Comments on: Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #113

By: Harry Manback

Harry Manback — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 03:07:07 +0000

Oh! Haha, makes sense, I suppose. I’ll not talk any more ill of him, as he can’t come defend himself and I don’t think it’d be fair; I will say, however, that I like the way you do things around here, Brian.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 03:00:12 +0000

That’s exactly why Ted Watson no longer comments here.

By: Harry Manback

Harry Manback — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:36:55 +0000

I must say, as someone who is currently reading through the back-archives in chronological order, as well as generally looking through the comments to each thread, Ted Watson certainly has, while perhaps not anger issues, some etiquette and attitude issues. He often tends to post in a very smug manner, and when information he posts is refuted, he rarely simply acknowledges his mistake. He also doesn’t seem to concern himself with being affable to other people in these commenting threads, unless they are on his side of the argument. I certainly don’t mean this as an attack, rather, as a simple statement of how you come off, from someone well-removed from the argument; and, as I’m not the first to mention such a notion through multiple threads, perhaps a subjective look at his own internet personality will bring to light that, while it certainly is an important part of many of our lives, it really is just a discussion about comics, and perhaps should be approached in a less serious manner?

By: Michael Koren

Michael Koren — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:56:54 +0000

The biggest fallacy of the Kirby DC era was that Jack asked that Vince Colletta no longer ink his books. Colletta was pretty much calling his own shots at DC and inking Kirby became less important to him than catching all the deadline bound books so they wouldnt miss the press runs. His attention to the company’s welfare resulted in his receiving the art director position shortly thereafter.

There are writers like Mark Evanier and Roy Thomas who have written that Kirby demanded Mike Royer as his inker but the true story was that Colletta decided to pass on future Kirby penciled books himself. It is a well-known fact that Jack’s layouts left much to be desired during the latter part of his career.

By: Greg Orzech

Greg Orzech — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:36:27 +0000

There may already be definitive information on this, but if not, I’d like to see this one checked out:

Urban Legend: The Avengers was created as a response to the Justice League.

By: Jukka Laine

Jukka Laine — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 18:21:46 +0000

Map from The New Adventures of Superboy # 22 (1981):
http://www.kvaak.fi/keskustelu/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5028.0;id=2593

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:53:27 +0000

Rural Juror: You certainly didn’t seem to be trying to agree with me back then.

By: Apodaca

Apodaca — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 23:22:19 +0000

Wow. I missed a pretty hilarious freak-out.

By: The Rural Juror

The Rural Juror — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:38:19 +0000

I looked over my Comic Readers and Amazing World of DC Comics from the era. Here is the timeline:

April 1975 – Gerry Conway hired as writer-editor [from TCR]

May 1975 – Jack Kirby quits DC and begins to work at Marvel. He leaves behind 8 drawn (some not scripted) issues of Kamandi (#33-40). [from TCR]

January 1976 – Jenette Kahn takes over at DC. [from TCR]

August 1976 – DC creates the position of Story Editor in an editorial realignment. [AWODCC...may have been reported there a month or two after the fact]

End of 1976/beginning of 1977 – last writer-editor work at DC during the 70s appears, work that had probably been begun just prior to the editorial realignment just mentioned.

So the facts certainly support the assertion that shortly (a year or a little more than a year) after Kirby left, DC instituted a new policy which forbid writer-editors. This policy was instituted by Jenette Kahn, who may have instituted this policy or been encouraged to institute this policy because of DC’s experience with Jack Kirby.

I sorry you took what I said to be a refutation of what you said. That was not my intention. I was just trying to add some more information into the mix.

We all good now?

