>Jack Kirby spent his life seething about Stan, Marvel, DC, royalties, character rights whatever
>Ditko never let out a peep after leaving Marvel, just kept on making comics and lived on
why was this

Btw Jack created Spider-man
he says so himself

>>149517247
Kirby was so full of shit.

>>149517247
By the way, Jack recycled his Spider-Man concept from a rejected proposal by Joe Simon and CC Beck. Stan looked at the first few pages and realized it was too close to Archie Comics The Fly, turned it on its head and gave it to Ditko to save.

The difference between Kirby and Ditko was that Kirby was willing to swallow his grievances for a check and Ditko wasn't until later in his life. The check was always number 1 with Kirby.

>>149517310
>>149517314
i love Kirby as a artist but the guy's pride made him a real ass that also shot himself in the foot several times
Little known fact was that after he left DC Stan actually offered him to come back to Marvel and co run the company but he flat out refused

>>149517247
>"I created Spider-Man"
shut the fuck up, that was Ditko's magnum opus

>>149517245 (OP)
Same reason why Watterson refuses to whore out Calvin & Hobbes and why Davis is okay with Garfield phones polluting the ocean. I don't demonize people who do it for the dolla, but dolla shouldn't be humanity's end point. Especially for writers

>>149517245 (OP)
Ditko was a super quiet, reserved and polite man. There is a documentary called In Search of Steve Ditko and the presenter kept trying to get interviews with Steve who declined and eventually just went to his office with no cameras and said Steve was really lovely to him, gave him some comics too and chatter.

The same documentary also features a Stan Lee interview where Stan's lawyer was running late and they started the interview anyway.

>>149517310
And Stan wasn't? With his rehearsed anecdotes always made far after the fact with clear narratives.

>>149517342
>And Stan wasn't
Of course he was but people act like Kirby is some saint.

the hate-train against Stan is so forced on /co/ especially when the people being defended as victims like Kirby had plenty of shit of their own. Stan just became an easy target once Marvel blew up as a multimedia brand in the 2000s and he was the last de facto face of its rich history

>>149517245 (OP)
Both men were quiet and reserved only Ditko was cripplingly shy. Both men put up with shit until their breaking point but Steve could comfortably withdraw and isolate himself to avoid more grief where as Kirby was one of those guys a bit soft to allow himself to be walked all over again.

>>149517247
This is Jack Kirby's Spider-Man btw. Hes so full of shit.

>>149517349
People just acknowledge his talent, art style and how he helped build Marvel. The mainstream does not acknowledge this because of Stan's marketing: his cameos in the MCU and how he has positioned himself as a Marvel saint.

I went to a mainstream gallery a few years ago and they had a Stan Lee collection, bear in mind Stan wasn't an artist. They had a Thor print by Esad Ribić for a thousand. It's cheaper to actually commission Esad Ribić for an original piece. Shit like that is weird.

Mainstream people think that Stan is some saint. So yeah maybe some people respond by making Kirby a saint. Those artists deserve some recognition and not to be forgotten.

The truth is all these people helped build Marvel together and you can't take any of them out of that context. But Kirby has been erased far more than Stan has been

>>149517342
The claims Kirby made during his lawsuit outstrip Bob Kane in sheer bullshitting.

>>149517379
Sorry picture related. Stan asked Jack to make a Spider-Man design. It sucked so he gave it to Ditko.

>>149517352
>Stan just became an easy target once Marvel blew up as a multimedia brand in the 2000s and he was the last de facto face of its rich history
Stand marketing began far before this when every comic had Stan Lee presents on it, even after he left to try to market Marvel in the and films he was still used as the defacto face of Marvel in a way many weren't.

>>149517390
Give all the examples aside from the Spider-Man one.

>>149517391
Kirby never got over this absolute mogging to the point he spent his entire life crying abiut it.

>>149517391
I'm surprised we never got an AU Spider-Man who looked like this, it's definitely the kind of hack shit Dan Slott would do

>>149517352
It's not forced per se it's just part of the natural cycle of contrarianism. People hate on Stan until liking Stan becomes cool and then hating Stan is taken up again.

Ultimately we are talking about working relationships, friendships, politics of the bullpen and how companies take ownership of creations for money. It's a web of situations, never as grand as some fictional drama, but full of half remembered slights, stories and rehearsed anecdotes. People push narratives: Stan is the cruel company man who screwed over talented artists or alternatively a bunch of idiot bleeding heart artists were too dumb to market themselves. Neither of these narratives is true.

But the truth is that a lot of normal everyday people don't care about the people that worked on the things they claim to love. And everyone else needs to boil down a life to a clean narrative of goodies vs baddies.

>>149517423
Its just THAT bad. Kirby was so far up his own ass he refused to see it.

