 'Tom Brown's School Days, don't worry, there's web-slinging action coming up!"  

 

Gene was famous for not reading the scripts he was illustrating all the way through. He'd read enough to get started, draw a bit, go back and read more -script, draw more, etc.  This is why so many of his books end with 47-panel pages.  (I wrote the second-to-last story he drew, and that's exactly what happened, which kind of delighted me.)  Stan sort of got around this by not giving him notes -- instead, they had verbal conferences that Gene recorded on a reel-to-reel.  But Gene would only play back a little at a time, then go nuts drawing.  Thus: stuff like Cap 130, which is completely bonkers. (And no, those tapes didn't survive - I wish they had.)

 

G

[DeadpoolJr.]

5 hours ago, glendgold said:

Gene was famous for not reading the scripts he was illustrating all the way through. He'd read enough to get started, draw a bit, go back and read more --script, draw more, etc.  This is why so many of his books end with 47-panel pages.  (I wrote the second-to-last story he drew, and that's exactly what happened, which kind of delighted me.)  Stan sort of got around this by not giving him notes -- instead, they had verbal conferences that Gene recorded on a reel-to-reel.  But Gene would only play back a little at a time, then go nuts drawing.  Thus: stuff like Cap 130, which is completely bonkers. (And no, those tapes didn't survive - I wish they had.)

 

G

This is a great tidbit of comic history, and really shows how different the artists were. Not just in their styles but also what their working habits were and approached illustrating the stories.

[comicwiz]

6 hours ago, bluechip said:

Stan's handwriting is very distinctive and easy to spot once you know it.  His notes can be found in the margins and on the backs of many silver age art boards. 

Kirby's handwriting is also distinctive and easy to spot.  Same with Romita Sr, Don Heck, Buscema, et al.  Once you clarify it's their handwriting on one piece, you can pretty much spot it on another.  Stan's handwriting was apparently the least legible.

Much handwriting in the margins ended up getting erased and some was cut off when they trimmed down the boards.

A lot can be gleaned from reading the notes. 

But margin notes alone are unlikely to reveal with any certainty who suggested which pieces of action or sample lines of dialogue in whatever conference or story session may have predated the art itself.  Neither can outlines or even scripts, for that matter.  Everything was a team effort to one extent or another. 

I have two examples, non-superhero, but one actually gives story/layout direction and ------script over 3 pages, the other is straight caption ------script that was written on an area of the page that was covered with a stat (I only noticed it the other day when the stat peeled off while scanning the page). When you read the ------script/caption, you can practically hear Stan Lee's voice. It's him, no question, and the page is not only credited to him, but signed by him as well. It's also from Dec 1960 based on the CCA approved rubber stamp on the back, which means the page was worked on earlier, and even if going by the approved date, is nearly an entire year before FF #1 was published. So I was really more curious about pages where Stan wrote in notes showing the method he popularized, not necessarily for any specific artist and what the earliest one would be. And whether in anyone's experience, such pages experience any value enhancement. I know for instance his signature would add value to a page, and people have a pretty standard way of assigning value in those instances, but wasn't sure if the same would occur with his handwritten notes. 

Edited April 28, 2021 by comicwiz

[glendgold]

3 hours ago, comicwiz said:

I have two examples, non-superhero, but one actually gives story/layout direction and -------script over 3 pages, the other is straight caption -------script that was written on an area of the page that was covered with a stat (I only noticed it the other day when the stat peeled off while scanning the page). When you read the -------script/caption, you can practically hear Stan Lee's voice. It's him, no question, and the page is not only credited to him, but signed by him as well. It's also from Dec 1960 based on the CCA approved rubber stamp on the back, which means the page was worked on earlier, and even if going by the approved date, is nearly an entire year before FF #1 was published. So I was really more curious about pages where Stan wrote in notes showing the method he popularized, not necessarily for any specific artist and what the earliest one would be. And whether in anyone's experience, such pages experience any value enhancement. I know for instance his signature would add value to a page, and people have a pretty standard way of assigning value in those instances, but wasn't sure if the same would occur with his handwritten notes. 

Can you post these examples? They sound fascinating. And if I understand what you were looking for, I'd say I always assumed that Stan didn't write in notes when it was Marvel Method - that there was a verbal story conference, the artist drew it, and then Stan's contribution would be to write the narration directly in the dialogue balloons; no notes necessary.  Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong.

I reviewed that Reisman book for the WaPo, and really enjoyed it. I think for, uh, dedicated folks like ourselves its analysis of what Stan actually did doesn't turn up much new information, but it does get all the evidence that's been scattered around in between two covers, so that's useful.

[bluechip]

12 hours ago, glendgold said:

There are a lot of reasons to hope FF 1 pages show up - geekily, I'm in it for the margin notes. I am of the opinion that Jack wrote -- and dialogued -- the origin sequence as part of a presentation to Martin Goodman (along with the pin ups that appeared in later issues), and then Stan wrote the opening afterward. This is based on the narration in that flash-back sequence shifting from past to present tense a couple of times. I think Kirby wrote it in present tense and then Stan went in and changed it. This theory is based mostly on coffee and having too much time on my hands.  I bet the margin notes for that sequence will have Stan explaining the cuts he made. Because the theory includes him cutting one or two pages out of the flashback. 

AIUI (inventing a new acronym for "as I understand it") the origin pages for FF1 do exist and were obtained by a collector who bought them as pages from FF Annual 1.  Reportedly some figures were redrawn for that issue  directly over the original artwork (!).   

As for the theory, I tend to favor your conclusion that it's based on too much coffee.

That said, I expect it to become the new Great Truth amongst the most ardent Kirby acolytes -- to whom Kirby is not just King but God and Stan is Satan.  

