Tag Archives: Jack Kirby

General

Stan Lee, Redux

A few days back I posted (you can read it here) about the biographical novel True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Reisman, which was released and has been promoted quite a bit.

This biography has opened up some old debates on just how much Stan Lee did with regard to the books/characters released through Marvel Comics and which have become these days a multi-billion dollar mega-juggernaut what with the success of the various Marvel movies… all of which, until Stan Lee’s passing, featuring amusing cameo appearances by him.

Roy Thomas, a Stan Lee protege who started working at a very young age at Marvel in 1965, was there for a little over half of Stan Lee’s tenure as editor/writer of the material (he left the position in 1972) pushes back against the biography and some of its conclusions. He argues the biography is a little too quick to take the word of Jack Kirby over Stan Lee and diminishes his work there. You can read the article for yourself at this link to thehollywoodreporter.com and is written by Mr. Thomas himself:

Roy Thomas, Former Marvel Editor, Pushes Back on New Stan Lee Biography

In my last posting, I noted that many years have now passed since that epoch, which lasted a little less than 10 years in total, basically from 1960 to roughly 1970.

Further, over the years since that point it was clear that memories were hazy, not just for Stan Lee, but for Jack Kirby as well, something that Mr. Thomas notes when stating the biography seems to come down harder on Mr. Lee’s fuzzy memory versus Jack Kirby’s.

If true (I haven’t read the book), that’s a fair point to make.

Further, Mr. Thomas does provide some solid written proof in the form of a couple of early plot drafts by Stan Lee which survive to this day and do indeed suggest/prove he did have a hand in plotting the first, and another earlier, Fantastic Four story.

Mr. Thomas provides this fascinating bit, taken from that column (I highlighted the part I thought was the most fascinating):

That Stan Lee was the co-creator, and not the sole creator, of the key Marvel heroes from the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through Daredevil and the Silver Surfer can hardly be in dispute at this late stage. I myself, back in the ’80s when I wasn’t working for him, had a friendly argument with him on that score over lunch. I soon realized that, as much as he respected the talents and contributions of artists (Riesman would say “artist/writers” and he’s right, at least in one sense) such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the characters introduced in the 1960s, he could never really bring himself, in his own mind, to think of them as “co-creators.” The two of us had to agree to disagree, and I never saw any use in bringing it up again.

This, to me, is the crux of the argument many have with/against Stan Lee: He took credit for the “creation” of all these characters and one can’t help but wonder how much he subsequently felt he was the sole writer of the stories as well.

I don’t doubt that in the early going of Marvel Comics Stan Lee had a much more involved hand in writing/plotting the stories. There may well be several stories, including some of the earliest ones, that Stan Lee had a big hand on.

But based on the voluminous photocopies of pages released in more recent times, one gets the feeling that Jack Kirby at least and perhaps a little later on, was doing most of the actual story plotting via drawing the actual pages and putting notes on the sides as to what’s going on. Stan Lee would then write in his dialogue/captions (and, to be extremely fair, they were often dynamite!) but to say that Stan Lee was the “sole” creator of these works, especially after the first few years, feels like taking a glory that wasn’t entirely his.

Interestingly, Mark Evanier, who one could look at as a protege of Jack Kirby (he was around/working with him following his leaving Marvel Comics), was interviewed for the biography but had no opinion about it because he hadn’t read it yet. Nonetheless, he had this to say about the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creative relationship (the full post which I took this excerpt from can be found on his website, News From ME – Mark Evanier’s blog):

But my conclusion is that the comics we know to be created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, not necessarily as 50-50 efforts and certainly not with Jack supplying only the visuals. I think Jack did a lot more than Stan — at least on the pages — and until fairly recently, got a lot less credit; likewise, Stan and Steve Ditko, Stan and Don Heck, Stan and Bill Everett, etc. The disparity in financial reward was even greater.

But that doesn’t mean Stan did nothing or did nothing well. I have witnessed way too many Stan/Jack debates in my life and I think all are dead wrong if they lead to the conclusion that either contributed zero. This view has occasionally made me feel unwelcome on Stan Lee forums and in Jack Kirby chat groups. And just as I reject that notion, I reject the argument that neither would have amounted to anything post-1961 without the other. They were two men of extraordinary skills…just not the same skills.

