Stan Lee Lied - Your Handy Guide to Every Lie in the 'Origins of Marvel Comics' 11 11

[sfcityduck]

On 10/13/2024 at 6:08 PM, VintageComics said:

Obviously, Stan Lee did nothing and Ditko was lying. 

Ditko had bigger beefs with Kirby than Lee, it seems. We've talked about Ditko's reaction to Kirby's foolish claim to Spider-Man, but Ditko also felt that Kirby did not create The Hulk which ultimately became successful:

“Setting aside the dispute between Stan and Jack Kirby as to the ‘creation’ of the Hulk, their Hulk ‘idea’/‘creation’ failed.  Stan and I did the sixth and last issue (March 1963) of that Hulk series. I was instrumental in bringing out the second version of The Hulk with different ‘ideas’ by Stan and me.  The second Hulk went on to continuing success.” (Steve Ditko, Tsk! Tsk! Examining a “Creator”/”Creation” Claim, The Avenging Mind p 137).

I should add that Ditko felt this way because he thought all creation was really re-creation. Kirby said The Hulk was Frankenstein so Ditko's Ayn Rand influenced view was certainly applicable to Hulk. 

Also worth noting that Kirby told an incredibly strange version of the Hulk's creation in the 1989 TCJ interview which may have been lifted out of the first episode of the incredibly horrible (my opinion is subjective no need to debate it) Hulk t.v. show of the 1980s. Kirby claimed to have seen a woman lift a car to save her child, a scene from the tv show. I don't know if he made this claim before the tv show. Anyone know? There are good reasons to doubt that.

Hulk as an atomically induced Frankenstein has a lot of support from early issues:

Hulk as a stress induced adrenaline freak was a later evolution and there's good reason to think that did not come from Kirby.

Edited October 14 by sfcityduck

[sfcityduck]

On whether Stan was "stealing pay" from artists:

On 10/13/2024 at 4:57 PM, sfcityduck said:

Can anyone here post the details of how Stan got paid by Marvel at the various times under discussion here?

E.g. did he have a contract for a salary? Did he get a page rate? Was it a hybrid deal? The Marvel method was never a secret -- is the contention being made that his employe was ignorant of the Marvel method? What happened when they found out?  

I'm not seeing any evidence on this and I'm curious how you can assert Stan Lee was "stealing" other people's pay without providing such basic facts.

 

On 10/13/2024 at 5:23 PM, VintageComics said:

I brought something similar up 30 or 40 pages ago. 

Yep - no answer yet. And there's the other side of the equation. Did the artists have rights to anything other than the page rate they negotiated. Ditko said no late in his life in letters to David Curie:

• "The ideas could be mine but I had no real right to them when published. And it didn’t matter. I was getting the experience free lancers don’t usually get” (Steve Ditko (2013 letter to David Currie).
• “What I did with Spider-Man I was paid for.” (Steve Ditko (March 2015 letter).

Kirby said this in the 1989 TCJ interview:

GROTH: You were getting a page rate at Marvel?

KIRBY: Yes, I was getting a good page rate.

GROTH: Did your page rate increase substantially in the ’60s as the work became more popular?

KIRBY: Yes, it did. My object was to help the publisher to make sales. That was my job. It wasn’t a job of being a Rembrandt.

ROZ KIRBY: It wasn’t that big an increase.

GROTH: Do you remember approximately what it went 10 from the beginning ’60s to the late ’60s?

ROZ KIRBY: I don’t remember what the page rate was.

GROTH: Do you think your page rate doubled during the ’60s?

ROZ KIRBY: I don’t think it doubled.

KIRBY: I don’t think it doubled, but it gradually grew, and it grew faster than it usually did.

....

GROTH: Did you have to ask for increases, or did they simply offer them to you?

KIRBY: No, no. I had to ask for them. There’s a class system in the comics.

....

GROTH: Can I ask you how you were paid? Were you paid on a weekly basis?

KIRBY: I was paid when I brought my script in. I was a freelancer. You get paid on a weekly basis if you worked in the office, and I never worked in the office.

GROTH: So you brought in an issue of The Fantastic Four, and they simply gave you a check?

KIRBY: They’d send the check out. They wouldn’t give the check to me, but I’d get the check the following week. They were prompt with their checks. We never had any difficulty because I was making sales for them, and there was a good relationship there.

