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

[lordbyroncomics]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:21 PM, Steven Valdez said:

In fairness, Stan Lee said that the Marvel Method was "developed" because it "saved him time".  Stan needed that time for jetting around the country to speak at college campuses about how creative he was.

The Marvel Method didn't save much time for Jack Kirby, however, who spent 14+ hours per day plotting, writing and illustrating up to 6 titles per month, and almost all of the covers.

With respect, Stan's first college speaking appearance is 1964 as a one-off that was not engineered by Stan himself and publicity for the events references "Martin Goodman's Marvel Comics" so it's a prototype of what would come. The next time was in 1966 and was again, not the full scale, ticket selling Q&A event that would later become the norm- it was not in an auditorium but more for a small group from Princeton that invited him. Sean Howe has audio of this on his YouTube channel. I find it telling that a fan asks how Greek and Norse Gods can co-exist in the Marvel Universe and Stan doesn't seem to understand or recognize what they refer to and instead responds with a joke that it's going on too long; I find this significant because Stan often didn't know where Kirby was going with the stories.

It was only starting over a year later that Stan begun speaking in earnest; it's the 1970s' when he really begins doing this as a second vocation, even hiring a publicity agent to book him as "Speaker Man".

The Marvel Method predates 1967 when he consciously began the speaking circuit.

It saved him time... from what? How long does it take to dialogue stories that someone else plots and leaves you guide notes for? Stan was coming in three days a week and then two days a week. It's a lie, plain and simple. "Too busy"- too busy doing what? It just doesn't hold up.

[namisgr]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:10 PM, Steven Valdez said:

Stan Lee was a copy-editor and proofreader.

This is utter nonsense.

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/1/2023 at 6:55 PM, namisgr said:

This is utter nonsense.

What's wrong with being a copy-editor and proofreader, son?

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/1/2023 at 6:00 PM, lordbyroncomics said:

I find it telling that a fan asks how Greek and Norse Gods can co-exist in the Marvel Universe and Stan doesn't seem to understand or recognize what they refer to and instead responds with a joke that it's going on too long; I find this significant because Stan often didn't know where Kirby was going with the stories.

 

 

It's a shame nobody asked him why he had Norse and Greek gods speaking King James Bible -style Elizabethan English.

[namisgr]

Most likely for the same reason that Stan and Jack (or just Jack, according to you) combined characters from both Norse and Greek mythology into the same stories.  Because it was fun and made for entertaining comics.

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/1/2023 at 8:55 PM, namisgr said:

Most likely for the same reason that Stan and Jack (or just Jack, according to you) combined characters from both Norse and Greek mythology into the same stories.  Because it was fun and made for entertaining comics.

No, that's not it.

[Ken Aldred]

On 7/1/2023 at 11:17 AM, Steven Valdez said:

It's a shame nobody asked him why he had Norse and Greek gods speaking King James Bible -style Elizabethan English.

English language comics.

Gods talking to modern humans.

Accent and speech pattern to differentiate them.  An archaic form of English that’s still easily intelligible from a modern perspective makes sense as one side of a comic book dialogue interplay between the two groups.

You can see why it was chosen, if not being one that’s totally ideal.

 

Edited July 1, 2023 by Ken Aldred

[Zonker]

On 6/30/2023 at 11:21 PM, Steven Valdez said:

In fairness, Stan Lee said that the Marvel Method was "developed" because it "saved him time".  Stan needed that time for jetting around the country to speak at college campuses about how creative he was.

The Marvel Method didn't save much time for Jack Kirby, however, who spent 14+ hours per day plotting, writing and illustrating up to 6 titles per month, and almost all of the covers.

I think that actually may be a bit of a mis-quote.  I think what defenders of the Marvel Method (including Stan and Roy Thomas) usually said was that it saved time overall for their production line.  In the traditional way of working comic books, the penciler would be idle until he received an approved -script to start working.  And with Marvel as a 1-man shop in the early 1960s, Stan had several freelance artists who would be waiting on him to supply something to draw once he ran out of old inventory scripts. So, he chats them up over the phone and/or flips them a few sentences to get started, and then later does his "crossword puzzle" thing once the finished pencils arrived.  Removed the bottleneck in production that would otherwise be there if the freelance artists were always waiting on Stan to start from a blank sheet of paper. 