>>149517446
>Neither of these narratives is true.
*Completely true

>>149517320
A lot of it was Kirby’s wife and his entering pushing him to make increasingly wilder claims so they could get legal case against Marvel. Rod, while she defended Jack a lot, also probably goaded him into the anti-Stan stuff more than he would’ve been otherwise

>>149517446
The /co/ntrarian cycle

>>149517391
You guys think Spider-Man would have flopped if he looked like this?

>>149517492
he wouldnt really stand out and history would remember it as
>remember when Marvel comics tried ripping off Blue Beetle?

>>149517492
Im sure the Ninja Turtles guys would have liked it.

People used to look up Kirby's name in the phone book, go round his house, his wife would make them lemonade and they'd watch him work. This is an actual thing that happened.

Imagine turning up at a creators' house today.

>>149517516
>Imagine turning up at a creators' house today
Alan Moore would probably be super pleasant to you, I've met him and everyone else I know who has met him knows he's a nice guy in person.

Turn up at Neil Gaiman's house and you're probably getting raped.

>>149517391
that's fake though

>>149517516
>his wife would make them lemonade and they'd watch him work.
i thought his wife was getting railed by Stan while he wrote F4 scripts

>>149517516
depends on the creator. some would be happy

Kirby was virulently jewish, so there you go.

>>149517447
What's bad about it? Doesn't look significantly worse than any other Golden Age-styled guy, and there's plenty of unimaginative costumes out of that era. I like the chest spider, you can kind of see Ben Reilly's Sensational emblem in it.
I guess for the time it's dated and it doesn't really work for what Spider-Man would become, but they were making this shit up as they went along.

>>149517245 (OP)
>>149517310
>>149517314
>>149517349
>>149517410
Here's Kirby shitting on Siegel because the latter demanded royalties

>>149517502
Ted Kord didn't exist at this point and Dan Garrett didn't look like that.

>>149517391
Here's Kirby's Spider-Man according to Ditko.

>>149517604
KEK. Kirby got MOGGED.

>>149517561
>Slott's face lights up at the door and he beckons me down the goat path he's constructed, surrounded by floor to ceiling empty pizza box towers, standing like marble pillars, into his inner sanctum. The smell.

>>149517622
The ball has been dropped

>>149517391
This pic isn't real btw, it's a mockup based off of Steve Ditko's recollection of the costume. Similar case with the "Bob Kane's Batman" image in the red costume; it's a mockup by Ty templeton, IIRC.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210125191251/https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2012/05/hoax-of-year-jack-kirbys-spiderman.html
>>149517502
this would've been some years before Ditko rebooted Blue Beetle. Maybe a bit more accurate to say ripping off The Fly , granted Kirby also worked on that

>>149517573
Looking like every other guy is what’s bad about it. Good enough isn’t going to stand out. Ditko’s Spider-man does because it’s so different

>>149517638
But I love Red Batman. :(

>>149517604

>>149517662
The lllt thickens because allegedly Tikely was commissioned to design those costumes, so Kirby might’ve designed the Ben Cooper costume

>>149517245 (OP)
I can't bring myself to care about how dead guys felt or what they thought or said or didn't.
It's like getting worried about HPL's politics. Why should I gas?
dead horse is dead.

>>149517662
The plot thickens because allegedly Timely was commissioned to design those costumes, so Kirby might’ve designed the Ben Cooper costume

>>149517662
Oh thats so cool. I like the idea Ditko used some shitty Halloween costume for inspiration. Feels like something Peter would actually do. I love 50s and 60s Halloween decorations too. Such a vibe. Ditko was a master of it.

>>149517391
So Stan really did have no input on Spider-man and it was all Ditko. Stan is the biggest piece of shit the medium has ever seen.

>>149517662
The funny thing is that Kirby actually did pencil the cover, so the first Spider-Man the world would have seen was still one drawn by Kirby.

>>149517423
Closest is Spider-Boy from Amalgam who had the goggles and web pistol but that was it

>>149517746
He had input and wrote Spider-Man's entire famous origin story and his first 100ish issues. Comics were very much a team effort back then. If Stan wasn't there Spider-Man would have been completely different from a writing point of view.

>>149517785
>>149517423
The Chameleon uses a web-gun whilst disguised as Spider-Man in the very first issue of ASM. Obviously not an AU Spidey but it's cool they found a way to use it straight away.

>>149517769
You can tell because Spider-Man is carrying a caveman.

>>149517807
That's some amazing fantasy right there.

>>149517825
Fifteen of them even

>>149517794
>Comics were very much a team effort back then
Not when Stan was involved.

