Jack Kirby claiming Stan Lee never wrote anything …disturbing article from 1990

[Winghead]

I’ve always been a fan of Stan Lee. He’s always been a hero of mine. I recently read an apparently famous Jack Kirby article where he states that Stan was not at all creative, had no involvement in co-creating any of the characters, and that he had never seen Stan actually write a word in his life. He mentions that he himself did all the dialoguing and that Stan would give Kirby’d scripts to some guy at the office and that they would write the dialogue. I’m not sure if this was meant to be tongue in cheek but Kirby came off like a total ass, completely disavowed that he and Lee had any form of collaboration and basically just called Stan an annoyance. I understand everything about The Marvel Method. I realize Kirby would write small side notes along the pages that Stan would give his own flavour and I had no issue with that as far as embracing Stan as one of my favorite creatives, but Kirby’s comments about Stan not ever having written and taking credit for office Joe’s work really disturbs me. Does anyone have any concrete info about this? Am I reading way too much into Kirby’s article?

[kcekada]

I don't know for certain, but I feel that Lee either did his own dialoguing or had someone other than Kirby do it. If you're ever read Kirby's dialoguing from his period at DC, it's not the same as the early Marvel books. That said, I feel Lee took way too much credit that he didn't deserve.

[gurkle]

Lee almost certainly wrote his own dialogue, though Kirby and other pencillers might leave suggestions about what the characters might say, but otherwise it wasn't very secret that his artists did a lot of uncredited writing work. Lee openly admitted it in an interview in the 1960s:

Well, what we usually do is, with most the artists, I usually get a rough plot. By a rough plot, I mean as much as I can write in longhand on the side of one piece of paper … who the villain will be, what the problem will be and so forth. Then I call the artist, whoever’s going to draw the strip … I read it to him … what I’ve written down, these few notes … and we discuss it. By the time we’re through talking for about 20 minutes, we usually have some sort of plot going. And we talk it out...

Then the artist goes home … or wherever he goes … and he draws the thing out, brings it back, and I put the copy in after he’s drawn the story based on the plot I’ve given him. Now this varies with the different artists. Some artists, of course, need a more detailed plot than others. Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean, I’ll just say to Jack, “Let’s let the next villain be Dr. Doom.” … or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He’s so good at plots, I’m sure he’s a thousand times better than I. He just about makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing … I may tell him that he’s gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I’ll give him a plot, but we’re practically both the writers on the things.

So Kirby was largely plotting as he drew, and so was Steve Ditko (which is why Kirby got Stan to drop the separate writer/penciler credits, and why Ditko demanded and got sole credit as plotter). But all the artists were expected to make some contribution to the plotting, which many of them understandably viewed as unpaid writing work. If he gave an artist a plot it would not be the kind of plot that tells them what is going to happen on each page and how the story should flow, it was, as he said, more like a general suggestion of what would happen, which the artist then had to flesh out.

[GenericUsername]

I’ve always been a fan of Stan Lee. He’s always been a hero of mine. I recently read an apparently famous Jack Kirby article where he states that Stan was not at all creative, had no involvement in co-creating any of the characters, and that he had never seen Stan actually write a word in his life. He mentions that he himself did all the dialoguing and that Stan would give Kirby’d scripts to some guy at the office and that they would write the dialogue. I’m not sure if this was meant to be tongue in cheek but Kirby came off like a total ass, completely disavowed that he and Lee had any form of collaboration and basically just called Stan an annoyance. I understand everything about The Marvel Method. I realize Kirby would write small side notes along the pages that Stan would give his own flavour and I had no issue with that as far as embracing Stan as one of my favorite creatives, but Kirby’s comments about Stan not ever having written and taking credit for office Joe’s work really disturbs me. Does anyone have any concrete info about this? Am I reading way too much into Kirby’s article?

All I know about their relationship was what Alan Moore has stated and the book promoted by the brass at Marvel called Marvel: The Untold Story. Which both seem to say that Stan didn't have as much to do with the creative process as he himself let on. And I believe even Stan had apologized at some point for hinting at otherwise.

[Tofali]

I have read comic books that Kirby has written and acolytes of Kirby have also written articles in recent years and their assertions about Stan Lee hardly holds any water for me anymore.

