VintageComics

Nobody? Canada, where are you??

I don't understand the latter part of what you're saying, sorry.

How so? I thought there was a settlement against Cold Play? https://ew.com/article/2009/09/16/coldplay-satriani-lawsuit/ In any case, Zeps lifts were MUCH larger than just a small melody here and there. They outright copied many songs from their blues predecessors without giving credit.

Sure about that? Because IDC what the guys in Cold Play say, they sure ripped off Joe Satriani for their "Viva La Vida" song. Look it up. Ripping other people's music (or whatever) always happens. What I meant by 'it wouldn't have flown' was that they wouldn't have gotten away with it legally in this day and age like they did back then.

........without Kirby, definitely. Without Ditko, maybe. I think it's a safe bet that Spidey wouldn't have been as successful without Ditko. Kirby could NEVER get Spider-man right, no matter how hard he tried.

I don't think Zep did that. Most songs were Page/Plant compositions and credited as such. By In Through The Out Door when Jimmy was mired in substance abuse John Paul Jones became the dominant writer with Plant and it was the first time Zep songs didn't have a Page credit in them. Sabbath and The Doors were bands that actually did that across the board with writing credits, at least until The Soft Parade with the latter. Zep is one of my favorite bands but they didn't credit all the old blues artists they stole their music from. When I first heard about it I thought people were exaggerating about them lifting the music but they lifted a LOT of music from their predecessors. In this day and age, that wouldn't have flown.

Boom. That's a great question.

Sounds to me like he's making a judgment call against collaborative work (like Stan's) and for one-man shows, with the collaborative work being denigrated. I guess I just don't see it that way. I just see it as stating Stan couldn't do anything in the industry without decent artists (and this is backed up with how sales dwindled when 2ndary artists were drawing Marvel books and it took a remarkable artist to bring sales back). And I see the 2nd half of his statement (grossly repetitive nonsense) as just a rant against the current comic industry. If it was meant otherwise, I didn't 'get it'

Any input is appreciated.

Sure, the dialogue was long and drawn out at times and it seemed like the words were secondary to just a lot of visual gratification. I'd have to reread it (haven't done so in a while) but I remembered it fondly.

The Surfer run is one of my favorite runs in comics, for sure, and that's a great observation. I would venture to say that it wouldn't have been nearly as successful if Kirby had drawn it (issue 18 not being on par with 1-17). I think that after seeing a lot of Buscema's work in Avengers, his art really complimented the melodrama well that always surrounded the Surfer. John's art looks dramatic even without words. Does anyone have any excerpts or discussions about who did what with Stan in regards to the Surfer story lines? Or any uber Buscema fans who may know John's work better than the average reader have any comments? I think that it's far to say that at the very least the success between artist and writer!scripted should have been split 50/50 (letters don't really sway a reader, do they? And colors weren't advanced enough back in the 60's to really influence me - that came in the 80's when printing techniques advances to where colors and letters DID influence stories). ---------------------- On a side note, I read an interesting interview with Mark Tremont of Alterbridge (formerly Creed) and he said that even though he and Myles Kennedy do most of the writing they split all credits equally among the band members. That's a very refreshing example in a capitalist world where everyone is fighting for their fractional share.

He didn't say Stan sucks, though. He said Stan couldn't stand on his own without the artist and there is a lot of truth to this. Just playing Devil's advocate here because I don't think Stan sucks, but what has Stan done without a great artist behind him? Here is another way of looking at this. Stan Lee did the 'writing' and dialogue for all the early issues, right? Don Heck was a great journeyman artist but his early Marvel stories aren't nearly as compelling as the Ditko or Kirby stories of the same early 60's era (they weren't for me, anyway). How about when Al Hartly or Joe Sinnott did the early Thor / JIM issues? Or the Werner Roth or Jack Sparling early X-me issues? Not nearly as appealing as the stories with Kirby artwork. So there is some truth to the argument that Stan's stories were only as good as the artist that rendered them and brought them to life. As a counterpoint, it's also true that Ditko and Kirby weren't as great without Stan but in comics, being a visual medium they seemed to have more legs than Stan in comics. I don't see the same demand for Heck, Roth, Sparling or Sinnott artwork that I see for Kirby and Ditko artwork either. Did Stan every write anything great outside of comics?

Other than not having trouble signing in, I really haven't noticed any changes. It might be a bit faster. I still lament for the old site that allowed me to open and check multiple issues at a time. I really wish that feature was still possible.