>>149517794
Anon, do you just not know about the well documented Marvel method? Stan said this once: he once wrote on a napkin "Mysterio fights Spider-Man this issue" and the artist would go away draw the story and do the plotting, basically the whole story, then he'd write some dialogue and superfluous narration. If the artist does the plotting, they've basically set the story. Sure the views will be different in the dialogue, but Stan is filling in blanks, not setting the story that much.

>>149517993
Ditko translated Lee's one or one-and-a-half-page plot summery things into a full 22-page story, including dialogue and captions for Lee to polish. He was officially credited as the plotter starting with The Amazing Spider-Man issue #25. Lee wrote most of the dialog you read though. Again without Lee the writing for Spider-Man would be completely different from what we have today. I'm not even saying Stan half created Spider-Man. Saying he had 0 creative input is false.

>>149517746
Nigga, bob kane was must worse.

>>149518086
Lee is the reason Norman Osborne is the green Goblin btw. Ditko fucking hated that idea. Ditko just wanted it to be a random guy while Stan wanted it to be Harry's father.

>>149518073
I never once claimed he had 0 creative input. But what I did say is that Lee himself admitted to the napkin anecdote, and the Marvel method meant artists did a heavy amount of the plotting. Appealing to who was credited for what is a very bad argument because credits were notoriously bad for decades until creators fought for those rights. To be clear: I never once said that Stan did nothing and I am in no way diminishing his input in the way you think. But you seem to be ignoring the Marvel method which Stan himself admitted to.

>>149518110
>Ditko just wanted it to be a random guy
This is actually false. It was a line repeated in the Ditko documentary but Ditko didn't want it to be a random guy and wanted it to be Norman too.

>>149518130
basically an editor?

What is wrong with you God damn nerds anymore, all you do is hate the people who create things. You sit around talking about AI getting rid of artists then you sit around hating all the dead artists. You guys just hate cartoons and comics. It's literally what's the point of being here if all you do is hate every single cartoon and every single comic

>>149518130
I was originally replying to >>149517746 which clearly says on the first line
>So Stan really did have no input on Spiderman and it was all Ditko
Like come on man the thread isnt even that large.

>>149518086
All due respect to Bill Finger, but he's no Kirby, no Ditko. Stan Lee fucked over more people.

>>149518160
Fair enough anon, I should have checked. That anon was talking one extreme, sure, but I think you were ignoring some context too.

>>149518086
Bob Kane was just fucking annoying as shit. Walked around on a cravat talking nonsense.

That Steranko anecdote is still funny, even if it's probably made up

>>149517245 (OP)
Ditko set the record straight several times on what he thought of Stan's contribution to Spider-man. Specifically after the first movie or that one time in the Comic Journal when Stan claimed he came up with the machinery landing on Spider-man. He wasn't made of stone anon.

>>149518253
Kane denying credit on every artist between the 30s and 60s who worked on Batman probably screwed over more people.
The people Kirby might’ve screwed over could’ve gotten better deals, but Lee still pushed for credit for them. Lane actively denied Finger’s contribution to Batman

>>149518493
Kane screwed over some nobodies and Bill Finger. Stan Lee screwed over two of the biggest titans in the history of comics in Kirby and Ditko, and there are others that have spoken about Stan's lack of contributions like Joe Orlando.

>>149517622
I would very much like to see the kind of person who would marry Slott. Either a man or a very obese woman surely.
>>149518130
Stan would help poke fun at himself over how much work he was putting on his artists. But yeah he played a big part in what made Spider-Man (and Dr. Strange) successful and the proof is that is looking at the dialogue of Blue Beetle, The Question, Mr. A, The Creeper, and Hawk and Dove which were all done with other writers or by Ditko himself. Just don't have that Spider-Man appeal.

>>149517310
he was jewish. what else would you expect?

>>149518073
>including dialogue and captions for Lee to polish
>Lee wrote most of the dialog you read though.
Just to add on to this, the notes by the artists varied a lot too. Often the notes were just a hint at what's supposed to be happening in the panel. Sometimes they included suggested dialogue (varying from very brief hints to full sentences), especially if it's important for the context. But generally speaking, what appears on the final pages is very different than what appears in the notes, the notes were usually very unpolished or incomplete.

Pic is Roy Thomas's final dialogue/captions and not Stan's, but you can get some idea of what Ditko's panel scripts looked like in a couple cases.

>>149517391
it wasn't colored though

>>149518695

>>149517604
and people shit on Ditko's objectivism...

