Unca Ben

I re-read the “Sore Spot” blog that had been linked, noting which text was blog author Patrick Ford’s comments and which text was direct quotes from Ditko’s essay.  I don’t have a copy of the original Sore Spot essay.  I wish I did.  It should be noted that at least one paragraph of the original essay quoted in the blog may be truncated at the beginning.

In his blog, Patrick Ford remarks that "Ditko had very harsh and extensive words for the comics community and its attitude towards stolen art", and that seems to be the thrust of Ditko's essay.

In the essay, Ditko is condemning the comics community (at the time) for their stand that Kirby had an “unqualified right” to all of his pages held by Marvel except for the pages held by others that were immorally or illegally taken from Marvel.
Ditko states that this hypocritical stance of the comic community (C/C) was a counter to the comic company’s claims that they were the self-evident owners of the art pages.
Ditko even laments that Marvel, despite their responsibility to protect their valued material, easily tolerated losing a piece of their property to crime.

In the quote from Ditko where he states “...(we) who are denied our 'original artwork' and are being 'deprived of a portion of (our) livelihood?”, Ditko is using the comic communities (nonsensical) view on ownership, not his own.

Now, when Ditko was talking about what pages he got back as a “gift”- which in another essay he stated that Marvel had a right to do – he was complaining about all the missing pages and about the conditions attached to the return of the few pages he got back.   That was to point out the large number of missing pages.  And where were all those missing pages?  Most were with the “thieves market” – who the comic community (at the time) seemed to be giving a pass.  (at least in his eyes)

The main point of Ditko’s essay “Sore Spot” seemed to be about the untenable view held by the comic community regarding art ownership of stolen pages.  The number of pages he got back was a secondary (but interesting) point in the essay, at best.

-That, by my lights, was the theme of Ditko’s essay.  I’m gonna look for a copy of the original.

37 minutes ago, comicwiz said:

 I don't think he ever uttered those words, but his actions could be construed as such. It is well known that Theakston had offered to get him a proper cutting board instead of using a stack of his original art as cutting boards, and Ditko refused and preferred to destroy them. That incident was written about in this NYPost article.

This fact, juxtaposed with the well known and public views he offered toward anyone in possession of his art. In his essay "The Sore Spot", he didn't mince words on what he refers to as "stolen art", and had very harsh words toward anyone who was in possession of his art. This is just an excerpt to expand on my previous point:

"I received story/art pages from 3 Spider-Man issues: 2 complete issues (inside pages) and a 3rd which had three pages missing. So, I was given, as a 'gift,' a portion of 3 issues of the 41 Spider-Man books I did. There is nothing from the Spider-Man annuals (one of which included Dr. Strange as a guest star). And no covers of any kind. What happened to those 38 missing Spider-Man books and all the other missing pages and covers? And how many other artists' names could be added to Kirby's and mine who are denied our 'original artwork' and are being 'deprived of a portion of (our) livelihood'?"

Notice how he refers to having the artwork held against his will as "depriving of a portion of (our) livelihood."

This is more of a footnote to my final point. Theakston's records appear to indicate the art he was seeing being offered for sale was likely taken from Marvel after February 1980, when Vartanoff gave up control of the warehouse. Theakston has gone on record to say he saw art for sale from the following books: Spider-Man #s 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14 and 27. There was also art from Strange Tales 110 and 112. This is just the art that Ditko would have worked on, there was other art in Theakstons records.

So based on Ditko's essay being published in 1993, which gave him at least 13 years to mull over what he knew was happening with his art, he had plenty of time to think about how this art was finding it's way (in his view, illegitimately) into private collections, I don't think it matters whether he was a capitalist or not, if you take into account his view on being :deprived of a portion of his livelihood", I'm certain he was not thrilled about anyone other than himself profiting from it. He made his position abundantly clear in that essay.

 

This seems in conflict with the essay he wrote that I posted above.  In the first essay, Ditko concludes that the company owns the art page.  Yet, in the 'Sore Spot" essay Ditko claims that he's being "deprived of a portion of his livelihood'  by the art that wasn't returned to him.

Am I missing something?  (could be)

Is Ditko saying that he's being denied a portion of his livelihood by not getting art back even though it isn't his property?  I tried to steel-man his collective argument, but I find it difficult to do) 

Nobody wrote dialogue like Stan.  I loved his work.

If there is one thing he could have done differently (besides giving due credit and compensation to others) it should have been to break off the quotation mark key from Kirby's typewriter when Jack left Marvel.  He would have been doing Jack a favor.

2 hours ago, Chuck Gower said:

In fact, he probably makes the case more for being work for hire than even Marvel did!

Yep.  Here's an essay by Ditko on that very subject.

I'd say Robert Downey Jr ended up making more off of Marvel than any other individual.  To the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Stan owned the rights to the characters?  Nah.

