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Wally Wood pokes fun at Lee's Thor dialog
J David Spurlock
24 August 2016
Wallace Wood wrote this Edgar Rice Burroughs satire “Warmonger of Mars” illustrated by Ralph Reese (1st published in Creepy #87, March 1977) starring “Junk Carter.” NOTE: The inclusion of a poke at STAN LEE's writing style.
Michael Hill: Awesome.
Patrick Ford: Witty Wallace Wood strikes again.
Patrick Ford: STEPHEN BISSETTE: "Stan Lee's bombastic dialogue rang hollow. I kept sampling Thor and even clung to a few scattered issues, but only the occasional "Tales of Asgard" really grabbed me. The personalized epic scope of Kirby's New Gods rang true to me."
J David Spurlock: I think Stan tinkered with Tales of Asgard less because it was a back up.
Patrick Ford: Lee is on record as saying Kirby "practically wrote" the Tales of Asgard strips.
I think pretty clearly Tales of Asgard is what Kirby intended for the Thor feature and that the early emphasis on the doctor and the nurse was ordered if not written by Lee.
Mark Evanier has written a fair amount about the Thor character and as he tells it Kirby was so dissatisfied that he wanted to basically kill everyone off and start from scratch. That was the genesis of the 1966 Thor presentation drawings which predated the Fourth World presentations.
https://comics.ha.com/itm/memorabilia/jack-kirby-gods-portfolio-and-the-jack-kirby-treasury-vol-2-hardcover-39-450-memorabilia-group-communic-total-6-items-/a/121145-10508.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515
Chris Tolworthy: Interesting comment about the Jane Foster subplot. I recently began reviewing Thor, but ignoring the dialog. the art generally tells a much better and different story.* The one thing that always stands out to me is that Blake did NOT have romantic feelings for Foster. Not for the first year or two: the dialog completely contradicts the art. But Lee must have pushed and pushed, and eventually Kirby goes "OK, fine" and has them be in love.
Kirby would have known that Thor was married to Sif in the legends, and his Tales of Asgard Sif story makes that clear, though again the dialog denies it. But in general the Tales of Asgard feature seems to be closer to Kirby's intent and often seems to act as a corrective or commentary to Stan's butchering of the main story.
http://classiccomics.org/thread/3689/thor-lee-review-thread
*The Grey Gargoyle is perhaps the best example of this: a superb updating of the Dracula story, but diluted and weakened by the dialog.
Patrick Ford: With Thor Lee also had the advantage of Kirby not being on the book for awhile during the first year of the books run. Issues 90-96 are not by Kirby. Tale of Asgard begins with issue #97. Kirby's first Thor story (JIM #83) features the Stone Men. When Kirby returns with issue #97 his first story features the Lava Men.
Michael Hill: The Thor thread looks like an invaluable exercise, Chris. Makes me want to get out my originals and clip out the balloons. (At least I would if I had the originals.) Henry Kujawa used to post thorough reviews of a number of Marvel titles as he read through them. Tim occasionally does the same.
The Kirby Without Words site (by Kate Willaert of the Kirby Collector 66 article) is fine for the pictures, but the narrative fully supports Lee's version of his creation of the Marvel Method.
Chris Tolworthy: Michael Hill Yes, I was very surprised by Willaert's comments. She is obviously better informed than me in many areas, yet she said there is no evidence for Kirby taking over before Avengers 6??? Just a glance at the surviving art for FF 3 shows that Lee was changing Kirby's plot - why would that happen if Kirby was following Lee's script? And that's just a page I happened to notice.
Others have commented on Kirby's notes on the early Hulk margins, and Lee himself said in 1947 that when an artist can write then Lee lets him, and he also (in the same 1947 guide) said that the person named as writer often is not. Even an outsider like me can see that quite obviously Kirby was writing from the very start, so it is odd to see her make those comments.
Patrick Ford: Willaert's Tumblr is interesting. She does have an unfortunate tendency to toe the line on Lee being the seminal idea guy.
It's interesting how even loads of people who support Kirby are absolutely dug in and will not budge from Lee being the person with the basic undeveloped ideas.
http://kirbywithoutwords.tumblr.com/
Michael Hill: Just reading through Tales of Asgard. I first noticed the word "thee" in "Balder, the Brave" in JIM 106. This also marks the first time Colletta inked ToA. The next appearance of "thee" is in "The Secret of Sigurd" five issues later.
Michael Hill: On page 5 of "Alibar and the Forty Demons" (Thor 141), the villain Mogul looks just like Maximus, and Maximus is based on Stanley.
Chris Tolworthy: Michael Hill "Maximus is based on Stanley." - I didn't know that, but it's obvious now you point it out. Any links or further info?
Michael Hill: Chris, no independent verification, but I used it in a letter to TJKC that got printed. (As far as I know, Stan Lee, who was alive at the time, did not write in to deny it.) I'll paste part of it here, but please note that it contains a couple of ridiculous statements with which I completely disagree 14.5 years later, the one about the Lee/Kirby FF run, and the one about Kirby being cut off in his prime (now I know Kirby just kept getting better). Mark Lerer is someone whose writing I hate to see published in TJKC.
[March 2002]...which brings me to Mark Lerer's [issue #33] "Family Reunion" article. Mark suggests the Inhumans' appearance in AMAZING ADVENTURES as the answer to Gene Popa's TJKC #26 question, "What would a Marvel Comics NEW GODS have been like?" Gene's piece was interesting as a curiosity, but the very idea makes me cringe. I'll grant that some of the most brilliant moments in comics came out of the Lee/Kirby FF run, but in my opinion Jack's '70s DC work (dialogue and all) was better.
I don't agree that Kirby was a flawed scripter (or that his later books were evidence of this); the pencil pages in TJKC #33 show stories springing from his imagination fully-formed, only waiting to be cluttered with dialogue. (I'd love to see this stuff completed as Jack intended, but the unadulterated pencils are the next best thing.) As Mark notes, he wasn't capable of the flippant or soap opera approach: "As a writer of dialogue, Kirby is clearly more interested in advancing the story than dazzling the reader with wit." Not only of advancing the story, but of keeping it moving: Jack was a master of page layout, panel composition and pacing. His own dialogue was unlikely to inhibit the flow of the story.
Jack had been honing his storytelling instincts for decades, and the late '60s were a time of building frustration and resentment during which he withheld his ideas and creations, incubating and fermenting, pending a more favourable situation. When later editing his own books, he wouldn't subject them to the indignities detailed by Mike
Gartland in "A Failure to Communicate"; these things were understandably perceived by Kirby as editorial tyranny on Lee's part. His inevitable departure from Marvel was The Great Jack Kirby "Bust-Out, " when he refused to stay and allow Stan to complete the destruction of Jack Kirby. For me, what followed was the "brief shining moment" as Mark calls it, when Jack found his rhythm on the Fourth World books -- just before cancellation cut him off in his prime.
Kirby being made the way he was, rather than act on his hard feelings at Lee (and later Infantino), he could only bottle them up until they boiled out through his pencil. The results were some terrific confrontations: As Scott Free he was there to rescue Houseroy when the House of Ideas went up in flames; as Himon he submitted to another "dying" at the hands of Carmine; as Kamandi he had it out with him in the guise of Tiny the ape. Here's one of my favourite passages, Kiernan blasting Turpin in NEW GODS #8: "You're off the case! As of now! You've trained some good men, Turpin! I'm turning this over to one of them! And don't bring up that bit about 'knowin' me when --"! This isn't just Matt Kiernan, a rookie cop, talking!"
This strikes me as the way Jack might have stood up to Stan over the Silver Surfer (Jack having "known Stan when" he was a teenaged office boy). It's the outcome he would have preferred: Turpin didn't let the chief take him off the case. In the light of these (and other) examples of Kirby venting vicariously through his characters, I wouldn't be surprised to find out Maximus had a toupée.
Chris Tolworthy: Thanks. Maximus has always fascinated me, and felt like one of the most real characters. I think he stood out because everybody else tells me Maximus was one dimensional and lacks any motivation or shape. I have the opposite opinion. Maximus is real, and the best way to prove that is, as you have pointed out, Maximus is Stan Lee.
Remember his gigantic phallic gun? His preening in his ridiculous gigantic head piece? How he was so friendly to people, just a likeable joker? Yet he felt it was his right to rule (despite no apparent reason why)? How he smashed the chess board on the cover to FF 83 (just as Stan would clumsily break Kirby's carefully plotted stories)? How he was a brilliant strategist at precisely one thing: manipulating others. How the real king, Black Bolt, was silent, unable to speak, and for some reason could never simply punish and get rid of Maximus. Why? Because Bolt was Kirby, and Maximus was Lee.
Of course, as others have pointed out on this forum, these are also universal villain tropes, Kirby was under no obligation to have them only fit one person Yet they fit that person so well.
Patrick Ford: Even without being exposed to Lee I believe Kirby would have told similar stories. Lee's type is not uncommon ("like all his endless kind" in Kirby's words) and it was a type which Kirby frequently targeted. Kirby was familiar with the type from his childhood neighborhood. I suppose we all are familiar with the type since they have always been around and continue to use the same time tested methods.
Patrick Ford: For example people Kirby is known to have disliked include: Billy Graham, Richard Nixon, Arthur Godfrey.
Michael Hill: When I wrote the line about the toupée I hadn't seen the headpiece... it was *almost* as subtle as Funky's costumes.
Chris Tolworthy:
Patrick Ford: One thing I am convinced that Lee did was to steer books in a direction he wanted. This is not to say that Lee created the characters or plots but he clearly had the editorial power to demand things like crossovers, cut short any story lines he did not care for and completely short circuit stories even before they hit the published page.
One example is Ditko saying that Lee wanted Peter Parker to graduate from high school. I don't think that could be called a plot. It's more of a directive. It's likely Lee told Kirby something like, "I want you to play up the Thor/nurse/doctor. Make it something like Superman-Lois- and Kent."
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