>>149517554
no, stan just took credit for it

>>149518701
as explained, it's not real, it's just a fan's guess what a kirby spidey would have looked like
the drawing is based on kirby's giant man

>>149518073
Spiderman feels like a parody or Freakazoid

>>149517245 (OP)
As a Ditkofag, this isn't completely true. He wrote a lot about Spider-Man history in his last decades and criticized Stan Lee and Marvel in most of them

He also basically called Quesada a bitch, heh

>>149518622
Guys like Dick Sprang weren’t nobodies, and if not for DC renegotiating with Kane once credits became a thing, Kane would’ve gladly took credit for the art of guys like Neal Adams.
Hell he paid Greg Theakston to trace Todd Mcfarlane images to sell them as prints under his name.

>>149518684
There's another comic like that with Steve Ditko from the end of Amazing Spider-Man Annual 1

>>149519314

>>149519321

>>149518253
>>149518622
Kane is still much worse.

>>149519370
Yep, at least Stan Lee had guys like Romita who’d say he did a well enough job. Not a single one of Kane’s collaborators would defend him. People in the DC offices hated when he came in. Editors would joke about asking if he could redraw something knowing full well he couldn’t.

Disputes about credit and pay aside, I think the Marvel Method is genuinely the best way to create comics if you're going to have an artist and writer working together rather than a solo creator. It's like board driven animation for cartoons, it's a visual medium and the artist should have freedom in how the stories are told. Full script seems too limiting on the artists.

>>149519445
>Marvel Method
I don't read Marvel, can you explain it

>>149519445
Some artists don't like it because they feel it puts too much work on them. Mark Bagley said he prefers getting scripts telling him exactly what to do.
>>149519465
The writer writes a few paragraphs or a page summarizing the plot. The artist draws the pages, sends those back to the write who thin writes the dialogue and narration for it.
In a number of cases it was the artist both coming up with the plot and drawing it and the writer just wrote in the dialogue at the end. This was how Wally Wood's Daredevil was and he seethed about not getting plotter credit and quit. They did give him this credit on the last issue he worked on.

I never understood this hatred of Stan Lee, calling him a thief.
It seems like he was pushing for others to get credit, and he was open about how the method worked.
I mean, I'm not saying it was some kind of angel or anything.
IDK I just feel like this whole treating Lee like the devil thing always felt forced.

>>149519465
The artist is given a brief plot or outline (if anything), ranging from a 1-2 page synopsis to a sentence. The artist then decides how to draw the story, deciding the details on what happens and how it's shown. He then gives it to a writer, who then writes the final dialogue and captions. In contrast, full script breaks everything down panel-by-panel.

You can see how this leaves more of the work to the artist, of course.
>>149519553
Yeah, the artists seem split on it. Others like John Buscema seemed happy with it.

>>149517586
And yet, Joe Simon refused to work for DC again until after Jack Liebowitz retired and Carmine Infantino was running things.
>>149518253
Martin Goodman was the one who fucked people over, starting with cheating Simon and Kirby out of the profits from Captain America.
Goodman was the one who fired everyone on staff because he had too much inventory. Goodman was the one who nearly sank the company because he made a stupid distribution deal. And Goodman was the one who didn't want to pay Kirby or Ditko.
Stan was the guy who worked with the creative people, so he took most of the flak when Goodman screwed them.

>>149519572
A lot of the "credit stealing" comes from a couple of interviews he did in the late 60s where the interviewer lionizes him for creating Marvel and he just rolls with it, and from the introductions he wrote for "Origins of Marvel Comics", that come across like "I did everything and Kirby and Ditko helped".

>>149517397
NTA but Kirby claimed to have gotten the idea for Hulk after reading about a mom who lifted a car off their child and other stories of people having superhuman strength while under great stress. The Hulk didn't use anger/stress to transform until several years after Jack stopped drawing the book, he transformed at night like a werewolf

>>149519553
A lot of comic artists , especially DC regulars, infamously tried the Marvel method and hated it
I think another aspect is that it makes credits murky, which is arguable the whole reason a thread like this exists in the first place

>>149519671
Oh you mean his uncle.

>>149517245 (OP)
Ditko didn't believe in human rights, and that included creator's.

>>149519704
I mean, there are several instances of artists asking for at least at least a co-plotter credit and him balking at that. The Wally Wood example comes to mind.

>>149519708
>I think another aspect is that it makes credits murky, which is arguable the whole reason a thread like this exists in the first place
Definitely an issue with it. Though to some degree fully accurate and proper crediting becomes an issue with any form of collaborative creative work. Especially when you have people brainstorming and spitballing ideas in the process.

Like I recently found out Craig McCracken was more responsible for more of Dexter's Lab's than I knew during the original seasons. Designs I assumed were Genndy's actually came from Craig. Or with video games, everybody knows Miyamoto created Mario, but it's not as if he's solely responsible for the success. If you look at Mario 3, Takashi Tezuka was the co-director and a big part of it, but most people just assume Mario = Miyamoto.
>>149520138
Martin Goodman was married to Stan Lee's cousin, so they were related by marriage but it's not like they were super close family members.

