The Marvel Method Archive

Lee wrote nothing between 1955-1957 (when Kirby arrived)

Patrick Ford 10 June 2016 Michael Vassallo: "In the post-code fantasy period (1955-1957) Stan Lee wrote absolutely "nothing". There are no stories signed by him and I've seen almost all of them. The scripts were churned out by other staff writers. For example, at the moment I'm working with Robin Snyder on the records of Carl Wessler and Paul Newman assigning all their Atlas scripting credits onto stories in my database. Guess what? In the post-code period I'm discovering that Wessler wrote almost 1/3 of ALL the post-code fantasy stories across ALL the titles in 1956-57! From talking to artists from the time I've learned that the freelancers worked from very full scripts." Here's something I put together which is all sourced from Michael Vassallo's research. In 1955-56 Atlas began a huge expansion of post-code titles, leading up to the 75 concurrent titles. They were feeding work to over 150 freelancers. Kirby began selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas) late 1956. His first sales were slightly before he began selling material to DC that same year. Among Kirby's works were three issues of the YELLOW CLAW, several BLACK RIDER stories as well as, misc. war stories and westerns, and science fiction stories. These stories were published between Dec. 1956 and Sept. 1957. In the Spring of 1957 Martin Goodman encountered a very serious distribution crisis which resulted in what is called The Atlas Implosion. The crash was abrupt and unexpected. There were no assignments for Kirby after the Spring Implosion. Stan Lee let the freelancers go in spring of 1957. After that and through the first half of 1958 Stan Lee was using up 1956-57 inventory and feeding a small number of new assignments to Dick Ayers and a handful of teen and romance artists. Kirby returned in July of 1958. Stan Lee who had been using over 150 freelancers just 14 months before began relying on a small number of freelancers to fill the eight titles a month Goodman was allowed to publish. During the first 8 months of the pre-hero period, cover dates from Dec/58 to Sept/59, all of the books also feature stories by Ditko, Heck, Reinman, Baker, Davis, Sinnott, Ayers, Williamson, Buscema, Forte, Severin, Forgione and Burgos. Inks on stories by Kirby range from Rule to Wood. Covers during this first 8 months, in addition to Kirby, feature Heath, Ditko, Heck and Sinnott. It seems that the entire pre-hero period started as a way for Stan Lee to get books out again once Goodman reorganized from the distribution fiasco and inventory dried up. During those first eight post Implosion months Kirby was selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas), DC, Harvey, and Crestwood. As Kirby's assignments at DC were taken away by Jack Schiff Kirby began to fill the pages of Goodman's magazines. Update, 8 September 2016

Everyone who cares pay attention now because this is interesting. All data presented is from Michael Vassallo. In 1955-56 Atlas began a huge expansion of post- code titles, leading up to the 75 concurrent titles. They were feeding work to over 150 freelancers. Kirby began selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas) late 1956. His first sales were slightly before he began selling material to DC that same year. Among Kirby's works were three issues of the YELLOW CLAW, several BLACK RIDER stories as well as, misc. war stories and westerns, and science fiction stories. These stories were published between Dec. 1956 and Sept. 1957. In the Spring of 1957 Martin Goodman encountered a very serious distribution crisis which resulted in what is called The Atlas Implosion. The crash was abrupt and unexpected. There were no assignments for Kirby after the Spring Implosion. Stan Lee let the freelancers go in spring of 1957. After that and through the first half of 1958 Stan Lee was just using up 1956-57 inventory and feeding a small number of new stories to Dick Ayers and a handful of teen and romance artists. Kirby returned in July of 1958. Stan Lee who had been using over 150 freelancers just 14 months before began relying on a small number of freelancers to fill the eight titles a month Goodman was allowed to publish. During the first 8 months of the pre-hero period, cover dates from Dec/58 to Sept/59, all of the books also feature stories by Ditko, Heck, Reinman, Baker, Davis, Sinnott, Ayers, Williamson, Buscema, Forte, Severin, Forgione and Burgos. Inks on stories by Kirby range from Rule to Wood. Covers during this first 8 months, in addition to Kirby, feature Heath, Ditko, Heck and Sinnott. It seems that the entire pre-hero period started as a way for Stan Lee to get books out again once Goodman reorganized from the distribution fiasco and inventory dried up. During those first eight post Implosion months Kirby was selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas), DC, Harvey, and Crestwood. As Kirby's assignments at DC were taken away by Jack Schiff Kirby began to fill the pages of Goodman's magazines. Patrick Ford: I'd supplement this by adding there are no "moster-mystery-fantasy" stories signed by Lee not only during the pre-implosion fantasy period (1955-1957) mentioned by Vassallo, but no stories signed by Lee in that genre from 1958 until Oct. 1961 one month prior to FF #1. During all those years (1955-1961) Lee signed literally thousands of stories in every genre aside from the "monster-fantasy" genre. Patrick Ford: With my own eyes I saw the TWO-HEADED THING.

Jim Van Heuklon: another part of the problem is that CGC continues to blindly give writing to credit to Lee for the vast majority of these books. Patrick Ford: They do and it's sickening. It's beyond a joke. It's reprehensible. Patrick Ford: I'm not even saying they should credit Kirby as the writer. What they should do is note the dispute. Mention that Kirby and Lee are 100% at odds. And mover on. Instead they credit Lee. It's shameful and inexcusable. Jim Van Heuklon: I sent Borock a message asking him to explain CBCS's blind devotion to the writing credits. We'll see if it warrants a response. Patrick Ford: If they were to respond they would call you a "Kirby Kultist." There is no reaching these people. They are in too deep. There is no turning back for them. ___________________________________________________________ Patrick Ford 23 May 2017

"I Was a Man in Hiding" TALES TO ASTONISH #2 (March 1959) Written by Carl Wessler (?) Illustrated by John Buscema Michael J. Vassallo: More and more I'm thinking there was a massive amount of unused scripts after Atlas imploded. In the post-code fantasy period (1955-1957) Stan Lee wrote absolutely "nothing". There are no (science fiction/fantasy type) stories signed by him and I've seen almost all of them. The scripts were churned out by other staff writers. For example, at the moment I'm working with Robin Snyder on the records of Carl Wessler and Paul Newman assigning all their Atlas scripting credits onto stories in my database. I already know there were nearly 30 from Carl Wessler alone. Add up to perhaps 4 or 5 different writers and that leaves around 150 orphaned scripts. Ok..that covers generic science fiction of the first year. Guess what? In the post-code period I'm discovering that Wessler wrote almost 1/3 of ALL the post-code fantasy stories across ALL the titles in 1956-57! From talking to artists from the time I've learned that the freelancers worked from very full scripts. The above is quoted from Michael J. Vassallo. What follows is a mix of my analysis and opinion along with me paraphrasing/quoting/patching together research and data by Michael Vassallo. ----In 1955-56 Atlas began a huge expansion of post-code titles, leading up to the 75 concurrent titles. They were feeding work to over 150 freelancers. Kirby began selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas) late 1956. His first sales were slightly before he began selling material to DC that same year. Among Kirby's works were three issues of the YELLOW CLAW, several BLACK RIDER stories as well as, misc. war stories and westerns, and science fiction stories. These stories were published between Dec. 1956 and Sept. 1957. In the Spring of 1957 Martin Goodman encountered a very serious distribution crisis which resulted in what is called The Atlas Implosion. The crash was abrupt and unexpected. There were no assignments for Kirby after the Spring Implosion. Stan Lee let the freelancers go in spring of 1957. After that and through the first half of 1958 Stan Lee was just using up 1956-57 inventory and feeding a small number of new stories to Dick Ayers and a handful of teen and romance artists. Kirby returned in July of 1958. Stan Lee who had been using over 150 freelancers just 14 months before began relying on a small number of freelancers to fill the eight titles a month Goodman was allowed to publish. During the first 8 months of the pre-hero period, cover dates from Dec/58 to Sept/59, all of the books also feature stories by Ditko, Heck, Reinman, Baker, Davis, Sinnott, Ayers, Williamson, Buscema, Forte, Severin, Forgione and Burgos. Inks on stories by Kirby range from Rule to Wood. Covers during this first 8 months, in addition to Kirby, feature Heath, Ditko, Heck and Sinnott. It seems that the entire pre-hero period started as a way for Stan Lee to get books out again once Goodman reorganized from the distribution fiasco and inventory dried up. During those first eight post Implosion months Kirby was selling freelance work to Marvel (Atlas), DC, Harvey, and Crestwood. As Kirby's assignments at DC were taken away by Jack Schiff Kirby began to fill the pages of Goodman's magazines. The question is why once the inventory was exhausted did Lee pretty much stop giving assignments to Baker, Davis, Sinnott, Ayers, Williamson, Buscema, Forte, Severin, Forgione and Burgos? And not only that but the percentage of pages filled by Kirby probably was around 50% since Kirby is frequently doing two stories in each title and later much longer stories (up to 20 pages). Patrick Ford: "I Foiled an Enemy Invasion" TALES TO ASTONISH #1 (January 1959) Illustrated by Jack Davis

