Stan Lee Lied - Your Handy Guide to Every Lie in the 'Origins of Marvel Comics' 9 9

[Dick Pontoon]

[comicwiz]

On 9/19/2024 at 12:09 PM, VintageComics said:

Would he still be King if his body of work was much smaller but had more attention to detail?

I'm going to answer your question with a question - have you have ever drawn anything competently? Not a trick question, and I'll respond to yours, but just would like to understand your own experiences with freehand drawing before I expound on my opinion.

[Zonker]

On 9/19/2024 at 12:58 AM, Paul © ® ⚽️💙™ said:

 

Kirby ain't all that. Give me the quirkiness of Wolverton, Matt Fox and the purity of Wood any day of the week. Worlds of difference. But hey art is subjective I get it, but Kirby?

Don't think so...sorry Kirby zombies but no.  

Comparing Kirby to Wally Wood is apples to artichokes.  Kirby is a cartoonist, communicating as much as possible with as few lines as possible, whereas Wood is an illustrator, trying to accurately capture on paper the world around us.  There have been both types of artists successful in the comics-- probably going all the way back to the comics strip work of Milton Caniff (cartoonist) versus Hal Foster (illustrator).  

[Paul © ® ⚽️💙™]

On 9/19/2024 at 6:27 PM, Zonker said:

Comparing Kirby to Wally Wood is apples to artichokes.  Kirby is a cartoonist, communicating as much as possible with as few lines as possible, whereas Wood is an illustrator, trying to accurately capture on paper the world around us.  There have been both types of artists successful in the comics-- probably going all the way back to the comics strip work of Milton Caniff (cartoonist) versus Hal Foster (illustrator).  

I'm just saying I prefer one artist's art to another....of course you can compare it.

[Mmehdy]

On 9/19/2024 at 9:09 AM, VintageComics said:

Frankly, because of Kirby's lack of realism in his Silver Age work I never liked it growing up, and this is probably because I was exposed to him when he was pumping volume.

His earlier work before Marvel seemed better, but again, not a huge fan of his blockiness in general. 

Ironically, Miller went from realism to blockiness and it didn't bother me as much, probably because I was hooked in Miller's earlier stuff before I was exposed to his later stuff, so I already had an emotional attachment to Miller. 

I can see the appeal of Kirby in his sequential story telling, but I still don't like the way he draws figures (and particularly women). 

Would he still be King if his body of work was much smaller but had more attention to detail?

He was an excellent artist and WRITER...you could just count his timely/marvel output and call it quits and still call him the King...but, historically its his work with so many different titles...his romance titles both including marvel show his versatility. Here is a great example of a different type of Kirby at marvel.

 check this out VC!

The" Complete  Kirby War and Romance" Omnibus for Marvel: It is fantastic!, I own it and have read it twice. Originally priced at $125...they are giving it away at Amazon for $77 with free shipping. 592 insane pages of great stuff...which is impossible to come by. Please see my Amazon verified purchaser review of the book.

VC he is the King because he could do it ALL.and that was with just one of the many company's he worked for ..and to do it all you have to have volume......

VC give it a buy try!

Edited 6 hours ago by Mmehdy

[Dr. Balls]

On 9/18/2024 at 7:14 PM, Paul © ® ⚽️💙™ said:

 

 

I gotta say....you have the strangest and most unique approach to PR and goodwill from a potential author that I have ever seen.  

 

I think it's cool that we're all talking and engaging (to varying degrees) and we're 23+ pages in. This is a great thread with great discussion. Some heated, some not - it's something we don't get a lot of around here like the olden days. 

[Mmehdy]

On 9/19/2024 at 11:04 AM, Dr. Balls said:

I think it's cool that we're all talking and engaging (to varying degrees) and we're 23+ pages in. This is a great thread with great discussion. Some heated, some not - it's something we don't get a lot of around here like the olden days. 

Second that....one of the best theads of the year

[comicwiz]

On 9/19/2024 at 1:40 PM, Mmehdy said:

On 9/19/2024 at 12:09 PM, VintageComics said:

Frankly, because of Kirby's lack of realism in his Silver Age work I never liked it growing up, and this is probably because I was exposed to him when he was pumping volume.

His earlier work before Marvel seemed better, but again, not a huge fan of his blockiness in general. 

Ironically, Miller went from realism to blockiness and it didn't bother me as much, probably because I was hooked in Miller's earlier stuff before I was exposed to his later stuff, so I already had an emotional attachment to Miller. 

I can see the appeal of Kirby in his sequential story telling, but I still don't like the way he draws figures (and particularly women). 

Would he still be King if his body of work was much smaller but had more attention to detail?

He was an excellent artist and WRITER...you could just count his timely/marvel output and call it quits and still call him the King...but, historically its his work with so many different titles...his romance titles both including marvel show his versatility. Here is a great example of a different type of Kirby at marvel.

 check this out VC!

