How much credit do Stan Lee and Jack Kirby deserve for X-Men?

Chris Claremont and John Byrne >>>>>>>>>>>> Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

It's not that "you can't really say they aren't the creators", you just can't say that, at all. Kinky Grandpa might have been the one that made them successful, and you can say that with no worries, he's the greatest to handle them and shall remain so, but Kirby and Lee are the reason they exist and they deserve the rightful credit for it.

[QUOTE=gurkle;4677023]The creator credit (which finally got added to all the Lee/Kirby creations after Disney settled with the Kirby estate) is just that, a credit. It's like a TV series, where the person who wrote the pilot gets creator credit forever even if they never had anything to do with the show in all the episodes that followed. Lee and Kirby were more important than that, because so many concepts and characters from the early issues have remained a vital part of the franchise, but it is true that others improved on their run, and it's not considered the benchmark for the entire series like the Kirby "Fantastic Four" or the Ditko "Spider-Man." So I'd say they deserve credit for creating the series and others (Thomas, Adams, Wein, Claremont, Cockrum, Byrne, etc.) deserve credit for making it good.

[IMG]https://ifanboy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Uncanny-X-Men_98_GM.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]

I think many have similar feelings in regards to all of Stan and Jack’s runs from the 60s. I’m sure quite a few deem to be the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man’s 80s stories to be better overall than Stan and Jack’s from the 60s too. No disrespect of course, but really though, when comparing the 60s stories to the ones from the 80s across various series, there’s definitely quite a few noticeable differences in terms of overall direction.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/BXCZ99K.jpg[/img]

they deserve alot more than they are actually ever given

This series was born because of their contribution, which is indelible. But the reason the series has survived and succeeded so far has little to do with them.

'Original Creators' maybe other cases have a profound connotation, but for X-Men the meaning of this word is just literally...

I am certainly grateful to them, but not as much as I am to other creators like CC and JB...

Depends on what you want to 'credit' them for.

For having the X-Men in the first place? Having the concept of mutants in the Marvel Universe? They deserve [I]all[/I] the credit for that because they actually created them. No one else may or would have.

For defining the X-Men as we know them today? Probably not, but it still sort of depends. Claremont to my knowledge wrote some of the most iconic X-Men stories ever and the tone, visuals and storytelling techniques he employed have defined the X-Men since he started and all through to the modern era. He (alongside the artists and following writers that kept this up) deserve that credit. But again, he would have probably had no X-Men if Lee and Kirby hadn't created them.

So to answer the question in any way possible: Lee and Kirby deserve [I]all[/I] for the X-Men and their creation. What makes them iconic today and what has largely defined them should be shared between them and the writers and artists that made this possible.

I suppose also worth mentioning, Neal Adams talking about being assigned to X-Men in around 1969:

"[Stan Lee] just said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "Well, what's your worst-selling title?" and he says, "X-Men. We're going to cancel in two issues." "Right," I said, "I'd like to do X-Men." When Stan asks me why, I say, "Because if you're going to cancel it in two issues, you're probably not going to pay much attention to it and I can pretty much do what I want." "Fine," he says, "you do X-Men, but after we cancel it, you have to an important book like Avengers." - DeFalco, Tom. Comic Creators on X-Men. London: Titan Books, 2006. p45.

And an interesting take in regards to how Neal Adams also deserves credit for basically helping keep people interested in the X-Men regardless of cancellation:

“The impact of Neal Adams' presence can't be overstated. It could be argued that the X-Men wouldn't exist today if not for four men; Neal Adams is one of them. X-Men, at this point never one of Marvel's big sellers, was limping towards cancellation. While the work Adams does alongside Roy Thomas, beginning here, won't save the title from ceasing to publish original stories in ten-issues time, it is credited with increasing sales enough to keep Marvel from canceling it outright. More importantly, the Thomas/Adams run will help make a cult hit out of its final days as they craft original riffs on classic X-Men tropes that will inspire later creators. Like the original Star Trek, this run, while lacking commercial success, will cultivate a small-but-devoted fan base, one that will help keep the characters alive until the next generation debuts.

Adams' work is both groundbreaking and trendsetting. It's not just that he does things few artists at the time are doing, but that what he does becomes the industry standard. Compared to the house styles of the time, his art (like Steranko's before him, and similarly incorporating influences from the world of commercial illustration) is far more detailed and realistic with unique and innovative panel layouts. Figures within panels are larger, backgrounds are more nuanced. Even the characters on the cover are breaking the fourth wall and interacting with the logo.

