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Stan, Jack, and Steve - The 1960's (1964) The Slow Build
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Started by Prince Namor,

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Steven Valdez

Steven Valdez

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Stanley was tired of writing nothing but giant monster comics for several years on end. He thought it was a silly and immature subject for a sophisticated grown man to be endlessly writing about.

So in 1961 he 'came up with' a new idea called the Fantastic Four.

The first issue featured... dozens of giant monsters.

In the second issue, Reed Richards averted an alien invasion by showing them panels of... giant monsters.

Issue #3 featured the menace of a ... giant monster.

The 4th issue showcased the return of Sub-Mariner, accompanied by a .... giant monster.

I suspect that whatever the impetus for the Fantastic Four was, it was not as a reprieve from... giant monsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dr. Haydn

Dr. Haydn

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On 12/8/2023 at 1:54 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Stanley was tired of writing nothing but giant monster comics for several years on end. He thought it was a silly and immature subject for a sophisticated grown man to be endlessly writing about.

So in 1961 he 'came up with' a new idea called the Fantastic Four.

The first issue featured... dozens of giant monsters.

In the second issue, Reed Richards averted an alien invasion by showing them panels of... giant monsters.

Issue #3 featured the menace of a ... giant monster.

The 4th issue showcased the return of Sub-Mariner, accompanied by a .... giant monster.

I suspect that whatever the impetus for the Fantastic Four was, it was not as a reprieve from... giant monsters.

 

It's been suggested that Marvel was trying to fly under the radar and get their superhero mag off the ground without industry leader DC noticing. I can (sort of) buy that, but maybe they were simply hedging their bets. Monsters and aliens were still trendy in 1961, and Marvel had had very little success with superhero mags since World War II.

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The humble Watcher lurking

The humble Watcher lurking

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On 12/8/2023 at 2:54 AM, Steven Valdez said:

Stanley was tired of writing nothing but giant monster comics for several years on end. He thought it was a silly and immature subject for a sophisticated grown man to be endlessly writing about.

So in 1961 he 'came up with' a new idea called the Fantastic Four.

The first issue featured... dozens of giant monsters.

In the second issue, Reed Richards averted an alien invasion by showing them panels of... giant monsters.

Issue #3 featured the menace of a ... giant monster.

The 4th issue showcased the return of Sub-Mariner, accompanied by a .... giant monster.

I suspect that whatever the impetus for the Fantastic Four was, it was not as a reprieve from... giant monsters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good observation. Yeah, looking like it's Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko that did create and do most of the work. Disclaimer I am more a artist than writer.  So maybe bias. I will give Stan Lee credit for a few things. He knew how to talk and promote. Now a days we in Hollywood would call him a show runner.  Plus his birthday is coming up . I know I know.  It's hard to get over Stan Lee. I still have a soft spot for him. Just for his marketing and promoting comics. I noticed the Marvel movies have tanked after his death. Yep, Kirby and Ditko were the creators, but Stan was the show runner. Ditko estate just got a big payment today. So all is fair in love and war. 

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Steven Valdez

Steven Valdez

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On 12/9/2023 at 10:49 AM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

Good observation. Yeah, looking like it's Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko that did create and do most of the work. Disclaimer I am more a artist than writer.  So maybe bias. I will give Stan Lee credit for a few things. He knew how to talk and promote. Now a days we in Hollywood would call him a show runner.  Plus his birthday his coming up . I know I know.  It's hard to get over Stan Lee. I still have a soft spot for him. Just for his marketing and promoting comics. I noticed the Marvel movies have tanked after his death. Yep, Kirby and Ditko were the creators, but Stan was the show runner. Ditko estate just got a big payment today. So all is fair in love and war. 

Yeah, I used to like Stan a lot more than I do now after learning the extent of his credit-stealing antics. In recent interviews, Steve Ditko's brother describe Stan as 'a leech' who knew Steve was his meal ticket. That's amazing news about the Ditko estate getting a big payment today. It's obviously too late to benefit Steve himself.

I agree that Stan was an excellent huckster, I just wish he'd been honest about who really came up with the characters and stories.

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BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

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On 12/8/2023 at 3:49 PM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

Good observation. Yeah, looking like it's Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko that did create and do most of the work. Disclaimer I am more a artist than writer.  So maybe bias. I will give Stan Lee credit for a few things. He knew how to talk and promote. Now a days we in Hollywood would call him a show runner.  Plus his birthday his coming up . I know I know.  It's hard to get over Stan Lee. I still have a soft spot for him. Just for his marketing and promoting comics. I noticed the Marvel movies have tanked after his death. Yep, Kirby and Ditko were the creators, but Stan was the show runner. Ditko estate just got a big payment today. So all is fair in love and war. 

