Jack Kirby’s son shares pointed statement on Disney Plus’ Stan Lee documentary
Kirby's son says it's time to "get this one chapter of literary/art history right"
Aux News Jack Kirby
On Friday, Disney+ released Stan Lee, a documentary about the (self-described) visionary creator of a big chunk of the Marvel Comics canon that uses a wealth of archival footage, clips from Lee’s cameos in superhero movies, and voiceover from Lee himself—recorded at some point before his death in 2018, since the man was nothing if not a proud self-promoter. Something the documentary does not spend much time on, though, is Jack Kirby—the… visionary creator of a big chunk of the Marvel Comics canon.
Most comic book fans are aware that there has been a decades-long dispute over who gets credit for the creation of pretty much anything in comic books, and by virtue of making himself the literal face of Marvel from the ‘60s right up until his death, Lee had the benefit of being able to say “I co-created all of these things with my fantastical ideas” while nobody else—like Kirby or Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko—really had an opportunity to chime in. This weekend, Kirby’s son Neal Kirby (through his daughter Jillian Kirby’s Twitter account) shared a statement reacting to the documentary that is fairly vicious in its takedown of Stan Lee’s mythology.
The statement acknowledges that this is a documentary about Lee, so it’s obviously going to be about Lee, but Kirby points out that Lee has always made things about himself (especially since Jack Kirby died decades before Lee) even when it strains credulity. “Are we to assume that it was never the other co-creator that walked into Lee’s office and said, ‘Stan I have a great idea for a character!’,” the statement opines, saying no, to Lee “it was always his idea.”
Kirby’s post says that there’s a moment in the documentary that addresses that dispute between Lee and Ditko, but Lee’s argument is that Spider-Man was “his idea” and therfore he “created the character,” but Kirby points out that the Opera Del Duomo commissioned Michaelangelo to make a statue of David in 1501, but everyone calls it Michelangelo’s David because it was “his genius, his vision, his creativity” that actually made it happen (leave it to the son of Jack Kirby to convincingly compare Spider-Man to Michelangelo’s David).
Kirby goes on to say that Lee had “35 years of uncontested publicity” since his father retired from comics in the ‘80s, and it’s “way past time to at least get this one chapter of literary/art history right.” He then ends his statement with a very pointed “‘Nuff said,” a catchphrase that Lee would use in his old “Stan’s Soapbox” columns at the back of Marvel comics when he felt like he had made an airtight argument.
93 Comments
By referring to Stan Lee as a “(self-described) visionary creator” and a “proud self-promoter” betrays your bias going into this piece. The Kirby acolytes go so far in the other direction that they make seem it like Lee never had an original idea of his own. Why is it so difficult for people to acknowledge that the two of them were artists who worked in collaboration with each other? And while Lee and Kirby worked together on series such as Fantastic Four, Hulk, X-Men, Lee also created or co-created several characters without Kirby, such as Daredevil, Iron Man and Black Widow. Did he steal all those ideas too? And all due respect to Kirby, but if he was such a creative genius, then why wasn’t his solo work with DC better? The two of them definitely benefited from working together. And in fact, on multiple occasions, I’ve heard Lee speak fondly of Kirby and acknowledge his contributions to their work together. Sorry, I know that spoils the narrative that Lee was a hack and a monster
Excellent point, and like many similar pop culture disputes, it’s a case of overcorrection. I just finished watching the documentary, and yes, it’s overall a flattering portrayal of Stan Lee. But I thought the inclusion of a radio interview where Kirby and Lee revisited this very argument went a long way in setting the record straight. One thing the Bill Finger documentary did quite well was it actually spelled out the aspects of Batman that Finger conceived, and spoke far more authoritatively about where those aspects came from than anything Bob Kane ever said.
That is an interesting point about Kirby’s post Marvel stuff. I have never read any of his DC stuff but I have read a ton of those 60’s Lee/Kirby comics. And even with Marvel, Kirby co-creates Captain America in 1940 and then his next super popular creation comes 21 years later with Fantastic Four. Yes I know he served in WWII for part of that time, and yes I know creating even one character at that level is nearly impossible, and yes I know that in the post-war period super hero comics took a major down turn, but I still find it interesting.
