shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Apr 28, 2017 10:01:02 GMT -5
Just wondering if, combining our own little pockets of knowledge, we can assemble a close-to-accurate list of Lee and Kirby's favorite and least favorite early Marvel properties. I'm curious if higher interest correlates to higher quality stories.
I believe it was in the introduction to the 1980s Silver Surfer one-shot that Lee indicated the Silver Surfer was his absolute favorite character of all time. I'm reasonably sure I've read the same was true for Kirby, but I couldn't tell you where. Maybe even just the fact that their final work together was the Silver Surfer Ultimate Cosmic Experience.
I'm assuming the two did not have a lot of love for the X-Men, as that title seemed to be the recipient of a lot less enthusiasm and creativity than their other works.
Jack always looked like he was having a ball in the early Agent of SHIELD stories, always introducing some far out new technology each issue.
Lee seemed to have fun waxing nostalgic in Sgt. Fury, as well as subtly introducing subversive messages about diversity that were way ahead of their time.
Did Lee's enthusiasm cause Spider-Man to become a sensation, or did Lee speak enthusiastically about Spider-Man because he was a sensation?
Fantastic Four was where it all started -- how much did that matter to Stan and Jack?
I know a lot less about the early Marvel Universe than most of you here, so I'm looking forward to learning from you all!
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 28, 2017 10:48:02 GMT -5
I think I read that Lee didn't think much of the Diablo character.
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Post by tingramretro on Apr 28, 2017 10:50:35 GMT -5
I think I read that Lee didn't think much of the Diablo character. Yes, he said he never really knew what Diablo was supposed to be all about, despite having co-created him. |
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shaxper
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Posts: 22,419
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Post by shaxper on Apr 28, 2017 10:54:35 GMT -5
I think I read that Lee didn't think much of the Diablo character. I had to go look up who this character was. I've probably read his first appearance before, but I have no recollection of it. |
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Post by tingramretro on Apr 28, 2017 10:59:28 GMT -5
I think I read that Lee didn't think much of the Diablo character. I had to go look up who this character was. I've probably read his first appearance before, but I have no recollection of it. Hardly surprising, since poor old Esteban is probably up there with the Metal Master as one of the most forgettable characters Silver Age Marvel ever gave us... |
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Post by MDG on Apr 28, 2017 11:12:11 GMT -5
I think they were on such a treadmill in the early days, they didn't have much time to think about anything besides getting the books out the door. As a result, continuity (within a story, let alone across stories) and logic often went out the door as well.
Kirby could draw sequences that flowed and told a story, but didn't seem to care how a technology was explained as long as it did what it did. Ditto why or how characters got from place to place.
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Post by coke & comics on Apr 28, 2017 11:31:53 GMT -5
Just wondering if, combining our own little pockets of knowledge, we can assemble a close-to-accurate list of Lee and Kirby's favorite and least favorite early Marvel properties. I'm curious if higher interest correlates to higher quality stories. I believe it was in the introduction to the 1980s Silver Surfer one-shot that Lee indicated the Silver Surfer was his absolute favorite character of all time. I'm reasonably sure I've read the same was true for Kirby, but I couldn't tell you where. Maybe even just the fact that their final work together was the Silver Surfer Ultimate Cosmic Experience. I'm assuming the two did not have a lot of love for the X-Men, as that title seemed to be the recipient of a lot less enthusiasm and creativity than their other works. Jack always looked like he was having a ball in the early Agent of SHIELD stories, always introducing some far out new technology each issue. Lee seemed to have fun waxing nostalgic in Sgt. Fury, as well as subtly introducing subversive messages about diversity that were way ahead of their time. Did Lee's enthusiasm cause Spider-Man to become a sensation, or did Lee speak enthusiastically about Spider-Man because he was a sensation? Fantastic Four was where it all started -- how much did that matter to Stan and Jack? I know a lot less about the early Marvel Universe than most of you here, so I'm looking forward to learning from you all! I would guess you can tell how much Lee loved a property by how long he kept writing it. Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man had more than a hundred issues with his name on them. He got nowhere near that far with his other properties. And it was up to him what he handed over to Thomas and other successors and when. By 1970, he was basically done with writing, essentially forever (he gets his name on the occasional thing, but I suspect he's paid for his name). He returned to only two Marvel properties for significant works. He wrote the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. And he came back repeatedly to Silver Surfer over the next 20 years. He and Kirby turned Surfer's origin into a proper standalone graphic novel. Then he wrote a metaphysical story "The Answer" in Epic Illustrated. Then the famous Parable miniseries with Moebius. Then the Enslavers graphic novel with Keith Pollard. I can't imagine that's a coincidence. While Enslavers is pretty forgettable, those other three Surfer stories are among his best works. All philosophical and introspective. |
