True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee 6 6

[kav]

23 minutes ago, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

First.. 

But you would more likely just get this as a reply. 

Bah while Marvel was giving out No Prizes, you know wut DC was given out?   PRIZES

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

5 minutes ago, kav said:

Bah while Marvel was giving out No Prizes, you know wut DC was given out?   PRIZES

Yes they were.. I know,  as I just got some of mine back from CGC last week. As well as the Shop owners copy , who also gave it to me. 

[kav]

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

1 minute ago, kav said:

Edited April 6, 2021 by onlyweaknesskryptonite
Like the Stan Lee tie in and wieners!

[kav]

4 minutes ago, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Stan Lee took credit for making that hot dog!

[kav]

Ps i've dealt with my own stan lee-graphic novel I did guy took my art, colored it, then signed his name to that cover!  My name appeared nowhere!!  

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

3 minutes ago, kav said:

Stan Lee took credit for making that hot dog!

So he claimed that "w" word for hot dog? (edited as mot to offend)

Edited April 6, 2021 by onlyweaknesskryptonite
Synonym Rolls , Like Grammar Used to Make.

[lordbyroncomics]

Kav, you just had to steal my thunder didn't you

Don't you worry. Get a Mort Weisinger thread going and I'll win a prize from DC... you'll see *sobs*

[Lazyboy]

On 4/5/2021 at 4:23 PM, shadroch said:

Stan's job was to sell comics, something he did better than anyone else.

 Really? So what was his job in the 1950s?

[shadroch]

2 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

 Really? So what was his job in the 1950s?

Funny you should say that.

In the 1940's, there were many dozen comic publishers. In the 1950's, that number declined to a precious few. Companies that had been huge all faded away. Yet somehow, the company formerly known as Timely kept plugging away. Crestwood failed, Simon and Kirby failed, Quality failed, EC failed, MLJ failed, Gleason failed, but somehow Stan kept his little company going, even after it distributors closed. 

Was Stan producing great stuff? Not at all, but his job wasn't to produce great stuff, it was to sell comics and that's what he did. By the late 50s, there were only a handful of companies left, and I suppose it might have been a coincidence but one of them was Stan's.  It was a third rate company, but it sold comics and kept it's doors open. That's something very few of his competing editors could say

[lordbyroncomics]

3 minutes ago, shadroch said:

Funny you should say that.

In the 1940's, there were many dozen comic publishers. In the 1950's, that number declined to a precious few. Companies that had been huge all faded away. Yet somehow, the company formerly known as Timely kept plugging away. Crestwood failed, Simon and Kirby failed, Quality failed, EC failed, MLJ failed, Gleason failed, but somehow Stan kept his little company going, even after it distributors closed. 

Was Stan producing great stuff? Not at all, but his job wasn't to produce great stuff, it was to sell comics and that's what he did. By the late 50s, there were only a handful of companies left, and I suppose it might have been a coincidence but one of them was Stan's.  It was a third rate company, but it sold comics and kept it's doors open. That's something very few of his competing editors could say

Let's also take into context that Atlas was a very small component of Martin Goodman's much larger Magazine Management. Many fans have (understandably) assumed that Atlas/Marvel was just a comics publishing company struggling to hold on in the fifties. No- it was a tiny (by comparison) part of a bigger publisher who put out everything from crossword puzzle magazines to romance digests to men's magazines and so forth. The comics division was an afterthought. The reason Atlas hung on in the fifties- this is confirmed, not speculative- is simply because Goodman could allow it to, since he made the majority of his profits from everything else he published, not the comics. Not until the late sixties at least.

[shadroch]

21 minutes ago, wisbyron said:

Let's also take into context that Atlas was a very small component of Martin Goodman's much larger Magazine Management. Many fans have (understandably) assumed that Atlas/Marvel was just a comics publishing company struggling to hold on in the fifties. No- it was a tiny (by comparison) part of a bigger publisher who put out everything from crossword puzzle magazines to romance digests to men's magazines and so forth. The comics division was an afterthought. The reason Atlas hung on in the fifties- this is confirmed, not speculative- is simply because Goodman could allow it to, since he made the majority of his profits from everything else he published, not the comics. Not until the late sixties at least.

