The "Stan Lee's Ethics" Thread

[ouroboros]

Once again I read a recently blogged article in which the writer condemned Stan Lee for not riding to the rescue on behalf of artists like Kirby and Ditko during the 1960s.

Every time I come across this sort of cant, I'm flummoxed as to what these writers thought Stan-- who had no ownership of the Marvel characters himself, any more than any artist-- could have done differently.

Imagine him in 1968, going to publisher Martin Goodman, for whom he'd worked for over 20 years, and trying to claim that Marvel should retroactively give Jack and Steve (and maybe Stan too) part of the action on the characters that Marvel already owned outright. Imagine Stan telling Martin he'd quit if there weren't new negotiations-- and then imagine Martin telling him not to let the door hit him, etc.

Stan may have done some questionable things over the years, but as I see it, once Jack and Steve agreed to be page-laborers, they were never going to get anything beyond that. That was the only way publishers did business in the early days, except for a brief period in the 1940s when a few creators managed to lawyer up.

What exactly is Stan supposed to have done different?

 

[NealKenneth]

Stan Lee developed the entire idea of recognizing writers and artists in comics. The way his character has been slandered is disgusting. People don't realize when they talk about Kirby, for example, that Stan repeatedly offered Kirby the position of Art Director, which would have paid him more and made his income more reliable and consistent. Kirby rejected this over and over to remain a freelancer.

This was a business. These writers and artists signed contracts fully understanding that control of the characters would go to their employer. There is literally NOTHING unethical about these agreements. In fact, they were essential to the comics industry functioning at all.

I would go so far as to say the concessions that were made to writers and artists between the 80s and the new millenium are a huge part of why comics has now collapsed as an industry. Everything is now marketed to a small collector/fanatic market because of a series of changes that were "only fair." The quality of the writing has fallen through the floor, no new readers stay, and the only "new" characters, only reinterpretations of old ones.

 

[ouroboros]

The thing I find most disgusting is that I'll occasionally hear about fans who think they're being "guerrilla journalists" by ambushing Stan Lee at conventions with arch questions about Kirby's treatment. (Almost never Ditko, or any other artist with whom Lee worked.) I suppose they feel vindicated when Stan either can't answer for legal reasons, or chooses to tow the company line, which, as you point out, has considerable precedent even if it wasn't the best of all possible worlds. The "ambushers" fail to realize that it's a complex ethical matter that can't be resolved by facile questions like, "What about Jack?"

(This is not to say that Marvel was ethically superior in all instances. They lost a lot of Kirby's original art over the years, simply because they didn't treat it like a valuable commodity. Admittedly, Kirby probably didn't want the art until it became valuable, but Marvel had the responsibility to keep the property secure.)

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

People don't realize when they talk about Kirby, for example, that Stan repeatedly offered Kirby the position of Art Director, which would have paid him more and made his income more reliable and consistent. Kirby rejected this over and over to remain a freelancer.

That's an interesting little tit-bit. Never heard that before.

 

[Sithborg]

It may not be up to Bob Kane level, but Stan Lee very much embraced the public personae as creator of these characters. He is an attention ****e. While he was an important part in early Marvel, I would say the artists were more important to the later creations.

 

[NealKenneth]

It may not be up to Bob Kane level, but Stan Lee very much embraced the public personae as creator of these characters.

Everyone who worked at Marvel benefited from this. It's like Walt Disney, George Lucas, or Steve Jobs. For some reason, things just become a lot more marketable if you put a face on them.

A lot of modern endeavors do this strategically because it's so effective (good examples are Peter Jackson and Zach Snyder, who take the public on while their creative partners stay in the shadows.)

He is an attention ****e.

This is an exagerration. He's a salesman pushing a product, he's not just trying to get attention.

While he was an important part in early Marvel, I would say the artists were more important to the later creations.

Well, sure, once he was out of Marvel, of course the people who were still there were more important.

But early Marvel...he's essential. Kirby and Ditko both did work before and after Lee and nothing they did ever became as iconic as their work with Lee. You don't get Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange, Hulk and on and on and on without Lee. If they happen at all, they don't catch on to nearly the same extent and we're certainly not talking about them in 2017.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

I will always recommend Sean Howe's book MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY. It is neither hagiography nor hatchet job. When speaking about Stan I think we should take a step back and not try to apply the narrative short hand of villains, victims and heroes to the history of Marvel.

Anyone seriously interested in the development of Marvel from the golden age to the inception of Marvel Studios should give Howe's book a read.

 

[Sithborg]

I will always recommend Sean Howe's book MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY. It is neither hagiography nor hatchet job. When speaking about Stan I think we should take a step back and not try to apply the narrative short hand of villains, victims and heroes to the history of Marvel.

