Stan Lee quotes from SCARP Con 1968 2 2

[lordbyroncomics]

On 4/24/2023 at 1:41 AM, sfcityduck said:

My only point is that Kirby was not King of the GA. Other guys had better resumes.  Kirby took it up several notches in the SA.  

I mean this purely for the enjoyment of this discussion and with respect, so I hope it doesn't read as challenging or disrespectful, but who would you list as guys with better resumes in the Golden Age? (Not saying there aren't cases for it, C.C. Beck could be argued for the sake of tenure on the biggest selling comics during the 40s')

I'd have to think co-creating the Kid Gang genre in comics, Romance comics, the fight choreography and so forth gives Kirby at least a seat at the table.

[sfcityduck]

Kirby is probably on my Mt. Rushmore for comics overall.  But the GA?  Nah.

His art style in the GA was not up to his early SA standards, and his GA “creations” do not impress me as much as others.  

Capt. America was created by Joe Simon and was an unoriginal copy of the Shield.  It might have been the first example of Marvel trend following.  Both Subby and Human Torch were much more original characters. Moreover, Kirby did what - ten issues of CA? And I view Schomburg covers as the definitive GA portrayal of the character. I just don’t think that CA measures up to a lot of other creations of the GA such as Superman, Batman, etc.

Bucky, like Toro, was just a copy of Robin.  The Kid Gang concept was not something I view as a major innovation just a kid Blackhawks.  S&K rode that horse as far as they could but To me that was an commercial trend that petered out.

Romance comics was just a commercial idea of Simon’s adapting a major magazine genre to comics to capture female readers, and romance had been done in comics before - Simon just went all in which was a smart economic move. I would not call Kirby the top romance artist by any means.

Kirby did introduce a unique style for portraying fighting action. It was a great style. However, other artists also introduced their own innovations for storytelling, pacing, portrayal of action, etc. For example, Eisner, Kurtzman, and Krigstein in comics and of course the strip artists like Raymond, Foster, and Caniff were all influential.  Kirby’s style got much more traction in the SA.

To me Kirby’s GA reputation is a bit overhyped thanks to Stan Lee.  In my book, for example, Everett was a more significant artist for Timely/Atlas in the GA.

There were a lot of important artists in the GA and for me Kirby was not the top.