Stan Lee Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko

[Iron Maiden]

I don't know if you can say the same about Ditko's effect on Spider-Man in the long run. Stan worked with JR sr when ASM started to push Marvel into being a serious challenger to DC's numbers. It did overtake Fantastic Four as Marvel's top seller.

I agree with you about Magneto but I think part of that is because Claremont took Doom's origin as his template to give Magneto a proper origin. Even Byrne called him out on that. and called Claremont's Magneto revision as a "half-assed clone" of Doctor Doom. Admittedly it's a stretch to say Stan's mixed the two up but Stan did have a notoriously bad memory. So did Kirby at times. They were both getting up there in age when they gained their greatest fame.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I don't know if you can say the same about Ditko's effect on Spider-Man in the long run. Stan worked with JR sr when ASM started to push Marvel into being a serious challenger to DC's numbers. It did overtake Fantastic Four as Marvel's top seller.

That's true. Still both Kirby and Ditko created the lion's share of characters, props, and stuff that was built on later.

I agree with you about Magneto but I think part of that is because Claremont took Doom's origin as his template to give Magneto a proper origin. Even Byrne called him out on that. and called Claremont's Magneot revision as a "half-assed clone" of Doctor Doom. Admittedly it's a stretch to say Stan's mixed the two up but Stan did have a notoriously bad memory. So did Kirby at times. They were both getting up their in age when they gained their greatest fame.

Claremont's X-Men outsold the Fantastic Four by several magnitudes and the X-Men became so big that it translated into adaptations in cartoons, games, movies, and TV. And Claremont's Magneto crossed over in a way that Doctor Doom, unfortunately has not (not yet anyway).

And while Magneto is inspired by Doom, it wouldn't be the case that they are entirely similar anyway.

[Iron Maiden]

Magneto was pretty much a blank slate for decades. I would go back and also say the brief Roy Thomas / Neal Adams run added one big factor. A more appealing visual. Byrne and Claremont both picked up on that part. Before that, he looked sort of like an old time boxer with a bucket helmet.


But now that Magneto has been in several movies, I don't see any big push for Magneto by Marvel/Disney. All the talk has been about Doom. He came pretty close to getting a solo film, something Fox bailed out on but they did give him a short origin sequence in First Class (?) and had him hunting post WWII Nazis. But it wasn't that solo movie that at one time was talked about.

[Cronus]

Commendation to folks for managing very nicely to keep this a civil and informative discussion. I almost always hate this particular topic, almost like parents arguing with each other ("whose side are you on anyways!").

Stan wasnt perfect, but I do happen to love so many of the original creators for Marvel including Kirby and Lee.

I suppose I (weakly?) circumvent these subjects by preemptively giving credit to everyone who had a hand in creating the character (i.e., The Silver Surfer created by Jack Kirby as expounded upon by Lee).

[williamtheday]

I don't know if you can say the same about Ditko's effect on Spider-Man in the long run. Stan worked with JR sr when ASM started to push Marvel into being a serious challenger to DC's numbers. It did overtake Fantastic Four as Marvel's top seller.

I agree with you about Magneto but I think part of that is because Claremont took Doom's origin as his template to give Magneto a proper origin. Even Byrne called him out on that. and called Claremont's Magneto revision as a "half-assed clone" of Doctor Doom. Admittedly it's a stretch to say Stan's mixed the two up but Stan did have a notoriously bad memory. So did Kirby at times. They were both getting up ther3 in age when they gained their greatest fame.

I liked Magneto more when there was an air of mystery about him.

[Iron Maiden]

Commendation to folks for managing very nicely to keep this a civil and informative discussion. I almost always hate this particular topic, almost like parents arguing with each other ("whose side are you on anyways!").

Stan wasnt perfect, but I do happen to love so many of the original creators for Marvel including Kirby and Lee.