Upon further examination your theory quickly becomes mind-boggling.  Did the FF spring whole cloth from Kirby's head, like (whomever it was; I can't recall) from Zeus?   And if so how come Jack never bothered to say he'd just written and illustrated an origin story with no input whatsoever?  Shirley, it should have occurred to Him to say so sometime during his later protestations about His creative input?   Is it possible he did that... and then forgot?!  And if he was capable of forgetting something that big and which he cared about that much, what else might he have forgotten?  Such us... that he'd had a conversation with somebody about the story, or had even read an outline.   

The most fundamentalist Kirbyists will have no trouble reconciling those contradictions, at least in their minds.  (And -- of course -- in massive posts on message boards)

    

 

[glendgold]

43 minutes ago, bluechip said:

AIUI (inventing a new acronym for "as I understand it") the origin pages for FF1 do exist and were obtained by a collector who bought them as pages from FF Annual 1.  Reportedly some figures were redrawn for that issue  directly over the original artwork (!).   

As for the theory, I tend to favor your conclusion that it's based on too much coffee.

That said, I expect it to become the new Great Truth amongst the most ardent Kirby acolytes -- to whom Kirby is not just King but God and Stan is Satan.  

Upon further examination your theory quickly becomes mind-boggling.  Did the FF spring whole cloth from Kirby's head, like (whomever it was; I can't recall) from Zeus?   And if so how come Jack never bothered to say he'd just written and illustrated an origin story with no input whatsoever?  Shirley, it should have occurred to Him to say so sometime during his later protestations about His creative input?   Is it possible he did that... and then forgot?!  And if he was capable of forgetting something that big and which he cared about that much, what else might he have forgotten?  Such us... that he'd had a conversation with somebody about the story, or had even read an outline.   

The most fundamentalist Kirbyists will have no trouble reconciling those contradictions, at least in their minds.  (And -- of course -- in massive posts on message boards)

    

 

Yeah, that's not where I was going with it at all.  I have a friend who is very good at teasing out threads of who-did-what, and as he's an artist and writer himself, he made a point that folks who haven't done a lot of artistic collaboration tend to be way more absolutist than folks who have.  When two people work together, there's a third artist in the room, some kind of angel that make the finished work have an integrity it wouldn't otherwise have.  I recognize the impossibility of parsing the nuances, even if you had a camera and tape recorder going at the time it was all getting worked out. 

Anyway, this came up because of something Tom Brevoort was examining, and it spells out a possible way FF 1 might have been composed:

https://tombrevoort.com/2020/05/24/lee-kirby-more-thoughts-on-fantastic-four-1/

[Grant Turner]

Here’s an example of Stan’s handwriting from Avengers 9. It’s kind of  hard to decipher (I think it says “Not Muscular- one of Don’s biggest faults” and is probably a note to the inker)

and an example of Jack’s notes from layouts he did on Tales of Suspense 77 (much easier to read and more focused on story)

[bluechip]

11 minutes ago, glendgold said:

Yeah, that's not where I was going with it at all.  I have a friend who is very good at teasing out threads of who-did-what, and as he's an artist and writer himself, he made a point that folks who haven't done a lot of artistic collaboration tend to be way more absolutist than folks who have.  When two people work together, there's a third artist in the room, some kind of angel that make the finished work have an integrity it wouldn't otherwise have.  I recognize the impossibility of parsing the nuances, even if you had a camera and tape recorder going at the time it was all getting worked out. 

Anyway, this came up because of something Tom Brevoort was examining, and it spells out a possible way FF 1 might have been composed:

https://tombrevoort.com/2020/05/24/lee-kirby-more-thoughts-on-fantastic-four-1/

I didn't mean to imply that you were going that way with the theory.   I just imagined Kirby Extremists glomming onto it and that got me thinking about how they might reconcile anything that didn't add up the way they wanted.

I like the concept of the Third Angel in the room.  Makes me wanna steal it as my own observation.   Instead I will say it's a Third Creative Spirit in the room.  Yeah, that works.  It's mine now.

  

[DeadpoolJr.]

For anyone interested, when the Hollywood Treasures TV show was on by Profiles in History, they were able to get Stan to look at an early issue of FF original art. He talks about the margin notes and repeats some of what has been talked about here about how he erased his notes but didn't say why. Interestingly he also said the margin notes were always Kirby (possibly  meaning that it's because he almost always erased his own so you'll maybe only see Kirby's writing?) but also points out ones that were his. Why those weren't erased isn't said either. 

 

 

[comicwiz]

6 hours ago, glendgold said:

And if I understand what you were looking for, I'd say I always assumed that Stan didn't write in notes when it was Marvel Method - that there was a verbal story conference, the artist drew it, and then Stan's contribution would be to write the narration directly in the dialogue balloons; no notes necessary.  Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong.

You know, I guess that is probably a good point to raise as this thread progresses. I assumed that at a certain point in Stan's renditions of his input/involvement in the story creation phase, that the notes/dialogue and direction on layout would have reinforced his position that there was more involved than just verbally telling the artist what to draw, they went away, did it, and his involvement ended there. Particularly in some of the more hairy situations where it was contended that Stan did nothing to deserve sole credit. Those notes therefore were as much a part of the Marvel method, especially in situation where it went into description how the page should be drawn, and/or in directing the flow of storytelling. I don't think either way is wrong to be honest, I think it just proves that he did more than just verbally explain the story, and we may have really developed our understanding around how that interaction occurred with artists like Kirby, but not with the numerous other artists or projects during his tenure at Marvel, and this has been sort of a learning experience for myself as I'm starting to gain a sense this was all done in an ad hoc manner.

Edited April 28, 2021 by comicwiz

[zhamlau]

I think in my DB i have a couple of examples, this is the only one i can find with a 1 minute look