Stan Lee and Jack Kirby: Who Did What? / Chris Tolworthy

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby: Who did What?

Answer: they each created the whole thing. On their own. It depends on how you define the question.

Chris Tolworthy

Synopsis

Stan Lee created Marvel Comics, with a big ‘M’ and a big ‘C’: the corporation as we know it. Jack Kirby created Marvel comics, with a small ‘c’: the individual stories.

Stan Lee was just as creative as Kirby, but in a different way. This is what Stan Lee created:

• The Marvel Universe itself. Stan created the links. Jack Kirby made stand-alone series; Stan linked them together. Stan also created the footnotes, encouraging people to buy back issues. This created the back-issue industry, which allowed the comics industry to ride out the bad times and increased the profile and earning power of the best talent.

• Easy to read dialog. Stan wrote the finished dialogue on Jack’s comics, adapting (or ignoring) Jack’s notes. People accuse Stan’s dialogue of stating the obvious, and his plots of being formulaic (e.g., the male hero always rescues the weak female). But, by golly, you always know where you are with a Stan Lee story. You’re guaranteed to understand it and have a pleasant read.

• Emotional touches, such as the noble deaths. Stan knows what sells and what connects with readers.

• Reader suggestions. Stan changed stories in response to what readers seemed to want. Stan connected with readers like nobody before or since.

• More comics. by creating a successful comic company. Stan Lee gave us more comics and put more writers and artists in print. According to Stan Lee and The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, Stan is also probably the best comics editor in history. No other comics publisher, and certainly no other Marvel Editor In Chief, has achieved so much.

• Creative freedom. He let his artists add far more to the story, bringing out their best (at least before merchandising became profitable and forced the stories to stop changing).

• Returning characters. While Jack Kirby liked to create new stories, Lee liked to bring back anybody who was popular. The Sub-Mariner, Dr Doom, etc: they would be gone and forgotten if not for Stan.

• The ‘who did what’ box. Comics had been signed by artists and writers for years, but most readers didn’t notice. But Stan put a big standardised box on every splash page, so EVERYBODY noticed. This enabled the best writers and artists to get a higher profile and do more work. It also revealed the inkers and letterers and colourists for the first time. Without Stan, many artists would still be largely unknown and penniless.

• A market for older comics. By conquering the media and being so likable, Stan made comics respectable. Remember that in the 1950s, comics were treated as either harmful or kids’ stuff. He changed this.

• Longer comic runs. Stan increased reader loyalty. The Hucksterism, brand loyalty, freedom to artists and relaxed letters pages were not new: they came from EC comics and their “usual gang of idiots”. The unique innovation was to link it into one big story, the Marvel Universe. Thanks to Stan’s invention, comics that would be expected to last maybe fifty issues at most are still going after five hundred!

Stan’s position is not in doubt. He deserves his millions of dollars, his fame and his endless fans. Stan does not need defending; his achievements speak for themselves. I want to start with that, and drive home the point with a sledge hammer, because otherwise what follows might get ugly. I am going to argue that Jack Kirby wrote the actual comics, and Stan simply dumbed them down to reach a wider audience. Them’s fighting words! But read the evidence and judge for yourself.

But let’s be clear: while Jack Kirby created Marvel comics (small ‘c’, the pictures and stories), it was Stan Lee who created Marvel Comics: the business empire, and the shared universe. Anybody who has ever run a business, or followed the lives of great entrepreneurs, knows that this is just as creative, just as difficult, as writing and drawing great stories.

Let’s get on with the topic: exactly who did what? What does the evidence show?

The Controversy

The early Fantastic Four stated, “Written by Stan Lee, Drawn by Jack Kirby”. Nice and simple. In Origins of Marvel Comics and in interviews, Stan Lee indicates that he came up with the ideas and Jack Kirby drew them. But there are several big problems here:

• Both before and after the early 1960s, Stan Lee was not known for producing great new ideas. Jack Kirby, on the other hand, was always producing big ideas, such as Captain America (co-created with Joe Simon) and the Fourth World series for DC (entirely on his own, immediately after leaving Marvel).

• Stan Lee was just too busy to write everything, and would often just deliver the faintest outline for a script. In this letter from 1965 (printed in the book The Stan Lee Universe), he outlines what became known as ‘the Marvel method’:

• Stan would often just phone in a suggestion and Jack would do the rest, delivering the pages for dialogue to be added. For example, Stan once said something like, “This month, have the Fantastic Four fight God”, and Jack then created the Galactus saga, perhaps the greatest comics story ever. Famously, when Stan first saw the Silver Surfer, he asked, “Who’s this guy?”

Very often I didn’t know what the hell [Kirby] was going to give me. I’d get some pages of artwork, and I wrote the copy and turned it into whatever story I wanted it to be ... It was like doing a crossword puzzle. I would try to figure out what the illustrations meant and then I would put in the dialog and captions.

(quoted in ‘Secret Origins of The Fantastic Four / Conclusion: A Legend is Born!’, Dial B for Blog No. 51, 2005)

Kirby would even add blue pencil notes for dialogue. Stan would then add the actual dialogue (which often contradicted what Jack wanted, but Jack seldom had time to read the finished comic).

• In 1968, the magazine Castle of Frankenstein #12 published a Stan Lee interview in which he stated:

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. (emphasis mine)

In interviews such as this, it seems that when Stan says “writing” he means adding the dialogue to the finished art; but when Jack Kirby says “writing” he means deciding what happens from panel to panel, and adding notes in the margins as needed.

• The surviving artwork often includes written notes from Jack telling Stan what is going on. This example (from the Kirby Museum) is from issue 61:

• Almost everything in the early FF has similarities with other Jack Kirby creations. In particular, the FF has many parallels with Challengers of the Unknown, a series Kirby had just produced for DC. It was about four friends who survived a plane crash and dedicated their lives to the good of mankind. Even the suits were the same. Issue 2 featured one of them crashing in a space ship and gaining various super powers.

• In later years, Kirby stated plainly that he created it all.

• Stan openly admits to having a notoriously bad memory, so how he remembers it may not be as others remember it.

• Stan has a powerful motive for claiming credit: copyright law means that if Kirby created it, then he (or his estate) would now be due hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties. But Stan is always the consummate company man, so as long as he claims credit (and takes his million-dollar-a-year salary), Marvel is legally safe.

• Kirby ignored most of what Stan wrote. According to John Romita, Sr:

I heard them plotting in other instances! [laughter] Jack would say, “Stanley, I think I’ve got an idea. How ’bout this?” Stan would say, “That’s not bad, Jack, but I’d rather see it this way.” Jack would absolutely forget what Stan said, and Stan would forget what Jack said. [laughter] I would bet my house that Jack never read the books after Stan wrote them; that’s why he could claim with a straight face that Stan never wrote anything except what Jack put in the notes. He was kidding himself; he never read them.

(‘John Romita, Sr.: Spidey’s Man’; interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke; Comic Book Artist No. 6, 1999)

Jack Kirby was paid only as an artist, but he felt he should be paid more because he also contributed story ideas. He believed he had been promised payment and it never came, so he finally left Marvel. Years later, in the 1980s, Jack was fighting to get his original art back from Marvel, and the two sides became polarized. Some fans felt that clearly Stan did everything. Others felt that he had taken credit for Kirby’s work. Still others felt that their contribution was equal. The battle rages to this day. So who is right?

The Case Against Stan Lee

Some people argue that Jack Kirby created everything. Consider the following excerpt from an interview with Stan Goldberg (‘The Goldberg Variations’), conducted by Jim Amash for Alter Ego (Vol. 3 / No. 18, October 2002; edited by Roy Thomas):

Stan Goldberg: Stan would drive me home and we’d plot our stories in the car. I’d say to Stan, “How’s this? Millie loses her job.” He’d say, “Great! Give me 25 pages.” And that took him off the hook. One time I was in Stan’s office and I told him, “I don’t have another plot.” Stan got out of his chair and walked over to me, looked me in the face, and said very seriously, “I don’t ever want to hear you say you can’t think of another plot.” Then he walked back and sat down in his chair. He didn’t think he needed to tell me anything more.”

Jim Amash: Sounds like you were doing most of the writing then.

Stan Goldberg: Well, I was.

For contrast, Goldberg told the same interviewer the following about Kirby:

Jack would sit there at lunch, and tell us these great ideas about what he was going to do next. It was like the ideas were bursting from every pore of his body. It was very interesting because he was a fountain of ideas. One day Jack came in and had this 20-page story and proceeded to tell us he was having his house and studio painted. I asked, “Where did you draw the story?” Jack said, “I put my board on the stair banister, and drew it.”