Kirby moved into the mega popular romance genre post ww2, which eventually petered out to make way for the superhero resurgence!
>>>And all due respect to Kirby, but if he was such a creative genius, then why wasn’t his solo work with DC better?<<< Ironically, you could ask the same question about Lee...
Yeah, but that’s the point. They did their best work together. Lee, Kirby, and Ditko rarely put out anything truly great after their partnerships ended.
Yes, no disagreement with that main point at all from me. I’m just pointing out that Kirby is most known for The New Gods at DC, whereas Stan Lee’s later work at DC was pretty-universally-agreed-upon as flotsam.
Stan Lee’s work at DC was when he well past his prime. He still worked with Romita, Sr. on Spider-Man for years and produced some great comics.
On the one hand I agree that Lee did bring a lot to their collaborations, and it’s important to note that Lee’s famously “hep” jazzy dialogue style, as corny as it may seem now, was leaps and bounds ahead of the dry schematic exposition that the Distinguished Competition relied on for too long. On the other hand you better not be talking shit on the New Gods or Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen run.
You say bias, I say a firm grip on reality.
I hate how Stan took credit for everything. He was undoubtedly important to Marvels success, but most of the marque characters wouldn’t exist with Kirby and Ditko.
I like to think that those who read comics know and appreciate this, but I get that for the families, it still stings.
It’s hard to know from my perspective but are their people out there who are into comics who aren’t aware of Jack Kirby’s role in creating so many of these great characters?
Stan always talked up the various other people that worked at Marvel.
As great artists he did. But he made it like he came up with the ideas and Kirby was just there to draw. Anyone who knows anything about those days of Marvel know that Kirby did most of the work.
Really, it’s just a semantics question. Imagine if Bob came up with an idea, and later asked Frank to draw it. Later still, someone sees the drawing and asks “Who came up with this?” Bob replies “I came up with the idea, and Frank drew it.” Trying to tease out what it means to be the “creator” and “who did most of the work” are foolish exercises. We all agree, right, that Stan Lee had an idea that he shared with Kirby, and then Kirby flushed out the idea and made it real, and then Stan added the dialog. Yes, this took Kirby more hours than it took Stan, that’s why Stan could do so many books a month.
Did Opera Del Duomo claim to have created the character of “David?”
Alright WB, time to get a parody biopic about the life of Funky Flashman produced.
Stan did his best work with Jack, Steve, and John.
Jack did his best work with Stan. Steve did his best work with Stan. John did his best work with Stan (but also with anybody, because he was John Romita).
All of these dudes were essential ingredients in the magic of the finished product.
THIS!The fact is these guys, working together in the 60s all did their best works together. None of them did better on their own or with others than they did together. It’s true that Lee has taken far more credit than he should many years but I think this idea that he didn’t contribute at all is foolish. Jack and Stan created the F4. Ditto and they created Spider-man.
It doesn’t seem to me like Kirby ever claims that Stan did nothing? He’s just frustrated with the framing that Stan was *the* most important figure in the creation of these iconic characters.
I mean, they compare Lee to the organization which commissioned Michaelangelo’s David (which is based on a biblical character/story) Fully implying that Lee did nothing but pay the real artist to do all the work.
No he doesn’t say that but it’s certainly not an uncommon argument that’s been made in recent years, by commenters on this very website.It’s a silly argument which smacks of a significant overcorrection of sorts to Lee’s credit-hogging over the years but in and of itself is equally factually incorrect.As the above note, these were collaborations in which these men did their best work together. Lee and Kirby certainly never reached the same heights creatively again after the end of their partnership, nor the same creative and commercial success.