The" Complete  Kirby War and Romance" Omnibus for Marvel: It is fantastic!, I own it and have read it twice. Originally priced at $125...they are giving it away at Amazon for $77 with free shipping. 592 insane pages of great stuff...which is impossible to come by. Please see my Amazon verified purchaser review of the book.

VC he is the King because he could do it ALL.and that was with just one of the many company's he worked for ..and to do it all you have to have volume......

VC give it a buy try!

I'll check that out, thanks for the suggestion!

I've got a busy few days with limited time, so I'll share my views on Kirby ahead of @VintageComics answer to my question to him above.

My earliest memories of comics were tied to drawings my older brother did. He drew a Captain America which I remember being one of Kirbys iconic renderings. It was good, but even at that young an age, I knew after a quick glance at the panel in the comic and his drawing that it wasn't perfect. He hadn't captured the essence of Kirby. Imagine being in kindergarten, and being critical of your older brothers drawing, who was 5 years older than you, with enough of an age gap to make you consider choosing your words wisely if you're going to egg on his art. I guess that artistic gene carried over to me, but I would remain self-taught because of circumstances. My kindergarten teacher called my parents in one day, and when I met them outside, they were worried I'd caused some trouble, and I had no idea why they were called in, but I would later find out it was to tell them she saw potential in my drawing abilities. From that day on, my Dad did everything to discourage me from pursuing art as a career, often citing the "starving artist" lifestyles many master artists had to endure, only to see their works pick up in value after they died.

I freehand drew because I enjoyed it. Comics were my reference material growing-up, and if staring at comic panels for long moments was nerdy, you should see me do it as an adult studying the line art from my OA collection. The elegant line flow, and visual storytelling were always something that impressed me most about the work comic artists did. I did paint as well, but colouring wasn't really something I enjoyed, illustration art was what I truly loved. Even as a self-taught artist, I knew how to ascertain the way lines could be arranged for dynamic action in the artwork, composition and subject matter. In my final year of high school, I pursued motion in art, largely influenced by sports but also Kirby's work, and was offered a scholarship at the OCA (now OCAD), but that was something my Dad would not allow. 

Despite this, I didn't need an education to see it in Kirby's work, it exudes it. I'm also not deluded to know my Dad was right all along, and if I gave some pushback in the fine art realm as a young boy you'd find in the art section of the library reading books bigger than me, learning about all the hang-ups with the comic publishing industry as an adult collector sure clinched it. I would never have been able handle any work for hire arrangement simply because my pace would not have allowed me to make enough from the page rate to make it economically viable to pursue as a career. Later as an adult collector and having done several recreations as commissions, I began to really understand the way lines moved from the time they were pencilled, to being inked, and coloured, and the idea my work would be altered in a way that might impact the aethestic I was trying to achieve would have certainly frustrated me if I pursued a career as a cartoonist, and that the process would be very difficult for me to handle as well, knowing the collaborations required to take a pencilled work and produce a finished production page for publishing.

When I began to really learn about Kirby's output, speed and pace, it hit me like a ton of bricks moment. The closest I had ever come to even remotely recognizing how impressive this feat was, would be through athletic pursuits in hockey. I had learned the importance of land training at a time when it wasn't really something incorporated into the development system, and was always relegated to being ancillary. When I arrived at a physical ability to actually see the game slow around me, it was a feeling hard to describe. It felt mythical, like I'd discovered something that if I continued, would give me that advantage, and a success I'd long worked hard toward attaining. Quickly realizing that it required a dedicated approach to continuing the hard work and activities which got me to that point if I wanted to maintain or even exceed that competitive edge into the future.

What Kirby did in terms of his artistic style, his consistent quality, and his unrivaled pace was truly extraordinary. Those fixating on the unique style (in your post, referencing lacking an attention to detail) are missing the real mastery in his execution, and that it was his ability to maintain such visual storytelling mastery and action even at that frantic and impossible to replicate pace. It's what seperates him from the rest. Even as some nobody who played at a semi-pro level, I was intoxicated by that feeling of trying to make the game slow down around me. Imagine the advtantages of seeing over 100 mile an hour puck slowed to my movement and play as a goalie, and never wanting to let that advantage slip. So you train 7 days a week, run 1.5 hrs each day, train for 2 hrs in a gym each day, and spend 6 days on the ice, and your day off day you're on roller blades. I won't bore you with the meal and training prep going on each day for the next. While I had raw artistic talent, even if I had pursued an education, and dedicated training rivaling the time I put into hockey, I could never arrive at the output Kirby did, at least not without compromising artistic style, consistency and quality. But what my instincts tell me is he needed to keep that pace to maintain that mastery, and that not only defined who he was, but if he felt anything like I did in my sports experiences, that feeling of being so ahead of everyone else, I'm almost certain, was only energized by the realization all that output would allow his mind-boggling body of work to endure well past his lifetime. 

