Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Jul 13, 2024 9:31:21 GMT -5
I really like this Evanier quote. It supports the idea (that I agree with) that there were a lot of ways to get these stories. And that one person’s memory about one particular way of doing it isn’t some kind of monolithic statement about how it was done the same way every single time. I agree with this. Nobody is saying that in the '60s Stan Lee didn't sometimes just say "Jack, let's have the Fantastic Four fight Dr. Doom next month" and then he would let Jack run with it, handing the finished art back to Stan for dialoguing. That clearly happened quite often because Stan himself has told that particular story. But on other occasions, coming up with the next issue was clearly a much more collaborative thing, with Stan and Jack, or Stan and Ditko, discussing the plot, the artwork layout, and the dialogue in detail in Stan's office for hours, as recounted in a number of interviews by Flo Steinberg. Sometimes, even in the mid-60s, there might have been a script of sorts that Stan had bashed out that would then be passed to Kirby. Who knows? But to say that Kirby always plotted/wrote everything, and Stan only ever did the dialogue is not likely or a particularly realistic conclusion, based on the available evidence and witness testimonies we have to go on. |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Jul 13, 2024 9:33:15 GMT -5
Absolutely. I've said it before in this thread, I know, but given the discussions filling the last 3 or 4 pages, I think it really does bear repeating: If your default position is to treat everything Stan Lee said as a suspect or an outright lie and everything the artists said as truth, then that's not a neutral position from which to posit an alternate, revisionist theory from. It's just classic confirmation bias.And the opposite is true also. If you accept everything that Stan Lee said and reject anything that contradicts that, then you are also experiencing confirmation bias. Thank you. Jesus Christ...how many times?!! NOBODY IS TAKING THAT POSITION IN THIS THREAD.That's a totally strawman argument. Not one person in this thread is saying that. There are, however, people saying the opposite, which is my point. After 57 pages (!!) of discussion, I thought we'd be beyond this by now. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 13, 2024 9:35:56 GMT -5
And the opposite is true also. If you accept everything that Stan Lee said and reject anything that contradicts that, then you are also experiencing confirmation bias. Thank you. Jesus Christ...how many times?!! NOBODY IS TAKING THAT POSITION IN THIS THREAD.That's a totally strawman argument. Not one person in this thread is saying that. There are, however, people saying the opposite, which is my point. There’s a lot of strawman arguments floating around, Confessor. This exact same statement applies to the non-stop Kirby critics. |
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Post by commond on Jul 13, 2024 9:46:09 GMT -5
Okay, but if Kirby's suggested dialogue wasn't used then that means it was scripted by someone else, so we're back to square one. I thought the question is, "was Kirby working from an already finished script, which means all the story and dialog is written before the artists gets them. Like a movie script. Or did Kirby do the story and then someone wrote the dialog afterwards. This panel suggests that Kirby was doing the story, with dialog suggestions, and the final words were written by someone else later.
It's not about whose the final word balloons were. But here we are talking about these early monster books, and whether their were completed scripts given to Kirby. I am sure there were at times, but I am equally sure many of the stories were done by him and given in to be worded. And we are just talking about the pre FF work, if I am not mistaken.
This was the original quote: To me, that statement implies that not only did Kirby plot the monster stories by himself but he also wrote the dialogue. Which means, in essence, that he created the entire story without a plot idea from anyone else, a script, or another person doing the dialogue. I realize that Jack was entirely capable of creating a comic book story by himself, but I also realize that if you're trying to produce as many pages as you can per day you probably don't care about following scripts, and if you're Jack Kirby you probably take one look at a script and figure out how you'd make it better. I don't think anyone believes that Jack Kirby needed a script or slavishly adhered to one. Jack receiving a script doesn't equal Jack needed a script, in my mind. Somehow "script" became a dirty word when it shouldn't have. If Stan Lee gave Jack Kirby a script on a Friday, and he came back on Monday with a five pager that was better than anything the person who wrote the script could have possibly conceived of, does anyone think Stan would have been pissed that Jack didn't follow the script? There's an all or nothing mentality when it comes to these debates. If I were to wager a guess, I imagine Jack received a script, thought it would be better if they did it a different way, and someone scripted the dialogue for the finished pages. |
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 13, 2024 9:52:09 GMT -5
I'll let you and that poster hash it out. I was trying to give the best assessment on the question. Which parallels what you wrote. But there is a question of the scripts is, was Stan turning out these finished scripts with all these monster ideas? Or was it Kirby and Ditko mainly coming up with most of the ideas?
