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

[Prince Namor]

On 10/19/2024 at 7:42 AM, Silver Surfer said:

50 years too late. Hopefully someone writes a book from Stan’s perspective but anyone that was there is too old or passed. 

Is this a joke? There are multiple books from Stan Lee's 'perspective' including a few HE wrote. 

[Zonker]

On 10/18/2024 at 9:31 PM, sfcityduck said:

I posted the reprint. The cite I gave the original publication.

OK: odd that Ditko would copyright @ 2002 a reprint from 1990. But the GCD has a reference to Ditko's essay in The Avenging World being a reprint, so there you go... learned something new today. 

[Prince Namor]

On 10/19/2024 at 8:48 AM, Zonker said:

OK: odd that Ditko would copyright @ 2002 a reprint from 1990. But the GCD has a reference to Ditko's essay in The Avenging World being a reprint, so there you go... learned something new today. 

I'll put it a different way.

Ditko's had been publishing and writing in 'The Comics' for a while. I can't imagine its print run was very high.

He broke through into the Mainstream - something he wasn't fond of - after Lee's claim in Comics Book Marketplace #61 (July, 1998). He felt so strongly about Lee's LIE that he wrote a letter to them for publication and then did 15 essays on the subject.

[Prince Namor]

On 10/18/2024 at 9:49 AM, sfcityduck said:

Ditko has written that he did not provide dialogue to Stan.

He did?

“The book contains two independent stories. They were both credited as Script: Stan Lee/Art: Steve Ditko. There was no Stan Lee script. I worked from two synopsis. And I provided rough panel script — dialogue — for the penciled story panels, plus whatever clarification needed when we went over the penciled panels.”

— Steve Ditko A Mini-History 3 “The Amazing Spider-Man #1’ (The Comics V. 12 No. 11, November 2001) the newsletter of Robin Snyder.

[Prince Namor]

Isn't it amazing that Ditko wrote and drew the Amazing Spider-man for over a year, without any communication with Lee and...

a) No one noticed the difference

b) It became Marvel's #1 selling book (it may already have been - but it didn't change)

c) was successful without using ANY crossovers

and

d) featured the greatest run in the history of the book, including maybe the greatest non-origin/death/1st appearance issue (#33).

 

"In choosing not to see and communicate with me, Stan never knew what he was getting in my Spider-man (Dr. Strange) stories and covers until after the ritual where Sol Brodsky took the material from me, took it into Stan's office and came out saying nothing about anything."

- from Ditko's published essay A MINI-HISTORY 1. "The Green Goblin" © 2001 S. Ditko.

 

Lee's reaction to it going on:

“I don’t plot Spider-Man any more. Steve Ditko, the artist, has been doing the stories. I guess I’ll leave him alone until sales start to slip. Since Spidey got so popular, Ditko thinks he’s the genius of the world. We were arguing so much over plot lines, I told him to start making up his own stories. He won’t let anybody else ink his drawings either. He just drops off the finished pages with notes at the margins and I fill in the dialogue. I never know what he’ll come up with next, but it’s interesting to work that way.”

- Stan Lee, New York Herald Tribune, 1966

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 10/18/2024 at 9:06 AM, Silver Surfer said:

The book might be spot on, who knows, but the way the writer viewpoint was presented here makes me not want to buy the book. Just sayin. 

[Prince Namor]

On 10/19/2024 at 9:13 AM, RockMyAmadeus said:

And yet a used car salesman like Lee they found appealing. 

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 10/18/2024 at 7:42 PM, Prince Namor said:

And yet a used car salesman like Lee they found appealing. 

 

Edited Saturday at 02:58 AM by RockMyAmadeus

[Prince Namor]

On 10/19/2024 at 9:58 AM, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

Damn. I've been doing the opposite. 

[Silver Surfer]

On 10/18/2024 at 6:47 PM, Prince Namor said:

Is this a joke? There are multiple books from Stan Lee's 'perspective' including a few HE wrote. 

