Stan Lee Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I'd agree with you about Doctor Strange but Spider-Man was mostly Stan Lee.

It's pretty obvious when you read the Lee-Ditko run, and then read the Lee-Romita run that followed that there was a drastic, stylistic shift between them. Not only in the art style but in the writing and characterization, something everyone has remarked upon.

The single best illustration of the Marvel Method is the evolution of Gwen Stacy from Ditko to Romita Sr. If you read ASM#31-38, Ditko's final issues on the title and see the character of Gwen Stacy there, she's this snobbish, unpleasant, perpetually frowning and bullying woman. The minute Ditko leaves, Gwen's personality gets altered drastically to the more familiar one.

That proves that Lee largely wrote and followed the outlines that Ditko and Kirby gave him. That as a writer he didn't as a rule underwrite or undermine their work. It means that the primary voice was in fact Ditko and Kirby's.

Even Romita Sr would tell you that.

Romita Sr.'s own interviews pointed out how when he signed on Spider-Man he tried to be true to Ditko's take and how he and Stan had issues when Romita Sr felt Lee was diverging too much from what came before.

[Iron Maiden]

It's pretty obvious when you read the Lee-Ditko run, and then read the Lee-Romita run that followed that there was a drastic, stylistic shift between them. Not only in the art style but in the writing and characterization, something everyone has remarked upon.

The single best illustration of the Marvel Method is the evolution of Gwen Stacy from Ditko to Romita Sr. If you read ASM#31-38, Ditko's final issues on the title and see the character of Gwen Stacy there, she's this snobbish, unpleasant, perpetually frowning and bullying woman. The minute Ditko leaves, Gwen's personality gets altered drastically to the more familiar one.

That proves that Lee largely wrote and followed the outlines that Ditko and Kirby gave him. That as a writer he didn't as a rule underwrite or undermine their work. It means that the primary voice was in fact Ditko and Kirby's.



Romita Sr.'s own interviews pointed out how when he signed on Spider-Man he tried to be true to Ditko's take and how he and Stan had issues when Romita Sr felt Lee was diverging too much from what came before.

That's not what I got out if it.....especially when you look at this quote....

John: Oh, he's a con man, but he did deliver. Anyone who says he didn't earn what he's got is not reading the facts. Believe me, he earned everything he gets. That's why I never begrudged him getting any of the credit, and as far as I'm concerned, he can have his name above any of my stuff, anytime he wants. Every time I took a story in to Stan—and if Jack were reading it, he'd have felt the same way—I had only partial faith in my picture story. I worked it out and I believed in the characters, but I was only half-sure it was going to work. I always had my misgivings. By the time Stan would write it, I'd start to look at that story and say, "Son of a gun, it's almost as though I planned it," and I'd believe a hundredfold more in that story after he wrote it than before—and if Jack would've allowed himself to, he would've had the same satisfaction. I sincerely believe that.

I think Stan deserves everything he gets. Everyone complains, including me sometimes. I used to say, "I do the work, and Stan cashes the checks." [laughter] It was only a half joke, but it's the kind of a grumble you do when you're tired.

I doubt that Romita did much dialogue in the stories is what I am saying. I think that would JR SR is saying here is that there would be the framework or plot of the story that they would both talk over. The "final draft" if you want to call it that would be Stan doing the dialogue and the text boxes.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That's not what I got out if it.....especially when you look at this quote....

And reading between the lines, I don't think anything he says there discounts my point.

JRSR is obviously conciliatory and trying not to take sides. That reflects the kind of guy he is, someone who doesn't feel like stepping into controversies and tries to be fair to everyone. But it also reflects his legal position because Romita Sr. at one point provided a legal deposition defending Lee and Marvel in a copyright case, so that also reflects why he's so diplomatic there. He's picked Stan's side (much like Roy Thomas did), out of conviction no doubt. But that means he's not neutral.

I think that would JR SR is saying here is that there would be the framework or plot of the story that they would both talk over. The "final draft" if you want to call it that would be Stan doing the dialogue and the text boxes.