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:15:31 +0000

Rural Juror: What I meant was that each was an instance of someone being both editor and writer on the same comic, not that all were on the same comic. As you specified three different titles and I repeated all three of them, you can’t sanely believe I meant what you are now claiming I did. No way! *I* stand by the GCD’s credits that Conway was not both writing and editing KAMANDI by late ’76 issues and the last O’Neil/DRAGON issue you cited was an isolated incident. Remember, I said that the rule came in a little while AFTER Kirby left, so these things don’t contradict my statement one little bit. While I don’t entertain, and did not mean to imply (though rereading myself I can certainly see how it looks that way and humbly apologize for it) serious doubts about the Boltinoff pseudonym (and repeat the suggestion that it was probably a way around the rule), with all due respects to the dead, trusting Jerry Bails is no option for me. His foreword to GOLDEN AGE SPECTRE ARCHIVES, VOL. 1 is a pile of rubbish, and a fair amount (but by no means anywhere close to all, to be fair to the man) of his “detective work” on ALL-STAR COMICS & the JSA, as described by Roy Thomas in his ALL-STAR COMPANION, is blatantly faulty. To give one (and as I recall, the most blatant) example of the latter, there was correspondence between Bails and Gardner Fox in the ’60s in which the fan surprised the veteran writer with his having correctly deduced that several stories near the end of Fox’s run were published well out of order (see? I said nowhere near all was faulty). The writer in turn surprised Bails by denying having written some published stories and giving titles of others he did write that never saw print. Bails eventually postulated to Thomas that #28′s “Paintings that Walked the Earth” was actually a retitling of what Fox had listed as an unused story. The problem with this is that Fox did indeed claim “Paintings…” as his own work as well (Thomas photographically reproduced the actual correspondence, so none of THIS is open to debate), and since his records, according to Roy’s text, were primarily financial, the only way Bails’ theory could be right was if Gardner collected two fees for the same piece of work and didn’t remember that was what had happened! Given the penny–pinching attitude the same book attributed to DC’s bosses of the day, I find it unlikely to have happened, and can’t believe at all that Fox wouldn’t have remembered it less than two decades later if it had. And these implications of Fox saying he wrote “both stories” jumped out at me big time the first time I read the COMPANION. Given the mistakes Mike Friedrich made in an interview Thomas conducted and transcribed in that same book, and the contrary facts Roy presented elsewhere in the volume and therefore was well aware of, yet didn’t make so much as a footnote or parenthetical aside at the interview to make sure his readers weren’t misled by Friedrich’s faulty memories (I figure he put his friendship with Mike ahead of being accurately informative to his readers), it is very possible Thomas did see the holes in Bails’ work and similarly declined to point them out. The point here is that I can’t, and no one should, trust Bails.

MarkAndrew: You postulate that someone might be deliberately “trying to push [my] buttons…and make [me] freak out.” Anybody who would do a thing like that should have his or her posting privileges rescinded. So don’t expect me to let a message saying I’m wrong or otherwise out of line, accomplished by misrepresenting what I said or what they previously said or what the objective data are, stand unchallenged on THOSE grounds. “If commenting here isn’t fun for you, then leave.” THAT is fun; it’s defending my information, my logic, and myself against unmitigated bullshit from people who prefer to stand by their sacred cows than deal with the reality of the situation under discussion that isn’t. But if I leave, “the terrorists win!” (just a figure of speech, of course, but surely you understand my point).

By: MarkAndrew

MarkAndrew — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 21:34:16 +0000

Ted Watson:

Here’s the image you are projecting. This vaguely paranoid dude who is easily driven to anger, and, with minimal prodding, can be driven to throw a temper tantrum.

And watching people throw temper tantrums is inherently interesting.

If you want people to get off your back, the absolute WORST thing you can do is act like you’ve been acting.

I am not seeing a grand conspiracy to make you angry. You’re argued with a couple different people in a couple different posts. They have a different opinion then you. It happens. Who cares? Assume that an intelligent reader can figure out who’s opinion is more in line with the actual facts, and move on.

And If someone IS trying to push your buttons they’ll say. “MAN! I TOTALLY got a reaction! This is AWESOME! Look at this guy freak Out! Let’s see what other buttons I can push to make this guy freak out some more!”

If commenting here isn’t fun for you, then leave. If it IS more enjoyable than aggravating then take a couple deep breaths and stop complaining about persecution. You’re either paranoid or giving the people who are against you exactly what they want. Either of these attitudes hurt your credibility.

By: The Rural Juror

The Rural Juror — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:39:57 +0000

Wow, Ted, you’ve got a lot of anger about something going on. You seem to be assuming the worst and attacking me personally as hard as you can. I’m just presenting interesting facts for consideration.

You said: What you did was cite what you claimed to be a few instances of people working as editor/writer on the same, mid-70s published, DC comic, and that is ALL you said.

No, I didn’t. I didn’t talk about the same DC comic, but three DIFFERENT DC comics, across the twelve months (give or take) after Kirby left DC. In my follow-up I provided examples from two more comics (Unexpected and DC Special).

