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Post by kirby101 on Jun 26, 2024 22:16:34 GMT -5
That great comic creators go in a new direction is not something unheard of. Eisner does Contract with God, Kubert does Fax from Sarajevo, Barry Smith does Monster, Miller does 300 or Sin City, and so on.
Kirby seeing he can do an expanded saga is not strange at all. His editorial control was most likely a big factor in his taking this on.
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Post by berkley on Jun 27, 2024 1:21:03 GMT -5
That great comic creators go in a new direction is not something unheard of. Eisner does Contract with God, Kubert does Fax from Sarajevo, Barry Smith does Monster, Miller does 300 or Sin City, and so on. Kirby seeing he can do an expanded saga is not strange at all. His editorial control was most likely a big factor in his taking this on. Yeah. And I think we also have to mention the general atmosphere of western popular culture from the mid-60s to the mid-70s when not only mainstream American comics but also Hollywood movies and pop music were producing work that would previously have been left on the fringes of the mainstream. I can't see a book like the New Gods or the Eternals getting anywhere making it to print in the industry as it existed in the 50s.
Since this is a Stan Lee thread, to look at it from that POV, I think Stan also learned and grew a lot in the 60s. Did he ever write anything quite like Spider-Man or the FF, Thor, etc before then?
The difference between him and Kirby that I keep coming back to is that after they parted ways as creative partners, Kirby kept coming up with new ideas, new characters, new comics; whereas Stan continued writing the FF, Thor, and Spider-Man for, what, a couple years? And then concentrated on his rôle as salesman and image-maker - at which he was very good. Even if you think Kirby's post-Stan solo work is crap I think there's no denying that he kept having ideas, however bad they may seem to you personally, kept trying to make new and different comics, and was driven to do so - because otherwise, why wouldn't he have tried to keep doing exactly the same kind of thing that had brought him his greatest acclaim in the 60s?
Which, it seems to me, is what Stan did during the short period he kept writing the FF and Thor after Kirby left. Spider-Man, I think there's a good argument that he and Romita did take the character and the series in a different direction - and, as I and many others have mentioned before, I think it's in looking at Stan's work on Spider-Man post-Ditko, on Daredevil post-Wood, and on the Silver Surfer solo series that we get the clearest idea of what his work was like when not working with an artist who was also doing much of what would normally be considered the writing (though I understand there are readers who contend that Romita contributed more than just the art to his and Stan's Spider-Man).
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 3:25:38 GMT -5
So, I've been reading some of Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown stories and while there are obvious similarities with The Fantastic Four, especially the origin story in FF #1, there seems to be a major difference besides the fact that Challengers wasn't a superhero comic. There is very little characterization in Challengers of the Unknown. You could swap the word balloons with any of the characters and it wouldn't make a difference. The only way to tell them apart at times is their hair color, and they all act the same. There are very few auxiliary characters and their presence is largely superficial. DC was keeping their comics pretty well bland during this period, though June Robbins does most of the bickering with them - though they keep it very sanitized. There IS conflict in Challengers of the Unknown but you have to read between the lines, as that wasn't DC's way to do things then. 100% wholesome in 1956. Read Kirby's pre-Code 'Boys Ranch' or 'Boy Commandos'. Reed, Ben and Johnny come directly from Scrapper-Gabby-Big Words in Newsboy Legion. Originally Kirby wrote the 'bickering' between the team in FF as deadly serious (Ben wanting to kill the others in the first issue) but Stan's glib Millie the Model dialogue toned it down and made it more jokey. It mirrors Rocky trying to kill the others (again you almost have to read between the lines in the DC comic) when he gains superpowers (Invisibility, the power to shoot flames from his hands, etc.) in a later issue. Kirby also had a team of 'bickering' astronauts in his 'Race to the Moon' series for Harvey, pre-Marvel, post-COTU.   I find it hard to believe that Jack came up with the characterization of the Fantastic Four without any input from others. It doesn't mesh with what he was doing on Challengers. Again, read Newsboy Legion. It's all there. And then the Monster stories. It's a mix. Bizarre to me that people find it hard to see, and yet Stan Lee did nothing even close to this for 20 years to compare and people believe HE came up with it I'm not even 100% sure that Jack liked the way the FF were characterized through Stan's dialogue given how often it was shoehorned in or contradicted what Kirby had drawn on the page. I would love to know who came up with The Thing. As I've said before, I consider him one of the great characters of the Silver Age and his tragic story is the kind of thing that made Marvel stories different. There is a ton of Jack in there, for sure, with the cigars, the Yancy Street Boys, and everything, but the pathos and tragedy, was that more Jack or Stan? I once read a fantastic article (pun intended) about how their different world views shaped the contrasting ways in how they told the FF stories. Another thing that stood out to me about these Challengers comics is that for all the talk about Stan not giving Jack enough credit, there is literally ZERO credit for Jack on these stories. If I were a kid buying comics in the late 50s for the first time, I'd have no idea who Jack Kirby was. No matter how cynical people get about the credit Stan gave Jack in the