I don’t think the Kirby family is “overcorrecting” as much as they’re correcting, because Lee was less an Editor than an iconic Producer in the same sense that Irving Thalberg, Darryl F. Zanuck, David O. Selznick, Roger Corman, or Jerry Bruckheimer was or is. They created an atmosphere (one way or another) that encouraged writers, directors, editors, set designers, audio engineers, etc. to do some of their best work, or to improve their work so when they moved on they did their best work. They’re also shameless self-promoters, with varying levels of generosity towards the people who worked for and with them—while Corman has no problem admitting his former “students” have made better films after leaving him than when they were with him, a Producer like Zanuck or Bruckheimer is always going to hog as much of the credit as they could or can.
Y’all Lee bootlickers never cease to disappoint me. You can go over when Kirby parts ways with Lee and see the IMMEDIATE AND DRASTIC drop off of the product Lee is still working on. Meanwhile, Kirby goes on to create so many other long lasting shit. Hell, Marvel had to copy his New Gods. Ditko went on to create Charlton characters, too. Lee just mastered self promotion.
Not a silly argument. By the way, the Golden Age of comics counts and Kirby sold literally millions of comics, had his name put on covers when he went to DC in the Forties and co-created the Romance genre with Joe Simon which outsold most of the Marvel line that appeared in the Sixties. So this dismissal of “Jack didn’t do anything on his own” is absolute BS.
Also, consider that Iron Man’s origin (which Kirby said he plotted after he designed the armor) is the exact same story he wrote and drew for a late 50s Green Arrow story (“The War that Never Ended”), consider his late 50s’ ‘Challengers of the Unknown’ about 4 teammates having adventures, wearing matching uniforms, and one story has them going up in a rocket and getting invisibility and flame powers (!)- the list goes on. A 50s’ Thor story where Loki, shown in shadows, has the same distinctive horns that we know and love from Marvel- so many things that Stan apparently “created” do not exist in his work PRIOR to Kirby coming back to Marvel. Whereas, Kirby has so many examples of this that it’s ridiculous to call it coincidence. Ed Piskor admitted that even Stan’s introductions over the years to Marvel collections were ghost written, not even a 2 pager could be written by Stan. Jim Shooter admitted he plotted the 60s Silver Surfer series. Roy Thomas admitted he wrote the Spider-Man strip for over 20 years.. it’s staggering how there is nothing to show for Stan’s creative life whenever he stopped working with Kirby- whereas Kirby went on and on and on and created the Fourth World which George Lucas ripped off and created the villains which appeared in Snyder’s Justice League film. It’s transparent just how UNcreative a powerhouse Stan Lee really was.
He says that and alot worse in the 1990 interview on the linked Twitter thread he basically says Lee was a glorified office worker who knew when the paper was coming in and getting sent out.
The Opera del Duomo comparison clearly suggests it, though. Even taking the most pro-Kirby position possible, David is an established religious figure with a defined backstory and characteristics. “Draw my new characters with X, Y, and Z characteristics” is already a more involved creative role, and Lee then scripted the first appearance at a bare minimum. The point that the record is overly favorable to Lee because he’s always had the biggest megaphone is a completely fair criticism, but it’s frequently weakened by this kind of hyperbole in the other direction.
Yeah I should have been clear Kirby never claimed that but modern fans who take sides sometimes don
There’s an interview on the Twitter thread where he does just that basically calling Lee an office worker and going on to say he had zero creative input at all with I’m guessing is his wife backing him up.
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying Lee tried to take ALL of the credit. The others to him were just helpers.
No shit it was great work. But Stan still was a credit-stealing bullshit artist who treated people badly at times. The way he treated Wally Wood and mocked him for wanting some writing credit was repulsive.
Stan Lee was a decent editor. Not a creator.
Stan is one of the all-time great comics editors. Who else comes close, in terms of sheer volume of excellent comics? Archie Goodwin? More recently, Stephen Wacker?
>> Stephen Wacker? Um, no. This is what happens when you measure by volume instead of quality.
