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Stan Lee

Started by Flemmings,

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Flemmings

Flemmings

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Interesting Stan Lee article.

 

http://stevestiles.com/stanlee.htm

 

Here are some quotes

 

As Lee recounted in a later interview with Roy Thomas, "My wife Joan said to me, 'you know, Stan, if they asked you to do a new book about a new group of super-heroes, why don't you do 'em the way that you feel you'd like to do a book? If you want to quit anyway, the worst that could happen is that he'll fire you, and so what? You want to quit.'I figured, hey, maybe she's right. I wanted to create a new group and do them the way I had always wanted to do a comic book."

 

And so the beginning of a new comic book renaissance was launched with The Fantastic Four #1, debuting in November 1961. (I wish I had taken better care of my FF# 1: mint icopies are now worth $19,000.)

 

Jack Kirby has said that his Challengers of the Unknown was a precursor and inspiration for The Fantastic Four, and there are similarities, but whatever the case, his claim illustrates the problem of assigning proper credit to whoever was the primary force behind the birth of "The House of Ideas." Kirby had considerable input on all of Marvel's new titles and designed many of the new characters and their costumes and attributes.

 

Lee is not without his detractors and has frequently been accused of claiming too much credit for Marvel's success at Steve Ditko's and Jack Kirby's expense. A great deal of sympathy was rightfully generated for Kirby when Marvel refused to return his original artwork, and Lee has been lambasted for that as well. (There was an attempted face to face reconciliation between Stan and Jack at San Diego Comic-Con in 1986, but the opportunity was derailed when Lee accidentally cut his hand and had to be rushed to the hospital.)

 

Bearing all that in mind, it still can't be denied that Stan Lee's comic book style of mock irreverence and formulation of the Marvel stable of characters is responsible for not only rescuing the comics field from possible extinction, but for the revitalization of the comics field for the next three decades up until its crash in October 1995!

 

 

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Excelsior!-migration

Excelsior!-migration

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I can think of some villains that just didn't take off, but I may have the wrong artist.... The Porcupine, Paste Pot Pete.....

 

I can't think of any heroes that didn't "make it."

 

So, Stan Lee came up with the idea of numerous characters with many different artists with almost a 100% success rate. Not bad. I can see why he might have a little bit of an ego when it comes to who should get credit for the creation of the core Marvel Universe characters. Would any of those characters exist without Stan Lee's ideas? I don't think so. If Kirby or Ditko had a problem with who created what they should have made an issue of it at the time.

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MedicAR

MedicAR

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I can think of some villains that just didn't take off, but I may have the wrong artist.... The Porcupine, Paste Pot Pete.....

 

I can't think of any heroes that didn't "make it."

 

So, Stan Lee came up with the idea of numerous characters with many different artists with almost a 100% success rate. Not bad. I can see why he might have a little bit of an ego when it comes to who should get credit for the creation of the core Marvel Universe characters. Would any of those characters exist without Stan Lee's ideas? I don't think so. If Kirby or Ditko had a problem with who created what they should have made an issue of it at the time.

 

Yeah, he had close to 100% success rate at the same time Kirby and Ditko had close to a 100% success rate, while they worked together. The core characters were in place by the time they parted ways. Once all three went their ways, none of them were as successful as when they were together. Steve Ditko has never clarified specifically why he left, but he seems to have always felt he was co-creator.

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JohnT

JohnT

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I can think of some villains that just didn't take off, but I may have the wrong artist.... The Porcupine, Paste Pot Pete.....

 

I can't think of any heroes that didn't "make it."

 

So, Stan Lee came up with the idea of numerous characters with many different artists with almost a 100% success rate. Not bad. I can see why he might have a little bit of an ego when it comes to who should get credit for the creation of the core Marvel Universe characters. Would any of those characters exist without Stan Lee's ideas? I don't think so. If Kirby or Ditko had a problem with who created what they should have made an issue of it at the time.

 

Yeah, he had close to 100% success rate at the same time Kirby and Ditko had close to a 100% success rate, while they worked together. The core characters were in place by the time they parted ways. Once all three went their ways, none of them were as successful as when they were together. Steve Ditko has never clarified specifically why he left, but he seems to have always felt he was co-creator.

