home
Stan Lee's bad dialog
Patrick Ford
27 June 2016
"...the throbbing core of the pulsating mass reverberates..."
If Hollywood wanted to make a film and a scene in it required
exceptionally bad dialogue it would be impossible to fake what comes
to Lee naturally. I can see the director telling the writer, "No, no.
That's too funny. It's actually clever in its own way. I know what
we'll do. We'll hire Stan Lee and tell him to write something real
serious, something from his heart."
Couldn't someone have put this guy down just to be merciful. Lee's
writing is so awkward and stilted that it brings to mind a clubfoot
walking on stilts over smooth river rocks covered with wet moss.
Patrick Ford: Note panel three, "Enough of your shallow homilies."
That sort of bit defines not only Lee's writing style, but his whole
public persona. Fans of Lee find that kind of thing charming. They'll
say that the fact he does not take himself or the stories seriously is
appealing. At the same time those people will ridicule Kirby for the
fact that Kirby comes across as earnest and sincere.
That's a very odd attitude in a way since it goes against another
frequent claim of comic book fans where they make a big issue out of
the supposed serious and mature nature of the Silver Age Marvel
comics.
These contradictory attitudes are hard to untangle.
Patrick Ford: From my point of view a man like Kirby in his approach
to his work and it's tone could not have less in common with anyone
than he has with Stan Lee. There are a whole lot of people who agree
with that, but think that is a good thing. These people honestly
believe that Lee's glib style is exactly what Kirby's style needs to
make it more palatable. I guess this explains why that type typically
loves the Lennon/McCartney comparison. Their assumption is that Lennon
was perhaps overly heavy on his own and that McCartney on his own was
cloying. So the two together meet in the middle.
That's the sort of thing they like.
Patrick Ford: I can see collaboration in some instances. The old time
Tin Pan Alley type of song writing often had one person who wrote the
music and another who specialized in lyrics.
That is not at all the same thing that people are talking about when
the talk about the Beatles or a perceived parallel between Lennon and
McCartney and Kirby and Lee.
But McCartney or Lennon were not Lerner and Loewe. There was no
lyricist and composer. They both wrote lyrics and composed.
If you pay attention it's always the stories that people are talking
about when comparing Kirby and Lee to Lennon and McCartney.
It's not a matter of Lee the writer working well with Kirby the
penciler. Instead the very people who claim that Lee created every
character (save the Surfer) and ever basic plot idea, suddenly switch
gears completely and say that Lee's instincts reigned in Kirby's
volcanic flow of ideas.
And yet all the ideas are (according to them) supposedly coming from Lee.
Patrick Ford: The Surfer page that's posted is from the '70s graphic
novel. That book represents one instance where Kirby's the story
intended by Kirby could be restored.
Kirby typed a script to accompany his penciled pages and mailed it to
Lee. Copies of Kirby's script are known to exist. Mark Evanier has a
copy and Twomorrows has a copy of Kirby's typed script.
I've only seen a few pages reproduced in TJKC but based on those few
pages it appears what Kirby wrote is a full script as opposed to
skeletal notes. There were also art pages added and removed to suit
Lee's rewrite. I believe that the whole story could be reconstructed.
Of course the odds of Marvel doing that are low. Perhaps it might show
up online some day?
Aaron Noble: I'd be happy to have someone on this page who could mount
a defense of Lee's artistic contribution. What is it that makes
Avengers 4 better than Mister Miracle 4? How is the Hulk a better
character than Orion? And how was it Lee who added those aspects that
tipped the balance? For me it's a tough case to make, but I could be
suffering the nostalgia effect myself. I'd been reading the first
reprints of the early Marvel books when I began reading comics in '68,
along with the Adams X-men, Colan DD etc. Just as I started maturing
into adolescence and developing my first critical sensibility, there
was the Fourth World, suddenly more baroque and yet more direct than
the Marvel books.
Patrick Ford: I'd be more than fine with it. I'd love to see someone
try. I've never seen a good argument in support of Lee's rewrites.
There are a lot of people like myself who read the Fourth World
stories during the same time period where they were reading the Silver
Age stories as reprints.
The Silver Age Marvel stories never appealed to me. And on the whole
most of the comics I read at that time did not contain stories which
appealed to me. I purchased most comics for the art, and it was rare
to find a story which deeply interested me. I was content to read a
serviceable story.
As far as nostalgia goes there are a lot of things I was interested in
back in 1970 which barely interest me today or which don't impress me
anywhere near as much as they did in 1970.
The best example I could give would be Frank Frazetta. In 1970 my
number one interest in terms of money spent (which is not a bad way to
measure interest) was Frank Frazetta. I never purchased any of the
special Kirby publications or portfolios from the early '70s. My money
as a 12-16 year old kind was limited and when I had a larger purchase
to make it went to Frazetta.
Today my interest in Frazetta is greatly diminished. And the interest
that remains is primarily nostalgic.
With Kirby there was around a gap between 1975 and 1981 where I was
not reading comics at all except for Undergrounds. My mother needed
room in a closet to store pickled eggs and other preserves and she
sent me boxes of old comics. Reading through them I was instantly
grabbed by the Kirby stories where as a lot of other comics I'd sort
of liked back in 1970 (Conan, Dracula, Tarzan) were tedious and left
me just leafing through the pages. I went out then and picked up (very
cheaply) the issues of Kirby's '70s Marvel work which I had missed and
shortly after that I began purchasing CAPTAIN VICTORY which really got
me.
Aaron Noble: I was similar, most of my attention went to the Studio
artists. Beautifully drawn comics with mediocre stories. I drifted
away from Kirby after the Fourth World was cancelled, which was a huge
disappointment. Came back to comics for Love & Rockets and Eightball.
Finally realized that 4th World were the only mainstream comics that
were still in my head, so I got all of Kirby's later stuff in big sets
on Ebay for about a buck an issue. What a treasure trove.
Aaron Noble: Speaking of the Studio, I had the pleasure of meeting
Bernie Wrightson at a con in Houston a few days ago. He described the
coloring effect he wanted to achieve in the first Kull story, Skull of
Silence, where he wanted the color to leach out as the sound
disappeared in the narrative, leading to a climactic black and white
panel. Just one panel. "Stan looked at me and said 'We print comics in
color.'" So there's a note on the Marvel Method.
Patrick Ford: Almost exactly my experience Aaron Noble except that you
were reading comics a bit earlier than I was. Not to say I didn't read
some comics prior to 1970, but it was not a significant number. As a
younger kid I was very interested in war. My father and the fathers of
most of my friends were WWII veterans. We played war with model tanks
and airplanes, 1/72 scale figures of soldiers and by dressing up as
G.I.s and crawling around in cornfields on our bellies. I actually
discovered Kirby and began reading comics because I had later
gravitated to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard and went to
seek out the Conan comic book I saw mentioned in ERB/REH fanzines.
Patrick Ford: Aside from Kirby, Kubert and Buscema the Studio guys
were my favorites, Particularly Jones and Kaluta. And aside from Kirby
my #1 comic book at the time was NATIONAL LAMPOON. I recall bringing
issues to school in the 8th grade. The late '60s and early '70s were a
liberated time. I did hide issues of the LAMPOON from the nuns though
home