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Lee did not know the story or characters
Patrick Ford
January 16, 2018
Patrick Ford
Note how similar this quote is to Lee's quote about the Destroyer. The emphasis on the name of the character.
Chris Tolworthy
January 18, 2020
Note the difference between Lee and Kirby. Lee only sees the surface, but Kirby sees deeper. Lee may as well have been shown the character name for the first time and be making it up as he goes along. Any good faker could do that.
Here, Lee describes how he created the Fantastic Four:
"I figured, "All right, but this time I'm going to do it my way." Instead of the typical heroes that have secret identities and nobody knows who they are, I did The Fantastic Four; where everybody knew who they were. And instead of the girlfriend who doesn't know that the hero is so-and-so, I had the girl in the series actually be engaged to the hero, and she was a heroine; she was part of the team. Instead of the typical junior sidekick, I had a teenager who was also the brother of the heroine; and the hero would soon marry the heroine, so they would be brothers-in-law. The fourth member of the team was a monstrous-looking guy, called The Thing, which was not a typical super-hero type in those days. I also tried to give them fairly realistic dialogue, and I didn't have them wear colorful costumes. I always felt that if I had super-power, I wouldn't immediately run out to the store and buy a costume.
Somehow or other, the book caught on."
(From Stan Lee’s 2000 interview with Kenneth Plume)
Now read how Kirby claims that HE created the Fantastic Four.
KIRBY: "The idea for the F.F. was my idea. My own anger against radiation. Radiation was the big subject at that time, because we still don't know what radiation can do to people. It can be beneficial, it can be very harmful. In the case of Ben Grimm, Ben Grimm was a college man, he was a World War II flyer. He was everything that was good in America. And radiation made a monster out of him - made an angry monster out of him, because of his own frustration. If you had to see yourself in the mirror, and the Thing looked back at you, you'd feel frustrated. Let's say you'd feel alienated from the rest of the species."
(From the 1987 interview with Leonard Pitts, Jr)
See the difference. Lee only sees the surface of the characters: how they look, the clothes they wear, the fact they they were engaged. All things that an OUTSIDER would see. We still don't know them as individuals. But Kirby talks about how it FEELS to be those characters: what MOTIVATES them, the central emotional conflict at the heart of the team. Which description is more likely to be from the writer?
Michael Hill shared a post.
February 4, 2018
Jeet Heer
I love panels where Stan Lee basically admits he doesn't understand the plot points Jack Kirby explained to him. (From Fantastic Four 58, Jan. 1967, p. 16)
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