>>149520467
>but it's not like they were super close family members.
Lmao dude.

>>149520501
I'm just saying, it's different. I'm not the guy you were originally replying to either, in case you thought I was making some sort of argument with you there.

Maybe it's because I'm not at all close with my cousins, but I hardly think of cousin's husband as family. Obviously there was nepotism involved with Lee at the company, but it's not like Lee was his son. He actually wanted his son Chip Goodman to take over as publisher in his place, but Lee took that role instead. Martin wasn't too happy about it.

>>149520544
>I'm just saying
Please... his uncle literally got him his job.

it's amusing how a bunch of people on this site can have intelligent discussions and there's always one faggot like >>149518693

>>149520781
Yeah, but you understand how there's degrees of closeness, right? Martin Goodman wasn't his uncle, and an uncle isn't the same as a cousin-in-law. I don't even know my cousin-in-law's names (or if they exist for some).

I'm not denying he got the job because he was family, everybody knows that.

>>149520810
>but you understand how there's degrees of closeness
Do you? How close you are to your cousins is irrelevant. If you and your brother aren't close doesn't mean someone can't be super close to their brothers. And this goes for parents, uncles, cousins and everything. He not only got his job because of him but he was handed immense power right out the gate, the kind no other writer at that time got. Trying to imply this isn't a clear case of nepotism is just... pathetic.

>>149520887
>Trying to imply this isn't a clear case of nepotism is just... pathetic.
Anon, can you read? I've said multiple times it was nepotism. The degree of closeness is an important nuance though.

>>149519229
>He also basically called Quesada a bitch, heh
Sauce?

>>149520918
>The degree of closeness
Is not something you can comment on. Just because you don't even know the name of your aunt or cousin's husband doesn't mean there aren't instances in which some uncle by marriage didn't take a huge liking to a nephew and they became closer than blood relations. Stop being obtuse.

>>149520887
>If you and your brother aren't close doesn't mean someone can't be super close to their brothers. And this goes for parents, uncles, cousins and everything.
Yeah, but generally speaking cousin-in-law means less than a more direct family relationship.
>>149520950
Not something you can comment on either, but we know that generally blood relations are more close. The fact that Goodman supported his son over Stan shows that.

>>149520810
>>149520781
To clarify this, it was Robbie Solomon (Stan's uncle) who got him the job, not Martin Goodman. Robbie was Martin's brother-in-law.
https://marvelsilverage.blogspot.com/2020/02/exposed-myths-of-marvels-silver-age.html
>"Martin and I had never had much to do with each other before I started working at his company"
From Stan Lee's autobiography. So you can take it with a grain of salt, but it seems likely enough to be true.

>>149520992
>but generally speaking
Holy shit who gives a fuck

>>149521165
People cared enough to make this image

>>149517245 (OP)
Ironic considering Ditko was screwed over by Stan in part because of their differing poltiics.
Steve being a very proud Randian objectivist, and Stan being a lefty new dealer.
If I had gotten screwed over by someone I considered a friend or valued coworker, for my political or religious beliefs, I'd have been a lot more vocal about it.

>>149521398
>Stan being a lefty new dealer.
But Stan's dialogue had the female characters being manexplained and being subject of sexism all of the time. Remove the bubbles and they suddenly become more energetic and competent.

>>149521292
Autism.

>>149521480
>80
Not the point and not written competently. Go watch Time Tunnel.
But from an Asian perspective, you loli racist, very well done!
This is another glorious victory for the Imperium!
Which for some reason you won't associate with Scar! Y'know,, with the spanish brain bear?

>>149521480
I don't fault Stan for that. He was a man of his time. It's possible to both believe in what you believe in progressive politics for government, while still being very conservative or chauvanist in your personal beliefs and art. Stan also said that he believed taxes shouldn't be higher than single digits.

>>149521398
I feel like people really exaggerated Ditko's politics and he wasn't as extreme as people think. And the disagreement over politics tend to be focused on a single point of how Spider-Man would respond to a protest.

>>149517334
The problem is, if you want to live from writing, you either sell out or not. There is rarely an inbewteen.

>>149521608
Yeah attributing their disputes and falling out to politics is incorrect

>>149521480
People have blindspots. Conway apologized when people writing letters told him he was being sexist.

>>149521608
Ditko let everyone know exactly what he thought in his Mr. A comics. Libs didn't like it at all.

>>149521700
I love Ditko’s work though!?

>>149521651
Ditko pretty directly said once he left because he figured he had no reason to stay if he wasn’t getting his due financially for plotting on top of art. I’m sure he had other disagreements but that was the main one.
I know Alex Toth similarly never took up Marvel work after he found the duties delineated in working in the Juggernaut debut story too messy.

