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Resolving the Question of the Marvel Universe's Origins and Architecture. . . Once and For All (PART IV)
Last time pays for all:
CREATOR -- n. a person who creates.
CREATE -- n. 1.) bring into existence; make; or cause. 2.) originate.
-- The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary
The only questions remaining, out of our original six, are:
4.) If it was, in fact, Jack Kirby who both created and plotted said comics... then where do such non-Kirby characters such as (say) SPIDER-MAN fit into the scheme of things, creation-wise?
5.) How does the published historical record inform us, re: the contributions of Stan Lee, in this regard?
First: let us consider the following, with regards to the actual, published oeuvre of Stan Lee... and a choice sprinkling of commentary re: same, by some particularly perspicacious observers.
"You have to look at the body of Stan's career. At the point the so-called "Marvel Age" began with FANTASTIC FOUR #1, Stan had been in charge at Marvel for 20 years. He had total creative freedom to write whatever he wanted, really... and he'd been at it for TWO DECADES. He'd written zillions of stories before he got to FF #1. Have you ever heard anyone single any of them out as 'well-written'?"
-- Mark Evanier [emphasis mine] (25)
GROTH: "On all the monster stories [of the 1950's] it says 'Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.' What did he do to warrant his name being on them?"
KIRBY: "Nothing! Okay?"
GROTH: "Did he dialogue them?"
KIRBY: "No. I dialogued them. [...] I would write the dialogue on the back, or a description of what was going on. Then Stan Lee would hand them to some guy, and he would write in the dialogue."
-- Jack Kirby (26)
"I'd like to say something if I could. Jack created many characters before he even met Stan. He created almost all of the characters when he was associated with Stan, and -- after he left Stan -- he created many, many more characters. What has Stan created before he met Jack, and what has he created after Jack left?"
-- Roz Kirby [emphasis mine] (27)
"Stan, on the other hand, would give you very little. I remember in this particular sequence that I think had to do with Gwen Stacy, he told me: 'I'd like you to draw a character like Broderick Crawford as the villain.' But that was about it. So I put together what I could from the material we had done before. I mean, there's a kind of continuity that gives you at least a direction for the material, from what preceded it.
"I'd build it up and bring it in, and he'd take a look at it: 'Yeah, yeah, yeah... Oh, geez, I don't like this at all.' And although I didn't say it to him, I'd think in my mind: 'Well, why the f*** don't you write it yourself? You're getting paid for it!'
"But we all went through that. Including Jack [Kirby].
"Jack made up all those stories, and I'm positive he'd made up practically all the characters, with very few exceptions."
-- Gil Kane [emphasis mine] (28)
Again, from our highlight reel:
"He'd written zillions of stories before he got to FF #1. Have you ever heard anyone single any of them out as 'well-written'?"
"What has Stan created before he met Jack, and what has he created after Jack left?"
" 'Well, why the f*** don't you write it yourself? You're getting paid for it!'
"But we all went through that. Including Jack [Kirby]."
Indeed. And -- as the record furthermore reveals -- the legendary Gil Kane is, of course, quite correct.
ALL of the Marvel Comics artists were routinely pressed into doing "double-duty" as plotters and character generators.
"Who sez so," I hear you thunder, in righteous, towering indignation...?
Wellllllllllllll...
"Sometimes I was so busy I would say to Kirby or Ditko or Buscema or Gil Kane or Gene Colan or Don Heck or whoever it was, I'd say: 'Look, let's just bring back Dr. Doom, and he kidnaps Sue Storm, and, I dunno, the Fantastic Four rescues her at the end, and blah blah,' and he'd go off and draw it. When the artwork came back, there were five million things there that I'd never mentioned, because the artist put them in. They were the artists' own ideas."
-- Stan Lee [emphasis mine] (29)
"I don't plot SPIDER-MAN anymore. Steve Ditko, the artist, has been doing the stories. I guess I'll leave him alone until sales start to slip. Since Spidey got so popular, Ditko thinks he's the genius of the world. We were arguing so much over plot lines, I told him to start making up his own stories. [...] He just drops off the finished pages with notes in the margins, and I fill in the dialogue."
-- Stan Lee [emphasis mine] (30)
"And then you look at the Stan Lee books after Kirby left, and you see that, first of all, Stan gave up writing a lot of books. [...] "... there are several writers who worked for Marvel at the time who claim that they were hired to ghost-plot the books that Stan did with John Buscema, and some of the other artists who might not have been as clever at plotting as Kirby and Ditko were."