Consider the following excerpt from a Steve Ditko letter to Comic Book Marketplace magazine, published in Issue 63 (1998):

The fact is we had no story or idea discussion about Spider-Man books even before issue #26 up to when I left the book. Stan never knew what was in my plotted stories until I took in the penciled story, the cover, my script and Sol Brodsky took the material from me and took it all into Stan’s office, so I had to leave without seeing or talking to Stan.

The legendary artist Wally Wood goes even further:

Did I say Stanley had no smarts? Well, he DID come up with two surefire ideas… the first one was “Why not let the artists WRITE the stories as well as draw them?” … And the second was … “ALWAYS SIGN YOUR NAME ON TOP …BIG”. And the rest is history … Stanley, of course became rich and famous … over the bodies of people like Bill [Everett] and Jack [Kirby]. Bill, who had created the character that had made his father rich, wound up COLORING and doing odd jobs.

(‘What Makes Stanley Run?’ by Wally Wood; The Woodwork Gazette No. 1, 1978)

Rob Steibel’s opinion of Stan Lee is apparently similar:

On each page, from 1964 to 1970, next to every single panel Jack wrote extensive margin notes explaining to Lee what was taking place in the story. It took Jack about 2 weeks do a single story, it may have taken Lee as little as 4 hours to add text to Jack’s art.

(‘Kirby Fantastic Four 2011’, Rob Steibel; The Kirby Museum website, 4 January 2011)

The Case Against Jack Kirby

The debate over ‘who did what’ often relies on the following myths. I have been guilty of them myself. You will see these claims again and again, here and elsewhere, and none of them stand up to scrutiny.

“Stan said...” “Jack said...”. Articles about Stan and Jack often quote what they said years later. But memories are simply not reliable. When we remember something our brains re-write the past. Study after study has shown that memories simply cannot be trusted. Instead we should rely on documents from the time.

Stan made Jack famous. If Stan plucked Jack from obscurity then Jack should be grateful! But Jack Kirby was already famous: far more famous than Stan Lee. ‘Simon and Kirby’ was the most famous double act in comics, probably even beating Siegel and Shuster. The names ‘Simon and Kirby’ even appeared on covers, because their names sold comics.

Jack wrote stilted dialogue. For my money, Jack Kirby writes the best dialogue in the business. But not everyone feels that way.

Overblown as Lee’s dialogue could be – “Stand back, human! None may leave this building by imperial order of Prince Namor himself!” – it had a certain corny charm. Kirby’s characters spoke in a stilted, awkward dialect which was sometimes very hard to read. In that debut issue of his Jimmy Olsen series, for example, he has Morgan Edge declare: “No deal, no how, Kent! Not you, Buddy Boy! The ‘hairies’ who inhabit the wild area – trust nobody over twenty-five!

(‘Lex, Luthor: Superheroes in Court’, Paul Slade; Planet Slade website)

By this definition, Shakespeare also writes stilted dialogue:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. (Julius Cæsar)

See how Shakespeare’s ideas jump around and use weird language. But maybe that’s because he’s so old? Then how about this:

O, Great Northern Mall, you dwindling oracle

of upstate New York, your colossal lot

of frost-heaved spaces so vacant I could cut

straight through while blinking and keep my eyes

shut, I’ve come like the flies that give up the ghost

at the papered fronts of your defunct stores [...]

(from ‘The Saturday Poem: Night Errand’)

The National Poetry society awarded this poem by Eric Berlin first prize in 2015. Poetry is like that. You have to read it slow, savour its words. So let’s take another look at Paul Slade’s example of Kirby’s “stilted dialogue”:

No deal, no how, Kent!

How is that hard to understand? Here is conflict, the heart of good writing! And this is a sentence that a real person might say (the speaker is an older New Yorker in 1970).

Not you, Buddy Boy!

And now we have personality and teasing—something that Stan Lee’s Namor example lacks. And notice the implication that the speaker and the listener are social equals. This makes the conflict meaningful – the speaker could actually lose. But in the Namor example, the power is so one-sided that there is no tension.

The “hairies” who inhabit the wild area [...]

A short sentence fragment, but packed with poetic imagery and useful information. “Hairies” brings with it hippie connotations, with political and social meaning. It also tells us that the older group looks down on the younger, finding them crude and uncivilized. And yet they have hair, they are full of youth and vigour.

– trust nobody over twenty-five!

This is the key dialogue. This is what I wanted to get to. It brings us to the next topic, feet of clay.

Stan added the feet of clay?

One of Marvel’s most striking innovations had been to give its heroes commonplace problems in their civilian lives, and a degree of ambiguity about whether their powers were a blessing or a curse. Spider-Man was always short of money, for example, and The Thing gained his phenomenal strength only at the cost of his new, hideous appearance. [...] This approach played a big part in Marvel’s early success, Lee’s the only common factor in all the debut books using it, and it’s not something you find in either Kirby or Ditko’s solo work. For all those reasons, it’s fair to credit Lee as its inventor.

(‘Lex, Luthor: Superheroes in Court’, Paul Slade; Planet Slade website)

We only have to open any Kirby story at random to refute that. Let’s look again at the previous “stilted language” for example:

No deal, no how, Kent! Not you, Buddy Boy! The “hairies” who inhabit the wild area – trust nobody over twenty-five!

Think of what that means. The speaker is older but cannot trust the young. So? Despite being an older, larger, more experienced man, and having the authority and power of the state to back him up, he cannot deal with the youth. He has no power, despite his power! This is real weakness, real feet of clay. The guy is weak despite being strong. This is how feet of clay work in the real world. This is true for all Kirby creations: their weaknesses are serious and real. Kirby’s Captain America has only the strength of a human athlete, and no more. Kirby’s Orion must fight against his own father. More importantly, Kirby created more than just superheroes. For example, Kirby and Simon literally invented the whole romance genre. An entire genre based on stories of human weakness.

Stan made the comics smarter?

The comic book marketplace was changing thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of Stan Lee. Pretty soon, the old way of creating comics was not going to work. Audiences were becoming smarter, not necessarily good news for the comics industry. Perhaps Stan actually recognized that or perhaps his different approach to how characters were written was just a lucky coincidence. Either way, it lead to an elevation in the average age of Marvel Comics readers and ultimately, to the average age of all comic readers.

(‘The Hulk on TV / Jack vs Stan, again’, Alan McKenzie and Brett Ewins; Marvel in the Silver Age blog, 23 April 2016)

None of Stan Lee’s comics were as adult in their themes and approach as Kirby’s adult-oriented comics. I don’t mean juvenile interests like sex and violence; I mean real adult themes, like marriage (the romance comics), psychology (Strange World of Your Dreams), or Kirby’s own direct experience of fighting in World War II. Some of Kirby’s earliest work was adapting classic novels; superhero and monster comics were just a small part of his repertoire.

This is hardly surprising, as Kirby had seen the real world. He fought in the war, he set up his own businesses (e.g. with Joe Simon), he worked for different people. He spent most of his time working at home surrounded by books, listening to the news on the radio. He created collages from the science magazines he read. Here, for example, is Jack at work with Joe Simon; note the books always at hand:

And here he is after he left Marvel, circa 1972. Again, notice the books on the shelves:

Or listen to his interviews: he is always wondering, always thinking about big questions of life, the universe and everything. This man is a thinker who was always coming up with original concepts.

Stan added the emotion?

Stan brought something to the table that didn’t appear in the mags of other publishers at that time – emotions.

(Ibid.)

Kirby, with Joe Simon, created the romance genre. Kirby wrote war stories from experience, where friends lie dead and dying. So Kirby could not communicate emotion? Hmmm.

Kirby was behind the times?

There are numerous other criticisms, but they are generally opinion, and are based on a particular reading of the facts. For example:

[...] Jack simply not understanding that the audience for comics had moved on since the 1940s and 1950s and a Big Idea was no longer enough [...] (Ibid.)

I have the opposite opinion: I think Kirby was too far ahead of his time. Kirby’s creations now earn billions at the box office, but Kirby didn’t live to see any of that money. And I don’t just mean creations where Stan Lee was also involved. DC movies contain a lot of Kirby’s ideas too, from the time after he left Marvel. At time of writing (July 2016) it looks like the upcoming Justice League movie will rely heavily on New Gods ideas (Darkseid, boom tubes, Apoklolips, etc.). And many commentators have suggested that George Lucas drew on Kirby’s ideas for Star Wars. Here I will look at just one example: how George Lucas created Darth Vader.

