Jack Kirby's Son Comments On New Stan Lee Documentary 3 3

[Prince Namor]

On 6/20/2023 at 3:40 PM, D2 said:

Perfectly put.

Then why engage? Anyone who is 'sick of it' and 'just doesn't care', has the option to ignore it altogether, but... here you all are. 

There are parts of this forum I just plain and simply don't agree with and want nothing to do with. I stay away from them. Simple.

[D2]

On 6/20/2023 at 4:09 PM, Prince Namor said:

Then why engage? Anyone who is 'sick of it' and 'just doesn't care', has the option to ignore it altogether, but... here you all are. 

There are parts of this forum I just plain and simply don't agree with and want nothing to do with. I stay away from them. Simple.

But...

isn't communicating the opinion still relevant? If I went through ignoring things all the time, does one continue to exist?

[Jeffro.]

On 6/20/2023 at 4:26 PM, D2 said:

On 6/20/2023 at 4:09 PM, Prince Namor said:

Then why engage? Anyone who is 'sick of it' and 'just doesn't care', has the option to ignore it altogether, but... here you all are. 

There are parts of this forum I just plain and simply don't agree with and want nothing to do with. I stay away from them. Simple.

But...

isn't communicating the opinion still relevant? If I went through ignoring things all the time, does one continue to exist?

It's an option and one that far too many people on this planet can't seem to grasp. Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. I don't mean you specifically, I mean a figurative "you"

I think this entire world would be a lot better off if 75% of the people just shut the eff up. 

[D2]

On 6/20/2023 at 4:31 PM, Jeffro. said:

It's an option and one that far too many people on this planet can't seem to grasp. Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. I don't mean you specifically, I mean a figurative "you"

I think this entire world would be a lot better off if 75% of the people just shut the eff up. 

I don't disagree, it's a great point.

For the record too, I do not want to undermine or undercut Jack Kirby's involvement and importance.

[comicwiz]

Great read (link shared by someone on FB)

How Stan Lee erased the true hero of Marvel

[Krismusic]

The whole Stan vs Kirby and how much credit they deserve debate can go on for a long time… as the only people who truly know are them and the people that worked on the books at that time.

But for us at least we know that they all had some part in creating the stories we loved as kids, teens and adults and without one of them we might not have had the chance to experience these awesome stories.

so we might not know who deserves more credit etc but we at least we know who helped create the characters we love. Whether it was a small part or a key stone part all pieces no matter how small or big were important in making those books into what we know and treasure today! 

[Ed Hanes]

I have been part of a couple art collectives which included designers, musicians, artists, etc. This struggle to define the 'creator' of something as either the person who came up with the idea or the person who put it in physical form was very real within the collectives ...and probably the main reason why these collectives always disintegrated..co creator would work for some projects but for those who only generated an idea..it was difficult to give credit and that caused a lot of drama.  And this was usually because the physical manifestation of the idea was several degrees removed from the original idea. I can understand Neal Kirby's frustration with Stan Lee  because what I think he is trying to express is that an idea requires many stages to become reality and all those changes are as valid as the original spark, and in some cases, moreso. I don't know anywhere in which the original idea (alone) is credited with so much value as we see in Stan Lee's self defense. Nobel Prizes are not given out to people with an idea..you have to put the work into it (in the form of publishing). Entertainment awards are not given to ideas but to the actual released projects (to the public). I think Stan Lee contributed a great deal to the comic world..but so did Jack Kirby and he deserve the accolades and credit also. 

[PopKulture]

I just don't understand the willingness to look the other way when it comes to Stan Lee. Every time someone posts a tribute to a recently deceased person of note in the Water Cooler, several users pile on to remind everyone about the worst thing that person ever did: that Beat guru ran over dogs, that musician did this... But Stan did not just pass, and all the blind worship of him causes Shelley's "Ozymandias" to subtly play on a loop somewhere in the back of my head. 

Given his decades-long body of self-serving lies on top of shameless self-promotion on top of spin and flim-flam, he was egotistical at a glance, and when you really peek behind the veil, he was downright oily. Affable, charismatic, engaging... but oily. For whatever part he did play in the creation of the Marvel Universe so many of us cherish, it brings me no pleasure stating such, but I refuse to play the fool.  