Of course, we now see the obvious solution to that problem would have been just to let Kirby and Ditko loose to do everything without waiting on Stan at all.  And sounds like that is pretty much how it evolved by the mid-1960s. But when it began, it was said to be a way for editor Stan Lee to exert some minimal due diligence control over the production process without relying too much on the availability of his wordsmith* Stan Lee. 

*pick whatever synonym you wish for what you think Stan did: "scripter" "writer" "copy-editor" or "typist" as you see fit.

[Cat]

On 7/1/2023 at 10:40 PM, Zonker said:

 So, he chats them up over the phone and/or flips them a few sentences to get started, and then later does his "crossword puzzle" thing once the finished pencils arrived. 

Ummmm..... d... does he? 

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/1/2023 at 10:40 PM, Zonker said:

*pick whatever synonym you wish for what you think Stan did: "scripter" "writer" "copy-editor" or "typist" as you see fit.

 I seriously doubt he did his own typing, the cover of Origins of Marvel Comics notwithstanding.

[Zonker]

On 7/1/2023 at 9:06 AM, Cat said:

Ummmm..... d... does he? 

Well, I wasn't there, so I'm just going by what I've read...  

[lordbyroncomics]

On 7/1/2023 at 8:40 AM, Zonker said:

I think that actually may be a bit of a mis-quote.  I think what defenders of the Marvel Method (including Stan and Roy Thomas) usually said was that it saved time overall for their production line.  In the traditional way of working comic books, the penciler would be idle until he received an approved --script to start working.  And with Marvel as a 1-man shop in the early 1960s, Stan had several freelance artists who would be waiting on him to supply something to draw once he ran out of old inventory scripts. So, he chats them up over the phone and/or flips them a few sentences to get started, and then later does his "crossword puzzle" thing once the finished pencils arrived.  Removed the bottleneck in production that would otherwise be there if the freelance artists were always waiting on Stan to start from a blank sheet of paper. 

Of course, we now see the obvious solution to that problem would have been just to let Kirby and Ditko loose to do everything without waiting on Stan at all.  And sounds like that is pretty much how it evolved by the mid-1960s. But when it began, it was said to be a way for editor Stan Lee to exert some minimal due diligence control over the production process without relying too much on the availability of his wordsmith* Stan Lee. 

*pick whatever synonym you wish for what you think Stan did: "scripter" "writer" "copy-editor" or "typist" as you see fit.

Respectfully, why are we thinking or speculating based on vague, collective memories of things said in passing over the years? How is it a misquote when several quotes exist that have Stan explaining that he was "too busy" and even "so it saved me a lot of time so I could look at other things like the cover" etc etc etc etc

I continue to be surprised that so many guys are entering this conversation with speculative bullets instead of real ones. Your first sentence invalidates anything else you wrote since the quotes exist.

Stan got his plots from Kirby. Which is why- careful, we've got more proof for the frantic ones- there exist stories in the 50s' that Kirby did alone that are repeated in Marvel books just a few years later. 

Jerry Bails asked Stan Lee for an example of one of his plots for a fanzine. Stan hurriedly sent him the FF plot which was a Puppet Master story. Stan made an unfortunate error in picking this plot and putting his name on it. Because it's the same story that Jack did in 1951 in Black Magic. So yeah- Stan isn't chatting up anyone on the phone. That's a myth. Stan Goldberg and MR. Ayers both said independently that Stan expected them to plot. Al Jaffee said the same. Romita Sr. said his "plot" would be: "next month- The Rhino"

Come prepared with quotes, not "i think what they said was..." 

 

[lordbyroncomics]

On 7/1/2023 at 9:32 AM, Zonker said:

Well, I wasn't there, so I'm just going by what I've read...  

The cover was Kirby's pitch art. Stan was reading him Kirby's plot.

Find the Green Arrow story four years earlier- "The War that Never Ended", by Kirby. In that story Green Arrow crashes on an island where a rebel army forces him to create advanced weapons using his arrow technology. He instead builds something to sabotage them and escape.