The Waid/Martin/Samnee Daredevil run is an all-timer. Slott’s Amazing/Superior Spider-Man. Kamala Khan. Rucka/Lark Punisher. Remender’s Flash Thompson Venom. Fraction/Aja Hawkeye, for crying out loud. Was there close to a decade there where anything with Wacker’s name on it was almost certainly going to be the best thing you read that week?
You could mostly argue this but also I think the Fourth World stuff is a masterpiece of comics and even Kirby’s lesser post-Lee stuff (like Eternals) is still pretty mind boggling today.
I love the Fourth World. I’m crazy for Mister Miracle.
Jack’s dialogue is ROUGH. I can’t read those collections without missing Stan in a big way.
“Jack did his best work with Stan. Steve did his best work with Stan.”There’s certainly a case to be argued, but plenty of comic historians would disagree with you there.
4th world was jack’s opus not marvel
Jack did his best work with Stan. Steve did his best work with Stan.I would agree, but both Kirby and Ditko created other lasting characters unattached to anything related to a co-creation with Stan.Jack had Captain America, Challengers of the Unknown (the proto Fantastic Four), all of the Fourth World stuff, Komandi, Devil Dinosaur and a bunch more.Ditko had Ted Kord Blue Beetle, Mr A, Creeper, The Question, Shade the Changing Man, and few more that escape me at the moment.
This is not the argument and this response is often used to sidestep the very genuine kickback scheme that was “The Marvel Method”. No one is saying Stan wasn’t important. But he was an Editor and a dialogue writer. It’s because he took credit for things he DIDN’T do rather than for the things he DID do. If someone delivers a finished story to you, complete with margin notes explaining what the characters are doing, etc. and you add dialogue BASED ON THIS, you are not the “Writer”. Secondly, the “creation” stuff is pure myth- it has been carried on by every corporate owner of Marvel since Martin Goodman first sold the company because they couldn’t let freelancers (as Kirby was) be credited as creating any of the intellectual property.
Things like “I snuck Spider-Man into the final issue of Amazing Fantasy” is a myth- Stan literally could not “sneak” anything into any issue- Martin Goodman saw and approved *everything* that was released. It’s all nonsense created for a press that was happy to lap it up because it makes a good and snappy story and Stan was good and snappy with the press. It isn’t vilifying someone to point out that they are literally not telling the truth and taking away from the actual creative force(s) that generated this stuff. I’m sorry if that disrupts a desperate need for nostalgia for a “Geek Grandfather” that didn’t even like the medium and was desperate to get as far away from it as he could.
Imagine Chuck D is dead and for 30 years we hear about how everything good from Public Enemy was Flavor Flav.
What bugs me about all the debate about Lee, Kirby and Ditko is that it ignores the fact that these characters may have been created by them but dozens of other artists and writers have contributed to forming these characters. Some way more then these three. Sure Lee and Kirby made the original X-Men but the internationally known and popular characters we have today is far more the work of Len Wein, Dave Cockrum, Jim Lee and, of course, Chris Claremont(to name just a few). It just points to how comics are a collaborative process
Totally. The X-Men are popular today not because of anything Stan or Jack did, but because of what Chris Claremont and his subsequent collaborators did (there’s a reason the original X-Men got cancelled).I get that Stan Lee gets a lot of credit for the mega cash cow that Marvel is, but it’s not ALL the credit. I appreciate that Kirby’s heirs want to redress the balance which makes Stan out to be the sole creator of every, but this is the same family that tried to claim co-creatorship of Spider-Man because Kirby drew the cover of Amazing Fantasy 15.
What bugs you about the “who created X character” is that they don’t take into account people who DEFINITELY DIDN’T create the characters?
Not just collaborative but accumulative. It’s the subsequent storytelling that elevates the characters to cultural significance.
Again, this is a specific debate (Lee’s stealing credit, enabled by Marvel’s corporate owners) and you are referencing a DIFFERENT debate. It makes no logical sense. It’s just to dilute and ignore the actual issue. No one is saying comics aren’t collaborative. What people are saying is that Stan Lee gets undue credit to a ridiculous, staggering level.