That's why he's the King. 

[jimjum12]

On 9/19/2024 at 1:40 PM, Mmehdy said:

He was an excellent artist and WRITER...you could just count his timely/marvel output and call it quits and still call him the King...but, historically its his work with so many different titles...his romance titles both including marvel show his versatility. Here is a great example of a different type of Kirby at marvel.

 check this out VC!

The" Complete  Kirby War and Romance" Omnibus for Marvel: It is fantastic!, I own it and have read it twice. Originally priced at $125...they are giving it away at Amazon for $77 with free shipping. 592 insane pages of great stuff...which is impossible to come by. Please see my Amazon verified purchaser review of the book.

VC he is the King because he could do it ALL.and that was with just one of the many company's he worked for ..and to do it all you have to have volume......

VC give it a buy try!

 Simon did most of the writing, inking, and lettering in the GA. In fact, it was Kirby who suggested the "Marvel Way" to Stan, based on his process with Joe, as a way to speed up his own production ( and remuneration). GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[jimjum12]

On 9/19/2024 at 2:18 PM, Mmehdy said:

On 9/19/2024 at 2:04 PM, Dr. Balls said:

I think it's cool that we're all talking and engaging (to varying degrees) and we're 23+ pages in. This is a great thread with great discussion. Some heated, some not - it's something we don't get a lot of around here like the olden days. 

Second that....one of the best theads of the year

It's definitely not political, yet. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

As passionate a discussion as those "Could Thing whup Hulk" debates in the back of the school bus.

[Mmehdy]

On 9/19/2024 at 11:33 AM, jimjum12 said:

 Simon did most of the writing, inking, and lettering in the GA. In fact, it was Kirby who suggested the "Marvel Way" to Stan, based on his process with Joe, as a way to speed up his own production ( and remuneration). GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Simon was no where to be found on the Marvel War and Romance, I agree on Foxhole and Young Romance.

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 9/18/2024 at 9:01 PM, Lazyboy said:

On 9/18/2024 at 4:18 PM, VintageComics said:

why did Action #1 sell 1 Million copies when Kirby wasn't there?

That one is really easy. It didn't. It wasn't even close.

https://comicbookhunter.blogspot.com/2015/04/action-comics-1-sales-figures-and-more.html

Edited 4 hours ago by RockMyAmadeus

[Prince Namor]

On 9/19/2024 at 11:09 PM, VintageComics said:

Frankly, because of Kirby's lack of realism in his Silver Age work I never liked it growing up, and this is probably because I was exposed to him when he was pumping volume.

His earlier work before Marvel seemed better, but again, not a huge fan of his blockiness in general. 

Ironically, Miller went from realism to blockiness and it didn't bother me as much, probably because I was hooked in Miller's earlier stuff before I was exposed to his later stuff, so I already had an emotional attachment to Miller. 

I can see the appeal of Kirby in his sequential story telling, but I still don't like the way he draws figures (and particularly women). 

Would he still be King if his body of work was much smaller but had more attention to detail?

No one came up with more concepts and ideas... new WORLDS... month after month for DECADES... like Kirby did. I was obviously aware of his FF work and saw it and liked it as a 10-14 year old in 1973-77, but I grew up with his work from THAT era - and I thought it was great then and I think it's great now. A 60 year old guy creating work like this for Marvel in 1977... at 60!!

Marvel could only DREAM of having someone this proficient today, producing month after month for years.... DECADES... consistantly coming up with new ideas and then bringing them to life on the printed page... there's NO ONE you can compare that to in the history of comics. That is why he is the KING.

Edited 56 minutes ago by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

What's even MORE amazing about Kirby's work in the mid-to-late 70's at Marvel is what he went through while creating it.

Yes, he felt he'd been done wrong by Marvel in the 60's and he STILL hadn't gotten his Silver Age art back (and when he did an incredibly SMALL portion of it - the stolen pages seem to sell every couple of months in auctions now), and he was getting older... he'd turn 60 during this stint with the company...

But Kirby went through MUCH more than that... I'm going to print an excerpt from my book about it here. 

Edited 37 minutes ago by Prince Namor

[Prince Namor]

There are 24 additional essays in the back of my book, and this is one of them. Very slight editing to make it ok for the forum here.

 

HOW MARVEL TREATED THE

KING IN THE 70’s

 

When Jack Kirby accepted Marvel’s offer to come back to the publisher in 1975, he had no idea the disrespect he’d be shown. Here was this legend of the art form, who’d had his work changed, stolen from him, his originals stolen from him, his pay for writing stolen from him, and the credit for his creativity stolen from him by this company… and yet, he had no idea how this NEW generation of writers would disrespect him.

