Kirby vs Marvel

[samurainoir]

If you can slough through all the legal babble, here's Mark Evanier's testimony...
The Mark Evanier Deposition For The Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

[Brazoo]

This is amazing!

To me Evanier always seems to have the clearest head when it comes to panning through the murk of time and ego with all this stuff. For instance:

"MARK EVANIER: My understanding is that Mr. Goodman said to Mr. Lee, “I see DC Comics has some very decent sales on what is called the Justice League of America. We should try a comic like that.”

Kinda blows a hole in the little fable Lee always tells where he makes it sound like he came up with the FF, told his wife about it, then kind of snuck it into production because Marvel was folding and he had one last chance to do the book he always wanted to. Also, just sounds much more realistic to me.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Well, I always thought that Goodman told Lee to create a super-group to compete with JLA, and Lee told his wife he didn't care to do it and was just going to quit, when she encouraged him to do it his way. So both stories kind of work together on this point.

Chris

[Brazoo]

Well, I always thought that Goodman told Lee to create a super-group to compete with JLA, and Lee told his wife he didn't care to do it and was just going to quit, when she encouraged him to do it his way. So both stories kind of work together on this point.

Chris

Yeah - that's a fair point. I guess this doesn't directly conflict with anything specific.

It's the wife conversation still sounds made up to me, and his statement that he was going to try all kinds of ideas he 'always wanted to try before' is just wrong to me. But - I'm sure we've talked about this a few times before already.

[samurainoir]

Evanier debunking the golf-game was actually the part of the "mythology" that was a revelation since we've heard that story over and over again so many times. Just goes to show how Stan Lee spins a yarn for fandom that gets repeated ad nauseam.

Although I don't doubt Goodman getting wind of the JLA sales and wanting jump the trend since that is what he's always consistently done.

[samurainoir]

Rascally or House (depending on who you believe) Roy takes the stand...
The Roy Thomas Deposition For The Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors

[Brazoo]

Evanier debunking the golf-game was actually the part of the "mythology" that was a revelation since we've heard that story over and over again so many times. Just goes to show how Stan Lee spins a yarn for fandom that gets repeated ad nauseam.

Although I don't doubt Goodman getting wind of the JLA sales and wanting jump the trend since that is what he's always consistently done.

Sorry, yeah - I don't even want to really get into a Lee V. Kirby thing - but the famous conversation with his wife the day before he worked on FF sounds just like the golf game thing to me. It makes it a better story and sorta more cliche - so it just doesn't sound convincing to me. When Lee talks about himself in those days he doesn't sound like he was overly enthusiastic about his job - not enough to come home and talk about story ideas with his wife. Not to me.

I think this is a great statement by Evanier:

"Mr. Lee’s versions occasionally differ from one another. You can’t believe all of them because occasionally they’re mutually exclusive. When Mr. Lee’s version and Mr. Kirby’s version matched up, and they matched the printed comics, and they kind of coincide with what people around them told me, then that is the version that I take to be the most credible."

And I don't think there's a better authority than Evanier for finding something close to the truth when it comes to that.

[johnmiic]

Lee went on-camera for the History Channel's Superheroes Unmasked special and repeated the Golf Game story for the genesis of the FF. I haven't read Origin's of Marvel Comics in some time. I bet the story doesn't match that. Also when Kirby died Lee gave an emotional interview to Wizard Magazine where he admitted Jack supplied the plots. If they can pull together many of the things Lee said in print and on camera they will have a shmorgasbord of tall tales to get thru.

[Brazoo]

The way I've come to understand Kirby is that he had a real drive to just draw and create - and that's where his mind was always partially at, it seems. He wasn't good at remembering things that happened - because his mind was always occupied on what he was working on currently. You can hear it in his interviews, and you can hear it from the people who knew him best. I don't think he cared where an idea came from - he just needed new ideas to keep going and going and...

Part of the tragedy, I think, is that he was taken advantage of by his publishers partially because he neglected his own worth in favor of just wanting to keep doing work. In some sense it seems he did know the value of what he was doing, but he favored working instead of fighting.

I think this part of the testimony really speaks to that:

Evanier:
"Well, I asked him [Sol Brodsky] in the early days was it true that Jack would come up with the plots for things, and Jack would go home often with know — with very little input from Stan. Or that sometimes it would be done over the phone, and Stan would say, “I don’t have time to talk about the next issue with you, so just do something,” and Jack would go ahead and draw an issue. I remember one thing he told me was that –and this is not a quote; this is a paraphrase by me — that repeatedly there was a situation where Jack would come into the office, and he and Stan would talk about the next issue of Fantastic Four, the issue of Fantastic Four that Jack was going to go home and start working on.

And on the way out, Jack — and Stan would say to Jack: Oh, then after that we’re going to do a Thor story, you know, next month. Got any ideas for that? And Jack would say — this is me making something up here — Jack would say something like: Oh, yeah, I got an idea for a story with Loki in it. And then Jack would go home and draw the Thor story that wasn’t needed next instead of The Fantastic Four story that was. He would get confused as to which story he was supposed to do in what order.
5So he would do this whole issue of Thor and bring it in, and Stan would say: Well, where’s the issue of Fantastic Four we were doing? And he’d say: Oh, I thought we were doing Thor first. He would get confused as to which book he was to do in which order."

[kingdom warrior]

I read this.........great read. I'm keeping my mouth shut on this.......those who know me
know how i feel about this.


Steve.

[PNGwynne]

Very interesting links, thank you all.

[jp1969]

My main comic collecting interest,has always been FF,the Kirby run.
IMO ,the FF is Kirby .
No 1 comes close to his style.

[Mego Superboy Prime]

Kirby is the King of Kings.

[hedrap]

Nothing personal to anyone here, but there's a romantic blindness to Kirby's POV that I don't get.

There are some great books and even papers that described what went on during this period, outside of Evanier, and Stan is consistent. When he talks of Goodman's golf outing with Schwartz, Schwartz denies the outing, not the conversation. What Evanier fails to mention, that's been chronicled by other historians, is that Goodman and Schwartz used to have lunch together, just as most of the NPP/Timely-Atlas-Marvel people did, as the "rivalry" was BS. Goodman was a golfer, so if Stan mixed up where the conversation took place, it wasn't intentional as Evanier leads people to believe, and it might have been how Goodman relayed the story to Stan. If Evanier wants to deny that Goodman and Schwartz used to do martini lunches, he's got a number of people who will correct him.

As for Stan's conversation with his wife, the story doesn't change. He wanted to write for TV and they were about to move out to LA when the JLA conversation took place. He had no interest as Atlas had laid dozens of people off and he was given more responsibilites, but his wife said write a story that you would read as a last hurrah. So he and Jack took the Challengers and mixed them with earlier creations. The debate is who gave them feet of clay.

For as much crap as Stan gets for playing fast-n-loose with history, Jack was just as bad. Evanier's testimony adds some light to Jack's bizarre 70's retcon of Thor, when he started claiming Asgard was never supposed to be mythological gods but an alien race. The reality, though, is Thor was supposed to the mythological god and it wasn't until Jack came up with his early 70's revamp, (most likely becoming the New Gods), that his idea of what Thor was changed, but that doesn't erase the actual history. You can find weird issues like this throughout with Kirby, especially with Spider-Man, and as Evanier is forced to admit, Kirby had moments of clarity in a hop-scotch memory, not vice-versa. It doesn't mean he was screwed out of ownership, it means he was screwed by bad freelance contracts as was everybody at the time.

[Brazoo]

Nothing personal to anyone here, but there's a romantic blindness to Kirby's POV that I don't get.

There are some great books and even papers that described what went on during this period, outside of Evanier, and Stan is consistent. When he talks of Goodman's golf outing with Schwartz, Schwartz denies the outing, not the conversation. What Evanier fails to mention, that's been chronicled by other historians, is that Goodman and Schwartz used to have lunch together, just as most of the NPP/Timely-Atlas-Marvel people did, as the "rivalry" was BS. Goodman was a golfer, so if Stan mixed up where the conversation took place, it wasn't intentional as Evanier leads people to believe, and it might have been how Goodman relayed the story to Stan. If Evanier wants to deny that Goodman and Schwartz used to do martini lunches, he's got a number of people who will correct him.

As for Stan's conversation with his wife, the story doesn't change. He wanted to write for TV and they were about to move out to LA when the JLA conversation took place. He had no interest as Atlas had laid dozens of people off and he was given more responsibilites, but his wife said write a story that you would read as a last hurrah. So he and Jack took the Challengers and mixed them with earlier creations. The debate is who gave them feet of clay.

For as much crap as Stan gets for playing fast-n-loose with history, Jack was just as bad. Evanier's testimony adds some light to Jack's bizarre 70's retcon of Thor, when he started claiming Asgard was never supposed to be mythological gods but an alien race. The reality, though, is Thor was supposed to the mythological god and it wasn't until Jack came up with his early 70's revamp, (most likely becoming the New Gods), that his idea of what Thor was changed, but that doesn't erase the actual history. You can find weird issues like this throughout with Kirby, especially with Spider-Man, and as Evanier is forced to admit, Kirby had moments of clarity in a hop-scotch memory, not vice-versa. It doesn't mean he was screwed out of ownership, it means he was screwed by bad freelance contracts as was everybody at the time.

To me, it's not a matter of who's view of history was most accurate - neither Lee or Kirby is great at recalling a history that makes total sense. Neither cares as much about the minutia of the stories and characters as any of the fans did and they both made many errors about that stuff all the time. I think Evanier's view is fairly balanced - and he even restated that a Goodman/Liebowitz (not Schwartz) conversation is what made Goodman decide to try a superhero team in his testimony. So, I do think you missed that.

Only the specific of the Goodman/Liebowitz being "over a game of golf" - which is how Lee put it - was questioned and debunked. It's the kind of thing Lee does. He uses little cliches to give his stories more punch. The wife conversation sounds like that to me - but I have no hard evidence for that. It's just a personal opinion of mine, and I don't know if anyone else questions it. I can see Lee coming home every night and saying "laid more people off - I really want to change my career - my uncle is driving me crazy.", but to me, discussing the contents of a comic doesn't seem natural for him to do. He only ever worked for his uncle - I can see him being reluctant to leave that security, and I can see his wife encouraging him to stick it out, but specifically saying something like "you go in there and take all those ideas you were telling me about and make one last go of it", or whatever he thinks she said, it sounds a little romanticized to me. And then, what did Lee and Kirby make? It's basically the exact same sci-fi monster book they'd already been doing, with a superhero team (as per Goodman's request). It's not exactly a giant leap or a 360º to me. Don't get me wrong - I love that book - and it was a cool combination - but it doesn't show evidence of the eureka moment Lee makes it out to be.

As far as I know Kirby only started speaking badly about Lee after many years of fans repeating how Lee was taking exclusive credit for his co-creations. For years, even after Kirby had problems at Marvel, he still spoke respectfully about working with Lee. In my view, if anyone created the situation of fans choosing "sides" between Lee and Kirby, it was Lee due to his public persona as the 'mind behind Marvel'.

My view is that Jack had a roll in the creation of these characters and stories that was undervalued - both creatively and financially. I believe that Marvel was unfair with him in many respects. Legally, this view was supported as well - and that's the main point of this whole thread.

Your references to Kirby's recollections about Asgardian's being alien instead of actual gods is hard to judge - I personally don't know much about those specifics of that, I haven't read Kirby saying that, but Kirby would often pencil different stories into the margins then what got printed after Lee (or more accurately in Thor's case Lieber, who was the credited writer on early Thor) got a hold of the pages. So I wouldn't write off the idea that Kirby had a different idea of what Asgard was about then what got published. There's plenty of surviving penciled pages and other sources to back that up - even if it's not accurate in this specific case - which again, I'm unsure.

I think Lee was a creative component in creating Marvel - but I think his public persona makes him less likable. His "company man" attitude and poor creative track record after he served as editor-in-chief are the main reasons why his point of view is tainted for me. I also have the view that Stan Lee was primarily an editor, and often unfairly misused his position and mis-credited himself as a "writer" on many stories he didn't actually write, in any conventional sense that would fit with standards of that time.