Stan, Jack, and Steve - The 1960's (1963) Butting Heads, Unexpected Success and Not Expected Failures! 3 3

[Steven Valdez]

On 8/9/2023 at 1:52 PM, jimjum12 said:

 -jimbo(a friend of jesus)

 

.... everyone else is extrapolating thoughts and motives out of the "minds" of dead people, I thought I'd have a go at it also. 

Were you referring to Jesus there or the early Marvel "bullpen"?

[jimjum12]

On 8/9/2023 at 1:20 AM, sfcityduck said:

JR had already proven himself to Stan as more than capable at producing superhero comics.

I think Romita had proved his prowess at doing ANY type of comic. To me, Romita was as much, if not more, responsibly for taking the spirit of Marvel to the next level of maturity and demographic expansion than anyone else.Stan saw that and nurtured it into the juggernaut that Marvel became. It was the late 60's, the world was ready to expanded. That was when comics began being taken seriously by the world at large. This didn't happen at DC or Harvey or Charlton ... and there's a reason for that. Brilliant marketing, unfortunately, is sometimes obscured by success.GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Edited August 9, 2023 by jimjum12

[N e r V]

On 8/8/2023 at 9:46 PM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

Became more popular but it was Ditko that created all those great villains.  Compare the first 38 issues to the next 38 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. By the time Spider-Man hit into the issues 70s to 100. It became a boring run without Ditko. It came back after Stan stopped writing it and a young Gerry Conway gave it new life.

Steve Ditko gave us this.

Created every one of them.

 

 

 

plus him and him.

 

 

Those are all fantastic villains for sure. Right up there with Batman’s rogues gallery. Playing devils advocate though the Spider-Man villains of the 1970’s were by far the more well known and successful ones. Pretty much all of those as great as they were stayed in the villains camp.

Think about some of the 1970’s villain introductions in Spider-Man. Morbius, Man-Wolf, The Punisher, Black Cat and the Clone storyline as examples. A number of them graduated out of the villain camp into their own series as leads or with far reaching storylines going into the next several decades.1970’s were mana for the Spider-Man series.

[Steven Valdez]

On 8/9/2023 at 2:46 PM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

Became more popular but it was Ditko that created all those great villains.  Compare the first 38 issues to the next 38 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. By the time Spider-Man hit into the issues 70s to 100. It became a boring run without Ditko. It came back after Stan stopped writing it and a young Gerry Conway gave it new life.

Steve Ditko gave us this.

Created every one of them

I wonder if Stan came up with the initial names for each villain, as he did later for Romita?

JR: "The only thing he used to do from 1966-72 was come in and leave a note on my drawing table saying “Next month, the Rhino.” That’s all; he wouldn’t tell me anything; how to handle it. Then he would say “The Kingpin.” I would then take it upon myself to put some kind of distinctive look to the guy."

[N e r V]

On 8/8/2023 at 10:32 PM, jimjum12 said:

I think Romita had proved his prowess at doing ANY type of comic. To me, Romita was as much, if not more, responsibly for taking the spirit of Marvel to the next level of maturity and demographic expansion than anyone else.Stan saw that and nurtured it into the juggernaut that Marvel became. It was the late 60's, the world was ready to expanded. That was when comics began being taken seriously by the world at large. This didn't happen at DC or Harvey or Charlton ... and there's a reason for that. Brilliant marketing, unfortunately, sometimes obscured by success.GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Let’s see he’s involved with the creations of Brother Voodoo, Bullseye, Luke Cage, Firestar, Gladiator, Hammerhead, Hobgoblin, Kangaroo, Kingpin, Masked Marauder, Nova, the Punisher, Rhino, Satana, Shocker, Wolverine and others as well as the first appearance of Mary Jane Watson and pretty much the look of the company for decades. Oh yeah, he could draw really well too. He deserves his seat at the Marvel table as much as Stan, Jack and a number of others in creating the Marvel universe as it sits today. Legendary.

Edited August 9, 2023 by N e r V
Spelling

[jimjum12]

On 8/9/2023 at 1:43 AM, N e r V said:

Let’s see he’s involved with the creations of Brother Voodoo, Bullseye, Luke Cage, Firestar, Gladiator, Hammerhead, Hobgoblin, Kangaroo, Kingpin, Masked Marauder, Nova, the Punisher, Rhino, Satana, Shocker, Wolverine and others as well as the first appearance of Mary Jane Watson and pretty much the look of the company for decades. Oh yeah, he could draw really well too. He deserves his seat at the Marvel as much as Stan, Jack and a number of others in creating the Marvel universe as it sits today. Legendary.

