Zonker

As is often the case, these various memories turn out to be mutually exclusive. If Kirby had the "cane gimmick" that Ditko didn't like, then DD must have been blind before the concept was given to Everett (assuming Ditko's recollection of the timeline is accurate).

NOW SOLD! Lot of 9 Justice League of America, all written by Conway, several drawn by Perez JLA 194, 195, 196, 197 & 200 all have George Perez artwork. JLA 195-197 is the annual JLA/JSA team-up, this time taking on the Secret Society of Super-Villians JLA 197's letter column includes a fan letter from Todd McFarlane, several years before his first professionally-published artwork. JLA 200 is a multi-chapter artistic jam issue. In addition to the George Perez chapters, this issue also includes: Green Lantern & the Atom by Gil Kane The Flash & the Elongated Man by Carmine Infantino & Frank Giacoia Wonder Woman & Zatanna by Dick Giordano Aquaman, Red Tornado & the Phantom Stranger by Jim Aparo Hawkman & Superman by Joe Kubert Batman, Green Arrow & Black Canary by Brian Bolland.

I mention Lieber, and the Colan and Heck estates, because earlier this year Disney reportedly settled with each of them. My understanding is there remains an ongoing dispute with the Ditko estate.

That is kind of what I thought: the work-for-hire issue must not have been a slam-dunk in Disney's favor, particularly after the Supreme Court surprisingly agreed to hear the case. Because Disney had to have known that by settling with the Kirbys, they would eventually also have to settle with Larry Lieber, the Don Heck & Gene Colan estates, and presumably, at some point down the road, the Ditko estate.

Can we turn this around and ask why would Disney agree to settle with the Kirbys if the work-for-hire issue was so clearly in Disney's favor?

Silver Age Marvel was before my time, and the comics that really made an impression on me as a youngster were the late 60s / early 70s DC's that I'm convinced were done in response to what Stan, Jack, Steve, John & company were producing at Marvel. Stuff like Aquaman by Skeates & Aparo, anything Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams did together or separately, Wein & Wrightson's Swamp Thing, the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter, and of course Kirby's Fourth World. I'm as big a fan of the Fourth World as you'll find on these boards. I wrote a long analysis of Forever People #3 here years ago digging into what Jack was getting at in that issue. But I have to acknowledge that at least the second tier of Kirby's Fourth World characters were quite underdeveloped as characters. Can anyone say what exactly was distinctive about the personality of say Serifan versus Mark Moonrider versus Vykin the Black versus Lightray? Does it matter? To me, not so much, given the great concepts Kirby was exploring. And if the series had been allowed to continue, I bet Jack would eventually have given us a memorable solo story about for example Big Bear that would have better fleshed him out. But to other readers no doubt the lack of characterization meant the books were under-written, or "poorly" written, depending on one's taste. And without a Stan Lee there to tell us how great they were...

Gratuitous, years-late to say that thanks to the MCS website, it is now clear that the author is talking about House of Secrets #90.cover dated March 1971.

Agreed. In the movie and TV industry, where a lot more money has been at stake for a lot longer, they have had to get very precise in defining how multiple people collaborate in creating the storyline So looking back with 60 years of hindsight and applying TV-speak to comics, the credits might ought to read: Story by: Jack Kirby (or Jack & Stan, on occasions when a conference actually happened) Teleplay by: Stan Lee Produced by: Stan Lee Directed by: Jack Kirby (and costume design, and choreography, and cinematography, etc. etc. etc) Without something like those WGA guidelines, the word "-script" can be ambiguous. For example Merriam Webster allows for the loosest interpretation i.e. "something written"

I did kind of wonder why the guy was derailing his own thread.

I don't think it is really material how many days (10 or "some days") or weeks ("maybe weeks" or actually 12) after D-Day Kirby arrived in Normandy, and I don't think (certainly hope not) anyone here is belittling Kirby's actual combat service later on during the Battle of Normandy. It's not like Kirby ever claimed he stormed the beaches on June 6th. But it does suggest that Kirby occasionally indulged in hyperbole or got the long-ago details not quite right, whether it is about the creation of the Spider-Man costume, or "Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything!" or "Nobody ever wrote a story for me."

Don't you think he's talking about the 2-page text piece that ran in the Golden Age Cap #3?

SOLD! 12 Miscellaneous Mid-Grade DC Comics from the late 1970s Kamandi, Warlord, Batman, Superman, Aquaman, Time Warp, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Mister Miracle & more Comics creators represented here include: Jack Kirby, Denny O'Neil, Jim Aparo, Mike Grell, Mike Golden, Steve Gerber, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Joe Orlando and Howard Chaykin.

And it could well be that Stan-- part of the generation that came of age during the Depression-- felt that anybody was lucky just to have a job, and that the freelancers' satisfaction just wasn't his problem. Which was true... until one day it wasn't anymore...

Yes, I do think in addition to whatever else he may have done (or failed to do!), Stan Lee deserves criticism for his management style (which unfortunately was probably pretty typical for those times). But for someone supposedly blessed with people skills and business savvy, Stan seems to have spent remarkably little effort in getting to know what truly motivated his top talent. You would think that after Ditko left, Stan would have done whatever possible to understand what motivated Kirby and tried to keep him satisfied. Instead, Stan turned out to be as surprised at Kirby's departure as he professed to be at Ditko's. It would be one thing if Stan was able to say "Jack's dialogue didn't fit the Marvel house style, and I couldn't agree to use all his words, so he quit." Or, "I decided it was best to make the Silver Surfer into this messianic figure, and Jack didn't agree, so he quit." Or even, "I tried to get the new owners at Cadence to match National Periodical Publications' offer in $$$, but Cadence just bought us, and didn't have the $$$ budgeted, so Jack quit." Anything to indicate Stan was aware of the issues, tried to manage them, but eventually made the business call that what Kirby needed was more than Marvel was able to give him. Instead, Stan only finds out his remaining top talent is working for the competition when Kirby calls him after-the-fact to tell him.