 

Edited October 14 by sfcityduck

[sfcityduck]

On 10/13/2024 at 2:53 PM, jimjum12 said:

 

Let's face it, ultra conservative philosophy was not exactly in vogue back in the 60's and 70's. 

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

All I can say given Mike's all-knowing scrutiny is that I would never say Ditko was "ultra-conservative." I don't believe he was socially conservative or the least bit religious. Ayn Rand is more of a libertarian type - believing in unrestrained capitalism (meaning unregulated or taxed businesses/corporations - which is ironic when this is a topic which is mostly about how individuals get ripped off by unregulated or unrestrained corporations). Ditko was focused on individuals. For all I know, he might have been an anarchist. I think its better not to pigeonhole Ditko because who really knew the man? Really no one. 

Edited October 14 by sfcityduck

[Ken Aldred]

"There was something about those mighty, horn-helmeted Vikings"

Straight away, in this quote I copied from the Origins excerpt, we see that he's no expert.

North Germans didn't wear horned (or winged) helmets.  They get in the way during fights.

Edited October 14 by Ken Aldred

[Ken Aldred]

On 10/14/2024 at 1:23 AM, VintageComics said:

I brought something similar up 30 or 40 pages ago. 

It's getting hard to keep track.

Is the thread progressing, or is there a lot of reiteration?

Edited October 14 by Ken Aldred

[VintageComics]

On 10/13/2024 at 7:32 PM, Ken Aldred said:

Is the thread progressing, or is there a lot of reiteration?

There is progress. Some other boardies who didn't contribute as much have started speaking up, and the discussion has become a lot more civil and progressed well over the last few pages.

One of the real slogs to the discussion is that we were using paraphrases and misquotes, and once we started addressing actual references and sources, it really seemed to tighten things up. 

I've personally come to the conclusion that Stan fibbed (or lied, or stretched the truth) more than I would have liked to have believed, but I've also concluded that some artists chose not to air their grievances for a long time, compounding the problem, and it's also become clear that some want to argue that Stan contributed less than he actually may have, with some beginning from the premise that he did nothing, which also compounds the problem. 

Speaking in absolutes has probably been the largest hinderance in the discussion.

 

[Prince Namor]

On 10/14/2024 at 5:27 AM, comicwiz said:

Get a grip.

Stan Lee has been quoted as saying it was "boring" for a guy that was so busy, doing nothing.

Multiple artists have described the exact same scenario - Goldberg (I've shown an example of this in this very thread), Orlando, Wood, and Ayers - all not only nearly, but the exact same situation.

They are sitting across Stan, staring at each other. He says nothing, contributes nothing.

In the case of Goldberg, he stands up, Stan Lee walks over to him, and says "I never want to hear you say you can't come up with a story" after Goldberg tells him  he has nothing. I"m sure you remember this, because you began ranting about how you had to work in unfair working conditions and quit. 

Dick Ayers stayed up all night once because he'd given up with the staring contest, and with the help of his wife, comes up with a story for Two Gun Kid #61 while they are in bed, restless, and unable to sleep. When he takes the story to Lee, he asks if he could get writers credit, Lee told him:

"Since when did you develop an ego? Get out of here!”

Ayers then submitted a payment requisition to Lee feeling he should be paid. 

Lee agreed to pay Ayers for lettering.

What's interesting about this example is that story was called "And Not A Word Was Spoken." 

The story was designed to be nearly wordless and contained no dialogue.

There was only lettering only on the first page and last page. 

Lee took the script credit and the page rate for a story written by Ayers and it's a story with no dialogue and one caption. 

Artists like Howard Chaykin describe him as a "hack."  For Stan, it was about the smallest to no contribution, with big pay

 

It's why Lee stopped working with newer artists... they couldn't do the work for him. 

Suddenly Lee's 'characterisation' and 'creativity' dried up. 

 

Remember "Defenders of Earth #1 (Jan, 1987)? It says, "Written by Lee with an assist by Harris". This series was an adaptation of an animated TV series by Marvel that I guess Lee wanted a part of thinking it might be the next Star Wars or something. 

 

--Michael Higgins (speaking about the series): " Stan never plotted anything. I was his editor on an issue of DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH. I asked if he wanted to write the book. He agreed. I called him several weeks later... wondering when I was getting the plot... and Stan began by asking me where the pages were! AS the "writer" it never crossed his mind that he should be providing a plot. I had to have someone else do the plot (He means 'story'. It was Bob Harras. Stan never put a story together for it) . When the art was done, I sent it to Stan with a copy proof of the plot.