Romita, more than any of them, had taken his evolution at D.C.'s Romance department and become exactly the kind of artist needed to breathe life and realism into a dying, redundant comic industry. He was the real deal and Stan did learn a little from Jack and Steve and gave Romita prominent roles in the company as time marched on. He was there for a LONG time, even raising a son who would go on to also be one of Marvel's best artists. His wife even worked there. What a horrible cannibalistic environment it must have been to bring the whole family into that Salt Mine. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Edited August 9, 2023 by jimjum12

[N e r V]

On 8/8/2023 at 10:43 PM, N e r V said:

Let’s see he’s involved with the creations of Brother Voodoo, Bullseye, Luke Cage, Firestar, Gladiator, Hammerhead, Hobgoblin, Kangaroo, Kingpin, Masked Marauder, Nova, the Punisher, Rhino, Satana, Shocker, Wolverine and others as well as the first appearance of Mary Jane Watson and pretty much the look of the company for decades. Oh yeah, he could draw really well too. He deserves his seat at the Marvel table as much as Stan, Jack and a number of others in creating the Marvel universe as it sits today. Legendary.

The first copies of Spider-Man I saw on the stands were #121 and 122. First one I bought was #123. To this day there has never been a time when I didn’t own at least 1 copy each of AF #15 and ASM #1 thru 150. That’s my Spider-Man gold standard. I never understood anyone who poo poo’d the Romita run post Ditko. He introduced a number of villains and characters into the series and even if his only contribution was Kingpin that character as a villain surpassed all the Ditko villain creations including Green Goblin through the sheer amount of other Marvel titles and characters he crossed over into. Romita did his run in the 1960’s and moved on to bigger and better things at Marvel post Spider-Man. Ditko run was different than Romita. Kane varied from Romita. I guess you can pick a favorite artist in the run but I’d say all of them did a good job at contributing their part to the Spider-Man series.

Edited August 9, 2023 by N e r V
Spelling

[Prince Namor]

On 8/9/2023 at 10:02 AM, jimjum12 said:

You have to remember that when Ditko quit, he was replaced by Romita and the book became even more popular.

Amazing Spider-man was very quickly Marvel's best selling book before Romita ever took over. Houseroy has made the claim the numbers went up after Ditko left, but really, there's more to it than that. 

The first Statement of Publication for the Amazing Spider-man, ran in issue #47, that hit the newsstands in January of 1967. The Statement was put together (according to the document) on October 1st, 1966. The nearest issue to that, previous to the date, was Amazing Spider-man #43, that came out on September 8th of 1966. That issue wouldn't be included, because the numbers wouldn't have been reported until AFTER the books got pulled and the logos torn off, a full month after they were released.

So for that first Statement of Publication, it means that it would be for issues 31-42 (8 Ditko issues and 4 Romita issues).

It shows a Total Paid Circulation of 340,105 for 1966.

For 1966, the FF was at 329,379. ASM was already beating it. 

For 1967, the ASM would go UP to 361,663, a moderate jump of 21,000 copies (Subscriptions went down 400 copies, and they had to print an additional 70,000+ copies to get that Paid Circulation number, but... sell through percentage fell from 65.8% to 61.6%.

Romita also got the benefit of the Spider-man Saturday Morning Cartoon (the good one) which began in September of 1967, and we'd see the book only go up another 10,000 copies a month for 1968's numbers, compared to the Fantastic Four, whose cartoon began at the same time, go from 329,000 in 1967 to 344,000 in 1968 ( a moderate jump of 15,000 copies a month).

Considering the live action Batman TV show sent Batman from 453,000 in 1965 to 898,470 in 1966 (and even 805,000 in 1967), it seems Marvel was almost leveling off by the late 60's. 

Was it MORE popular with Romita?

It would level off at 372,000 in 1969 (technically a drop), and it would fall every year after that for the next 4 years, bottoming out at 273,204 in 1973 (100,000 less than 4 years earlier). Romita shared the book with Gil Kane through issue #123, which came out in May of 1973.

Obviously some of that has to do with price increases, up to 15 cents in 1969, and 20 cents in 1971, and 25 cents in 1973, but it still stands that in 4 of Romita's 7 years on the book, it sold less than (mostly) Ditko's 340,000 in 1966.

