sfcityduck

I see more similarity with 99 pound weakling ads on the back of comics (or even Batman's origin story push-ups) than I do to Spider-Man.

I would not expect Ditko, Lee, or Kirby to admit to plagiarism. Ditko alerted Lee to the Fly similarity because he was accusing Kirby of self-plagiarism. The Fly was a 1959 comic by a more fringey publisher (MLG/Red Circle) and Ditko had worked for S&K was working for the more fringey publishers and probably kept abreast of what was happening..

Because? Kirby has the answer in the 1990 interview - he was smart enough to switch over to commercial illustration which was far more lucrative. Kirby wished he'd changed careers.

Two things: First, that memo was in Joe Simon's file. No reason to believe that Kirby ever knew it existed or read it. He was notoriously uninterested with happened to a story after he was done. I doubt he was reading a memo on a rejected idea. Second, far more likely that Ditko or Lee (or even Sid Jacobson) were ripping off Spider Queen from Fox's Eagle Comics 2 (9/41 - and S&K were done with Fox by then):

Seek? Maybe not. But he received it. As for "need," I've read pretty much all of Kirby's work (early, S&K, post S&K, Marvel, DC, and 80s) and IMHO he benefitted greatly from collaborators.

Ever read Mr. A? That just sounds like Ditko.

You call it "feedback," "suggestions," "revisions," "demands," or whatever word you want. But Kirby clearly said he discussed the plot with Stan and it was either "approved" or Kirby had to "change it, to maybe further the plot." Seem clear to me.

So now the theory is that Kirby was plagiarizing a halloween costume he may or may not have seen seven to four years earlier? Doesn't work for me. Comics are full of plagiarism (or swipes) so Kirby might have been ripping off something else, but I seriously doubt Jack "King" Kirby would have ripped off a Halloween costume. More likely, he would have been ripping off "the Tarantula" when S&K did "the Fly" and that character had a web gun (originally Kirby's design according to Ditko). If Ditko was ripping something off, it was probably Spider Queen's webshooter sequence. In any event, "Spider Man" is a generic name. The "Spider" had been a pulp hero since the 1930s. And other publications and heros pre-dating Marvel's Spider-Man also were doing "spider-characters" besides Spider Queen and Tarantula, like "the Web" and bit characters actually named Spider Man, etc. More than I personally know of I'm sure.

Jack says he was getting either approval or input from Stan. And if it was input, he was acting on that input:

Joe pretty consistently said, and I think Kirby acknowledged, that Joe did scripts, a bit of inking and pencilling, and handled the business end of the S&K partnership in its early days with Kirby doing most pencils. The 1970 quote starts out with "Well, in the case of Marvel" which I read as meaning he's talking about the 1960s Marvel work. That 1970 quote is also internally contradictory. Kirby states that "most of the plots, I handle myself." That's "most" not "all," and then he immediately states contradicting that: "I would discuss it with Stan, I would tell him what I was going to put in it, and it was either approved, or I would change it, you know, to maybe further the plot." So he's saying he did a lot of plots (but not all) himself, but talked with Stan to get his input, and he would on occasion make changes as a result of the input. And then he changes directions again and says: "I’ve always done my own stories. I’ve never done anything else." Kirby contradicted himself quite a lot. That's ok. It happens. But it makes isolating out a sentence or two from its full context a huge mistake. You read the full multi-sentence answer, and the message is that he did discuss plots with Stan but Jack felt he originated most of them.

The Silver Spider idea was Joe Simon's. Kirby took Joe Simon's idea to Marvel. So under your reasoning Joe deserves the credit, not Kirby. Without Joe, it never happens. But then again, without Martin Goodman, the FF never happens either. So is he a co-creator of FF? This is just Butterfly effect theory. What we do know is that Lee, Kirby and Ditko each had much more than a "Butterfly effect" on the creation of Marvel's superhero universe and the success of the company.