credits, captions, letter pages and Bullpen Bulletins, at least comic book readers knew who Jack was. Jack Kirby was a HUGE star in the Golden Age of Comics. He was one of the first creators ever listed on the front of a comic. With Joe Simon they sold MILLIONS of copies of the early Captain America, Newsboy Legion, and their Romance line of comics that they introduced as a genre into comics. And it's not about Stan giving 'credit' to Jack. Lee gave Jack SPECIFIC credit, to DISCREDIT him as the writer and be able to steal the pay for it. This isn't speculation. Read the testimony from the trial (what's not redacted of it by Marvel). FWIW, the stories are okay. I early Showcase stories aren't very good, though I liked the one about the vials that created different monsters. The backup story where the Challengers suddenly become pets for a boy alien was derivative but enjoyable. Kirby's art doesn't really look like the Kirby I'm familiar with except in flashes, but it's fine. There's some confusion over who wrote the stories. The splash pages are very Kirby-esque n terms of the dialogue above the story title. I don't really see Stan swiping from this. I feel like he was more inclined to swipe from Arnold Drake than Challengers. No one claims Stan 'swiped' from it. It was Kirby's ideas he took writing/creator credit for. Challenger's isn't 'exactly' like the Fantastic Four - it's a PROTOTYPE. I haven't read a lot of DC comics from the 50s, but the war books, as repetitive as the stories can be, have better characterization than anything I've seen in Challengers thus far. I presume that's because the war books are character driven whereas Challengers is adventure driven. I'm not necessarily looking for conflict between the characters just some basic traits that distinguish them from each other. In the most recent story I read, June tries to sabotage their mission because the computer says the Challengers will die, and the Challengers believe she's a traitor for a couple of pages, but it's resolved without any struggle. The other 50s comics I've been reading lately are Kubert's Tor stories, and Challengers didn't strike me as particularly sophisticated by the standards of Our Army At War or Tor. I did read the first issue of Boy's Ranch, however, which I thought was very good. If Jack scripted that then it's the best writing I've see from him probably ever. I appreciate the examples of Jack doing stories about bickering astronauts, though the scripting appeared weak to me, and what is with Kirby and alliteration? I guess some people find it delightful but not me. I will check out Boy Commandoes and Newsboy Legion at some point. I'm not fully opposed to the idea that Jack came up with all of the elements in the Fantastic Four, but I still see a step missing between Challengers, that Harvey story, and the Fantastic Four. Perhaps those elements lie in Jack's previous work. I'm aware that Kirby was a big name in the Golden Age, but if you were buying Challengers off the rack as a kid, how would you know it was by Kirby? |
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 3:32:21 GMT -5
The long form operatic story that the New Gods was, is something Stan never attempted. If anything Stan constained Kirby when he worked towards that, like with Galactus, the Silver Surfer, the Inhumans and Him. There are stories of Stan telling Jack to make the stories more conventional. You guys are getting hung up on the wrong thing. When Kirby began scripting his own stories in the 70s, we got to hear his "voice" in the splash page intros, captions, word balloons, and outros. There are elements of Lee in there, or if that's too controversial, elements of a story told the Marvel way. And I don't mean in the plotting. I mean in the scripting. And he got weird at times -- funky corn, rattling gonads. |
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 3:44:17 GMT -5
I just don't see any evidence that Jack was moving in that sort of direction with his previous work. Again, if you read what Kirby did from 1954 through 1961 up to the FF, it's pretty plain to see. It ALL combined leads to the FF. If you read what Stan was doing from 1954 through 1961 up to the FF, you'll see smarty pants one liner dialogue and genre westerns with no unique characterizations. Even if Stan contributed a fair amount, I'm sure he just swiped a bunch of ideas from other comics or media. The point I was making about Kirby's dialogue once he started doing the DC books, and even when he returned to Marvel, was that it could sounds very Stan Lee-ish at times. There is a lot of weird stuff in Kirby's 70s work. Not only in the dialogue, but in his letters pages. Maybe he was a quirkier guy than he appeared in interviews. Maybe he was trying to be hip for the younger generation. I don't know. If others don't agree that Jack was influenced by Stan's hyperbolic style, I'll leave it at that. Kirby being influenced by Lee's writing is... almost comical. Lee wasn't a writer. Kirby WAS. Kirby always had a sense of humor. Read his Fighting American with Joe Simon. Read his Newsboy Legion. The humor. The wise cracking dialogue. It's all there. Lee did the scripting. Scripting is part of writing. You can literally change the entire tone of a story through the scripting. |
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 4:00:16 GMT -5
That great comic creators go in a new direction is not something unheard of. Eisner does Contract with God, Kubert does Fax from Sarajevo, Barry Smith does Monster, Miller does 300 or Sin City, and so on. Kirby seeing he can do an expanded saga is not strange at all. His editorial control was most likely a big factor in his taking this on. Yeah. And I think we also have to mention the general atmosphere of western popular culture from the mid-60s to the mid-70s when not only mainstream American comics but also Hollywood movies and pop music were producing work that would previously have been left on the fringes of the mainstream. I can't see a book like the New Gods or the Eternals getting anywhere making it to print in the industry as it existed in the 50s.