Anyone seriously interested in the development of Marvel from the golden age to the inception of Marvel Studios should give Howe's book a read.

Agreed, its a great book. It is clear that Lee was an important part, but not quite to the level the public seems to praise him for.

 

[I Am The Knight]

I will always recommend Sean Howe's book MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY. It is neither hagiography nor hatchet job. When speaking about Stan I think we should take a step back and not try to apply the narrative short hand of villains, victims and heroes to the history of Marvel.

Anyone seriously interested in the development of Marvel from the golden age to the inception of Marvel Studios should give Howe's book a read.

Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

I will always recommend Sean Howe's book MARVEL COMICS THE UNTOLD STORY. It is neither hagiography nor hatchet job. When speaking about Stan I think we should take a step back and not try to apply the narrative short hand of villains, victims and heroes to the history of Marvel.

Anyone seriously interested in the development of Marvel from the golden age to the inception of Marvel Studios should give Howe's book a read.

I'll seek that out - thanks for the rec

 

[Sithborg]

Going over the crash also helps put the recent troubles Marvel has been having into perspective a bit more.

 

[ouroboros]

Agreed, its a great book. It is clear that Lee was an important part, but not quite to the level the public seems to praise him for.

Much though I defend Lee's part in the early formation of Marvel, I must admit that he didn't find much success in his quest to bring Marvel into other major media. He spent most of the 1980s trying to sell Marvel products to Sat morning cartoons, and had only moderate success. I've heard some people credit Avi Arad for the mainstreaming of Marvel into live-action movies, for what that's worth.

 

[NealKenneth]

Hindsight is 20/20 but I agree. It had to be hard for Stan to stay at Marvel, especially post-Kirby, but it would have played more to his strengths.

Context is everything here. Stan was sick and tired from working so hard, and the comic book industry had let him down over and over again. I can totally understand everything Kirby and Lee did as the 60s came to an end, and it's very common for artists to make these kinds of errors in judgement as they get more and more comfortable with financial success. It seems at least 90% of artists end up killing the golden goose eventually.

Lee understood they had a Lennon-McCartney situation going on, while Kirby did not. And Kirby was overworked. They should have scaled back all their work to just two prints: Fantastic Four and Thor. These could have been great vehicles for Kirby's Fourth World ideas and stories.

Kirby was obstinate unfortunately. Even when he returned to Marvel in the 70s, he would not work with Lee.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Stan Lee responsible for Marvel's survival on at least one or two major instances?

Also, I think it's wrong to treat Stan Lee as if he took sole credit. Stan Lee might've deserved only partial credit instead of "co-creator" credit buy the custom at the time was for a company to take full credit. So Stan Lee giving creators co-credit was actually charitable at the time.

It's easy to say Stan Lee should've stayed in the shadows and given artist full credit but I very much doubt Marvel would be the massive powerhousr today if he did.

You can count the mega popular non-DC and non-Marvel superheroes on one hand. As someone pointed out, maybe these less than fair practices is what allowed superheroes to reach the current level of omnipresence.

 

[Infinity9999x]

What do people think of this interview? In which Kirbyville asserts Stan did almost no writing?

http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

What do people think of this interview? In which Kirbyville asserts Stan did almost no writing?

http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/

Interesting read - thanks for posting.

KIRBY: Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything! I've never seen Stan Lee write anything. I used to write the stories just like I always did.

Wow. So as far as he's concerned Stan Lee was an editor, nothing more.


Edit: Some of the comments make interesting reading as well;

"What is really going on in the interview is Kirby is ripping Lee to bits, making clear he has no respect for Lee as a writer or as a man.
The interview is a conversation, in conversation there is almost always use of hyperbole, comments which are exaggerated for humor (even if it’s an insulting humor), and comments which might be understood by the participants but might not be understood by the reader."

"This is Stan in 1968:

'Well, what we usually do is, with most of the artists, I usually get a rough plot. … 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 make 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 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 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.' "

(Supposedly from Neal Kirby)

"Though my opinion may be viewed by some as non-objective, I can say that my father spoke the truth in this (Gary Groth) interview. Stan Lee has the advantage since my father’s death in 1993 of being the last man standing.

He has been able to say, calim, invent whatever he wants without fear of rebuttal! Is it conceivable that Stan Lee, with little knowledge of mythology, much less Norse mythology could come up with the premise of Thor as a super hero? Isn’t it much more likely that my father, whose studio on Long Island was filled with books on history and mythology, of which his favorite was Norse mythology, would be much more likely to have created such a character? I could go on as such concerning almost all the Marvel characters. What bothers me the most, however, is that Stan Lee is rewriting history in his favor, and young people now are starting to view him as the lone creator of the Marvel characters. There have been many injustices in the 80+ years of comic book history; this without question is one of the greatest."

