How do the Kirby's Claim Ownership of Spider-man?

[RichardWrite-migration]

Not sure how much this has been discussed here, but in their lawsuit, how on earth is the family of Jack Kirby claiming co-ownership of Spiderman? Did he ever even draw any Spiderman books?

[VintageComics]

Uh, Kirby drew the cover to AF #15 that was published.

 

[RichardWrite-migration]

I understand that, but one cover over a 50 year period hardly seems to give his family claim to half ownership....

[kidcolt]

Co-creator maybe for being in on the original design?

[DiceX]

Well I claim the other half because I used to have Spider-Man Underoos.

 

 

[comix4fun]

Uh, Kirby drew the cover to AF #15 that was published.

 

 

 

And the original concept for the character may have come from Kirby as well.

 

Kirby said that the idea for Spider-Man had began with Kirby and Joe Simon. In the 1950s had created The Silver Spider for the Crestwood comic Black Magic. Then Kirby told Lee about The Silver Spider in which an orphaned boy living with an old couple finds a magic ring that granted him super-human powers. Lee and Kirby had a conference regarding potential stories and and Lee Kirby to flesh out the character and draw some pages.

 

Each of the parties in the story, Lee, Kirby, Simon, told a different version of the story so there's no way to know for sure. That's where the dispute comes from.

[RichardWrite-migration]

Then why not give the Kirby family permission to publish a SILVER SPIDER series, and Marvel promises no legal action?

 

And DC could then sue them for infringing on the Green Lantern trademarks.

[That Ron Dude]

Kirby also drew at least part of the original Spider-Man story. I don't have the full low down on it but I am sure the information can be found elsewhere on the internet. If my memory serves me well, Spider-Man had a webgun and boots. The story was rejected but I am sure that his family could argue that Ditko and Lee built their Spider-man on the foundation of the Kirby story.

[TheWatcher]

Kirby also drew at least part of the original Spider-Man story. I don't have the full low down on it but I am sure the information can be found elsewhere on the internet. If my memory serves me well, Spider-Man had a webgun and boots. The story was rejected but I am sure that his family could argue that Ditko and Lee built their Spider-man on the foundation of the Kirby story.

 

[TheWatcher]

"Comics historian Greg Theakston says that Lee, after receiving Goodman's approval for the name Spider-Man and the "ordinary teen" concept, approached artist Jack Kirby. Kirby told Lee about an unpublished character on which he collaborated with Joe Simon in the 1950s, in which an orphaned boy living with an old couple finds a magic ring that granted him super-human powers. Lee and Kirby "immediately sat down for a story conference" and Lee afterward directed Kirby to flesh out the character and draw some pages. Steve Ditko would be the inker. "'Stan said a new Marvel hero would be introduced in #15 [of what became titled Amazing Fantasy]. He would be called Spider-Man. Jack would do the penciling and I was to ink the character.' At this point still, 'Stan said Spider-Man would be a teenager with a magic ring which could transform him into an adult hero — Spider-Man. I said it sounded like the Fly, which Joe Simon had done for Archie Comics. Stan called Jack about it but I don't know what was discussed. I never talked to Jack about Spider-Man... Later, at some point, I was given the job of drawing Spider-Man'". When Kirby showed Lee the first six pages, Lee recalled, "I hated the way he was doing it! Not that he did it badly — it just wasn't the character I wanted; it was too heroic". Lee turned to Ditko, who developed a visual style Lee found satisfactory. Ditko recalled:

 

 

In an early recollection of the character's creation, Ditko described his and Lee's contributions in a mail interview with Gary Martin published in Comic Fan #2 (Summer 1965): "Stan Lee thought the name up. I did costume, web gimmick on wrist & spider signal." At the time, Ditko shared a Manhattan studio with noted fetish artist Eric Stanton, an art-school classmate who, in a 1988 interview with Theakston, recalled that although his contribution to Spider-Man was "almost nil", he and Ditko had "worked on storyboards together and I added a few ideas. But the whole thing was created by Steve on his own... I think I added the business about the webs coming out of his hands".