In my follow-up I provided a link to Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who. You can confirm Wesley Marsh is Murry Boltinoff there. I think you can trust the father of comics fandom on that.

I supported all the things I said with links to reputable sites. Gerry Conway was writer-editor on Kamandi after Kirby left DC and Denny O’Neil was writer-editor on Richard Dragon and Murray Boltinoff was writer-editor as well for quite a while after Kirby left DC. I would suspect that these three (at least) may have had contracts that stipulated writer-editor status that simply hadn’t expired when the new rule came in. Maybe. I don’t know, and can’t say

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:09:09 +0000

Rural Juror: “All I did was point out that the writer-editor existed for about a year at DC after Kirby’s final work appeared there.”

That’s a lie. I defy you to point out where you said any such thing. What you did was cite what you claimed to be a few instances of people working as editor/writer on the same, mid-70s published, DC comic, and that is ALL you said. Given the entire context, the only sane interpretation is that this was supposed to somehow contradict my argument about the “no editor–writer” rule & Kirby’s leaving the company (I concede that you didn’t come right out and SAY that I was wrong, but BFD!). You’re “…the no writer–editor rule, if it existed…” does nothing but prove that you don’t know enough about the period to be taking part in a discussion of it. Check out CBUL #48, the original discussion of Kirby’s departure, and you’ll se that no less than Mark Evanier stipulates to its existence.

I postulated on the original board that “Kirby was far ahead on KAMANDI when he left DC” and got castigated by the aforementioned “C. Elam” for it. I’d say “Thanks for the corroboration” but I’ve already pointed out that you’ve revealed a significant ignorance of the period, so I can’t take your word for it.

The “redrawn Superman heads thing” was about the criticism I got there for not having read the comics under discussion before commenting on them. I had qualified my statement there to indicate that it was an educated presumption making that shot less than entirely justified, but here you stated as flat facts things I was easily able to disprove. I point out that Boltinoff’s pseudonym, if it was such, was used probably because of the rule. As for RICHARD DRAGON, look closely, and you’ll see that the editing and/or writing credits on that series had been changing almost every issue for several in a row at that point, and would continue to do so for awhile, so this was an isolated incident just slipped by. I repeat (albeit rephrased and expanded somewhat), I am sick and tired of people posting unsupportable crap to contradict what I’ve posted, and also of them misrepresenting what they or I had previously said and flatly ignoring my most telling points (which is not to say that ALL of these happened this time; I’m getting general here, I admit) to “defend” themselves against my refutation of said crap.

By: The Rural Juror

The Rural Juror — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 02:59:00 +0000

I don’t know what the whole Superman heads thig has to do with what I said.

Murray Boltinoff wrote under the pseudonym Wesley March (verify this at Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who http://www.bailsprojects.com/(S(3ocq0355ylopy4va1xihetfi))/whoswho.aspx), which you can find in Boltinoff-edited comics into 1977 http://www.comics.org/search.lasso?type=writer&query=wesley+marsh&sort=alpha&Submit=Search

Denny O’Neil’s last writer-edited issue of Richard Dragon is actually #13 (cover dated January-February 1977) http://www.comics.org/details.lasso?id=30636

Kirby was far ahead on Kamandi when he left DC. His first work back at Marvel actually appeared before his last Kamandi.

So it looks to me that the no writer-editor rule, if it existed, may have been instituted by Jenette Kahn, who came to DC in late 1976, but who didn’t deal with Jack Kirby in the mid-70s.

You’ll also notice that nowhere in my original post did I say you were wrong. All I did was point out that the writer-editor existed for about a year at DC after Kirby’s final work appeared there.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 23:13:45 +0000

The Superman radio show probably streamlined the backstory to reduce the number of voice actors – and the number of characters the listener had to keep straight by voice alone.