Not so fast.  

Stans comic company was distributed by Atlas News, which also delivered Goodman's magazines. One of the under-researched aspects of comics in the 1950s was the relationship between mobbed up distributors and comics. People look at Wertham and the comics code for driving companies out of business, but at the same time the US Government was starting to look into the mob and where they laundered their money. 

It might be a coincidence that within two years of the House investigations into money laundering that 90% of magazine distributors went under, but I don't think so. Goodman's publishing companies all faced the same problem that his comic division faced- No distributors.

With everything we know, or think we know , about Martin Goodman, does it make sense to think he would carry a comic division that was losing money? i'm sure the comic division was just one cog in his vast empire but do you really think he would allow it to continue if it wasn't making him some money?  Does it make sense that he would lose money on an operation just to keep a very distant relative in a job? He could just as easily put Stan in charge of crossword puzzle books if all he was worried about was keeping him employed.  I'm pretty sure Stan would have been just as good selling crosswords as comics.  

 

[shadroch]

1 hour ago, wisbyron said:

Let's also take into context that Atlas was a very small component of Martin Goodman's much larger Magazine Management. Many fans have (understandably) assumed that Atlas/Marvel was just a comics publishing company struggling to hold on in the fifties. No- it was a tiny (by comparison) part of a bigger publisher who put out everything from crossword puzzle magazines to romance digests to men's magazines and so forth. The comics division was an afterthought. The reason Atlas hung on in the fifties- this is confirmed, not speculative- is simply because Goodman could allow it to, since he made the majority of his profits from everything else he published, not the comics. Not until the late sixties at least.

In the mid-1950s, Stan was publishing as many as forty comics a month. Goodmans magazine division wasn't publishing that many each month, but he also was putting out crossword puzzle books and cheap paperbacks. Unlike the 1960s, when Goodmans publishing took up a whole floor of a building, in the 50s they worked out of a much smaller office in the Empire State building.  I'm not sure it is accurate to say his comics division was just a small part of his finances. Maybe in 1958-1960 when they were limited to 8 books a month but not when they were churning out forty plus books earlier in the decade. Remember that a comic in the 50's cost as much as a magazine, but by the late 60's, many mags were 35-50 cents while comics were still 12 cents, so they were much less profitable.

Goodman ran into financial problems when he tried to self-distribute.

Nearly forty years later, Marvel ran into problems when they tried to self-distribute. 

Twenty five years later, they are trying it again.

 

[dupont2005]

2 hours ago, shadroch said:

Funny you should say that.

In the 1940's, there were many dozen comic publishers. In the 1950's, that number declined to a precious few. Companies that had been huge all faded away. Yet somehow, the company formerly known as Timely kept plugging away. Crestwood failed, Simon and Kirby failed, Quality failed, EC failed, MLJ failed, Gleason failed, but somehow Stan kept his little company going, even after it distributors closed. 

Was Stan producing great stuff? Not at all, but his job wasn't to produce great stuff, it was to sell comics and that's what he did. By the late 50s, there were only a handful of companies left, and I suppose it might have been a coincidence but one of them was Stan's.  It was a third rate company, but it sold comics and kept it's doors open. That's something very few of his competing editors could say

It wasn’t a coincidence. The mass public outrage at the content of comics at other publishers, and then the Comics Code helped Stan greatly by eliminating the competition 

[Prince Namor]

1 hour ago, dupont2005 said:

It wasn’t a coincidence. The mass public outrage at the content of comics at other publishers, and then the Comics Code helped Stan greatly by eliminating the competition 

Exactly. Goodman was a big enough overall publisher, and former partner of MLJ's Louis Silberkleit, that between the two companies and a third (National i.e. DC Comics), the Comics Code they put together eliminated most of their competition. 