Lee's work with Romita Sr is definitely more purely Stan Lee than before, albeit I think Romita Sr. did have some influence on the romance comics' turn of the stories. And it's a great run, not as consistent as Ditko but it's two big consistent stretches from ASM#39-52, and ASM#87-98 are great. The in-between stuff is lesser but it's not bad so much as mediocre and dull. And Lee in that run definitely pushed for more diversity...such as Robbie Robertson and later the Prowler. So people who saw that Lee-Romita Sr. watered down Ditko are unjust and incorrect to do so. Lee was generally apolitical in that he reflected stuff when it was safe and mainstream rather than a period when he had to take a stand and yet at the same time, ASM#91-92 is maybe the boldest anti-racist story Marvel put out in that time, the two-part story where Spider-Man fights against a white supremacist Sam Bullitt.

You know I think ASM#87 is the most purely autobiographical story Stan did for Marvel. The story has Peter having a breakdown and deciding to confessing to everyone at a party that he's Spider-Man. When he announces, Gwen Stacy goes into hysterics as do most of his friends, and this drives Peter to panic mode to scarper out and convince the Prowler to dress as him to basically walk that back. That story goes into the heart of "impostor syndrome" and I think Stan Lee suffered from that a lot, and had the attitude that nobody would accept his real self. So he constantly had to hide, pretend, and be someone else. He used the nom-de-plume Stan Lee because he wanted to use his real name Stanley Leiber for his professional novel work. He created a persona of this gregarious slangy alliteratively verbose dude, who fans fell in love with. Spider-Man is a complex character, there's a part of Peter who's aloof, withdrawn and asocial (his Ditko self) and the part of Peter who wants attention, who wants respect, who always dates the most beautiful women in the world (his Stan Lee self).

[Iron Maiden]

I will have to go back and look that one up.

It wouldn't surprise me that Stan did feel that way frankly. I do recall reading that when he moved out to California he didn't have much luck making any deals for Marvel properties. I doubt he was involved in developing the Incredible Hulk TV show and probably his only involvement was the one cameo he had . The show was a critical success but that was mostly due to producer Kenneth Johnson. And for once a studio was interested in doing a live action show written not just for kids.

I don't recall where I read this but I don't think Stan was treated very respectfully in Hollywood at this time. This could be because most executives were still thinking comic books = kids stuff. The respect would come from the next generation of producers and directors that we see now who were fans of the comics in their youth.

[CTTT]

But ok, let's say that Kirby and Ditko were treated well and they got the contracts they wanted...would the MU be any different than what it is today?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I will have to go back and look that one up.

It wouldn't surprise me that Stan did feel that way frankly. I do recall reading that when he moved out to California he didn't have much luck making any deals for Marvel properties. I doubt he was involved in developing the Incredible Hulk TV show and probably his only involvement was the one cameo he had . The show was a critical success but that was mostly due to producer Kenneth Johnson. And for once a studio was interested in doing a live action show written not just for kids.

I don't recall where I read this but I don't think Stan was treated very respectfully in Hollywood at this time. This could be because most executives were still thinking comic books = kids stuff. The respect would come from the next generation of producers and directors that we see now who were fans of the comics in their youth.

Stan Lee as EIC was always chasing respectability. He wanted his comics to appeal outside the usual audiences. He targeted college kids. And he also loved intellectual respect and attention. Marvel Comics were quite liked by arthouse film-makers like Federico Fellini and Alain Resnais (who wanted to work with Lee on a project and Lee wrote a script for him too) and at one point he was trying to get playwright Tom Stoppard to write for Marvel!

So he had ambition.

I don't know if Stan Lee was entirely satisfied with being Stan Lee in his later years./

But ok, let's say that Kirby and Ditko were treated well and they got the contracts they wanted...would the MU be any different than what it is today?

Are you trying to say that Marvel was right to screw over Kirby and Ditko because any AU where that didn't happen would be different and so worse...

[Iron Maiden]

But ok, let's say that Kirby and Ditko were treated well and they got the contracts they wanted...would the MU be any different than what it is today?

Unfortunately, Jack Kirby found out that things weren't that much better at DC. He did get to stretch his legs so to speak on projects he was entirely in control of but there are reports of a contingent of DC artists that were resentful of Kirby. Eventually, DC only wanted Kirby to draw and not write when his books were getting canceled. He was even asked to draw more like Neal Adams IIRC. There was covered in the Ronin Ro book "Tales of Astonish". This probably lead to his final stay at Marvel before he went into animation. He created the Eternals (which is rumored to be in development), Machine Man and Devil Dinosaur and even worked with Stan on a couple of projects. DC or Marvel were the only employers in comics that could have paid Kirby at the rate he was used to and he had problems with both of them.

