Stan, Jack, and Steve - The 1960's (1962) Jack Kirby creates the Marvel Universe! 4 4

[Dr. Haydn]

Stan's dialogue for the Hulk kept going back and forth from brutish to literate (eloquent, even!) throughout the 1960s. It's as if he really didn't know what to do with the wealth of characters Jack was presenting him with...

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Gunsmoke Western #73 - Jack Kirby does the cover and a story for the issue, both inked by D. Ayers... I wonder...

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Gunsmoke Western #73 - yep, Stan left his mark again... white painting the Kirby/Ayers signature out...

Edited January 23, 2023 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Love Romances #102 - Jack Kirby also does the cover and 2 stories in the issue, with Vince Colletta inks. Not signed by anyone. 

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

The following week, September 11, 1962, we begin with Tales to Astonish #38 - Jack Kirby does the cover (inked by Sol Brodsky) and a 10 page Ant-Man story (inked by D. Ayers). It's the first appearance of the credit box in the series, and when Kirby sees it he quits all three titles supposedly 'scripted' by D. Ayers - Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales, and Journey Into Mystery (all in the same month, all three, his last issues will be December of 1962).

Why no one has ever noticed this before is surprising. Those 3 titles and 10 issues that Lee gives Larry credit for '-script', are the ONLY time that ever happens with Kirby - and Kirby immediately quits those those titles in protest - and we never see a Kirby story with that Lieber byline again. More proof that the whole notion of Larry writing for Jack is a bunch of made up nonsense. 

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Tales to Astonish #38 - Stan Lee and Steve Ditko also had a story in this issue, signed Stan Lee & S. Ditko on the splash. It also would go 50 years without being reprinted...

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Strange Tales #103 - Jack Kirby does the cover and then writes and pencils the 13 page Human Torch story, all inked by D. Ayers. 

The job number on the story V-823 is before the job number from the ST #101 story (V-846) and ST #102 story (V-887), meaning it was completed and added to inventory prior to those two issues. 

Also, It's the first appearance of the credit box in the series as well, and when Kirby sees it he quits all three titles supposedly 'scripted' by D. Ayers - Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales, and Journey Into Mystery (all in the same month, all three, his last issues will be December of 1962).

Why no one has ever noticed this before is surprising. Those 3 titles and 10 issues that Lee gives Larry credit for '-script', are the ONLY time that ever happens with Kirby - and Kirby immediately quits those those titles in protest - and we never see a Kirby story with that Lieber byline again. More proof that the whole notion of Larry writing for Jack is a bunch of made up nonsense. 

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Strange Tales #103 - We can also see in the original art, where Lee again white paints over the Kirby/Ayers sig. 

All of these clues and all of these timelines put together show us a clear case of what was going on. How can we see these things and not see that what Lee/Lieber and Houseroy SAY, is all BS?

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Strange Tales #103 - Stan Lee and Steve Ditko also had a story in this issue, signed Stan Lee & S. Ditko on the splash. It also would go 57 years without being reprinted...

[Prince Namor]

On 1/23/2023 at 10:19 AM, shadroch said:

When I first read the early Hulks, I wondered if they were written for solo Thing stories, like the HT stories in Strange Tales.

Stan had some nerve changing the work Kirby submitted. It's almost as if he thought he was an editor, or something.

Yeah, especially considering Jack had been a part of some of the biggest selling comics in history at that point, and Stan had been... a part of nothing really. A guy who copied other people's ideas. 

And maybe, even, because Jack had been on his own at Marvel for 4 years creating their best selling books without interference, and Stan... had been putting together books that DIDN'T sell. 

Yeah, now you're starting to see it. 

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Tales of Suspense #36 - Jack would do the cover (inked by himself?), but not a story inside for Tales of Suspense for one of the first times in it's 4 year run...

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Tales of Suspense #36 - Stan Lee and Steve Ditko also had a story in this issue, signed Stan Lee & S. Ditko on the splash. It also would go 50 years without being reprinted...