Even Nicolas Cage recently pointed out he got his name from Luke Cage, a “Stan Lee character”- for as much as Cage is given “geek cred” by the press, this was insane- Luke Cage was created by Archie Goodman and Roy Thomas and Stan had nothing to do with it. Is it “bugging” you to try to educate casual fans so that people that actually created the stuff get their due credit? Is it bugging you to remind people that Len Wein created Wolverine when someone inevitably says that Stan Lee did? I’m sure Jack Kirby had more reason to feel “bugged” than you do.
My read on the “credit” is that it wasn’t about ego; it was about money.As follows: 1) Artists were paid by the page.2) Quotes from various artists of the time accuse Lee of taking credit for story ideas and plots they’d have to pitch to *him*.3) The upset caused by 2) could be explained that writers were *also* paid by the page. So if Lee taking credit for other people’s stories/plots/etc, he was effectively stealing their money, too.4) Conspicuous by its absence in the documentary was the fact that Lee was part the publisher’s family. That’d be enough to explain why Marvel artists let steal from him.I’ll await contradiction if my speculations are wrong.
I know he’s kind of a jerk, but John Byrne needs a mention, I think that a good chunk of what they’re adapting now is from the Claremont/Byrne era. Frankly, it’s the only era I really like, when Byrne left, it just became misery porn.
Disney, the company who basically wrote Ub Iwerks (the co-creator of Mickey Mouse) out of history sidelining Kirby in favor of Lee? I’m shocked, shocked. Well, not that shocked.
I haven’t read or watched a single biography of Walt Disney that covers the time period of the creation of Mickey Mouse that doesn’t mention Ub Iwerks (including stuff produced by the Disney company). He might not be a household name like Disney is, but the name of the company always was “Disney” not “Disney-Iwerks”.
PBS’s American Masters series did a documentary on Walt Disney, and it conveniently mentioned very little of Iwerks. However, Bravo aired a documentary in 2008, “the Man behind The Mouse: Ub Iwerks”, which chronicled Iwerks’ career, from his first meeting with Walt and through their betrayal by Charles Mintz at Universal to their creation of Mickey Mouse.Bravo’s docu showed what Disney and PBS (probably from pressure by Disney) refused to present: Walt’s tyranny towards Iwerks, Iwerks’ decision to start his own studio with backing from film processor Pat Powers (who had his own beef with Disney), and his brief but interesting years as a struggling indie before Powers pulled the plug on the firm. Then, there was the brief moment where Iwerks was a sub-contractor for Leon Schlesenger before He and Walt reconciled, just in tie for the production of Snow White.Iwerks’ output included Flip the Frog (which MGM distributed until it hired Hugh Harmon and Rudolph Ising), Willie Whoppers, and Color Comics (a retelling of children’s stories and fairy tales). I’s surprised Disney didn’t go after Iwerks’ library like they did with Walt’s pre-1929 Oswald shorts from Universal.
That 2008 doc was directed by Leslie Iwerks, Ub Iwerks’ granddaughter. Her dad/his son Don worked for Disney until 1985. I thought I had seen her name on a documentary I saw on Disney+, that was “The Pixar Story.” Also, I didn’t know about Charles Mintz, but on a hunch I looked up the villain from Up (Charles Muntz) and yup, he was based on him 🙂
Mintz was a real pain in the ass. He hated Walt so much, Mintz gave Walt and Iwerks pure hell during their tenure at Universal. When Oswald took off, Mintz secured the rights to the character, signed Walt’s staff to full contracts with Universal, and fired Walt and Iwerks, and turned supervision of Oswald over to his brother-in-law, only for newly-minted Universal president Carl Lemelle to fire both of them in 1929. Mintz then launched a new animation studio, Color Rhapsody, in 1934 and got a distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. Columbia bought Mintz’s company in 1938, and Columbia president Harry Cohn fired Mintz a year later. Cohn was no better himself. He hired the Three Stooges at scale wages in 1934, but was forced to pay them more when the short “Disorder In The Court” became a smash hit. The Stooges were Columbia’s biggest act, yet Cohn never paid them their trtue worth.He also openly hated Sammy Davis, Jr, and some suspect he had something to do with the car accident that cost Sammy an eye and almost ended his life. Sammy’s close friend, Frank Sinatra, definitely hated Cohn.