A lot of folks don’t want to hear about the battles and the quarrels and the screwings. They just want to enjoy the body of work…and I sometimes wish I could stop there. Instead, I think I’ll stop here…for now.

Perhaps that’s the best summary of these extraordinary men and their extraordinary place in entertainment history.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Love the art, part deux…

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Yesterday I wrote about Joss Whedon -among others- who are well known creative individuals who are reckoning with some pretty negative stories regarding how they are as individuals. (You can read that post here)

With regard to Mr. Whedon, the negative stories, rumors of which were around for years but the flood of stories seem to have been breached in the last couple of years, may make fans of his work, including Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, The Avengers, etc., rethink their feelings for the artist, if not the art they produced.

Over on Salon.com, there is an excerpt from the novel True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Reisman.

Before I offer a link to the excerpt, let me say the following: Most people today view Mr. Stan Lee in very glowing terms.

Image result for stan lee

In recent years and before his passing in 2018 and thanks to a series of cameos in the Marvel movies, among others, he became the genial grandfather, the kindly face of the Marvel Age of Comics, of which he was one of the big movers and shakers of the company since its first big successes in 1961 with the release of The Fantastic Four and in 1962 with the release of Spider-Man.

In both cases, Stan Lee was listed as the writer of these -and a lot of other!- Marvel books.

In reality, there has existed for many years curiosity as to how much Stan Lee actually did with the individual comic books he was reported to have written.

Image result for jack kirby

The above individual is Jack Kirby. His name may not be as well known as Stan Lee, at least among those not as familiar with the comic books which became the basis for the spectacularly successful Marvel films, but it should be.

Jack Kirby (1914-1994) was the artist and, at the very least, co-plotter/co-creator of The Fantastic Four and had a hand in virtually all of the Marvel books created in the 1960’s. Black Panther? Jack Kirby. Captain America? Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (another name which should be better known today). Sgt. Fury? Thor? Hulk? Iron Man? The X-Men? Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, and Kirby. If he didn’t outright create these characters, he had a hand in their creation.

Further, he produced literally thousands of pages of comic books for Marvel until he left the company in the later 1960’s. And not on very good terms.

The other very big character to come out of Marvel in the early 1960’s, which I mentioned before and which was arguably Marvel’s most successful property is Spider-Man.

While Jack Kirby created an early version of the character, it was not used. Instead, Spider-Man was co-plotted and drawn by one Steve Ditko, who also created or co-created Dr. Strange…

Image result for steve ditko

And her we come to the excerpt from the novel I mentioned above.

Read it here:

The Stan Lee Story That Tore Apart Marvel Comics

While you’re at it, check out this article by Jillian Steinhauer which also explores Stan Lee, the person and the myth…

The Unheroic Life of Stan Lee

The bottom line of both articles is this: Stan Lee was a showman. He was a man who loved to promote Marvel Comics as well as himself.

He did this incredibly well and deserves a great deal of credit for the success of Marvel Comics.

He worked well with many creative people. He also wound up alienating and losing the two people who should be, like Stan Lee, the face of Marvel Comics. Yup, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

Without getting too far into the weeds of comic book writing, Marvel had a method to the “writing” of their books which was different than the standard full script writing method. Basically, in the Marvel method, the writer would not write a full script but rather a general, perhaps even very general, plot idea. Theoretically this would be enough for the artist to then draw out a full issue, pacing the pages and panels as the artist sees fit. After the artist was done, the writer would get the pencilled pages and write captions and dialogue for the book. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Only…

Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were incredibly imaginative people. While there’s no doubt Stan Lee wrote some really great dialogue/captions in the various books he was listed as the “writer” (his style is quite unique and one can see the difference in books he had a hand in versus those which were completely done by either Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko), there is a great deal of argument as to just how much of the plot of the various stories -and the character creations- he actually had a hand in.

Jack Kirby, in particular, created character after character after character while working for Marvel. The story goes that one day when he dropped off a batch of pages of the latest issue of Fantastic Four, Stan Lee asked him who this one character flying on a surf board was.

“The Silver Surfer,” Kirby reportedly told him, indicating it was solely a Jack Kirby creation… yet one that Stan Lee would later on take from Kirby’s hands and control his stories over the objections of Jack Kirby. Reportedly, this was yet another of the many issues which infuriated Jack Kirby and eventually led to his leaving Marvel Comics.

