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Kick-backs to the editor were very common in the industry Patrick Ford 22 September 2016 Kirby is frequently criticized for saying that Stan Lee, "Never wrote anything." However, Kirby said that when being asked about the "Monster Stories" published in 1958 and 1959 and the fact of the matter is not one of those stories is signed by Stan Lee. Not one of Kirby's, not one of Ditko's nor Reinman's, Heck's, or anyone's. Lee never signed a "Monster Story" until Sept. of 1961, one month prior to FANTASTIC FOUR #1. In 1969, before he quit selling his stories to Marvel, Kirby told Mark Herbert he was constantly pushing Stan Lee to suggest to Martin Goodman that Marvel should give the super hero genre a try. GROTH: When you went to Marvel in ’58 and ’59, Stan was obviously there. KIRBY: Yes, and he was the same way. GROTH: And you two collaborated on all the monster stories? KIRBY: Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything! I’ve never seen Stan Lee write anything. I used to write the stories just like I always did. GROTH: On all the monster stories it says “Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.” What did he do to warrant his name being on them? KIRBY: Nothing! OK? GROTH: Did he dialogue them? KIRBY: No, I dialogued them. If Stan Lee ever got a thing dialogued, he would get it from someone working in the office. I would write out the whole story on the back of every page. I would write the dialogue on the back or a description of what was going on. Then Stan Lee would hand them to some guy and he would write in the dialogue. In this way Stan Lee made more pay than he did as an editor. This is the way Stan Lee became the writer. Besides collecting the editor’s pay, he collected writer’s pay. I’m not saying Stan Lee had a bad business head on. I think he took advantage of whoever was working for him. Patrick Ford: It's certain Kirby resented the fact that Lee took the whole writer's page rate and credit. Nothing unusual about that. Lee clashed with Wally Wood and Steve Ditko over the same issue. If you consider that Kirby created around 10, 000 pages which he sold to Marvel and Lee collected the writing credit and pay on all but a handful of them it's easy to understand Kirby's resentment. There is an argument that if Kirby felt he was being treated poorly he should have quit. That's easier said than done for a man with a family to care for. There is also the fact that the comic book industry was on the whole a large fire with frying pans named Marvel, DC, Charlton, etc, . Kirby had recently been selling work to DC when he began selling stories to Lee in 1958. In my opinion Kirby's editor at DC, Jack Schiff, was using his position as the editor handing out assignments as a lever to extort money from Kirby. When Kirby tried to resist Schiff's scheme Kirby's assignments at DC were taken away and Schiff filed a lawsuit against Kirby. Kirby had also recently been burned by Charlton. The unpublished Mainline inventory was sold to Charlton and Kirby was paid only a small fraction of what he was supposed to be paid. Kick-backs to the editor, extortion in my opinion, were very common in the industry and that is no doubt the reason Kirby bit the bullet and kept selling stories to Lee. In 1971 Kirby said this to Tim Skelly. Patrick Ford: Notice that Kirby uses the word "script" when describing his stories. Kirby essentially supplied Lee with a full script. A complete story broken down into pages and panels. All the characters and settings were described (supplied to Lee). Patrick Ford: There's actually no evidence Lee ever contributed a single idea to Kirby prior to Kirby beginning work. And there is a ton of evidence that the ideas were coming from Kirby. Patrick Ford: No better example than Spider-Man. Ferran Delgado: "I would write out the whole story on the back of every page. I would write the dialogue on the back or a description of what was going on." Any proof of this? I don't recall it. But the back of some pages of FF #3 have "layouts" by Lee. Patrick Ford: Ferran, Those FF #3 pages were discussed here recently. Do you think Lee was supplying Kirby with blank sheets of art board with layouts on the back? The other question would be why only a few of the pages from that story contain those "layouts." My guess is those "layouts" are indications of Lee asking for redraws after the fact. Patrick Ford: Kirby may have begun by writing the stories on the back of pages. There are no examples I've see. There are many pages with Kirby's handwriting on the front of pages. The typical Lee-advocate explanation for