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 13, 2024 9:53:16 GMT -5
And the opposite is true also. If you accept everything that Stan Lee said and reject anything that contradicts that, then you are also experiencing confirmation bias. Thank you. Jesus Christ...how many times?!! NOBODY IS TAKING THAT POSITION IN THIS THREAD.That's a totally strawman argument. Not one person in this thread is saying that. There are, however, people saying the opposite, which is my point. After 57 pages (!!) of discussion, I thought we'd be beyond this by now. What if I re-phrase it a bit? “If you automatically reject any statement that you disagree with because it makes Stan Lee look bad or gives Jack Kirby more credit than you think he deserves, then you are also experiencing confirmation bias.” Is that OK? It’s a lot closer to what I meant. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
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Post by Confessor on Jul 13, 2024 9:58:02 GMT -5
Jesus Christ...how many times?!! NOBODY IS TAKING THAT POSITION IN THIS THREAD.That's a totally strawman argument. Not one person in this thread is saying that. There are, however, people saying the opposite, which is my point. There’s a lot of strawman arguments floating around, Confessor. This exact same statement applies to the non-stop Kirby critics. I can't say that I can see that. Certainly, I'd be surprised if you could find one single example of anyone saying Stan Lee did everything and Jack Kirby was just the artist in this thread. I don't think I've seen anyone saying that. BTW, just changing the subject for a bit, it occurs to me that my above reply to you might look really arsy or could be read that way. I intended it to be have a "laughy", "exaseprated" tone, rather than a furiously angry one, but I can see how it could be construed that way. Hopefully you took it in the spirit in which I intended it. But if not, rest assured, I'm not angry with you or having a dig at you, my friend.  |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 13, 2024 10:03:29 GMT -5
Not really. It’s pretty good evidence that Kirby wasn’t working from a script. Case closed then. Jack Kirby never worked from a script. Hi, Confessor. I didn’t have to look very hard to find a strawman argument. They are all over the place. |
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 13, 2024 10:10:27 GMT -5
I really like this Evanier quote. It supports the idea (that I agree with) that there were a lot of ways to get these stories. And that one person’s memory about one particular way of doing it isn’t some kind of monolithic statement about how it was done the same way every single time. I agree with this. Nobody is saying that in the '60s Stan Lee didn't sometimes just say "Jack, let's have the Fantastic Four fight Dr. Doom next month" and then he would let Jack run with it, handing the finished art back to Stan for dialoguing. That clearly happened quite often because Stan himself has told that particular story. But on other occasions, coming up with the next issue was clearly a much more collaborative thing, with Stan and Jack, or Stan and Ditko, discussing the plot, the artwork layout, and the dialogue in detail in Stan's office for hours, as recounted in a number of interviews by Flo Steinberg. Sometimes, even in the mid-60s, there might have been a script of sorts that Stan had bashed out that would then be passed to Kirby. Who knows? But to say that Kirby always plotted/wrote everything, and Stan only ever did the dialogue is not likely or a particularly realistic conclusion, based on the available evidence and witness testimonies we have to go on. By the time Flo was hired, Ditko was no longer talking to Stan. So no long sessions there. Where do you get that they discussed plot, art layout and dialog in detail. I have only seen that in those Stan and *** come up with a story in the backs of Annuals. I think by now we would have agreed that by the mid 60s, Kirby was doing most of the story and plotting on his own.
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Post by commond on Jul 13, 2024 10:23:14 GMT -5
Case closed then. Jack Kirby never worked from a script. Hi, Confessor. I didn’t have to look very hard to find a strawman argument. They are all over the place. In my defense, I was being sarcastic because you were being completely disingenuous. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 13, 2024 10:29:14 GMT -5
If those story conferences were as imaginary as some here are implying, then Kirby himself was a willing participant in the mythmaking. Note that the 3-page feature "This Is a Plot?" in the '67 FF Annual, which shows the comic chaos resulting from one such conference, was plotted, drawn, *and* scripted by Jack.
Cei-U!
I summon the sticking point!
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 13, 2024 11:01:18 GMT -5
I’ve had the Menace volume of Marvel Masterworks for a few years, and I had forgotten that Stan Lee wrote most of the stories in the early issues.
Menace was a horror/thriller comic book that Atlas published for 11 issues in the 1950s. It’s famous for a lot of really good horror stories in the earliest issues, especially for the Bill Everett art.
I haven’t read it for a while, but the art by Everett and some other artists that will be recognizable from 1960s Marvel comics really makes it pop!
And Stan does a really good job with the writing.
As I remember, anyway. I haven’t read them for a while. I’m going to read them again over the next few weeks and see how it all holds up.
The first appearance of Simon Garth, the zombie, is in this run, though I don’t remember which issue it is. He was resurrected for the 1970s horror craze.
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Post by tarkintino on Jul 13, 2024 12:36:01 GMT -5
But on other occasions, coming up with the next issue was clearly a much more collaborative thing, with Stan and Jack, or Stan and Ditko, discussing the plot, the artwork layout, and the dialogue in detail in Stan's office for hours, as recounted in a number of interviews by Flo Steinberg. Sometimes, even in the mid-60s, there might have been a script of sorts that Stan had bashed out that would then be passed to Kirby. Who knows? But to say that Kirby always plotted/wrote everything, and Stan only ever did the dialogue is not likely or a particularly realistic conclusion, based on the available evidence and witness testimonies we have to go on. All true, but now Flo (of all people) is questioned as unreliable, all because her living witness statements cannot conclude Lee had no real involvement in the creation (writing) of major Marvel characters/books. This goes around and around. |
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Post by Hoosier X on Jul 13, 2024 13:03:47 GMT -5
Flo started in mid-1963. About the time of Fantastic Four #18 and Spider-Man #4. She says there were story conferences, and I certainly don’t doubt her. But she wasn’t in the story conferences, and she admits that she doesn’t really know who created what and who did the plotting.
Pointing this out does not mean that people are saying that Flo is unreliable.
It also doesn’t mean that there weren’t times when Jack wasn’t doing most of the story with a little more than a few sentences from Stan. Which at DC, was called editing.
And Stan himself explicitly admits that he wasn’t even talking to Steve Ditko during a large part of the run on Spider-Man.
You can believe all of this without thinking that Flo Steinberg is unreliable. So please stop making those accusations. Just because people disagree with you doesn’t mean that they are mindless partisans or have bad intentions.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 13, 2024 14:05:44 GMT -5
Thanks to some insane strawmen and other dishonest twisting of facts, this thread has descended into a finger pointing match about HOW we discuss that has made furthering the actual discussion almost impossible. Frankly, this thread has just become a very unpleasant place to be, and it's also become a source of hurt feelings for some and a ton of work for the Mod Team as well.
I'm temporarily locking the thread so that everyone has a chance to reset. The Mod team will then discuss whether or not it makes sense to resume the conversation at a later point.
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