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Post by tingramretro on Apr 28, 2017 11:40:49 GMT -5
Just wondering if, combining our own little pockets of knowledge, we can assemble a close-to-accurate list of Lee and Kirby's favorite and least favorite early Marvel properties. I'm curious if higher interest correlates to higher quality stories. I believe it was in the introduction to the 1980s Silver Surfer one-shot that Lee indicated the Silver Surfer was his absolute favorite character of all time. I'm reasonably sure I've read the same was true for Kirby, but I couldn't tell you where. Maybe even just the fact that their final work together was the Silver Surfer Ultimate Cosmic Experience. I'm assuming the two did not have a lot of love for the X-Men, as that title seemed to be the recipient of a lot less enthusiasm and creativity than their other works. Jack always looked like he was having a ball in the early Agent of SHIELD stories, always introducing some far out new technology each issue. Lee seemed to have fun waxing nostalgic in Sgt. Fury, as well as subtly introducing subversive messages about diversity that were way ahead of their time. Did Lee's enthusiasm cause Spider-Man to become a sensation, or did Lee speak enthusiastically about Spider-Man because he was a sensation? Fantastic Four was where it all started -- how much did that matter to Stan and Jack? I know a lot less about the early Marvel Universe than most of you here, so I'm looking forward to learning from you all! I would guess you can tell how much Lee loved a property by how long he kept writing it. Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man had more than a hundred issues with his name on them. He got nowhere near that far with his other properties. And it was up to him what he handed over to Thomas and other successors and when. By 1970, he was basically done with writing, essentially forever (he gets his name on the occasional thing, but I suspect he's paid for his name). He returned to only two Marvel properties for significant works. He wrote the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. And he came back repeatedly to Silver Surfer over the next 20 years. Are you suggesting that She-Hulk and Ravage 2099 are not significant!!!?  |
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shaxper
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Posts: 22,419
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Post by shaxper on Apr 28, 2017 11:44:46 GMT -5
He and Kirby turned Surfer's origin into a proper standalone graphic novel. Then he wrote a metaphysical story "The Answer" in Epic Illustrated. Then the famous Parable miniseries with Moebius. Then the Enslavers graphic novel with Keith Pollard. I can't imagine that's a coincidence. While Enslavers is pretty forgettable, those other three Surfer stories are among his best works. All philosophical and introspective. I adore the first three but didn't even know about The Enslavers. I suppose that proves your point. Still, I'm going to have to check it out now. |
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Post by codystarbuck on Apr 28, 2017 20:48:35 GMT -5
Kirby flat out hated Sgt Fury. He felt it was too unrealistic, especially as someone who saw combat, during WW2. Stan was stateside and didn't know any better and was just trying to do the same kind of thing in a war book as they were in the superhero books. Stan was more about whatever was selling, based on his training under Martin Goodman: if something's hot, copy it and put out 12 of the same. War comics were hot for DC and Charlton, so Stan went for a war comic; but, tried doing it like the other books, rather than the types of stories they had in the old Atlas war books. Kirby preferred working on The Losers, as he got a chance to do more serious war stories, though he hated that name and would have preferred to create his own characters.
Kirby definitely had an affinity for the FF, as it let him explore new territory in comics and that's what he lived for, according to Mark Evanier's essays. I think Stan really got into Kirby's plots and enjoyed creating dialogue with those characters. Also, the series lent itself to imaginative villains, via Jack's designs and Stan's personalities. BY contrast, when Stan was working on his own, you got a lot of Commies. Same with Ditko, as his designs and bizarre villains seemed to stimulate Stan's imagination.
Silver Surfer, was a bone of contention, though. Both loved the character; but, for different reasons. he is the character you can say is all Kirby, in that he created it without input from Stan. However, Stan immediately took a shine to the character. In Stan's eyes, he was a human who sacrificed his freedom to save his planet and become herald to Galactus. Stan used him to explore his own philosophical ideas. Jack conceived him as being a being of energy, in a humanoid shell. He was a void waiting to be filled. Jack wanted to explore what it means to be human, to be a blank slate that is filled with human ideas of love, hate, greed, sacrifice, and more.
