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Barry Windsor Smith: another eye witness who was not there
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSVHHzgJdrA
Alex Grand
24 September 2016
There is a purposeful confusion from the Marvel Method of who the mind behind the Fantastic Four truly was. Barry Windsor Smith weighs in his thoughts in 2005:
Aaron Noble: Barry considers Stan to be the instigator, but I think the evidence is against him. It gives a sense of what the office version of events might have been when Barry arrived in '69-'70.
Tim Bateman: Perhaps Windsor-Smith had never seen the challengers of the Unknown?
Patrick Ford: Smith ought to know better considering his one "collaboration" with Lee was a story Smith wrote completely on his own.
Yeah the whole bit of Lee as the seminal idea guy is so ingrained that it's almost like it's been beaten into peoples minds. Even when they know better. I think this is clearly due to Marvel company policy and has to do with copyright. Marvel's attorneys recognized very early on that if Kirby was the guy coming up with the presentations on his own and bringing them to Lee that was a much higher mountain to climb if Kirby had sued Marvel. They certainly knew it by 1966 when Joe Simon sued over Captain America.
Patrick Ford: Smith may mean that Lee was the instigator in the sense that Lee asked Kirby for ideas? He does clearly say the FF came from Kirby.
Patrick Ford: In the same way Lee "instigates" a story from Stan Goldberg.
Stan Goldberg: “One time I was in Stan’s office and I told him, “I don’t have another plot.” Stan got out of his chair and walked over to me, looked me in the face, and said very seriously, “I don’t ever want to hear you say you can’t think of another plot.” Then he walked back and sat doen in his chair. He didn’t think he needed to tell me anything more.”
Patrick Ford: That's a good way to instigate something. Threaten to fire a person if they don't roll over.
Aaron Noble: That's fair!
Alex Grand: I thought instigator meant poking at the fans with dialogue, and that the ideas and conception were all Kirby
Patrick Ford: Hard to say. He may be dug in on the "Next issue The King Pin" business.
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