I suppose I (weakly?) circumvent these subjects by preemptively giving credit to everyone who had a hand in creating the character (i.e., The Silver Surfer created by Jack Kirby as expounded upon by Lee).

That's the best way to look at it. I think things happened so fast and people were cranking out those issues so fast they didn't have time to worry about such things as who is getting credit. IIRC many comics in those days didn't give any credit at all. Some artists had to work under an alias because even though they were mostly all freelancers in the industry, your assignments might dry up if DC found out you did a job at one of the other companies.

I also forgot to mention that Kirby in the late 1950s didn't have many options himself. He was allegedly blacklisted by DC over the lawsuits and countersuits involving DC editor Jack Schiff and the syndicated comic strip Sky Masters. Kirby would only be able to go to DC once DC editor Jack Schiff left DC in the late 1960s. Kirby would leave Marvel for DC once Schiff was gone.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I liked Magneto more when there was an air of mystery about him.

Magneto never had "an air of mystery" before Chris Claremont arrived. Lee-Kirby's Magneto was a total d--bag. Far less impressive as a villain than their Juggernaut in terms of character, if not abilities. He wasn't mysterious, just always angry, violent, sadistic, and bullying.

He was a terrible villain in that there was no logical reason why anyone would follow him willingly, he has no challenge to Professor Xavier in terms of ideology and competing vision for mutantkind. Whereas you know there are reasons for why most Latverians willingly support Doctor Doom, as oppressive as his regime was, the one that existed before was worse being a corrupt aristocracy. The rebels like Rudolf and so on are also jerks and it's hard to get a real sense that things would really be better without him. And as in the Astonishing Tales stories, Doom also keeps the Nazis and fascists out when he repelled by himself a HYDRA takeover of his nation.

Claremont rectified that. His Magneto is inspired by Doom in that he provides a valid challenge and alternative to the ideals of the hero. He has virtues to himself independent of his actions. Where Magneto is different from Doom in that he's a more romantic figure than Doom. He's always on the outside and on the margins, he's an outsider who is scarred by the actions of society. Whereas Victor von Doom as given by his name is a conqueror, he started out on the margins but he ultimately took over and became King of Latveria, and ultimately became one of the most powerful figures in the world. Doom ultimately released his mother's soul to heaven achieving a permanent lasting victory that few characters in the Marvel Universe do. Doom is the ruler, Magneto is the rebel. Magneto's always on the margins, he's suffered defeats, setbacks, and reversals.

[Iron Maiden]

I would argue that Doom is also a romantic figure and probably more so than Magneto. He's almost like Marvel's Phantom of the Opera, mysterious and mercurial . He chooses to costume himself in the trappings of a bygone age instead of something sleek and functional. I mean he has to have something going on to win over women like Wanda and Morgan. And that one Valeria look-alike jumped off a cliff for him to keep from giving her employers getting any advantage over him . Or something like that that was kind of weird.

J.F Moore and Warren Ellis takes Doom back to his revolutionary roots in Doom 2099 and the comic was the better for it.

Warren Ellis on rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe

I chose not to pursue because, ultimately, the magic stuff wasn't
as interesting to me (in this instance) as the political stuff.
I wanted to write a piece of political sf, so I kind of ignored
the magical side of Doom. I felt it was more important to drag a
REALLY ignored side of Doom into the limelight -- his
revolutionary aspect.

Doom was leading his little band of rebels in Latveria before he even went off to college. His revolution doesn't succeed until Doom is perhaps early to mid 30s when he returns from a self-imposed exile. Hard to tell with Marvel's sliding timescale.

[Shalla Bal]

...

Even without Lee, Kirby would still be a major figure in comics' history. Had Kirby not made comics after 1960 he would still be known as the co-creator of Captain America, the Newsboy Legion, and the founder of Romance Comics as a genre, and numerous other contributions he made before then.

