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Post by berkley on Feb 19, 2024 3:06:29 GMT -5
Just a trivial obervation, but I find Dr. Strange looks a bit like Sammy Davis Jr in some of those early Ditko pages.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Feb 19, 2024 3:11:15 GMT -5
GCD suggests the origin of Dr Strange in Strange Tales #115 may have been the ninth or later Doc story to be drawn, as they think he was modelled on Vincent Price in the other issues up to ST #120, but on Ronald Colman in the origin and later stories.
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Post by Cei-U! on Feb 19, 2024 3:53:59 GMT -5
GCD suggests the origin of Dr Strange in Strange Tales #115 may have been the ninth or later Doc story to be drawn, as they think he was modelled on Vincent Price in the other issues up to ST #120, but on Ronald Colman in the origin and later stories. They may be right about that first part. ST #121 is the first story other than the origin in which Strange's eyes no longer look Asiatic (i.e., suggest an epicanthic fold). I'm not sure I buy the Price/Colman bit, though. Strange doesn't look much like either aside from he mustache.
Cei-U! I summon the well-groomed wizard!
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Post by commond on Feb 19, 2024 6:45:34 GMT -5
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Post by tarkintino on Feb 19, 2024 8:26:13 GMT -5
I've said before that the most tedious thing in all of comics is the argument about whether Stan or Jack should get the credit. So I'm not going to participate much. But kirby101 is correct about Dr. Strange - it was Ditko's idea. In January 1963, some months prior to Dr. Strange making his debut, Stan wrote a letter to superfan, zine publisher, and budding comics historian Jerry Bails, and in that letter among other things he teases upcoming projects including Dr. Strange. In the letter Stan explicitly states that Dr. Strange was Ditko's idea.  That letter and Stan's comments don't preclude Stan having involvement in that initial story or the subsequent evolution of the character. He even mentions the changing of the character's name that I mentioned in my previous post right there in the letter. Stan writing to Bails about the new "Mr. Strange" strip and saying "'twas Steve's idea and I figured we'd give it a chance" doesn't necessarily mean that Lee didn't tinker with elements of that script or have some involvement in later stories, even if they were relatively minor. Of course not, but the attempt to erase Lee from every creation and development of characters will continue, no matter how much digging for "gotchas" never conclusively writes Lee out of his position and contributions. |
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Post by commond on Feb 19, 2024 17:11:36 GMT -5
As an aside note, I found Tom Scioli's graphic novel, Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics, to be highly entertaining. His Stan Lee biography is also good, but I think Scioli has more of an affinity for Kirby and the art is better in the Kirby novel. Whether you agree with Scioli's take on Kirby is up to you. The biography is fictionalized in large part, but meticulously researched and full of anecdotes that I'd never come across.
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Post by commond on Feb 26, 2024 19:11:42 GMT -5
I just finished Kirby's run on The Losers and I feel it highlights a lot of his strengths and weaknesses as a writer.
Kirby was very good at plotting a story out on the page, panel by panel, which led to some excellent single issue stories, however there was no sense of an overarching story. They're a series of random adventures with nothing tying the plots together. A deliberate choice by Kirby, but not a particularly satisfying one, especially when he decides to send The Losers on missions all over the globe. Kirby also forgoes any sort of characterization of The Losers themselves, which was a big complaint among readers at the time. There is pathos and tragedy in the series, but it happens to other characters. There are a lot of great action scenes, especially the scenes involving Nazi patrols, and I enjoyed the final issue and the way Kirby signed off, but there were a lot of silly single issue stories. I guess some folks may find Kirby's sillier stuff charming or amusing, but the way the series is sold is that it's a more serious take on war than the average war comic and that's simply not true.
A lot of people boil things down to Stan's dialogue being better than Jack's, but personally I don't think dialogue is the problem. Some of the captioning on his splash pages might be a bit archaic at times, but I didn't have a problem with the way the characters spoke. He simply wasn't able to give characters distinct personalities and flesh those personalities out through dialogue. Of course, Stan went overboard at times and bombarded the reader with characterization but at least you knew what made each character tick.
