"I'm ready for my cameo, Mr. DeMille": Lee's husk meets Captain Howdy of The Exorcist.
Click on images to enlarge
In his attempts to appear fair to his subject, Abraham Riesman often skews toward being overly kind to Stan Lee in True Believer: The Rise And Fall Of Stan Lee, his mostly well-researched, cumulatively nauseating biography of the late Marvel figurehead. To be sure, Riesman does not erect a shiny tent for worship as most of Lee's previous biographers have. Instead, he digs a grimy evidential sinkhole as he details how Lee abused his most productive artist partners Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, as well as all of the other artists who worked by the Marvel Method, by making it so he and Marvel's other copywriters took not only full writing credit, but also full writing pay, for years--for stories that the artists were the primary writers of.
Now that Ditko and Lee are pushing up daisies and the Kirbys have money to burn, the truth might seem moot to some who don't want their child-brains bruised. But the thing is, Lee's fame primarily rests on the idea that it was he who created the character/properties--Fantastic Four, Spiderman, X-Men, Avengers---that form the core of the multibillion dollar Marvel Universe. However, as becomes obvious as Riesman describes Lee's overwhelmingly unimaginative concepts both prior to his Marvel heyday and subsequent to it, Lee was never creative in that way. Yet as Reisman hammers the salient points home and then suggests Lee's possible complicities in a range of bizarre corporate malfeasances that occur in his direct proximity throughout his later career, he still also emphasizes Lee's likability and possibly exculpatory naïveté and gullibility, while judging lesser players more harshly.
Some of Lee's contributions to Marvel's success are indisputably significant, and Riesman does not discount those: he details Lee's skills as a promoter; as an editor and art director with a grasp of what makes for clear, exciting comics storytelling; as an office manager with a talent for gladhandling artists; and as a copywriter and blurbist with a knack for punchy titles, clichéd soap operatics, glib humor and sly catchphrases. And Riesman offers some unique insights in that area: for example, he points to Lee's service during World War 2 as a stateside writer of propaganda films as being the major inspiration for the style of his editorial voice at Marvel in Bullpen Bulletins pronouncements, letters pages, and captioned asides throughout Marvel's stories in the 1960s. These and Lee's more unique bits of wordsmithing like the campy archaic-ish dialogue in Thor were part of why Marvel Comics were such fun and made us all feel part of something cool.
Unfortunately, what we didn't understand was that these fun, cool comics were made according to an inequitable comics production system. Lee's "Marvel Method" is based on the idea that a writer "writes the story" by providing a brief plot in a meeting or phone call with an artist, in even a sentence or two--or, by not even contributing anything at the outset. The artist may come up with the basic idea themselves. Whatever the story idea's source, though, the artist creates from that a complete set of sequential drawings that are the equivalent of a TV episode or film; i.e. the artist invents all of the specifics of incident that define storytelling, the full articulation of all well-cast players visually interacting and acting appropriately with dramatic timing, with "camera" movement in space, with light and atmospherics, sound effects, beats and foreshadowing, etc.---everything that involves a viewer/reader in a story and all far beyond the scope of the elevator pitch that the writer may or may not offer in the first place. Either way, the job of the Marvel Method writer was to take the complete pages that the artist makes and blurb them, writing captions and balloons based on the story notes and suggested dialogue that the artist wrote in the panel margins---and not always adhering to that artist's intent. Often, the best of Marvel's storytelling artists made up their own stories entirely; Kirby was like that, by Lee's own account--that is, by Lee's earlier, contemporaneous accounts. Later, he began to lie for legal reasons. But irregardless of their initiation of or contribution to stories, "writers" were given the entirety of writer credit and pay, while Kirby and his fellow artists were only ever credited and paid for their drawings.
Reading Riesman's book, I was reminded that former Marvel talents Jim Steranko and Gene Colan both told me that they usually liked Lee as an editor. Lee is presented in these pages as having the charm and slick management techniques to get everyone to do what he wanted, and a teflon aura that usually stopped them from blaming him if things went wrong. Gene told me that he liked the freedom the Marvel Method offered him to plot and pace stories himself; while Steranko enjoyed a privileged position as the sole writer/artist, at least credited as such, at that time at Marvel. "He's like AD Cedric Gibbons at MGM--let's give the old guy a break," Jim chided me when I grizzled about Lee to him.
You won’t be able to wash your eyes and brain.
But Steranko also told me that he left Marvel at the apex of his tenure precisely because after he asked Lee not to alter his exactingly orchestrated short horror masterpiece, "The Lurking Fear at Shadow House," Lee changed it anyway--hard. He messed with captions, added silly lines of dialogue and retitled it "At the Stroke of Midnight"--and he rejected the unique cover Steranko designed, opting instead for competent but derivative John Romita art. Nothing that Lee did needed doing, especially not at the risk of losing a major talent; and I doubt that his alterations contributed to the Alley Award the story won. His actions were only about establishing who is boss. Steranko had threatened that he would leave if this was done, and did. "It was the straw that broke the camel's back," Jim told me. Steranko could leave, because he always had other options. Kirby, Ditko and Wallace Wood likewise eventually all left in disgust. But Gene, Dick Ayers, Herb Trimpe and more didn't see themselves as having other options, and so they stuck with it for many years as work for hire freelancers at Marvel. All ended up suffering greatly from the lack of job assurance, benefits and recompense. Gene at the end of his life was afflicted with glaucoma and cancer with no health insurance. The halfhearted benefit comic Marvel did as a gesture to him just deflected responsibility to the fans.
Was that Lee's doing? Well, he wasn't there anymore, but he set up and greatly profited by a system that allowed the great talents who had helped put him where he was to be disenfranchised. He doesn't seem to ever have stood up for his ostensible collaborators in any way that counted. The guy who is shown here to be fun and entertaining is simultaneously revealed to be ethically challenged and lacking in sincere empathy. And more, plausible historical backup for his vaunted status of being known to millions as the primary creative dynamo who invented the sprawling Marvel Universe of characters is nowhere to be seen. It thusly seems strange when the author says in several different ways that that it is "possible and maybe even provable that the characters and plots Stan was famous for all sprang from the mind of Kirby" and that Kirby "may well have been the creator of the whole kit and kaboodle" ---because Marvel so obviously reflects the brunt of Kirby's furious talent for inventive character creation and design, sprawling narrative structure, and powerful sequential imagery, qualities which were always present in his work before Marvel and remained strong throughout his subsequent career---and face it, idea-wise, Lee is a nadir---but then relegates the relative few who believe Kirby's own account of their "collaboration" (including, ahem, myself) to being "hardcore comics geekdom."
Riesman should have consulted more geeks, because he missed certain areas of inquiry that might have helped to clarify Kirby's practice and so answer the overarching question of Marvel's founding authorship. For one thing, Riesman barely examines the dynamic of Jack Kirby's earlier team-up with Joe Simon, beyond allowing Simon's claims in his own book to pass unquestioned: that it was Simon who created Captain America and was the writer and inker of all the Simon/Kirby stories; that Kirby just penciled throughout their long partnership. But Kirby is on the record explaining how in his teaming with Simon, he usually wrote the stories he and others in the studio drew, while Simon concentrated on doing the business. Examination of the comics bears this out: many of the classic S&K stories in titles like Boy's Ranch, Young Romance and Black Magic clearly reflect Kirby's writing voice. In his upcoming book According to Jack Kirby, Michael Hill shares that Simon once conceded, "We were both prolific writers," but S&K studio writers are more specific: Walter Geier says that in story conference sessions with staff writers, "They sat there and made up the plots...Jack did most of that. Joe would say something once in a while but Jack was the idea man." Kim Aamodt agrees: "Jack did more of the plotting than Joe...Jack's face looked so energized when he was plotting that it seemed as if sparks were flying from him." Kirby scholars tend to believe that Simon contributed more to stories and inking in the earlier prewar years of their teaming, but as time went on shifted his attention to hustling deals. As Kirby said, "Had I stayed at Joe's side all the time that Joe operated we'd have never gotten any pages done." In the postwar S&K era, in addition to writing stories for himself and other artists, it is clear that Kirby most often inked his own pencils. In addition, he punched up pages by other S&K studios artist’s pages with his brushed ink blackspotting—and also colored, particularly on many effective covers.
Kirby pencils, inks, colors--and writes---S&K classics.
Doing the lion's share of the creative work was to Kirby a reasonable partnership, because "operating" was something he didn't want to deal with, while Simon did bring in lots of well-paying work. And so, Kirby likewise allowed Stan Lee to take way too much credit and pay---for years---because he thought he benefited from Lee's marketing savvy. Fan Barry Pearl claims that at the NY Comic Con in 2008, he overheard Lee whisper to Simon, “I have used what you taught me throughout my entire career.” And how.
That's another point that Riesman doesn't follow up on: by exploiting Kirby, his “partners” allegedly ended up with the lion's share of the assets including overly large portions of the original art. The Simon estate has auctioned off major original Kirby art including his early masterpiece “Mother Delilah” on Heritage. Riesman does mention a few times allegations that arose from Lee's 2010 appearance on the TV show Hollywood Treasure, when in a segment about valuing original Kirby Silver Age Fantastic Four art, one of Lee's entourage is quoted by the host describing Lee's "garages (and) storage units full" of Marvel original art. Given the context in which it comes up, one assumes this means similar art: highly desirable Silver Age Kirby art. I saw the show at the time, then discussed it with other Kirby fans. We all hoped that a real investigator, which Riesman is, would look into it. But even though a huge part of Kirby's dispute with Marvel was about his original art, and he only ever finally received a few hundred out of the thousands of pages which were rightfully his, Reisman doesn't afford the allegation any interrogation, but instead immediately diverts to what he calls a "far more eyebrow-raising" account of Lee's extravagances and the squiffy stock manipulations at his company POW.
An oozing stain of disempowerment seeps into the book whenever it deals with Kirby. Jack's claims of authorship are supported right up front in the Overture, if unverified---no "smoking gun"---but Kirby's own statements about this crucial issue are disbelieved by Riesman, and sometimes disputed even by others who present as being on Kirby's side. Mark Evanier was Kirby's assistant for a few years in the early 70s, also knew Lee "personally and professionally for decades" and worked for the aborted Stan Lee Media; he offers some valuable anecdotes in these pages. But several times herein, Evanier also subverts Kirby's authorship claim. I believe that Kirby, who by Lee's own admission constantly surprised his editor for years with new characters, through their accumulation and interdynamics initiated the elaborate cross-title continuity of the Marvel Universe, expansive lateral storytelling techniques he learned from his writing idols: Dumas, Dickens and newspaper strip cartoonist Milton Caniff. But Riesman ascribes this key innovation to Lee, without any justification beyond Evanier saying that Kirby "found it cumbersome and irritating, because it forced him to incorporate other people's ideas into his own comics." Really? Kirby seemed fine with including Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner and Carl Burgos' Human Torch early on with his own appropriation of Jack Cole's Plastic Man, and, um, the Norse god Thor--and who else created armies of interrelated characters in the early days at Marvel? Perhaps Jack said that about his later, ill-fated second stint at Marvel---after others has further filled his playground---and when Evanier no longer worked for him? And despite all the cited evidence that Lee rarely if ever plotted anything for or with Kirby, Evanier claims in these pages that Kirby and Lee "had already plotted" (in other words together) the issue of Fantastic Four that was "plotted" performatively after the fact by Lee for the benefit of the writer of a NY Herald Tribune article so insulting to Kirby and Ditko that it led to them quitting Marvel.
One thing Lee did create is the illusion that he somehow concocted that complex continuity and so added the most significant innovation, without inventing any of the participants. There’s no evidence that Stan initiated any of that, but there IS evidence that Stan blurbed a lot of cute captioned asides as he tried to keep track of all the things Kirby was adding to the sprawling canvas of Fantastic Four, The Avengers, SHIELD, The X-Men, etc. Yes, Lee may have asked Kirby to bring back characters sometimes, but they all were only ever on the board to be used because of Jack. But Kirby wore down after a while—against his nature, he tried to stop giving away ideas because he was cut off from the fruits of his labors. He was denied the promised royalties when his concepts were spun off into new titles and when his Marvel art was animated for TV cartoons and used wholesale for an array of merch. That wasn't all Lee's doing; no, the most major screwing was done by Lee's cousin by marriage, Marvel publisher Martin Goodman. But for all Lee's ability to secure lucrative consideration for himself with the publishers, first Goodman and then sundry corporate lowlifes, he never intervened for Kirby when Jack was struggling to get his due. Lee could have, but he didn't. And he sank his lowest long after Jack's passing, when he deposed against the Kirbys in their suit against the company, claiming that he was the sole creator of the Marvel Universe. But Riesman's tone goes hard on Kirby when describing his brilliantly incisive caricature of Lee as "Funky Flashman" in Mister Miracle #6 as a "brutal...gutshot."
Funky Flashman throws HouseRoy to the Furies.
He even lets Lee's understudy Roy Thomas, accurately nailed in that story as the subservient "HouseRoy," repeat his opinion that the "not in good fun" parody "hurt" Lee. Boo fucking hoo. Thomas has in recent years provided a needed forum for interviews of elder cartoonists with his zine Alter Ego, but his obsequious Pence-like defense of Lee is worth more than a demerit. The only person ever cited in True Believer or elsewhere as a witness to verify the provenance of Lee's few alleged "synopses" for two of the earliest issues of Fantastic Four is Roy Thomas. These documents, supposedly preserved since 1961, form the sole support for Lee's---and so Disney's---claims to the Marvel characters, but were likely concocted well after-the-fact of Kirby's initiative, and at any rate, Thomas did not work for Marvel until 1965. Perhaps here is the place to throw in that Marvel doesn’t pay royalties to artists, but I'm told they do to writers.
Twice, Riesman inexplicably describes Kirby's elder son Neal as "vicious" for his statement made during the Kirby family's last legal battles before their settlement that Lee was an "excellent" marketer, manager and promoter but without "any creative ability" ---a logical assessment that aligns with what Riesman himself implies throughout. Neal knew full well that his dad was a fount of ideas. All of the Kirby kids grew up watching their father's practice and saw his capabilities first-hand. Jack's youngest daughter Lisa recalls,
I do believe his work was well thought-out before he went to the drawing board. My dad was in his head a great deal of the time...My dad's studio pretty much had an open-door policy. We just came and went and it didn't seem to bother him...His schedule was usually from mid-afternoon and he worked all night. My mom would usually get up at 2 or 3 AM to check on him and try to convince him to go to bed.
That 12 hour workday didn't stop Kirby from caring from his family, who were in his mind the only reason he did what he did. Lisa says, "He was my father first, artist second...he did manage to take time off for family get-togethers and outings...He loved people and entertaining." Kirby did his best not to let his frustrations affect his family life, but his kids felt all their lives the damage that Lee's self-serving lies inflicted upon their family.
An awful picture is painted of Lee's own family throughout this narrative. For one thing, Reisman uses a repeating motif of the indignities visited on Larry Lieber, who gets bones thrown at him by his older brother Stanley and his subordinates of mostly low-level work writing and drawing for Marvel, but is largely dissed, exploited and/or ignored. That is pathetic, but on the other extreme is Lee's wife Joan and their troubled daughter JC, who are both depicted throughout as spoiled, profligate spendthrifts, and perhaps drivers for Lee's desperate greed. It is hard to assess JC, though; she does sound incredibly capricious and so her frequent appearances here may spur most of whatever scraps of pity are generated for the book's subject---but imagine what growing up with such parents would do to a person.
In truth, Lee held no regard for women. The man who claimed the "Invisible Girl" among his most famed female characters made it his business to objectify and diminish women throughout his career. Lee very deliberately altered Kirby's plotted Marvel stories to sideline the female characters. Lee's constant bowdlerization of Kirby's stories has been incisively articulated by Mike Garland in his series "A Failure to Communicate" in the Jack Kirby Collector. More recently, Kate Willaert examined the "Lee/Kirby" corpus and at first generously asserted, "Tight deadlines meant there wasn't always time for Lee to get an art correction when it didn't match his sensibilities, so he'd try to change it with text." But as Willaert compared Jack's penciled border story notes on the original art and the gestures and attitudes of the women in his drawings, with the published versions, reconfigured by Lee through his text and alterations and deletions of art, she observed "a recurring pattern of Stan Lee preventing a female character from having agency in a story, even when Jack Kirby had drawn it in." Kirby was a surprisingly progressive guy and he liked strong women, so he often wrote powerful, proactive female characters into his stories. A good example is The Invisible Girl. But no matter how bright, observant, resourceful and courageous Jack makes Susan Storm Richards, these qualities are vehemently denied by Lee's printed words. In the 100-plus issues of Fantastic Four that Jack Kirby wrote and Stan Lee rewrote, Sue is ignored, told to shut up, made to give the male characters credit for her actions that drive the plot, and removed from panels, over and over again.
Lee makes Sue Storm invisible.
Crystal and Medusa vanish, too.
Chris Tolworthy cites Lee's "foundational sexism: Kirby created (Sue) who was there due to her own intelligence and courage. But Lee would only allow a female as a love interest...(he) uses every opportunity to make her inferior to men." Lee goes far beyond any dismissals of "times were different then"--his constant sabotage of a quarter of the Fantastic Four greatly harms the storytelling across the series. And this is just one of the Marvel titles that he edited. Lee used his "great power" to be responsible for helping generations of boys be more sexist. Most of the ideas he ever genuinely came up with are based on his own leering propensities: besides the oft-derided Pamela Anderson vehicle Stripperella, he offered an endless succession of cheezeball titles: Stag Line, Virtue of Vera Valiant, Chastity Jones, Baaad Girl, Hef's Superbunnies, Li'l Repute, Harpies, etc.---and even an idea for a magazine that he discussed doing with Will Eisner with a feature article titled "Shall We Legalize Rape?"
After hundreds of pages about remorseless screwings, tasteless brainfarts, celebrity hobnobbings, and sordid, ethics-less and likely felonious business maneuvers done by, or under the aegis of, the revered cultural icon, it is hard to find any sympathy that as Lee's time on Earth wound down, he was increasingly a magnet for sleazeballs, con men and thugs, all eager to feed at his trough, and finally left to the less than tender mercies of his shrieking progeny. For whatever its faults, and I think the title True Believer is one of them as it suggests honesty on the part of the subject, the book finally pops the bubble of lies that made Stan Lee a multimillionaire and a revered figure to millions, but left his talented writer/artists in the dust, relatively unappreciated and even impoverished. In the end, Riesman did good--he nails the coffin on the old bullshitter. But the grime! I need a shower.
What…in the holy blue fuck did I just read. This is the most rambling, amateurish, incomprehensible “review” I’ve ever read. Yikes.
Excellent work by the always excellent James Romberger. I’m not qualified or smart enough to make psychological connections but I do wonder if Lee’s “foundational sexism” is a subconscious response to his wife Joan, who Marvel just last month sickingly reference in a blurb for the upcoming ‘August 1961’ Omnibus (“Considering leaving the comic book industry behind, Stan Lee was persuaded by his loving wife Joan to create one more book exactly the way he wanted it.”)- I would argue that the lifestyle Stan and his wife wanted (Long Island, expensive cars, house servants) are “evidence” enough of how Stan’s “I was going to quit anyway and my wife said do it my way…” myth is utter bullshit. He was not going to go anywhere to make it up in quantity like he did for Uncle Martin. Truth.
The silence from within the industry regarding this book boggles my mind. Scott Edelman announced, sight unseen, that it was “mean spirited,” and said he would determine whether to read the book based on the free chapter. Then he decided the free chapter wasn’t worth the aggravation. Like Barry Pearl and his marathon rebuttal, you don’t need to acknowledge what’s true in the book if you haven’t actually read it.
Responding to Michael Hill: You’ll see a proactive defensive attitude from the usual suspects- Edelman, Tony Isabella, Roy Thomas, Danny Fingeroth- all of whom are, coincidentally, writer/editors not known for being groundbreaking creators. Lee’s system validated their own position(s) and allow them to dismiss the artist. I went to see a Kirby at 100 panel a few years ago with Thomas and Fingeroth and it was mostly discussion about the then-recent ‘Logan’ film and Roy Thomas anecdotes- any credit to Kirby was begrudging, it seemed. Of course they’re going to shoot down this book. Fingeroth’s own flawed and biased book includes Lee’s documented statement of ‘Twas Steve (Ditko)’s idea’ regarding the creation of Doctor Strange… followed immediately by Fingeroth stating “It’s unclear what Stan meant by that.” That staggering bit right there tells you everything you need to know about these enablers.
WB,Kirby wrote female characters based on the wife he had. Lee rewrote them to be the wife he wished for. In light of True Believer, Kirby’s observation to Mark Borax that Lee was incapable of reversing course regarding the credit issue makes more sense. Compared to Lee, Kirby was the richest man in the world, and Lee had his pity. Great point about the writer/editors.
I’d like to see all the Thomases and Fingeroths of this world explain why it was right (to give but one example) to deny Steve Ditko a portion of Lee’s writing salary when even Lee both admitted in interview and acknowledged in print that Ditko was co-writing ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’.
Oof: “irregardless”—it’s been some time since I’ve seen that one.
Okay, two comments.
First, Nerd Herd’s extreme response goes too far. But Romberger’s writing sometimes does ramble… like in this sentence, which awkwardly ends the first paragraph:
“Instead, he digs a grimy evidential sinkhole as he details how Lee abused his most productive artist partners Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, as well as all of the other artists who worked by the Marvel Method, by making it so he and Marvel’s other copywriters took not only full writing credit, but also full writing pay, for years–for stories that the artists were the primary writers of.”
A little editing could have made that very rich writing more palatable.
Second, even given the above, this is absolutley the best review I’ve read of Reisman’s book, and I’ve tried to read them all. It is rich writing indeed, and thoughtful, and insightful, and provocative in the best ways. If only Reisman had sent his manuscript to Romberger for review and comments prior to the final draft!
“For whatever its faults, …the book finally pops the bubble of lies that made Stan Lee a multimillionaire and a revered figure to millions…”
Yes. A lot of what Riesman says in the book isn’t relevatory for anyone who has read full-fledged Kirby biographies or followed The Jack Kirby Collector over the years. What Riesman does that is (sort of) new is bring the evidence of Lee’s mendacity to a larger public. It has been a bit dizzying to see mainstream reviewers treat Riesman’s account as shockingly new, as if some kind of terrible secret had been revealed.
Me, I wish Riesman had actually uncovered something new about the halcyon Marvel Sixties, the period of, for me, greatest interest. That is fairly well-trod ground, and he doesn’t dig much more out of it in terms of new findings or concrete evidence. He does do an interesting job of insinuating things about Lee’s years of anonymity and Long Island suburbanite living. And he does due diligence and then some on the awfulness of Lee’s final years. But the stuff that is most interesting, most important, he doesn’t really bring new evidence too.
One thing to Riesman’s credit: given the usual epistemological swamp that is early-Marvel historiography, i.e. the much talked-about unknowability of it all, the lack of documentation on Lee’s side, etc., he acknowledges, in a way that few bios have before, that there is very little evidence of Lee’s creative input into the major properties and that in fact Lee may have had little to do with creating them. Again, that is probably an obviousness to a lot of comic-book buffs, but to have Riesman actually come out and say it, and then have mainstream reviewers pick up on that, well, that’s something.
Intriguingly, the book begins with a European familial prologue in which Lee’s ancestors flee antisemitic violence in Romania, but then Riesman acknowledges Lee’s almost complete dissocation from Jewish culture and heritage throughout his adult life. I’m wondering if the “True Believer” of the title is really a reference to assimilationism and the so-called American Dream.
@Charles-
I think what would help nudge awareness (or at least make it nigh-impossible for the rationalizers to shrug off or dismiss) would be for an author to make a detailed timeline narrative that collects what you correctly described as stuff that people reading TJKC, etc. for years have already known. That would include things such as-
– Ger Aperdorn’s exhaustive research into Stan’s many failed attempts into self-publishing and syndication in the late 50s’ to mid 60s’, even recording Stan’s idea to get his wife to call various offices pretending to be an enthusiastic reader
– Stan’s expensive lifestyle which, no judgment, would necessitate a job that he could make profit on volume to sustain said lifestyle and the spending his wife was accustomed to
– Ed Piskor revealing that he found out Stan didn’t even write the introductions to the famed “Marvel Masterworks” series, using a ghost writer (likely Roy Thomas) and then adding a ’nuff said’ or two
– Roy Thomas revealing that he ghost wrote the ‘Spider-Man’ syndicated strip for years and years
– Stan’s recorded statements of Kirby bringing him Ego The Living Planet, Silver Surfer, etc. with no input from Stan
– Stan’s recorded statement of Doctor Strange being “Steve’s idea” (Fuck how Danny Fingeroth interprets that)
– Jack’s creations pre-1961 including Captain America, The Vision (the Silver Age version isn’t THAT much of a departure), Fighting American, the entire Romance Comics genre
– Jack’s creations post-Marvel including many of the concepts and characters in the recent discussed ‘Synder’s Cut’ of the JUSTICE LEAGUE film
– Stan’s public plea in 1971 in a Bullpen Bulletins asking readers to send in plot suggestions
– Stan’s mutating origin story of his wife urging him to it “his way”.. the very first recorded retelling of this has Stan saying his wife was annoyed at his complaining and she says (quote) “when are you going to realize this is permanent?”
– At least 58 recorded statements of Stan saying he didn’t read comics, had no interest in them, didn’t have the time for them
Again, that isn’t brought up to villify him. That’s not saying you can’t be a good Editor even if you don’t love the medium. It just shreds the myth that he was this genial “Geek Godfather” who loved comics and was a great IDEA man. That he created anything. The historians lament the lack of documented evidence. The documented evidence is all there in the BODY OF WORK. One guy creates the Fourth World. One guy creates NHL Hockey Super-Heroes that literally bankrupted a company and included a Black Panther clone called “The Panther”. It’s laughable, but again- people need these myths, and badly.
Charles, Riesman has done more for Kirby than any existing or proposed Kirby biography other than Tom Scioli’s. He won’t consider writing a companion Kirby biography for the same reason Jean Depelley encountered resistance to a US edition of his two-volume set, deference to the long-awaited “official” version.
Riesman’s revelations about the “halcyon” sixties are highlighted by his interviews with Freedland, O’Neil, and Larry Lieber. Lieber, besides showing us what a dick Lee was to his brother, adds his name to the list of those who never witnessed a Kirby-Lee story conference (so far it’s unanimous), and admits plots given to him by Lee may have originated with Kirby. Freedland told Riesman that he hoped his article would lead to a job with Marvel. Did Lee fire Denny O’Neil, who had a wife at home with a new baby, because he failed to get Lee an honorary degree?
Prior to the book, Lieber revealed in his deposition that he never knew what became of his scripts after he submitted them, because he had no follow-up with the “artist.” If he received and submitted assignments to the office, Kirby may simply have been unaware that Lee was paying Lieber to write scripts. Also from Lieber’s deposition, rather than the first indication of trouble in paradise, the Herald Tribune article was just another jolt: a Kirby-Lee dust-up in late 1962 led to the torn Hulk pages and Kirby refusing to keep up his schedule of face-to-face story conferences.
The followers of the halcyon days of the abuse of the freelancers form the core of “Kirby fandom” these days, the ones TJKC and Evanier’s biography are cultivating/trying not to offend. As you suggest, Riesman is simply aiming at an audience that’s higher in every respect.
Hey Nerd Herd, are you ever going to write a Part 2 to your magnum opus about Jim Shooter?
“Stan’s public plea in 1971 in a Bullpen Bulletins asking readers to send in plot suggestions…”
Where did this appear? I’ve looked through the 1971 Bullpen Bulletins and can’t find anything that fits that description.
“Perhaps here is the place to throw in that Marvel doesn’t pay royalties to artists, but I’m told they do to writers.”
Where did you get that? I’ve always got art-royalties when they reprinted one of the two or three things I drew for them.
Eddie Campbell: I have no idea what the situation is today but when I met Ros and Jack in 1992 she told me they were not receiving any royalties for reprints from Marvel. They were from DC.
@Joe S Walker- I could be off and it’s 1970 but my source for this is John Morrow’s ‘Stuf’ Said’ book, I was unaware of Stan making this public suggestion (plea) before reading it there. Sorry for not citing the source.
Eddie Campbell, I suspect you benefited from a specific contract, that maybe a writer helped you get? But whatever the advantages enjoyed by artists working after the more progressive creator contracts that I think began at Marvel with Archie Goodwin’s Epic, those benefits were not retroactive. As Stephen Brower says above, Kirby and the other older artists were never paid royalties, but some sometimes are or were given what Marvel terms “incentive payments.” These are given selectively. As for writers getting royalties, I heard they were both from a writer and a written source a while ago, but damned if I can recall who or where, which is why I wrote “I am told…”
I’ll pass on reading the original article–I had my fill of James’ hallucinatory, falsehood-ridden screeds a long time ago–but I was curious about what Eddie was commenting on.
James is wrong to say that Marvel did not pay reprint money. They have since at least the early 1970s, and the policy was applicable to all material, not just work done after a certain point. In the early 1980s, before the trade paperback era, I recall it was $45 an issue, which was split among the scripter, penciller, and inker. The penciller got the largest share. There was also a back-end payment if sales warranted. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was something. With book collections, which became a thing later in the decade, I recall the amount was a cover-price percentage multiplied by either the sales or the print-run number.
Here’s a partial history of Marvel’s back-end payment policies:
Pre-1980: Flat reprint payments to scripters, pencillers, and inkers.
Early 1980: Epic Illustrated debuts, utilizing an author-ownership contract put together by editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, Rick Marschall (the magazine’s original editor), and Marvel president James Galton. Archie Goodwin was not involved. Marschall had acquired most of the first year’s material before Shooter fired him and replaced him with Goodwin. I believe the contract had a royalty clause.
Mid-1981: Shooter, Marvel publisher Michael Hobson, and writer-artist Jim Starlin finalize the template contracts for both the author-owned and company-owned Euro-album graphic novels. Both contracts include royalty clauses, and Marvel became the first of the legacy newsstand comics publishers to agree to royalties on a company-owned publication.
December 1981: Marvel announces they will pay royalties to scripters, pencillers, and inkers for issue sales over 100,000 copies for their newsstand comic-book line going forward. The plan duplicates one announced by DC the month before.
June 1982: Marvel announces the Epic Comics line, which emphasizes author-owned comic-book series, although it also includes company-owned projects that weren’t suitable for the traditional newsprint line. The template contracts converted the graphic novel contracts so they were appropriate for comic-book series. The royalty clauses of course carried over.
November 1982: Marvel implements a character-creation royalty plan, although it only covers new characters. It wasn’t retroactive. The plan was substantially similar to one DC implemented in the late 1970s. Jim Shooter had announced that the plan was forthcoming in 1980 pending approval from the board of directors of Marvel’s parent company. Unfortunately, Steve Gerber filed his lawsuit over ownership of Howard the Duck before they could vote on it. Implementation of the plan at that time would have increased Marvel’s contractual obligations to Gerber, and Marvel’s lawyers advised against it until after the suit was resolved. The plan went into effect the moment the judge approved the joint motion to dismiss the suit.
As for Stephen Brower’s comment, I believe he is confusing royalties for character licensing with royalties for comics sales. DC worked out an agreement with Kirby in the early 1980s to include the New Gods characters in their character-creation royalty plan. The only reprinting of his DC work before 1992 that I know of was a 1984 New Gods series that appears to have sold poorly, so I don’t think there was much, if any, royalty money to be had. I also know of no published complaint from the Kirbys that they did not receive reprint payments from Marvel.
“They have since at least the early 1970s..”
Sorry RSM, that sounds like a hallucinatory, falsehood-ridden screed to me! Per Scott Edelman, it wasn’t until December 1976 that Jim Galton and Smilin’ Stan announced a minimal reprint policy, which itself didn’t go into effect until 1977! It was $2.00 a page for writers and $4.50 for artists. It was also reactionary, as DC had begun one right before then. Hope this correction helps. Godspeed.
WB, I stand corrected. I knew the policy predated Shooter’s tenure as editor-in-chief, and most policies that predated Shooter usually date to Roy Thomas’s tenure at the latest.
For those curious, Edelman published the policy memos here:
http://www.scottedelman.com/2009/05/10/1976-marvel-and-dc-begin-paying-for-reprints/
For those interested in the source for the $45 policy I cite, see TCJ #87, page 18.
I assume WB has no disagreement with the rest of my chronology of Marvel’s back-end payment policies.
That aside, WB, I find it curious that you stayed silent about this information knowing that James was wrong.
What’s your standard? As long as the people you want to see demonized are demonized, it’s perfectly alright to lie or otherwise propagate falsehoods towards that end? But if someone pushes back on this, they have to be discredited, no matter how accurate what they’re saying is overall? All that’s needed is some detail, such as an erroneous date, to nitpick over?
Thanks for reminding me why I largely stepped away from the comics press. It’s as tribal as the right-wing media world, and just as obnoxious and, ultimately, stupid.
RSM, thank you for the grandiose responsibility and casting of being the responsible party for your reminder of why you stayed away from the comics press. But, not that you asked a question, allow me to respond: I did not stay silent about this information knowing James was wrong as I did not previously know this information. I simply was interested in the things you cited and had an admittedly vague memory of Jim Shooter possibly going over this in his blog a decade ago.
Being a curious lad, and finding that it’s best to do your research when you’re curious…. I simply googled the Marvel Reprint Policy and Edelman’s blog came up. There was no more diabolical motivation than THAT.
But you’re welcome for being the manifest of a reminder that comics are tribal, obnoxious and stupid.
WB–
James made false, defamatory claims about Marvel’s compensation policies that were at best recklessly ignorant. That doesn’t seem to bother you at all. You say nothing.
I correct him, and in an otherwise accurate comment, I got a date wrong. You respond by going on the attack.
Judging from your behavior, you think my getting a date wrong is far worse than James making false, defamatory statements, to the extent you think James making false, defamatory statements is bad at all.
Perhaps that’s tribal behavior, or perhaps it isn’t. But whatever it is, it represents a seriously messed-up set of values. And in the comics community, it’s hardly unique to you. I love comics, but so many of the fans are another story.
Now go ahead and deflect.
RSM,
So, I responded with genuine curious interest in something you stated in your initial comment. I do admit I used a bit of humor in my response there and, since I don’t know you, I should not have done this as it implies familiarity or closeness so for that and that alone, I apologize.
I would think your initial comment provoking someone to go study up would be something to be pleased about, or at least indifferent. Not so. Now we have..
– I want to see specific people be demonized
– As long as those specific people ARE demonized, I will rationalize any untruths and compromise any morality
– If anyone dares to “push back” against my tyranny, I must discredit them immediately
– If I make a minor correction to something that was not a big deal, that is me “nitpicking”
Got it. (I personally and sincerely think you miss Jeet Heer and those debates from a decade ago. Let me humbly admit that I am bound to (continue to) disappoint as I’m not an academic and cannot joust half as well; I’m a lowly Rock N’ Roll singer. But we can joust if you’d like; you already have the literary advantage.)
Again, I genuinely found your post interesting and know from your past writings that you are meticulous with facts and dates- a good thing. So me being inspired to look this up is seen as a nitpicking, an obsessive need to find anything I can to preserve the demonization of someone.
I don’t think James Romberger made false, defamatory statements. I think James, like any writer, is capable of making errors or mistakes- such as you literally just did above, with your minor error about when royalty payments on reprints began. Simple as that. James Romberger is passionate and fierce in his convictions and has proven it with his outspokenness on the plight of artists. He’s also not an idiot, therefore I find it hard to believe he’d knowingly just lie in a publicly available article. Hey RSM- even the best journalists can make an error here and there. If Romberger had written that Stan Lee stole his bike, I’d be a lot more incredulous.
Thank you for citing that I have a seriously messed-up set of values based on these minor interactions. I’m also curious how you can cite and respond to anything since, according to you (who wouldn’t lie or deceive), you HAVEN’T READ JAMES’S ARTICLE. Therefore, is anything you say about said article sensible or theoretical??
But.. no harm done. I’m actually working on a really comprehensive essay called ‘Robert Stanley Martin: A Second Opinion’ with a great sidebar called ‘THE RSM VICTIM FILES’ of which Jeet, James and Patrick Ford all have entries. I’m shopping around for blogs to run it. Any real frantic ones interested?? Hit me up!!!