Yes, that's always been my impression, Kirby was always conscious to maximize income for his family. Which is why it seems odd he would accept a pay cut by going from the pay for writing & penciling the monster books to "just penciling" pay for FF #1 and subsequent books. Unless he could get more work out by doing the Marvel method, which seems unlikely given the minimal amount of input Stan apparently provided to kick off the stories. What I can find online is Kirby told Gary Groth a typical page rate was $35 to $50, though it is not clear what period he is speaking about. (TCJ Interview) Then the claim is made in the NYT Captain Relevant article that Kirby left his $35,000 a year job at Marvel to take the Fourth World ideas to DC. The Ray Wyman book indicates Kirby did an average of 670 pages per year during this period, which seems about right for 1969 (12 FF, 12 Thor, a couple of Caps and other stuff). So that would be $52-ish per page, somewhat higher than the numbers @Prince Namor notes John Romita was looking at. Incidentally that $35,000 annual salary in 1969 is $290K in today's dollars. Still a drop in the bucket compared to the $4B Disney valued Marvel at the time of purchase, but it wasn't like Jack was destitute during this time.

Yes, I've been wondering about that. If Jack originally was paid for both writing and penciling the monster books, and then Stan demoted him to just penciler pay, while giving Jack only minimal story input, then Jack was doing essentially the same work for less money per page as of FF#1. I realize going back to DC was not an option at that time for Jack, but I would think a significant pay cut back then would have been enough for Jack to want to at least try to pick up some additional work from Charlton or Classics Illustrated. (Unless Charlton was so cheap that its writer + penciler pay was still less than Marvel's penciler-only pay.)

Ok, so Kirby and Ditko had page rates agreed with Goodman for whatever-it-was-Jack-and-Steve-did. And Lee had his own page rate for whatever-it-was-Stan-did. Unfortunately nobody in those days had contracts, right? So there was never any specificity about "In return for $XX a page, you will pencil from a complete -script, including such-and-such detail in your pencils sufficient for the inker to do his job, etc." Impossible to now know, but I would love to understand what Kirby's page rate around 1966 was compared to someone like Infantino at DC, who penciled from a full -script. Or how Stan Lee's page rate as Goodman's "wordsmith" compared to that of Gardner Fox or John Broome, producing those full scripts.

How did this work, exactly? We've established that Goodman's staff (certainly including Stan) all were on salary, not paid by the job. Is it the thinking here that Stan drew his salary as an editor, but also had a separate page rate for his work as a wordsmith*? *Again, I'm using "wordsmith" to avoid arguments about what is a writer or scripter or dialogue-polisher or whatever it is one thinks Stan did. Substitute whatever word makes sense in your frame of reference.

I think part of the continuing fascination many of us have with the Kirby/Lee dynamic is that it is an example of what is almost an archetype across the history of innovation. Think Wozniak/Jobs or-- somewhat differently-- Tesla/Edison (though those 2 were never actual collaborators): One person grinds it out through a combination of genius and sheer force of will, while another person certainly contributes, but also has the personality and the savvy to focus on securing the funding, marketing the effort, building the myth, while effectively delegating out a lot of the detail. One person is relatively unknown, while another person is a household name to this day. This dynamic probably plays out more often than we know about in start-ups or university labs (by definition, the more-silent partner is relatively invisible!)

Care to share the fruits of your research? The reason it sounded screwy to me was because I cannot see how there was time for him actually to live the hobo life given the timeline laid out the Wikipedia page for Goodman. Was he just slumming on the weekends? Cause it sounds like he had a job in late 1929, was able to afford an ownership stake in Mutual Magazine Distributors around 1932, and he could afford to honeymoon in Europe in 1937?

Where is that next G. I. Joe movie, anyway?

This is surprising to me. Up until now, I had thought that the concept of a page-rate (perhaps different for every creator) was fundamental to comic book production back in the day, whether the creator was on staff or freelance. Doesn't this undercut one of the arguments often made here, that Stan was padding his income and taking money away from the artists by getting paid for not only editing, but also for writing each issue, despite not producing full scripts? If Stan is strictly on salary, then Goodman is paying him for doing whatever it is that Goodman and Stan Lee agree needs doing, and it doesn't really matter monetarily to Stan what the individual credits say, does it?

I will say I would feel bad for any parents who bring their pre-teen girls thinking this is a version of what they might otherwise see on Nickelodeon Saturday mornings. But given the legs this movie has shown week over week, that must not be a big issue. As you say, the themes of the movie were pretty well telegraphed in advance for any parents bothering to pay attention. I'd also be interested to know how many people commenting in this thread have actually seen the movie, or are we just reacting to talking points we've picked up second hand?

This is an interesting point. I'm not sure I completely agree. Did the audience for a movie like for example Schindler's List go strictly for entertainment? I guess it would depend on what counts as "entertainment." Instead, I'd say that people go to the movies for an experience they otherwise wouldn't encounter. That experience could be what we normally think of as entertainment (e.g. the proverbial popcorn flick), but it could also be an experience of a previously unfamiliar bit of history, or a part of the world we haven't seen, or a point of view we may or may not agree with.

Ironic is one way of thinking about it... or maybe it is a testament to the writer/director investing more energy in developing her male character (who could have been merely a punching bag, or as much of a non-entity as the original Mattel Ken toy was) than the energy typically expended in developing the average male cinema protagonists' female counterparts.