[CTTT]

No, RJ I'm not saying they were right to "screw him over". I'm saying if things were different both artists got the contracts the wanted would the MU look any different as far as storylines and characters go if they had stayed longer on the books?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

No, RJ I'm not saying they were right to "screw him over". I'm saying if things were different both artists got the contracts the wanted would the MU look any different as far as storylines and characters go if they had stayed longer on the books?

If Kirby stayed, the New Gods become Marvel characters. That much can be known objectively, because Kirby devised those characters in the Marvel years and hoarded them for his planned for transfer to DC. The New Gods mean Orion, Darkseid, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, Metron, the Mother Box, Apokolips, New Genesis and all that become part of the Marvel Universe. What are the implications of that? Well there would be no Thanos. Nor would there be The Eternals. Thanos was created by Starlin as a Metron/Darkseid knockoff. The Eternals were created by Kirby after he left DC and came back to Marvel in the '70s to continue his New Gods-interest in cosmic stuff with different characters. In an AU, it would be Darkseid who smiles and smirks at the end of Avengers 1 while Desaad (rather than a Desaad copy as in the movie) tell him that the Earth has the secret of the Anti-Life Equation. Instead of Chitauri, it would be parademons. The New Gods becoming part of the Marvel Universe would be interesting because DC as a whole never really integrated them well. Kirby was given leeway to treat that as standalone but he was never allowed to tell a complete story with them (as for instance Gaiman was allowed to do with Sandman, and Moore with Watchmen) and yet at the same time DC never really knew what to do with those characters, and Kirby's DC stuff owes a great debt to Bruce Timm's 90s Cartoons for becoming prominent characters of DC. In Marvel, stuff like the Anti-Life Equation would easily involve characters like Doctor Doom, Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Thor and others. It's the ultimate Magical and Cosmic thing that come together. Whereas in DC, the big characters like Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman don't easily cross into the Kirby stuff. It took until the 90s for people to figure out how to make Darkseid a Superman villain and it was the animators who did that. One wrinkle is that Kirby initially thought to end the Thor line with Ragnarok and have the New Gods rise out of that, but he knew that Marvel wouldn't end an entire line of published characters like that. But if Kirby was treated better at Marvel, given credit and remuneration due to him, he might well have compromised on that. Kirby intended the New Gods to be ongoing creations that other creators could use and contribute and develop. Kirby ideally would have preferred to tell a complete single story with the New Gods and indeed tried to end it with The Hunger Dogs, but that's because DC weren't handling the characters or treating them, or knew fully well what to do with them.

In the case of Ditko, he would most likely have left eventually. Stan Lee was the one who first introduced Ditko to Ayn Rand and he did that very early in their partnership as a sort of books for Steve to read. So Ditko had long been dropped into the metaphorical vat of acid. However, Ditko's radicalization was definitely a result of his treatment at Marvel's hands by both Stan Lee and Martin Goodman, and fairer treatment to Steve might have moderated him somewhat or at least not confirmed his Randian-instincts to the extent that it overpowered all his other instincts as an artist and creator, and ultimately destroyed his life and career (Ditko is the shining example of an ideology utterly destroying someone creatively). People who worked with Ditko in the 60s and 70s said that on a personal level he was a nice guy, friendly and he didn't discuss politics and stuff (and his Randian turn in the '70s took many people by surprise). As an artist, Ditko saw his Marvel work as commercial work and he always had a sense to separate his private more creator-driven interests from commercial gigs. Like even when he turned Objectivist, he put most of that in Mr. A while The Question and Ted Kord, Blue Beetle had some objectivist stuff but were mostly superhero story adventures you can take or leave. Alan Moore himself said that The Question was Ditko's commercial-friendly version of Mr. A. Among his Marvel work, collaborators and other writers, believe that Doctor Strange was more personal for Ditko than Spider-Man. The only reason people blather nonsensically about objectivist subtext in Spider-Man and not Strange is because of the former's success. Doctor Strange never got his own title when Ditko was around and never got beyond cult success. In the case of Spider-Man, Ditko was developing the subplots with Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin and Mary Jane as a major love-interest, and for the most part that would happen even with Ditko around.