"showrunner" is definitely apt as a description, and there are plenty of showrunners who have lots of shows running concurrently and who give wide latitude to their staffs and episodic writers.  But most of those people, just like Stan, still do a lot more than "talk and promote" or "marketing", much as those obsessed with tearing down the legend would like people to believe otherwise by putting out voluminous and numerous threads like this one. The latest theory, about the last panel in the Spider-man annual about how comics are/were created, is typical and so flagrantly biased and grasping it's embarrassing.  So.. Ditko draws several pages depicting himself as a beleaguered artist trying to stay calm in the midst of Stan's relentless over-enthusiasm, but then, in the very last panel, must have meant to draw himself showing the same sort of annoying over-enthusiasm he's mocking in Stan?  All because the Stan-obsessed people just can't accept the idea (expressed in the panel) that Stan Lee waken up with an idea and was about to disturb Ditko in the middle of the night?  All because they just can't abide the idea that Ditko admitted Stan had ideas.            

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jimjum12

jimjum12

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On 12/11/2023 at 10:31 PM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:
On 12/8/2023 at 6:49 PM, The humble Watcher lurking said:

Good observation. Yeah, looking like it's Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko that did create and do most of the work. Disclaimer I am more a artist than writer.  So maybe bias. I will give Stan Lee credit for a few things. He knew how to talk and promote. Now a days we in Hollywood would call him a show runner.  Plus his birthday his coming up . I know I know.  It's hard to get over Stan Lee. I still have a soft spot for him. Just for his marketing and promoting comics. I noticed the Marvel movies have tanked after his death. Yep, Kirby and Ditko were the creators, but Stan was the show runner. Ditko estate just got a big payment today. So all is fair in love and war. 

"showrunner" is definitely apt as a description, and there are plenty of showrunners who have lots of shows running concurrently and who give wide latitude to their staffs and episodic writers.  But most of those people, just like Stan, still do a lot more than "talk and promote" or "marketing", much as those obsessed with tearing down the legend would like people to believe otherwise by putting out voluminous and numerous threads like this one. The latest theory, about the last panel in the Spider-man annual about how comics are/were created, is typical and so flagrantly biased and grasping it's embarrassing.  So.. Ditko draws several pages depicting himself as a beleaguered artist trying to stay calm in the midst of Stan's relentless over-enthusiasm, but then, in the very last panel, must have meant to draw himself showing the same sort of annoying over-enthusiasm he's mocking in Stan?  All because the Stan-obsessed people just can't accept the idea (expressed in the panel) that Stan Lee waken up with an idea and was about to disturb Ditko in the middle of the night?  All because they just can't abide the idea that Ditko admitted Stan had ideas. 

I still don't hear as much as I should about how Kirby and Ditko got to sit home and do all the fun stuff, while Stan took care of the unpleasantries. And yet he did nothing. I must confess, I did give another chance to New Gods, and the 3rd issue wasn't as bad as I remembered, but the dialogue was still so thick and cumbersome that I threw in the towel on several pages where it was just more of the gratuitous characters being knocked through yet another brick wall. Kirby thought we wanted action, action, action, while many of us wanted some coherent dialogue and a story. I'll be the first to admit that the Marvel method wasn't for every artist, working with Kirby and Dirtko would certainly have been easier, but Stan's editorial input kept the staleness out, at least until they both began running out of ideas and began relying on filling panels with action(around 1968). I was a voracious reader and expected challenging and interesting dialogue and captions, but like Humble Watcher said, many fans were more art oriented. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)(thumbsu

 

I could see where fans who started out in the BA could learn to just skim the art, as much of that material was mostly unreadable. 

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Dr. Haydn

Dr. Haydn

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On 12/11/2023 at 9:31 PM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:

All because the Stan-obsessed people just can't accept the idea (expressed in the panel) that Stan Lee waken up with an idea and was about to disturb Ditko in the middle of the night?  All because they just can't abide the idea that Ditko admitted Stan had ideas.            

My initial observation was that Ditko's background visuals in the final two panels suggest the passage of time (about two weeks, if I remember my lunar cycles correctly). Stan's dialogue tells a different story. One can interpret this discrepancy however one chooses.

