It's disturbing that the Herald Tribune took away their pants.

I've seen and read many interviews, talking about things after more than a decade and a common theme is misremembering details, time frames and often confusing names. With Kirby and the Captain Marvel issue, I suspect that most of that is that very situation, rather than a deliberate attempt to claim credit for something he didn't do; and, would venture that is an element to Stan, when it comes to conflicting stories of creation, in interviews and book forewards. Mark Evanier reiterated multiple times that Jack had a poor memory, especially as he got older. Stan was said to have equally a bad one. I forget the piece, but I read an interview that featured Stan and Roy Thomas and Roy had to repeatedly correct Stan on the details and he confused several different things, at different points. That doesn't imply malicious intent, but age and the similarity of work done, month in and month out on things like comics, which is bound to cause memory problems.

In my own life, I have confused details and images into an entirely different memory. For years, I had vague memories of a live action kids show, from the 1070s Saturday morning programming. I only recalled a clubhouse behind a fence, which had a section open like a drawbridge and also a vague memory of something with some kids and a double decker bus. For most of 20 years, I tried to figure it out and eventually did, thanks to a book about the Harlem Globetrotters and the internet. The book had a chapter about their 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoon and mentioned the opposition, on the other networks, including a show called Here Come The Double-Deckers. A quick trip to IMDB found a listing and a vague description. A little more searching led me to a fan website and pictures from episodes and it clicked. I was not recalling two different things but different components of the same tv show. I recently found episodes on the Internet Archive and watched one in particular, about an alien invasion and the memories started flooding back, about watching it.

Similarly, what seem like clear memories of comic book stories and who worked on them have tripped me up several times in reviews, when I didn't verify on GCD or check the credits of an issue. Also, where the issue fell in a run. I'm not in my 70s and plagued by nightmares of combat, either. So, I cut Jack some slack on mixing up details and believing them and I give Stan some slack for mixing details, though a bit less in claiming credit that sounds like he was the sole creator and not collaborating with others to create a character or story. As I said before, the auteur theory doesn't work in film and it doesn't work in comics, as too many hands are involved for one person to be responsible for the finished work, unless they are working alone. Even Cerebus is Dave Sim and Gerhard and you only have to look at the pre-Gerhard stories to see how his involvement changed how Sim told his stories.

Reading Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, it struck me as very Pratchett and less Neil Gaiman. I first heard about it because of Gaiman's success in comics and hadn't read Pratchett, yet. When it was adapted into the mini-series, they plastered Gaiman's name all over it and he did constant interviews, because Pratchett had passed away, after several years of a rare form of Alzheimer's, which affected his ability to speak in public and the mechanics of his writing (but not the creation and telling of his work). Pratchett ended up writing the bulk of the novel, because of Gaiman's comics commitments, though they developed things together. Still, the end result is very heavy Pratchett and a bit of Gaiman in certain scenes and characters. In longer form interviews about the adaptation, Gaiman was better able to articulate Pratchett's scope of the work, but in shorter pieces, he would, at best, invoke his name as co-author, but that would be about the end of it. Neil wasn't trying to downplay Terry; but, media people trying to fill content, with a limited scope, edited him to very small points.

Memories get worse as we get older.  It's a simple fact of life. 

Who created what in the early days of Batman is another rat-hole I have zero interest in going down.  But I've read at least two books written by Jerry Robinson.  In at least one of them he talks about how he'd never read a comic before he started working on Batman, but he'd loved Will Eisner's The Spirit before that.  The problem is that The Spirit didn't debut until some time after Robinson started working for Bob Kane.  I don't think he's doing anything untoward.  But people's memories get damn hazy as they get older.  And we need to keep that in mind.  

I have only seen this quote from Kirby in 1970



Did he mean Captain Marvel Jr and just say Captain Marvel. Was he mistaken, since he was not at Fawcett when CM was created. Who knows. But I do not see anywhere where he says he created Captain Marvel.

Maybe commond's memory was faulty about what he read. (that is a joke)

No, aside from the character's name, the ashcan version was identical to what ran in Whiz #2. Kirby had nothing to do with the creation of Captain Marvel, period.

Cei-U!
I summon the bona fides!

The one character I keep seeing that shows Stan was capable of creating great characters on his own is The Kingpin.

Here is what Romita said about the characters origins.



Do I see Stan having a hand in creating the Kingpin, absolutely. But I also see the bulk of creating the character done by Romita. Then Stan doing what he did best, riffing off the plotting work the artist did to make the comic fun.

But I don't see "next month, The Kingpin of Crime" (do we remember Ditko's Crime Boss?) showing the creative fountain that he has claimed to be.

It's a matter of who you want to believe. The man who claims he thought up some of the greatest characters in comics for about 5 years, creating nothing of worth before or after. Or the man who was a creative powerhouse for his entire 50 years in comics.


This whole article is very telling to me.