More accurately he was the co-founder of "Romance Comics as a genre." Don't forget that during that part of his career Kirby was working with Joe Simon. By many accounts Simon was the one in their partnership who took care of the business negotiations, drudge work, editorial, scripting, etc. He also did a lot of the layouts for Kirby and their various companies' other artists. Joe Simon's contributions to the Simon-Kirby partnership shouldn't be minimized.

Postscript: I find it interesting that in 1966 or thereabouts when Simon threatened to sue for rights to Captain America, (his and Jack's co-creation), whose side did Kirby take? That's right, he took Marvel's side, against his former partner. I know Kirby was beholden to Marvel for freelance work (as many comic book artists were--none of them were rolling in the dough!), but it's too bad Kirby didn't seem to want to stand with Joe or work things out with him regarding their co-creation at this point.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

More accurately he was the co-founder of "Romance Comics as a genre."

Touché,

...Joe Simon's contributions shouldn't be minimized.

Touché.

Simon's collaboration with Kirby was far longer, diverse and extensive than Kirby's with Lee. So you are absolutely correct.

And something else about Simon: in 1966 or thereabouts when Simon sued for rights to Captain America, whose side did Kirby take? That's right, he took Marvel's side, against his former partner.

I am sure there's more to this. But thank you for bringing this up, I'll check up on this.

My feeling is that Kirby had a family to provide for, and he was primarily trying to find a way to put them first. A lot of his ventures with Simon crashed and burned in the mid-50s, and that led to Kirby working with Goodman and Lee over at Marvel to start with. Likewise, the '60s was a time when agitating for creators' rights was hostile...Gardner Fox tried to start a union and he and other DC writers got fired and replaced by younger talent (which is how Gerry Conway got his first gig). The climate improved in the 80s.

In any case, I don't think anything untoward Kirby did to Simon would justify that being done to him in turn. And Simon and Kirby were friendlier later on, certainly friendlier than Kirby would ever be with Lee again.

I would argue that Doom is also a romantic figure and probably more so than Magneto.

It depends on how you define romanticism. Romantic literature was about the outsider, the marginalized, the oppressed, the outlaw, and the criminal. That defines Magneto more than Doom, at least after their origin story ends. Magneto has generally been far more often a criminal and outcast, whereas Doom has for the most part been a ruler and leader of his people.

To me Doom is a figure of the Enlightenment. Or at least a darker side. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...sEnlightenment). He's basically a kind of Enlightenment Monarch of the Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and Napoleonic kind.

He's almost like Marvel's Phantom of the Opera, mysterious and mercurial .

The phantom is a dude living underground in sewers. Victor lives it up in a castle on a mountain.

J.F Moore and Warren Ellis takes Doom back to his revolutionary roots in Doom 2099 and the comic was the better for it.

Revolutions are Romantic in the period of struggle/defeat/retreat, whereas it's Enlightenment when the Revolution is in Power. Che Guevara is Romantic, Fidel Castro represents the Enlightenment. Guevara walked out of his job and went back to the forests and ultimately got himself and others killed in a doomed struggle against imperialism, while Castro established a dictatorship that led Cuba to be an isolationist and repressive state but which also attracted approval for its aid given to other oppressed nations such as Nelson Mandela and others who saw him as a hero. Magneto is Che, Doom is Castro.

Magneto is struggling for a better world for mutantkind but he's never gonna completely get there since that's not the interest of the X-Men. So he's a revolutionary in the period of struggle. Doom started off as a revolutionary but he ultimately took over and built his society in Latveria, so his revolution is in power.

Warren Ellis in his Doom 2099 was invoking that because obviously his Doom in 2099 is in a revolutionary stage.

Doom was leading his little band of rebels in Latveria before he even went off to college. His revolution doesn't succeed until Doom is perhaps early to mid 30s when he returns from a self-imposed exile. Hard to tell with Marvel's sliding timescale.

Yeah but Doom's revolution ultimately did succeed and take effect. And it has proven lasting since nobody inside and outside Latveria has built an alternative to Doom.