When Marvel got back in the superhero game in the early 60's I sincerely doubt if anyone involved had envisioned a long game.  Superheroes (other than Batman and Superman) had a short shelf life.  The characters and stories, like the comics, were disposable.
They were flying by the seats of their pants and so documenting who came up with what would have been a waste of precious time.  Only after it became clear that there would be long term value to these ideas did questions of authorship arise (except for Ditko- he wanted plotting credit and compensation at the time).   And Ditko has stated that Marvel owned the characters and that he received proper compensation for his contributions (other than his plotting dispute with Stan) and that he had no rights to the characters.

Speaking for myself and as someone who was around at the time, yes the FF and Spidey were regarded as the 2 best titles, but my friends and I also enjoyed all the other Marvel books as well.  They were all great.
The Avengers' Sons of the Serpent 3-issue storyline.  Iron Man's three-parter with the Titanium Man.  Daredevil's classic three-part battle with the Cobra and Hyde where DD lost his enhanced senses.  The Sub-Mariners' six part Quest serial in TTA.  The Hulk storyline with the Stranger and the Abomination. And so on.  All great, all well received by the fans.

Stan would quickly leave a book after Ditko or Kirby left?  Stan stayed with ASM for 70-plus more issues after Ditko left.

It seems like there's a lot of revisionist history and hyperbole being bandied about to try and make a point.  Super hero comics need heroes and villains.  I guess when those properties become popular and profitable beyond what was originally expected, the creation of those properties need heroes and villains, too.

Question:  When Simon and Kirby ran their own company, did they extend creators rights to their work-for-hire?  Did they return original art to the artists working for them?  If those line of books ended up like the Marvel properties did, would Simon and Kirby be regarded in the same way as Martin Goodman and Stan?

2 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Oh to be a kid again.

@Unca Ben - sorry for the hijack! I'll bog off now 

Hijack away!  I love this stuff!  
It's totally in keeping with the topic!
 

I had a small pile of extra covers that I liberated from their books but they never made it into the scrapbook.  Here's two.

Finally, this was tucked away with the scrapbook - it's contemporaneous and indicative of how I grew up:  comics and the space program.  So I included this just for fun.

p128

p129 (sendaway pic of Stan) plus MMMS flex record in sleeve

p130-131

...and a lot more stuff.

p82-83

p101

p102-103

p 64-65

p 68-69

p70-71

p76-77

page 50-51

p54-55

p56-57

p58-59

page 36-37

p44-45

p46-47

p48-49

p24-25

p26-27

p32-33

p34-35

pg 14-15

p16-17

p20-21

p22-23

page 6-7

page 8-9

p10-11

p12-13

"BECAUSE I COULD"  or:  "WHY OH WHY?"

I made a post in the Marvel Annuals topic and it got me thinking about my scrapbook made years ago.  Here's some pics just for fun...

page 1:

page 2-3

page 4-5

On 2/7/2020 at 11:58 AM, porcupine48 said:

My original first copy with the blank interior cover,I can still remember the day I found it at Arthurs Such an important comic to me!

(from the files,haven't been digging)

Whenever I see Marvel Tales #2 it brings back memories. 

Bought for me at some roadside place; we were on vacation.  The Smoky Mountains or something, I think.  I sat in the backseat reading and rereading my small batch of Marvels, but I really liked this one because it had the origins of the Avengers and the X-Men.  Such old stories!  I already had a collection of Marvels at home, stored in a dresser drawer and neatly stacked by title.

...So of course, when I got home I cut up the Marvel Tales #2 into sections and restapled each section so I had my Avengers #1 story at the bottom of my small Avengers stack (that at the time started with #15), and the same with my X-Men, Strange Tales, and Astonish piles.

Fortunately, that practice began and ended with Marvel Tales #2 (except for 2 years later, when I cut up all my doubles to make a Marvel scrapbook).  I still have the scrapbook.

1 hour ago, thehumantorch said:

Agreed.  I don't recall anything in the FF run that made me think Ben was in competition with Reed for Sue's love.  The basic setup was  Reed was in love with Sue, Sue was Reed's friend, Ben was Reed's college roommate and friend, Johnny was Sue's kid brother and if anyone was in competition with Reed for Sue's affection it was the Sub-mariner

 

Another easy error to spot is the comment that FF51 is the "first appearance of the negative zone".  While this point is not germain to the article's thesis, it does show another mistake by an FF "historian".

The first mention of a "negative zone" is in FF 48, when Maximus traps the Inhumans behind a barrier which in that issue (and a few following issues) is called a negative zone.  This is not the same "negative zone" as in FF 51. 
In FF 51, Reed is exploring "sub-space" - which ends up being made of negative matter hence the explosive problem when this matter encounters the positive-matter Earth in the story's climax.  This sub-space ends up being renamed "the negative zone" in later issues.
However, the first mention/appearance of this sub-space was in FF 37, which is how the FF travel to the Skrull homeworld to avenge the death of Sue and Johnny's father, Franklin Storm.