And TWICE, Goodman made Stan fire his entire staff - once when he found an abundence of back story art paid for and unused and then a second time, not long before Maneely died. He kept the comics division open to appease his wife's cousin, Stan. But none of that seemed to matter when in August of 1958, Atlas released zero comics to the newsstand and it looked as if they'd shut their doors forever. It was Jack Kirby who saved them, not Stan Lee. 

 

[Prince Namor]

4 hours ago, shadroch said:

MLJ failed

I'd say MLJ thrived. 

[shadroch]

3 minutes ago, Prince Namor said:

Exactly. Goodman was a big enough overall publisher, and former partner of MLJ's Louis Silberkleit, that between the two companies and a third (National i.e. DC Comics), the Comics Code they put together eliminated most of their competition. 

And TWICE, Goodman made Stan fire his entire staff - once when he found an abundence of back story art paid for and unused and then a second time, not long before Maneely died. He kept the comics division open to appease his wife's cousin, Stan. But none of that seemed to matter when in August of 1958, Atlas released zero comics to the newsstand and it looked as if they'd shut their doors forever. It was Jack Kirby who saved them, not Stan Lee. 

 

 That's ridiculous. What about Martin Goodman  gives you the idea that he would keep an entire comic division going just to please his wife's cousin?  He could have given Stan a job editing fan mail if he wanted to, and if comics weren't making money, he would have. 

Kirby tells some bs story about showing up for an interview and the moving company was there taking out furniture but Kirby tells them to put it back because he is there to save the company.  It never happened. As much as Stan may have played with facts, and forgotten things, Kirby was much worse.  Bob Beerhoim( sp) dug up an interview Jack gave in the mid 1960s where Kirby talks about creating Captain America, then the boy Commandos, moving to Crestwood and creating romance comics, then inventing 3-D comics  before  saving Marvel.   No mention of his equal partner for those many years, Joe Simon.  Kirby also spoke about landing on Normandy Beach two weeks after D-Day when he was stateside and in England until the Fall of 1944. Forgive me if I take anything he claimed with a huge grain of salt. Perhaps he had a bad memory or perhaps he saw the world thru Kirby-vision.

In the first place, there was no office, so to speak. Stan and his comic company shared an office with the magazine staff so unless the entire magazine company was closing, it didn't happen.  Secondly, do you think the Empire State Building allows movers in during regular business hours?  Kirby was in court with his former editor at DC and needed work.  With no place left to turn, he went back to Goodman.  

Goodman told Stan to use the excess inventory and not to give work to anyone until the inventory was gone. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything but at least you got that part of it right. Does that make Stan a bad guy or a failure.  The comic industry was in shambles in the mid to late 50's and Stan Lee saw his company through while his competition mostly floundered. 

 

[lordbyroncomics]

Joe Simon was an equal partner. Uh... right.

Marvel was not in the Empire State Building in 1961.

Marvel put out no books whatsoever in October 1961, which lends to Kirby's claims.

Michael J Vassallo did the research and was able to pinpoint that Kirby first saw Stan again right after Joe Manleey died, lending credence to him seeing Stan distraught and understandably emotional. Vassallo has the research to back all of this up.

Stan "may have" played with facts and forgotten things but "Kirby was much worse".. uh, wow. Right. You have lost any credibility with this specific statement.

Kirby may have had memory issues- Stan outright lied. Which is worse? 

[Prince Namor]

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

 That's ridiculous. What about Martin Goodman  gives you the idea that he would keep an entire comic division going just to please his wife's cousin?  He could have given Stan a job editing fan mail if he wanted to, and if comics weren't making money, he would have. 

 Because Martin promised his wife he’d always look after Stan (according to Stan) and yet he didn’t have much faith in him to do much else than comics (also per Stan). Despite that... it doesn’t look like he was going to be able to keep it going until Jack showed back up. 
 

