Quote Originally Posted by JackDaw View Post
A specific example: Take the original Galactus trilogy...the way Jack drew the sequence where Johnny travelled through space and time to get the weapon that causes Galactus to leave said masses more about Johnny’s character than any dialogue in those issues.
Totally. There's an entire website and sub-field in Jack Kirby studies called "Kirby Without Words":
https://kirbywithoutwords.tumblr.com/

And they point out numerous instances where the art tells one story but the dialogue contradicts it, and usually the most prominent is that the art is often more feminist than Stan Lee's dialogue. And in some cases, they compare the original dialogue suggestions to what Lee did, and Kirby's dialogue is more economical and reads better than what Lee did.

More than that dialogue is determined by context. Without context, dialogue is often meaningless.

There's documentary evidence for that: "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility". This was not an original quote, many versions flowed around. A superman serial in the '40s had Pa Kent telling this to Clark long before the comics credited that caption to Uncle Ben. Here's the thing, between AF#15 in 1962 to Spider-Man V. Wolverine in 1987, the first 25 years of the character, this line had no special significance and meaning and was never alluded to after the first issue. Famous landmark stories like Spider-Man No More which revisited the origin made no mention of this line. And yet Spider-Man was a successful and famous character and already arrived in those 25 years. If the final captions didn't have that line, if it said something else, something that doesn't become iconic...the history of Spider-Man in those first 25 years would be unchanged.

What determines and gives that line meaning is -- Peter lets the burglar go who ends up killing his Uncle Ben. All empirical evidence suggests that Ditko created this. That is the engine of the character, and it is this action that gives that line any meaning. Without it, "with great power'' is well a vague, empty phrase that can mean whatever you want it. (Remember the first version was said in 1793 by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, aka Robespierre's committee, and it's possibly a self-righteous way of saying, 'we have to guillotine a bunch of people and we're not gonna be happy about it, so don't make me destroy you').

Quote Originally Posted by Alan2099 View Post
One thing I always feel gets left out of these discussions about who created what is the characters personality. Stan created who the characters acted, talked, and thought, even if you want to say he didn't have anything else. The personality is what separates a good character from an instantly forgettable.
The way characters acted is often shaped and determined by the art, by action and movement. In the case of what the actors thought and talked, Stan didn't create that entirely because he followed dialogue suggested by Lee and Ditko. So he's technically what's called a "script-doctor" to use Hollywood terms, where a major production would hire someone to touch up the dialogue.

Take Star Wars. Here's a comparison of George Lucas' draft of a famous speech and Lawrence Kasdan's touch-up of the same speech:
George Lucas: “Not material are we. Luminous beings are we, tied together by the Force. Yes. There are two of you … your body and your energy.”
Lawrence Kasdan: “Luminous beings are we [pinches Luke’s skin], not this crude matter.”

Now Kasdan's dialogue obviously flows better but fundamentally Lucas already created the character, the personality and content of the story before Kasdan's input. Yoda is George Lucas' creation, he created the name, the look, the entire role and personality, as well as the kind of Buddhist Monk trappings to him. Kasdan was obviously important to that, but no one, and certainly not Kasdan, has ever said that he created those characters.

Also, I don't know how many of you have ever tried this, but take a comic, erase all the word balloons, and captions, then go back and try to rewrite them and t.ell a coherent story. Even with a good artist, it's hard.
"Kirby Without Words" said hold by beer to that a long time ago (https://kirbywithoutwords.tumblr.com/).

A lot of Kirby's panels read quite clearly and legibly and in many cases Stan Lee's dialogue overexplains stuff and doesn't actually qualify as good dialogue in terms of economy.

In some cases, Lee hardly touched up anything.