 

Spider-man became even more popular after Ditko left.

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JohnT

JohnT

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It wasn't Stan's "idea" of the characters that made the Marvel heroes great, nor was it Kirby or Ditko's renditions of them. It was Stan's fleshing out of the characters through his humanized dialogue and dynamic exposition that made Marvel special.

 

In all honesty, I don't see what the debate is about. Stan created the Marvel Age, and Kirby and Ditko made the stories beautiful. It was a once-in-a-lifetime aligning of the stars. Nuff said!

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thehumantorch

thehumantorch

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I can think of some villains that just didn't take off, but I may have the wrong artist.... The Porcupine, Paste Pot Pete.....

 

I can't think of any heroes that didn't "make it."

 

So, Stan Lee came up with the idea of numerous characters with many different artists with almost a 100% success rate. Not bad. I can see why he might have a little bit of an ego when it comes to who should get credit for the creation of the core Marvel Universe characters. Would any of those characters exist without Stan Lee's ideas? I don't think so. If Kirby or Ditko had a problem with who created what they should have made an issue of it at the time.

 

I would guess that the Incredible Hulks sales couldn't have been very good as they cancelled his book after 6 issues. Antman was also a weak character and I suspect his sales weren't very good and it wasn't that many issues before he was replaced in TTA. I think both could have been considered failures at the time and Antman to this day hasn't been able to sustain a title on his own.

 

Virtually all of Marvel's 60's creations were swipes of previous characters and there wasn't an original character in the bunch other than Spiderman and perhaps Daredevil. Giving the characters hangups and problems made them more interesting but I think the difference between DC and Marvel was Stan's dialogue, Stan's hip letter pages, his constant jazzy references to previous issues and even his silly creator nicknames in the credits.

 

The characters were OK but Stan made the difference by making Marvel books cool. Kirby's dynamic art, especially his wonderful covers sure didn't hurt.

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AtlasFan

AtlasFan

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Was there any character failures with Stan Lee as the writer and Kirby or Ditko as the artist in the early years of Marvel Comics? We know the successes like Spider-man, Fantastic Four, X-Men etc... If there were failures, who got the blame? Anyone?

 

I would say that the Hulk was an initial failure after its cancelation with the 6th issue. Stan was wise to make the Hulk an anti-hero -- fighting the FF and the Avengers..evantually, he proved popular enough to get a partial billing for TTA and finally back in his own mag.

 

Jack and Stan's X-Men could also be considered a failure. Their book was canceled. It was'nt until the New X-Men appeared that those freaks became a success.

 

Who is to blame for these failures? I think the early issues of the Hulk were just wonderful...I really have no idea why the sales were so poor..Same for the X-Men. Quite a mystery!

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mica

mica

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Who is to blame for these failures? I think the early issues of the Hulk were just wonderful...I really have no idea why the sales were so poor..

Well he kept yelling at Rick Jones all the time, and Rick took it like a battered wife. Those 6 books were awesome but there were some cringe moments as well. On the cover of issue # 3 they brag that the Hulk can now Fly... to a kid (reader) this is slightly dishonest.
Same for the X-Men. Quite a mystery!
I think the Beast could have been better from the start.

Take a really smart guy with big feet and place him into a group of super heroes.

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MedicAR

MedicAR

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In all honesty, I don't see what the debate is about. Stan created the Marvel Age, and Kirby and Ditko made the stories beautiful. It was a once-in-a-lifetime aligning of the stars. Nuff said!

 

In all honesty, I don't see what all the debate is about, Lee, Kirby, and Ditko all had equal hands in the creation of various characters. 'Nuff said!

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MR.COMICBOOK

MR.COMICBOOK

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Was there any character failures with Stan Lee as the writer and Kirby or Ditko as the artist in the early years of Marvel Comics? We know the successes like Spider-man, Fantastic Four, X-Men etc... If there were failures, who got the blame? Anyone?

Any book that was considered a sales failure then would now be considered a sales hit today. I just looked at some monthly sales figues and most monthlys don`t break 50,000 sales a month. What a shame, Spidey or Uncanny X-men can`t even break 100,000, where is this generations Stan Lee to bring sales back up?

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