Stan complained.

He told me that next time... he wanted me to copy the plot onto the pages in the borders next to each panel.

100% true story. 

Oh, when issue #1 was published,Stan also called up and was livid (he reached Shooter's secretary) about the fact that I credited the person who actually DID the plot (he means 'story', Stan had nothing to do with the 'story') with a "Writing Assist." I didn't return the call."

 

[Readcomix]

Whoever did however much of it, that Defenders of the Earth is a fun little series to read! Only four issues; I recommend it. 

[sfcityduck]

On 10/13/2024 at 7:24 PM, Ken Aldred said:

"There was something about those mighty, horn-helmeted Vikings"

Straight away, in this quote I copied from the Origins excerpt, we see that he's no expert.

North Germans didn't wear horned (or winged) helmets.  They get in the way during fights.

Except that most of folks of Kirby and Lee's age got their views on Vikings from Foster's Prince Valiant and they sure wore horned or winged helmets in that strip. In fact, Kirby that he belonged to the "school" of  Hal Foster's and Milt Caniff, and also said this:

GROTH: Now, you read pulps. Did you also read newspaper strips?

KIRBY: Yes I did. I loved the newspaper strips. I loved Bamey Google . I think that’s what brought me into journalism. The comics are so large and colorful. The pages are extremely large, and I used to love that. And Prince Valiant, of course, it was astonishing to see this beautiful illustration in the newspaper, and it was so different from the ordinary comic.

GROTH: You must have had an eye for quality work.

KIRBY: I like quality work. Comics like Prince Valiant. I loved Milton Caniff and his work. Everybody did. If a man was good he was universally liked.

In fact, Kirby like Prince Valiant so much that stole/homaged the Demon's look from a famous Prince Valiant Sunday page that also was a direct inspiration for Batman.

[Readcomix]

On 10/13/2024 at 11:33 PM, sfcityduck said:

In fact, Kirby like Prince Valiant so much that stole/homaged the Demon's look from a famous Prince Valiant Sunday page that also was a direct inspiration for Batman.

For those who have never seen the Prince Valiant Sunday in question.

[sfcityduck]

On 10/13/2024 at 8:40 PM, Readcomix said:

For those who have never seen the Prince Valiant Sunday in question.

 

Obviously also an inspiration for the Batman origin.

[VintageComics]

On 10/13/2024 at 8:40 PM, Readcomix said:

On 10/13/2024 at 8:33 PM, sfcityduck said:

In fact, Kirby like Prince Valiant so much that stole/homaged the Demon's look from a famous Prince Valiant Sunday page that also was a direct inspiration for Batman.

For those who have never seen the Prince Valiant Sunday in question.

I think some people see each character creation as a fresh start, cut from whole cloth when in reality, it was really a bunch of separate threads weaving and crisscrossing throughout comic history, and each creator took a turn pulling on a thread until they jumped to the next fresh thread. 

It was a small, niche industry with limited original ideas, and most ideas were conveniently borrowing from their competitors regularly...if they weren't already borrowing from history. 

I really like comparing comics to music, because there's really very little original in music. It's really more of a repackaging of an already established idea. Zepplin and the Stone took old blues songs, just changed their packaging and everyone thought they were fresh songs in the pre internet age. 

Does this mean Kirby and Lee owe Fox royalties for borrowing Thor from Weird Comics #1?

If the DC lawsuit against Fawcett is precedent, then you'd have to say yes, even though today that lawsuit that put Fawcett out of business wouldn't fly today. 

[Prince Namor]

If anyone has a question as to what Kirby did before he met Joe Simon: let's be clear... he was already a talent.

I'll put some of Harry Mendryk's writing with it about the art:

Jack Kirby became a staff artist for Lincoln Features Syndicate in 1936 and stayed there until 1939. Most of his strips can be described as comic humor (for example Socko the Seadog, a take-off of Popeye). Jack also did a lot of “real facts” art (for instance Your Health Comes First). Unfortunately I do not have access to any of this work. Those truly interested in this very early work can find it in the recently published “The Comic Strip Jack Kirby” by Greg Theakston. However some of Jack’s syndication work included some strips with more action and, even better, some of these got reprinted in comics. One, Lighting and the Lone Rider was a daily that appeared in January and much of February 1939. This material was reprinted in Famous Funnies #62 to #65 (September to December 1939). Jack used a number of alias during these early years, here he signed them as Lance Kirby.

