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Any synopsis was written AFTER discussing ideas with Kirby
Patrick Ford 13 August 2016 It's interesting to see Tom Brevoort back in Feb. of 2000 saying that synopses were written *after* conversations between Kirby and Lee. Of course Breevoort wouldn't know anything more than what he was told by someone at Marvel, but still interesting to see a high ranking Marvel executive saying in 2000 that synopses were written *after* Kirby met with Lee. I'm mentioning this in light of recent excited comments in TJKC concerning synopses by Lee (or more likely Roy Thomas or Flo Steinberg) which some people seem to think prove that Lee was feeding ideas to Kirby which Kirby then took and built on. That argument hinges on when the synopses were typed. To: kirby-l@egroups.com Subject: [kirby-l] Re: Stan Lee Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 02:15:29 EST X-Evolution-Source: 1431864398.27118.2@scrapper Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Stan and Jack would still have at least one conversation before he'd jump into an issue throughout these periods, though, and there were still some form of written plots, based on their conversations (often typed up by Roy Thomas from the notes of their meetings.) True, those notes could often be sparse, and often Kirby deviated from them--and it's also true that Jack was doing the lion's share of the plotting in terms of the actual page-to-page, panel-to-panel pacing--by Stan was still involved to some degree in the plotting, even if it was simply in agreeing to the general elements of a given issue. Stan and Steve, by the last year on SPIDER-MAN, however, weren't even speaking to one another. Stan wouldn't know what was going to be happening in a given issue until Ditko brought the pencils in. Tom Brevoort J David Spurlock: I believe this was pretty standard. Lee would pick the "artist's" mind for plot ideas, take notes, add any editorial thoughts/changes/ideas he had, and type it up (or have Roy or Flo type it up), and send a copy of the contemporaneous notes to the "artist" so everyone was on the same page. This perfectly lines up with Jack's point of view that Stan's primary contribution was "coordinating" — though Jack acknowledged that, "At Marvel, the Editor put the final dialogue into the balloons." "The artists were doing the plotting--Stan was just coordinating the books. The artists were the ones that were handling both story and art. We had to--there was no time not to!" --Jack Kirby, Comics Interview 41.
J David Spurlock: While he had ever enjoyed the notoriety and benefits of being listed as sole "writer" for his dialogue, after the law changed in 1978, Marvel's legal team expressed how key it was to limiting the creator's rights, to rewrite history and promote the idea that the synopsis came first. Patrick Ford 18 October 2016 It's interesting to see Tom Brevoort back in Feb. of 2000 saying that synopses were written *after* conversations between Kirby and Lee. Of course Breevoort wouldn't know anything more than what he was told by someone at Marvel, but still interesting to see a high ranking Marvel executive saying in 2000 that synopses were written *after* Kirby met with Lee. I'm mentioning this in light of recent excited comments by Shane Folley in TJKC concerning synopses by Lee (or more likely Roy Thomas or Flo Steinberg) which some people seem to think prove that Lee was feeding ideas to Kirby which Kirby then took and built on. That argument hinges on when the synopses were typed. To: Kirby-l@egroups.com Subject: [Kirby-l] Re: Stan Lee Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 02:15:29 EST X-Evolution-Source: 1431864398.27118.2@scrapper Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Stan and Jack would still have at least one conversation before he'd jump into an issue throughout these periods, though, and there were still some form of written plots, based on their conversations (often typed up by Roy Thomas from the notes of their meetings.) True, those notes could often be sparse, and often Kirby deviated from them--and it's also true that Jack was doing the lion's share of the plotting in terms of the actual page-to-page, panel-to-panel pacing--by Stan was still involved to some degree in the plotting, even if it was simply in agreeing to the general elements of a given issue. Stan and Steve, by the last year on SPIDER-MAN, however, weren't even speaking to one another. Stan wouldn't know what was going to be happening in a given issue until Ditko brought the pencils in. Tom Brevoort

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