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What Kirby thought of Lee's words
1. Removing them from the book:
Patrick Ford
31 July 2016
MARVEL'S GREATEST SUPERHERO BATTLES (Simon and Schuster, 1978)
reprints Wally Wood's Daredevil v. Sub Mariner story from DAREDEVIL
#7.
Stan Lee wrote two or three page introductions for all the stories
collected in the book.
Recently, I purchased Jack Kirby's own copy of Marvel's Greatest
Superhero Battles, from 1978.
Page two is blank except for Simon and Schuster's logo—and here is
where Jack Kirby drew the sketch that accompanies this article.
A secondary feature of Kirby's copy of this book is equally hard to
interpret (or, to be honest — it's hard to try not to interpret this):
Large sections of Stan Lee's text have been excised with scissors or a
razor blade. These aren't dainty cuts, and repeating the whole
paragraphs missing requires more space than seems necessary. Generally
speaking, any mention by Stan Lee of Kirby or his method of creating
got cut.
"When Benjamin J. Grimm first made his appearance in the FF... Jack
Kirby and I decided to make him one of the strongest, most powerful
characters in all of comicdom." That's gone, along with all language
describing how the FF and the Hulk were created—but the cuts leave
intact all mention of what the fans wanted, i.e. "Virtually every
letter contained the same demand: "Let the Hulk fight the Thing!"" And
Stan's whole introduction to "The Avengers Take Over," FF #26, is
ripped out.
The intro to the Sub-Mariner/Daredevil slugfest, which was penciled by
Wally Wood, is untouched. In fact, all of the stories that Kirby
didn't pencil feature intact introductions by Stan. The last cut is a
three-paragraph appreciation by Stan of Jack's artistic abilities.
Some sample lines that are now missing: "In working with Jack on the
many, many super-hero tales we've produced over the years, I've only
had to say to him, 'How about doing an offbeat fight scene in this
part of the story?' and then stand back and let 'im go. Jack would
dream up the action sequences and the many gimmicks that were so much
a part of the widely heralded Marvel style..."
It's hard to say what the intent of these cuts was. Of course, it's
tempting to look for evidence that Stan's language pissed him off; but
I'm not so sure that's what's at play here. Since he also removed the
table of contents and the word "preface," perhaps he just was looking
for collage fodder. In any case, what he left behind is a very
enjoyable sketch of many of his prime characters—and look, they're
smiling.
http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/24battle.html
2. Blacking out Lee's word balloons
Patrick Ford
20 April 2017
Posted today by Jeremy Kirby.
https://www.facebook.com/jackkirbycomics/photos/a.109630362416835.4868.108944192485452/1377159558997236/?type=3&theater
Jeremy didn't mention that his grandfather had drawn over all of Stan Lee's word balloons.
Gethin Lewis Much prefer the silent version. ^^^ ^_^ ^^^
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