Zonker

"If you want to get at the truth... follow the office furniture!"

It only works if we think that Jack's memory of Stan being emotional was due more to Maneely's death rather than whatever was going on with the office furniture. So, in this theory Stan has a few remaining crumbs of work for Heck & Kirby, crumbs that were originally intended for Maneely, but Kirby needs more than crumbs at this point and so convinces Goodman to grant a stay of execution. But it's all speculative. Maybe Kirby heard through the grapevine about Maneely, showed up to pay his respects to Joe's remaining co-workers, and one thing led to another. Or, as you say, perhaps it was all a coincidence.

Same reason* Stan would reach out to Don Heck, assuming Heck's recollection (previous page) is accurate: * We can't really know why there was work available for Don Heck, but we could speculate it might have been part of a ramp-down plan, using up the remaining printing press time and/or paper already purchased, or fulfilling already-sold ad publication commitments. In other words, filling whatever remaining gaps were left by Maneely's death. Unless you're thinking it was Maneely's death that prompted Goodman's latest "shut 'er down" threat?

Wouldn't it make sense that if Stan Lee reached out to Don Heck immediately after Maneely's death, that he would also have reached out to Kirby? Not at this point with the intention to rejuvenate the Atlas/Marvel line, but simply to fill out whatever gaps there were in the remaining production schedule allowed by Goodman and yet suddenly left vacant by Maneely's death. So Kirby shows up to see what Stan is offering, and maybe they are moving furniture at this point, maybe it is at this point when he finds Stan sobbing. Kirby sees an opportunity to help turn the ship around, as things had gone sour for him at DC. Kirby's TCJ interview wasn't clear on what prompted Kirby to show up (or when exactly this was):

It's interesting to realize how different things were 50 years ago. I wasn't there, but I do happen to have a copy of the 1974 Overstreet. Overstreet prices of course are never exactly correct, but he did report as of 1973 that the value of those early New Gods issues was greater than all but the Ditko issues of ASM. If speculation was going on in the early 1970s, it seems reasonable to believe what was being speculated on was not the then-current, "low-value" Spideys, but instead the prospective next big thing. (Maybe it would be Conan. Or New Gods. Or Shazam!)

I don't think that's quite correct. Phil Seuling was running his operation by the mid-1970s. My first comic convention (1976? 1977?) I was gob-smacked to find comic books for sale almost a month earlier than they would show up at the drugstores. It was as if I had stumbled across a time travel portal from the future!

I'm still not sure we're talking about the same thing when you say "affidavit returns." Maybe in the old, old days the distributors had to physically return unsold copies, I'm not sure. But at some point everyone realized the shipping costs for sending back unsold junky old comics was prohibitive. So then the requirement became to strip off the cover logos for all unsold copies, and just mail back to the publishers an envelope filled with all the stripped-off cover logos to get credit for these unsold items. Yet all of us here have seen examples of low-grade comic books with only the bottom half of the front cover still intact-- those are almost certainly copies sold 2nd hand after already being fully credited by the publishers. That's an earlier generation of fraudulent back-issue dealing clearly evident to this day. Then later people decided it wasn't even worth the effort to count out those stripped off cover logos to determine what to credit the distributors. So they just instituted an honor system that the distributors would pledge they had scrapped all unsold copies. And the distributors just had to sign an affidavit saying they had done so to get credit. Nothing was actually returned. I'm sure some distributors were honest, but we are told by folks like Beerbohm and Rozanski that some distributors couldn't resist the temptation to sell those books twice: once for full credit from the publishers as unsold, and again to some less-than-scrupulous emerging dealer-collectors out there. I can't dispute what you saw on the spinner racks back in 1971/1972. I wasn't buying comic books until a few years later. But I'd be hard pressed to remember today what was left unwanted on those spinner racks so long ago. I'm much more likely to remember what I had trouble finding in the mid-1970s. Stuff like the Aparo/Fleisher Spectre issues of Adventure Comics-- I could never find those in the usual locations, only at the G. C. Murphy department store, unfortunately a very infrequent shopping expedition for my mom.

Those 1950s PS scripts could be recycled as Scooby Doo episodes! I used to wonder why as a pre-Code book, they didn't take better advantage of the occult storytelling possibilities back then. But then I learned that Julius Schwartz was the actual editor of the original PS run. I suspect as a founding member of SF fandom, Julie just couldn't bring himself to go for an out-and-out mystical interpretation. Had to be science, baby!

A lot to digest indeed! The Stranger went through several distinctive stylistic changes throughout the stories contained in this book. Since they elected not to include the letters pages, I thought it might be interesting to share this page from PS #30, panning the unlucky duo tapped to follow the preceding classic Wein/Aparo run: And editor Joe Orlando's follow-up in the letters page of #33. Respect!