[jimjum12]

On 6/20/2023 at 4:06 PM, Prince Namor said:

No one makes these arguments for Bob Kane.

Who is Bob Kane ?  GOD BLESS ....

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[jimjum12]

On 6/20/2023 at 10:41 PM, Ed Hanes said:

I have been part of a couple art collectives which included designers, musicians, artists, etc. This struggle to define the 'creator' of something as either the person who came up with the idea or the person who put it in physical form was very real within the collectives ...and probably the main reason why these collectives always disintegrated..co creator would work for some projects but for those who only generated an idea..it was difficult to give credit and that caused a lot of drama.  And this was usually because the physical manifestation of the idea was several degrees removed from the original idea. I can understand Neal Kirby's frustration with Stan Lee  because what I think he is trying to express is that an idea requires many stages to become reality and all those changes are as valid as the original spark, and in some cases, moreso. I don't know anywhere in which the original idea (alone) is credited with so much value as we see in Stan Lee's self defense. Nobel Prizes are not given out to people with an idea..you have to put the work into it (in the form of publishing). Entertainment awards are not given to ideas but to the actual released projects (to the public). I think Stan Lee contributed a great deal to the comic world..but so did Jack Kirby and he deserve the accolades and credit also. 

Lennon and McCartney .... 

Lennon had some fine solo efforts, as did McCartney. Together, they were MAGIC. 

Simon and Garfunkel, Plant and Page .... etc.

 I'm as big a lover of Kirby as anyone out there. When I still had a fully functioning mind, I had an encyclopedic knowledge of almost everything his work appeared in. At some point or another I read almost all of it. Some people don't really READ comics, happy to lovingly skim over all the pretty pictures. 

This is all opinion here (mine) but i always noticed a stiffness, a contrived element to Kirby's own storytelling. To me, It was that way before his work with Stan and that way after Jack left for D.C. and then on to the independents. I was a kid in the 60's and when Kirby left Marvel for D.C. in 1970, I was traumatized. The material he produced alone at D.C. just never did scratch the itch again. Nothing ever really did ... maybe Adams and O'Neil. Even though this is all my opinion, if we "follow the money" and analyze back issue prices, it would seem I am not alone in holding Stan AND Jack, or Stan AND Steve, in a higher regard.... you know, the old "sum of the parts..." thing. 

Kirby was what they call on Madison Avenue, or in Hollywood, an Idea Man. For Stan to have allowed a perception to persist that all the "Ideas" were all his was rather shameful. I have seen a few interviews where he alludes to otherwise, like the unexpected flying figure on the Surfboard. Unfortunately, this is the age of "spin", and interviews where Stan gushes about his co creators are skillfully left out of the narrative. Still, in all honesty, "The House That Stan Built" was aggressively promoted as canon since the Bronze Age. I can see where Jack's frustration came from. 

As a fan who actually READ the comics, I also noticed a very different atmosphere when Roy Thomas started getting his hands dirty as well. The dialog can definitely be the "Fairy Dust", the zeitgeist of the product, in the hands of a competent wordsmith ...

GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

 

.... please pardon my impertinence, as I am binge watching "Young Sheldon" at the moment. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by jimjum12

[Bronty]

On 6/21/2023 at 2:24 AM, jimjum12 said:

 

This is all opinion here (mine) but i always noticed a stiffness, a contrived element to Kirby's own storytelling. To me, It was that way before his work with Stan and that way after Jack left for D.C. and then on to the independents. I was a kid in the 60's and when Kirby left Marvel for D.C. in 1970, I was traumatized. The material he produced alone at D.C. just never did scratch the itch again. Nothing ever really did ... maybe Adams and O'Neil. Even though this is all my opinion, if we "follow the money" and analyze back issue prices, it would seem I am not alone in holding Stan AND Jack, or Stan AND Steve, in a higher regard.... you know, the old "sum of the parts..." thing. 

 

well said!   I could not agree more.   