[Prince Namor]

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Tales of Suspense #36 - Larry Lieber also has a 'scripted' story in this issue... with Don Heck doing the art. This is an interesting example, because it reads more like a fleshed out Stan Lee 5 pager, than something Kirby would do (this actually looks and reads like something from a DC title of the day). But it HAS to be fleshed out to 13 pages, because Kirby doesn't have a story in this issue and they need to fill up space. 

Edited January 23, 2023 by Prince Namor

[Dr. Haydn]

On 1/23/2023 at 1:20 PM, Prince Namor said:

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Strange Tales #103 - We can also see in the original art, where Lee again white paints over the Kirby/Ayers sig. 

All of these clues and all of these timelines put together show us a clear case of what was going on. How can we see these things and not see that what Lee/Lieber and Houseroy SAY, is all BS?

It sure looks like Kirby's handwriting in the top tier of panels--his distinctive slanted E's are especially visible, top right.

Edited January 23, 2023 by Dr. Haydn
right instead of left

[Zonker]

On 1/23/2023 at 2:17 PM, Prince Namor said:

ON NEWSSTANDS SEPTEMBER 1962

Strange Tales #103 - Jack Kirby does the cover and then writes and pencils the 13 page Human Torch story, all inked by D. Ayers. 

The job number on the story V-823 is before the job number from the ST #101 story (V-846) and ST #102 story (V-887), meaning it was completed and added to inventory prior to those two issues. 

 

Also, It's the first appearance of the credit box in the series as well, and when Kirby sees it he quits all three titles supposedly 'scripted' by D. Ayers  (I think you mean Lieber) - Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales, and Journey Into Mystery (all in the same month, all three, his last issues will be December of 1962).

Why no one has ever noticed this before is surprising. Those 3 titles and 10 issues that Lee gives Larry credit for '--script', are the ONLY time that ever happens with Kirby - and Kirby immediately quits those those titles in protest - and we never see a Kirby story with that Lieber byline again. More proof that the whole notion of Larry writing for Jack is a bunch of made up nonsense. 

Did Kirby ever say that was the reason he stopped working on Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales & JIM? Because it seems out of character for Kirby to quit in protest without having more work lined up.  He seemed like the guy who always thought about providing for his family first and foremost.  If he wanted to stage a protest, wouldn't it have been more effective to turn in his artwork without any margin notes or dialogue, and say "you guys are the writers, you go figure it out..."?

The Ray Wyman book notes that the year 1962 was Jack's career highwater mark for completed pages:  1158.  Whereas his average yearly output over his most productive period (1958-1978) was 670 pages.  The Wyman book (pg.128) attributes this quote to Kirby regarding the end of 1962:

Quote

"The production was nuts," comments Kirby. "There were days where I was penciling and writing five or six pages in one day.  I might have done more, I don't know. All I remember is that I was working very hard."

Don't you think that might have had something to do with his upcoming absence from those 3 books?

[Dr. Haydn]

Books on sale in September were probably drawn about two or three months earlier (late June/early July). That would be a good time for Kirby to say (for whatever reason) that he needed a few weeks off for a family vacation.

[Prince Namor]

On 1/23/2023 at 3:30 PM, Zonker said:

Did Kirby ever say that was the reason he stopped working on Tales to Astonish, Strange Tales & JIM? Because it seems out of character for Kirby to quit in protest without having more work lined up. 

There's was never a shortage of work for Kirby in the 60's. Even with quitting those three books. 

On 1/23/2023 at 3:30 PM, Zonker said:

He seemed like the guy who always thought about providing for his family first and foremost.  If he wanted to stage a protest, wouldn't it have been more effective to turn in his artwork without any margin notes or dialogue, and say "you guys are the writers, you go figure it out..."?

I suppose if you want believe the Stan Lee BS it's easiest to look at it that way.