Many of the fanboy Lee sycophants that worked there at the time, wanted what Stan Lee had: an artist to do most of the work, while they dialogued it and got credit for the ideas. It was the ultimate fanboy ‘I’m not an artist or a creator’ dream: Instant status.

But Kirby’s agreement with Marvel was that he’d write and draw his own work. He didn’t want to get back into a situation where someone took advantage of him again.

And so the writers and editors began to softly… quietly… try and stab him in the back.

Well except one. As you’ll soon see - the MAIN one - who stabbed Kirby in the back on Day One.

But let’s look at how some of these others chose to cowardly attack the man responsible for them even having a job.

First, they SPECIFICALLY chose negative letters to print in his books, especially if anyone complained about his writing.

 

“Jack's feelings about this work (and his concern about his letters pages trashing him, which someone else mentioned) will perhaps make more sense if you know that there was at least one editorial staffer at Marvel at the time who was quite vocal in his dislike of Kirby writing, and who felt HE should have the job of doing the dialogue. Jack told me that this guy would phone him up and say, "Well, your new issue of CAPTAIN AMERICA just arrived, Mr. Kirby, and the artwork is breathtaking but everyone here in the office [a gross exaggeration] agrees that the writing is mess. Your books are all bombing, too. The only way you can save your career is to have one of us take over doing the dialogue." Or words to that effect.”

-Mark Evanier original message from the Kirby-List 23 October 1996 (in response to Charles Hatfield)

 

From the Kirby-List (Nov 19, 1996)

An exchange between Comic Book Historian Michael Vassallo and former Kirby assistant Mark Evanier:

 

M. Vassallo: You mean to tell me that some disrespectful insufficiently_thoughtful_person at Marvel actually said to Jack that his writing was “mess”? You’d better keep his name a secret Mark. This is one livid Sicilian here!! Even 20 years after the fact I’m appalled. Low-life scum!

M. Evanier: It’s true and there were some worse incidents than that.

“The editorial staff up at Marvel had no respect for what he was doing. All these editors had things on their walls making fun of Jack’s books. They’d cut out things saying ‘Stupidest Comic of the Year’… This entire editorial office was just littered with stuff disparaging the guy who founded the company these guys were working for. He created all the characters these guys were editing.”

- Jim Starlin, from Sean Howe’s 2012 Book, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

 

 

“About 12 years ago, I was on a comics panel sitting right next to

guys like Kanigher, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, who had agreed with me privately before the panel began but didn’t back me up publicly. My viewpoint was that what Jack Kirby was doing was comic books for 12 year old boys, and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with that... You didn’t have to write down to your audience, you just gave them exciting adventure stories. All of the people at Marvel Comics at the time, in my opinion, seemed to want to justify the fact that they were the fanboys that grew up and were now the ones producing comic books.

If you looked at any of the Kirby comics like 2001, Machine Man, or Devil Dinosaur, the “boys” in New York were in charge of putting together the letter columns. I read these letter column pages, and all the letters in essence were saying, “Oh, the artwork is great, but the writing sucks.” And I voiced the opinion that if I were a 12 year old boy and I loved this comic book, and then read

the letter page and all of my comic-buying peers were saying this, of course I would question my own judgment. It would make me question the validity of the publication I was buying, and question my own taste. A 12 year old is subject to “peer pressure” from all arenas. I was booed by the audience because I espoused the opinion that all of these fanboys at Marvel were sabotaging Jack, because they all felt their own “writing” would fix (re: save) Jack’s books from declining sales.”

- Mike Royer, Interviewed by John Morrow, March 29, 1995 via computer on America Online and printed in The Jack Kirby Collector #6, July 1995 in response to the question “What are your feelings about Jack’s treatment at Marvel in the 70s?”

 

“I can only imagine how demoralizing this must have been for Jack; I was freelancing at Marvel around this time, and it was heartbreaking to see with one’s own eyes various photocopies of Kirby’s work posted around the offices with “satiric” overdrawings and sarcastic written comments scrawled on them. The utter contempt for and jeering at Kirby’s work for the company was mortifying, and a stern lesson for a budding freelancer working to (maybe) get one’s foot in the door.”

- Stephen Bissette (comic artist), Jack Kirby! group, 10 Sep 2019

 

“It was and remains a very sad thing to me that Jack Kirby went through a period during which he was treated so badly by the market, fans and even creators. I've told the story of the time at the San Diego Con, when they had artists draw pictures onstage which they then auctioned to raise money, and after asking minimum bids for the work of far lesser lights that were in the hundreds of dollars, the auctioneer asked for an opening bid of FIVE DOLLARS for Jack's brilliant drawing of Captain America. And that seemed to be consistent with the audience's evaluation.”