[comicwiz]

On 6/21/2023 at 2:24 AM, jimjum12 said:

This is all opinion here (mine) but i always noticed a stiffness, a contrived element to Kirby's own storytelling. To me, It was that way before his work with Stan and that way after Jack left for D.C. and then on to the independents. I was a kid in the 60's and when Kirby left Marvel for D.C. in 1970, I was traumatized. The material he produced alone at D.C. just never did scratch the itch again. Nothing ever really did ... maybe Adams and O'Neil. Even though this is all my opinion, if we "follow the money" and analyze back issue prices, it would seem I am not alone in holding Stan AND Jack, or Stan AND Steve, in a higher regard.... you know, the old "sum of the parts..." thing. 

This (bolded part) is a sentiment many of us probably share at some level, but where things start to unravel is when Stan goes out of his way to steal the limelight, with the neverending need to jostle for his place on things he deserves little to no credit. I watched the documentary and I couldn't understand why he had to say he wrote, did writing, scripts, and more writing - for nearly half the duration of the doc. I couldn't possibly ever bring myself to watch it again, but I was curious if someone reading this hasn't seen it - if they can count how many times he mentions being a writer/writing - because it feels like a high number in the triple digits or high double digits. He kept going about this until he he had to become "publisher", sounding like petulant child when he spoke about not being good with numbers and having to report to a board.  And even then he still kept talking about writing.

Most people who actually do what they say they do only need to say it once. It's like he was carrying around his resume the entire time the doc was rolling, not to mention that I was sure at some point they were going to share a pic of him on the toilet with his typewriter. It was so obvious what was happening here, and frankly, there are bullpen artists who have already spoken out about this, both in the past, and who continue to bring it up now, and that is the issue with how Stan took people's pay for doing no writing. A pure hanger-on move if there ever was one, and why I call him and his brother the quintessential nepotists. He didn't do any "writing" other than filling some word balloons, he sucked at running Marvel after he became publisher. And it turns out that even after his uncle got him the gig, he still was on the brink of having the comic divisiion shut down on him in 1961 - if not for Jack Kirby. From the article I posted above:

"Comic book artist Jack Kirby told stories. One of his best comes from off the page: that in 1961, Kirby came into the office of what became Marvel Comics to find Stan Lee – AKA “Stan the Man”, the much-treasured Marvel editor – at his desk, sobbing.

 

The publisher, Martin Goodman, was planning to drop comics from the company’s portfolio. The office furniture was already being lugged out. Marvel Comics would be erased from comics history. “And I needed the work!” Kirby later said. “I had a family and a house and all of a sudden Marvel is coming apart.”

 

Kirby told Stan to hold off Goodman. He could make the comic books sell. Kirby sensed that superheroes, out of style since the Golden Age, were ready to return.

 

So, as Kirby told it, he presented a “blitzkrieg” of character concepts: the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, and the X-Men. “I saved Marvel’s [butt],” Kirby later said. Indeed, those heroes took centre stage in a Sixties boom period dubbed the “Marvel Age”. In 2023, the legacy of Kirby’s work has long since taken over as the dominant, indestructible force in mainstream pop culture. Comic aficionados know Jack Kirby as, quite simply, “the King”.

Edited June 21, 2023 by comicwiz

[MatterEaterLad]

If you hated the documentary, you'll love this bio, it does a great job digging into the creation of certain characters.

Also, I had no idea J.C. Lee was that crazy.

 

[october]

The middle road is usually closest to the truth. Stan was clearly a fame and credit hog, but he also didn't do nothing. Apologists are flat-out ignoring reality, while the haters gloss over the fact that dialogue he often created was a key element in what set Marvel apart. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by october

[Prince Namor]

On 6/21/2023 at 8:30 AM, october said:

The middle road is usually closest to the truth. Stan was clearly a fame and credit hog, but he also didn't do nothing. Apologists are flat-out ignoring reality, while the haters gloss over the fact that dialogue he often created was a key element in what set Marvel apart. 

No one's claiming he did NOTHING. That's a straw man argument. 

The issue is this: LEE claimed UNDER OATH, in a court of law, that he created and wrote everything and then just assigned an artist.

That is a LIE that discredits Kirby and Ditko, and even Romita, Colan, Heck, etc. 

Disney/Marvel is trying to continue this whitewashing of TRUTH, of HISTORY - with a version that they feel benefits THEM - and it is continued with that documentary. A Documentary that completely glosses over the impact those two people had. 

'The haters' are clearly aware of Lee's dialogue. It's NOT the issue. 