The story behind the rights to Oswald is maybe the most interesting story in the history of art/entertainment legalities. You have two of the biggest media empires trading a goddamned sportscaster in order for Disney to obtain rights to an obscure character for the sole purpose of creating a middling platform video game developed by a down-on-his-luck industry legend known exclusively for mature, intricate, and violent RPGs. Honestly, it should be a movie in and of itself; it’s certainly not any stupider than the glut of inane “origin of a random company/product” biopics/feature-length ads that have come out in the past year (e.g., Air, BlackBerry, Welcome to Chippendales, Flamin’ Hot, Tetris, etc.)
I there anyone out there with even a basic familiarity with Marvel comics character who isn’t aware that Jack Kirby was hugely important in the creation of many of the classic golden and silver aged characters? It’s not like this is some hidden secret of Marvel comics.Disney/Marvel made a movie about Stan because he was basically their spokesperson who kept working with Marvel basically from the 40’s until he died. Even going back to the 80’s as a kid I can remember Stan narrating Spiderman and his Amazing Friends. No one is stopping Kirby’s family or anyone from making a documentary about him either and I would absolutely watch it if they did.
Yeah, I was never a fan of super hero comics, but even I knew who Stan Lee was before I was 10, and I could clearly distinguish Marvel from DC characters. That’s how effective he was as a spokesperson.
“a documentary about the (self-described) visionary creator of a big chunk of the Marvel Comics canon”I’d *LOVE* to see some kind of evidence of Lee referring to himself as a visionary.Maybe he does in the doc that I havent seen, but otherwise I can’t think of any time he was quoted as calling himself a visionary.
At least karma paid him back a thousand fold and his final years were a fucking misery. The recent bio is grim reading.
True. I’m glad he got fucked in his last years, some of it by his own family. Hope you rot in hell, Stan.
Wow, what a miserable bag of cunt sauce you are.
And you, my good sir!
That seems awfully harsh. Did you catch him fucking your wife or something?
Well, Stan was notorious for cheating on his wife numerous times, so that’s an apt reply if I’ve ever seen one.
which bio
The one thing that always goes unsaid about Stan Lee and what hecreally contribution is that Stan Lee’s real masterpiece wasn’t Spider-Man or Fantastic Four. It was the Marvel brand. Stan Lee made Marvel into no just a company, but a community you wanted to be a part of. He gave the various artist and writers personality and nicknames (who do you think coined Jack ”The King” Kirby), created catchphrases and common touchstones. He created the idea of Marvel as a singular entity, something that still endures today. Did he do that in a manner that put himself under the spotlight. Absolutely. And he deserves criticism for that. But act as if he never gave Kirby or Ditko any credit is a step too far.
I worship Jack Kirby, but this is absolutely true. Stan hogged credit, he sometimes hurt feelings, and Marvel treated Kirby atrociously by not preserving/returning his artwork. But Lee wasn’t Bob Kane— a front man who contributed almost nothing to his most famous creation. Lee provided the VOICE and the TONE of Marvel Comics. To imagine Marvel without Lee is to consider the MCU without Downey Jr. Sure, his schtick could wear thin— but his sensibility and charisma were the booster rockets that were essential to pushing the whole crazy bag of bolts into orbit. He humanized Jack Kirby’s characters, and prevented Peter Parker from devolving into a bitter objectivist. And as the great Romita said (no slouch himself in the art department and developing/defining/perfecting Marvel’s characters)— Lee was an incredible editor with a singular vision who at one point was in charge of something like 17 monthly comics simultaneously. He wasn’t a dilettante.Someone once described Lee as ‘A con man who actually delivers’— and that describes the man just about perfectly, I think.