“The fact that alleged professionals at Marvel joined in was appalling. DID THEY NOT KNOW WHO BUILT THE HOUSE?”

- Jim Shooter, from the comments section of his blog post: http://jimshooter.com/2011/08/superman-first-marvel-issue.html/ (Sept. 01, 2011)

 

Mark Gruenwald, had written a letter to Kirby that had been printed in Mister Miracle #4, saying, “One thing I’ll say for Kirby’s new series at DC: It certainly is alive with excitement of its own possibilities. I had been under the impression that the outer limits of the imagination had already been reached in the comic genre and all one could hope for is novel variations. But Kirby has been unleashed and suddenly there is a new wonder afoot.

“The Source”,”The Mountain of Judgement”, “The Boom Tube”, “The Mobius Chair” and the rest…. A volcano of new ideas spewing forth from Kirby’s mind. Now I sit back and wonder, knowing how closely writer and artist collaborate at Marvel, how many of the ideas behind the Lee/Kirby masterpieces usually attributed to Lee came from the mind of his one-time partner.”

 

Kirby’s response is classic: "As to Marvel, more imagination is used in the credits than in any given story.”

BUT, Gruenwald would go to work for Marvel a few years later, and HE would be the one credited with coming up with the disrespectful “Jack the Hack”  label put on Kirby.

Indoctrinated by the sycophants.

 

“Tensions were now worse than the’d ever been in the sixties. Kirby reportedly received hate mail on Marvel letterhead, and crank phone calls from the office.”

- Sean Howe, from his 2012 book, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story

 

I’m more impressed by the guys who weren’t afraid to mention it - to go against the hive mentality of these people:

 

“And of course, I didn’t like Ralph (Macchio) all that much. I didn’t like the way he treated Jack Kirby, among other things. If you notice the credit box, it says Alan ‘King’ Kupperberg. I wrote that, but I thought Ralph would edit that out. You see, I used to write, pencil, letter, ink and try and do anything on my jobs if I could. So whenever I came in Ralph would begin yelling, “The king! The king! The king is here! Bow to the king!” You know, big comedian. My attitude was, “ you, individual_without_enough_empathy. What have you ever done, besides mock Jack Kirby?” So that’s why I put that in. But Ralphy left it in, he didn’t take it out.”

- Alan Kupperberg, from a now missing post on his blog http://www.alankupperberg.com/whatif.html - retrieved with the wayback machine!

 

Wow.… so what did Kirby have to say on the matter?

 

“The health of a comic book can be manipulated by the staff alone. You fill up a book with knock letters (negative criticisms in the letters pages). The reader picks up the book and reads all those knock letters knows that’s the book he’s reading… well it’s not so hot. And if you do it consistently, it becomes ‘a bad book’.”

- Jack Kirby, Comic Scene #2 (March 1981)

 

And of course the letters to the editor for that issue came in from the Marvel Staff…

 

“…Howard Zimmerman’s article/interview with Jack Kirby was more than a bit disturbing. If Mr. Kirby has been led to believe that there was some sort of conspiracy to sabotage his books at Marvel in the 1970’s, then someone has played a cruel joke on the man.”

- Roger Stern, Comic Scene #4 (July 1981)

 

And…

 

“As for the idea that competing writers filled the pages of Jack’s books with overly critical letters - “knock letters” as Jack called them - well nothing could be further from the truth. To the best of my recollection, the letters pages to Jack’s books were assembled by then-staffer Scott Edelman and Neo-writer David Anthony Kraft, though I put together a few myself.”

- Roger Stern, Comic Scene #4 (July 1981)

 

And Scott Edelman? HE’D never have an issue with Kirby, would he?

 

“I was on staff at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s when the King returned and tried to pick up where he’d left off. At the time, as I sat there in the Bullpen with my blue pencil and proofread the original art for some of his initial issues of titles such as Captain America, which he not only drew, but wrote and edited, I was horrified. The art could still be the stuff of dreams at times, but the words that came out of his characters’ mouths seemed more like a nightmare.

The buzz from us kids in the office wasn’t kind. I’ll admit it. Kirby was a god to us for what he did during the ’60s, but what he was doing at Marvel in the ’70s made us wince, and we didn’t have the tact or maturity to say it appropriately. So we acted like ungrateful punks. But now that the years have passed, as I read some of those issues of Captain America over again, I’m wincing still.”

- Scott Edelman, from his blog scottedelman.com, 21 Apr 2011

 

“Not only do none of the characters talk the way people actually talk—or even the hyperbolic, melodramatic way superheroes talk—but they are barely coherent. And what’s worse, in Captain America #207, old winghead, after discovering that a tyrannical dictator in a banana republic was torturing his people, decided to do NOTHING, basically declaring it none of his business!”