Trying to erase Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko from the creation of the Marvel Universe is a creative, cultural and artistic CRIME. 

Respectfully.... THAT is what this about. 

 

 

[Prince Namor]

On 6/21/2023 at 2:24 AM, jimjum12 said:

Lennon and McCartney .... 

Lennon had some fine solo efforts, as did McCartney. Together, they were MAGIC. 

Simon and Garfunkel, Plant and Page .... etc.

 I'm as big a lover of Kirby as anyone out there. When I still had a fully functioning mind, I had an encyclopedic knowledge of almost everything his work appeared in. At some point or another I read almost all of it. Some people don't really READ comics, happy to lovingly skim over all the pretty pictures. 

This is all opinion here (mine) but i always noticed a stiffness, a contrived element to Kirby's own storytelling. To me, It was that way before his work with Stan and that way after Jack left for D.C. and then on to the independents. I was a kid in the 60's and when Kirby left Marvel for D.C. in 1970, I was traumatized. The material he produced alone at D.C. just never did scratch the itch again. Nothing ever really did ... maybe Adams and O'Neil. Even though this is all my opinion, if we "follow the money" and analyze back issue prices, it would seem I am not alone in holding Stan AND Jack, or Stan AND Steve, in a higher regard.... you know, the old "sum of the parts..." thing. 

Kirby was what they call on Madison Avenue, or in Hollywood, an Idea Man. For Stan to have allowed a perception to persist that all the "Ideas" were all his was rather shameful. I have seen a few interviews where he alludes to otherwise, like the unexpected flying figure on the Surfboard. Unfortunately, this is the age of "spin", and interviews where Stan gushes about his co creators are skillfully left out of the narrative. Still, in all honesty, "The House That Stan Built" was aggressively promoted as canon since the Bronze Age. I can see where Jack's frustration came from. 

As a fan who actually READ the comics, I also noticed a very different atmosphere when Roy Thomas started getting his hands dirty as well. The dialog can definitely be the "Fairy Dust", the zeitgeist of the product, in the hands of a competent wordsmith ...

GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

 

.... please pardon my impertinence, as I am binge watching "Young Sheldon" at the moment. 

jimbo, I always enjoy your posts, but I do want to make two comments here...

One, is that Stan Lee COULDN'T make a solo creation because he can't draw...

and Two, there are a few old time Silver Age fans who've followed my month by month Kirby, Ditko, Lee threads over in the Silver Age who have seen first hand in reading those stories how BAD the Stan Lee stories are when he doesn't have Kirby or Ditko writing for him. His early TTA and TOS's and ST's with Ayers and Heck are just... really lame. Seeing them side by side as they were published, has changed some people's view...(including Mitch Mheady).

But Stan told people over and over and over again how great they were and people tend to misremember things and... well sometimes it helps to just go back and read them.

From the other end, with Kirby's work, his late 50's DC House of Secrets, My Greatest Adventure, House of Mystery work reads just like Silver Age Marvel to me (minus some of the Stan Lee Millie the Model dialogue) and Fighting American is still some of my favorite works he ever did. 

Ultimately it's all subjective what we like and don't like, but many of the people posting here have never even read all the stories involved - they just repeat the rhetoric. I'm just trying to show the proof so people can read it - because its all about the actual stories - and make an educated decision on it. 

[Dr. Balls]

"History is written by the victors."

I love comics, I love the history of comics - but the history behind Stan Lee isn't even interesting anymore. It's just polished stories, embellishments and half-truths that leave out any component of the story that would lend to the idea that anyone at all assisted Stan Lee. In 20 years, everyone is going to think that Stan Lee created, wrote, drew, lettered, colored, printed, delivered and sold every Marvel comic book from 1939 to 2020.

I'm not a Stan Lee hater, but like a great many things in the world today: STFU, I've had enough.