But that's exactly the point. Per the affidavit system then in place, any unsold "leftovers" were pledged to have been destroyed. So if high grade examples exist as "never sold" leftovers, that means they exist as the result of affidavit fraud.

We'll never know the full story behind the cancellation of the Fourth World books. The easy answer is that the audience simply rejected it as poor quality, but I am not so sure it was as simple as that. DC re-started the New Gods by Denny O'Neil & Mike Vosburg with First Issue Special #13 in 1976. Coincidentally the same month as the final Kamandi issue to contain Kirby artwork. Kind of a slap in the face to Kirby, I'd think. But why even bother to reboot something that was recognized to be a sales failure just a few years prior? I think several things worked against the Fourth World. Some of them were Kirby's own doing, some of them not so much. - As mentioned in this thread, Kirby chose to divert his readers from being further introduced to his main characters, and instead focused his 3rd issue of New Gods on the Black Racer, who only played a minor role in anything that came after. Instead of further digging in to all the concepts he introduced into the early Jimmy Olsens, he instead pivoted to first the Don Rickles and then the latter-day vampire & werewolf stories in that title. And he partially shifted the spotlight in the Forever People away from his title characters and towards Sonny Sumo for the middle part of the run. - These weren't conventional super-hero comics, and about a third of the issues covers of Forever People and New Gods either didn't have the main characters shown in full costume, or else de-emphasized them in favor of putting the spotlight elsewhere. DC probably made a mistake in launching Forever People #1 guest-starring Superman, rather than giving Kirby an issue of their best-selling Superman comic to print that story introducing his characters (DC could have pushed out by a month the first non-Weisinger Superman issue #233 to make room for the Kirby launch.) - We've talked about the Robert Beerbohm / Neal Adams theory that all the fan-favorite runs of the time were hoarded and accounted as unsold, the result of fallen-off-the-truck affidavit fraud. The theory might be self-serving in Adams' case, but it would explain why so many of the big-name artists' work was discontinued in those years, yet remains quite common today in the collectors' after-market (Neal Adams' X-Men, Deadman & GL/GA, Kirby's DC books, even the BWS Conan was on the verge of cancellation, only becoming a good seller it is said around the time of the Gil Kane fill-in issues ) - Just as Kirby was getting going, the fourth issues of New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle jumped in price along with all the other DCs to 25 cents. So you could buy 4 of these DC Comics featuring still-unfamiliar characters for a dollar, or you could get 5 well-known Marvels for the same price. Those were unfortunate headwinds blowing against Kirby launching his new universe.

One of the ongoing mysteries is why DC kept repeating the same failed experiment over and over in the 1970s? 25 cents Bigger and Better? Nope, that allowed Marvel to eat their lunch by undercutting DC by 5 cents per issue. 100 page Super Spectaculars? Abandoned after a year or so. Dollar Comics? Lasted a bit longer, but by the early 80s all those comics either reverted back to the smaller size, or were cancelled outright. I guess it is one of those ideas that is sound in theory, but never really worked in practice. Raise your cover price, make the product more valuable for the retailers to carry, and everyone becomes more successful. Except, as long as comics were being bought by kids, they couldn't be bothered to do the cost/page math to decide which was the best bargain. And for parents buying comics for their kids, they certainly didn't want to spend any more time than glancing at the cover price to decide what to buy for them.

I think it was about momentum. DC could see Marvel's trendline, and wanted to try to blunt it before they got overwhelmed. Also, we now know DC had fired many of its old-guard writers in retaliation for them starting to organize a bit for better terms. At that point DC was probably worried about betting their future on all those fan-turned-pro kids then wandering the halls. Kirby was dependable, and generally could be counted on to not rock the boat. Perhaps he would bring with him some of Marvel's audience, or if he didn't, at least his absence might slow down Marvel's ascent, right?

More on the Rickles Jimmy Olsens-- I wonder if Kirby himself had second thoughts about this storyline, given the cover blurb "Don't Ask! Just Buy It!" I'm not sure who was in charge of the cover copy on Kirby's DC books. I'm betting it was Kirby, given the over-the-top hype at the bottom right, which sounds like an attempt by Kirby to one-up Stan Lee. Left to their own devices, I don't think the powers-that-be at DC in those days were doing this level of hard-sell:

I love much of the stuff that DC put out from 1968-1974, but it is clear that those in charge of DC during those years lost their way as to what was actually selling:

Well, 14-year-old me thought those 6 issues were incredible when I found taped-up back issue copies in a local used book store in the late 1970s. They were revisited during the post-Crisis Byrne-era Superman reboot, and also formed the basis for an extended storyline in the Justice League Unlimited animated show. I do think you're correct though that Kirby was throwing out ideas so fast that he missed the chance to follow through on many of them. Stan wasn't there to help steer those ideas into multi-part storylines (or as Stan's critics will likely say "to milk them for all they were worth!") I thought the Hairies were WWII veteran Kirby's sympathetic and optimistic view of the then-current flower power generation, and a prototype of sorts for the soon to be released Forever People. And the DNA Project was I believe the first significant use of cloning in mainstream comics, before the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter, before the Gwen Stacy clone, etc. etc. etc. The Black Racer is the avatar of Death, long recognized by the New Genesis and Apokolips races. Kirby does not tell us about the first Black Racer, but he shows us the character passing on the mantle to his successor, that Vietnam vet. Had the series continued, I bet we would have revisited the character, perhaps now faced with the choice of continuing existence as a paralyzed human being, or dying and/or assuming full time the god-like Black Racer persona. And yes, I think BR is Kirby's pretty obvious Silver Surfer do-over for DC. Exhibit A for why writers/artists sometimes need an editor to step in and remind them their initial brainstorms occasionally need re-thinking. Sorry. Hard pass.

Yes, my own view is that is the real origin of the Marvel Method. While I'm more sympathetic to Stan than most of the posters here, these threads have reinforced for me the idea that Stan was not a white-sheet-of-paper kind of guy. If he said he was too busy to write full scripts, I think that might be true if one also considers maybe he was too slow to write something starting from that imposing blank sheet of paper. But give him the penciled work of a Ditko or a Kirby, and that would prompt him to do his thing ("like working a crossword puzzle" he used to say). And I'm still agnostic over how much he contributed to pre-artwork plotting conferences with Ditko or Kirby in the earlier years.

Kirby began to conceive his new comic books when he was still at Marvel, but felt he might not get enough editorial autonomy. He left his $35,000‐a‐year job at Marvel and took his new books to National.

I missed the reference to Kirby's 1964 take-home pay being $20,000, but that seems somewhat consistent with what the NYT reported in 1970 when he jumped ship to DC (i.e. a raise to $35,000 for probably less work in his final year at Marvel).

I would have advance ordered this one and started selling off my reader copies if the omni included the letters pages. Collects The Phantom Stranger #1-6 (1952), The Phantom Stranger #1-41 (1969), stories from The Saga of the Swamp Thing #1-13, Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #18, The Brave and the Bold #89, #98, #145, Showcase #80, Justice League of America #103, House of Secrets #150, DC Super-Stars #18, Secret Origins #10 and DC Comics Presents #25, and #72.

NOW SOLD! Nine Bronze Age Batman Comics Includes: Detective 427 - Mike Kaluta cover Detective 450 - early Walt Simonson art Detective 459 - Ellery Queen homage story Batman Family 16 - Mike Golden art on Man-Bat Detective 483 - early Don Newton Batman art, 1st appearance Maxie Zeus, Crime Alley sequel Batman 319 - Joe Kubert cover Batman 336 - second string villains return: Spellbinder, Cluemaster, Monarch of Menace Batman 347 - "Shadow of the Batman" Batman Annual 8 - Ras al Ghul & Talia appear

I think that makes a lot of sense. In addition, I wonder if the last several years' worth of binge-watching extended series television on Netflix and elsewhere have exhausted audiences from continually seeking out multi-part franchise storylines. Could be what motivates the audience now to go out to the theater is a well-told standalone story with a beginning, middle, and satisfying ending, all within a single sitting. James Gunn, are you listening?

This one is insane.

Yeah I thought I read somewhere that Kirby's original conception was for the Watcher to be a singular unique being. So this ToS story would be the non-Kirby retcon that has since taken hold. I don't think "only one Watcher" has been in effect since then (I'm sure someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that).

He was already kind of the goofy one in Zack Snyder's Justice League, wasn't he? This sure isn't the Silver Age Barry Allen "police scientist" we grew up with. If anything, this character borrows from the treatment of the Flash in the Justice League Unlimited animated series, a kind of immature, smart-alecky younger guy. And I get it, if you're doing an ensemble piece like JL, you want to have different character-types to liven things up. That's traditionally the knock on the DC characters-- each one is a paragon of virtue, ultra-professional at all times, always following Robert's Rules of Order, etc. So, "Not my Barry Allen," but then, I knew that going into this particular movie. The one line I did wonder if they added after Miller's off-screen troubles was when the Flash says to the hospital staff right after Batman & WW depart, something like "Well, you know the members of the Justice League aren't exactly prime examples of mental health..." That was either a last-minute -script addition, or else an unintentional breaking of the fourth wall!