- Scott Edelman, from his blog scottedelman.com, 21 Apr 2011

 

Stan Lee did NOT dialogue the way people talk. Read any of his dialogue out loud to a NON-comic book reader and they’ll cringe at how bad it is. Edelman never gave even ONE example of the dialogue from Kirby that he’s talking about, just an opinion on if he should or shouldn’t go into a country and get involved in something he knows nothing about.

Which side of the Palestine- Israeli conflict should he get involved in? If one was torturing the other, should he get involved to stop it? What if it was the OTHER torturing the other? Should he get involved with THEIR side? What if BOTH are doing it?

The world isn’t black and white.

 

“Until this rereading began, I was only offended by the crudeness and incomprehensibility of Kirby’s dialogue, but now, decades later, I’m also repulsed by Cap’s decision, no matter how well or poorly it was phrased.”

- Scott Edelman, from his blog scottedelman.com, 21 Apr 2011

 

The only example Edelman gives us is a panel of Cap saying, “But, this is NOT my country and not my place to fight for causes I know nothing about.”, which to anyone with any real experience traveling the world, sounds perfectly sane and reasonable.

But an EXAMPLE isn’t important to the the Stan Lee sycophants, only making sure they get the MESSAGE across. And that is… to put down Kirby’s writing so that people think Stan Lee COULD.

 

“If I ever needed a reminder of how much Stan Lee and Jack Kirby needed each other, neither ever creating separately at anywhere near the level they did when together, man oh man, this was certainly it.”

- Scott Edelman, from his blog scottedelman.com, 21 Apr 2011

 

Ha ha ha. Gives his game away so easily.

Kirby’s writing is sorely missed in this world and from comics in general.

Edelman’s? LOL. No one misses it.

Your real claim to fame was ghost-writing Stan Lee’s Bullpen Bulletins for all the EDIT: 'True Believers' to believe was really their hero.

Sums it all up just perfectly.

 

Now back to, Roger Stern who also gave us some statistics!

 

“Not fully trusting my memory on this, I checked back over the old letters pages to see just how negative the printed mail was. In Captain America and Black Panther, I found that over two-thirds of the mail responses were out-and-out raves, an impressive statistic when one considers that the previous writers associated with those two series - Stephen Englehart and Donald McGregor - had such a rabid fan following. ”

- Roger Stern, Comic Scene #4 (July 1981)

 

What Marvel book is HE used to reading where 1/3rd of the letters are NOT raves? Marvel’s general M.O. for almost the entire time I read their comics was that you had maybe one complaint letter every two issues, and it would be something they could easily diffuse. Here, you have Kirby’s books were filled with 33% of negative letters?

Sounds fishy to me.

 

“Staffers seeded the letters columns of Kirby's books with negative comments - some of which were fake - in a seeming attempt to spite him. They referred to him as 'Jack the Hack'. Some editors scrawled derisive comments on copies of Kirby's pages and pasted them on their office doors. [...] On more than a few occasions, Kirby was aggravated by the ingratitude of the company he had helped build. Stan had to step in to smooth things over.”

- Esteemed Comic Book Journalist Tom Spurgeon and Jordan Raphael, form their 2003 book Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book.

 

“They must have gotten negative letters like that concerning Neal Adams and John Buscema’s art also. There is, after all, no accounting for taste. But you never know what’s going on behind the scenes, after all. The Invaders was a dying book and I’ll bet the editor was doing his best on the letters pages to encourage enthusiasm. It can work both ways. What if an editor at Marvel is a no-talent son-of-person_without_enough_empathy with an axe to grind? And let’s say he feels he’s been “stuck” with Jack Kirby, in the twilight of Kirby’s brilliant career, doing a regular book. And out of sheer spite, this editor prints the letters that put the knock on Jack. But you’ve gotta believe that there were probably just as many or more letters that were pro-Jack.”

- Alan Kupperberg, from a now missing post on his blog http://www.alankupperberg.com/invaders.html - retrieved with the wayback machine!

 

Jim Shooter, who was the there at the time, wrote:

 

“Jack’s titles got plenty of positive mail, too, especially early on, but because the people putting together the letter columns then used a lot of negative letters, that had the effect of generating more negative letters. In those days, it was a very cool thing to see your letter in print. Show the readers that negative letters are likely to get printed and you’d get lots of them.

“I cannot imagine what the people putting the letter columns together were thinking. Were they trying to be “fair and balanced,” and show that some people were disappointed with what Jack was doing? Was it that they, themselves, were disappointed with what Jack was doing and weighted the lettercols to express their POV? Putting together a negative lettercol is stupid, amateurish and/or malicious.”

- Jim Shooter, from his jimshooter.com blog 24 Sept 2011

 

Edelman denies all of this of course and says he simply put the letters in there that the fans wrote in and gave them their say. Shooter also responded to THAT nonsense:

 

“Stan told me that when John Romita replaced Steve Ditko on Spider-Man, the mail was overwhelmingly negative. Stan ran only the rave letters, almost without exception. Soon, the mail became overwhelmingly positive. And, P.S., people got used to John’s style and sincerely started grooving on it. This happened, in part, because the lettercols promoted the new look. That helped to start a movement.”