Sort of familiar. 

Please if we're going to cite them as evidence, by all means, let's keep reading Don Heck quotes:

"Jack Kirby created the costume, and he did the cover for the issue. In fact the second costume, the red and yellow one, was designed by Steve Ditko. I found it easier than drawing that bulky old thing. The earlier design, the robot- looking one, was more Kirbyish. But what happens with something like that is that the cover is due, like a month before, so Jack makes up a cover for Iron Man, and the character's design is right there on it. Then Stan calls me up and says, "You're doing a character called Iron Man."  That's about it. Well, Jack Kirby is the one who created most of those characters.  He's the one who was always in there, and he's the one who was developing all those characters. Stan and he would get together, and they'd start discussing it.  I try not to brush the truth into the corner. It's what it is."   

[Zonker]

On 7/1/2023 at 9:32 AM, lordbyroncomics said:

 

Come prepared with quotes, not "i think what they said was..." 
 

OK.

This recent Roy Thomas quote is top-of-mind and easy to find online.  If I can find a similar Stan Lee quote I can copy/paste, then I'll add it later.  **

Riesman himself doesn’t seem to understand the full variety of ways that the “Marvel Method” worked. It was begun primarily to benefit the artists — so that, at a time when Stan was virtually the company’s sole writer, they wouldn’t have to sit on their hands earning no money until he had time to bang out a full --script for them. It turned out to have other, unintended consequences, like increasing the action quota and visual appeal of the stories. Then the scripter would swoop in and tie things together with whatever words were needed to augment the pictures and add flavor to the sequence.

**Here it is from the Castle of Frankenstein interview Stan gave in 1969:

Edited July 1, 2023 by Zonker

[lordbyroncomics]

On 7/1/2023 at 9:39 AM, Zonker said:

OK.

This recent Roy Thomas quote is top-of-mind and easy to find online.  If I can find a similar Stan Lee quote I can copy/paste, then I'll add it later.  

Riesman himself doesn’t seem to understand the full variety of ways that the “Marvel Method” worked. It was begun primarily to benefit the artists — so that, at a time when Stan was virtually the company’s sole writer, they wouldn’t have to sit on their hands earning no money until he had time to bang out a full --script for them. It turned out to have other, unintended consequences, like increasing the action quota and visual appeal of the stories. Then the scripter would swoop in and tie things together with whatever words were needed to augment the pictures and add flavor to the sequence.

I'm sorry, I find Roy Thomas's quotes to be questionable due to his bias.

Let's consider that when Roy leaves Marvel in 1980, he has very different things to say about Stan, Stan's apparent pettiness and so forth.

This carries through in various letters and other interviews up until about 1985 when things sour for him at DC.

Roy admits that Marvel didn't prioritize him so he reached out to Stan in 2000 who told him he could ghost-write the Spider-Man strip. Okay.

Roy said for years that he disagreed with the sole creator idea and brought up an example of he and Stan having lunch discussing the producer that created the show the "A-Team". Roy disagreed with this and also disagreed that he was a co-creator of Wolverine, Ghost Rider etc. though he had been an Editor who had suggested "a canadian character" or "an international X-Men", etc.

Fast forward a few years later. Roy gets a sycophant "Manager" named John Cimino who now re-markets him to take the place that Stan did at conventions, literally billing himself as "Stan's chosen heir!". Roy also curiously now backtracks and contradicts earlier statements and literally bills himself as the co-creator of Storm, Wolverine, etc. 

Roy's changing narrative- which always changed due to his fluctuating fortunes- makes him a less than credible witness.

[Steven Valdez]

On 7/1/2023 at 11:45 PM, lordbyroncomics said:

I'm sorry, I find Roy Thomas's quotes to be questionable due to his bias.

Let's consider that when Roy leaves Marvel in 1980, he has very different things to say about Stan, Stan's apparent pettiness and so forth.

This carries through in various letters and other interviews up until about 1985 when things sour for him at DC.

Roy admits that Marvel didn't prioritize him so he reached out to Stan in 2000 who told him he could ghost-write the Spider-Man strip. Okay.