How would Ditko have built up the Norman reveal? We can never know. Norman was definitely the Green Goblin though (the rumor he wasn't or Ditko had issues with that is character assassination and Stan Lee propaganda). What would Ditko's MJ look like? We can never know. Spider-Man became really successful commercially when John Romita Sr. took over which is not to say Ditko's run didn't sell because it did, and Romita Sr. probably was built off the equity and goodwill that Ditko brought about, but would Ditko's Spider-Man become a mainstream brand and Marvel's flagship? Who knows?

A Marvel with Kirby and Ditko around to the end of the '60s and early '70s, a Kirby who is secure and a Ditko who is moderate, would have been a different place. It would certainly have consolidated Marvel's prestige as the "House of Ideas" without Ditko and Kirby's defection exposing that as a sham. And who knows, it might have driven Marvel to be more creator friendly and welcoming. Maybe Alan Moore works with them now, because one of the major reasons why he didn't is because of Marvel's treatment of Kirby and Ditko.

[CTTT]

That's interesting about the New Gods becoming part of Marvel. But as it is, I think Marvel since then has developed a pretty good cosmic base with interesting storylines like Annihilation, Thanos Quest, etc. RJ will probably disagree vehemently with me because he's JK's flag waver, but, to each their own. The great thing is if you like DC better than Marvel that's fine, and if you like Marvel better that's ok too. If you like both, awesome.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

That's interesting about the New Gods becoming part of Marvel. But as it is, I think Marvel since then has developed a pretty good cosmic base with interesting storylines like Annihilation,

Annihilation features Annihilus, a character created by Jack Kirby, LOL.

Thanos Quest,

There's only been one great Thanos story, The Infinity Gauntlet...and sure Kirby staying would mean butterflying that out, and that would suck, but on the other hand, it's definitely likely that Jim Starlin would continue to work at Marvel and that includes stuff like Adam Warlock, The Death of Captain Marvel and other stuff not tied to Kirby's creations. And who knows what else Starlin could do when not asked to imitate the King.

Marvel's Cosmic Stuff was quite underdeveloped for the longest time. And in fact you could argue that DC had a better cosmic side than Marvel did for a while. It's only recently that stuff has gotten more attention. The Skrulls were a joke, the Kree were bores and if you ask a lot of people about Cosmic stories after Kirby, the biggest would be the X-Men's Phoenix Saga.

Had Kirby stayed, the X-Men would still be revived by Claremont since the situation with the sales on that title not doing well and so on would still be the same since that's a title that Lee-Kirby just couldn't make work.

The great thing is if you like DC better than Marvel that's fine...

I like good comics, good art, good stories regardless of whichever company or genre they come from.

I am loyal to nothing, poster, except quality.

I like Jack Kirby when he worked at Marvel, and I like him when he worked at DC, I even like his Romance Comics stuff which is available in an anthology put out by Fantagraphics. Some of the stories by Kirby and Simon are quite interesting in terms of portraying complex women, as well as classic dynamics.

[Paradox_Nihil]

I'd agree with you about Doctor Strange but Spider-Man was mostly Stan Lee. Even Romita Sr would tell you that. Here's a quite interesting interview JR Sr gave to the Comic Book Artist magazine which is published by TwoMorrows. This is the same company that publishes the excellent Jack Kirby Collector. I found this quote by JR jr to be very enlightening. Remember, he was there at Marvel in the early 1960s and mostly worked in the office as the unofficial art director in addition to doing ASM.

Ah, The Jack Kirby Collector, one of the best sources for all things Kirby. I have several issues, and many of their other magazines, but not that one, and now I am eager to read that interview.