At the same time, I've been reading Jack's final issues of Kamandi. Kamandi feels like classic 70s Kirby to me. He starts off with all these big ideas, throws himself into the work, is hellbent on creating a runaway hit, then the business bites him in the ass somehow and he loses motivation. The series peaks with the death of Flower, IMO, and that's in issue #6. However, the interesting thing to me is how much the art changes once Conway takes over as editor and then writer. Jack goes from doing his usual dynamic artwork to suddenly working within a 6 panel grid. I assume he was working from script and it was Conway's scripting that forced Jack to lay the page out in that manner, but it's interesting to see the difference between Kirby plotting the book himself and another writer taking over. Conway's scripting is smoother, but I imagine most Kirby fans would find the results boring.
My take is that Stan was the best editor Jack ever had, the Marvel method allowed Jack to flourish and reach new heights of creativity, Stan's dialogue made Jack's characters more relatable, and everything else is different parties on either end of a legal dispute.
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Post by kirby101 on Feb 26, 2024 21:29:48 GMT -5
As far as I know, Conway did not take over writing until issue 39. And worked with Kirby on 3 issues. Up till then, Jack wrote and drew. It was his most successful DC book.
My favorite issue is 16, where he uses a diary about the great apocalypse to also tell current story with Kamandi, it's a masterful bit of writing.
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Post by commond on Feb 27, 2024 8:37:55 GMT -5
Conway takes over as editor with issue #34 and you start to see changes straight away with Joe Kubert suddenly doing the covers. The art starts getting weird around issue #37. Not sure if that's because of different inkers or editorial changes.
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Post by kirby101 on Feb 27, 2024 8:42:57 GMT -5
Probably Bruce Berry, I thought his inking was inferior to Royer.
KIrby only stayed until #40, so he was probably working up other things. I wonder if he was already doing the new Marvel stuff.
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Post by shaxper on Feb 27, 2024 9:57:42 GMT -5
Probably Bruce Berry, I thought his inking was inferior to Royer. KIrby only stayed until #40, so he was probably working up other things. I wonder if he was already doing the new Marvel stuff. Been a long time since I read the run, but I thought it was Conway using Kirby plots by the time of issue #40. |
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Post by MWGallaher on Feb 27, 2024 10:32:44 GMT -5
I just finished Kirby's run on The Losers and I feel it highlights a lot of his strengths and weaknesses as a writer. Kirby was very good at plotting a story out on the page, panel by panel, which led to some excellent single issue stories, however there was no sense of an overarching story. They're a series of random adventures with nothing tying the plots together. A deliberate choice by Kirby, but not a particularly satisfying one, especially when he decides to send The Losers on missions all over the globe. Kirby also forgoes any sort of characterization of The Losers themselves, which was a big complaint among readers at the time. There is pathos and tragedy in the series, but it happens to other characters. There are a lot of great action scenes, especially the scenes involving Nazi patrols, and I enjoyed the final issue and the way Kirby signed off, but there were a lot of silly single issue stories. I guess some folks may find Kirby's sillier stuff charming or amusing, but the way the series is sold is that it's a more serious take on war than the average war comic and that's simply not true. ; Kirby was reportedly unhappy about taking on this assignment, taking justifiable offense, as a combat veteran himself, at the very idea of a team of war heroes labeled "losers". His solution, whether made consciously or not, was to make the "losers" of his stories not the lead characters, but the other characters in the stories: the victims of war, the war criminals, the opportunists and collaborators. I'm a big fan of the Losers series as a whole, but I found Kirby's take a refreshing change from the moping, defeatist and depressed characterization that cropped up under other writers of the feature. And to keep it on topic, I can only imagine this run would have been the worst possible thing for Lee and Kirby to have hypothetically collaborated on, since Stan would have been pulled in an entirely different direction, making the Losers a bunch of happy-go-lucky wise-crackers trading insults in every other panel. |
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Post by kirby101 on Feb 27, 2024 13:41:24 GMT -5
Kirby only drew 39 and 40 not as the writer. Then he left the book. I would guess he co plotted these issues.
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Post by MDG on Feb 27, 2024 13:55:00 GMT -5
Kirby only drew 39 and 40 not as the writer. Then he left the book. I would guess he co plotted these issues. I have no documentation for this, but it wouldn't surprise me if Kirby plotted and drew the story, with marginal notes, and left it to DC to find someone to finish up. |
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Post by chaykinstevens on Feb 27, 2024 16:46:01 GMT -5
Kirby only drew 39 and 40 not as the writer. Then he left the book. I would guess he co plotted these issues. Gerry Conway also wrote Kamandi #38. Paul Levitz received special thanks in the credits for #40 - GCD has him as co-plotter of that issue. |
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