Roy said for years that he disagreed with the sole creator idea and brought up an example of he and Stan having lunch discussing the producer that created the show the "A-Team". Roy disagreed with this and also disagreed that he was a co-creator of Wolverine, Ghost Rider etc. though he had been an Editor who had suggested "a canadian character" or "an international X-Men", etc.

Fast forward a few years later. Roy gets a sycophant "Manager" named John Cimino who now re-markets him to take the place that Stan did at conventions, literally billing himself as "Stan's chosen heir!". Roy also curiously now backtracks and contradicts earlier statements and literally bills himself as the co-creator of Storm, Wolverine, etc. 

Roy's changing narrative- which always changed due to his fluctuating fortunes- makes him a less than credible witness.

The other interesting about Roy (apart from pleasuring Stan) is that he simply was not there for the formative years of the Marvel Universe. He's no more of an eyewitness to those times than any of the rest of us are.

[Steven Valdez]

As an aside, Spider-Man was created in 1954 by the Ben Cooper company.

aside

[lordbyroncomics]

On 7/1/2023 at 9:53 AM, Steven Valdez said:

The other interesting about Roy (apart from pleasuring Stan) is that he simply was not there for the formative years of the Marvel Universe. He's no more of an eyewitness to those times than any of the rest of us are.

Listen, Roy is a villain. And he irked people considerably... MR. Ayers confided that to me, as well as someone else I can't name. Roy seemed to have lacked self-awareness. He himself said that when Ditko delivered Spider-Man art to the offices and said "tell Stan I'll bring the next one in in a couple weeks", Roy said "Oh, so there's going to BE a next one?" 

I was amazed at such a lack of tact. Ditko already felt uneasy coming in; why alienate him further? Per Thomas's own retelling, Sol Brodsky took him aside (!) and gave him a lecture about how Ditko could take that. Roy also said in another interview he went to Marie Severin, Gene Colan and Romita Sr and said "It takes all of you to do what Ditko did in a month!" and how he only "meant it as a joke".

I can see Roy rubbing veterans the wrong way. He was a fan who hadn't paid his dues. And then he writes things like "Little Jack Kirby, sitting in his derby" and "come back! all is forgiven- carmine" in a comedy story and so forth- I mean, Houseroy isn't far off. And Roy has grown into Houseroy increasingly these last few years. Can you not see Jack's position at wondering why this intern is mentioning his business with DC?

For me, the worst thing he did as a professional was when he was in a higher position and feels the need to write "Lousy Dialogue":on one of Kirby's stories- and then sends it back to Kirby to see it. Whatever your opinion of Kirby's dialogue, why would you handle it like that in 1978 or whatever? The guy is a massively overrated. He admitted that Thundra was taken from Big Barda. When Kirby did his white skinned science-based vampire in Jimmy Olsen, Colletta took the finished pages with him to the Marvel offices and admitted that Roy looked at them. A month later, Morbius the white skinned science-based vampire appears. The list goes on and on, even if it offends the fragile fanboys who will show real outrage if they think they've been screwed over a deal for slabbed books but could care less that someone who gave much of their life to the medium and the industry might just have had some credit taken from him. 

[Steven Valdez]

"In the early days, I would write a complete -script. Later, I WAS TOO BUSY to write stories for all the artists. Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil, the Avengers — I COULDN'T KEEP UP. I’d say to the artists, look, you know how the stories go. I’d like Dr. Doom to kidnap the heroine, and the hero has to go into Latveria. Here’s the ending, the high points. The artist would go draw it, and then I’d get the pencil pages and put in the dialogue and the sound-effect balloons."

S. Lee, November 2011, New York Post interview

Edited July 1, 2023 by Steven Valdez

[Zonker]

On 7/1/2023 at 9:45 AM, lordbyroncomics said:

I'm sorry, I find Roy Thomas's quotes to be questionable due to his bias.

 

I'm sorry, I can't help you further.  I was asked if Stan chatted up creators by phone, so I found an example where he did so with Don Heck. I was asked to provide some quotes about Stan/Roy's justification for the Marvel Method, so I did so. 

I'm not at all surprised that the quotes are not found to be credible, so we'll have to just leave it there.