Great point. Silver Surfer #1 added so much heart and depth to the character far beyond what was suggested in his early Fantastic Four appearances. That's not a stab at Kirby, but acknowledging that Lee knew how to write the character with just as thoughtful and strong in its sci-fi foundations as Kirby's version, contrary to the criticism Kriby's children had for Lee.

This has been an interesting discussion from one perspective: it seems there isn't much disagreement about the basic facts: Lee and Kirby each made important contributions to the characters and comics they produced. I don't think there's even much disagreement as to who did what, in a very general sense - Kirby coming up with new characters and often the story concepts, Stan Lee the script and dialogue (obviously) but also the characterisations and interplay and the general attitude that lent the 1960s Marvel so much of its charm.

Some things we just don't know in detail, as Commond points out - how much was hashed out together in story conferences, who contributed what to a plotline, how much new stuff did Krby spring on Lee when he sent in the artwork, how much did Lee alter or misinterpret Kirby's ideas, etc. Though there are clues to such details in some specific cases, as Kirby101 mentioned in regard to the Silver Surfer.

So to me it looks like where the big disagreement comes in is our differing value judgements as to how good was Kirby's and Lee's work apart from one another, whether solo or with another collaborator. And boy, there is a huge gap here between the two "camps" (not sure I like that word in this context, noticeably applied only to the Kirby side so far, not the Lee). We see it, for example, in Kirby101's and Tarkantino's differing assessments of the Lee/Buscema Silver Surfer; or in the differing views of Kirby's solo work, e.g. the New Gods and The Eternals.

Looking at Stan Lee's work apart from Kirby and Ditko, I don't think I've seen it dismissed in the same way - though I do see a significant difference in this work myself, and one that helps give an idea of what he brought to the table when he did work with those two on series like the FF, Thor, Dr. Strange, etc. I'm willing to hear an argument against this - but it seems that these Kirby vs Lee arguments never get to this point.

I'm not sure there's any bridging ths gap, because I think that comics readers who don't see much artistic value in Kirby's solo work see everyone who disagrees as victims of an illusion, brainwashed into thinking this hack artist was a creative genius because that's what they've been told (by someone, sometime), while they themselves are the brave truth-tellers pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. Excuse the rhetorical exaggeration, but that's the feeling I get - that there's no common ground for a real conversation. And fair enough, in a way - I suppose I'm equally guilty in not being in any hurry ready to find common ground with, I don't know, fans of Jim Lee's artwork or whatever.

No, we can't know those details. But we do now have much more historical evidence from which to deduce more about the process by which Stan and his artists created the story, after those decades during which Stan's version was the primary one, decades when a mythology engrained itself in comics fandom, a mythology that Marvel devotees are loath to abandon. We have the original art, with its copious artist notes. Consider the Romita "jackpot" page:



Would Romita have had to write "Anna and Aunt May hug--Pete uncomfortable" or "Pete expects the worst-" if he were working from a detailed plot that Lee wrote?

We have the words of artists like Kirby, Ditko, Ayers, Wood discussing plotting and not being credited for it. 

We have full runs available for more careful analysis through which we can detect particular plotting differences that distinguish stories drawn by different artists, differences that aren't just a matter of staging and storytelling but a matter of themes, of character, of plot twists, of subject matter, of background knowledge.

We have Stan's own words, words that were less well known when the myth was being cemented, from fanzines and forgotten Bullpen Bulletins, where he credited Ditko with coming up with Dr. Strange, or where he specifically said Kirby, Heck, and Ayers were the primary plotters, implying that this was the norm in their stories, not the exception:



We have examples of stories that he rejected outright, like Kirby's trashed Hulk story. We have stories we now recognize as being largely replotted through the text, such as the "Hulk can fly" story or the origin of Dr. Doom. We have stories that clearly weren't used as intended, such as the origin of Galactus segments inserted into a few issues of THOR, which doesn't seem like it was plotted as a natural component of the story being told but broken out from something else Kirby turned in intended for...something, somewhere else.