>>149521608
The guy believed in privatizing the fire department. Something which frank miller mocked him for in one of his Batman comics.

>>149521398
I don't think Ditko thought of Lee as a friend. Ditko claims that the name "Steven Strange" was Lee's "little joke" that was directed at Ditko himself.

>>149518151
Amen brother, amen.

We call that jealousy- people who haven’t created anything that have impacted lives will always downplay and diminish those who have

>>149517245 (OP)
>Ditko never bitched
Have you never read any of his ‘zines? He never went to conventions to bitch sure, but he wasn’t happy about the credit he was due. Nigga quit the company over it the first time they screwed him? Kirby kept eating it for a decade

>>149521934
Eventually he got sick of being picked on. So he took his toys and left the playground.

>>149518151
I don't hate the people who made the comics. I like comics. People are just discussing the history, that's all.

>>149517586
I've seen a lot of letters like that and some creators having very little idea about the truth of them because they were written by the legal department and they just signed them.

Reminds me of how the cheques at DC (or was it marvel) for a time basically said, if you cash this thing you're declaring you don't have creative rights over the content.

>>149522054
Eh people aren't jealous they are just /co/ntratian and flip flop between
>Stan was great, the artists were idiots
and
>Stan was the devil, the artists were geniuses
When the answer lies it in the middle where a lot of stuff happened.

>>149522379
It's not in the middle, Stan was a piece of shit.

>>149522098
Yeah Ditko bitched a lot but I think kept an overall lower profile.

>>149520795
he's not wrong. cope, kike lover.

>>149522414
>Stan was a piece of shit
I never said he wasn't. I'm more saying that a lot of stuff happened and simple narratives ignore all the context and how things happened.

>>149522379
>When the answer lies it in the middle where a lot of stuff happened.
This is accurate. People seem to hate nuanced takes on things, especially on 4chan. And no, of course middle doesn't mean "exactly in the middle," in case someone wants to call it golden mean fallacy.
>>149522449
Exactly.

>>149522462
That said, I don't think Stan was a piece of shit.

>>149522379
It's a bit like the discussions over the recently deceased Jim Shooter (RIP).
>One narrative says he saved comics, built up Marvel to their peak, reigned in the creatives and helped get better pay/rights .
>Another narrative says he killed comics by creating the big event cycle, was a cunt to too many creatives, presided over a bunch of shit worth criticising.
His blog was always worth a read about some of this stuff from his point of view (the infamous Avengers annual, Dark Phoenix, plagiarism and the like).

The different between Jim and Stan is Jim would outright say the buck stopped with him and take responsibility for problems even when it wasn't necessarily his fault while Stan was a bit more slimy in some answers.

Kirby contributed the lion's share of the creative ideas, but people underrate the importance of Stan's writing and characterization. The dialogue and captions are a big part of the experience of reading a comic, and Stan's humor made Marvel comics fun.

Kirby contributed the lion's share of the creative ideas, but some people underrate the importance of Stan's writing and characterization. The dialogue and captions are a big part of the experience of reading a comic, and Stan's humor made Marvel comics more fun.

>>149522565
It is worth acknowledging that a decent proportion of people who read those comics as a kid didn't even read the dialogue/narration that much. I've heard a bunch of creatives and celebrities admit this when discussing OG Marvel. It was superfluous compared to the art. A lot of narration:
>Described what was happening when the art already showed that.
>Described the dialogue.
>Repeated information about powers etc.
Those celebrities and creatives mostly talk about being drawn to the art.

Also peak Marvel, peak in terms of sales, was literally when the "superstar artists" were headlining books in the late 80s/early 90s. The art was a big part of the draw.

>>149522481
Most people have good and bad qualities.
Kirby fuming about Lee throwing him to the wolves at the Distinguished Competition was funny though.

>>149518684
Confession: I honestly love Stan's screwball dialogue. Not the general quips he has almost all his heroes make or the dumb MAD rip-off comedy you get in Not Brand Echh, but his actual back and forth patter dialogue like in this skit. It's corny but comfy.

>>149522642
This is for: >>149522580
But the original post was deleted and reformatted.

>>149522642
I can't deny that, different people value different things. But for me, Spider-Man making wisecracks and The Thing saying "It's clobberin' time" are part of the soul.

>>149522580
>The dialogue and captions
are garbage.

>>149522697
Individuals value different things. I would say different periods of comics have had different audience draws with varying percentages of what the main draw was. Early Marvel did have a big artist draw which is undeniable in many ways in what people got out of those comics and what inspired them.

Now the average fan can name the writers more, a sort of purposeful decision post the Image guys leaving Marvel which still haunts business decisions to this day.

