And again, a lot of people seem deeply invested in calling Stan Lee out, but these same people are nowhere to be found when more serious and indisputable breaches of what we now call creators’ rights are contemporaneous with whatever Lee’s being blasted for this time.

Quite late, as I’m working my way through the archive… I’ve mostly tried to not get into old stuff, but this one needs a response.

Omar, has it occurred to you that a lot of people might be deeply invested in 1960s Marvel, but relatively unfamiliar or unconcerned with 1960s (or even pre-Crisis) DC material? That in and of itself would explain the seemingly unfair dichotomy you’re so perturbed with.

I just thought it was interesting that another set of cards that came out in 1993, I think ,did the same thing but with relatively less known characters and that was the first appearance of David Mack’s Kabuki, who is stil around today.

- Someone said they’d never heard a bad word about Kirby. Check Dick Ayers’ autobiography. Dick was inking Jack’s newspaper strip, and one day Kirby dropped by to pick up or drop off some art. Dick was working on Western character designs. He told Kirby that Stan Lee had decided to revive the “Rawhide Kid” title and had asked Dick to draw it. As it happened, Kirby was on his way to the Marvel office from Ayers’ studio. A day or two later, Dick got a call from Stan saying that he’d decided to do Rawhide Kid with Kirby, and have Dick just ink it. Dick didn’t appreciate Kirby taking the job from him.

- That aforementioned comic strip was the cause of a lawsuit which Jack lost and which blackballed him from DC until 1970. In a nutshell, Kirby signed a contract and then didn’t honor the provisions of the contract. Which is dumb on the face of it, and even dumber when the person you’re refusing to pay is a senior editor at DC, who was his major employer at the time.

- the “Spiderman” proposal that Jack brought to Stan had very strong similarities to The Fly, which Simon & Kirby had created for Archie Comics in 1959 (based, like Spiderman, on the “Silver Spider” proposal that Harvey had rejected years earlier). I think that fact played a role in Stan’s rejection of the proposal.

Look Familiar?
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It might if I could login to your private account. That’s what the link wants me to do.

Stan Lee may hog credit at times (not always), and he may not have been a great boss, but he could write dialogue (not necessarily realistically, but always with style.) Kirby and Ditko both sucked at dialogue.
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Have you read New Gods? The dialogue is far more poetic and masterfully applied than the majority of Lee’s Marvel work. The way he can change perceptions of characters within single pages and actions still amazes me.

How do you figure Kirby “created” Spider-Man? Stan had the idea, went to Kirby, didn’t like Kirby’s design, then went to Ditko who came-up with a design that was completely different from Kirby’s.
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Stan’s whole “I saw a Fly walking up a wall” story was total bullshit, he admitted himself once that it was fabricated because, frankly, it makes for a good story. Spider-man was basically a hashing together of old Simon/Kirby pitches, aternatingly called the Silver Spider or Spiderman (no hyphen)

Have a look at this piece: http://s377.photobucket.com/albums/oo216/lucatavan/?action=view&current=Kirby_Spidey_originaljpg.jpg

Look Familiar?

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y220/ManofTheAtom/cblr.jpg

Well guess what? Comics wouldn’t be the same today if it weren’t for Stan Lee’s contributions to the medium. Put that in you’re haterade and drink it.

In any interview with him about the movies, he always corrects whoever asks him about how he created this character or that by bringing up the artist involved.

Alter-Ego reprinted a Lee interview from the late 60′s that had Stan going on and on about Kirby and Ditkos, and Heck and Liebers, contributions to the Marvel universe.

When was it that Stan took sole credit?

I would really like to see you do a column that clears up a debate I have been having with other fans about whether or not Bishop (of the X-Men) was indeed African American up until Claremont retconned him into being Indigenous Australian (Aborigine). I would like to know that after Portacio’s original idea to make Bishop Filipino was rejected and Marvel told him to make Bishop Black, did they mean African American black or Indigenous Australian black? I also would like to know if Claremont intended Bishop to be half AA and half IA when he retconned his nationality and race?

“just as Stan didn’t force Jack out, but tried to pressure him into a contract that would demand more work for less money while Stan was hogging all the accolades.” Source?

I agree with much of what Omar had to say. The argument isn’t that Stan Lee was a saint, but that he was a decent man for his time, and an important creator. On the other hand, you wouldn’t have so many people up in arms if Stan Lee didn’t remain such a public figure. On the rare instances Mort Weisinger’s name comes up, it’s vilified, but he’s not appearing from beyond the grave in “Superman Returns,” either. Personally, I think Stan was just smart enough to cut the best deal as a company man, where Kirby was a great idea man, but lousy at scripting and hustling. He was an object lesson that if you’re going to work freelance, take some business classes, because the pure “artiste” isn’t exactly known for securing bank. Same thing still happens to recording artists who should damned well know better by now. Finally, I’d say Stan Lee was the more important figure in Spider-Man’s success, but everything good about Dr. Strange came from Ditko (and the bad was stolen by Stan from Lee Falk besides.)

Oh, I’ll add that Gardner Fox never did much for me. Super-teams would have happened without him, and I hated how his formatting of JSA stunted team dynamics in comics for years through imitation of its inevitable success. I wish Sekowsky had written his own gonzo stories for JLofA, since Fox’s scripts are to this day a chore for me to read.

The Art Thibert stole Jim Lee’s style joke was great. So that’s why he can’t hit the broad side of a schedule!

As a kid, I grew up reading Stan’s Fireside books where he repeatedly makes claims about creating characters more or less on his own… and reading comics that all started with an opening page saying “Stan Lee Presents.” The clear impression was that Marvel was more or less Stan’s creation. It was an impression shared by many in the press and even by Marvel’s new owners when it got sold in the ’70s. Stan often didn’t outright lie but let people draw their own conclusions which he would not dissuade… just as Stan didn’t force Jack out, but tried to pressure him into a contract that would demand more work for less money while Stan was hogging all the accolades.

Many of the Marvel artists of this period have bitched that the “Marvel style” championed by Stan (loose story conference, art gets drawn, panels get dialogued) often forced the artists to handle the lion’s share of the actual non-dialogue “writing” — major plotting, devising characters, etc.

This is not to villainize Stan — without Stan’s unique dialogue, his penchant for marketing and promotion, and his relentless energy, Marvel would never have gotten anywhere. Stan was obviously a phenomenally talented collaborator; but as a sole creative force? Not so much. Just look at the track record: In collaboration with others, notably Joe Simon, Jack created characters like Captain America, Fighting American, the Newsboy Legion, and all-new genres of comics (he and Simon were pioneers in the Romance genre). Post-Marvel, Jack went on to create the New Gods, the Demon, Omac, Kamandi, the Eternals, Machine Man and other titles that inspired a new generation of fans. On his own, Ditko created the Question, Mr. A and the new Blue Beetle — quirky creations but ones that nonetheless made a lasting impression. Stan went onto create… what, She-Hulk and Stripperella?

That special Marvel magic owes a lot to Stan, but his legacy will always be tainted by the way he treated Kirby, in particular, while he leveraged his own advantaged position for greater fame and money.