I’m not saying Eddie Campbell doesn’t know what he’s talking about (in this instance), but what Marvel calls “royalties” in magazine articles are actually called “incentives” in their contracts. A royalty is a legally binding payment; an incentive is at the whim of Marvel.
“… even an idea for a magazine that he discussed doing with Will Eisner with a feature article titled “Shall We Legalize Rape?””
Yikes. Context please? That’s a pretty jarring thing to throw out and not explain.
In this case the context is in the book rather than the review.
WB: The June 1970 Bullpen Bulletins page was more than half taken up with “Stan Lee’s Little Survey”, which consisted of five questions and a lot of white space, and which asked readers to name “the kind of mags you should do more of,” and “the changes I’d make at Marvel.” I guess that’s it? It is thinkable that if someone sent in a brilliant suggestion Stan would have conveniently forgotten their name. On the other hand maybe for some reason that month they had to put together a Bullpen Bulletin page in about five minutes, and someone whisked up the survey out of desperation. I haven’t found any follow-up to it.
For context, read Riesman’s book. As if context would make the ideas of these fools more palatable. Geez, why am I even bothering to reply to nameless commenters.
“The documented evidence is all there in the BODY OF WORK. One guy creates the Fourth World. One guy creates NHL Hockey Super-Heroes that literally bankrupted a company and included a Black Panther clone called “The Panther”.”
Amen, WB!!!
When it comes to the unanswerable and eternal “exactly who created what” question, both men’s body of work after the swinging 60’s salad days, CLEARLY shows who was doing the heavy lifting in the time of their partnership.
Jack created Darkseid, a character still in use 50 years after creation, not only in comics, but TV, film, and videogames as well.
Stan created Ravage 2099, a character and concept so atrociously awful that John Byrne himself wiped his ass with the terrible script, as per a long ago letter Byrne wrote to the Comic Buyer’s Guide. Byrne was beside himself with nerd-glee to illustrate Stan the Man’s triumphant return to a Marvel monthly, but when he finally read the trite from the start story of Lee’s eco warrior battling corporate polluters in a dystopian future, replete with flying garbage trucks!, he rejected the script and bowed out.
@Joe S. Walker- I have to admit and apologize that it’s possibly not that exact Bullpen Bulletin. However, I am not making this tidbit up- the esteemed Patrick Ford also privately asked me where I got this. I read this in John Morrow’s ‘Stuf Said’ book and was flabbergasted that I hadn’t heard about this before. I no longer have that book so could not cite the exact and specific Bullpen Bulletin, but it *is* something Morrow mentions (along with Marvel putting out a ton of ongoing reprint titles featuring Kirby’s work the month New Gods #1 came out) that I found significant. Whatever your personal opinion of Morrow/TwoMorrows, I don’t believe he’d put out anything false so I trust him as the source for this.
As I am likely only vaguely remembering it, as soon as Kirby’s DC books were about to launch, Marvel publicly asked for plot suggestions and put out Kirby reprint books. Since Stan was such a creative powerhouse, this seems very strange of course! And yeah, I apologize for putting out a potentially wrong date for one of the things I’m citing but hey, I’m a commenter not a journalist.
Ravage 2099! I was like 13 when those books were coming out and remember a guy at the comic shop talking about how significant it is or was if they had STAN writing a book. How much of that book is Paul Ryan though? How do we know- seriously- Danny Fingeroth wasn’t ghost plotting or ghost scripting it, at this point? We can’t even give Stan credit for THAT drek.
With great power comes great responsibility.
From Franklin Roosevelt’s last speech printed posthumously in countless newspapers and magazines in 1945: “Today we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility.” Stan Lee’s paraphrase is the most famous thing he ever “wrote.”
Here’s a link to the original:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.24204300/?st=text
Bruce Chrislip, excellent.
WB, the Stan Lee’s Soapbox is from December 1971, and asks readers for one-liners describing life, in the vein of Lee’s “own” recent entry, “Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans.” He described it as “pithy and evasive.”
Page 119 in the second edition has Lee’s request for plot ideas, from the letters page of FF #116.
Michael, thanks for the clarification. The request for plot ideas from the letters page is what I was thinking of and referring to and I apologize for not making that more clear. That still likely would have been written when New Gods #4 was coming out, as FF #116 came out in Nov 1971.
Kirby and Ditko stole the bikes, Lee just fenced them.
I hadn’t heard that story from Piskor about Rascally Roy ghosting the Masterworks intros, that’s pure gold.
@Jones: I should clarify, he doesn’t state Roy specifically. He says, with a pause for emphasis, that it’s someone from “Stan Lee’s people”… I am assuming it’s Roy (or Fingerroth), but Roy was already ghost writing his Spider-Man strip.
If you watched the Cartoonist Kayfabe video about Stan’s Silver Surfer with Moebius mini-series, it’s that episode. I also believe Ed mentions it somewhere else, in a more chuckling manner. But the quote from the Silver Surfer ep is:
“Breaking kayfabe, I have been a part of projects that had a Stan Lee introduction… and, the way it worked… was… somebody else… that we were affiliated with… wrote the whole introduction… in Stan Lee’s voice. And, they send it off to the Stan Lee people… they get a little checkmark on it… then you get to publish it and say that Stan Lee wrote the intro.”