"The work that was done stands on its own merit. They were great comics, made by great men. We all enjoyed them, and the entertainment they provided to us. Let whatever happened between Lee and Kirby, lie between Lee and Kirby. We have the comics to remember, and the inspiration they have given us. "

 

[NealKenneth]

Unfortunately, you just can't take Kirby at his word later in his life.

Think about this logically...in this interview Kirby says Stan never wrote. Does he mean plotting? Well, that's unlikely because we know from interviews at the Marvel bullpen during the 60s exactly how plotting happened. Kirby and Lee would essentially bounce ideas back and forth for awhile until Kirby went off and drew the panels. This reporter was there to watch them go through their routine, day-to-day activities...so is it more likely that the reporter or Kirby was lying? And if it was the reporter, what was his motive for lying?

Did Kirby mean dialogue then? Well, there's a series of major problems with claiming Lee did not write the dialogue itself. First, there would be the massive coincidence that the dialogue is extremely similar to how Lee actually speaks in real life. Second, we'd have to explain why neither Ditko or Kirby were able to find similar success without Lee. Third, we'd have to explain how the dialogue in The Amazing Spider-Man was very similar and of equal quality, despite the fact that Ditko gives Lee credit for writing it. Is Ditko covering up for Kirby writing the dialogue? If so, why? And in that case we know that Ditko started plotting the issues without Lee's help, and for that Lee gave him plotting/co-writer credit. If we are to believe Kirby was plotting FF or Thor on his own...why wouldn't Lee give him similar credit?

The simpliest answer to all these problems is that Kirby, for whatever reason, is either being dishonest or has forgotten the truth during this interview.

 

[ouroboros]

Hindsight is 20/20 but I agree. It had to be hard for Stan to stay at Marvel, especially post-Kirby, but it would have played more to his strengths.

Context is everything here. Stan was sick and tired from working so hard, and the comic book industry had let him down over and over again. I can totally understand everything Kirby and Lee did as the 60s came to an end, and it's very common for artists to make these kinds of errors in judgement as they get more and more comfortable with financial success. It seems at least 90% of artists end up killing the golden goose eventually.

Lee understood they had a Lennon-McCartney situation going on, while Kirby did not. And Kirby was overworked. They should have scaled back all their work to just two prints: Fantastic Four and Thor. These could have been great vehicles for Kirby's Fourth World ideas and stories.

Kirby was obstinate unfortunately. Even when he returned to Marvel in the 70s, he would not work with Lee.

I like the Lennon-McCartney comparison, because it speaks to how artists may enjoy working together but also want to test themselves solo. Of course in comics it's also a money issue, since Kirby wasn't getting paid for whatever concepts he originated, only for his art. Lee probably didn't understand his frustration in this regard, since as far as Lee was concerned they were both giving up all rights to their work. I think Kirby began to believe that he could parley his sudden burst of "fame" into something more remunerative than his Marvel setup. He seemed to believe that he might become an editor at DC, which would have freed him from being bound to the drawing-board in his golden years. But if Infantino made any promises on that score, he reneged on them, and Kirby ended up being chained to the board there too.

Kirby's conditions for coming back to Marvel were that he didn't want to work with any writer, not just Lee, because he felt-- with some justice-- that he "wrote" the essentials of the story on the drawing-board. He and Lee did collaborate on the SILVER SURFER graphic novel, though.

 

[ouroboros]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Stan Lee responsible for Marvel's survival on at least one or two major instances?

Also, I think it's wrong to treat Stan Lee as if he took sole credit. Stan Lee might've deserved only partial credit instead of "co-creator" credit buy the custom at the time was for a company to take full credit. So Stan Lee giving creators co-credit was actually charitable at the time.

It's easy to say Stan Lee should've stayed in the shadows and given artist full credit but I very much doubt Marvel would be the massive powerhousr today if he did.

You can count the mega popular non-DC and non-Marvel superheroes on one hand. As someone pointed out, maybe these less than fair practices is what allowed superheroes to reach the current level of omnipresence.

Yeah, I think some of Lee's collaborators resented his prominence, but it's highly dubious as to whether any of them could have tolerated the demands of self-salesmanship. Lee had a little stage experience and he knew how to build up his "character" while staying "on message."

 

[ouroboros]

What do people think of this interview? In which Kirbyville asserts Stan did almost no writing?

http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/

I think he misrepresents his contribution pretty baldly, but this was some time after Marvel had attempted to get him to jump through a lot of extremely complicated legal hoops before he could get his original art back, so Lee is probably getting some of the heat that Marvel the Company provoked.