Kirby’s influence on Darth Vader. Star Wars drew on many sources. Old movies are an obvious influence: Saturday morning Flash Gordon serials, WWII dog fights, etc. But Lucas openly admits to getting ideas from comics (such as the Classics Illustrated version of War of the Worlds: see Star Wars Insider No. 41, p. 26). George Lucas was reading a lot of comics when he planned Star Wars; he even part-owned the Supersnipe Comic Art Gallery, part of the famous Supernipe comic shop. Let’s look at Darth Vader for example. Ralph McQuarry’s original design was a cross between a Samurai and a Nazi:

Lucas’s final version was changed, and was more like Dr Doom. He had Doom’s hideously scarred face, Doom’s mix of magic and science, and a father-son story plucked straight from Kirby’s Darkseid and Orion. Darkseid, of course, is pronounced ‘dark side’. The death star is like Apokolips with its fire pits, and this Darth Vader scene in The Empire Strikes Back is almost identical to an unforgettable FF scene from 1974 (based on an earlier Kirby scene), and so on.

Kirby even had a character called Skywalker in his Justice Inc comic (Issue 2).

(By the way, note how Kirby routinely used the name ‘Avenger’ before Stan Lee started using it. Turok was the first ‘Avenger’ back in Simon and Kirby’s Captain America No. 1.)

This doesn’t prove anything, of course. But the similarities were obvious at the time. As Mark Hamill has recalled:

It was at Bill Mumy’s house in Laurel Canyon. I also went out to [Jack’s] house once in Thousand Oaks. [Jack] was a very self-effacing guy. You’d never know from his demeanor how important he really was. We were joking, and I said that when I first saw Darth Vader, I thought, “Oh, it’s Doctor Doom.” (laughter) He certainly didn’t say, “Oh, he took my ideas,” or any of that kind of stuff. He was content with who he was and his abilities.

(Mark Hamill Interview, conducted by John Morrow; Jack Kirby Collector No. 28, April 2000)

Given Kirby’s fame among comic readers in the early 1970s (when Lucas was planning Star Wars), it is difficult to argue that comic fan Lucas was not aware of Darkseid or Dr Doom. My point is not that Lucas stole from Kirby – all creative people ‘steal’ ideas and develop them further. My point is that Kirby dealt with powerful, eternal concepts, and he did it first. Kirby was not behind the times. He was way out in front.

Controlling the Message

Stan Lee is superb at self promotion. So his name is strongly linked to the characters he worked on. Take Captain America for example. Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, yet “Many fans—and even Lee himself, once—have erroneously credited Lee with having created the character” [emphasis mine] (‘Stan Lee Will Have a Cameo in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Report Says’, Ross Burlingame; ComicBook.com, 6 March 2014).

The recent Captain America movie has Stan Lee in the credits, but there are no references to Simon and Kirby. The movie has a cameo role for Stan Lee, but not for anyone representing Simon or Kirby. In big letters, the movie calls Cap “The First Avenger”, referring to the characters closely associated with Stan Lee. The movie set features a shop called ‘Excelsior Cigars’, a reference to Stan’s catchphrase. Stan is often photographed with Captain America imagery, and signing Captain America comics. And so it goes on.

So the casual fan is most likely to think that Stan Lee created the character:

I have this really bad habit, though I do it out of love and pride for my grandfather. Whenever I see someone wearing a Captain America t-shirt, I like to first compliment them on their stellar choice, and then I ask, ‘Do you know who created Captain America?’ Answers have varied. Some may say they don’t know, few say Simon and Kirby, and many say Stan Lee.

(‘Captain America Lives On: Joe Simon’s Granddaughter on Marvel’s Films, Credits, and the Great Comic Book Creator’, Megan Margulies; ComicsAlliance.com, 4 April 2014)

This is not new. In 1984, the planned Captain America movie producers advertised Cap as “Stan Lee’s Character”.

According to a 2012 article (‘Invading the USA and then going MIA’) on the Night Train to ¡Mundo Terrible! website, a 1985 Cannon Films advert in Variety magazine (the same ad?) credited Stan Lee as creator of the character, and the Kirbys’ solicitor subsequently contacted Marvel Comics regarding the error.

Thirty years later, Marvel Studios still linked Stan Lee to the name Captain America, without mentioning Simon and Kirby. Prominent fans encouraged a movie boycott.

Jack Kirby’s co-creator credit appears nowhere in the promotion of The Avengers. His fans have expressed outrage over the way his contributions to the movie’s very existence are being swept under the rug. Stephen Bissette (co-creator of Constantine, and noted Swamp Thing artist) called for a boycott of Marvel comics and merchandise, while James Sturm, co-founder of the Center for Cartoon Studies, also published an essay explaining his decision to boycott the movie.

(‘Stan Lee on the Jack Kirby Avengers Credit Controversy – Update’, Moviefone Staff; the Moviefone website)

Marvel was afraid to admit credit because the Kirby family wanted a share of the profits. But with so much money at stake, Marvel finally offered the Kirbys an undisclosed sum to resolve the dispute. So from 2015, Kirby’s name will sometimes appears alongside Stan Lee’s. But Stan Lee’s name and likeness are far more prominent in general publicity. Kirby’s supporters still have to be on guard for claims like this.

Secrets Behind the Comics

Stan Lee’s concept of creation was illustrated (literally!) back in 1947, in his book Secrets Behind the Comics.

In the book, Stan states that the name on the book is not necessarily the person who actually wrote or drew it:

Stan then showed us who he thought was the real creator behind a strip. He used the example of—you guessed it—Captain America.

It is clear that Stan Lee thought that publisher Martin Goodman was the genius, the only name that mattered. Stan did not even mention Joe Simon or Jack Kirby. Yet Simon and Kirby had already created the character before offering it to Goodman. As longtime comic reader Kurt F. Mitchell has explained it (online, on the Classic Comics Forum):

According to Joe Simon’s My Life in Comics, he and Jack had created the entire first issue of Captain America before Simon was hired to be Timely’s first in-house editor. Had he not been hired just then, Cap might well have wound up at Centaur or Novelty Press and became THEIR million-copies-a-month cash cow instead of Goodman’s. (27 February 2016)

There is no reason to doubt either man on this. Simon and Kirby ran their own comic-publishing house and routinely produced new characters. They are among the most prolific comic inventors in history. Goodman in contrast was a magazine publisher, who cared little for comics; he was far more interested in the bigger and more lucrative men’s magazine section. Goodman was famous for two things: ruthless business practices (which were the norm back then) and copying trends created by other people. To suggest that he worried about the comics or came up with original comic ideas is, shall we say, an interesting slant on history. Online, reader ‘Ish Kabbible’ has suggested (on the Classic Comics Forum) why Simon and Kirby were not mentioned by name:

By this time [1947], both creators had long left Marvel and in fact might have already been in competition with Marvel as the publishers of Prize Comics. Of course Marvel would not jeopardize their claim over what those two had created for them in the past by giving them credit at this stage of the game. Martin Goodman was well aware of what was going on at that time between DC and Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster. (27 February 2016)

Siegel and Shuster are relevant to this story: in 1947 they had just been fired for trying to get the rights to the character they created. This was in the same year that Stan Lee published Secrets Behind the Comics, which argues that the publisher of a comic (e.g. Martin Goodman) is the real creator of the characters. Siegel and Shuster sold Superman to DC when they were both young. They were then both drafted into the war. When they came back, they found that not only was DC making millions from their creation, but were also making millions from a derivative character, Superboy, without paying Siegel or Shuster an extra dime. So in 1946 they hired a lawyer to launch what would be the first in a series of legal battles that would cut short their careers and ultimately impoverish them.

Stan Lee’s view of creation was that the publisher hires the writers and therefore the publisher is the creative force. This seems a long stretch for Martin Goodman, who thought so little of comics that he hired his teenage cousin (Stan Lee: writer at 16, editor at 17) to run the entire line. But perhaps it was more true of Stan himself? After all, Stan was intimately involved with every stage of production. This leads us to ‘The Marvel Method’, where an artist would write his own stories, after a discussion with Stan Lee, and Stan would then shape the final dialogue. Let’s look at The Marvel Method in more detail.

The Marvel Method

The ‘Marvel Method’ was in place long before Fantastic Four Issue 1. This is from Secrets Behind the Comics, where Stan talks about scripts, and also about artists who like to write:

Note the picture of the script: panels on one side, dialogue in the margins. Compare this to the pencils of The Fantastic Four (see below). This is exactly what Jack Kirby produced for Stan Lee, except that instead of describing each picture, he drew it. He put the dialogue in the margins, and Stan then approved or changed it—exactly as Stan describes it.