>>149522697
>The Thing saying "It's clobberin' time"
And you don;t think you're shallow and small brained for getting so swooned by a fucking catchphrase?

>>149522759
Nope. They're comic books man, lighten up. The catchphrases are fun.

>>149522736
It could always be worse. Ditko's collaboration with Lee worked so much better than his collaboration with Steve Skeates. Kirby's Fourth World comics didn't have anywhere near the mass appeal of the comics he made with Lee.

>>149522829
>Kirby's Fourth World comics didn't have anywhere near the mass appeal of the comics he made with Lee.
You do know how much DC messed Kirby around? They purposefully printed horrible letters in the letter page rather than the supportive ones which created a climate of feeling that it was disliked even when it did have a following.

>>149522829
>Kirby's Fourth World comics didn't have anywhere near the mass appeal of the comics he made with Lee
I do not believe you can use this as evidence of anything, since Lee books without those big artists never did well either. And part of the reason some people were turned off Kirby at the time is simply because time had passed on his style for many, compared to the more recent stuff coming up. And also this: >>149522851

>>149522851
Kirby fanboy Mark Evanier was in charge of the letter columns and it was a healthy mix of criticism and praise. All the titles were cancelled after a brief period of time because they just didn't sell all that well, Forever People and New Gods going first, Mr. Miracle lasting seven more issues than the others.

>>149522851
I remember hearing something like this happening but mostly at Marvel during his later years.
>Foley: More than once we’ve heard that Jack Kirby felt the letters pages in his ’70s Marvel books were stacked negatively against his work, with disparaging and critical comments being given greater voice than the positive, supportive ones. And there are certainly staffers from that period of time (Jim Shooter and Alan Kupperberg, for example, both interviewed online) who have publicly stated they felt Kirby was right in his suspicions. However, I must admit that, while I knew there were many negative and critical comments on those pages, I had never felt that they were overly so, or that the opinions printed there were entirely unfair.
>Shooter: Jack’s titles got plenty of positive mail, too, especially early on, but because the people putting together the lettercolumns then used a lot of negative letters, that had the effect of generating more negative letters. In those days, it was a very cool thing to see your letter in print. Show the readers that negative letters are likely to get printed and you’d get lots of them.
>I cannot imagine what the people putting the letter columns together were thinking. Were they trying to be “fair and balanced,” and show that some people were disappointed with what Jack was doing? Was it that they, themselves, were disappointed with what Jack was doing and weighted the lettercols to express their POV? Putting together a negative lettercol is stupid, amateurish and/or malicious.

>Jack Kirby: “The health of a comic book can be manipulated by the staff alone. You fill up a book with knock letters [negative criticisms in the letters pages]. The reader who picks up the book and reads all those knock letters knows that the book he’s reading… well, it’s not so hot. And if you do it consistently, it becomes ‘a bad book.’ I haven’t seen anything like a bad book anywhere. I’ve seen a lot of guys trying. I’ve seen a lot of guys who’ll never get the chance to develop. And you can’t develop with two or three issues. You’ve got to give a man a chance to stay in there—either take his beating or succeed. And comics have not done this today.
>“A guy will create a book, another will fill his book up with knock letters—he’s off in five months, or three months, and the other guy’s got his shot.” Until now Kirby has spoken in even tones. His voice quiet, firm. Now emotion breaks through. There is an anguished look in his eyes and a touch of bitterness in his voice as he says, “I see it as a serpent’s nest. And in a serpent’s nest, nothing can survive. Eventually all the snakes kill each other. Eventually they’ll also kill whatever generated them.”

>>149523127
>>149523150
https://accordingtokirby.wordpress.com/2020/06/15/knock-letters-some-context/

Blog post article.

>>149522943
>they just didn't sell all that well
DC claimed that but Jack and others said otherwise. And there has always been rumours that other things went on behind the scenes.
>But it was not because sales had fallen off. “They were in [DC’s] top 10, I can assure you,” Kirby says

>>149517604
I really love how ditko gets into depth considering what actually makes someone a creator

>>149517604
You can apply this to AI art as well

>>149523150
Who reads a comic starting with the letters page?

>>149523528
That's not what these saying, he's more saying that generating negative buzz begets negative buzz like what Shooter said in the post before it.

I mean it is proto online shit posting territory. How people come on /co/ to shit on something recent and people join in.

>>149523127
>>I cannot imagine what the people putting the letter columns together were thinking. Were they trying to be “fair and balanced,” and show that some people were disappointed with what Jack was doing? Was it that they, themselves, were disappointed with what Jack was doing and weighted the lettercols to express their POV? Putting together a negative lettercol is stupid, amateurish and/or malicious.
Surprised to see Shooter take this stance. He was no stranger to printing negative letters to stories he himself had written. A decent balance of positive and negative letters was the right call so you could have your victory lap but without coming across like a head-in-the-sand hugbox.