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Dr. Haydn

Dr. Haydn

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On 12/12/2023 at 3:21 AM, jimjum12 said:

I still don't hear as much as I should about how Kirby and Ditko got to sit home and do all the fun stuff, while Stan took care of the unpleasantries.  

In all likelihood, Sol Brodsky and Flo Steinberg took care of most of the unpleasantries (i.e., the day-to-day office management and personnel-related stuff), leaving Stan free to dialogue and edit. 

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BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES

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On 12/12/2023 at 8:18 AM, Dr. Haydn said:

My initial observation was that Ditko's background visuals in the final two panels suggest the passage of time (about two weeks, if I remember my lunar cycles correctly). Stan's dialogue tells a different story. One can interpret this discrepancy however one chooses.

A passage of time weakens the joke if you're setting up, as Ditko is, in the previous panel, the notion that he could finally rest.  If Ditko's trying to say that two weeks later he wakened with Lee-like exuberance when he had a new idea, it's not a joke at all -- plus lousy (and oddly vain) storytelling.  

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Dr. Haydn

Dr. Haydn

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On 12/12/2023 at 2:23 PM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:

A passage of time weakens the joke if you're setting up, as Ditko is, in the previous panel, the notion that he could finally rest.  If Ditko's trying to say that two weeks later he wakened with Lee-like exuberance when he had a new idea, it's not a joke at all -- plus lousy (and oddly vain) storytelling.  

Certainly, the joke works much better when the final two panels occur on the same night. (I think Zonker made the same point earlier in the thread.) I wonder though why someone didn't fix the moon in the final panel. Stan has asked for art revisions at other times to bring the art in line with the dialogue.

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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On 12/12/2023 at 11:21 PM, Dr. Haydn said:

In all likelihood, Sol Brodsky and Flo Steinberg took care of most of the unpleasantries (i.e., the day-to-day office management and personnel-related stuff), leaving Stan free to dialogue and edit. 

That's correct. 

According to Houseroy, when Stan was in the office (2-3 times a week), he spent most of his time locked in the office watching women from his window with binoculars.

ROY THOMAS: "When Stan looked out the window of his office and asked, 'So—what do we have to do to hire you away from National?', he was standing, not swiveling in his chair. We’ve got to get these important historical details straight. If Stan stayed sitting, he couldn’t see the pretty girls walking down Madison Avenue (like in that Sinatra song “It’s Nice to Go Travelin’” from the “Come Fly with Me” album), and he liked to do that, in a harmless, non-lecherous way. "
JOHN ROMITA: "I'll tell you what he used to do. He had binoculars by his window overlooking Madison Avenue."
MARIE SEVERIN: " Even in the bullpen back in those days he had binoculars."

Screen Shot 2023-12-14 at 6.19.35 PM.png

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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On 12/12/2023 at 10:31 AM, BLUECHIPCOLLECTIBLES said:

 All because they just can't abide the idea that Ditko admitted Stan had ideas.            

Ditko admitted Stan had LAME ideas. That's why Ditko eventually took over writing the book completely with no input from Stan at all.

Stan of course, still got PAID as the writer, stealing that money (and credit) from Ditko.

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Prince Namor

Prince Namor

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ON NEWSSTANDS JUNE 1964

Daredevil #3 - Lee, Joe Orlando, Colletta, Rosen

Cover by Jack Kirby (inked by... ugh, Vice Colletta)

Without the benefit of Kirby or Ditko creating ideas, Daredevil is a perfect example of what Stan was as an editor/dialogue writer.

This story is boring and lacks any of the appeal of a typical Kirby/Ditko issue. There's no 'deep motivation' to the villain, he's simply created as a typical bland genre bad guy. For all the talk of how 'Stan' gave characters depth - without Kirby and Ditko's input, there is ZERO sign of it.

Stan repeats the usual, Lois Lane/Superman homage of unrequited love/unknown identity that we've already seen him borrow to use in Thor and Iron Man and somewhat Giant-Man. Three issues in, and Daredevil is already a dud. 

Without Kirby or Ditko, Stan has nothing.

Part ONE:

Daredevil 03-000.jpg

Daredevil 03-001.jpg

Daredevil 03-002.jpg

Daredevil 03-003.jpg

Daredevil 03-004.jpg

Daredevil 03-005.jpg

Daredevil 03-006.jpg

Daredevil 03-007.jpg

Daredevil 03-008.jpg

Daredevil 03-009.jpg

Daredevil 03-010.jpg

Daredevil 03-011.jpg

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