BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

"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.

I have also wondered about the lack of added interest in color pieces and even a preference for B&W. I find pieces created to be published in black and white with lots of shading, etc, are sometimes more appealing to me than the ones created to be presented in color. Sometimes the ones without color have enough blacks and greys that they look just as appealing in B&W. But much more often, if the drawing is a busy image with thin lines and little or no shading, it feels, to me incomplete. I clicked on a few examples I had in files that felt to me as good in BW as in color. Some have lots of shading and some not as much (and I realized afterwards the latter examples were printed either with all or mostly one solid color

The fact that the cover calls it a "guest appearance" means they were presenting it as a cross-over

There are also numerous pics showing loose copies laying on desks and stacked on shelves

Not a fan of encouraging the disassembly of books, but when the pages are loose and one of them happens to be the thing that mostly makes it valuable it makes beaucoup sense to slab it.

Uncut puzzle sheet from the company files/library

As I understand it, loose copies of books were kept on hand in the Marvel offices but tended to disappear,but that they also had bound volumes which also disappeared but not quite as often. This, according to a one-time Marvel employee, was purportedly one such volume from Marvel's offices

I heard he also skewers innocent babies when in his cups.

Hitler rose to power in Germany with less than 40% of voter support. The sad truth is that at any given point in history in any given country there was/is/will be about a third of the population that would like to do away with democracy and live in an autocracy wherein they believe they would be in a favored group.

I got it. Every slam of Stan is the unvarnished truth, even if the slams contradict each other. Every word of support for Stan is the word of a hack or a liar, or someone who just has it wrong. Sometimes the people who say good things have also said bad things. You must disregard all the good things they said and heed only the criticisms. Of all the possible motives behind every action taken by the people Stan reported to, or those who worked with him, you should presume they did each and every thing because they loathed him. Moby cut the leg off Ahab. I don't know what Stan did to this guy. But the depths of his obsession is world-class.

So, if someone says the Marvel method is bad because it leaves it to the artists who, without a detailed -script, will give us "infantile" and "futile action" we should agree, so long as the intent behind that assessment is to prove that Stan is bad. And if someone says the Marvel Method is good because it proves that artists do it all and therefore Stan is bad, then that is also true. All statements and opinions are correct if they contain the key argument that "this proves Stan is bad"

In the rare book world the "no dot" would be called the "first printing, first state" and "with errata"

There was a story in a DC war comic from the same time period, and a look back at the two stories helps delineate the difference between Marvel and DC at the time. Although the stories were hugely similar, both ending with blood transfusions, the DC story's bigot was a cartoon who looked and behaved like an orc, was a terrible soldier and so stupid he didn't even realize black people have red blood. Marvel's bigot was an intelligent guy who was even heroic at points and you'd like him if you never knew he was a bigot. Bigots like the DC character were not unheard of in real life in the 60s (and sadly they've become more emboldened recently after moving into the shadows for a while), but the Marvel character was far more nuanced.

Seeing the picture here I realized I had spoken with him in person a few times as well, and didn't realize it was the same guy I'd spoken with on the phone. Very jovial guy.

Spoke with him on the phone a few times and had pleasant conversations each time. Seemed like a nice guy