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Lee said he did nothing wrong (on why Ditko and Kirby quit)
Patrick Ford
16 May 2017
Here's an interview with Stan Lee in the May 1975 issue of the British fanzine FANTASY ADVERTISER.
Among the more dubious claims:
Lee says of Kirby, "If he'd have told me he wanted to his own book, I'd have said fine and let him write it."
A bit later Lee claims, "I remember in the very first issue of the FANTASTIC FOUR I'd suggested in the synopsis a monster, and Jack drew a hundred monsters. I said, 'Jack it's more dramatic to have one monster."
Lee also comments on Steve Ditko quitting Marvel and as usual says he has no idea why Ditko quit. He does add something which I haven't seen in another interview. He says that he expects at some point Kirby will work for Marvel again but adds, "I don't think Steve ever will."
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz-VsUjOG2SidWZCajFEX3doa2M/view
Patrick Ford: This does not come close to matching what Ditko has written.
LEE: "Finally it reached a point where he didn't even come to the office with his artwork. He'd just mail it in."
Patrick Ford: And then there is this.
LEE: "I bent over backwards to accommodate him. But it was like Chamberlain giving in to Hitler."
Mark Ricard: He said that?
Dave Rawlins: Alternate facts!
Patrick Ford: Mark Ricard , Don't take my word for it. I posted a link to a pdf of the magazine which contains the interview.
Chris Tolworthy: The FF anecdote is more evidence that Lee just makes stuff up. Apart from having no historical evidence, and coming on top of a long list of "memories" of the creation of the FF, all of which have been debunked. It just makes no sense. Is he seriously suggesting that Kirby tried to turn the Fantastic Four into the Fantastic 400? http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/f/fantastic400.jpg
Or that Kirby had a habit of creating armies of monsters? Or that Kirby had any reason at all to create 100 monsters? Or is he pretending that the Mole Man story was created especially for FF1 when internal evidence shows it was a pre-existing story?
It is far more in keeping with Lee's talent for making memorable anecdotes with no concern for what actually happened, trying to invent some space where he can pretend to have added something useful to the creation process, a process he clearly does not understand.
Patrick Ford: On page 19 Lee is asked about "patriotic speeches" in the Silver Age Captain America stories and Lee answers, "What I wanted to do first was to get people to hate him."
Steve Skeates commented in a TCJ interview that in 1965 Lee, "was a conservative who supported the war."
Patrick Ford: On page 21 Lee says that artists who aren't loyal to one company hurt the comic book business and that they will be the first ones out of work if assignments are cut.
Patrick Ford: On page 22 the interviewer mentions that during the mid-'60s DAREDEVIL became a series of issue length fight scenes.
That is what I call a Gene Colan plot. Very similar plots can be found in books where Lee was teamed with John Buscema. Although in the SURFER book most of the pages consisted of the Surfer gliding around on his board while gesturing at landscapes.
Patrick Ford: There is an interview with Lee where he jokingly complains that Gene Colan spent two pages on a character turning a doorknob.
There is a reason Colan spent two pages on that. There wasn't much in the way of a story.
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