>>149523557
Pretty much like how people watch a movie then go online to see how they should feel about it

>>149522580
this. I re-read the first 100 issues of amazing occasionally, and while I love Ditko's art, I always remember Lee's writing more.

its just fun and quirky

>>149521517
if not for assholes like you, it wouldn't be necessary

>>149523603
I think there is a difference between a balanced letter page vs a negative one. And for Shooter, constructing a negative letter page himself and answering criticism head on was how he rolled. The point is some others didn't get that opportunity.

>>149521700
based. Ditko was right

>>149523722
The writing is fucktarded sometimes. I mostly remember the art.

>>149523722
I mean, most of the writing is very juvenile or unnecessary.

>>149518143
It's false, but it appears to have been repeatedly stated by Marvel as an "official story" for why Ditko left Spider-Man and left Marvel, preferring a fake story about creative differences with Stan rather than talk about the real reasons Ditko left, which were over pay, which would have been issues with Marvel's boss at the time, Martin Goodman, rather than issues with Stan.

>>149524285
Yeah if you go through those old issues it's clear they were setting something up with Norman. We saw him even before Harry was introduced. Why devote any panel time whatsoever to this adult man Peter didn't even meet until quite a few issues later?

>>149518130
There appears to be some debate over when exactly Stan started using the 'Marvel Method', and even when he did, Kirby or Ditko being able to produce an entire issue from a one line prompt didn't mean all the other artists could also do so. There's a tendency amongst fans to assume that just because Ditko eventually successfully got credit for plotting ASM that he'd always been doing it from the start, and that Kirby had always been doing the same for every book he worked on right from the start, to make arguments that Stan had no real creative input at all.

Nobody was really keeping day to day records of who was doing what, a lot of creative decisions would get made during conversations between Stan and the artists, again with no records of exactly which guy came up with which idea, and decades later fans keep having these pointless arguments about it all, largely influences by self-serving recollections of old guys, often old guys with self-admitted bad memories.

>>149521480
This issue seems to be more exaggerated than it actually was, all of the examples are from Kirby issues of FF and X-Men, while the same issues just don't seem to have happening with heroines in other books Stan was working on without Jack.

I don't know what the deal was, and if Stan was messing with Jack, but downplaying the heroines was mainly just Stan believing the male heroes were the draw, they were the characters that kids were paying to see, so it should be them doing stuff, more than the girls.

Stan would also write dialogue that changed the intent of scenes to make the hero look stronger, make it look like he wasn't taking a hit or getting beaten up, and it was largely done with the same reasoning, but nobody talks about that because "Stan wanted Spider-Man to look strong" can't be made into a controversial point to shame him with like "Stan made Sue and Jean look weak" did.

>>149524522
>Kirby had always been doing the same for every book he worked on right from the start, to make arguments that Stan had no real creative input at all.
Stan had input. All this stuff is somewhat speculative but there is reasons for it. The FF for example took some ideas from another book Kirby had done before. Precedent like that always gives credence to the speculation around the plotting and what percentage who was doing tends towards the artists. The problem is we have on one side regimented Stan Lee anecdotes and self aggrandisement that always places him at the centre of the decisions and creative decisions (aside from like two places, namely the Mysterio napkin anecdote and him plainly saying Jack made the Silver Surfer, those are like the other two real gaps in his stories where he allows others in.)

In one interview Stan himself boiled it down to he created the initial concept ergo that means he thinks he's the sole creator but Ditko did most of the rest, and if Ditko wants to believe that makes him a creator then he can believe what he wants.

And that to me is kind of the crux of the issue here, that Stan, editorial or the like could basically make a concept and the artist could essentially make the costumes, powers, casts, villains and a fair amount of the plot, but think because they had a concept they are a creator when a concept without form is nothing.

>>149524736
The Silver Surfer is for me the biggest fuck you around. Stan openly admits in his anecdote he found the Silver Surfer to be kooky and that is was 100% Jack.

Then later he writes the Silver Surfer series and the John Buscema art carries it hard. The Silver Surfer waxes lyrically every issue with the same complaint of being trapped on Earth, the writing is Stan at his most self indulgent, feeling it's deep.

Then it damages the Silver Surfer. He's meant to be completely alien, it gives credence to him learning and understanding humanity and wanting to save them. But now he's given a generic as they come back story of being from a quote standard world and wanting to protect Shalla Bal.

And I think that detachment of concept is really bad. From the true alien to just another generic love story.

>>149517245 (OP)
eh

>>149524868
Stan is a grade A hater.