Later we will look at the story conferences, and the document for FF #1 that Stan called a ‘synopsis’. The synopsis refers to the meeting between the writer and Stan Lee, whereas the script refers to the frames and dialogue, such as Kirby produced. Now let us look at how Stan described the life of a writer-artist:

This is exactly how Jack Kirby described the process: Jack had the ideas, and then Stan would approve or change them and add his own ideas. But Stan was in overall control. He especially needed to show his control in the case of Jack Kirby, because Kirby had previously created a multi-million-dollar idea, then left to work for rivals. Besides, Stan Lee’s dialogue was more popular with the mostly young comic readers of the time. So when Stan changed Jack’s dialogue, he may have improved the sales.

This is not to say that Stan never wrote scripts. Stan wrote a lot of scripts! A lot of artists didn’t want to do plotting, or weren’t good at it. At these times, Stan wrote a full script, and all the ideas are his.

Stan’s book mentioned that a writer-artist always discussed the story synopsis first. What were these meetings like? How detailed was the discussion?

What Were Those Story Conferences Like?

We have seen that later story conferences were often nothing more than Kirby telling Lee what he planned. But everything hinges on the early story conferences. Is that where Stan provided the key ideas? We only have one direct eyewitness account of a full story conference. (Flo Steinberg reports hearing them in the early days, but they were behind closed doors, so we can’t know for certain who came up with what.) In late 1965, the reporter Nat Freedland visited the Marvel offices for an article later published in the New York Herald Tribune (on January 9th, 1966). In part of it, he reports on a “weekly Friday morning summit meeting with Jack ‘King’ Kirby”. This is what Freedland wrote (as reprinted in the Collected Jack Kirby Collector, Volume 4):

The date and content indicates that they are planning Fantastic Four No. 55. At first, this supports the idea that Stan Lee came up with all the ideas. But look closer:

• Stan does not know what is in the comic. He says, “The Silver Surfer has been somewhere out in space since he helped the FF stop Galactus from destroying Earth.” But the whole point is that the surfer can’t go out in space because he was exiled to Earth.

• Jack shows almost no interest and gives no input, and seems very keen to leave at the end.

• Little of what Stan says ended up in the comic (FF #55): Alicia was not in trouble at the start, the FF were not in trouble with Dr Doom, and Ben did not wander off dispirited – Stan seems to be remembering FF #51.

• In fact, FF #55 seems designed to show the opposite – Reed and Sue barely feature, and when Stan said to put them in crisis, Jack did the opposite: he drew them as ridiculously calm and happy. I mean, when else do we see Reed and Sue in that super-happy pose or Alicia strumming on a guitar? It’s like Jack is making it utterly impossible for Stan to write dialogue that implies danger. The only part that made it into the story is that the Surfer returns and Ben misunderstands so he has a fight. Stan was the boss, so Kirby could not completely ignore him.

• The article implies that Stan had all the ideas. But we know that is not the case because he openly admitted in other interviews that when the surfer appeared Stan had no idea who the guy was.

The story in question, Issue 55, interrupts the flow of the previous issues: the story of the Black Panther and Klaw, with Johnny searching for Ben. For years, ever since I was a child reading these for the first time, I have wondered why all the other issues in the classic period flow into each other, with each issue containing seeds of the next; but FF #55 just throws the surfer in from nowhere, and then the next issue carries on with the Panther-Klaw saga.

• Oh, and Stan’s final claim, that he won the Herald Tribune competition three times? This claim has been extensively researched and there is no evidence for it (see page 6 of Raphael and Spurgeon’s ‘Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book’).

From this we learn that:

1) Stan did not know what was going on

2) Whatever Stan said, Kirby ignored most of it or deliberately did the opposite

3) Kirby had no interest in what Stan was saying and did not like being there

4) Stan’s plans for this issue interrupted the normal issue flow

5) Stan greatly exaggerated his writing ability (i.e., about winning a writing competition three times)

So this meeting was almost certainly expanded because the journalist wanted it. After all, if you’re planning a major newspaper item, then you want to report that you have seen the inner workings. So Stan played the part. However, when this story was published it made Kirby look weak. Roz (Jack’s wife) was mad. This article was a major contributor to Jack’s disaffection with Marvel. Flo Steinberg has reported that in the early days Jack used to come in weekly or even more, and their story conferences could become noisy, with stories acted out. But after this we were more likely to have Flo’s recollection of him coming to the office just every two weeks or so to drop off his work, and the story conferences being little more than a brief phone call.

The very first conference. The most important story conference of all is discussed later in this essay: the conference before Issue 1. We will see the same pattern: Stan wrote it, and Jack ignored most of what Stan said; Jack didn’t even see the typed-up notes.

Two thirds of the finished comic was not in the synopsis, much of what Stan did say was ignored, and the parts that did end up in the comic reflected Jack’s earlier work. For example, Jack had created many creatures called ‘The Thing’, he was familiar with the earlier Human Torch from his work on Captain America, and so on. In short, nobody is denying that Stan and Jack spoke before each issue, or that Stan could write comics, or that Stan liked to be in control. But Jack did not think much of Stan’s ideas and ended up using his own.

John Romita’s recollection. John Romita recalls times where Stan and Jack planned a story:

I was present at at least two plotting sessions of John — Jack and Stan Lee. They were the same as my plotting sessions and the same as Gene Colan’s and Herb Trimpe’s and John Buscema. John Buscema actually did his plotting by phone, because he lived two hours away from the city.

(‘The John Romita Deposition For The Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit’; The Bleeding Cool website, 9 March 2011)

So “plotting session” could sometimes mean just a phone call. This is how it went:

One guy would make a suggestion, Jack would say, “that’s not a bad idea,” but what if we did it this way,” and then Stan would say, “okay, but only if we did it that way” and “only if we did it this way.” They were both talking different plots and it’s— and the reason I know it is because when Stan and I would plot, I foolishly did it from memory. I never recorded it.

(Ibid.)

So Stan and Jack were “both talking different plots”. Romita gives more detail in another interview:

CBA: In the past, you’ve told that great anecdote about realizing they weren’t listening to the other!

John: I knew that even when I heard them plotting in other instances! [laughter] Jack would say, “Stanley, I think I’ve got an idea. How ’bout this?” Stan would say, “That’s not bad, Jack, but I’d rather see it this way.” Jack would absolutely forget what Stan said, and Stan would forget what Jack said. [laughter] I would bet my house that Jack never read the books after Stan wrote them; that’s why he could claim with a straight face that Stan never wrote anything except what Jack put in the notes. He was kidding himself; he never read them.

(‘John Romita, Sr.: Spidey’s Man’; interview conducted by Jon B. Cooke; Comic Book Artist No. 6, 1999)

Romita then mentioned Jack’s and his wife Roz’s reaction to the Herald Tribune article:

CBA: Did you see any of the problems Jack was having?

John: I had heard all of the inside stuff, like from the Herald Tribune article that insulted Jack, that he thought Stan was a part of. Stan could not convince him of that, and certainly could not convince Roz that Stan hadn’t encouraged the writer to make fun of Jack. I know for a fact that Stan would rather bite his tongue than say such a thing, because Jack’s success would’ve been his success. There’s no reason to run Jack down. Stan had the position; he didn’t have to fight Jack for it. I don’t think Jack ever wanted the editorial position; if he wanted credit, he deserved credit. Stan used to give him credit all the time; he used to say most of these ideas are more than half Jack’s. Why they would think Stan would try to make him look bad in print is beyond me; but from that time on—which is very close to when I started there in the middle ’60s—when the Herald Tribune article came out, there were very strained relations, and I thought it was a matter of time before Jack would leave [...]. (Ibid.)

The bottom line: Jack ignored Stan as far as possible. The bottom line is that, yes, Stan would meet with Jack before a story, and Jack ignored everything Stan said—or at least as far as he could (Stan was the boss so Jack couldn’t ignore it completely). So Jack was correct when he said that Stan did not write the stories, and that he (Jack) never saw the synopsis to Issue 1.

When did Kirby begin writing the FF?

There is plenty of evidence that Kirby plotted the later issues (marginal notes, Stan Lee’s comments, etc.), but some people think he didn’t plot the first twenty or so:

The earliest Fantastic Four page scan that I can find with Kirby’s notes is from F.F. Annual #2, appearing in the summer of 1964. Comic Book historian, Nick Caputo concludes that Jack Kirby’s margin notes first appear in The Avengers #6, dated July 1964. If one looks at the notes in the upper margin, it is clear that it is Kirby’s lettering. Thus we can probably date the beginning of the Marvel Method to this approximate period.

(‘Margin Notes’, Norris Burroughs; the Kirby Kinetics blog at the Kirby Museum website, 24 November 2010)

Also, on other pages of original art from pre-1964, no notes are found (other than editorial notes left by Stan). So sometime during 1964 Jack begins the process of leaving notes in the borders of the artwork.