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:32:17 +0000

Concerning The Rural Juror’s credits contradicting me, I forgot to admit to one other error in my original inquiry, that those two policies themselves were the cause of Kirby’s departure. As I said in post #14, they “WERE put in place shortly after [Jack's] departure,” and according to the GCD, the last issue of KAMANDI with Kirby interiors was February 1976, and as of the September ’76 issue, Denny O’Neil was writing while Conway continued to edit. RICHARD DRAGON’s August-September ’76 issue had Conway editing and David Kraft writing. THE WITCHING HOUR? The only writing credits Boltinoff is given there are two letter columns—one in 1973, the other in 1978, and which obviously don’t count to this point anyway—and a one page story in September ’78, with a question mark indicating that it is actually uncredited and they aren’t certain HE wrote it, which would explain how it got past that prohibition, IF he indeed wrote it. When I suggested on the message board for the aforementioned CBUL about Kirby’s Superman faces being redrawn that there probably weren’t too many of them since the series under discussion was JIMMY OLSEN, somebody pointed out that the Man of Steel got a great deal of on-panel exposure during Jack’s run. He then said I should read the stories before I comment on them, as if I hadn’t prefaced my comment with , “I bet…,” indicating it was educated speculation (admittedly, I could have checked the GCD then, too, and found Supes in every Kirby issue’s “character appearances” list—except for his last, which doesn’t have one, but the index notes the redrawn faces, so he IS there, too—even getting top billing on several instances). YOU made no such qualifying remark, and are therefore much more deserving of THAT criticism than I was. I am getting sick and tired of people posting alleged but actually non-existent “facts” on these boards to say I’m wrong.

By: Ted Watson

Ted Watson — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 18:43:46 +0000

I meant my “You’ll never convince me otherwise” closing as an acknowledgement of the earlier piece. That was originally posted at the previous web address, and the message board discussion there no longer exists. The item started from an inquiry on my part, in which I wrongly suggested that those policy changes were made to make Jack leave, which was absurd; I don’t at all believe DC wanted him out, just under control, my bad. I pointed out that Evanier’s response ignored Kirby’s fairly autonomous status, which I had expressly included as a major factor. Several folks here have since acknowledged that this was his situation, if unwittingly corroborating me, on the “Jack’s Superman faces got redrawn” installment’s board, CBUL #105. This, as I said back then, lay Kirby’s commercially failing products all the more clearly at HIS feet, and in turn renders much of what Evanier said in his denial of any relationship between Jack’s departure and the new policies invalid. Another poster, C. Elam, apparently took offense at the very idea of the word “failure” being attached to any part of Kirby’s comics career, and engaged in a series of distortions and illogics, and in his final posting there one outright lie, that were obvious to anyone reading that board with a significant degree of intelligence and objectivity; he even submitted Jack’s presumably-editorially-rejected “pilots” that were thrown away in DC’s short-lived anthology, 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL, as if they were somehow evidence Kirby WASN’T producing numerous commercially failing comics for that company. Hence, my standing by the position in post #14, correcting the one error conceded to above.

By: Darren J Hudak

Darren J Hudak — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:57:27 +0000

Or was Smallville just one of those cities that never got assigned a state?

In the early days Smallville was in the same state that Metropolis was in, if Metropolis was NY then Smallville was upstate NY. There were many Superboy comics where Clark’s class took a bus trip to Metropolis, (sometimes to visit the Daily Planet). When it was decided the Smallville was in Kanas, (in the first Movie), the two cites were put in different states, (becasue even though it was never stated that Metropolis was really NYC, many of the editors, writers and artist treated it like it was), and the Superboy stories with class trips to the Daily Planet just went away.

Smalleville the show put MEtropolis back in the same state as Smallville, or at least within driving distance. Unfortunatly that state is still Kanas which really doesn’t work. (for me, anyway) but there you go.

By: Harry Mendryk

Harry Mendryk — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:14:39 +0000

Who can argue with Joe Simon being the greatest Simon and Kirby expert? I for one hope he retains that position form many years to come.

Seriously I am only one of a number of people who study the Simon and Kirby period. But if you are going to seek information about Jack’s final DC period you simply cannot go to a better source then Mark Evanier.

By: James

James — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 21:55:57 +0000

“Itâ€™s funny, in the Fleischer Superman cartoons from the 40â€™s (which are fun and incredibly animated, but very campy) his origin had him landing on Earth as a child and then we were given a quick line about him growing up in an orphanage, and then on to an adult at the Daily Planet!”

Actually, this was from an early version of the comic strip that Siegal and Shuster shopped around to various publishers. Another version had him found by a passing (lone) motorist, taken to an orphanage, and adopted by the Kents, who never knew why he was different.