Maybe I will buy those books. 

[Prince Namor]

On 10/19/2024 at 11:06 AM, Silver Surfer said:

Maybe I will buy those books. 

Yeah, you had your mind made up before I even wrote my book.

[jimjum12]

On 10/18/2024 at 8:58 PM, sfcityduck said:

What is with the Houseroy name calling? I am not from the South but isn’t that a racially charged derogatory term?

From wictionary

 

Etymology

edit

From house +‎ boy (“young male; (historical or offensive) non-white male servant regardless of age”).

 

It is.

Another whose captions and dialogue were among my very favorite from the SA and BA . 

GOD BLESS ... 

-jiimbo(a friend of jesus)

[jimjum12]

On 10/18/2024 at 10:03 PM, Prince Namor said:

rough panel script

 

[VintageComics]

On 10/17/2024 at 7:19 PM, Prince Namor said:

On 10/17/2024 at 12:41 PM, sfcityduck said:

Fact: Amazing Fantasy 15 covered date 8/62 was a tryout for Spider-Man. Amazing Spider-Man 1 covered dated 3/63 came out SEVEN MONTHS LATERmaking it highly unlikely that Jack and Stan were having plotting sessions for ASM issues.

Pretty sure we can assume they had conversations in between that time. 

Why is it that whenever an assumption benefits Jack Kirby it's given the wholesale benefit of the doubt, but when it detracts from Jack Kirby or worse, benefits Stan Lee, it's dismissed as just a "5 minute meeting" or just ignored?

This is the bias that everyone keeps bringing up. This is the 'black hole' I mentioned weeks ago. Anything that could or might benefit Stan is just swallowed up to disappear forever unless you can't deny it because it's in writing somewhere as direct proof, but any inferences are ignored or denied, and yet if the name Kirby is put in the same circumstances, he's given the benefit of the doubt. 

Stan's conversations have creative value as an editor (much like the producer adds creative value to a song recording - they literally affect the final product, just  Julius Schwartz comment below and in other parts of the conversation admits) and yet you're loathe to admit Stan affected the outcome of the creation in any positive way because you don't seem to want him to get ANY credit.

If Julius Schwartz was involved in the creation of characters as editor, Stan must have been as well - Stan just chose to take more credit for them than Julius.

On 10/17/2024 at 7:27 PM, Prince Namor said:

On 10/17/2024 at 1:09 PM, sfcityduck said:

Julius Schwartz was an editor of full scripts. He wasn't acting as the writer working under the Marvel method. So its no surprise that he made no claim to creation.

He discussed the idea with the writers previous to them writing the script. That's how editors worked.

If "that's how editors worked" does that include Stan Lee?

Because when I tried to make the claim that Stan would have had SOME input into the creation of Thor through conversation, as editor, you literally laughed it off. 

On 10/17/2024 at 7:51 PM, Prince Namor said:

Unlike LEE who wrote a BOOK, where he sat and down and had time to think about how his wrods would be contrued, Kirby said these things in the course of an Interview.

This is another great example of making excuses for Kirby in an inconsistent manner. 

When Kirby says something off the cuff that's incorrect you say "well, Stan wrote a book about it and Kirby didn't have time to think about it" but when  Kirby DOES have time to think about it, like in a court record, in which great efforts are taken to be clear and accurate, and that record is questioned you give Kirby the benefit of the doubt and say "well he meant Fox even thought he stated Victor Fox".

You're consistently, en masse giving Kirby the benefit of the doubt on everything about him, while scrutinizing everything Lee said and did. This is the bias that is clear throughout your entire arguments, from beginning to end. It's constant. 

On 10/17/2024 at 7:51 PM, Prince Namor said:

On 10/17/2024 at 2:24 PM, sfcityduck said:

I don't think there's any good faith argument for ignoring the middle ground.

Depends on what you believe the middle ground is.

The middle ground is filling in some of the grey areas with a reasonable interpretation of the total evidence, and not just swinging everything in Kirby's favor automatically every time there is a dispute.