Since this is a Stan Lee thread, to look at it from that POV, I think Stan also learned and grew a lot in the 60s. Did he ever write anything quite like Spider-Man or the FF, Thor, etc before then?
The difference between him and Kirby that I keep coming back to is that after they parted ways as creative partners, Kirby kept coming up with new ideas, new characters, new comics; whereas Stan continued writing the FF, Thor, and Spider-Man for, what, a couple years? And then concentrated on his rôle as salesman and image-maker - at which he was very good. Even if you think Kirby's post-Stan solo work is crap I think there's no denying that he kept having ideas, however bad they may seem to you personally, kept trying to make new and different comics, and was driven to do so - because otherwise, why wouldn't he have tried to keep doing exactly the same kind of thing that had brought him his greatest acclaim in the 60s?
Which, it seems to me, is what Stan did during the short period he kept writing the FF and Thor after Kirby left. Spider-Man, I think there's a good argument that he and Romita did take the character and the series in a different direction - and, as I and many others have mentioned before, I think it's in looking at Stan's work on Spider-Man post-Ditko, on Daredevil post-Wood, and on the Silver Surfer solo series that we get the clearest idea of what his work was like when not working with an artist who was also doing much of what would normally be considered the writing (though I understand there are readers who contend that Romita contributed more than just the art to his and Stan's Spider-Man). There's nothing Lee did post-Kirby that compares to anything he did in the 60s except for perhaps a few of his Silver Surfer stories. There are also rumors that practically everything he worked on post-Kirby was ghostwritten by others, which wouldn't surprise me. However, I think if you look at the period where he was really dialed in as Editor-in-Chief that most of the scripting he did was solid. The fact that Spider-Man continued to be popular with Lee and Romita onboard instead of bombing when Ditko left has to be considered a win. I don't think anyone can deny that Lee & Romita's run helped contribute to the lasting popularity of the character. The Fantastic Four issues after Kirby left are largely mediocre but the series doesn't tank. It just lacks the excitement you'd expect from The World's Greatest Comic Magazine. I'm not a big fan of the tail end of the Lee/Kirby run in general due to a combination of their beefing, the mandate about no continued stories, and Kirby apparently pushing for Lee to provide actual plots. I haven' read all of the Silver Age Marvel stuff. I don't actually know what the worst Stan scripted book was. Sgt. Fury can be tough going at times. I did read an interesting comment the other day that the reason Stan was in such a hurry to hire new writers was that he didn't want to work with young artists who couldn't produce stories in the Marvel Method to the extent that Ditko and Kirby did. There are many other anecdotes of Stan not wanting to do the plotting for an artist. Whether it's because he couldn't do it, or didn't want to do it, are two different things. |
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Post by kirby101 on Jun 27, 2024 6:52:37 GMT -5
Yes, the Romita & Lee comics were good, as were the Kane & Lee. But Romita and Kane were also artists who could plot the whole book themselves. Doesn't "Sometimes a sentence or two, sometimes just the villain". Make anyone rethink their opinion that it was Lee that made Spider-Man great. And of course, it was Stan's dialog. Here is a page from ASM #47, where the kids are celebrating Flash enlisting and going to Vietnam, in 1967. They all think it's the coolest. And Stan's dialog isn't cringey at all, unlike Kirby. They all sound like real kids from that time. Right?  |
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Post by kirby101 on Jun 27, 2024 7:10:31 GMT -5
A sample of Kirby's bad dialog. Notice the sparce word balloons as each character just says what he needs. Compare that to the over written dialog in the Thor review thread we have. Where Stan always uses 3 or 4 balloons when 1 would do. Is Kirby's dialog really so cringey and off sounding?  |
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Post by Cei-U! on Jun 27, 2024 7:25:11 GMT -5
I've never had a "problem" with Kirby's "dialogue." Yeah, sometimes it's "clunky" and "tone-deaf" (as is true of Lee, Wolfman, Kanigher, Haney, etc, etc.) but it's also "efficient" and "entertaining."