If Kirby stayed, the New Gods become Marvel characters. That much can be known objectively, because Kirby devised those characters in the Marvel years and hoarded them for his planned for transfer to DC. The New Gods mean Orion, Darkseid, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, Metron, the Mother Box, Apokolips, New Genesis and all that become part of the Marvel Universe. What are the implications of that? Well there would be no Thanos. Nor would there be The Eternals. Thanos was created by Starlin as a Metron/Darkseid knockoff. The Eternals were created by Kirby after he left DC and came back to Marvel in the '70s to continue his New Gods-interest in cosmic stuff with different characters. In an AU, it would be Darkseid who smiles and smirks at the end of Avengers 1 while Desaad (rather than a Desaad copy as in the movie) tell him that the Earth has the secret of the Anti-Life Equation. Instead of Chitauri, it would be parademons. The New Gods becoming part of the Marvel Universe would be interesting because DC as a whole never really integrated them well. Kirby was given leeway to treat that as standalone but he was never allowed to tell a complete story with them (as for instance Gaiman was allowed to do with Sandman, and Moore with Watchmen) and yet at the same time DC never really knew what to do with those characters, and Kirby's DC stuff owes a great debt to Bruce Timm's 90s Cartoons for becoming prominent characters of DC. In Marvel, stuff like the Anti-Life Equation would easily involve characters like Doctor Doom, Silver Surfer, Doctor Strange, Thor and others. It's the ultimate Magical and Cosmic thing that come together. Whereas in DC, the big characters like Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman don't easily cross into the Kirby stuff. It took until the 90s for people to figure out how to make Darkseid a Superman villain and it was the animators who did that. One wrinkle is that Kirby initially thought to end the Thor line with Ragnarok and have the New Gods rise out of that, but he knew that Marvel wouldn't end an entire line of published characters like that. But if Kirby was treated better at Marvel, given credit and remuneration due to him, he might well have compromised on that. Kirby intended the New Gods to be ongoing creations that other creators could use and contribute and develop. Kirby ideally would have preferred to tell a complete single story with the New Gods and indeed tried to end it with The Hunger Dogs, but that's because DC weren't handling the characters or treating them, or knew fully well what to do with them.

This is... an impressive post and I'm generally not easily impressed . I have been a big fan of the Fourth World for decades (and still am) and those are my favorite concepts and characters from Marvel or DC, but have never considered those possibilities.

I think Stan Lee had a key role in making Kirby's (and Ditko's etc.) characters and ideas popular, though. People tend to think that the dialogue Lee put into the titles such as Fantastic Four, for example, is "better" than the one from Kirby's later works, but it's not. It's just (much) more accessible. Kirby's words are full of tragedy and pathos and emotion and meaning, but they can be very hermetic and opaque for general audience (in the tradition of the Bible ). Without Lee, Kirby would have been like William Blake, one of the greatest poets and artists of all time, whose poems were read by 2,5 people during his lifetime. (And that's exactly what happened with his DC works.) Lee was seminal in making all those things as relevant for popular culture in general as they are today, but I don't have a shred of doubt from whose imagination all those things came.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think Stan Lee had a key role in making Kirby's (and Ditko's etc.) characters and ideas popular, though.

Absolutely. I accept that. Lee basically found an audience for that stuff, for that aesthetic. And that's to his favor.

It's just that American culture takes that claim as validating Lee over Kirby and Ditko. Lee sold Kirby, so he could sell anything (which no, the first 40 years of his life proves otherwise) or that he's somehow bigger than Kirby and others for doing so.

I mean this isn't an issue with just Lee, it's common across American culture where salesmanship is glorified over the stuff made and created. Steve Jobs didn't create Apple, he didn't develop the software, or the tech, but he did have a say in the presentation and display, and to many that justifies him as a "genius" that validates his abuse of his colleagues and employees. Elon Musk likewise didn't create the Tesla Car. That was done by Eberhard-Tarpenning, all he did was invest in their company but somehow everyone thinks he's a great inventor and stuff.

People tend to think that the dialogue Lee put into the titles such as Fantastic Four, for example, is "better" than the one from Kirby's later works, but it's not. It's just (much) more accessible. Kirby's words are full of tragedy and pathos and emotion and meaning, but they can be very hermetic and opaque for general audience (in the tradition of the Bible ). Without Lee, Kirby would have been like William Blake, one of the greatest poets and artists of all time, whose poems were read by 2,5 people during his lifetime. (And that's exactly what happened with his DC works.) Lee was seminal in making all those things as relevant for popular culture in general as they are today, but I don't have a shred of doubt from whose imagination all those things came.

Kirby in the '70s wrote and drew one of the greatest Captain America stories -- Madbomb. And that's much better than any Lee-Kirby story of Cap they did before. And the dialogue there is quite good.

The New Gods are overly verbose and Kirby does suffer from the problem many artists turned writers do, i.e. in not knowing when to let the image speak and when to use words and how much/how less. Writers, in a lot of cases, know that instinctively. Walt Simonson had this problem too on his run on Thor. His early stuff is hard to read because it's overwritten but as he continues he gets better, and by the time of Mjolnir's Song (the fight with Jormungandr) he's more content with letting the image speaking. And the IDW Ragnarok is also awesome in that regard.