Editors of literary works don't write the dialogue. They mainly evaluate and advise. They don't get a writer's credit or a co-creator credit. If Lee really was an "editor" who does "not much at all," then why do you think he deserves a co-creator credit? The reality is that you minimize Lee far too much. When Stan Lee wrote the dialogue on a Marvel comic, he was doing something much more valuable than editing. Even the often biased website that calls itself the "Kirby Museum" had this to say in its Ditko minimizing view of Spider-Man's creation: They are right about that. Following Kirby's lead, they also make comments which minimizes Ditko's contributions, if any they imply, by stating: So does Ditko deserve co-creator status? To be clear: I call the Kirby Museum biased because they make claims that Jack Kirby did NOT, and which are supported by nothing more than wishful thinking and rank speculation. For example, the Kirby Museum claims that Kirby plotted the first three Spiderman stories. Kirby never made that assertion. And that assertion is contrary to how Kirby claims he worked - with basically no plot until he sat down at the drawing board and began visualizing a story - something he did not do for Spiderman. Furthermore, everyone seems to agree that Kirby's basic idea for the first Spiderman story was rejected as too similar to the Fly, so why would Stan and Ditko have gone to Kirby to get plots? It is a view that only makes sense to a "true believer." The Kirby Museum further implies that as late as issue 10 of Amazing Spiderman Kirby's plots were still being used, which again Kirby never claimed and Stan and Ditko rejects.

What was his contribution in your view? And does he deserve co-creator credit for that contribution?

He sure did in your quote: How is "I came up with Spider-Man. My initial concept was practically the same." He only credits Ditko with "refining" his creation. This is even more clear from the 1990 Groth interview: Lee and Ditko both disagree. Ditko hasn't held back. He's rebutted Kirby's dis of him by creating the below diagram of Kirby's original costume design was a redux of Kirby's GA standby style used for Captain America/Sandman/Fighting American of a covered head, open eyes and mouth, boots, shorts, and sometimes a gun.

Where does Kirby make that claim?

Feel free to post the examples! But didn't Larry Lieber get the writer credits on 1962 Human Torch stories?

You don't want to give any credit for participating in the creation of the FF. Jack in 1970 disagreed: By 1986, Kirby's heyday was over. Other younger creators at Marvel, DC, and independents had come to the fore. Jack was around 70, and he took a more cantankerous tone: And by 1990, Kirby was firmly in his 70s, even more cantankerous, and his recollection even faultier:

You say in response to my post of Kirby's margin notes, not dialogue, on a Marvel superhero page (because we're talking here about superheros not monsters): I respond: You then post Kirby siding with me that he wasn't "writing dialogue in the balloons": So where was Kirby supposedly writing all of the dialogue? Roz says the margin notes. But the margin notes I post above don't amount to dialogue. Here's another example: Look at the note immediately above at the bottom of panel 4. That's not dialogue, that's a margin note by Kirby to himself regarding what he wants in the panel. Same with the first line of panel 5. The margin notes for panels 1-3 and 5 do contain suggested sketches of what the gist of the dialogue should be. But, that isn't dialogue. It's not spoken in the character and cadence of Surfer or Doom. The margin note above panel 1 isn't even coherent. The dialogue actually used is light years better than what Kirby "suggests" (and to be clear, I seriously doubt Kirby intended his margin notes to be suggested dialogue - he knew Stan was great at dialogue). So why are you telling me that Kirby wrote all the dialogue? The evidence does not support that assertion. Again, Roz is right: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby each were bringing value to the creation. They should have been billed as "Co-Producers" of the product with the inker and letter given separate credits for their more mechanical work. And for his business or publisher or executive editor role, whatever you want to call it, I see nothing wrong with giving Stan that credit on all books of that time period - even if he was not at all involved in the creative process for books bearing that separate credit.

We are not talking about monster books here. The Groth interview is a bit of a mess, but it also gets taken out of context. The part I am quoting is not about monster books. I have looked for pencilled balloons on superhero OA and I have not seen. I have done the research and the superhero OA cited on this topic is largely not supportive of a Kirby wrote all the dialogue theory. I am happy to post more. But the piece posted above is a very good example that does not support your position. Perhaps you should consider it instead of ignoring it.

Now, it is worth noting that Jack Kirby was given co-credit by Joe Simon for Captain America. Joe did this despite that he alone created the character design (the concept of a patriotic hero was being copied from others), he at least co-scripted the first story, and he did some pencils and inks. Why? Because Joe Simon had an expansive view of what creator credit meant. Frankly, way broader than Jack Kirby's view as applied to him and Stan -- except when Jack wanted to get credit for creating Spiderman (and deny that credit to Ditko) in which case Jack's view of what is enough to entail creator credit became too broad to be taken seriously.