Patrick Ford: "A Robot in Hiding" TALES OF SUSPENSE #2 (March 1959) Illustrated by Joe Sinnott

Patrick Ford: "I Fell to the Center of the Earth" from TALES TO ASTONISH #2 (March 1959) Matt Baker/Colletta.

Patrick Ford: "The Strangers from Space" TALES OF SUSPENSE #1 (January 1959) Illustrated by Al Williamson

J David Spurlock: Where did you get the Vassallo quote? Patrick Ford: The direct quote is recently from FB. Michael J. Vassallo would probably remember where. The section below that is me assembling stuff Michael wrote on the old Kirby list back in 1999. Michael J. Vassallo: I've spoken about this many times lately on many lists so I don't even recall where. I know about one or two weeks ago I wrote a very long response on the Comic book historians list to this stuff. I think the thread was a Joe Maneely thread and folks were arguing about a what if? Joe had not died. I jumped in late and just typed for 20 straight minutes all out of my head! Michael J. Vassallo: Ok, I found that post I mentioned but it's not focused on post-implosion inventory. It's focused on Maneely. Wait! I did a blog post on post-implosion inventory..... https://timely-atlas-comics.blogspot.com/2016/10/atlas-errata-cover-alterations-and.html Dave Rawlins: Michael J. Vassallo, Patrick Ford, it's fairly well established that Stan Lee signed the stories he dialogued. Do either of you know what the first Kirby story was that Lee signed? I'm thinking it was F F. #1. Also, what was the first Ditko story Lee signed? Chris Tolworthy: Dave Rawlins If that was the first, was it simply because Lee felt the need to keep control? It seems likely that Kirby had been pushing for the new FF title: that it was his baby. He must have been itching to prove once again what he could do after the string of hits in the past. That's certainly how Kirby remembered it later, that this was his conscious effort to save the business that was failing under Lee. Lee was in a weak position at the time (his uncle thinking about scrapping comics altogether) and would not want to be back in the 1941 position where he was just the office boy and Kirby was the star. So did he sign it just to remind Kirby that he was still the boss? Dave Rawlins: I don't know what his motivation was. Like Joe Friday, I'm curious to know just the facts. ;) Michael J. Vassallo: Ditko's first story with Stan was a western, I think 2-Gun Western #4 in 1956. "The Badmen" (from memory). Kirby's was either FF #1 or a romance that may have been sort of concurrent. Patrick Ford: Michael J. Vassallo , Possibly a RAWHIDE KID or another Western. Definitely not FF #1. Patrick Ford: The Ditko Western is sort of an anomaly. It's not unusual that Lee wrote Westerns. That was one of the genres he favored. What is unusual is there aren't any more signed Ditko/Lee stories for several years. Michael J. Vassallo: That's true. Stan was writing more westerns (fillers) than anything else in 1956. He was still writing teen stuff also. Ditko was just another freelancer on a western filler. Patrick Ford: Looking things over I think the first Kirby/Lee story is. "Dance, or Draw, Tenderfoot!" from TWO-GUN KID #54 (June 1960). This story is a rewrite of a story called "The Tenderfoot" WILD WESTERN #50 (Jul 1956). "The Tenderfoot" story is not signed by Lee. Dave Rawlins: Do we know if the Lee/Ditko story from 1956 was full script. Also, was the Kirby story from 1960 fully scripted? Was it a common practice of Lee to rewrite older stories and do we know if those rewrites were written full script? Patrick Ford: It's my opinion that Lee signed stories he wrote-scripted-dialogued (pick the word of your choice). So from 1956-June of 1960 there are no Kirby/Lee stories. Prior to June of 1960 Kirby worked in; Westerns, romance, science fiction/fantasy, and war genres without any of the stories being signed by Lee. All those are genres closely associated with Kirby. Patrick Ford: Dave, If I recall correctly either Michael or someone else turned up comments by former Marvel staff and freelancers which indicate Lee used the Marvel Method frequently during the whole time he was employed by Martin Goodman. Ditko has written in several of his essays that he never got a full script from Stan Lee. This topic can get confusing because many people will use the term script for a dialogue script. There is also the fact that Lee as the editor assigned full scripts to artists. That is often confused with Lee assigning a full Lee script to an artist. Someone will say, "Stan always gave me full scripts." That sounds conclusive until you go and look and see that those scripts weren't by Lee. It's like Julius Schwartz giving Murphy Anderson a full script...by Gardner Fox. Michael J. Vassallo: That's true. The comment by Bernie Krigstein about Stan's scripts are moot because Stan never scripted a Krigstein story! Dave Rawlins: Has a full Lee script ever seen the light of day? I'm not asking about plot synopses. Patrick Ford: I think Lee wrote a full script for the Silver Surfer graphic novel. However it's known Lee wrote his script after Kirby sent Lee the artwork and a typed script. So Lee's script may have been intended for the letterer? Dave Rawlins: So Lee was actually following Kirby's penciled story, like he did in the 60s, only with a typed Kirby script instead of margin notes? Dave Rawlins: Confession, although I followed everything Kirby produced at Marvel in the 70s the Silver Surfer graphic novel is the one thing I've never read. Patrick Ford: Dave Rawlins , That's right. Only as usual he didn't exactly follow Kirby's story. There were changes made to Kirby's script. Patrick Ford: Just to nail this down. Michael can probably say if it was just (or mainly) scripts that were in inventory after the implosion. The artwork by; Davis, Williamson, Buscema, Sinnott, Baker, Forte, etc. was assigned and drawn post Implosion?? Michael J. Vassallo: Those stories were likely drawn post-implosion but the scripts were inventory. I'll cut and paste from my blog... "......So here is the set-up in place now. At the time of the work stoppage, production was on schedule for Goodman's full spectrum of scores of titles. Perhaps a hundred freelance artists and at least 10 freelance writers were all churning out material when the call came to shut down production. We know that after a short hiatus Stan Lee filled out his skeleton line with inventory before the call went out for new material after a year. Let's go back to the time of the work stoppage. The backlog of inventory was large. In the fantasy titles, there was enough completed inventory to pace the two re-started post-implosion fantasy books (World of Fantasy and Strange Tales) for an entire year using inventory from the M job number run. The war titles had three books with M and O inventory (Battle, Marines in Battle and Navy Combat) while the romance line had two with M and O (Love Romances and My Own Romance). In the westerns, there were four with M and O (Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt Outlaw, Gunsmoke Western and Wyatt Earp). *** (The harbinger of "new" work in the pre-hero era was the appearance of P and S stories (in the teen and western titles), followed by T (in the war, romance and fantasy titles). *** But in addition to completed inventory, there was also inventory in all manner of semi-completed states. Atlas Implosion : Status of Source Material Complete and published Complete and unpublished Undrawn scripts Let's take each one at a time. 1) Complete and published : We've already seen that completed inventory was used for an entire year. Focusing on fantasy books, this inventory filled the post-implosion issues of two titles. Strange Tales from #60 (Dec/57) to #66 (Dec/58), a total of 42 inventory stories, 83% of which were M stories (and a handful of K and L stories). World of Fantasy from #9 (Dec/57) to #15 (Dec/58), a total of 42 inventory stories, 74% of which were M stories (the rest J, K and L) What about inventory that was not used up? What about scripts never drawn? That comes next. 2) Complete and unpublished : While this was always a theoretical possibility, it took until last month for proof to emerge! On August 31 of this year I was contacted by Guy Miles Budziak, a collector/indexer who does work for the Grand Comics Database. He inquired about a British Atlas reprint of the Atlas title Six-Gun Western published by L. Miller & Son, a prolific packager of American comics in the U.K.during the 1940's and into the early 1960's. The cover by John Severin could not be placed on an American Atlas comic, nor could the 5 stories inside, all with late M job numbers. Well a grand search by myself confirmed that these stories were never published. But surprise! Cross-referencing them against Carl Wessler's work records showed that two of the scripts were written by Wessler on February 16, 1957! A little about Carl Wessler...... Thanks to comics historian Robin Synder, we can track at least one of Timely's long-time writers, Carl Wessler. When Wessler died in 1989 his work records went to his friend, Robin Snyder, publisher of the seminal comics history newsletter, The Comics. Starting in the late 1990's, I began to cross-reference Wessler's Timely records against my Timely/Atlas database, able to assign nearly 700 stories to him from 1950 to 1957. Wessler's records contained the exact date he wrote each story and what book it was assigned to (book assignments that often changed as editors frequently moved stories to where they were needed in their redundant titles.) When I got to 1957 (real time), immediately I noticed an aberration. From 1/4/57 to 4/13/57 Wessler scripted exactly 65 stories for Stan Lee. February, March and April's stories were all Westerns and Romance stories, 95% of which I was able to attribute to published stories based on story titles. These two drawn and unpublished westerns came from February joining two others already published and four more unknowns......" 3) Undrawn Scripts : Getting back to Carl Wessler and 1957, January was a completely different animal! The entire month of his 29 scripts were solely for the fantasy titles and only one single story written on January 4, #M-450 "Bedlam in Barnesville" (illustrated by Jim Mooney), was published as inventory in World of Fantasy #12 (June/58) an entire year later. So at first glance, it appears that almost none of Wessler's January-scripted fantasy stories ever appeared in print! That's a full four months before the Implosion. It also became obvious that there could be more scripts by several different writers whose record we do "not" have, that were also never drawn before the work stoppage. When you look at the earliest pre-hero titles, there are a tiny handful of stories with M and O job numbers that were drawn "new", likely from pre-implosion scripts. Examples of this include John Buscema's #M-567 "The Day I left My Body!" in Tales of Suspense #1 (Jan/59) and Steve Ditko's #O-365 "The Hidden Doom!" in Battle #63 (Apr/59). Both these stories with pre-implosion job #'s were likely drawn "new" using scripts from early 1957, scripts already assigned older job numbers, were ready to go, then quickly shelved. John Buscema drew six stories and a cover in this pre-hero period, all except this one were T scripts. So the #M-567 script easily falls into the realm of it being a left-over, never drawn script, although already assigned a job number. Nothing makes me believe this is simply unpublished inventory from 1957. Buscema did no work for Atlas since three stories in 1953. Steve Ditko drew seventeen stories for Atlas in 1956 (one published in 1957). The Job #'s run H to L. Then during the pre-hero period, cover date April/59, he draws a war story for Battle #63, job #O-365. Again, this is likely an older pre-implosion script already assigned a job number back in 1957, drawn "new" in late 1958. But what about completely orphaned scripts? Scripts not even assigned a job number? Now as nature abhors a vacuum, a nearly failing business abhors wasting money. And no one hated wasting money more than Martin Goodman. There just had to be a place where these already paid for fantasy scripts were used and the only place to look for them was in the period when work continued. For the most part, Stan Lee was the only writer around in the spring of 1958 when artists were called back and his signature appears on just about 100% of all the "new" western and teen-humor stories published with P and S job numbers. The fantasy line was re-launched with Strange Worlds #1 (Dec/58), concurrent with the death of Lee's top artist Joe Maneely on June 7, 1958. ***(We know it was almost to the day because job # analysis of the lead Jack Kirby story in Strange Worlds #1 (Dec/58), T-76 "I Discovered the Secret of the Flying Saucers" [the start of Kirby's famous 12 year run at Atlas/Marvel - ed] and Joe Maneely's last story in Two-Gun Kid #45 (Dec/58), T-67 "The Revenge of Roaring Bear!" are only 9 single digits apart, a period of time indicating they may have been assigned simultaneously, possibly even on the same day. Maneely only got the splash page drawn, Jack Davis completed the story. To parse this even further, there's more evidence that Jack Kirby's story could have been assigned within a day(s) of Maneely's death. The Dick Ayers story "Guns Roar in Tombstone", #T-65, was delivered to Stan Lee on June 9, 1958, two days after Maneely's death)*** Along with Strange Worlds, five additional titles encompassed the "new" fantasy line. Cover date Jan/59 saw two new titles, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense, while Strange Tales stopped publishing inventory with #67 (Feb/59) and Journey Into Mystery was re-started after a 15 month hiatus with inventory-filled #49 (Nov/58) and then new material with #50 (Jan/59). Finally, World of Fantasy, a title that had been also publishing inventory since the implosion, puts a new Jack Kirby cover onto #15 (Dec/58), simultaneous with the launch of Strange Worlds #1, and converts completely to new material with #16 (Feb/59). This change between #15 and #16 also interestingly reveals a change in the titles sub-publisher from Chipiden Publishing Corp. to Zenith Publishing Corp., as Goodman began to discontinue the use of his older, longer-running publishing companies, for the newer companies like Zenith, Vista and Canam. (By the way, Chipiden is the joining together of Martin's two sons, Chip and Iden.) Stan Lee now had 6 fantasy titles to fill with material. All of these stories were primarily science-fiction based along with light fantasy twist-endings. There are no signatures at all on the early pre-hero fantasy stories. So who wrote them? Well, I can tell you one thing. It wasn't Stan Lee. Not a single story is signed by Stan Lee, and won't until they begin appearing on Steve Ditko stories in 1961. The 28 orphaned scripts penned by Carl Wessler in January of 1957 may hold a clue. Other than the single story illustrated by Jim Mooney I mentioned above, none of the others match the exact titles of known published stories. But as I wrote in my Carl Burgos article (here), two others I can attribute with 90% degree of certainty. According to Carl Wessler's records, these three of the 28 orphaned stories were written as follows: January 17, 1957 "The Gargoyles are Watching" (4p.) for Mystic January 19, 1957 "The Man in the Deep Freeze" (4p.) for Marvel Tales January 19, 1957 "The World Must Be Warned" (4p.) for Mystery Tales Both Mystic, Marvel Tales and Mystery Tales were long cancelled in the Atlas Implosion of April, 1957. Scanning well over 150 stories published among the 6 titles during the first year reveals three possibilities..... #T-354 "I Know The Gargoyle's Secret!" (4p) in Journey Into Mystery #54 (Sept/59) #T-141 "I Spent Eternity In A Deep Freeze" (4p) in Tales To Astonish #2 (Mar/59) ????? "I Saw The Day The World Ended!" (4p.) in Strange Worlds #2 (Feb/59) I would say with a great degree of certainty, that the first two match up.They were never assigned older job numbers and possibly were even partially re-written and given new T designations. The third above has no job # whatsoever and a reading of the story (reprinted below) gives the plot as a possibility. Let me know what you think. The other 25 are ciphers and may always be so. None of their names match up with anything I can glean as a possibility. It will take a close reading of all these stories with the list of story titles to see what shakes out in the future. " Patrick Ford: Great. I'll read the whole post but I know your posts tend to be very detailed (a good thing) and I'll set aside time to read the whole thing later. Patrick Ford: Here is a quick count for story pages signed by Stan Lee in January of 1956. Total number of pages signed by Lee is 243. Kid humor accounts for 93 of those pages. Westerns total 106 pages, and the Gal humor genre totals 44 pages. So in one month Lee is credited with enough story pages to fill around ten monthly post Implosion titles.

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