But Larry Lieber is credited with all of this body of work - ALL of Kirby's monster stories over 4 years - co-creating Iron man, Ant man, and Thor. And yet...

We have his name and Jack Kirby's name legitimately credited on only 3 titles - and 10 stories - THAT'S IT. 

HUNDREDS of stories with ? in GCD.

But just 3 titles and 10 stories that we can say, there are actual credits listed in the book. 

And once that happens - Jack quits all three books at the same time. AND - Larry gets removed from Iron Man immediately. 

Where does Larry go exactly? This prolific -script writer of the last 4 years? What other great ideas does he come up with???

Nothing. 

Why did he get removed from those books so quickly?

Without Kirby to supply the ideas and -script written into the word balloons - he does two issues of Thor that are terrible. Two issue that show him to be the novice he is. Super Editor Stan only sees it after the fact...

He's then very quickly replaced by Robert Bernstein who does't stick around but for a couple of issues. In fact, Larry gets pretty quickly tossed to the side. The co-creator of Thor? and Iron man? Where are the rest of his ideas? Where's the rest of his work?

He'd start doing little 5 page Stan Lee stories - ART and -script from Stan's 'plot'. Almost no superhero work for the rest of his time at Marvel. A lot of Westerns. A decent Spidey Annual. 

He's just another guy who came in and worked with Kirby for a few issues and created all of this amazing stuff and then just shuffled away, after showing that him and Stan thought it all up. 

Yeah, ok.

On 1/23/2023 at 3:30 PM, Zonker said:

The Ray Wyman book notes that the year 1962 was Jack's career highwater mark for completed pages:  1158.  Whereas his average yearly output over his most productive period (1958-1978) was 670 pages. 

Through 1978? Why are you stringing it out that far to make it seem smaller? Jack made a deal with DC to do a bit LESS work, for better money - by adding those years in that it would naturally drag down the number of pages per month. 

Kirby's completed pages throughout the early to mid 60's was always huge - and his totals would INCREASE after he quit those THREE books - in fact he'd come back to Thor - WITHOUT Larry and do 23 pages a month of it and come back to Ant Man for a bit - WITHOUT Larry - and then start up the Avengers and Sgt. Fury and the X-Men...

Books dated January 1964 - 119 pages, with 10 covers. 

His totals did NOT go down. 

On 1/23/2023 at 3:30 PM, Zonker said:

The Wyman book (pg.128) attributes this quote to Kirby regarding the end of 1962:

Don't you think that might have had something to do with his upcoming absence from those 3 books?

I doubt there was ever a time Stan thought, "I'm working Kirby way too much!" Even when he wasn't doing pages he was having to layout stories for Don Heck and George Tuska and early on, John Romita. 

For Kirby to quit those three books all at once - and to NEVER work with Larry Lieber again - it tells me something was definitely up. OVERWORKED wasn't something Jack ever quit over. 

[Zonker]

Just to clarify

Quote

Through 1978? Why are you stringing it out that far to make it seem smaller?

Not my choice, just the dataset provided in the Wyman book  

[Prince Namor]

On 1/23/2023 at 5:28 PM, Zonker said:

Just to clarify

Not my choice, just the dataset provided in the Wyman book  

Ok, so not a complete set of info... maybe someday I'll do that, month by month.

But yeah, his number of pages would remain high - not sure what Wyman used for reference... GCD didn't exist then, but as I said, just January 1964: 119 pages, 10 covers

February 1964: 41 pages, 7 covers

March 1964: 110 pages, 11 covers

April 1964: 40 pages, 8 covers

So if he remained on this schedule... 77.5 pages a month, that's 930 for the year + 108 covers.

Jack remained plenty busy.

Larry Lieber, not so much. 