Spider-man was Marvel's most popular character when Ditko was writing and drawing the book. Despite fanzine hatred toward Marvel over Ditko leaving the book, Romita helped continue the popularity of the character (thanks in part to the Cartoon series that ran from 1966 to 1970). It grew as Marvel grew. 

[Prince Namor]

On 8/9/2023 at 1:05 PM, N e r V said:

The first copies of Spider-Man I saw on the stands were #121 and 122. First one I bought was #123. To this day there has never been a time when I didn’t own at least 1 copy each of AF #15 and ASM #1 thru 150. That’s my Spider-Man gold standard. I never understood anyone who poo poo’d the Romita run post Ditko. He introduced a number of villains and characters into the series and even if his only contribution was Kingpin that character as a villain surpassed all the Ditko villain creations including Green Goblin through the sheer amount of other Marvel titles and characters he crossed over into. Romita did his run in the 1960’s and moved on to bigger and better things at Marvel post Spider-Man. Ditko run was different than Romita. Kane varied from Romita. I guess you can pick a favorite artist in the run but I’d say all of them did a good job at contributing their part to the Spider-Man series.

Romita is my favorite Marvel artist. Spider-man was always my favorite character. And even though I grew up during the Ross Andru era, which I loved, those Romita covers were always the best. Personally he's still my favorite cover artist for Marvel of ANY character. 

He absolutely deserves MUCH more recognition for what he did in his long and amazing career. 

Edited August 9, 2023 by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

On 8/9/2023 at 12:33 PM, N e r V said:

 

Those are all fantastic villains for sure. Right up there with Batman’s rogues gallery. Playing devils advocate though the Spider-Man villains of the 1970’s were by far the more well known and successful ones. Pretty much all of those as great as they were stayed in the villains camp.

Think about some of the 1970’s villain introductions in Spider-Man. Morbius, Man-Wolf, The Punisher, Black Cat and the Clone storyline as examples. A number of them graduated out of the villain camp into their own series as leads or with far reaching storylines going into the next several decades.1970’s were mana for the Spider-Man series.

True, but those you mention were created over a 15 year period. Most of the Ditko one's were created over 15 MONTHS. 

[jimjum12]

On 8/9/2023 at 2:27 AM, Prince Namor said:

Romita is my favorite Marvel artist. Spider-man was always my favorite character. And even though I grew up during the Ross André era, which I loved, those Romita covers were always the best. Personally he's still my favorite cover artist for Marvel of ANY character. 

He absolutely deserves MUCH more recognition for what he did in his long and amazing career. 

I'll always have Kirby and Ditko on my "fantasy team" .... however .... 

GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Edited August 9, 2023 by jimjum12

[N e r V]

On 8/8/2023 at 11:30 PM, Prince Namor said:

True, but those you mention were created over a 15 year period. Most of the Ditko one's were created over 15 MONTHS. 

Oh for sure Ditko deserves a ton of credit. I meant it when I said Spider-Man’s early villains were on par with Batman’s who also had extremely strong villains. It seems by design you created a hero then immediately had to regularly create villains until you created enough to take a break and have them repeat. Lol A lot of series followed that format. The difference being you had some series like Spider-Man that created many classic ones and then other series like say Daredevil who also created a bunch of new villains just not so many classic ones to start. Ironically from my own personal perspective as great as Ditko was on Spider-Man and certainly more creative with introducing villains as you pointed out I actually think his work on Doctor Strange was far more riveting to me. He really, really cut loose there. Yes not nearly as successful when compared to the Spider-Man series but what an absolute blast of Ditko madness on full display on comics. Think about being around Marvel in the 1965/66 period with Kirby doing cosmic and Ditko firing away on multi dimensional worlds at the same time. Then look over a DC book at the time like Supes, Bats or JLA for some context on how the two companies were literally worlds apart.

Edited August 9, 2023 by N e r V
Spelling

[N e r V]

If you look at his earlier works at Marvel (pre heroes) and Charlton you can see he used his past experiences on the fantasy titles to get us here and it was glorious…

 

Edited August 9, 2023 by N e r V

[Steven Valdez]

The Romita Spider-Man was like a different series than the Ditko Spider-Man. Peter Parker and the supporting cast were very different characters in each version.

Both are equally iconic in different ways.