While it's easy to see how his art is different from what came before, it's hard to appreciate how innovative it is, because so much of modern comic book art is built on the work of Neal Adams. But what he's doing at this point in his career, like using the whole page simply because he can or thinking about how the layout of the page contributes to the story, will have such an impact both on fellow artists and sales of comics that future artists will incorporate his innovations into their own work while the comic book companies are happy to let them. These are things most every artist nowadays does and thinks about. It's not that Neal Adams did them first, it's that after he did them, everyone else started doing them too.“ - [url]https://www.therealgentlemenofleisure.com/2010/10/x-amining-x-men-56.html?m=1[/url]

Stan Lee stopped writing comics a long time ago. I remember when I used to get this tingle reading a marvel comics that started with[I] Stan Lee presents the uncanny x-men [/I] though it was obvious he never probably ever read the issue and he is still getting credit. Stan Lee had stopped having any creative input for x-men since the 70s.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created them so yes they deserve credit.
Roy Thomas and Neal Adams kept the O5 alive as long as possible.
Chris Claremont and John Byrne created most of the characters/elements the series is known for.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Sentinels, Magneto, Mimic and the Brotherhood of Mutants .

They also created the original mutants - Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, iceman, Angel.

So that's a big chunk of the X-Men there.


In terms of writing, Lee's take on the characters hasn't endured. In terms of art, the designs of Magneto, the Sentinels and others have endured to this day, so Kirby gets huge props. The O5 X-Men wear matching uniforms and that's generally been the look of the X-Men in the movies and in Grant Morrison's run and the Ultimate X-Men run and the X-Men Evolution cartoon. So that's an aesthetic that has endured more than the all-new all-different look of the X-Men from Claremont/Byrne/Cockrum/Wein.

The X-Men are the bastard ugly ducklings of the Lee-Kirby run and it found adopted parents under Claremont and Wein and others, but it still resembles its biological parents a fair deal.

For me 80% of the credit goes to Claremont and 20% to Lee and Kirby. Without him i dont think the second genesis cast would succeed and the x-men would be cancelled again. And when i think about x-men, i think the iconic Claremont stories or Morisson Whedon Lobdel Remender etc based on Claremont stories. I dont give Len Wein credit at all!

Thank God the Avengers weren't that good when Claremont joined so the only competition was Fantastic Four :p

[QUOTE=Revolutionary_Jack;4693284]Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Sentinels, Magneto, Mimic and the Brotherhood of Mutants .

They also created the original mutants - Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, iceman, Angel.

So that's a big chunk of the X-Men there.


In terms of writing, Lee's take on the characters hasn't endured. In terms of art, the designs of Magneto, the Sentinels and others have endured to this day, so Kirby gets huge props. The O5 X-Men wear matching uniforms and that's generally been the look of the X-Men in the movies and in Grant Morrison's run and the Ultimate X-Men run and the X-Men Evolution cartoon. So that's an aesthetic that has endured more than the all-new all-different look of the X-Men from Claremont/Byrne/Cockrum/Wein.

The X-Men are the bastard ugly ducklings of the Lee-Kirby run and it found adopted parents under Claremont and Wein and others, but it still resembles its biological parents a fair deal.[/QUOTE]

Don't forget the Juggernaut!

But yeah, good point. Honestly, as I said before, of all the classic Marvel properties it seems Stan and Jack are the least associated with the X-Men versus their other works that defined the MU. They had the basic idea down, it was just expanded upon by everyone else. They clearly didn't think much of it, as both left relatively early on in the run, after Issue #19 I think. Compare this to Stan and Jack's historic run on the Fantastic Four, which lasted a whole decade and over 100 issues, and you can see how they thought of the titles. X-Men was the forgettable throwaway, Fantastic Four was the crown jewel.

Stan had this to say about how X-Men grew:

"Who knew they'd multiply the way they did! I might as well have created a bunch of rabbits!"

[QUOTE=Hybrid;4693294]Don't forget the Juggernaut![/quote]

Yeah, the Juggernaut. One of the most impressive villains of comics' history. Also a villain who Claremont rarely did much with. I mean I think there were a few issues with Black Tom Cassidy but that's about it.

[QUOTE=Hybrid;4693294]Don't forget the Juggernaut!

But yeah, good point. Honestly, as I said before, of all the classic Marvel properties it seems Stan and Jack are the least associated with the X-Men versus their other works that defined the MU. They had the basic idea down, it was just expanded upon by everyone else. They clearly didn't think much of it, as both left relatively early on in the run, after Issue #19 I think. Compare this to Stan and Jack's historic run on the Fantastic Four, which lasted a whole decade and over 100 issues, and you can see how they thought of the titles. X-Men was the forgettable throwaway, Fantastic Four was the crown jewel.

Stan had this to say about how X-Men grew:

"Who knew they'd multiply the way they did! I might as well have created a bunch of rabbits!"[/QUOTE]

Eh, perhaps unpopular to say this, but I don’t think the 60s run of Fantastic, a few small exceptions, wasn’t particularly great either. Like the with the X-Men’s case, I felt that it didn’t get consistently engaging until the 80s. “Forgettable throwaway” probably isn’t accurate in terms of what they thought of it, but more so that they and Roy Thomas seemed to have trouble finding solid directions to go in.