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

Kirby tells some bs story about showing up for an interview and the moving company was there taking out furniture but Kirby tells them to put it back because he is there to save the company.  It never happened.

And yet the month of August 1958 Atlas put ZERO books out to the newsstand. Fact. 
And then in September of 1958, Kirby debuted 3 new books. Fact. 

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

As much as Stan may have played with facts, and forgotten things, Kirby was much worse.  Bob Beerhoim( sp) dug up an interview Jack gave in the mid 1960s where Kirby talks about creating Captain America, then the boy Commandos, moving to Crestwood and creating romance comics, then inventing 3-D comics  before  saving Marvel.   No mention of his equal partner for those many years, Joe Simon.  Kirby also spoke about landing on Normandy Beach two weeks after D-Day when he was stateside and in England until the Fall of 1944. Forgive me if I take anything he claimed with a huge grain of salt. Perhaps he had a bad memory or perhaps he saw the world thru Kirby-vision.

Yet you believe ever word Stan says. Got it. 
The one fact Jack can show is constant content from 1939 almost to the day he died. He was always creating.  

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

In the first place, there was no office, so to speak. Stan and his comic company shared an office with the magazine staff so unless the entire magazine company was closing, it didn't happen.

Uh no... you can shut down one of part of a company that isn’t producing despite the fact it shares space with everyone else. 

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

  Secondly, do you think the Empire State Building allows movers in during regular business hours? 

In 1958? I have no idea and doubt you do either. 

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

Kirby was in court with his former editor at DC and needed work.  With no place left to turn, he went back to Goodman.

Jack could’ve went back to Harvey Comics, who had 20 some titles at the time. He had a great open door relationship with them. 
 

He could’ve went to Charlton Comics who had 25+ titles at the time, though it would’ve been a pay cut. 
 

He could’ve went to ACG who had a small handful of titles but could’ve used a creative powerhouse like him. 
 

If all else failed he could’ve gotten some constant work at Dell as he was a master of most genres outside of kid cartoons and they published plenty of westerns and movie and TV adaptations. 
 

Lucky for all of us he went in and saved Stan Lee. 

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

Goodman told Stan to use the excess inventory and not to give work to anyone until the inventory was gone.

Well, your probably mixing that up with the first time it happened in 1949. The SECOND time he had to fire everyone was in 1957, as Goodman began to slowly cancel titles and downsize the line.
He DID have to go all inventory in 1957 as well - they had almost no one left, but a backlogue of work for over the next few months that they stretched out over almost a year.  (As merticuloisly documented by Michale J. Vassallo in his blog). 
But the famous closet inventory discovery is from 1949. 
So what made Goodman hire Jack Kirby back after firing everyone?

He knew the one person that could save it all was Jack Kirby. And he did. 

3 hours ago, shadroch said:

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything but at least you got that part of it right. Does that make Stan a bad guy or a failure.  The comic industry was in shambles in the mid to late 50's and Stan Lee saw his company through while his competition mostly floundered. 

Dell excelled. Archie/MLJ excelled. DC Comics excelled. Harvey excelled. Charlton even excelled during this time. Considering Stan pretty much was copying what everyone else was doing it’s no wonder they hung on as long as they did. 
He worked his butt off for Goodman to keep it together and Goodman had to have been aware of it. 
But Goodman’s own bad business dealings in distribution almost ended it all. 
His OTHER publications would’ve been just fine as National didn’t limit those. But the comic line being gutted, with a lack of any creators... without Jack coming along, it just wouldn’t have lasted. They’d have gone the same route as ACG. 
 

Just think... Kirby might’ve gone to ACG and been given free reign and no telling what he might’ve put together and it could’ve saved them while Atlas went under. 

[lordbyroncomics]

"Kirby misspoke on occasion, by accident. Lee’s falsification of history was deliberate and pervasive." - Michael Hill