[sfcityduck]

JR’s first comic book cover for Marvel:

JR interior art from 1954:

 

 

Edited August 9, 2023 by sfcityduck

[Prince Namor]

On 8/9/2023 at 1:45 PM, N e r V said:

Oh for sure Ditko deserves a ton of credit. I meant it when I said Spider-Man’s early villains were on par with Batman’s who also had extremely strong villains. It seems by design you created a hero then immediately had to regularly create villains until you created enough to take a break and have them repeat. Lol A lot of series followed that format. The difference being you had some series like Spider-Man that created many classic ones and then other series like say Daredevil who also created a bunch of new villains just not so many classic ones to start.

Completely agree. I think the Spider-man/Daredevil villain comparison is a great example of what a Ditko could do vs... what it would've been like without Kirby and Ditko.

On 8/9/2023 at 1:45 PM, N e r V said:

Ironically from my own personal perspective as great as Ditko was on Spider-Man and certainly more creative with introducing villains as you pointed out I actually think his work on Doctor Strange was far more riveting to me. He really, really cut loose there. Yes not nearly as successful when compared to the Spider-Man series but what an absolute blast of Ditko madness on full display on comics. Think about being around Marvel in the 1965/66 period with Kirby doing cosmic and Ditko firing away on multi dimensional worlds at the same time. Then look over a DC book at the time like Supes, Bats or JLA for some context on how the two companies were literally worlds apart.

Again completely agree. It had to be an amazingly exciting time! 

[Prince Namor]

On 8/9/2023 at 2:05 PM, Steven Valdez said:

The Romita Spider-Man was like a different series than the Ditko Spider-Man. Peter Parker and the supporting cast were very different characters in each version.

Both are equally iconic in different ways.

It became a romance comic. Romita was essentially writing it, and that was what he knew best, from 7 years doing that at DC. BUT, he learned to do Action sequences, and that action was superb!

His work on it was beautiful from the beginning, but man, as he evolved, his work was just the best. And as an inker, just... the best inker in comic books for my money. 

[Prince Namor]

Ultimately... Ditko was the biggest difference maker in the whole Marvel Universe. Without what he started on Spider-man, it just isn't what it was. For all of Kirby's greatness and ability to write and draw his own work and create his own stories... the REAL genesis of the Marvel Universe is... the start to and immediate ascension of Spider-man.

Kirby coming in with his 'blitzkrieg' of ideas and heroes - Stan Lee taking some of that and sharing it with Ditko early in the Spider-man work - Kirby not having TIME to do Spider-man (remember, it wasn't Kirby AND Ditko... it was Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, throw a bone to Ditko at the time) - then Ditko being headstrong in understanding character development, more so than his editor - eventually taking over the book...

And whoever designed that costume. If you ask me, I believe it was Ditko. Doesn't look much like a Kirby design to me. 

Spider-man was hot from the word go, and Marvel's most popular superhero almost immediately. Keeping that book going, month after month, and having a pro on it like Romita, reenforced it even more. 

FF, Thor, Doctor Strange, Iron Man... Marvel had a great line-up. But Spider-man would become the most popular superhero in the world. And that helped Marvel take on DC head to head. 

[N e r V]

On 8/9/2023 at 9:47 AM, Prince Namor said:

Ultimately... Ditko was the biggest difference maker in the whole Marvel Universe. Without what he started on Spider-man, it just isn't what it was. For all of Kirby's greatness and ability to write and draw his own work and create his own stories... the REAL genesis of the Marvel Universe is... the start to and immediate ascension of Spider-man.

Kirby coming in with his 'blitzkrieg' of ideas and heroes - Stan Lee taking some of that and sharing it with Ditko early in the Spider-man work - Kirby not having TIME to do Spider-man (remember, it wasn't Kirby AND Ditko... it was Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, throw a bone to Ditko at the time) - then Ditko being headstrong in understanding character development, more so than his editor - eventually taking over the book...

And whoever designed that costume. If you ask me, I believe it was Ditko. Doesn't look much like a Kirby design to me. 

Spider-man was hot from the word go, and Marvel's most popular superhero almost immediately. Keeping that book going, month after month, and having a pro on it like Romita, reenforced it even more. 

FF, Thor, Doctor Strange, Iron Man... Marvel had a great line-up. But Spider-man would become the most popular superhero in the world. And that helped Marvel take on DC head to head. 

My moneys on Ben Cooper in 1954…

 

https://nypost.com/2015/07/14/did-stan-lee-steal-spider-man-from-a-brooklyn-costume-shop/

 

[N e r V]

And in an alternate universe….