(‘A Failure to Communicate: Part 5’, Mike Gartland; The Jack Kirby Collector No. 26, November 1999)

However, other collectors do have evidence of earlier notes. James Robert Smith posted the following comment to Mike Gartland’s ‘Failure to Communicate: Part Four’ at the Kirby Museum website. In it, he refers to Hulk No. 4, which has the same cover date as FF #8:

It was when I was collecting Silver Age artwork in the late 1980s that I realized that it was Jack Kirby all along who was writing the books Stan Lee claimed to have written and created. My earliest pages were from Incredible Hulk #4 and it was obvious from the hand written notes from Kirby that he was writing the book and Lee’s only contribution was in sometimes pumping up the dialog. Lee was an editor. A very good editor, but nothing more than that.

Inkers would of course erase the pencils, so any notes within the panels (and sometimes the others) would be gone. Take for example the experience of this anonymous contributor to the Comic Book Collecting Message Board:

I have a Kirby/Romita Daredevil page where a prior owner erased Jack’s pencil notes. Kirby’s notes sometimes differed from Stan Lee’s final balloons/captions and it’s fun to see how they match or don’t.

But Kirby’s writing occurs mainly through his art. Most pages in the early issues did not need additional notes: you can remove the dialogue and still see what is going on. But as Kirby’s stories became more ‘cosmic’, then additional notes were needed. Here’s a good example from those earlier issues needing fewer notes: the last page of FF #40:

Observe that the notes have been erased but they are still somewhat visible; so I have enhanced them:

Compare this story to the page from FF #61 shown previously. This story is from an earlier year, and is less ‘cosmic’; so it is easy to follow even without notes.

This example shows how the pages were trimmed before printing; the surviving page shows only part of what Kirby wrote:

Evidence from Fantastic Four No. 3

Here is the earliest evidence I can find for how the Marvel Method functioned at the beginning of the FF. This is an original page from FF #3. Oddly, it has a “please turn over” mark, and notes from Stan on the back.

It looks like Stan was asking for a change. Note the big arrow: he wants something moved. And note the pencil-writing on the original frame the arrow referred to; it’s hard to make out what the original dialogue was supposed to be, but the last word is definitely “Thing” – a word that now appears in the first frame. So it seems most likely that, with that arrow, Stan was just asking for the last panel to become the first one. It also looks like Stan added the whole sequence at the top.

The pacing in the top half of the finished page and the bottom half of the previous one is odd: lots of ‘jumping around’, without it being clear how each image is supposed to lead to the next. Kirby generally drew like a movie, where each frame leads to the following frame. So here is what I think happened:

If we start from the premise that Kirby’s art tends to move smoothly from frame to frame, then page 4 somehow got the team from the fight at the theatre to the new headquarters on page 6. So I presume the headquarters diagram on page 5 was originally there, and the two half-pages in between somehow got us from the fight to the headquarters. The sequence probably focussed on Ben’s anger: Kirby tends to fill his stories with action, and Ben’s anger was a big deal in the early issues.

Stan would have looked at this and thought, “We are five pages in and haven’t seen a clear direction with a clear hero and villain”. He wanted to emphasise the Miracle Man as an individual, and create a contrast with Reed as an individual. So in his altered version we get close-ups of both men: Reed sums up the conflict (“the one foe they could not defeat”), the Miracle Man has a monologue, we get a foreshadowing of the monster, and it ends with Sue saying how “wonderful” Reed is. That’s all classic Stan (in my opinion, based on Stan’s solo comic writing).

I think this was a good change, and illustrates what Stan added to the story: he made it clearer and more personal. All of Stan’s stories are clear and are personal. As people often say, Jack provides the divinity, Stan adds the humanity. With Stan, we always know who the good guys and bad guys are, we always feel close to them, and we never get lost.

Contrast this with what we know of Kirby’s solo work. On typical monster stories (Jack’s previous work for Atlas/Marvel), we don’t have time to get to know the characters very personally, for the whole thing has to be over in eight pages. When we look at Kirby’s later Fourth World stuff, it’s the same scenario: all cinematic action, but sometimes hard to follow, and readers don’t feel an intimate connection with the characters as friends.

I think Stan’s changes here are a good example of why he was needed, even though the changes break the smooth flow. Kirby created the story (after a chat with Stan, where Stan was the boss), and then Stan asked for changes. Then Stan scripted the dialogue—just as he explained back in 1947, and just as we see from the notes on later pages.

Did Kirby exaggerate his role?

Kirby said he basically created everything, more or less. Some people say he exaggerated. This is their case:

1. Kirby never said it at the time? The best known Kirby interviews are from the late 1980s, when he was bitter about not getting his art back. Critics say that there was none of this bad feeling in the 1960s, when Stan and Jack got along fine.

2. Kirby’s memory. Kirby’s description of how he came to join Marvel and how the FF were created has been questioned.

3. The synopsis to Issue 1. The original synopsis for Fantastic Four No. 1 still exists, and it’s by Stan Lee.

4. The synopsis to Issue 8. The synopsis to Issue 8 also exists, and it’s by Stan Lee.

5. Creating Spider-Man. Kirby also claimed to create Spider-Man. Most people believe Spider-man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, but a close look at the details show that Kirby came up with the initial idea.

Four of these claims will now be examined in depth:

1. Kirby never said it at the time?

In researching this essay, I tracked down every Kirby interview I could find, and in them he is always consistent: he created the plots, and always went about creating comics that way (at least with regard to Marvel). The best early interview I can find is from the 1970 San Diego Comic Convention, held a few months after he left Marvel. The interview was recorded only on a seven-inch reel tape, but it is good to hear Kirby’s own words. The audio is poor in places, but Kirby’s answer is clear:

Well, in the case of Marvel, uh... most of the plots I handled myself. It’s, you know, easy enough to do it after thirty years. I would discuss it with Stan... and I would tell him what I was going to put in it... It was either approved or... I would change it, you know, to... to maybe, you know, further the plot. In my case, it was done that way—I’ve always done my own stories. So... uh, uh... I’ve, you know, I’ve never done anything else.

He implies that Stan did have some input, at least in regard to the earliest issues. Kirby is fair.

In another segment of the tape, Kirby states that he simply “had a hand in” creating Doctor Doom. He also refers to Edward Herron, who co-created the Red Skull and Captain Marvel Junior.

The comics tell their own story. Even if Kirby had said nothing, the comics speak for themselves. Right from the start, it was clear that Lee’s dialogue often contradicted Kirby’s art. That is, Kirby was not drawing what Lee wanted, but Lee was adding text afterwards.

We see this most clearly with Sue Storm. Kirby draws her as an equal partner, able to defeat enemies on her own. But whenever Kirby does that, Lee adds dialogue stating that really it was Reed’s doing, even though it makes no sense in context. I mean, since when was Reed a world-class judo expert? But Lee seems to be thinking of old-style superhero stories where the male lead is always The Greatest Hero and everything must be achieved by him. Kirby’s respect for strong women is inspiring, but Lee’s sexism now looks very dated.

These changes are there right from Issue 1. The excellent Baxter Building podcast points out that the ending makes no sense (without a lot of interpretation). How could they trap the Mole Man underground? He had monsters that can dig through solid rock! But take the dialogue away, and you see a completely different story:

Kirby’s art in the final panels shows the Torch filling the tunnels with flame, which suggests that they cause the explosion. But Lee can’t have a hero doing that, so his dialogue states that the Mole Man destroyed his own base, thus ending the threat. (This confuses readers, as clearly the Mole Man would get away first; whereas blowing him up, as the art suggests, would have stopped him.)

So the comics themselves confirm what Kirby and others said: right from the start, Kirby was creating his stories, with Lee then adding dialogue.

But Kirby was fine with that? Kirby did not become angry until later when he felt promises had been broken, and he was treated as replaceable. He did not openly criticise Lee until he left in 1970 (see ‘Funky Flashman’ for example, a clear parody of Lee). This excerpt from an interview in 1986-87 sums up his feelings:

PITTS: What input, then, did Stan Lee have in creating Spider-Man and these other characters?

KIRBY: Stan Lee had never created anything up to that moment. And here was Marvel with characters like the Sub-Mariner, which they never used. Stan Lee didn’t create that; that was created by Bill Everett. Stan Lee didn’t create the Human Torch; that was created by Carl Burgos. It was the artists that were creating everything. Stan Lee – I don’t know if he had other duties… or whatever he did there…

ROZ: Maybe we shouldn’t get into… too much characterization. I mean–

KIRBY: [...] Actually, we were pretty good friends. I know Stan Lee better than probably any other person. I know Stan Lee as a person… I never was angry with him in any way. He was never angry with me in any way. We went to the cartoonists’ society together.

