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Who contributed more to Dr Strange dialogue?
J David Spurlock
19 October 2016
Re Did Ditko or Lee contribute most to Dr Strange Dialogue:
Steve has said he turned in typed scripts with his Spider-Man work. As Ditko created Dr Strange and offered the 1st story complete to Marvel with no impetus or request from Marvel/Stan, and as Dr Strange was an anomaly, relegated to Strange Tales with seldom even a cover mention to acknowledge it, it should be a safe assumption that Ditko enjoyed even greater autonomy on Strange than he did on Spider-Man. That being said, Stan's dialogue and character names are easily identifiable via his regular use of alliteration. Stan has said that Ditko dreamed up the stories, characters and created the weird worlds through his art and that Stan put the words in the balloons in a way that drove Steve nuts. Though artists like Kirby, Ditko and Wood made up their stories from scratch (lesser talents worked from brief synopsis), at some point Stan started asking for their story notes to be either outside the panels, or like Ditko, on a separate sheet of paper, so Stan had more of an open canvas to write the final dialog on to. Many, including Doc V, question if Stan dialogued ANY of Kirby's monster stories -- though he may well have played with the titles and character names, within his role as editor. There are early stories including Thor/Asgard in J.I.M. in which, one can see via the original art, that Kirby wrote the dialogue as well as the plot and it was later lettered in ink with few editorial changes by Lee. Just as Lee may have edited/updated story titles and/or character names in Kirby's monster stories, based upon Ditko's comments and Lee's love of alliteration, I believe Stan came up with the name "Dr. Stephen Strange" -- inspired by Stephen (Steve) Ditko and the Dr Strange name which has recently appeared in the Iron Man story "The Stronghold of Dr. Strange" in Tales of Suspense #41 (1963)
Patrick Ford: Ditko's "panel scripts" were not typed. He drew a grid on a piece of type writer paper and indicated dialogue suggestions and plot descriptions in each panel. Ditko is on record as saying Lee didn't want him to suggest dialogue.
Patrick Ford: There are a couple of pages of Ditko panel scripts in ALTER-EGO #68. I have the issue and a pdf can be purchased inexpensively from Twomorrows.
Robert Beerbohm: Stan Lee was long ago already on record in quotes he gave Jerry Bails way back in 1963 for The Comic Reader zine that Doctor Strange was ALL Steve Ditko's "baby" - I don't think SL even came up with the name. Just saying.....cuz I have an original copy of that TCR ditto zine kicking around here close by
Patrick Ford: According to Ditko Lee suggested the name Dr. Strange because the character was going to be placed in STRANGE TALES. Interestingly enough Jack Kirby had recently created a character named Dr. Strange who appeared in an Iron Man story. Lee said he forgot about that.
Ken Lupoff: Patrick Ford I think that there was also a 1940s "Doc Strange" comic character.
Patrick Ford: There was. I have an old coverless Golden Age comic book which features him.
Ken Lupoff: Oddly enough, this Doc Strange is a Doc Savage type! But, I digress from our Marvel Method theme.
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