These two statements really catch my eye. Stan Lee without an artist to collaborate with wasn't much of a force in the sense that he couldn't create alone. All of his 'best' efforts were obviously collaborative. I always draw things to automotive analogies because I spent 22 years in that industry. The Germans and the British and the American created all sorts of original things over the years but the Japanese manufacturers came in and took over the automotive markets not by creating much new but by perfecting what the Germans, British and Americans couldn't. And they're still doing it today, putting out amazing world class automobiles using the ideas of their predecessors. But Jack could tell a story without Stan. And while I have never read or look into DC's 4th world stuff, I have heard several people say (on this forum) that it's some of their favorite Jack Kirby material. It's a matter of taste of course, but I've heard it several times. I would liken Stan to David Lee Roth. Amazing within the band of Van Halen, decent on his own but really had nothing left by the time he left his prime. David Lee Roth still does a great job of pumping himself on the media but I didn't like the last Van Halen album, I don't like his voice any longer and I find him annoying individually. I would like Jack Kirby to Sammy Hagar (or even Joe Walsh) in the respect that no matter which band he was in (solo, in an early band or a later band) there was some form of success. I don't know enough about Ditko to comment (except what I've read here) but he sounds like the dude who would leave a band on principle and never play with them again, even if it meant zillions of dollars. On a side note, a local guy used to be Justin Bieber's guitarist growing up. He refuses to play with Bieber because he doesn't like the music. All of his friends are saying "Just play with the dude for a year and make your million and then do what you want!" He refuses to out of principle. He doesn't like the music. Is one greater of the 3 than the other? That's a different debate and probably impossible to answer.

Well, it was both but he put his money where his mouth was, right? He believed something philosophically and acted on it.

In this day and age, it's hard for most people to believe that someone wants the truth and doesn't want the money. Even if it's large sums of money. That sort of belief is foreign to our society because we live in a society where everything is monetized, even honor. Society doesn't believe there are people like that out there...but there are. All I have to say to this is Holy Flip.

One thing I will say about Ditko is that his 'black and white' and uncompromising view of the world (there is no grey area) expects everything to be divided surgically, and sometimes that isn't possible. I'd add that human recollection isn't reliable enough to do that, though. In fact, I remember a boardie (ex police officer and now a lawyer) saying that it's one of the least reliable forms of evidence...that's one reason why multiple witnesses are preferred.

We're short on moose here this week, so...

I have no idea why my comments were removed either. Probably because they were trimmed with Kav's comments, although I didn't post anything offensive or incorrect. Maybe the mods just love me a little extra.

Steranko also confirms that the artists even supplied some of the dialogue - something I'd heard before - and that they weren't just artists.

Being a bit socially withdrawn, as he was in his later years, doesn't necessarily indicate that. If you read his self-published work, there's a lot of very, very literal black / white interpretations of social situations, both in his writing and his art, and he seems to be incapable of accepting the existence of intermediate, composite, 'grey' interpretations of those same social situations. Instead of someone hiding confidently inside overblown Objectivist philosophy, this viewpoint could also much more simply indicate very narrow thinking and a 'lack of theory of mind', which can be present in autism spectrum disorders, but also in other non-autistic and quite distinct conditions. Ditko seems to be an extremely black and white personality (and there is nothing wrong with that). There is no 'grey' in his world. I know zillions of people like that. My ex was like that (and still is). The challenge is on communicating between personality types on any sort of collaboration, whether it's a relationship or a job and I'd venture to say that when comics were considered worthless, throw away newsprint people didn't think who created what mattered as much but past forward into today's world and there are teams of lawyers whose job is only thing - to surgically separate creator's rights. I suspect that in the beginning the creators were all struggling to survive and didn't expect to be one day considered as one of the pillars of American pop culture. We can to one degree or another say we ALL suffer from some sort of sensory deficiency and today it falls under the blanket of 'mental health'. It's what makes us individuals. We just tend to label the extreme ends of the spectrum as 'special needs' but we're all special needs in some way. And those that say they aren't and are complete are usually the ones who are the most special. I suspect that in the beginning nobody cared about credits all that much but Stan Lee (enfant terrible - ) caught on pretty quickly to the popularity and milked it for all it's worth.

Is this really going to devolve into another 'shoot the messenger' thread? Chuck is posting articles by people who were there at the time, working with Stan Lee. They speak for themselves. It's really simple, if anyone has a problem with what those articles state they should feel free to post their own links and sources as a rebuttal. Not shoot the messenger.

I remember reading this when I read the comics in hand but looking back as an adult puts it in a very different perspective, doesn't it? In fact, I see Stan Lee very differently now than I did when I was younger and he wasn't very nice to his employees (or better put, co-workers), was he? I appreciate the stuff you've posted on it.

That's an interesting observation I hadn't really thought about. One of the criticisms of Kirby's 4th World is that it wasn't as cohesive as his Marvel work - but that's because it didn't have the time to come together. Imagine if the Fantastic Four or Thor had been cancelled after 11 issues! But you're right... Ditko seemed to know exactly where he was going right from the start... That is a brilliant observation Sneeze made.

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