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The "happy bullpen" Patrick Ford 19 May 2017 Robin Green (September 16, 1971) : "Hanging on the wall in Flo's bedroom were some cartoons left over from her days at Marvel. One showed Flo lying down with a huge thumb in her stomach, blood all over the floor, and bloody footprints walking away from the scene. Another was a cartoon of the rut Flo was in–to angry eyes peering out of a crack in the ground, and a sign "rut" next to a pail and shovel." http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/face-front-19710916 Patrick Ford: Herb Trimpe (1971): "Anybody who gets a good-guy medal, they must be doing something wrong. So now I'm real bad. I react in the opposite direction, trying to be bad. If you keep being a good guy, people will take advantage of you, they'll take you for granted. Because I'm not a threat to people they don't listen to me. Herb Trimpe, they say, that's one guy you don't have to worry about. Hah." He scowled at the coca cola he was drinking. "I went to the Marvel office Christmas party. Stan wasn't there; just the slaves." Aaron Noble: This post/ comment is so brutal I think nobody has anything to say... Patrick Ford: It sounds like a fun place doesn't it? Patrick Ford: Think about it. A huge thumb on Flo's belly with blood all over the floor. Whose thumb could that have been? And how long did Flo Steinberg last at Marvel? Three or four years? Not nearly as long as Ditko, let alone Kirby. Patrick Ford: According to Mark Evanier when he visited the Marvel office in 1970 there were Marie Severin cartoons lampooning Lee all over the place. Evanier said that at some point Lee walked in and there was a scramble to take down all the cartoons. So what does that say? Aaron Noble: That reminds me, I wonder if Gil Kane had Stan in mind when he designed the human form of Dr. Evil? This is from Captain Action 3, script and pencils by Kane, inks by Wood, 1969.
Patrick Ford: The huge medallion clinches it. Kane is another creator who didn't get along with Lee in the least. Patrick Ford: Al Jaffee created this cartoon of Lee back in the late '40s. Jaffee had a long and apparently good relationship with Lee, and yet Lee angered Jaffee to such a degree in one instance that Jaffee quit on the spot. Walked out and never came back.
Patrick Ford: Note that Lee had an interoffice TV which he used to keep an eye on the staff. According to Adele Kurtzman Lee had a button in his office he would push if he saw one of the staff goofing off. A loud buzzer would sound and Lee would dismiss the offender for the day. Aaron Noble: Spyglass and interoffice tv in Jaffee's cartoon, accurate. Whip, hatchet and corpse are perhaps metaphorical. Patrick Ford: Marie Severin on the "True Believers." "I asked Marie Severin about the fans, the ones who find the office, and manage to get in. She put down the plastic cigarette she was sucking on. Marie says she has the common sense, or pride, to hide what she really is. Like she dresses very Peck and Peck, and with her wide brown eyes looks like the kind of person people on the street ask for directions. But if she dressed the way she really wanted to, it would be, she says, gold lame. "Gee," she said, "they're so uninteresting, that's why they're fans. If they were interesting they wouldn't be fans. I mean, is a hospital ward interesting? The fans buy the books, but they don't support comics. Comics are supported by many other normal little children, but the fans are the ones who are hung up on it. I think fans are very lonely." She says the fans are arrogant now. They don't gasp and ooh and ahh anymore. The new breed of fans just want to lean over your shoulder and tell you what you're doing wrong. Hanging above Marie's desk is a cartoon she drew describing the fans who come to the office. "There's one guy that clutches his artwork to his chest and won't show it to anybody but Stan, and he is what the office calls the wet dream. Then there's the mother that brings the child up and the child is the absolute duplication of her, with short hair and no bosoms, and the poor child has done these comics and they're all stapled and worn and looked at, and she is saying, 'Look at this, isn't this marvelous that he can draw this,' and you look at what the child has drawn and there's murder, every page he's killing his mother, right there, and she is propagating it, bringing this child up and he just looks at you and doesn't talk or communicate in any way. "And then there's the whole family that comes up and the father's taking pictures and bumping into everything, and they're from Indiana or something and awfully nice dull people, and the mother does all the talking and we keep handing the children pictures and there's no reaction, these children could be in a covered wagon. And they say to John Romita, 'Yes, I like Spiderman. I like Steve Ditko [who used to draw Spiderman],' and John Romita cries because he is an artist, and Ditko was a fan, but they all remember Ditko. And then there are the little thieves who steal anything. They don't come up to steal, it just happens. "Then there are the really quiet totally subdued kids, with acne all over their faces, but with something to show, work that they've done, and you have got to give them credit, it's not bad. And then there's the beatnik woman from the Village, and they're usually, pardon the expression, doing an article for a magazine, and they're very overbearing, and when Stan comes in they immediately hunch over and follow him." Patrick Ford: Severin's comments are pretty brutal (although I think probably spot on) and if Jack Kirby has ever said anything like that the MMMS would have made them a staple of their prosecution and conviction of Kirby.

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