[Micabe]

Whether or not Stan Lee wrote or did not write any stories he was undoubtedly a writer-editor but he, Stan, (IMHO) was and still is the face of the Marvel Comics foremost.

[marhawkman]

All I know about their relationship was what Alan Moore has stated and the book promoted by the brass at Marvel called Marvel: The Untold Story. Which both seem to say that Stan didn't have as much to do with the creative process as he himself let on. And I believe even Stan had apologized at some point for hinting at otherwise.

Yeah, Stan was perhaps best described as the center of the process, but didn't handle all the details, but rather made sure the result was a whole.

[Alan2099]

There were times Kirby got rather bitter and a few occasions he tried to take credit for creating characters he didn't have anything to do with. Saying Stan wrote nothing isn't any more accurate than saying Stan wrote everything.

[Johnny Thunders!]

I think Stan must have influenced the tone and the attitude. When I see Robert Downey Jr., the wisecracking reminds me more of Stan Lee than classic Tony Stark. That being said, Kirby created characters and universes before and after Stan Lee but Stan really didn’t keep creating or create much before and after Kirby. It might not have been his role, but I think it says a lot that Kirby just kept churning out concepts, characters, and ideas before and after Stan Lee.


Edit: I’m a Stan Lee fan, his intro’s and his soapbox made me feel like I was part of a big club or welcomed into a universe like Rod Serling on Twilight Zone. I bet he had ideas for heroes and someone fleshed them out, I bet he came up with dialogue, plotted stories, and came up with story directions. He certainly wore the brand and has/had been Mr. Comics for at least 50 years. Having said that, we have to help round out the fame of the rest of the creators. Jack Kirby had billion dollar talent but I think we have to say Stan did too!

[Gaastra]

Well didn't stan write those dc comics in the 90s in that event? Also, stan wrote his own dialog for that generation x issue the writer said when it was out. Said he left the words for stan blank and stan filled them in. So, he wrote those at least.

60s books? Don't know.

[James Cameron]

To say Stan did not write anything is just ridiculous. yes, in most of the stories back then the pencilers did the plotting, but Stan had a pretty distinct voice and most of all he was not a very good writer. His dialogue was often pretty clunky and sexist (those Ant-Man and Wasp stories, yikes) and it's only because of the uniqueness of the Marvel formula that this drama still gets brought up. There were plenty of stories that Stan just plotted, and maybe some cases where he didn't actually write anything, but the notion that Kirby never saw Stan write a word in his life is just unbelievable and largely contested by history. And even though Kirby is the true mastermind behind the Marvel universe in my opinion, he unfortunately did not have the most reliable memory, the Spider-Man thing being one of the big examples.

[Darkshadow]

The over correct we've seen in recent years to credit Kirby with everything while smuggly leaving Lee to a Editor's footnote is grossly disasteful. In some forms of media, people credit Kirby for everything but colors and leave Lee off entirely.

If you read Kirbys later stuff like Eternals, Devil Dinosaur, etc, you can see Lee (or someone) was heavily involved in dialogue in those early years who's name was not Kirby.

Also, I may be wrong, but wasn't Marvel, under Lee, the first publisher to first page credit creators? Seems like some people got bitter in late age while others mellowed.

Lee still did collabs on into the 2000s and, even though lingo changed, to me, you can still identify Lee's style all the way from the `60's.

[HsssH]

There were times Kirby got rather bitter and a few occasions he tried to take credit for creating characters he didn't have anything to do with. Saying Stan wrote nothing isn't any more accurate than saying Stan wrote everything.

What characters has he claimed to have created?

[Alan2099]

What characters has he claimed to have created?

Wolverine, Punisher, and once even tried to claim he created Superman.

[Iron Maiden]

I think Jack Kirby tried to claim Spider-Man too. He did do a preliminary sketch that Stan rejected IIRC. Stan didnt' like Steve Ditko's cover for Amazing Fantasy #15, which was Spidey's debut so he did have Kirby do another cover. AF was just a one shot story but it proved so popular Stan gave Spider-Man his own title. Those Kirby had no role in any of the decision making process of the line. For good or bad, that was Stan. Kirby had very little to do with Spider-Man.