BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

There's a Batman 1 first printing (aka "no dot" copy) in HA's current auction. In rare book parlance, they might actually call this not a first printing but, more specifically, a "first printing, first state" due to an "errata" -- because there are so few "no dot" copies that it's virtually certain it was a mistake caught early in the printing process and corrected before too many copies had been printed. But whatever you call them, the dotless copies are clearly the first ones off the press.

I don't know that I would go so far as to call it a house of cards, but I would agree the value of rare first printings (Supe 1, Bat 1, Marvel 1) has remained close to the value of subsequent printings in a way that is almost completely out of keeping with the way such things are treated in other collectible fields. Even, actually, in the way so many modern comic "variants" are valued. And it seems likely, IMV, that some of that is due to collectors who for various reasons don't want people to have an interest in the more rare earlier printings, resulting in a fair amount of "nothing to see here" over the years.

Prior to 1961 it was gospel that a person might read comics prior to puberty but would be expected to dispense with them soon after along with other childish things. Stan unraveled that narrative so that pre-pubescent readers would, as they got older and more sophisticated and started liking girls, would abandon the childish comics and graduate to Marvels, which depicted real adults with real and relatable problems.

Another beat in ASM 38 has always made me want to see the OA and Ditko's description of what's happening: Spidey has defeated the villain and turns to see a smiling mannequin, which irks him so much he punches it. Stan's dialogue has spidey saying the mannequin "reminds me of Ned Leeds". Being this was literally the last time Steve drew Spidey throwing a punch, and that he did so while planning to quit, methinks Steve might've meant it be a parting shot as another person, like maybe somebody with a nickname about his "smilin'"

A look at Spider-man 38 shows the divide between their views. Ditko drew it in late 1965 with no input from Stan. It contains a sequence wherein Peter confronts student protesters who behave like sneering brats and Peter seethes because he'd like to thrash them, later Lee and Romita did a similar sequence in 1968, and Peter is much more sympathetic to the protesters.

A 60s magazine named "Charlie" -- that's part of an article

Reading typical quotes from Stan during this era, you can imagine he's wearing love beads and a peace symbol necklace while "Revolution" plays in the BG

It seems odd that the consigner was a clearly a big fan (enough to go to the Marvel offices where they were given this), but was neither a big enough fan (nor sufficiently curious to investigate) to realize, in 50+ years, that the image was the basis for an image that has appeared countless times on all sorts of common spidey merchandise?

Does Reo dance on the sand?

The OG poster was printed in 1964 and advertised in the comics. That seems to be of the era.

Stan liked the image enough that he had a knitted version of the published poster in his office for many years.

Definitely can be classified as published

This looks like it may have been used (with some repo'd limbs) to make this poster.

Depending on how much you're working backward from a conclusion, Kirby's magic ring boy story means he (and not Lee) created Spider-man, even while the rejection of the magic ring story means Ditko (and not Lee) created Spider-man. It's okay to embrace those contradictions because both of them work backward from the conclusion that Stan Lee had nothing or at lest very little to do with it. The fact that Lee mentioned the ultimately rejected magic ring notion in an initial discussion means he could never have changed his mind to create or co-create what it later became. And Ditko's own recounting that Lee wrote a synopsis must be disregarded as inconsistent with the conclusion that Lee did little to nothing.

You may be in the wrong place with this.

Is there anybody for whom that is not true?

I do not have direct knowledge of Disney's work methods but I've spoken with people who did and I do have direct knowledge of showrunning and Stan's work methods and skills. No analogies are perfect but the Disney and showrunning comparisons do fit on many, if not all, levels. The efforts to overcompensate re Kirby don't change that.

"The truth comes out" sounds like this was some newly found audio recording of Stan twirling his moustache as he confided this to some co-conspirator. This is an interview he gave freely in 1990. He knew he was being interviewed. Just as he knew he was being interviewed when he said things much like this in years before, dating back to the mid-60s, when he bragged on his artists and even downplayed his input at times, just as he sometimes overstated it. A creative team/bullpen/writers room/whathaveyou is almost never binary -- with one doing either everything or nothing. But it seems like people who have never toiled in such environments have immense difficulty grasping that. Don't they at least recall how it was doing creative projects in school or doing live action role play (just as old schoolers played "cops and robbers"), coming up with stories in b.s. sessions? Ideas bounce around and feed off each other and if you're lucky the result of several minds gives you more than the sum of its parts. As the editor, Stan was basically the Walt Disney of Marvel, or like a TV "showrunner" today who happens to have dozens of shows on the air. Sometimes a showrunner will haven written virtually every line of an episode despite some other person's name being on the title page, and sometimes the showrunner will just be there for the first few minutes of pitching and not feel a need to rewrite what the episodic writer hands in. Stan's run as the editor of Marvel couldn't possibly have been as good as it was if he had not been a gifted writer, and the fact that he grew lazy at times doesn't change that. Nor does it change that because he veered between taking too little and too much credit. There is no great hidden truth about how Marvel's 1960s run came about. Stan was an extremely talented guy who oversaw a bunch of extremely talented people, and as time went along and the stuff they made became more successful, everybody's memories got more and more skewed and they all remember their part in the collaboration as being bigger than it was.

Noticed the page count for this thread and thought this book should be here in honor of page 666

Some additional pics. Warning: racist text in the Mickey book

I had the Negro Romance 4 some years ago and foolishly let it go never to see it again for less than 20X what I had sold mine for. Here are a few other notable books if you're looking to flesh out that collection

So it's in the Atlantic.

A passage of time weakens the joke if you're setting up, as Ditko is, in the previous panel, the notion that he could finally rest. If Ditko's trying to say that two weeks later he wakened with Lee-like exuberance when he had a new idea, it's not a joke at all -- plus lousy (and oddly vain) storytelling.

"showrunner" is definitely apt as a description, and there are plenty of showrunners who have lots of shows running concurrently and who give wide latitude to their staffs and episodic writers. But most of those people, just like Stan, still do a lot more than "talk and promote" or "marketing", much as those obsessed with tearing down the legend would like people to believe otherwise by putting out voluminous and numerous threads like this one. The latest theory, about the last panel in the Spider-man annual about how comics are/were created, is typical and so flagrantly biased and grasping it's embarrassing. So.. Ditko draws several pages depicting himself as a beleaguered artist trying to stay calm in the midst of Stan's relentless over-enthusiasm, but then, in the very last panel, must have meant to draw himself showing the same sort of annoying over-enthusiasm he's mocking in Stan? All because the Stan-obsessed people just can't accept the idea (expressed in the panel) that Stan Lee waken up with an idea and was about to disturb Ditko in the middle of the night? All because they just can't abide the idea that Ditko admitted Stan had ideas.