On 10/17/2024 at 8:14 PM, Prince Namor said:

On 10/17/2024 at 7:50 PM, sfcityduck said:

Not about Spider-Man. It wasn't Jack's book. He didn't care about it. He wasn't doing the art. Jack never contributed ideas to a book he wasn't drawing. Jack never claimed once that he came up with plots for ASM issues. If he had, he would have said so. You are making this up.

He didn't have to. People said Jack was ALWAYS bursting with ideas. Constantly telling them to people. 

And we've established through testimony and with evidence from the people working with Jack that Jack's ideas needed to be corralled and edited to make them MORE accepted for public consumption. 

Jack was always better with a good editor, whether it was Simon, Lee or Roz.

That's the consistent picture being painted as the discussion about Jack progresses. 

On 10/17/2024 at 8:23 PM, Prince Namor said:

On 10/17/2024 at 7:56 PM, sfcityduck said:

The artists drew the stories. They got paid by the page. The artists understood the Marvel method and they individually negotiated page rates based on what they thought was fair. Ditko, to his credit, acknowledges he was paid for everything he did on the strip. Kirby admitted he was happy with his page rate. The notion that Stan "stole" pay from artists ignores what the artist's contracted to get knowing what they were to do. It's just a sour grapes attempt to re-write a contract long after both sides agreed to it, worked under it, and got paid without complaint pursuant to it.

Stan Lee stole credit AND pay from his artists. He was a IP thief. You can lawyer-splain it all you want.

He's giving an accurate interpretation of the past. 

You can't look at the past through today's eyes. You MUST view the past through the past's eyes to account for what and how things happened in the past. We established that early on in the thread (and a few people mocked it) but that's just the way it is.

You can't retroactively change notions and laws just because you want to.

On 10/17/2024 at 8:30 PM, sfcityduck said:

You miss the point. Kirby got a higher page rate than other artists. This is not about Kirby's income versus Lee's. The question is whether Kirby got compensated for the work he did. He apparently did because he got a page rate he was happy with.

Yes. 

Even if it wasn't spelled out, or well defined, it would seem reasonable that Kirby's higher (highest) page rate was a compensation for his OVERALL creativity. 

They couldn't have known that these details would need to have been formalized for a legal battle 40 years later. They were a fledgling company publishing garbage children's books that were meant to be destroyed. Kirby was compensated well and it seems he accepted that compensation as a compromise until he no longer accepted it and moved on. 

Edited Saturday at 03:38 PM by VintageComics

[VintageComics]

On 10/17/2024 at 7:52 PM, PreHero said:

Want to clarify my previously comments on 1961 radio interview.  I responded in context of that specific paragraph in Origins about Thor.  Think the questions were “could Stan have been interviewed on the radio in 1961” - absolutely!

The 1967 WBAI is just an option, which seems to have similar words/concepts used that specific paragraph in Thor section of Origins.  Could be different interview that occurred closer to 1974 (or earlier).  Looking forward to seeing other options!

Here’s a more complete versions of applicable quotes from 1967 interview:

Hodel: All these superheroes are, not all of them, but many of them have, uh, hangups. You have one superhero who is blind, uh, named Daredevil, otherwise known as Matt Murdock. You have Spider-man, Peter Parker, who is perhaps the most guilt-ridden teenager I have ever run across. And there are, uh, many others. How did you decide that these were gonna be something more than superheros, that they were gonna have problems of their own?

Lee: Well, it was just the idea of trying to make them realistic, as we mentioned before, trying to write them a little bit better. It seems to me that the best type of story is the type of story a reader can relate to. The average superhero published by some of the other companies, you can’t really relate to them because they’re living in a vacuum. They just have a super power. They can fly through the air or whatever and that’s it, but other than that, they are two dimensional.

Now in order to make a person three dimensional, he has to have a family life, he has to have personal problems and so forth. The thing, I’ve said this so often that it’s almost becoming a cliché with me, but what we try to do is we know that these superhero stories are really fairy tales. They are fairy tales for older people. We think of them that way. We don’t really write them for young kids. And, uh, what we ask the reader to do, and hope he will do, is accept the basic premise, the basic fairy-tale quality, such as the fact that Spider-man does have the proportionate strength of a spider, if a spider were his size and that Spider-man does have the ability to cling to walls, which obviously nobody does.

However, once we accept that basic premise, that fairy-tale quality, we try to make everything else very realistic. The idea being, what would a real person do? How would he react? How would his life be if he had the strength, proportionate strength of a spider and could cling to walls? Wouldn’t he still have sinus trouble? Possibly trouble with girls? A- a- a sick relative that he was worried about? Have to worry about his school marks and so forth?

So once we get beyond the fairy-tale quality, we try to write realistic stories. We try to have the character speaking in a realistic way. To me, I- I feel that this gives it a great deal of interest. You have the combination of the fantasy, mixed with the most realistic story you can get and, uh … Well, we found sort of a winning combination.

….

Hodel: Well, I think you’ve also pioneered the use of mythological superheroes. I’m talking about Thor, which you two-

Lee: Oh.

Hodel: … come up with every month.

Lee: Well, you’ve got the right guy here ’cause I would say that Jack is the greatest mythological creator in the world. Well, we- we kicked Thor around and we came out with him. And I thought he would just be another book. And I think that Jack has turned him into one of the greatest, uh, fictional characters there are.

In fact, I should let Jack say this, but just on the chance that he won’t. He was … Somebody was asking him how he gets his authenticity in the costumes and everything. And I think a priceless answer Jack said was, “They’re not authentic. If they were authentic, they wouldn’t be authentic enough.” But he draws them the way they should be, not the way they were.

Hodel: Did you do a lot of homework on that, a lot of, uh, Norse myths and so forth?

Kirby: Well, uh- uh, not homework in the sense that I- I went home one night and I really concentrated on it. All through the years, certainly I’ve had uh- uh, a kind of affection for any mythological type of character and, uh, my conception of what they should look like and, uh, here Stan gave me the opportunity to draw one and I wasn’t gonna draw back from really letting myself go, so I did. And, uh, like, uh- uh, the world became a stage for me there and, uh, I had a costume department that really went to work. And, uh, I gave the Norse, uh, characters twists that they never had in anybody’s imagination.

Lee: (laughs)

Kirby: And, uh, somehow it- it turned out to be a lot of fun and I- I really enjoyed doing it.

Hodel: Isn’t it rather tough to come up with villains that, uh, are a suitable match for a Norse god?

Kirby: Well, not if they’re Norse gods.

Lee: (laughs).

Hodel: Well, you’ve also dragged in some Greeks. I remember one epic battle with Hercules.

Kirby: Well, Hercules had, uh, Olympian powers, which certainly are, uh, considered, uh, on an equal basis with old powers of the Norse gods and, uh, therefore we, uh, we felt that, uh, they were an equal match for each other, and by rights, they should contend with each other.

Lee: These college kids, who are so hooked on these stories, and they like Thor also, and not long ago I was speaking at Princeton, and one of the questions that I was asked was, “How do we reconcile the idea of Norse gods and Greek gods in the same story?” Now, obviously, Zeus and Odin are really the same god, but, uh, in different mythologies. And it occurred to us, what we do is we create our own mythology and we create our own universes and in our minds, there is an Olympus and there is an Asgard and Odin is the boss of his little god- god-dom and Olympus is the chief of his and we may someday bring in the Roman gods or whoever else.

And we figure that we don’t have, as Jack said, we don’t have to be that accurate because we think we can do better. After all, mythology is mythology and who’s to say we can’t make up our own myths, which is what we’re doing, just basing them on other past ones and having a heck of a good time doing it.

There is SO MUCH more context from entire, longform quotes than when people distill their interpretation down to what they perceive the words mean. Thanks for posting that!