On the other side, Steve Ditko was known to have clashes with Stan Lee as well regarding the direction of Spider-Man. Ditko, a man who was almost the very opposite of Stan Lee in terms of how he carried himself (introvert versus a very extroverted Stan Lee!) reportedly left Spider-Man and Marvel when he could no longer take Stan Lee’s attempts to put his fingerprints on Spider-Man’s stories.

In the end, we’re talking about things that happened in the 1960’s, now fifty plus years ago. We don’t know the whole of the ins and outs of their situation but do know this: Marvel Comics was blessed with three very talented individuals: Stan Lee, the fun loving carnival barker who drew in fans to the fledgling company. Jack Kirby, the titan of ideas who could release a mind-bogglingly large number of quality pages/stories each month. And Steve Ditko, another titan of ideas who, while not as quick as Kirby, arguably created/co-created Marvel’s seminal character in Spider-Man.

And also not arguable is the fact that of this trifecta of people, both Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko left this company and in doing so shared very much the same complaints regarding Stan Lee.

It’s a fascinating story, and one wonders if, had they been able to work together better, would they have created even more spectacular works into the 1970’s?

That’s something we’ll never know.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Original art…

The thing about collecting something is that its value, should that be what interests you about it, is determined solely by the demand/desire others have in the item.

When I was younger and just getting into comic books, comic book legend Jack Kirby’s career was, sadly, on the decline.  If you don’t recognize the name, you certainly recognize many of his creations or co-creations: Just about every superhero character present in the enormously successful Marvel films.

Captain America?  Co-created by Mr. Kirby

Hulk?  Ditto

Iron Man?  Co-created/co-designed by Mr. Kirby

Thor?  Kirby

Ant-Man?  Kirby (though his cinema incarnation has a longer path involving many more creators over the years)

Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and Galactus?  Kirby either created or co-created most of the characters.

And so on, and so on.

But as I said above, when I was first getting into comics in the 1970’s Jack Kirby’s star was on the decline.  Hell, it was worse than that.  There were many who derided Mr. Kirby’s then new work as being nothing short of terrible.  Quite the turnaround considering the 1960’s were arguable Jack Kirby’s biggest, most popular creative decade.

Even more sad is the fact that when Mr. Kirby passed away in 1994, he was engaged in a years long legal fight with Marvel Comics to get back the artwork he was certain they were holding from him.

This comic book artwork was considered worthless back when he made it.  In fact, almost every one of the artists working on comic books for the first thirty plus years of the industry viewed their artwork as disposable and many of these pieces were indeed thrown away.

Which is why classic original artwork, especially any by Jack Kirby from the first decade of Marvel Comics, is so very hot today.  Check this story out, involving the original Jack Kirby artwork for the cover of Thor #159 (the article linked to below mislabels the cover as belonging to issue #158), which was valued at £5000 and wound up selling at auction for a whopping £44,000:

Thor comic cover which hung on girl’s bedroom wall for 30 years sold for £44,000

Amazing, no?

Here’s what the Kirby illustrated cover looked like on the actual 1968 comic book:

And here’s the original cover artwork…

The most amazing thing about all this to me is it proves how hot Jack Kirby’s artwork is these days.  IMHO, while this is a pretty damn good cover, it is hardly one of Mr. Kirby’s better or best known works, yet it still merits a truckload of cash!

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Kamandi Omnibus #2, the review

A while back (you can read it here) I reviewed the first Omnibus of what I consider Jack Kirby’s last great comic book series, Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth.

I’m a huge fan of the works of Jack Kirby, and for whatever reason his last major works, which appeared in the early to mid 70’s, hold a special place of interest.  I love The New Gods and the related books.  I love The Demon.  I love OMAC.

And I especially, especially, love Kamandi.

True, none of the DC Comics works are held in quite the same regard as his many classic creations for Marvel Comics in the 1960’s (Jack Kirby had his hand in pretty much all the stable of Marvel heroes that are now so very popular on the big screen), but for whatever reason, it is his run at DC that I go back to again and again.

When I reviewed the first Kamandi Omnibus, however, I noted that this book, which reprinted the first 20 issues of the original series, was the one to get, as it featured the best Kirby works on the series.

Now, having picked up (belatedly) the second Omnibus, my comments are reaffirmed…although I would quickly add that any fan of the works of Jack Kirby should still pick this book up.