Here's where we disagree: Comics are a unique medium. The story is told in both art and words. Even with a "full --script" by the writer, the artist will still be contributing significantly to the creation of the story by providing the visuals. We all know the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" and, while overblown, it does have truth in the comic book context. Every comic artist is a co-creator to some degree in every story they touch. But so too is the writer of the dialogue that accompanies the pictures. A picture without words can depict a scene, Bernie Krigstein proved that in the early 1950s, but a wordless story can only very very rarely depict characterization better than dialogue. Dialogue tells us much about the background, intelligence, inner feelings, attitudes, and actions of the characters, amongst many other things. Dialogue is essential. Dialogue is what conveys most of the character of the characters - especially for superheroes who wear costumes which cover their facial expressions. Which is why in the movie business the folks who write dialogue are referred to as writers even when those writers were working off of a "full --script" in the form of a book. They call that an "adapted screenplay." That's why Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, & Peter Jackson each have an Academy Award for making a fairly faithful adaptation of someone else's story. The art they brought to the process was taking someone else's dialogue and adapting it. That scripting of disalogue is rightly viewed as the very important role of "writing" in the movie industry, despite that the Director and actors and countless others are responsible over the look and sound of the overall film. Worth noting that many works share the same basic plots. Often one of the key things that distinguishes good implementation of a plot from bad impletmentation is the dialogue. So yeah, even a guy who only writes the dialogue is a writer and is a co-creator of the story told in a comic book. Which gets us to the question of whether Jack Kirby "wrote" the dialogue for the stories he did with Stan Lee. Jack claimed he did in a rather infamous 1990 interview by Gary Groth published in the Comics Journal. It wasn't a good day for Jack or Groth. Groth was trying hard to fan the flames between Kirby and the publishing industry and Kirby was disappointing him with his answers, especially earlier in the interview. Jack was also feeling rather pugnacious, repeatedly telling stories about the physical altercations he had as a kid and boasting that he'd "bent steel." Jack was also suffering from a number of memory lapses and both Groth and Jack's wife Roz had to repeatedly correct him. it's a strange interview. And it led to some of Kirby's most outrageous claims. This was one of them: That claim was so outrageous that Roz felt the need to correct him: But were those margin notes really the "dialogue" for the stories? Nope. They were mostly just layout notes. Certainly evidence of Kirby's very significant contributions to the visuals for the story and its pacing, as well as the contents and plot of the story, but not the actual dialogue. An example from the Kirby Museum website: Kirby's margin notes often read as directions to himself, not Stan, regarding the topic of the story. This is supported by other examples in which the margin notes provide nothing but an explanation of the visuals, not dialogue at all. This is in line with the method Kirby stated in the interview he used when working on the stories. Kirby contradicted himself on whether he had a plot in mind when he started work on a story. At various times he claimed he did develop a plot and that he and Stan had cursory discussions about. At others he claimed he never had a plot before he sat down at the drawing board. Regardless of what you think about that massive contradiction, what does have the ring of truth is that Kirby came up with the story layout and pacing on the fly. He most likely visualized a page, layed out the panels, and then made margin notes to remind himself what to put in those panels. Still, I'm sure they also were a great help in ascertaining what the gist of the dialogue should be. When you contrast the margin notes with the actual dialogue, you see that the dialogue is radically different. The dialogue captures the subjects character, their emotions, and generally expands greatly on the thought in the margin note's sketch. The dialogue is far from verbatim of the margin note. The comic would have been an unreadable mess if the margin note was the dialogue. Not sure how anyone can view this contrast as evidencing mere "editing" and not writing. The evidence is clear and this example proves the dialogue is essential to the story. Personally, I think the solution that Roz favored for assigning credit was the right one. I don't agree with her comment that taking a writing credit is the same as taking "all of the credit" when it comes to a comic book, far from it, but the best solution would have been this: To her credit, Roz did admit that "Every so often he’d [Stan Lee] put down, “Produced by." But she was right it would have been better if used consistently.

The lowest numerical number for the best extant example of that comic is the bottom line for my "high grade." For example, if the best existing copy of a comic is 5.0, then that's high grade.

Department store or toy store comics?

Yeah, we all have regrets. Found one in the wild for $20. Sold it: