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Fantastic Four Collecting Thread!
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Started by uclapeterg,

13,840 posts in this topic

KirbyJack

KirbyJack

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 5/30/2022 at 4:43 AM, Straw-Man said:

are these any good?

They're hit and miss. According to Alan Moore, Stan Lee wasn't a respectable writer; and at the time, the folks at DC called Kirby's art "bad", so you be the judge.

Edited by KirbyJack
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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

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Stan Lee didn't entirely write his comics like Moore and most other authors after Stan have so in that sense he's right, although as usual Moore's tone if he really did describe Stan as "not respectable" is overly dismissive.  This is Stan's "Marvel Method" as I understand it from the way he's long described it:

  • Stan and the chosen penciller--which means Kirby for FF--would discuss ideas for a story.  Sometimes they were Stan's ideas, sometimes Kirby's, but usually they were a mix of ideas from both of them that have mostly been lost to time as to who had which idea.
  • Stan then left the plot, i.e. how the story is told up to the penciller.  Stan is the only writer who I've ever seen do this.  Every other one I'm aware of writes a very explicit screenplay-like description for how the story is told through panels, but Stan claims he never did that.  That's why he's credited as the writer on so many Silver Age books--he was leaving most of the creative writing of the plot up to the artists.
  • After the penciller was done Stan would go back and fill in empty word bubbles with dialogue.

I don't know any other author who left plots up to the artists like Stan did.  If you find Silver Age Marvel issues hard to follow then usually the penciller is to blame.  Stan's dialogue is in general REALLY good, and his character ideas were of course exceptional since that's what he's best known for.  But he left the most time-consuming parts of creative storytelling up to the artists.

If Moore's point is that Stan should have focused more time writing for fewer titles then I agree; a dedicated writer developing both the story AND plot leads to the best writing possible.

Edited by fantastic_four
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KirbyJack

KirbyJack

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I believe what Moore said was, “I don’t respect Stan Lee as a writer”. He rationale for the statement goes along the lines you describe; taking full writer/ creator credit in instances where he contributed very little. 

I recognize Stan’s contributions. His dialogue is very good. Once he spent some time on a feature, the main characters developed a distinct voice. A reader who is familiar with those characters can often name the speaker from dialogue alone. Stan also had a real facility for engaging his audience, and could tightrope that fine line between goofy fun and corny.

However, when Kirby and Ditko were not involved, Stan struggled to create interesting villains. Consider Daredevil’s rogue gallery or the FF after Kirby stopped contributing good ideas (after #66). Both features were written by Stan.

Edited by KirbyJack
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MattTheDuck

MattTheDuck

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"After the penciller was done Stan would go back and fill in empty word bubbles with dialogue"

I know next to nothing about how these books were produced BUT this seems very unlikely to me.  Despite knowing the plot and story but without dialogue responsibility, how could the penciller know how many word balloons to include and of what size?  How would he know which characters would speak in any panel?  Or how many top-of-panel or elsewhere rectangles should be included for story exposition and where?  Whoever was responsible for dialogue and expository writing would be limited by the size of the spaces made available by the penciller, certainly challenging and probably not a situation the "top guy" at Marvel would have accepted.

Again, I don't know anything about what's a "reasonable" process in producing these books so I could be way, way off, but it seems much more likely to me that either Stan worked with the penciller to add balloons based on his expected dialogue, or the pages were returned and Stan either worked directly with the letterer or gave notes to the letterer after seeing the pages on adding the balloons and dialogue.

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fantastic_four

fantastic_four

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On 6/7/2022 at 12:18 PM, MattTheDuck said:

"After the penciller was done Stan would go back and fill in empty word bubbles with dialogue"

I know next to nothing about how these books were produced BUT this seems very unlikely to me.  Despite knowing the plot and story but without dialogue responsibility, how could the penciller know how many word balloons to include and of what size?  How would he know which characters would speak in any panel?  Or how many top-of-panel or elsewhere rectangles should be included for story exposition and where?  Whoever was responsible for dialogue and expository writing would be limited by the size of the spaces made available by the penciller, certainly challenging and probably not a situation the "top guy" at Marvel would have accepted.

Again, I don't know anything about what's a "reasonable" process in producing these books so I could be way, way off, but it seems much more likely to me that either Stan worked with the penciller to add balloons based on his expected dialogue, or the pages were returned and Stan either worked directly with the letterer or gave notes to the letterer after seeing the pages on adding the balloons and dialogue.

You're probably right that Stan decided where the bubbles would go; not sure why I said that because I don't recall him ever referring to existing bubbles.  But he did go back and fill in the dialogue after the art was done.  I've heard him affirm that multiple times in multiple videos that are pretty easy to find.  Here's one:

 

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KirbyJack

KirbyJack

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I think Stan wrote dialogue while the pages were uninked. The letterer took Stan’s -script and drew word bubbles on the uninked pages, which were then given to the inker. 

I think.

Edited by KirbyJack
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MattTheDuck

MattTheDuck

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On 6/8/2022 at 4:51 PM, fantastic_four said:

You're probably right that Stan decided where the bubbles would go; not sure why I said that because I don't recall him ever referring to existing bubbles.  But he did go back and fill in the dialogue after the art was done.  I've heard him affirm that multiple times in multiple videos that are pretty easy to find.  Here's one:

 

Wasn't trying to call you out.  It makes perfect sense to me that the penciller would know he had to leave area(s) for balloons on most panels "somewhere" which adds an interesting twist to the "art" part - didn't have to worry about that with the Mona Lisa.  I suspect the story conferences would have laid most of this out, as you don't want to have to go back and redraw too much after the first go-around.  Pretty cool to have this insight into the creative process and the different ways people liked to work.

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