[VintageComics]

On 10/17/2024 at 9:58 PM, DanJD said:

After 112 pages, neither side has given up ground.  You guys might need to agree to disagree before someone has a heart attack.

MOST people on the forums read and learn but don't get involved in the conversations. There are dozens of people reading and it's a GREAT discussion.

[VintageComics]

On 10/18/2024 at 9:04 AM, Prince Namor said:

On 10/18/2024 at 8:39 AM, VintageComics said:

I didn't realize DC employed the Marvel Method. 

It also doesn't mean Schwartz wasn't responsible for co-creating. It just means he chose not to take credit for those things. 

 

i.e. or steal the credit and pay from those doing the actual writing.

Not if Kirby quietly agrees to it while taking a larger paycheck than anyone else for his contributions, which (up until this point) is the conclusion that is forming.

[VintageComics]

On 10/18/2024 at 1:13 PM, jimjum12 said:

This is only my opinion, but I don't really see Ditko being the sole catalyst for the HS angst and humanistic approach to ASM's characterization, as he never really did much of that theme, if any, outside of ASM. Lee's daughter J.C. was, however, in Junior High and High School when this was all happening. They say writers feed off of what's around them, but that would spoil the narrative a bit, you know, all that annoying reality. I do think the 5 pager O Henry type stories were a lot Ditko, as he was churning out that sort of anthology fare both before and after Stan. His heroic fantasy stuff was limited to Captain Atom, Mysterious Traveller, Blue Beetle, and Creeper, none of which had much of the tongue in cheek spirit that PERMEATED the ASM work. Melodrama and sensationalism were hallmarks of both Ditko and Kirby's solo efforts, with little to no humor. GOD BLESS ...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

*ahem* I hate to be always right, it's just what I'm used to, but Stan was "fun at parties" and Steve and Jack were both buzzkills, overthinking. even perhaps their own grocery lists.

 

 

I called Kirby and Ditko social misfits 100 pages ago and I still stand by that. They were powerful creative types (as many socially inept people are) and spent most of their energy invested in those worlds.

You CAN be socially inept and still have family and friends and be social (although more in Kirby's world than in Ditko's). It just means you perceive the outside world differently than most, and in fact it's this unrealistic, creative perception that allows them to come up with such wild things. 

Stan wasn't a "creator" per se, he was a manager type and more socially adept. He was a "less agreeable personality" that could say 'no' at the correct times. This is why he knew what people would consume and a chameleon at giving people what they craved.

Stan's managerial skills honed Kirby's and Ditko's pure art to make it more consumable by the masses.   

Edited Saturday at 04:13 PM by VintageComics

[VintageComics]

On 10/18/2024 at 1:37 PM, jimjum12 said:

As a fan of literature and the written word, I will often mention theme, tone, voice, and spirit, when comparing one wordsmith to another. As has been said before, NONE of us were there, but I've read that Everett both penciled, plotted AND dialogued the Sub Mariner revival of #33-42. That being said, I have NO problema in recognizing a similar tone, voice, and spirit in DD 1 that parallels Everett's earlier work. One chief characteristic it lacks, as an aside, is San Lee's zany undercurrent that was mostly ALL his own. GOD BLESS...

jimbo(a friend of jesus)

 

Stan loved working with Everett, and I'm sure he would have offered Bill the moon to lure him from his stable and lucrative advertising career, unlike Kirby, who showed up bawling and begging after D.C. had put the foot upside his rump and his wife was, allegedly, packing to go home to mama.

 

Fun fact for today, Everett also lettered much of his Timely and Atlas work, being an early work-at-home freelancer, making it easier for him to get his drink on. 

As a large fan of DD, this explains why DD had a very different feel than surrounding books that I hadn't thought about earlier. In fact, it did have a more 'GA' like feel to it. 

I  Everett's work. 

[Prince Namor]

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

Why is it that whenever an assumption benefits Jack Kirby it's given the wholesale benefit of the doubt, but when it detracts from Jack Kirby or worse, benefits Stan Lee, it's dismissed as just a "5 minute meeting" or just ignored?

My assumption is FACT. They talked. There's no denying it.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

This is the bias that everyone keeps bringing up. This is the 'black hole' I mentioned weeks ago. Anything that could or might benefit Stan is just swallowed up to disappear forever unless you can't deny it because it's in writing somewhere as direct proof, but any inferences are ignored or denied, and yet if the name Kirby is put in the same circumstances, he's given the benefit of the doubt. 

Example?

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

Stan's conversations have creative value as an editor (much like the producer adds creative value to a song recording - they literally affect the final product,

No one said otherwise. Straw man.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

just  Julius Schwartz comment below and in other parts of the conversation admits) and yet you're loathe to admit Stan affected the outcome of the creation in any positive way because you don't seem to want him to get ANY credit.

Wrong. Didn't say that. When it looks like he did, he did - when it looks like he didn't, he didn't.

STOP MAKING THINGS UP.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

If Julius Schwartz was involved in the creation of characters as editor, Stan must have been as well - Stan just chose to take more credit for them than Julius.

REALLY? 

Gee, welcome to the conversation.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

If "that's how editors worked" does that include Stan Lee?

Because when I tried to make the claim that Stan would have had SOME input into the creation of Thor through conversation, as editor, you literally laughed it off. 

You claimed he DID - which you can't because no one knows for sure. I claimed he most likely DIDN'T, because of 8 reasons I listed - none of which you could dispute.

Keep up.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

This is another great example of making excuses for Kirby in an inconsistent manner. 

No its not.

Its another example you using generalities because you can't dispute anything.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

When Kirby says something off the cuff that's incorrect you say "well, Stan wrote a book about it and Kirby didn't have time to think about it" but when  Kirby DOES have time to think about it, like in a court record, in which great efforts are taken to be clear and accurate, and that record is questioned you give Kirby the benefit of the doubt and say "well he meant Fox even thought he stated Victor Fox".

You don't think there's a difference between someone in a conversation.... versus someone sitting down to carefully plan out what they're saying in a book?

You don't think there's a difference when someone misspeaks and it doesn't benefit them financially in any way vs someone straight up LYING so that they can make a fortune?

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

You're consistently, en masse giving Kirby the benefit of the doubt on everything about him, while scrutinizing everything Lee said and did. This is the bias that is clear throughout your entire arguments, from beginning to end. It's constant. 

Example? Despute what I said to the one above.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

The middle ground is filling in some of the grey areas with a reasonable interpretation of the total evidence, and not just swinging everything in Kirby's favor automatically every time there is a dispute.

And we've established through testimony and with evidence from the people working with Jack that Jack's ideas needed to be corralled and edited to make them MORE accepted for public consumption. 

All you can provide is OPINION. It's subjective, dude. Get a clue.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

Jack was always better with a good editor, whether it was Simon, Lee or Roz.

Subjective. Opinion.

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

That's the consistent picture being painted as the discussion about Jack progresses. 

He's giving an accurate interpretation of the past. 

You can't look at the past through today's eyes. You MUST view the past through the past's eyes to account for what and how things happened in the past. We established that early on in the thread (and a few people mocked it) but that's just the way it is.

You can't retroactively change notions and laws just because you want to.

What notions have I changed? What laws have I changed?

What are you talking about???

On 10/19/2024 at 10:30 PM, VintageComics said:

Yes. 

Even if it wasn't spelled out, or well defined, it would seem reasonable that Kirby's higher (highest) page rate was a compensation for his OVERALL creativity. 

They couldn't have known that these details would need to have been formalized for a legal battle 40 years later. They were a fledgling company publishing garbage children's books that were meant to be destroyed. Kirby was compensated well and it seems he accepted that compensation as a compromise until he no longer accepted it and moved on. 

Uh, no.

Edited Saturday at 04:19 PM by Prince Namor