[Prince Namor]

Kirby’s first superhero work (before he worked with Joe Simon) was on a comic strip The Blue Beetle, published from January to March 1940, starring a character created by the Charles Nicholas, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip. There actually WAS a Charles Nicholas, but he wasn't really doing the strip.

Page 80, Joe Simon: My Life in Comics

Simon (talking about seeing Kirby for the first time): “From what I could see, the Charles Nicholas in the bullpen didn't have anything to do with it. But that didn’t matter to me. As far as I was concerned, whoever did that Blue Beetle art was very talented.”

 

Despite the limitations of the strip format, Kirby's dynamic style was already taking shape.

[jimjum12]

On 10/13/2024 at 9:51 PM, sfcityduck said:

believing in unrestrained capitalism (meaning unregulated or taxed businesses/corporations

Around here, this is considered ultra-conservative, but too far and we get political, and I don't want that. I'll agree to disagree.  GOD BLESS ... 

-jiimbo(a friend of jesus)

[PreHero]

On 10/13/2024 at 3:27 PM, comicwiz said:

Get a grip.

Stan Lee has been quoted as saying it was "boring" for a guy that was so busy, doing nothing.

Multiple artists have described the exact same scenario - Goldberg (I've shown an example of this in this very thread), Orlando, Wood, and Ayers - all not only nearly, but the exact same situation.

They are sitting across Stan, staring at each other. He says nothing, contributes nothing.

In the case of Goldberg, he stands up, Stan Lee walks over to him, and says "I never want to hear you say you can't come up with a story" after Goldberg tells him  he has nothing. I"m sure you remember this, because you began ranting about how you had to work in unfair working conditions and quit. 

Dick Ayers stayed up all night once because he'd given up with the staring contest, and with the help of his wife, comes up with a story for Two Gun Kid #61 while they are in bed, restless, and unable to sleep. When he takes the story to Lee, he asks if he could get writers credit, Lee told him:

"Since when did you develop an ego? Get out of here!”

Ayers then submitted a payment requisition to Lee feeling he should be paid. 

Lee agreed to pay Ayers for lettering.

What's interesting about this example is that story was called "And Not A Word Was Spoken." 

The story was designed to be nearly wordless and contained no dialogue.

There was only lettering only on the first page and last page. 

Lee took the script credit and the page rate for a story written by Ayers and it's a story with no dialogue and one caption. 

Artists like Howard Chaykin describe him as a "hack."  For Stan, it was about the smallest to no contribution, with big pay.

Timeframe an artist is talking about is critical when using a Marvel Method quotes:

Dick Ayers discussing Marvel Method: "It worked good when it was with Stan.  There was some kind of simpatico thing going there.  I'd worked with Stan since 1951.  He wrote all of my Wyatt Earp stories, and then those little short stories that he wrote all the time.  But don't forget that, in the beginning, he too wrote his stories in the regular full script method.  But as the books got more popular and more numerous, and because he was doing most of the writing himself, he had to find short cuts.  First of all, I noticed I would get just the dialogue, and from what the dialogue was saying, I could gather what the scene was.  I had no problems.  And then he came up with the synopsis.  The first one I had came on the Two-Gun Kid, a story called "The Bronc Buster" or something, where the guy's at a rodeo.  It was a little short story.  He said, "Here try this", and he gave me a paragraph for a synopsis.  Bingo, it worked great!"  CBM #98.  

This story appeared in TGK #63 (5/63).  Later in same quote, Dick talks about a sleepless night where his wife suggests a story about a nun - that appeared in Sgt Fury #23 (10/65).

John Romita Sr discussing how Stan and Jack worked:  "You may have heard I used to drive home with them; whenever he was in for a story conference, Stan would drive Jack home. My house was on the way, so they'd drive me home, and then take Jack home. Sitting in the back seat of Stan's convertible with the top down, going up Queens Boulevard, listening to them plot stories, I felt like I was sitting behind Cecil B. DeMille's director's chair. It was the most wonderful thing; I felt like a kid back there."  "I knew that even when I heard them plotting in other instances! [laughter] Jack would say, "Stanley, I think I've got an idea. How 'bout this?" Stan would say, "That's not bad, Jack, but I'd rather see it this way." Jack would absolutely forget what Stan said, and Stan would forget what Jack said. [laughter] I would bet my house that Jack never read the books after Stan wrote them; that's why he could claim with a straight face that Stan never wrote anything except what Jack put in the notes. He was kidding himself; he never read them."  Comic Book Artist #6

[sfcityduck]

On 10/13/2024 at 8:54 PM, Prince Namor said:

Kirby’s first superhero work (before he worked with Joe Simon) was on a comic strip The Blue Beetle, published from January to March 1940, starring a character created by the Charles Nicholas, a house name that Kirby retained for the three-month-long strip. There actually WAS a Charles Nicholas, but he wasn't really doing the strip.

