Dr. Haydn

Ditko was born in November 1927. I wonder if he read this?

Kirby and Ditko were the batter, Lee was the frosting?

We have seen Kirby’s handwriting in the word balloons in some of the 1962 superhero stories (Ant-man, Thor, and the Human Torch solo stories).

This kind of proves the point that the artists were the pilots of the Marvel juggernaut. When Kirby and Ditko (and later, Romita and others) were on their game, the stories were (arguably) better than anything else out there at the time. Lee couldn't create depth on his own--he could only enhance what the artists brought him. There's one of those moments coming up soon in Avengers (issue 7, I think?), when Rick Jones puts on Bucky's costume and shows himself to Captain America. Cap's extreme reaction in this powerful scene was already present in Jack's pencils. Thankfully, Stan didn't try to dilute the moment with his customary levity, and to my eyes, the scene works beautifully as Jack choreographed it: a rare serious moment that transcends what the stories of the Comics Code era generally attempted.

Thomas had a brief tryout on Millie the Model and scripted an Iron Man story in 1965. He began his X-men and Avengers runs in 1966. Stan was able to cut back from about 10 books a month (assuming he was truly dialoguing all of them) to 5 or 6 books a month.

I get the sense that Stan took his job a bit more seriously once Marvel began to take off in the mid-60s. His dialog was much snappier from about 1966 onward than we’ve seen so far in this thread.

"Stan actually used the largest "credit box" I ever saw anywhere. It took up a quarter of the splash sometimes. He always seemed to make sure everybody got noticed." Yes, they were pretty large. Question is: is the information in them accurate or misleading?

It starts badly with "Neil" Kirby and goes downhill from there.

Of the people involved, we know that Kirby had Halloween-age children in 1954 (Susan was almost 9, Neal was 6). Neal, as we know, is still around--has anyone asked him about the Ben Cooper costume?

And who could forget the Schemer? By the way, the Prowler story included John Romita Jr’s first comic book credit (for suggesting the name to his dad).

I don’t think anyone has suggested that Kirby’s AF 15 cover was a presentation piece before, but I like the idea.

Hardly different from a late 1960s FF.

...albeit a proofreader who missed a lot of errors!

I like what Jack Kirby said in the Comics Journal interview. "Stan was an editor." Yes, Stan Lee made a contribution to the finished product--many would say a positive one. But it was not a creative contribution: it was an editorial one. That is, he revised and refined the stories after the conceptual and creative work was largely complete.

And one could argue that the Thing was based on the "Monster of the Month" characters for Marvel ca. 1960. His characterization, granted, was rather unique for the time.

This demonstrates one thing: Kirby acknowledged his source material, even if no one else does.

And of course, Marvel's publication record debunks the 8 titles a month story from about 1960 onward...

Management's gotta manage. It's apparent that Goodman largely ignored the comics division. However, every three years or so, he might have poked his head in, made a couple of unwise demands to show who was the boss (e.g., the moratorium on continued stories in mid-1969--that sure backfired!), and then went back to his men's sweat magazines and the like, where the real money was.

Bought this in reprint form in 1975. Particularly resonant now.

I find it hard to tell how hands-on Goodman was with the comics division (since it seems he kept trying to shut it down around this time), but I could imagine a scenario where he requested superheroes from his editor in 1961 based on DC's success, got the FF, which (despite its relative sales success) didn't fit the bill for him, and tried again in mid-1963 ("and get it RIGHT this time, Lee!"), hence we get the Avengers. The Avengers debuted the same month as the X-men, which reminds me of another theory I've read: that Daredevil was supposed to be the other summer debut, alongside X-men, but Bill Everett couldn't meet the deadline, so Stan and Jack rushed the Avengers into production to fill the slot. (The timeline for this theory has some problems, but I suppose we'll talk about it when we get to early 1964.)

I suspect that the Avengers was a lot closer to what Goodman was hoping for in 1961: a derivative, frothy team book. Instead, mainly through Jack's initiative, he got the FF--something almost unprecedented in superhero comics.

Still, it's pretty easy to come up with a book that puts all of your star characters together to form a team, once someone else has created the characters first. The Avengers, like Justice League over at DC, features the company's second-line characters (at the time). They even had Rick Jones as a less annoying version of Snapper Carr.

Early Roy Thomas (ca. 1966 on Avengers and X-men) reads a lot like Stan Lee dialogue. By 1968-69 (later Avengers and X-men), his distinct voice begins to come through--far wordier and "literate" (pretentious) than Stan.

Granted, it was about the highest-ranked DC book that Goodman could copy without raising DC's ire.

PS - Page 7, 1st panel "Mormammu" -bc The Mighty Mormammu is an example of Smilin' Stan's awesome alliteration, I guess. Perhaps he's the Dread Dormammu's big brother?