 

Kirby disputed Lee's version of the story, and claimed Lee had minimal involvement in the character's creation. According to Kirby, the idea for Spider-Man had originated with Kirby and Joe Simon, who in the 1950s had developed a character called The Silver Spider for the Crestwood comic Black Magic, who was subsequently not used.Jack Kirby in "Shop Talk: Jack Kirby", Will Eisner's Spirit Magazine #39 (February 1982): "Spider-Man was discussed between Joe Simon and myself. It was the last thing Joe and I had discussed. We had a strip called the 'The Silver Spider.' The Silver Spider was going into a magazine called Black Magic. Black Magic folded with Crestwood (Simon & Kirby's 1950s comics company) and we were left with the -script. I believe I said this could become a thing called Spider-Man, see, a superhero character. I had a lot of faith in the superhero character that they could be brought back... and I said Spider-Man would be a fine character to start with. But Joe had already moved on. So the idea was already there when I talked to Stan". Simon, in his 1990 autobiography, disputed Kirby's account, asserting that Black Magic was not a factor, and that he (Simon) devised the name "Spider-Man" (later changed to "The Silver Spider"), while Kirby outlined the character's story and powers. Simon later elaborated that his and Kirby's character conception became the basis for Simon's Archie Comics superhero the Fly. Artist Steve Ditko stated that Lee liked the name Hawkman from DC Comics, and that "Spider-Man" was an outgrowth of that interest. The hyphen was included in the character's name to avoid confusion with DC Comics' Superman.

 

Simon concurred that Kirby had shown the original Spider-Man version to Lee, who liked the idea and assigned Kirby to draw sample pages of the new character but disliked the results — in Simon's description, "Captain America with cobwebs".Simon, Joe, with Jim Simon. The Comic Book Makers (Crestwood/II, 1990) ISBN 1-887591-35-4. "There were a few holes in Jack's never-dependable memory. For instance, there was no Black Magic involved at all. ... Jack brought in the Spider-Man logo that I had loaned to him before we changed the name to The Silver Spider. Kirby laid out the story to Lee about the kid who finds a ring in a spiderweb, gets his powers from the ring, and goes forth to fight crime armed with The Silver Spider's old web-spinning pistol. Stan Lee said, 'Perfect, just what I want.' After obtaining permission from publisher Martin Goodman, Lee told Kirby to pencil-up an origin story. Kirby... using parts of an old rejected superhero named Night Fighter... revamped the old Silver Spider -script, including revisions suggested by Lee. But when Kirby showed Lee the sample pages, it was Lee's turn to gripe. He had been expecting a skinny young kid who is transformed into a skinny young kid with spider powers. Kirby had him turn into... Captain America with cobwebs. He turned Spider-Man over to Steve Ditko, who... ignored Kirby's pages, tossed the character's magic ring, web-pistol and goggles... and completely redesigned Spider-Man's costume and equipment. In this life, he became high-school student Peter Parker, who gets his spider powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider. ... Lastly, the Spider-Man logo was redone and a dashing hyphen added". Writer Mark Evanier notes that Lee's reasoning that Kirby's character was too heroic seems unlikely — Kirby still drew the covers for the first issues of Spider-Man. Likewise, Kirby's given reason that he was "too busy" to also draw Spider-Man in addition to his other duties seems false, as Kirby was, in Evanier's words, "always busy". Neither Lee's nor Kirby's explanation explains why key story elements like the magic ring were dropped; Evanier states that the most plausible explanation for the sudden change was that Goodman, or one of his assistants, decided that Spider-Man as drawn and envisioned by Kirby was too similar to the Fly."

[paperheart]

Kirby also drew at least part of the original Spider-Man story. I don't have the full low down on it but I am sure the information can be found elsewhere on the internet. If my memory serves me well, Spider-Man had a webgun and boots. The story was rejected but I am sure that his family could argue that Ditko and Lee built their Spider-man on the foundation of the Kirby story.

 

 

no hyphen. throw the case out of court.

[rodan57]

Well worth the extended read if you like the intricacies of Marvel history: Who Drew the Original Spider-Man: The Debate

[bluechip]

Lots of people may have had ideas for a "spider man" but only the combination of Lee and Ditko would've made it what it was.

 

I am sure Simon and Kirby and CC Beck and a bunch of other guys had spider heroes in mind. But they weren't the only ones.

 

Here's a "spider man" villain from the 1930s (the character was featured in a Centaur book, in 1938)

 

 

By early 54, this spider man was a halloween costume (made by Ben Cooper)

 

 

Later the same year there were a couple Spider men on the booksheleves and the comic racks . (the uncanny tales version appeared in a timely comic, whose editor was, ya guessed it, Stan Lee)

 

 

 

This halloween pic was dated 1956

 

 

And the mask looks not dissimilar to a certain logo that appeared years later.

