home
Why top writer-artists left Marvel
J David Spurlock
6 June 2016
Unfortunately, editor Stan Lee did too-little, too-late to keep his
top writer-artists. In near last-minute efforts, he finally gave
Ditko, Wood, and Kirby, respectively, some writing credit just before
they walked. That in itself is evidence that the lack of writing
credit/compensation was a key factor in such stellar talents leaving
Marvel and, was an ongoing bone of contention between these essential
freelance creators and their editor. Here we see Wallace Wood getting
rare writing credit in Daredevil #10 from 1965, just as he was about
to make his exit in favor of companies that did regularly pay him for
his writing.
Patrick Ford: Notice that Lee uses his usual bit of the right hand
drawing back while the left hand advances.
1. Lee implies that Wood is a novice to writing.
2. Lee implies that the story is confusing and difficult to follow.
Dave Rawlins: Also he made sure that Wood was listed 3rd in the
credits. And as for Powell doing layouts, haven't Wood's rough layouts
for this issue seen print in Vanguard's Wood Sketchbook, J David
Spurlock?
J David Spurlock: Some issues of layouts by Wood for Powell have
turned up... #9 and #11. I don't believe #10 have turned up yet.
Dave Rawlins: My memory must be getting foggy. Anyway, since Wood
wrote the story and did layouts for #9 and #11 it seems odd that he
would leave the layouts to Powell for this issue.
Patrick Ford: Dave Rawlins, That was Lee's error. Wood was doing
layouts on all those and later after thinking about it he told Evanier
the credits were wrong.
Wood was taken off full art after he complained to Lee about not being
paid for writing. In my opinion Lee decided to punish Wood by
assigning Wood to layouts which paid only 1/4 of what was paid for
penciling. There are people who believe that Lee pulled the layout
stunt because he wanted more pages out of Wood. That does not make
sense with Wood since Wood was inking and when he was doing pencils
those pencils were basically layouts anyhow. We have all seen Ditko's
pencils? They are what a lot of people would call layouts. Why?
Because when a penciler is going to also ink then there is no need for
a laboriously detailed pencil drawing.
Dave Rawlins: And "layouts" in Lee edited comics is really synonymous
with "writer".
J David Spurlock: Well, it wouldn't be the first time Stan got the
credits wrong. He likewise credited Powell for layouts on another
issue which the Wood layouts (and plot) are known to exist.
Patrick Ford: As was "penciler." In the case of Kirby I have long
believed Lee assigned Kirby to "layouts" not in order to teach others
the so called Marvel Method, but as a way of getting more pages out of
Kirby for which Lee would be paid as a writer.
That does not translate to Wood since Wood was also inking and I
seriously doubt there was much difference between penciling and
layouts when it came to instances where Wood was going to do the
inking himself.
Patrick Ford: As a matter of fact I believe that Kirby was removed
from inking his own pencils for the same reason he was assigned to
layouts. It was a way to get more written pages out of Kirby.
Inking is time consuming. It takes about the same amount of time as it
takes to pencil a page. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but on the
whole roughly the same.
In 1956 Kirby was writing, penciling and inking for Marvel (Black
Rider, Yellow Claw). So what changed? What changed was the number of
books Marvel was publishing from around 40 titles a month to 8.
Lee did not start to write a large number of pages in 1958. If you go
look at his Timely-Atlas credits for 1956 he is probably being
credited for more pages of writing than he was in 1962.
home