Spider-Man was probably Stan's pure favorite, as he got to do the kind of character stuff he really enjoyed, plus the melodramatic and comedic dialogue. He also got to portray more of an underdog.
Thor was a book that resonated with Kirby and was more his baby, just as Dr Strange was more Ditko's. On the other books, I think Stan was basically doing variations on what he was doing on Spider-Man and FF. Silver Surfer is the one I would say that was something different.
Kirby didn't really do that many Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD stories. After he did the intro, John Severin took over. Kirby came back later, in did a couple of issues here and a couple there; but, not a long sustained run. He did layouts on Steranko's first few stories, to get him going. Outside of devising things in that first story, I don't think Kirby put much thought into Fury, other than to make the stories action-packed and exciting.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Apr 28, 2017 21:07:26 GMT -5
I would guess you can tell how much Lee loved a property by how long he kept writing it. Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man had more than a hundred issues with his name on them. He got nowhere near that far with his other properties. And it was up to him what he handed over to Thomas and other successors and when. By 1970, he was basically done with writing, essentially forever (he gets his name on the occasional thing, but I suspect he's paid for his name). He returned to only two Marvel properties for significant works. He wrote the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip. And he came back repeatedly to Silver Surfer over the next 20 years. Are you suggesting that She-Hulk and Ravage 2099 are not significant!!!? Yeah, don't be throwing shade on Ravage! |
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Post by chadwilliam on Apr 29, 2017 0:06:36 GMT -5
I think I read that Lee didn't think much of the Diablo character.
Though I'm not that familiar with a lot of Marvel beyond Spider-Man, I do remember seeing Stan Lee on Larry King about 10 years ago and saying that he loved the name 'Diablo'. Again, this would have been about ten years ago so details are vague, but his comment was along the lines of "I just knew I had to do something with this character because, ooooooo 'Diablo', what a great name for a villain!" At the same time, he either gave the sense or flat out stated that he couldn't really come up with a satisfying hook for the character.
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Post by chadwilliam on Apr 29, 2017 0:28:28 GMT -5
Also - Lee has said on a number of occasions that he would have loved to have played J Jonah Jameson when he was younger and that he based the character on himself. It sounds jokingly self-deprecating especially since in the following interview for instance, he describes JJJ as "irascible, he was bad tempered, dumb - he thought he was better than he was" but as the clip also shows, his eyes really do light up when he's asked about Jameson. "Who know who he was? He was me"
Anyhoo, here's a thought - if you can find Stan Lee or Jack Kirby (or Steve Ditko too for that matter) going into such intricate detail about the supporting characters of a hero (and he later even goes into details regarding Robbie Robertson who was a supporting character to a supporting character) then I think it's pretty safe to assume that those lead characters occupy a special place in their minds.
Again - I don't claim to know much about Marvel's characters beyond the basics, but did Ant-Man, for instance, have a whole slew of characters around him in his initial appearances or was Lee still struggling to work out who Hank Pym was in those early issues to bother with such details? Some characters had so much of who they are in people's minds today already developed in their first year or so (ie. Spider-Man wasn't just a sticky guy who swung from a web - he had a unique "Spider-Sense", Spider Tracer (from issue 11 I believe at least), Spider-Signal (which was actually a spotlight rather than a summoning device to be used by New York's Commissioner as it might sound) and more within the same time frame that Lee and Kirby couldn't quite figure out how many toes The Hulk had, or what color he should be, or if he could fly, or if his transformation was triggered by the moon, or...
In other words, if Lee/Kirby/Ditko seemed bursting with ideas they couldn't wait to get on the page (as opposed to throwing things at the wall) then I think it's safe to say those guys were their babies. |
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Post by tingramretro on Apr 29, 2017 1:30:06 GMT -5
You know, thinking about it...aside from Jan, Hank Pym never actually had a supporting cast! Nobody at all! Hmmm...
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Post by coke & comics on Apr 29, 2017 1:33:37 GMT -5
Are you suggesting that She-Hulk and Ravage 2099 are not significant!!!? ??? Yeah, don't be throwing shade on Ravage! I'm going to say the key word in my sentence was "returned". Obviously, we all love Ravage. |
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