-- Mark Evanier [emphasis mine] (31)
That slightly liquid sound you're hearing is the frenzied ga-GULPing
of several dozen hardcore, take-no-prisoners "What about SPIDER-MAN?
What about DAREDEVIL?, etc." fans, attempting to peristalt their own frozen
lumps of argument. 
GROTH: "Ditko was also doing some of the best work of his life at that time."
KANE: "In fact he did one of the great jobs of comics, which was that story when Spider-Man is trapped under something, and the tempo of that story is, for comics, masterful. [...] And by that time, as I understand it, Ditko was doing all his own stories. He did not talk to Stan; they were not speaking for about eighteen months before he left the company. Since he worked until issue #36, he stopped talking to [Lee] at about issue #18. So he would outline all of these jobs and draw them and send them in. And Stan would [dialogue] without ever having said a word to Ditko."
-- Gil Kane [emphasis mine] (32)
Can I get an "Excelsior!" from the choir, please...?
Questions #4 and #5 were, respectively:
4.) If it was, in fact, Jack Kirby who both created and plotted said comics... then where do such non-Kirby characters such as (say) SPIDER-MAN fit into the scheme of things, creation-wise?
5.) How does the published historical record inform us, re: the contributions of Stan Lee, in this regard?
#4 has gone down, finally, in a red-orange blossom of flames... with none other than Stan Lee, his own self, having supplied the tailgunner ammo.
(In plain truth: the "What about SPIDER-MAN, etc." argument never did amount to overmuch in the way of honest, intelligent rebuttal. The Dick Ayers/Werener Roth/Don Heck/etc. illustrated Marvel comics of the day were simple, straightforward, one-two-three affairs, plotting-wise: (1) [Iron Man] Skirmishes With [the Melter]; (2) [The Enforcers] Get Away From [Daredevil]; (3) [Giant-Man] Tracks Down [Egghead] and Triumphs Over Death-Trap #473. It's not as if a child couldn't bloody orchestrate these things month in and month out, after all; and Colan, Heck and Company were -- at that point in their respective careers -- anything but children. I'm just sayin', is all.)
(Those non-Kirby, non-Ditko comics of the era were [and remain] memorable chiefly for their quirky, tongue-in-cheek dialogue and humor... which no one doubts was supplied by Stan Lee, of course. I'll state as much myself, in big, block lettering: STAN LEE DIALOGUED MANY OF THE SILVER AGE MARVEL COMICS. AND A DARNED EXEMPLARY JOB HE DID OF IT, TOO.)
(... but -- by his own admission -- he neither plotted the Kirby or Ditko comics, in the main; he did not fashion characters for the Kirby or Ditko comics, in the main; and -- often as not, when dealing with any/all of the other artists in the Marvel Comics stable -- "When the artwork came back, there were five million things there that I'd never mentioned, because the artist put them in. THEY WERE THE ARTISTS' OWN IDEAS.")
As for #5: Roz Kirby stated it as succinctly as is humanly possible, with all the pristine elegance of a quadratic equation:
"What has Stan created before he met Jack, and what has he created after Jack left?"
I'll take this one, Roz.
Before Kirby -- in a career spanning (as Mark Evanier reminds us) nearly two DECADES -- nothing. Nada. Zero. Zip. The Big Goose Egg.
After Kirby: the She-Hulk.
And that's it.
CREATE -- n. 1.) bring into existence; make; or cause. 2.) originate.
Jack Kirby brought into existence; made; caused; and originated, at various points along the way, most (if not ALL) of the pivotal Silver Age Marvel comics involving the Fantastic Four; the Incredible Hulk; Captain America; the X-Men; the Mighty Thor; the Black Panther; the Silver Surfer; the Inhumans; Nick Fury (both as a "Howling Commando," and an "Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.") Among other things.
This is simply beyond all rational argument or debate.
That's -- what? -- a good three-quarters of the truly significant
Silver Age Marvel Universe, right there...?
(Throw in Ditko's SPIDER-MAN and [in all likelihood] DOCTOR STRANGE...
and pretty much all you've got left, really, is Iron Man.
And Daredevil. And... well. Iron Man and Daredevil, anyway.)
