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Notes began in 1963. Before that Kirby met personally with Lee. Patrick Ford 23 October 2016 Here we have a splash page from RAWHIDE KID #21, April 1961. The page is signed by Lee, Kirby and Ayers. As far as I can see there is no evidence of penciled lettering by either Lee or Kirby on the page. There are only faint traces of lettering guide lines so the page was perhaps heavily erased after the inked lettering was done or maybe Heritage scanned the page in a way that it would be scanned for comic book publication? What else can we observe about the page. The most obvious thing is the story was broken down into chapters. It's also notable that when Kirby brought back the Rawhide Kid the characters had been so completely revamped (most notably the Kid is now a kid) that only the name was the same. J David Spurlock: Heritage would not clean up pencil out of the scan J David Spurlock: Lettered must have principled lettering in very faintly or not at all -- likely from a separate full script page Patrick Ford: It would be interesting to nail down the brief period of time where Lee was penciling in the captions and dialogue on the page. He apparently wasn't doing that in early 1961. When did it begin? When did it end? Is it possible Lee was erasing Kirby's lettering and writing over top of it to obscure the fact Kirby was the writer from the letterer? Is that an unreasonable assumption? Patrick Ford: I'll see if I can find pages by Ditko with Lee's hand lettering. J David Spurlock: There are no Kirby notes in the gutters? Patrick Ford: Kirby didn't begin using border notes until 1963. Prior to that he was meeting personally with Lee. Kirby didn't have any story conferences with Lieber. Patrick Ford: I believe Ferran Delgado posted a scan from FF #5 which showed Lee's penciled lettering in the balloons and captions. AF #15 was published the same month. Do any of the fantasy stories from AF #15 or the Spider-Man story from that issue show Lee's penciled dialogue in the captions and balloons? Ferran Delgado: See this thread for plenty of samples of stories with Kirby and Lee's writing inside of the balloons. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1758159214462637/permalink/1831220717156486/ Ferran Delgado: I think that WhatifKirby is a more reliable source to search traces of pencils since scans have more quality than Heritage's. Ferran Delgado: I looked a few samples at Heritage of comics with some writing, and you couldn't see anything. Patrick Ford: True. At best there are faint traces. Patrick Ford: Here's Lee taking a plot credit in Dec. of 1962. Notice that Lee began taking plot credits in the published comic books thew very first month Marvel (Lee really) began using credit boxes. Ferran Delgado: Amazing Adult Fantasy #7 (12/1961) Ferran Delgado: What is strange is that Lee signed stories like Patsy Walker #87 (2/1960) but not the monster stories, signed by Kirby/Ayers circa the middle of 1960. Ferran Delgado: JIM #56 (1/1960) has stories signed by Sinnott and Ditko, but Lee didn't signed them. Kirby didn't sign his story. Patrick Ford: Yeah. Michael Vassallo pointed out that Lee didn't sign any Science Fiction-Monster-Fantasy stories between 1956 and Oct. of 1961. And even after 1961 he wasn't signing any by Kirby. Yet Lee was signing everything. That includes many Westerns by Kirby. There are also a fair amount of romance stories Marvel was publishing and only some are signed by Lee. https://comics.ha.com/c/search-results.zx?N=52+790+231&Ntk=SI_Titles-Desc&Nty=1&Ntt=Kirby++Marvel+Romance+Colletta&ic4=KeywordSearch-A-071316 Ferran Delgado: One month later than the Sinnott story, he signed a Patsy Walker story (#87, Feb, 1960). _____________________________________________________________________________ When the margin notes began Patrick Ford April 8, 2017 Kirby inked by Paul Reinman, KID COLT OUTLAW #119, 1964. Nicely inked by Paul Reinman who captures the feel of Kirby's faces. Reinman's inking is somewhat similar to Chic Stone's but a bit less formalized. The page contains no margin notes of any kind. J David Spurlock The lack of Kirby margin notes could indicate a rare example of Marvel actually supplying Jack with a script. The bit of text we see here doesn't exactly strike me as Lee style which, was pretty established by 1964. Had it been a Larry Leiber story, he would tend to be credited. So, I'm wondering if it wasn't some ghostwriter -- possibly one of the Goodman magazine guys. They tended toward non-superhero scripts like westerns... Patrick Ford I doubt there was a script. Keep in mind this is right at the cusp (July 1964 issues) of when Kirby began using the margin notes and the lack of any by Lee probably indicates the drawing tells the story well enough for Lee to remember what Kirby sat there and told him. AVENGERS #5 (June) has no margin notes, AVENGERS #6 (July) does. It's also possible Lee (or someone at Marvel) erased Kirby's margin notes on some pages. For example FF #31 has pages with Kirby margin notes and other pages with Lee margin notes. Michael Hill How do you know whose came first? Patrick Ford All notes on the art pages only make sense if they were added after the page was penciled. I believe a comprehensive study of Kirby's original art from 1958-1965 would show that Kirby began writing the stories in the captions and balloons (just as he says he did). Later Kirby would sit with Lee and Lee would take notes on the art board as Kirby went over the story explaining it to Lee. Eventually Kirby began writing notes on the pages so that he could limit having to go to the Marvel office and explain the stories to Lee.

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