[Zonker]

On 6/20/2023 at 10:41 PM, Ed Hanes said:

I have been part of a couple art collectives which included designers, musicians, artists, etc. This struggle to define the 'creator' of something as either the person who came up with the idea or the person who put it in physical form was very real within the collectives ...and probably the main reason why these collectives always disintegrated..co creator would work for some projects but for those who only generated an idea..it was difficult to give credit and that caused a lot of drama.  And this was usually because the physical manifestation of the idea was several degrees removed from the original idea. I can understand Neal Kirby's frustration with Stan Lee  because what I think he is trying to express is that an idea requires many stages to become reality and all those changes are as valid as the original spark, and in some cases, moreso. I don't know anywhere in which the original idea (alone) is credited with so much value as we see in Stan Lee's self defense. Nobel Prizes are not given out to people with an idea..you have to put the work into it (in the form of publishing). Entertainment awards are not given to ideas but to the actual released projects (to the public). I think Stan Lee contributed a great deal to the comic world..but so did Jack Kirby and he deserve the accolades and credit also. 

I think there is a lot of truth here.  

But I think what many would argue is that it was Kirby, Ditko, etc. who had most of the actual original ideas.  Ideas that Stan then "polished," if you're in a charitable mind to his contributions.  Though some would say what he did to Kirby's work was similar to what Vince Colletta did: prettified, simplified, and arguably erased a bit.  

[jimjum12]

On 6/21/2023 at 11:23 AM, Prince Namor said:

jimbo, I always enjoy your posts, but I do want to make two comments here...

One, is that Stan Lee COULDN'T make a solo creation because he can't draw...

and Two, there are a few old time Silver Age fans who've followed my month by month Kirby, Ditko, Lee threads over in the Silver Age who have seen first hand in reading those stories how BAD the Stan Lee stories are when he doesn't have Kirby or Ditko writing for him. His early TTA and TOS's and ST's with Ayers and Heck are just... really lame. Seeing them side by side as they were published, has changed some people's view...(including Mitch Mheady).

But Stan told people over and over and over again how great they were and people tend to misremember things and... well sometimes it helps to just go back and read them.

From the other end, with Kirby's work, his late 50's DC House of Secrets, My Greatest Adventure, House of Mystery work reads just like Silver Age Marvel to me (minus some of the Stan Lee Millie the Model dialogue) and Fighting American is still some of my favorite works he ever did. 

Ultimately it's all subjective what we like and don't like, but many of the people posting here have never even read all the stories involved - they just repeat the rhetoric. I'm just trying to show the proof so people can read it - because its all about the actual stories - and make an educated decision on it. 

I've learned a lot from your Facebook group and from the threads here. There was certainly a lot of misrepresentation going on. My main problem is when motive is speculated about or interjected as truth without Stan being around to defend himself. I've worked for enough big Corporations to know that a good idea is always "owned" by upper management. It's the nature of the game, to protect their properties. If I were to speculate, I would think that both Stan and Jack were motivated to sink or swim, a downward spiraling division of a big company ... maybe they agreed to a  Hail Mary approach with the understanding that someday it would be theirs if they saved the day. And they did. And then it got bigger. And bigger. Any types of handshake agreements or rainy day promises became untenable. Lee, being family, would always have that cushy job. Kirby, by nature of his work for hire contract, remained just that, a yard boy. I'd be pissed too, if I gave it my all, my last hurrah, and Stan got the meat and I got the bone. It got too big to maneuver and the aftermath was dismal for two guys and a handshake.Goodman changed his mind and Corporate greed won the day. GOD BLESS ... 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Edited June 21, 2023 by jimjum12

[lordbyroncomics]

On 6/20/2023 at 12:02 PM, shadroch said:

"His take " being the key phrase there.

So wait! Repeating the ACTUAL WORDS OF PEOPLE WHO WERE THERE is another guy's "take"? Wow!

On 6/20/2023 at 2:44 PM, Prince Namor said:

Or Stan Goldberg:

Stan Goldberg: Jack would sit there at lunch, and tell us these great ideas about what he was going to do next. It was like the ideas were bursting from every pore of his body. It was very interesting because he was a fountain of ideas. Stan would drive me home and we’d plot our stories in the car. I’d say to Stan, “How’s this? Millie loses her job.” He’d say, “Great! Give me 25 pages.” And that took him off the hook.

One time I was in Stan’s office and I told him, “I don’t have another plot.” Stan got out of his chair and walked over to me, looked me in the face, and said very seriously, “I don’t ever want to hear you say you can’t think of another plot.” Then he walked back and sat down in his chair. He didn’t think he needed to tell me anything more.

Jim Amash: Sounds like you were doing most of the writing then.

Goldberg: Well, I was.