That's not the case with Magneto. He's been a terrorist, he got a nation called Genosha but that got genocided by sentinels. And now he and others are at Krakoa, making a second go at it, but hanging over everything is a looming dread that it will end badly and they are preparing themselves for that.

[CTTT]

Yeah, I too believed that Lee created Marvel Comics, and then reading about the behind the scenes stuff made it more complex. I also think that when Lee was hired at then Timely Comics in 1939 I think Kirby was there at that time also?

[Iron Maiden]

Yeah, I too believed that Lee created Marvel Comics, and then reading about the behind the scenes stuff made it more complex. I also think that when Lee was hired at then Timely Comics in 1939 I think Kirby was there at that time also?

Yes, he was at some point I think. It is recounted in Mark Evanier's Kirby book. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America while they were both at Timely in 1940. Stan was hired by publisher Martin Goodman when he was quite young, maybe late teens. He was the office go-fer and things like that. He used to annoy Kikrby by playing a little flute like instrument called a recorder. I think Kirby's mistake was he always saw Stan in that light, even after Goodman gave him more responsibilities. But it wouldn't be long before both Kirby and Lee were either drafted or enlisted in the army.

[jackolover]

Yeah, in retrospect, Stan shouldn't have made it has cut and dry as simply as him being credited as the writer while Jack Steve were credited as artists even though they arguably had considerable input in the stories themselves and should have received co-writing credit.

It’s almost like Jack and Steve wrote and planned the course of their stories, (FF, Thor, Spider-Man, Doc Strange) in all its relationship complexity, and, Stan Lee should just be credited with Dialogue.

[jackolover]

I think in the early years Stan thought that people who interviewed Stan Lee wanted to hear about Stan Lee, and he got better over time. I also think in order to get more credit Jack and Steve would have had to become walking billboards for Marvel, something I don't think would have interested them but something Stan reveled in.

It was a different world in the early to middle 1960’s. Nobody at Marvel thought their comics characters would last past five years, so the process was pretty slapped dash. We attribute this much importance to creators in hindsight decades later after these creators like Jack and Steve had moved on and forgotten about their hard work. It was really just paid for pages to these old comic artists. The legal stake in the characters only ever became an issue later. Stan Lee gets to have better connection to the characters because he had continuos company-man status at Marvel and had to carry the brands decade after decade. I think we have to remember that when remembering the era this was created in, with SL, JK and SD.

[gurkle]

It’s almost like Jack and Steve wrote and planned the course of their stories, (FF, Thor, Spider-Man, Doc Strange) in all its relationship complexity, and, Stan Lee should just be credited with Dialogue.

This actually was the credit for Ditko’s last couple of years on Strange and Spidey, with Ditko credited with “plot and art” and Stan with “script and editing” (though Stan’s name still came first, as it did even on comics where he was credited as editor only).

With Kirby and other artists he simply dropped the separate writer and penciler credits and credited Lee and Kirby as the joint creators of the story. I personally think the Lee/Kirby comics have some stories that seem like they were more to Stan’s taste than Jack’s, so he may have had more story input than with Ditko.

But even where Lee gave an artist a plot it would be very basic, like calling them on the phone and giving them a few story beats and leaving them to figure out what to draw in between. The Marvel Method made every artist an uncredited co-writer to some extent, at least back then (with later writers the plots got more detailed and more like scripts).

One thing that interests me is that just before Kirby left Marvel he did his own scripts for a couple of Inhumans stories (in Amazing Adventures) and while there are some differences between Kirby writing and Lee writing - weirdly, Kirby always used more redundant captions than Lee, who was more willing to let the art speak for itself - the dialogue feels much more in Lee’s style than Kirby’s. I don’t know if Lee rewrote people’s dialogue or just forced them to write like him, but his influence was hard to escape even for artists doing their own dialogue.