(‘1986/7 Jack Kirby Interview’, conducted by Leonard Pitts, Jr.; the Kirby Kinetics journal at the Kirby Museum website, 6 August 2012)

2. Kirby’s memory

Kirby’s memory of how he joined Marvel has been used as evidence that Kirby is not reliable. Let’s look at that claim. Wikipedia (quoting interviews originally published in The Comics Journal #134 and Comic Book Artist #2) sums up Kirby’s claim and Lee’s counter claim:

[Kirby] recalled that in late 1958,

I came in [to the Marvel offices] and they were moving out the furniture, they were taking desks out — and I needed the work! ... Stan Lee is sitting on a chair crying. He didn’t know what to do, he’s sitting on a chair crying — he was still just out of his adolescence [Note: Lee, born Dec. 28, 1922, would actually have been about 36.] I told him to stop crying. I says, “Go in to Martin and tell him to stop moving the furniture out, and I’ll see that the books make money”.

The interviewer, The Comics Journal publisher Gary Groth, later wrote of this interview in general, “Some of Kirby’s more extreme statements ... should be taken with a grain of salt...” [The Comics Journal Library, p. 19]. Lee, specifically asked about the office-closing anecdote, said,

I never remember being there when people were moving out the furniture. If they ever moved the furniture, they did it during the weekend when everybody was home. Jack tended toward hyperbole, just like the time he was quoted as saying that he came in and I was crying and I said, “Please save the company!” I’m not a crier and I would never have said that. I was very happy that Jack was there and I loved working with him, but I never cried to him. [laughs]

Were they moving out the furniture? The furniture anecdote was told decades later. At other times Kirby told it like this:

“Marvel was on its ass, literally, and when I came around, they were practically hauling out the furniture,” Kirby said. “They were beginning to move, and Stan Lee was sitting there crying. I told them to hold everything, and I pledged that I would give them the kind of books that would up their sales and keep them in business.”

(Marvel Comics: The Untold Story [prologue], Sean Howe; Harper Collins, 2012)

Note the word “practically” and the context: “they were beginning to move”. The Wikipedia article on Atlas Comics (Marvel’s name at the time) notes that Kirby’s first work was freelancing “on five issues cover-dated December 1956 and February 1957”, but he did not do further work until he was formally hired in 1958 – his first published work cover-dated December 1958. Between those dates, the company lost its distributor and so its output crashed. The article quotes a 1988 interview with Stan Lee:

[We had been] turning out 40, 50, 60 books a month, maybe more, and [now] the only company we could get to distribute our books was our closest rival, National [DC] Comics. Suddenly we went ... to either eight or 12 books a month, which was all Independent News Distributors would accept from us.

(‘Stan the Man & Roy the Boy: A Conversation between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas’; Comic Book Artist No. 2, 1988)

This led to many layoffs. The same Wikipedia article also quotes a 2003 Joe Sinnott interview:

Stan called me and said, “Joe, Martin Goodman told me to suspend operations because I have all this artwork in house and have to use it up before I can hire you again.” It turned out to be six months, in my case. He may have called back some of the other artists later, but that’s what happened with me. (Alter Ego No. 23; June 2003, p. 11)

So they went from needing enough people for sixty titles a month to needing nobody for a while, and then needing a much smaller staff. Obviously fewer desks were needed, so Kirby was right about this general period. Yes, they were moving out furniture.

Did Stan Lee cry? Stan Lee was known to take it personally when he had to bring bad news to staff. He genuinely cared, and felt it deeply when bad things happened, as recorded in Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story and various interviews. And one man’s depressed sniffle is another man’s “crying”. So this may be just shorthand for how Stan was obviously feeling at the time.

In short, Kirby does not contradict Lee in any serious way. It’s all a matter of interpretation.

3. The synopsis to Issue 1

The written synopsis to Fantastic Four No. 1 still exists. It’s very brief – consisting of just two pages in the copy that is printed in FF #358, and four pages in the copy printed here. This synopsis is sometimes used as proof that Stan Lee came up with all the ideas.

The synopsis was written after the initial discussion. Stan Lee talked with Jack Kirby about the Fantastic Four before this summary was produced. According to Mark Evanier, Kirby’s longtime assistant:

It [FF #1] feels an awful lot more like Jack’s earlier work than anything that Stan had done to that date. So I find it very difficult to believe that Jack did not have input into the creation of the characters prior to the—that synopsis, whenever it was composed. And, also, I have the fact that I talked to Stan many times, and he told me—and he said it in print in a few places—that he and Jack had sat down one day and figured out what the Fantastic Four would be.

(Mark Evanier deposition, 9 November 2010; as quoted in ‘The Marvel Method According to Jack Kirby –

Part One’, Michael Hill; the Kirby Effect journal at the Kirby Museum website, 25 July 2015)

Stan himself said in Origins of Marvel Comics (Fireside, 1974),

After kicking it around with Martin and Jack for a while, I decided to call our quaint quartet The Fantastic Four. I wrote a detailed first synopsis for Jack to follow, and the rest is history. [emphasis mine]

But years later in 1991, when Marvel was in legal conflict with Kirby, Stan gave a different version of events:

“[...] I didn’t discuss it with jack first. I wrote it first, after telling Jack it was for him because I knew he was the best guy to draw it.” (Alter Ego: the Comic Book Artist Collection, Roy Thomas; TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001; p. 34)

Did Stan remember accurately? Probably not. His poor memory is notorious. It was always bad, as he admits himself. “I even had a bad memory when I was young,” he stated on Twitter in November, 2009. I’d call him [The Hulk] ‘Bob Banner’ instead of ‘Bruce Banner’, etc. I hadda give out a heap of no-prizes!”

When Brian Cronin discussed the matter online in Comics Book Legends Revealed #222 (2009), Steve Sherman, an assistant to Jack Kirby, commented:

I asked Jack about that synopsis. He told me that it was written way after FF #1 was published. I believe him.

Why would a synopsis be written after the event? That is normal in business. The boss discusses something with the workers, and it is written up as a series of instructions. Let’s take a closer look.

Provenance. The above synopsis is a re-typed copy. Note the XXXs; originally those had words underneath. Stan typed Xs to delete a word, but this version only has the Xs. Another version has no XXXs at all; so neither is the original. I have seen yet a third that is claimed to be the original. Furthermore, none of these were made public until at least the 1980s, over twenty years after FF #1 appeared. In his book The Stan Lee Universe, Roy Thomas mentions seeing the synopsis in “the late 1960s”. It must have been 1968 or 1969, as Thomas said the cover price had just gone up to 15¢ and he wondered if Stan was calling him to talk about another price rise. But Stan instead showed him this synopsis he had just found. Stan said he did not keep his other typed instructions, and it was pure luck that this one survived. In the book, Thomas also refers to one other early script (for Issue 8). Like this first one, it was not a script in the usual sense.

I remember seeing that synopsis (to FF #8) in Jerry Bails’s house when I came to Detroit to visit him. I said, “This is a script?!?! You just give the artist some sort of synopsis and then the guy goes off and draws it and then he adds balloons? What a crazy way to do comics!” Now of course I think the fact that they’re not done that way anymore is one of the things that’s wrong with comics.

(‘The Story Behind The Stan Lee Universe’: interview with Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas; Graphic Novel Reporter website, 2011)

Apparently none of these early synopses survive, despite the hundreds of comics written in the early 1960s, and the interest of fans such as Roy Thomas and Jerry Bails. Presumably ‘scripts’ were very sparse, if they were written at all.

Accuracy. Much of the synopsis contradicts the final version. For example, about Sue being permanently invisible, Johnny not throwing fireballs, Reed feeling pain when he stretches, and the emphasis on the Ben-Sue-Reed love triangle.

Similarity to the Challengers of the Unknown. Many have noted The Fantastic Four’s similarity to Jack’s earlier comic for DC, Challengers of the Unknown. For example, the two teams are of similar origins; consist of four friends who roughly represent the four elements, etc. The Challengers even got super powers in Issue 5, including one like that of the Human Torch.