 

 

 

 

Is it possible that Lee and Kirby and Simon had heard of the Spider-man villain (dressed in a web coat) published by Stan's uncle in 1938? Or that DItko answered his doorbell one halloween in the mid 50s to see a kid in a spider man costume? Or that any or all of them read the children's book about a mischievous spider who acted like a wise-cracking man while he outsmarted his enemies?

 

Anything's possible. But any other spiderman (or spider-man) coming out of that, in any way other than Lee and Ditko, would have been just another superhero that came and went. Or lingered in mediocrity.

 

 

[homerwannabee]

I think there is a video somewhere that proves that Kirby is straight up lying about Lee's minimal involvement. It shows the Amazing Fantasy 15 drawings. On the drawings you can see Lee make notes left, and right to make changes in the story. It is clear with the notes that Lee had a vision of how Spider-man should be. It is also clear by Kirby's own Spider-man that this character was the more traditional super hero. Heck even the cover to AF 15 shows a portrayal of a character that is drastically different than Lee's vision. Which is of a teenager with a lot of short comings that one day gets super powers. Kirby's is of an adult that has an inner self confidence before he even tries on the super hero uniform.

[bluechip]

I wouldn't go so far as to say Kirby was "lying." The collaborative creation process is good in that it can allow just about everybody involved in the process to believe their ideas were the most important ones. But what the evidence clearly shows is that Marvel had actually published a character called Spider man not once but at least twice before, going back as far as 1938 (when, by the way, it was spelled with a hyphen). That was well before Kirby ever went to work for Marvel (not to mention Ditko or Lee)

 

Kirby was a genius but anyone who knows his strengths and his style as well as Ditko's and Lee's can tell you without interviewing any of them that AF15 is straigh-up Lee and Ditko and just the sort of story they had been telling as a team in all those "pre-hero" twilight zone-ish tales in Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense and "Amazing (Adult) Fantasy." Spider-man's story fit right into that mileu. Had Marvel not been operating under the constraints of an onerous distribution deal with DC/National, they might have created the character in a different way for a different book. Lee and Ditko may have ended up hating each other, but neither Lee nor Ditko could've created the character with anyone else, at any other time or under any other set of circumstances. It was a perfect creative storm.

 

 

[Jamie Coville]

Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that when Goodman asked for more Superheroes that Lee would have gone to Kirby, a long established popular superhero creating/revamping veteran, and asked him for some ideas. And Kirby probably pitched Spiderman to Marvel as it was an old idea that was never used.

 

According to Joe Simon (and Ditko backs him up on this) Kirby's Spiderman was very similar to Archie's The Fly. Archie owners were known for flying off the handle and threatening to sue over similarities to their books. This happened with Captain America's Shield, it had recently happened when Dan DeCarlo was drawing Archie style books for Marvel and the same hue's of red and blue was used on the covers.

 

Lee then asks Ditko to re-do the character, which is what we have today.

 

But without Kirby's original Spiderman pitch, there wouldn't BE a Spider-man today. This makes Kirby Spider-Man's co-creator.

 

 

[bluechip]

Personally, I'm more inclined to believe that when Goodman asked for more Superheroes that Lee would have gone to Kirby, a long established popular superhero creating/revamping veteran, and asked him for some ideas. And Kirby probably pitched Spiderman to Marvel as it was an old idea that was never used.

 

According to Joe Simon (and Ditko backs him up on this) Kirby's Spiderman was very similar to Archie's The Fly. Archie owners were known for flying off the handle and threatening to sue over similarities to their books. This happened with Captain America's Shield, it had recently happened when Dan DeCarlo was drawing Archie style books for Marvel and the same hue's of red and blue was used on the covers.

 

Lee then asks Ditko to re-do the character, which is what we have today.

 

But without Kirby's original Spiderman pitch, there wouldn't BE a Spider-man today. This makes Kirby Spider-Man's co-creator.

 

 

You're working backwards from the conclusion you want. You start with a supposition that Lee went to Kirby based solely on beleiving Lee "would have gone to Kirby" and then you ride that even further to say he DID go to Kirby and then you conclude with him being co-creator. Which is the conclusion you want to reach so you reach it in whatever way you can.

 

Kirby was fantastic. But you can't give him co-creator status to something on the presumption that lee would have gone to Kirby and that it couldn't have happened any other way, even though nobody -- not even Kirby -- says it happened that way. As I undersand it Kirby said Stan came to him with the idea in 1962; Kirby claims he'd already had the idea years before, not that Stan came to him in 1962 and said whadday ya got. you want take it even further than Kirby himself. .