that is the claim that Larry Lieber was writing full scripts for Kirby. However has anyone ever seen a Larry Lieber script? Patrick Ford: Come to think of it Roy Thomas said that on the Iron Man and Sub-Mariner story he worked on with Kirby, Kirby wrote a short plot synopsis on the back of the splash page and an issue of TJKC published a scan of the synopsis. Patrick Ford: The Kirby story notes are for Tales to Astonish #83. See TJKC #51 page 58. Patrick Ford: TJKC does say that the notes are based on a phone call Kirby had with Lee. Since Kirby was not writing either the Sub-Mariner or Iron Man at the time it's likely Kirby did talk to Lee or Thomas about what was going on in the story leading up to the one he was assigned to. Ferran Delgado: But this "layout" from #3 doesn't look corrections. https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GffQlBTa-y8/Rgr4x8EwYrI/AAAAAAAABTE/MuxFTYtm1xk/s1600/KirbyFF03pg12.jpg Chris Tolworthy: How do we explain why Stan's comments are different from Kirby's art? The top 1 is supposed to be the soldiers attacking (according to the notes), the middle is supposed to be the monster grabbing Torch, the bottom is supposed to be the "4" flare, etc. I think Kirby's version makes more sense and I'm glad he kept it. Ferran Delgado: What it looks to me is that Kirby read Lee's notes and did it what made more sense to him. But they look very rough prelim notes by Lee. Another item is that they finally were useless. Patrick Ford: Just to be clear Ferran. It is your theory that Lee was supplying Kirby with art board which Lee had already drawn layouts on? Ferran Delgado: Or this one... https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_GffQlBTa-y8/RhtBsX7axYI/AAAAAAAABds/pLWD8CL6pYQ/s1600/KirbyFF003pg05.jpg"> Chris Tolworthy: I think page 5 has to be Stan asking for changes. (I don't have time to examine the other page, just leaving for work). Note the big arrow: he wants something moved. That's the smoking gun. To confirm, note the pencil writing on the original frame the arrow referred to: it's hard to make out what the original dialog was supposed to be, but the last word is almost certainly "Thing" - a word that now appears in the first frame. So it seems most likely that, for that arrow, Stan was just asking for the last panel to become the first one. This was necessary because it 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 leads to the next. Kirby generally drew like a movie, where each frame leads to the next. So here is what I think happened: Kirby's solo art tends to move smoothly from frame to frame. Here, page 4 somehow got the team from the fight at the theater, via this page, to the new headquarters on page 6. So the headquarters diagram on page 5 was probably in the original plan, and it makes sense for the arrival pic (the one that Stan moved) to be in its original position just before the cutaway. The removed sequence probably focused on Ben's anger: the smooth flow of events becomes jarring just after the frame where Ben gets angry. My guess is that Stan removed this to make space for the villain monolog. Whereas Kirby liked to gradual build up, to develop personalities, Stan liked to explain everything in the most obvious way. The monolog has Stan's fingerprints all over it. Patrick Ford: Corrections frequently involved replacing whole pages. That is according to Joe Orlando and Kirby. There is quite a bit of evidence which shows that Lee was known to have entire stories redrawn on occasion. The most well documented instance being Kirby's last "monster story" for Marvel. Patrick Ford: BTW. I have always thought this particular bit of writing looks more like Kirby's printing than Lee's. It's hard to be certain, but this is far more legible than Lee's usual scrawl. Ferran Delgado: I know first hand about Lee's tendency to move pages out of order. I lettered a short story based on his first work for Marvel in Marvel 75th Anniversary, and he asked to move the splash out of order, which was a mess and made no sense. Fortunately the editor kept the order as drawn by Bruce Timm. Patrick Ford: Ditko has described meetings with Lee where Ditko tried to accommodate Lee's ideas/demands. Ditko says Lee would tell Ditko what he wanted and Ditko would make very quick sketches and ask Lee for approval before making the change. Patrick Ford: I would make a distinction between a correction (moving an arm, making a closed mouth open, adding speed lines or shadows) and whole sale changes to a story which required that entire pages, or several panels on a page, being erased.

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