- Jim Shooter, from his jimshooter.com blog 24 Sept 2011

 

THIS is the whole point.

The letters page is a promotional tool. Stan Lee, the person that most of those fanboy hires admired the most, was smart enough to realize, you don’t talk down your talent in those letters pages. If Romita hadn’t been worthy, the criticism wouldn’t have stopped, and at some point he would’ve been replaced.

Whenever a new artist or writer starts a book, there’s ALWAYS going to be criticism and people who don’t think it’s as good as before. People are creatures of habit and comic book readers, especially the obsessed type, REALLY don’t like change.

To HIGHLIGHT that negativity, is to immediately undermine your writer/artist from the get-go, putting undue pressure on them, and BUILDING the negative toward their work.

They did that to JACK KIRBY.

That was Edelman’s (and whoever else’s) specific POINT in doing it… to undermine Kirby because THEY felt it wasn’t what it should be.

The NERVE of those talentless hacks.

 

“A possibly interesting fact: though Jack’s books did not sell well on the newsstands, because, I think, to casual readers they seemed old-fashioned and un-hip, they sold gangbusters in the nascent direct market, as well or better than the X-Men, and far more than all other titles. I remember noticing that a couple of Jack’s books were selling upwards of 30,000 copies — just about enough to break even all direct — at a time when Spider-Man, the Avengers, etc., were selling closer to 10,000 direct. That observation was part of the genesis of the first major all-direct book, Dazzler #1. So, it wasn’t that Jack’s books were universally hated. The more comics-sophisticated/collector direct market patrons liked the stuff — enough of them, anyway. I wonder how many copies direct Jack’s books would have sold when the direct market had developed a little more and X-Men was selling several hundred thousand direct each month.”

- Jim Shooter, from his jimshooter.com blog 24 Sept 2011

 

It’s tough to pinpoint the blame on any ONE specific person in all of this, though with letters, I think Scott Edelman deserves our full scorn and disgust for doing what he did - though, I can’t say it matters to boycott his work, I was never familiar with his bland comic book writing in the first place until I researched his story.

Honestly, my first thought was, “Who???”

 

But a fair amount of blame for ALL of it can be put on Roy Thomas.

Kirby’s first story upon his return to Marvel, received a note along the top that said “Nice Art—lousy dialogue.”, written by Editor Roy Thomas. Someone made a copy of it and sent it to Kirby. Can you imagine?

CAN YOU IMAGINE?

Kirby’s first story… after deciding to come back to Marvel… and that was what he was greeted with. This LEGEND, who’d been a success in comics before Roy Thomas was even born… was treated as a novice.

All because the Stan Lee bootlickers couldn’t stand the idea of Kirby writing his own dialogue.

 

“A guy will create a book, another will fill his book up with knock letters - he’s off in five months, or three months, and the other guy’s got his shot.” Until now Kirby has spoken in even tones. His voice is quiet. Firm. Now emotion breaks through. There is an anguished look in his eyes and a touch of bitterness in his voice as he says, “I see a serpent’s nest. And in a serpent’s nest, nothing can survive. Eventually all the snakes kill each other. Eventually they’ll also kill whatever generated them.”

- Jack Kirby, Comic Scene #2 (March 1981)

 

NOW the idea that Kirby became outspoken in Comic Scene Magazine afterwards (after he’d already left Marvel) doesn’t seem too out of place, does it?

 

In doing my research, I noticed an interesting letter to the editor in Comic Scene Magazine #4 (responding to the Kirby cover story from #2) from artist/writer John Byrne, who’d help take the Fantastic Four comic back to respectable and entertaining levels it hadn’t encountered since Kirby left the book in 1970.

Byrne was a ‘company man’ for Marvel who towed the line and repeated it verbatim (as is often the case with those in their productive, happy years), and usually played the heavy in many of these print discussions and letters to the editor during this time.

Here he incorrectly weighs in on Kirby, presenting himself as a know-it-all, when in fact he’s 100% wrong.

 

“Your article on Jack Kirby, for instance, was so full of muddled retellings of events that it was almost unreadable. Example: when I started at Marvel in 1974 they already had established a policy of returning artwork to the artist and writers involved. Kirby makes it sound as if he had to fight for the return of his work after he came back to Marvel in 1976, and this is reported as true. You owe more in-depth reporting to your readers. Unfortunately, since Marvel, Jim Shooter, Stan Lee, and probably myself now, are branded as corporate bad-guys the majority of your readers will probably take every word of the Kirby article as gospel.”