[Zonker]

I obviously don't know exactly what happened, I wasn't there.  But there are other possible explanations.  We know despite what Jack sometimes said, he did in fact work from other people's scripts on occasion.  His last few unhappy months at DC in the 1970s included a few issues each of scripts from Michael Fleischer (Sandman), Denny O'Neil (Richard Dragon & Justice Inc) and Gerry Conway (Kamandi).  He drew the 1985 Super Powers mini-series written by Paul Kupperberg, and of course Steve Gerber's Destroyer Duck.  In fact, earlier in this thread it was speculated that Stan gave Jack an old western ---script to recycle.

 

So now it is 1962 and Kirby is busy busy busy.  Not that he would ever complain to Stan about being overworked.  But Stan maybe says "How soon can you get me the next 20 pages" and Jack says "Best case is early next week."  And Stan at least knows enough that there is no sense pushing Jack for more. So he's got Jack and he's got Larry Lieber. (I'm guessing Ditko is maxxed out, but that's just a guess).  Stan knows Larry isn't as good or as fast as Jack, but the point is Larry is another pair of hands.  I'm no artist, but I would have to believe that the time it takes Jack to draw a page from someone else's ---script is less than the time it takes Jack to start from a literal white sheet of paper.  So Stan as the production manager just maximizes all his resources.  Get as much as he can out of Jack for the flagship Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk that Stan has been touting.  We saw how Stan wasn't really pushing Thor at this point, so maybe he feels like he can get by with letting Larry run with it, just to speed up the overall process of Kirby providing him those pages for the headliners.

I can easily believe JIM #83 is all Kirby.  But at some point soon thereafter I think Stan and Larry start to show their hands:  the soap-opera elements, the "uru" hammer, the Quaker speech patterns.  If Larry is given a plot by Stan, it might well have come from something Jack told Stan, or it might have all been contained in Kirby's original pitch for Thor, thus nothing Stan felt like he could sign his name to.  We will see later a common pattern is Kirby starts up a title (Avengers, X-Men, Sgt Fury), does the first several issues, then drops back to layouts-only, or hands it off completely to someone else to draw.  Not because he gets mad at Stan over and over, but just because it makes sense:  Kirby is the idea factory, so let him get working on the next new idea, and leave the follow-up execution to the Don Hecks, Werner Roths, and Dick Ayers of the world.  

Meanwhile Larry I think was happy to avoid the spotlight that Stan began to shine on the emerging super-heroes line-up, which of course had to all be written in the Stan Lee winking style.  We might not believe him, but it is an alternative explanation:

Quote

Lieber: Stan was critical sometimes, and he knew I hadn't written before I started writing for him. He thought back on writers he had known in the past - he had a couple of them he tried out, some of the old pros, and then he said to me, "Your stuff isn't that good, but you know, you're better than these guys!"

RT: Killing you with compliments, huh?

Lieber: Right, it was sort of a compliment. With me, he had no other writer to compare me to, except what he remembered. So whatever faults he saw in me, he just felt I wasn't as good as he was. So he took things very easy: "Well, why don't you do this?" But as it went on, he got better with me. Jack had been drawing Rawhide Kid, and he gave it up.

RT: That western had a nice feel, which is probably one reason it was the most successful of the westerns for several years.

Lieber: I don't remember why I wanted to do it, particularly. I think I wanted a little more freedom. I didn't do enough of the super-heroes to know whether I'd like them. What I didn't prefer was the style that was developing. It didn't appeal to me... but it appealed to everybody else!

RT: Was it the fact that it was more melodramatic, or was it the realism?

Lieber: Maybe there was just too much humor in it, or too much something. I don't know. But, of itself, it wasn't bad. I remember, at the time, I wanted to make everything serious. I didn't want to give a light tone to it. When I did Rawhide Kid, I wanted people to cry as if they were watching High Noon or something. The writers I used to love were Rod Serling, Paddy Chayevsky, Sterling Siliphant. So I was trying to write that kind of thing.

 

Edited January 24, 2023 by Zonker
Richarded it up