I have nothing but the highest admiration and regard for what Stan Lee indisputably did bring to the party. The man had an uncanny ear for the niceties of speech and dialect; a ready and facile wit; and (lest we forget the importance of this) the ability to recognize top-notch talent... and the inherent canniness requisite to the successful promotion of same in the public sales arena.
These are, none of them, small or insignificant gifts.
Let no one mistake it (whether intentionally or otherwise): The "Marvel
Age of Comics" could NOT have occurred without Stan Lee.
His contributions -- as detailed above -- were invaluable ones.
And anyone attempting to rack up rhetorical "frequent flier points" on
the grounds that this author (ostensibly) wants to "trash" Stan Lee is
politely advised to go back and re-read the last two or three paragraphs.
And then to go back and re-read 'em a third time. Just in
case.
But: Jack Kirby says he wrote (i.e., created and plotted) the "keystone" Marvel titles.
Jack Kirby's contemporaries say that he wrote (i.e., created and plotted) the "keystone" Marvel titles.
Marvel Comics, Inc. -- in thuggishly attempting to blackmail Jack Kirby into stating otherwise -- implicitly admits that he wrote (i.e., created and plotted) the "keystone" Marvel titles.
... and, on more than one occasion (as we have seen), in the odd, unguarded moment: STAN LEE says that Jack Kirby wrote (i.e., created and plotted) the "keystone" Marvel titles.
Say good night, Gracie.
A whole heck of a lot of good and blameless people have grown up believing in what is (demonstrably) a myth, all of these years.
Myself included.
The hell of this whole thing is: it's such a sweet myth, overall -- the notion of Stan "The Man" and Jack "The King," working alongside one another in happy, humming harmony; with Stan doing all of the creative brainstorming behind a battered old typrewriter, and a placid, pliant Jack dutifully rendering each and every one of those four-color fever dreams, with nary a murmur or creative codicil -- that there is (and, doubtless, always will be) those who are loathe to surrender it.
Stan Lee is a charming, affable, and altogether personable man. He is -- for those of us who've grown up addicted to the chronicled canons of Benjammin J. Grimm; Prince T'Challa, of Wakanda; or the tragic, tormented Bruce Banner -- more than just a shill or huckster for some dopey old comics company. He's Good Old Uncle Stan: forevermore favoring us with a sly wink and a confident "Face Front, True Believers!"
You can't really profess to being all that shocked and startled, then, when folks get a mite... touchy about you pointing out that their uncle's endlessly entertaining roundelay of How I Won the War Single-Handed stories are -- in all likelihood; based upon the testimony of every other soldier stationed in the field -- NOT one-hundred-and-ten-percent in accordance with the verifiable and true.
To those of you reading these words, who might number themselves as being in that company... all I can offer you is this:
I come here, not to "bury" Stan Lee... but, rather, to (at long, long last) accord Jack Kirby his rightful measure of acclaim, in turn.
As someone (and it doesn't really matter whom) once wrote: "With great power... comes great responsibility."
To coin a phrase: " 'Nuff Said."
... and: God Save the King. )))
FOOTNOTES
1.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #112; page 78 (11/86)
2.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #100; page 13 (7/85)
3.) ibid
4.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #100; page 14 (7/85)
5.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #101; page 7 (8/85)
6.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #101; page 8 (8/85)
7.) ibid
8.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #105; page 7 (2/86)
9.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #104; page 11 (1/86)
10.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #112; pages 68 and 69 (11/86)
11.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #105; page 66 (2/86)
12.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #105; page 55 (2/86)
13.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #111; page 12 (9/86)
14.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #115; page 96 (4/87)
15.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #111; page 12 (9/86)
16.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #112; pages 78 and 79 (11/86)
17.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #105; page 69 (2/86)
18.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #167; page 11 (4/94)
19.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #167; page 16 (4/94)
20.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #112; page 77 (11/86)
21.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #110; pages 28 and 29 (8/86)
22.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #105; pages 60 and 61 (2/86)
23.) SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS
24.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #181; page 71 (10/95)
25.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #112; page 83 (10/86)
26.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #134; page 80 (2/90)
27.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #134; page 91 (2/90)
28.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #186; page 95 (4/96)
29.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #111; page 13 (9/86)
30.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #181; page 70 (10/95)
31.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #112; pages 83 and 84 (10/86)
32.) THE COMICS JOURNAL #186; page 97 (4/96)
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