Cei-U!
Obviously I'm kidding with all the quotation marks but I stand behind the basic sentiment!
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 7:45:51 GMT -5
I wasn't alive in 1967 so Ii don't know how well that dialogue holds up. It's also not like-for-like with the Kirby page. I don't really get the point you're trying to make. I do think there's a lot to be learned from the ASM page about where Stan thought word balloons should be placed over the art. However, one example is a subplot and the other is an action page. It probably reveals that Marvel weren't anti-the war at that stage, but according to everything I've been told, Stan didn't plot that page and Romita was the one who came up with the plot of everyone having a fun sendoff for Flash. Unless it wasn't meant to be taken that way and Stan scripted it wrong. However, looking at the pages either side of it, it's really just a subplot about whether Peter should be dating Gwen or Mary Jane and is handled fairly well considering Lee was experienced at writing both romance comics and Archie style comics. It may be over-written, but we know how all of the central protagonists feel in the scene, and as far as storytelling goes, they enter and exit at the right time.
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Post by kirby101 on Jun 27, 2024 7:46:19 GMT -5
I've never had a "problem" with Kirby's "dialogue." Yeah, sometimes it's "clunky" and "tone-deaf" (as is true of Lee, Wolfman, Kanigher, Haney, etc, etc.) but it's also "efficient" and "entertaining." Cei-U! Obviously I'm kidding with all the quotation marks but I stand behind the basic sentiment! But no one says that the dialog is the main ingredient that made the characters or books great for anyone but Lee. |
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 7:49:15 GMT -5
I've never had a "problem" with Kirby's "dialogue." Yeah, sometimes it's "clunky" and "tone-deaf" (as is true of Lee, Wolfman, Kanigher, Haney, etc, etc.) but it's also "efficient" and "entertaining." Cei-U! Obviously I'm kidding with all the quotation marks but I stand behind the basic sentiment! But no one says that the dialog is the main ingredient that made the characters or books great for anyone but Lee. It's a comic book. You read the dialogue not the pictures. |
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Post by commond on Jun 27, 2024 7:51:39 GMT -5
A sample of Kirby's bad dialog. Notice the sparce word balloons as each character just says what he needs. Compare that to the over written dialog in the Thor review thread we have. Where Stan always uses 3 or 4 balloons when 1 would do. Is Kirby's dialog really so cringey and off sounding? Wait, what happened between panels 3 and 4? Don't give me that funky corn, Jack Kirby. |
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Post by kirby101 on Jun 27, 2024 7:58:43 GMT -5
But no one says that the dialog is the main ingredient that made the characters or books great for anyone but Lee. It's a comic book. You read the dialogue not the pictures. The pictures tell the story, often the dialog is superfluous. For the Marvel method artist, you could know what was happening without reading the words. Yes, the dialog and captions helped, but were they really the reason the books were good. Did they really contribute more than the artist? Would the dialog Kirby and Ditko suggested in the margins work just as well. Or was Stan so incredibly superior as a writer that without him these books would just be mediocre. |
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Post by kirby101 on Jun 27, 2024 8:01:18 GMT -5
A sample of Kirby's bad dialog. Notice the sparce word balloons as each character just says what he needs. Compare that to the over written dialog in the Thor review thread we have. Where Stan always uses 3 or 4 balloons when 1 would do. Is Kirby's dialog really so cringey and off sounding? Wait, what happened between panels 3 and 4? Don't give me that funky corn, Jack Kirby. It's quite clear to me. Stan would have explained what was happening in panel 3, but Kirby waits untill panel 4. Panel 3 is a sudden shock, and then we see Kalibak emerge over the roof. Stan would have a caption in 3 like "And then, from the once thought defeated Kalibak, a might blow that sends the squad realing". Unnecessary describing the action we can see was one of Lee's hallmarks |
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