Page 80, Joe Simon: My Life in Comics

Simon (talking about seeing Kirby for the first time): “From what I could see, the Charles Nicholas in the bullpen didn't have anything to do with it. But that didn’t matter to me. As far as I was concerned, whoever did that Blue Beetle art was very talented.”

 

Despite the limitations of the strip format, Kirby's dynamic style was already taking shape.

Never seen those. I knew that Joe Simon got Kirby his first superhero work in comic books, but I was unaware of his work on the Blue Beetle strip. In fact, I was ignorant there was such a strip. So Blue Beetle was like Ms. Fury and started as a strip?  Good info.

[sfcityduck]

On 10/13/2024 at 8:50 PM, Prince Namor said:

If anyone has a question as to what Kirby did before he met Joe Simon: let's be clear... he was already a talent.

I'll put some of Harry Mendryk's writing with it about the art:

Jack Kirby became a staff artist for Lincoln Features Syndicate in 1936 and stayed there until 1939. Most of his strips can be described as comic humor (for example Socko the Seadog, a take-off of Popeye). Jack also did a lot of “real facts” art (for instance Your Health Comes First). Unfortunately I do not have access to any of this work. Those truly interested in this very early work can find it in the recently published “The Comic Strip Jack Kirby” by Greg Theakston. However some of Jack’s syndication work included some strips with more action and, even better, some of these got reprinted in comics. One, Lighting and the Lone Rider was a daily that appeared in January and much of February 1939. This material was reprinted in Famous Funnies #62 to #65 (September to December 1939). Jack used a number of alias during these early years, here he signed them as Lance Kirby.

 

Obviously, Joe Simon thought Jack Kirby was talented. That's why he took him on. Was Kirby an earth shattering talent? No. Nothing in his strip work suggests he was. He was no Foster or Caniff or Raymond. But almost no one was. Back then, being a Roy Crane was impressive enough to get a lot of comic book work.

I don't think Jack's approach to comic book work was primarily a product of working on a western strip or even Blue Beetle. I think he was more impacted by his time as an in-betweener in animation. One of Kirby's strengths as a comic book artist was his focusing on the in-between action instead of just initial and ending action.

[sfcityduck]

When people talk about full scripts I think they fail to realize that there are different versions. Here's part of a full script by Alan Moore. This is one extreme:

There's no way that Jack Kirby would have worked with Alan Moore. Jack Kirby didn't want someone telling him what and how to draw. He would have been bored by this script. Moore's script is great. And it results in a great comic. But Moore basically made all the artistic choices. 

I've gone through the Gardner Fox archive of papers. His full scripts for JSA stories were maybe 8 pages long. This compares to a Stan Lee synopsys of 1.5 pages for Ditko. Fox didn't attempt to draw any page layouts (something Moore does) and his description of the action gave the artists some lattitude. But the advantage of Lee's approach was he didn't tell the artists what to draw at all. So they got innovate. Which is why Ditko, as quoted in an above post, was seemingly happy to work for Marvel. He got creative license. Lee's approach was a purer form of collaboration than anyone else's. 

 

[ttfitz]

I find myself coming back to read more of this thread again and again, I don't know why (calgon take me away)....

Anyway, I'm still back on page 37, so maybe this has come up in the next 60 plus pages, but.

On 9/22/2024 at 4:58 PM, PopKulture said:

Show me all those credits then where it says “co-written.” Surely that’s the most he deserves when somebody delivers a stack of plotted pages?? With the co-writer credit, we could at least reasonably argue whether Stan gets 87% credit and Ditko gets 12% credit (and 1% to the ancient Greeks) or vice versa. 

Not exactly what you are asking for, but I found this interesting - from Amazing Fantasy #15:

And Fantastic Four #1 (note: not my scan and I don't own a copy, so I can't be 100% sure this is how it was originally):