Three references to Mars. Fantastic Four No. 1 was planned for July, 1961 (though cover-dated November, which was normal at the time). This means it would be planned in April, the exact same month that Russian Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. But it was inspired by the success of Justice League, which first went on sale cover-dated March 1960. So they were thinking about superheroes before April, and from April the space race suddenly heats up. Note the changes between the published issues 1 and 2. Issue 1 is vague about merely going “to the stars”, and actually gets no further than the atmosphere. But in Issue 2 they refer specifically to Mars. Before April 12th, when the news broke, the fear was merely that the Russians would get into space. After April 12th, the concern was for the next step: to the Moon, and if the Russians got there quickly, then on to Mars. This hints that FF #1 was plotted before April 12th, or certainly before the significance of the news had sunk in over the following weeks. FF #2 was of course written after the Russians’ goal of going to the Moon was well known. It may be important then that the synopsis mentions Mars three times. It suggests that the synopsis was written after The FF were drawn and scripted, but not long enough after for a sense of Relax – the Russians are nowhere near the moon yet to have sunk in. This is consistent with the normal course of events: writing a synopsis of a meeting after the meeting.

Tone. The tone is verbose, even chatty. He gives reasons for creating ideas. Why give these in a script? Why not just say “make the guy flame on”? Why the need to more or less say, Here is proof that the ideas are all mine, and this is my reasoning? If he is just being chatty, then why not chat about the other parts of the story?

The smoking gun. The ‘synopsis’ only covers the origin. The finished comic is in three roughly equal parts. The synopsis acknowledges this, but discusses Part One in only a single line and does not outline Part Three at all. Even if we go with the theory that this was the original script, with no input from Kirby, that means Kirby wrote two thirds of the book on his own, and the rest was greatly changed.

Why was the synopsis written? Stan Lee understood the business of comics. So he would know that this particular issue had legal implications, so he needed a paper trail.

He knew the comic might be noticed. At the exact same time the comic was being written and drawn, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. The news broke on April 12th 1961. This was HUGE news. The space race was already hot, but this made it WHITE hot. Stan’s ‘first into space’ comic was suddenly topical. This had legal implications, because Stan was planning to slip the book under the radar of his competitors.

He knew that National (DC) had reason to complain. Marvel was planning a superhero team, but DC distributed their books (they lost their own distributor in 1957 in the wake of Frederick Wertham’s anti-comics crusade). DC was happy to take their money because Marvel at the time didn’t produce any superheroes that might compete for sales with Batman and Superman. Worse, The FF resemble The Challengers: it might look like Marvel had acquired Kirby, formerly a DC artist, and got him to copy his own DC title! The distributors would not be happy. The synopsis seems designed to be insurance against such claims.

The synopsis looks designed to cover his back. The Synopsis would come in useful if either Martin Goodman changed his mind or DC found out and were not happy.

First, it can be used as proof that Stan invented the team, and he did not simply copy it from Jack or from DC.

Second, it emphasizes the non-superhero nature of the characters: Ben is a monster who is angry and lashes out at his friends. This is a monster trope; not a superhero trope.

Sue is always invisible, with an emphasis on masks and changing clothes, clearly based on H.G.Wells’s The Invisible Man, and not a superhero. (Incidentally, Wells was a socialist, and the invisibility that drove his character mad is widely seen as a metaphor for the invisible underclass. Note the later parallels with Sue: the most powerful member, yet seen as the weakest.)

Reed is in pain when he stretches, like a horror character, and not a superhero.

Finally, Johnny cannot control his flaming; it only happens when he’s excited, and then it dies down. And he does not throw fireballs. Like the others, he would fit better in a ‘weird-tales’ book – not a superhero book.

It was no big deal. This need not be a conscious decision. Stan just had a gut feeling that he should have a written copy. It’s a common feeling in any business. Stan understood business, so this would be an automatic response, the work of a few minutes. It does not require any conspiracy.

“We should discuss.” The synopsis says, “We should discuss this” – Does this imply it was before the meeting? It was before any lengthy meeting, certainly. But most of these elements (the love triangle, how easily they changed, etc.) were vague in Issue 1. They were not set in stone until later issues. Is it dishonest to write “do this” after it is already being done? No, these are minutes, a paper trail. It’s a faithful record of what was said, from Stan’s point of view. And a record of the same event from Jack’s point of view would have had the same general ideas but in a different way.

Does “do this” and “do that” prove it was all Stan’s idea? No, that’s just good business. You have to make actions crystal clear. I sometimes make web pages for others, and the synopsis reminds me of the emails I get later: “You will do this, you will do that”. Those emails reflect meetings where I actually made the suggestions, as I was the one with the expertise. The client was the one wanting a web page, but then took my advice at every point about what was possible, what would work, etc. But he was the one signing the cheque, so the final document had to state, You will do X. I was the creator, but he was the master.

Conclusion. The famous synopsis was probably written a few hours (or, at most, a few weeks) after the initial discussion, but Kirby never read it. The synopsis is minutes of a meeting, presented after Kirby gave his input. It only deals with those elements that might cause legal trouble later, and tries to show that DC has no reason to complain. In short, this is not a synopsis, but rather a defense against DC. Years later, it became useful in the legal battle against Kirby. Stan searched for it, and found it in 1969 when Kirby was grumbling about deserving more pay. It then became widely published in the 1980s when Kirby was talking about suing Marvel.

4. The synopsis to Issue 8

We know of just one other early synopsis: that for Issue 8. Roy Thomas refers to it in the book Alter Ego: the Comic Book Artist Collection. According to Thomas, “the synopsis for #1 wasn’t the first FF plot I’d seen” (p. 36). Thomas was Stan’s right-hand man since 1965, yet this was worth his commenting on. Apparently, he saw only two written FF synopses in all his years there.

“Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1963,” remembers Thomas, “while the nation mourned the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the week before, I took a train from St. Louis to Detroit to spend a subdued holiday with Jerry Bails, college-prof founder of Alter Ego” (p. 36). It was Jerry Bails who pretty much invented fandom as we know it. Bails kept writing letters to the comics, asking for information. He was probably the first person to ever ask for a script. Once in Detroit, Bails showed Thomas an item Stan Lee had recently sent him: the ‘script’ for Fantastic Four No. 8.

“Knowing” that comic book artists always worked from a script as detailed as a Hollywood screenplay, I was surprised to see that what Jerry had received was merely a plot, its first page covering the initial 13 pages of the comic, and that it was clearly meant as a blueprint from which the artist would break down the tale into pictures.

“Marvel artists work from this?” I asked. Jerry said apparently so: Stan added dialog and captions later. I shook my head. It seemed to me like a helluva way to run a railroad. (Yeah, as it turned out – a good one!) Evidently Stan trusted artists like Kirby, Ditko, et al., to both pace out and flesh out the story.

(Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection, Roy Thomas; TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001; p. 36)

So it is never in question: the artists did most of the ‘writing’ work.

Neither Bails nor Thomas can recall whether Bails ever possessed the entire synopsis or merely the first of two pages. Whatever the case, it was only the one page that Bails retyped and printed in a low-circulation fanzine of the day. According to Thomas, Bails thinks that if “he’d had the whole synopsis, he probably would have printed both pages” (p. 36).

So the only two synopses we have deal solely with the key eleven or thirteen pages, and are highly compressed. This agrees with Kirby’s memory that when a person suggested a comic to a potential client they only roughed out the first few pages.

Now let’s look at that synopsis in detail:

What did Jack add to the story? It is fascinating to compare Stan’s synopsis to Jack’s finished art. Jack’s version of the story is:

(a) More detailed; Jack expanded a very brief synopsis into a full story.

(b) More dynamic; instead of just seeing the rescue with binoculars (passive), the Puppet Master burns his finger on the puppet (active).

(c) More dramatic; instead of being hit by rays (passive), Ben attacks Reed, accidentally spilling chemicals (active); so Ben helps cause his own fall.

(c) Funnier; Jack adds the whole comedy scene with Sue kicking a man while invisible.

(d) More emotional. Stan has asked for “interesting scenes for how he tries to capture her”. This suggests a battle. Jack did something more creative and more poignant: instead of chasing her around, Jack has the puppet master use gas; so we see Sue desperately plead with Ben, who, rather than fight her, stays motionless. It’s much more dramatic and emotional as we see Sue gradually collapse. I love, love, love this scene.

(e) More creative. Stan instructs to merely disguise Alicia as Sue, a common comic-book trope (it seems that anybody in comics can be disguised as anybody else, and nobody suspects). But Jack realized that this was silly, so he made the idea more believable. He takes several panels to show the idea form in the Puppet Master’s head that the two women look similar; then Jack adds the dramatic image of the Puppet Master cutting off his daughter’s beautiful hair (shades of Les Miserables).

(f) More empathetic. Stan writes, “IG [Invisible Girl] strains to escape bonds”. Jack evidently didn’t like the idea of women being helpless and in bondage. So she is not in bonds, merely gassed, and she manages to escape long enough to summon the FF.