 

[ouroboros]

Unfortunately, you just can't take Kirby at his word later in his life.

Think about this logically...in this interview Kirby says Stan never wrote. Does he mean plotting? Well, that's unlikely because we know from interviews at the Marvel bullpen during the 60s exactly how plotting happened. Kirby and Lee would essentially bounce ideas back and forth for awhile until Kirby went off and drew the panels. This reporter was there to watch them go through their routine, day-to-day activities...so is it more likely that the reporter or Kirby was lying? And if it was the reporter, what was his motive for lying?

Did Kirby mean dialogue then? Well, there's a series of major problems with claiming Lee did not write the dialogue itself. First, there would be the massive coincidence that the dialogue is extremely similar to how Lee actually speaks in real life. Second, we'd have to explain why neither Ditko or Kirby were able to find similar success without Lee. Third, we'd have to explain how the dialogue in The Amazing Spider-Man was very similar and of equal quality, despite the fact that Ditko gives Lee credit for writing it. Is Ditko covering up for Kirby writing the dialogue? If so, why? And in that case we know that Ditko started plotting the issues without Lee's help, and for that Lee gave him plotting/co-writer credit. If we are to believe Kirby was plotting FF or Thor on his own...why wouldn't Lee give him similar credit?

The simpliest answer to all these problems is that Kirby, for whatever reason, is either being dishonest or has forgotten the truth during this interview.

What frosts my butt at times is that no one likes to admit that the "Marvel method" was the way Kirby often worked at other companies, with no expectation of special treatment.

I wrote a long blog-post on the subject here, but here's the most relevant section:

Here's an interesting aside on the way Kirby worked with another writer, taken from Mark Evanier's KIRBY: KING OF COMICS:

Kirby could do CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN without [Joe] Simon, and he did. A writer named Dave Wood provided scripts, which pretty much meant sitting with Kirby, hearing him spin off a plot, and the going home and typing it up. Jack rewrote whatever he was given anyway."-- KIRBY, page 101.
Evanier does not cite his source for this view of the Kirby-Wood collaboration, but it's likely that his information came from Kirby. This narrative is probably as accurate a description of a 1957-59 working-relationship as anyone's likely to get after sixty years, but what I find most fascinating is that Kirby's creative process on CHALLENGERS, prior to any significant 1950s collaborations with Stan Lee, was essentially "the Marvel Method." This method meant that the writer simply discussed the plot very generally with the artist, after which the artist created his own version of the story, which might or might not owe anything to the writer's intentions-- at which point the only thing left to the official writer would be the dialogue.

So the question occurs to me, "Let's say that Jack Kirby did the lion's share of the work on CHALLENGERS; then where were his complaints about Dave Wood getting a full writer's paycheck?" I strongly doubt that Wood took anything but the full writer's check; no writer back then would have wanted to work with Kirby for less than the going rate, nor would DC Comics, whose relationship with Kirby was less than amenable, have made any special dispensations for Kirby.

 

[NealKenneth]

What frosts my butt at times is that no one likes to admit that the "Marvel method" was the way Kirby often worked at other companies, with no expectation of special treatment.

Thanks for the link! It was very interesting and I also read Part 1.

I think we can assume that there isn't anything particularly original about the Marvel Method besides the way Stan Lee promoted it. To me, it has always seemed to be the most logical way of making a comic book, especially if you're running a small operation like Marvel was in the early days. Kirby was just very good at it, and so was Ditko (I can only imagine what it was like for Stan when he opened the envelope with the pages for ASM 33! We know for a fact that he and Ditko weren't even talking at that point, much less plotting ideas out.)

Your essay goes into it a bit, but I think you nailed the motive here...by 1989 it was clear that the properties could make a lot of money and Kirby wanted a nice, big slice. You can even tell from the way Roz is sorta coaching Jack through the interview. Very sad.

 

[Infinity9999x]

The whole situation is very fascinating...and sad. I imagine it's somewhere in the middle. As NealKenneth points out, there are a lot of things that seem to go against Kirby's statements. I think that in some cases, it probably was similar to what he said, but in others probably not. And to be fair to Stan, Stan, certainly in interviews I've read, never seems to try and take credit completely for the characters. His statements seem to go along somewhat with what Kirby is saying...Kirby just seems to have exaggerated it. Stan said himself that with artist like Jack, he didn't have to do as much in terms of plotting.

It's certainly not a Kane/Finger situation to be sure. Still, sad that Kirby seemed to be so bitter at the end there.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

The whole situation is very fascinating...and sad. I imagine it's somewhere in the middle.

I agree. I find the Lennon/McCartney comparison mentioned earlier an interesting one.