Traditionally, we have viewed these stories through Lee's framing, assuming that most of them accurately reflect a plot that he assigned to his artists. Once we can divorce ourselves from that assumption, very often a significantly different plot emerges from the pictures on the page, and different orders of events become plausible. If we assume that Iron Man began with Stan's plot about Tony Stark developing the armor as a prisoner of the Viet Cong, we have a very clumsy entry two issues later when Jack Kirby comes on board and seems to telling a very different kind of story, but if we consider the possibility that Kirby's story came first, and was intended as the origin, which Stan didn't like and reworked with Don Heck, we have a plausible scenario...but it's one that requires us to accept the possibility that Kirby turned in an Iron Man story that he basically came up with on his own, not one based on a Stan Lee plot. 

The picture that comes together is one in which Stan's routine method of creating comics seems to have been telling his artists to do the bulk of the plotting, telling him what the story was with their margin notes, and dialoguing what he got in. With that perspective, I'm seeing evidence--and this might just be confirmation bias, I admit--that he was doing the same in the days of the Atlas Westerns and jungle comics, where the characters seemed to be handled exclusively by specific artists who appear to be bringing their unique plotting techniques to the features they handled.

I have come to understand that we can, with careful study, deduce a lot about things we weren't there to witness; I recently did some training in geology, and was astounded to learn how geologists figured out things like continental drift and formations of land features based on physics happening underground where we will never be able to directly observe, and it has turned on a light bulb in my head: I realize how dismissive the public can be of history and science under the assumption that some assertions can only be guesswork because we don't understand how they were reached. I think that thanks to how much more we know now, not just the stories themselves and the corporate-blessed recounting, but from all of the sources that exist now that comic book historianism has become "a thing".

Thanks for that great post M W.
Let me say this. I think there is a worthwhile discussion of who brought more to the books, the artists who plotted the stories from vague outlines worked out with Lee (and sometimes not) or Lee, who scripted the books and maintained an editorial hand in the whole thing. And I am in agreement that both had contributions that varied issue to issue. You can say Starlin made Captain Marvel the fan favorite it was, but no one says Starlin created Captain Marvel. I hope you can see the difference.

But this is the point I have been trying to make that has been obscured with things like who made the character what it became.
Stan claimed, and now Disney has continued this falsehood, that Stan created everything, every character started with his idea, every book was him bringing in an artist and telling him what it was about. This is a bold faced lie and the evidence is overwhelming that most of the characters did not start with him. Love Stan the Man. Love his rapport with the readers, his melodramatic dialog, his overseeing the Silver Age MU. But please at least acknowledge that the myth of Stan as the sole or primary creator of all the Marvel character is a lie. A lie used by the corporate entities that owned Marvel to deny rights to the artists that created these characters.

Romita has said Stan would have very involved story conferences with him, and provide his plotting notes; as an artist, Romita also made notes based on the specifics of the conferences over panels during the process of laying out scenes, so the "Jackpot" page may have been the result of such a conference. Now, as many a CCF-er knows, I think Romita is one of the key, most impactful creators in the medium's history, and I'm in no way minimizing his being a co-plotter (and restructuring the entire visual language) on TASM (and other titles), but he's talked about his process with Lee and though not always as consistent a pattern as what i've recollected, it's a view into part of said process enough to know Lee was not a peripheral figure in the creation of major stories.

Here is what Romita said in an interview. This is not saying Stan contributed nothing or he never came up with a plot. But he often left everything but a story idea to the artist.



Mind you, Romita has no problem with Stan getting writing and creative credit. He thinks he was a great editor, maybe the best. But he does give a good example of what Stan often contributed to the plotting of the stories.

Find those humorous accounts that artists like Dtko, Colan and Romita did in the back of Annuals on story conferences and you will probably be closer to the truth about them.