Although a DC fan from the mid-60s onward, I was of course aware or Marvel, but as a kid with a limited budget, and later with a $200 a moth DC habit, I had to makea choice. But I note that regarding Jack “King” Kirby, his stint with DC on “Jimmy Olsen”(?) and the Fourth World saga, bringing us Apokolips and Darkseid and Mister Miracle and Big Barda was not mentioned at all. Also, I need to give a plug for Roger Stern (whom I know) who did great work for both Marvel – The Avengers in particular, and for DC – Superman and The Aton, andwas part of the “Death of Superman” crew are wrote a novel about that.There are always going to be people who are forgotten at the majors.
“Kirby points out that the Opera Del Duomo commissioned Michaelangelo to make a statue of David in 1501″Neither Michaelangelo nor the Opera Del Duomo created the character of “David, from the Bible”, and Stan Lee didn’t ask Kirby to draw a picture of an existing character.If anything, this ‘David’ story backs up Lee because nobody would EVER say that Michaelangelo created the character of David, he merely produced the sculpture. The ‘David’ thing is more akin to claiming Kirby co-created Spider-Man just because he drew the cover of Amazing Fantazy 15.
I am flabbergasted that the shameless self promoter is the one mainstream history gives the lions share of credit to in a collaborative effort.
Douglas Wolk’s “both-and” take on Stan in All of the Marvels as a visionary (and often generous) artist who facilitated an intensely creative atmosphere of collaborative art work AND a self-promoting con artist who compulsively hogged the spotlight is worth a read, as it’s both intellectually convincing, clear-eyed honest, and actually pretty poignant.And without a doubt, the single greatest Stan Lee cameo in the movies is his turn as a the costume shop guy in “Into the Spiderverse,” in that it somehow encapsulates this entire way of evaluating Stan’s persona into maybe ten seconds of screen time…
Sidenote: that’s a very fun book.
“leave it to the son of Jack Kirby to convincingly compare Spider-Man to Michelangelo’s David”
He didn’t convincingly compare anything. It’s a nonsensical argument. Nobody is claiming that Michelangelo created David, just as no one is claiming anyone other than Ditko drew Spider-Man.
Lee’s argument about Spider-Man is based on the fact that, unlike virtually every other character he co-created for Marvel, Stan had a clear idea of who the character was and how he should be portrayed on the page. This is why he took the unprecedented step of taking Jack Kirby off the project and giving it to Ditko because Jack just couldn’t make it work to Lee’s satisfaction.
It was that act alone that convinced me that Lee deserves sole credit. This was a character unlike the others and it wasn’t Lee’s fault that he had no artistic ability to do it on his own.
Who created Darth Vader? The answer is easy. George Lucas. But he didn’t create anything about his look. He didn’t design or build the iconic costume. As the creator, he chose the people to do that for him, to bring his vision of the character to life.
It’s the same with Spider-Man. Lee created him, gave him to his #1 guy, then took it away and gave it to someone who could breathe life into his creation. Had Ditko not delivered to Lee’s satisfaction, I assure you he would have been pulled as well, and we’d be arguing whether Don Heck or even Lee’s brother Larry Lieber had co-created the character.
(Also remember that Kirby was notorious for listening to his flattering hangers-on, ultimately making outlandish claims such as that he had written every comic book story he ever drew and that *he* had co-created Spider-Man because he drew the cover. So, I don’t take anything his family says with anything but a thousand grains of salt.)
Kirby claims he was too busy and came up with the character so idk. It’s in the Twitter thread in the story.
I don’t know, if somebody creates a costume as iconic as Spiderman’s, I think they deserve co-creator credit, that has to be a pretty high percentage of the characters success.
I think Disney has played a big part in this because, just as Walt Disney is propped up as the man with all the ideas even though most of the characters were the creation of teams of people, it puts a nice bow on Marvel to say “and it’s all thanks to this one man.” They know it works and that it’s profitable.