Yes, issues #21-40 of the original series featured a clearly less involved Jack Kirby.  The artwork wasn’t quite as lush as before and the stories, while still quite good, weren’t up to the level of the first twenty.  Regardless, there are great ones.  Check out, in particular, issue 29’s story “The Legend”, which has Kamandi and company find a most peculiar suit…one originally (?) worn by Superman!  Or marvel at issue 31, which features sequences that may well have been inspired by the works of the late Ray Harryhausen.

Yes, there are still plenty of good stories to be found, but by issue #34 the book was clearly in trouble.  The legendary Joe Kubert took over cover duties, a sure sign that Jack Kirby’s marketability was reaching a low ebb.  By issue #38, Gerry Conway took over the scripts of the series and remained on the book during the last three Jack Kirby illustrated issues.  Perhaps by that time Mr. Kirby simply had no more Kamandi stories he was interested in telling, or perhaps he was simply trying to kill time before his contract was up.

The book, however, appeared to still be popular despite Mr. Kirby’s departure.  Despite overall poor sales at DC Comics during that time, the series lasted another 19 issues without Mr. Kirby before being cancelled.  I’m such a fan of the series that I would love to see those issues, plus the two issues never actually published (though they were made and eventually released in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade).

Overall, I’m very happy to finally have all the Jack Kirby Kamandi issues in two wonderful volumes.  Give it a try.  You may like it.

KamandiV2

Books/Literature, Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Kamandi Omnibus #1, the review

This post originally appeared in October of 2011.  A bit of news:  The second volume of the Jack Kirby Kamandi issues, collecting the rest of his run, is scheduled to be released later this year.

To some degree, reviewing the Kamandi Omnibus Vol #1, released last week, is almost pointless.  I have all of the Jack Kirby written/drawn issues of the series (indeed, even the 19 issues after he left with issue #40 plus the 2 issues never released but collected in the Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. Yes, I’m a BIG fan of Kamandi!) and I pretty much know the book backwards and forwards.

Yet seeing the first 20 issues all together in one volume, I recognized something that hadn’t really occurred to me until they were read all together: This was Jack Kirby doing comic book versions of movies. Many movies.

The primary movie source material is obvious: Kamandi, the first issue of which was released in 1972, borrowed quite a bit from the then very popular original Planet of the Apes movies. Indeed, there were many back in the day who dismissed this series out right because of the fact that it borrowed so heavily from those movies. The series, after all, featured a “boy” in a post-apocalyptic world where animals (including, of course, apes!) were sentient and humans were viewed as lower life forms. The cover to the first issue of the original series also had strong echoes to the ending of the original Planet of the Apes, at least with regard to that famous statue present at that movie’s end, you will also find references to, among others, the original King Kong, The Andromeda Strain, Ben Hur, Westworld, various Gladiator movies, etc. etc.  And if you look beyond that, you’ll also find references to then hot topics such as Watergate and the then very hot topic of pollution.  Unlike other series Jack Kirby was working on at the time, Kamandi appeared to be Mr. Kirby taking a fictional look at the things that currently interested him.

And it is so much fun.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  While Kamandi may not be the very last work of Mr. Kirby, it was certainly his last sustained successful comic book work. I know he made several books and series afterwards, but none, in my opinion, were as entertaining as this one. If you’re a fan of Jack Kirby, you’d be crazy to ignore this incredible series.

I’m not sure when Volume 2, collecting the last 20 issues Mr. Kirby did, will be released, but I’ll most certainly be picking it up. While the series lost steam toward the end of Mr. Kirby’s run and the very best stories, in my opinion, are in this first volume (of those, my absolute favorites are found in issues #9 and 10), the second volume will certainly be a must buy for me.  Sadly, Mr. Kirby faced many obstacles when he chose to leave Marvel in the late 1960’s.  Much of his work was derided by fans and it wasn’t until toward the end of his life that fans began to once again appreciate what it was he brought to the comic book field.  I’m pleased that DC Comics has decided to reprint all his 1970’s works, including the various New Gods issues, Omac, The Demon, and Jimmy Olsen.

And while I can understand that the Kamandi reprints will end with Mr. Kirby’s last issue, I’m such a fan of the series that I wish they’d offer a third volume that features all the rest of the stories in the series. Regardless, Kamandi Volume 1 is well worth your time.