[Paradox_Nihil]

The New Gods are overly verbose and Kirby does suffer from the problem many artists turned writers do, i.e. in not knowing when to let the image speak and when to use words and how much/how less. Writers, in a lot of cases, know that instinctively.

Do not tease me about the New Gods, man! I don't want to change this topic into a discussion about them! This is still the Marvel sub-forum.

Yes, Kirby's writing was often overly verbose, obviously, but the thing is, that's not the most important aspect to me. I usually advocate the craft and understanding of the form, that's true, but I consider 'the clarity (and fluidity) of storytelling' to be the means and not the goal of comics. Drama, conflicts, themes, emotion, messages... those are of the greatest value to me. And Kirby had the symbolism and the power and the layers of meaning Lee couldn't touch. "Another faceless hero" and many other phrases and sentences from the New Gods is what first comes to my mind when I think about examples of writing from Kirby's (or Kirby + Lee's) work. (And many writers who didn't draw, such as Roy Thomas and Chris Claremont and Marv Wolfman, weren't less verbose at all. Even Moore had entire walls of text in the Swamp Thing, although Moore was probably the most skilled comic writer at using words, so it was never an obstacle.)

And, because you've alredy mentioned Simonson, who is one of my favorite artists in American comics, I think that his best work is Orion (without considering Ragnarok, until it ends). The same problems as with Kirby's New Gods: 2,5 people have read and enjoyed it (dont' worry, guys; they are NOT the same people who had originally enjoyed Blake's poetry - those are long dead) Ok, a poetic exaggeration on my part, but the point remains. Those were very sophisticated comics, not necessarily in presentation (although Orion is) but in their themes and ambition. And that's the thing about Kirby: his work was never so steeped in the context of superhero comics as the media (or history?) want us to believe. When he was given freedom to do Thor to his heart's content, we got Tales of Asgard. That's why his creations are so incompatible with the DC universe. And it might have been Lee's guiding hand that made his Marvel creations more superheroic in a modern sense (a type of power fantasy, actually).

I fully agree with your thoughts about Lee as the salesman, and can't add or subtract anything.

But, courtesy to you, RJ, I'll now dream about an alternative history where Kirby and Ditko stayed at Marvel and Roy Thomas went straight to DC to write JSA to his heart's content... Cheers!

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Yes, Kirby's writing was often overly verbose, obviously, but the thing is, that's not the most important aspect to me. I usually advocate the craft and understanding of the form, that's true, but I consider 'the clarity (and fluidity) of storytelling' to be the means and not the goal of comics. Drama, conflicts, themes, emotion, messages... those are of the greatest value to me. And Kirby had the symbolism and the power and the layers of meaning Lee couldn't touch.

That's true. Some of the ideas of Kirby are really powerful and compelling. Like The Anti-Life Equation, "If someone has absolute control over you, then you aren't really alive". That's really haunted me. To be honest, I've never been satisfied with any version of the Anti-Life Equation put out. That includes Grant Morrison's take which seems to have become canon somehow...the idea that Morrison put that the New Gods are abstract figures on another reality and that all the physical forms we see of them are constructs...I don't think that's Kirby, but it does get some bits of what he's trying to do.

(And many writers who didn't draw, such as Roy Thomas and Chris Claremont and Marv Wolfman, weren't less verbose at all. Even Moore had entire walls of text in the Swamp Thing, although Moore was probably the most skilled comic writer at using words, so it was never an obstacle.)

Marv Wolfman is genuinely weak as a writer, with a poor ear for dialogue moreover. Kirby's better than him for certain. In the case of Claremont, he was at his most verbose when he had Byrne because Byrne kept undermining him so Claremont had to overwrite to assert control. In his collaboration with Windsor-Smith and Frank Miller, he's more restrained. With Moore, the verbosity is a plus because it's almost always cool to read his stuff.

And that's the thing about Kirby: his work was never so steeped in the context of superhero comics as the media (or history?) wants us to believe.

Yeah, Kirby always seems to be his own genre.

But, courtesy to you, RJ, I'll now dream about an alternative history where Kirby and Ditko stayed at Marvel and Roy Thomas went straight to DC to write JSA to his heart's content... Cheers!

Thanks. It would have been a better world for Marvel certainly...