(g) More creative. Stan wanted Alicia to fall in love with Ben’s human form. But Jack made her fall in love with his rocky form, which creates inner tension and has far more story potential.

(h) Bigger. If the synopsis to Issue 1 is any guide, then there may not have been much description for the remaining pages. Jack apparently wrote the remaining half of the book on his own.

What did Stan add to the story? We do not have audio of the original story conference, so we cannot know how much Stan actually contributed to the content.

We do have his dialogue, but that generally just states what is already clear from the art. Stan is very good at making the story simple and obvious. This becomes clear upon reading Kirby’s later Fourth World books. They are wonderful to study, but without Stan’s easy dialogue, they are too intense for most readers.

In my opinion, Stan was excellent at turning out comics quickly. His stories had familiar tropes (the hero always wins, the woman always needs rescuing). His stories were very easy to follow. But they were “just comics”: a throw-away, undemanding medium. Jack added the depth that made the comics something more.

Did Stan write more than two synopses? Bails asked for a script in November of 1963. Stan would have just finished FF #25 or 26. So why send such an old script? Wouldn’t a more recent one be easier to find? And why has nobody ever seen another ‘script’? Nobody who worked there has ever recalled seeing another script—for Kirby, at least. (Might other artists have needed them?) We only have evidence that two synopses ever existed.

I think the key is to compare the stories before Issue 8 with those stories that came after: the early stories usually feature outer space (Issues 1, 2, 6, 7), the team fight amongst themselves, and super-powers are not needed (all stories would work without them). All of this changes after Issue 8: the stories become lighter, more conventional superhero stories set mainly on Earth. (This also coincided with the stories going monthly after Issue 7).

Now examine Issue 8 without the dialogue. Look at the previous issue first. Then look at the Puppet Master’s head. Look at Kirby’s previous stories in other comics about puppet masters and robots. It seems to me that the Puppet Master was not intended to be fully human, and Alicia was to be a puppet or automaton of some kind. Add the suicide and mind control, and this is a dark story. My guess is that the ‘synopsis’ is Stan’s instructions for Kirby to make changes so the story is lighter. The fact that he had to put it in writing shows how strongly he felt. After this, the stories lighten up, and do not become dark and cosmic again until Stan becomes too busy to edit as much, starting with the issues numbered in the 40s.

It’s just a theory. Maybe there were other synopses that were all lost. Or maybe, as some have suggested, when Bails requested a script, Stan just pulled the first comic he could find, flicked through the pages without reading carefully, and wrote something then and there. Who knows?

Summary. To summarise, Stan’s dialogue was very easy to follow. Beyond that, it is difficult to say what he added. However, his fame does not (or should not) rest on his stories, but on his abilities as an editor and promoter. Nobody else has ever edited and promoted like Stan. That is Stan Lee’s real genius.

Stan, the genius, the founder of the modern industry

The following is by ‘lornelb’ of the FF Forum (at comicboards.com), and reprinted by permission. Somebody asked why we see so much negativity about Stan Lee among fans.

The reason you don’t find any negative blogs about Kirby is that this whole ‘Lee vs Kirby’ debate arises because of the perception that Lee has somehow cheated Kirby and made himself rich, while Kirby died penniless.

The whole narrative rises from that notion.

Stan is portrayed as the Hollywood Huckster, who had little to no input in the comics that made him rich, beyond “signing his name larger than everyone else’s”.

Jack is portrayed as the true genius who conceived, drew, and wrote everything, with little to show for it at the end of his life. Under those circumstances, there wouldn’t be much sense to an anti-Kirby blog.

Even Kirby’s stories about coming into the Marvel offices as the furniture was being moved out and Stan crying at his desk, untrue though everyone else has stated them to be, doesn’t generate much anti-Kirby sentiment, because he is, by far, the more sympathetic of the two.

Kirby can claim to have written everything and Stan, nothing, and be contradicted by the writers and artists working at Marvel at the time, and still not be vilified, because his creative genius is beyond question.

The way the industry was set up then, the work-for-hire credo insured that most creative types would have little more than their contracted pay rates to show for their work.

The problem for me is that vilifying Stan for the way the comics industry existed while the two worked together is completely misguided.

Stan’s vision and innovations (including non-innovations like copying EC’s style of promoting its artists) completely changed the comic-book publishing industry forever. Without Stan’s editorial vision and scripting, the Fantastic Four (nor ANY of the Marvel comic characters that he scripted, including Spider-Man) doesn’t create the sensation that they did amongst comic book readers.

In a world without Stan, the average comic-book reader would be an 8- to 14-year-old boy who stops reading comic books when he discovers either girls or porn; the artists who fall into comics would still be largely working under pseudonyms (Check with Jacob Kurtzburg [Jack Kirby’s real name] about that); working until their eyesight failed because of a lack of medical or financial retirement benefits in an industry that probably wouldn’t have lasted past the first huge hikes in paper and ink costs in the early ’70s.

There certainly wouldn’t be any websites like these, created by educated fans who retained their love of the medium and were confident enough in the attractiveness of the medium that there would exist like-minded fans with whom they could communicate.

There are any number of far more talented creative types who have worked in comics than Stan Lee, including Siegel, Shuster, Kane, Kirby, Eisner, Moore and dozens of others. But not one of them can claim to have had as great and far-reaching an effect on the medium overall as what Stan Lee did. With his innovations to comic-book scripting (I think far too little credit is given to Stan for his skill at writing dialog, which not only included biblical and Shakespearean elements, but included a great ear for being able to distinguish one speaker from another in the same panels) and his vision of a unified, continuous comic-book universe, Stan Lee changed the entire industry.

It is also Stan’s idea of a unified universe and continuity that created the modern notion of comic-book collecting. With the use of the footnote (something Stan used copiously to reference previous storylines and character appearances), constant references to previous adventures, continued storylines and cross-overs, Stan created a necessity for readers to retain their prior issues for reference. This was never the case before, where comic-book stories mostly, outside of the same characters appearing in the same outfits, were written as if each new story had no connection to any previous storylines. Stan’s use of continuity also created the desire in newer readers to find those referenced issues so that they could see what was going on. In this way, Stan pretty much took comic-book collecting out of the province of eccentrics and rich Arabian child princes and made it a common practice. From this arose stores dedicated to comic books and back-issue mail-order companies.

None of the forgoing can be attributed to Steve [Ditko] or Jack. They had been plying their skills in the same manner for some years before the so-called Marvel Age. It wasn’t until Stan expanded the EC model of fan inclusion and artist recognition using his own breezy, accessible editorial voice (his detractors call this “hucksterism”), that comic-book fandom took off. As a case in point, seven years after Stan and Jack first published FF #1, Jack’s name was known to even the most casual of comic-book readers. Could the same be said for Graham Engels or Johnny Craig, two of EC’s mainstays?

In the final analysis, Jack will always be seen as the person who was ill-served by the industry and the very publishing house that he helped [transform], from an ill-regarded, lowest-rate-paying shady publisher [...] into a billion-dollar industry worthy of being owned by Disney.

But, because Stan managed to help change that perception and also appears to be prospering at the end of his life, doesn’t mean that he is the villain of the piece, or even somehow responsible for Jack’s circumstances.

Jack was bursting with ideas, but he was also impatient, bitter and distrustful (rightfully so). Jack also knew the nature of the industry he chose to work in. Had Jack been able to hold out against Goodman’s ‘promises’ long enough, I believe that, when the company was sold, Jack would have found himself in a far better position with respect to the new management. Jack would have been seen as an “asset” to the company’s continued goodwill, and probably treated as such. Unfortunately for Jack, by the time he returned to Marvel, he was too bitter, combative and distrustful to allow that to happen.

Meanwhile, everyone is seeing Stan move to California, glad-handing movie stars and living ‘the life’.

Sympathy for Jack and jealousy for Stan leaves us with exactly what we have now: a bunch of people lined up to tell us what a dishonest snake Stan is for prospering while Jack languished.

So now we get a bunch of stories about how Stan took credit for everything while stealing office pencils, from everyone who managed to pass by Stan in the offices, because that’s the narrative everyone wants to hear.

I imagine that, upon Stan’s passing, some of the acrimony will die down.

Lee created Marvel Comics. Kirby created Marvel comics.

In conclusion, Stan Lee was the genius who created most of Marvel Comics: the industry, the cross-overs, the billion dollars of brand value, the fact that you and I have even heard of these characters and can easily relate to them. That’s all Stan.

It is equally true that Jack Kirby was the genius who created most of Marvel comics with a small ‘c’, the characters and stories.

Stan Lee, big ‘C’. Jack Kirby, small ‘c’. Simple.