So FF 37 is the first appearance of sub-space, which is later re-labeled as the negative zone.

...and the original "negative zone" that held the Inhumans captive becomes "the negative barrier" or "negative zone barrier" or just "the great barrier".

I'm not an FF historian, just a fan that read these stories voraciously when they first came out.  

The article shows bias.  For one example, "Reed stole Ben's girlfriend."  Where was it ever stated that Sue was Ben's girlfriend?  Conversely, there were references that Sue and Reed were sweethearts before the events of FF1.
This article seems to be like so many other modern "theories".   Let's begin with a premise, cherry-pick the evidence that's in favor of the desired conclusion and downplay or ignore any contrary evidence, and exaggerate and/or make false claims (was Sue ever Ben's girlfriend? No).
This is so common nowadays; to have a predetermined conclusion lead the evidence, instead of the evidence leading to a conclusion.

-here's some evidence that Stan may have had a hand in the plot of FF 51. 
It has similarities to an earlier FF story (#10), where by most accounts Stan was still contributing to the stories.
And the story in FF 51 bears very startling similarities to Daredevil 15 - which was just from a couple months earlier, and was written by Stan.  Let's recap both stories:

In DD 15, a scientist switches bodies with a physically powerful character (the Ox).  In FF 51, it was a scientist and the Thing.
The Ox, now with the scientist's body, realizes he's been tricked (similar to Ben's reaction in the FF story). 
Ben can't convince Reed and Sue that he's the real Ben Grimm (in DD 15, the Ox in the scientists' body initially has the same problem with Karen Page). 
By the end of the story, the false Ox has become more like the real Ox, as his scientific intelligence is replaced by the Ox's brutish, limited intelligence. This leads to his fatal plunge off a building. 
In FF 51, the "changeling" Thing has his jealousy of Reed replaced by admiration as he starts seeing Reed through Ben's eyes, just like the real Thing.  This leads to his demise.

Interesting that these two very similar stories came out a couple months apart with the earliest one being written by Lee.

-All this is just worth noting, since we are trying to be precise as to who did what and when, and not be one-sided about the whole matter.
And it's worth noting that this plot was used over and over again in Silver Age Marvel superheroes stories, the first time being FF 10 where Doom switches bodies with Reed, then DD 15, then FF 51, then DD 37 (Dr. Doom and DD) then Captain America 115 (Cap and the Red Skull).  There may be more that I'm forgetting.

6 hours ago, Zonker said:

I'm cross-posting this with my catch-all Bronze Age thread because I think it fits the theme of this thread as well-- what's going on with Kirby, apart from the comics artwork we all know so well?  I've come across a lot of opinions on these boards over the years that Kirby was a semi-literate mental inferior to (pick your favorite comics-scripting wordsmith here).  But there was a lot going on upstairs with Kirby, as I think this text piece reinforces.

Spoiler

 

I thought it was an unfortunate mistake that DC chose not to reprint Jack Kirby's editorial pages in the Fourth World Omnibus reprint editions.  The one pasted below from Jimmy Olsen #135  from 1971 gets to a lot of what Kirby was attempting in his Fourth World series, 

• In the text below, Kirby is talking on one level about the Hairies, who are the characters he recently introduced to the Jimmy Olsen strip: products of the secret DNA Project, they are genetically manipulated super mutants.
• But clearly the Hairies are stand-ins for the then-current (or recently-current) Hippies of the Woodstock Nation.   As are the Forever People, another of Jack's creations from this same timeframe.
• Reading the below, you can see Jack debating with himself-- the WWII veteran versus the late-middle-aged dad trying to make sense of the 1960s counter culture.  A similar debate happens in New Gods #6 "Glory Boat" where Kirby explores and ultimately rejects pacifism as a response to the evil represented by Darkseid.  Indeed  you can read the New Gods as the soldiers fighting the enemy head on, responding to force with force.  And the Hairies and the Forever People are perhaps trying to win the hearts & minds, to use a Vietnam-era phrase. 
• I had never thought of this before, but maybe the Fourth World trilogy is showing us 3 responses to the Vietnam conflict:  Join the Army (the New Gods), support the counter-culture (the Forever People), or escape to Canada! (Mister Miracle) 

In any case, the below text piece I think says a lot about Kirby wrestling with these questions.  See what you think:

 

 

Nice!  I think I remember that piece.  What issue is it in?  edit: nvr mind

the Punisher
Wolverine
Venom
Carnage
Cable Domino, Shatterstar, Deadpool, etc etc

Happy Birthday, John Romita!  Great memories, indeed!