- John Byrne, Letter to the Editor, Comic Scene #4 (July 1981)

 

Let’s break down how wrong he got this:

 

“Your article on Jack Kirby, for instance, was so full of muddled retellings of events that it was almost unreadable.”

And yet… the most ‘muddled retelling’ he gives us is on return of his artwork? Surely a ‘muddled retelling’ that’s ‘almost unreadable’ would warrant an example of greater impact than that, especially for a seasoned professional to actually write a letter in to the editor.

 

“Example: when I started at Marvel in 1974 they already had established a policy of returning artwork to the artist and writers involved.”

Yeah, well when Kirby left Marvel in mid-1970, they DIDN’T. Completely irrelevant. In FACT, if you were being honest, you’d say it BEGAN in 1974, after DC Comics had already begun to do it. (i.e. to retain top talent, Marvel HAD to do it to compete.)

 

“Kirby makes it sound as if he had to fight for the return of his work after he came back to Marvel in 1976, and this is reported as true.”

No. YOU make it sound as if he never had to fight for the return of ANY of his artwork. He DID. And he wouldn’t get back his Silver Age work, a SMALL percentage of it, until 1987.

 

But Byrne had something else wrong, and Comic Scene threw it back in his face (politely):

 

“…I feel your negative reactions were due in part to a misconception. You see, there is a big difference between a news report and a feature interview as there is between an interview and a Guest Spot column. Had the Kirby story been a news report or a historical piece on Marvel in the 70’s, it would have been incumbent upon us to dig for and - as you put it - “…disclose facts.” It would have been necessary to speak with Stan Lee, Marvel’s legal and accounting departments, and many other people - such as yourself - who were working there during that period.”

“Had it been a hard-news story, it may’ve been necessary to tell Kirby that his memory, his version of what went on, differed dramatically from other people’s recollections; or to say (for arguments sake) that the records show that 69 1/2% of all original artwork was returned to the artists during the decade (Kirby did NOT get 69 1/2% of HIS original art back - more like MAYBE 10-15%) and then ask Kirby to comment on that. But this is not the function of the Kirby story. It was simply (and, we thought, obviously) a study of a man whose contributions are central to the industry in which he works.”

“Any “muddled retellings of events” to which you refer are Kirby’s quoted recollections. He is entitled to them. The readers are entitled to have them recorded in print.”

“If other people wish to set the record straight by offering an alternative, perhaps, more accurate, reconstruction of events, they are eagerly invited to do so - as you have - by writing to the letters column. - Howard Zimmerman.”

 

In other words, ‘we realize Mr. Byrne, that at this point in your career, you were happy to act as a lap dog for Jim Shooter, the at-the-time, Head Honcho of Marvel Comics, but really? You’re trying to pretend you don’t know the difference between a news story and a feature? You’re OBVIOUSLY the one who wants to ‘muddle the waters’ for your corporation bosses over reality, by playing a part in downplaying the true story of Jack Kirby.’

John Byrne who benefitted from a modern corporate financial setup at Marvel, would become a millionaire. Despite that, his level of whining about how he was later done wrong by Marvel far exceeds any complaining Kirby ever did.

 

Despite working in a profession that is filled with hacks and mediocre writing, Jack Kirby was lauded and praised for HIS writing by the likes of Harlan Ellison, Glen David Gold, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, and Neil Gaiman. Comic book writer Grant Morrison has compared Kirby to William Blake, and commented that fans who don’t understand or who don’t appreciate Kirby’s writing simply don’t have Kirby’s “reading list.”

 

Ultimately though, Kirby got the last laugh.

He will be remembered as a legend who created the Marvel Universe, Captain America, the Fourth World with Darkseid, and so much more.

Guys like Scott Edelman, Mark Gruenwald, Bill Mantlo, Steve Englehart, Ralph Macchio, will be remembered as having very brief careers in writing and have spent the last 40 years crying how the “majors” won’t hire them.

The only reason they worked in comics in the first place was Lee, through Thomas, opened the door for these guys because they played a game of ‘bend the knee’ to Stan Lee and his version of history. They protected it and continue to protect it.

Those who didn’t play the game, quickly butted heads with ‘editorial’ and didn’t last long in the 70’s there (Jim Starlin, Barry Windsor-Smith, Mike Ploog, Frank Brunner… and Jack Kirby).

I had no idea at the time, but those were the guys I actually LIKED and appreciated as a 12 year old Comic Book Reader. Not those silly writers.

[Prince Namor]

There's very few pictures in my book, but two of them appear for this story.

The first is from a graphic put together by Daniel Greenberg of the Marvel Method Facebook Group.

Edited 13 minutes ago by Prince Namor

[Mmehdy]

Amazing research putting the puzzle pieces together ,fantastic…. Now this is History….,thank you SM

Edited 4 minutes ago by Mmehdy