There’s a saying that “rising tides lifts all boats”. Stan Lee would have lost nothing in spending more time acknowledging and praising his counterparts. Now they didn’t spend as much face time out there, but there’s a reason the singer reintroduces his bandmates at every show.
I saw Florence and the Machine last year and she didn’t introduce her bandmates and it felt weird, to say the least. Especially since her band actually has a name – they’re The Machine!
I had no idea she was touring with Bert Kreischer!
I feel like he did acknowledge them a lot, at least he did in the 70’s, when I was a kid reading Marvel. The only reason I knew Ditko and Kirby’s names was because Stan wouldn’t shut about how brilliant they were. Jim Shooter said that he had asked Stan and Jack separately what percentage of credit they deserved, and they both basically said 60/40, in their own favor, so he figured it was somewhere in the middle of that.
I am well aware of the talent level and creativity of Kirby, Ditko, and MANY others at Marvel, but to condemn Lee for providing the ‘Face Of Marvel’ is ridiculous.
Not everyone can be a zealous cheerleader—certainly not Kirby or Ditko- so Lee filled a valuable role that made Marvel a very personable entity to the fans.
As for Kirby`s relatives; I have trouble respecting anyone who launches their attacks on DECEASED TARGETS who cannot defend themselves.
The same could be said about Lee’s credit hogging after Kirby died in 1994.
To be fair, they attacked him plenty when he was alive, too.
Fuck off, Sam.
I had a lot instructors who were old time comic book creators and comic
strip artists. None of them had anything nice to say about Stan except that Stan was a GREAT hype man and did
have an ear for dialogue – which was the missing ingredient that Jack
lacked. These guys would go into detail on how Stan screwed over other creators. As young
wannabe comic artists, we were all shocked by what we heard because
we all believed in the Stan Lee persona that was sold to us. I loved those comics that he had a hand in creating, but his MCU cameos hit me differently knowing what those old timers told us. The most charitable excuse was that Stan was a self serving coward who did what the company told him to do. I choose to believe that one over the others.
why the fuck would you use “big chunk” twice?
It was a really big chunk.
I suggest any body that wants a look at the other side of Stan Lee’s life go ahead an check this book out:It might be a little too extreme in the other direction but at least it talks about the not so wonderful parts of the story.
I actually watched the documentary, and while it isn’t perfect it does include a fairly unvarnished moment where we hear Lee and Kirby on a radio show in 1987. Lee starts out saying they may have had their differences in the past but today thay can perhaps agree that the works they collaborated on had become greater than the sum of their parts.But then he adds “I DID write all the dialogue,” and accuses Kirby of never reading the comics after he was done drawing them, and the whole conversation goes to hell.So, props to the filmmakers for keeping that bit in.
That conversation was transcribed in Marvel the Untold Story, and I have since heard it on youtube, I didn’t think the conversation went to hell at all, they both seemed to enjoy talking to each other. I wouldn’t say Stan accused him of not reading the comics, Kirby said he used to write dialogue in the margins, and Stan pointed out that he was so busy at the time, he never had time to read the published books, so maybe he didn’t know that none of that ever saw print. I think any Marvel fan should look it up and listen to it, it’s great to hear Stan and Jack reminisce about the old days.
The thing about Stan Lee that made some of the workers at Marvel upset in the 60’s & 70’s is he tried to make Marvel more corporate. Most of the workers who developed the comics were content living their daily lives in New York City. Stan Lee enjoyed that too but he saw the opportunity to promote the brand to Los Angeles and the TV/big screen. He thought that if DC can have success doing this, why couldn’t Marvel. If Stan Lee did not do the extra promotion of the characters, someone else later down the line in the Marvel brand would have done the exact same thing.
Seeing all the predictable arguments below. Kirby and Ditko were visionaries, but if anybody doubts that Stan Lee added something to the mix, think of what Spider-Man would’ve been if it was Ditko that stayed and Lee that had left instead. Ditko, after Stan Lee, wouldn’t have agreed one iota that “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” as his life philosophy was exactly the opposite.