home
Lee contradicts himself over Spider-Man's origin
Patrick Ford
15 August 2016
Lee continuously contradicts himself. One of the more notable examples
is well documented but ignored.
Notice that Lee claims that Kirby worked from the same synopsis that
Ditko worked from. This is clear as Lee describes the teenager with
problems character idea and indicates Goodman rejected the idea. Lee
claims that once the decision was made to cancel AMAZING FANTASY he
"asked Jack to draw" the story.
Just ponder how many blatant contradictions there are between Lee's
verbal and written history of the first Spider-Man story and the
documented historical facts. Exhibit one being the fan page in AMAZING
FANTASY #15.
[The following quote is from Lee's legal deposition]
Q. Now, did you discuss the idea that you had for Spider-Man with Mr. Goodman?
STAN LEE: Spiders. Secondly, you can’t make him a teenager. Teenagers
can just be sidekicks. And finally, problems? Don’t you know what a
superhero is? They don’t have problems. They’re superheroes.
So I had a feeling I hadn’t hit pay dirt with Spider-Man as far as
Martin was concerned, but I always liked the idea So sometime later we
had a magazine we were going to drop. It was called Amazing Fantasy.
Strangely enough, Steve Ditko had drawn all the stories in that one,
now that I remember. Anyway, it wasn’t selling well, and we were going
to drop it.
Now, when you drop a magazine, nobody cares what you put in the last
issue because you’re dropping it anyway. So just to get it out of my
system, that’s when I asked Jack to draw it. Then I asked Steve to
draw it. And we did a little, I don’t know, 10- or 12-page story. And
we threw it in Amazing Fantasy in the last issue. And just for fun, I
put him on the cover.
And the book sold fantastically. So a couple months later when the
sales figures were in, Martin came to me and he said, “Hey Stan, you
remember that Spider-Man idea of yours that we both liked so much? Why
don’t we make a series of it.”
Mark Ricard: Have you read Will Murrary's article? He addresses a lot
of things about this issue and the first and second Spider-Man issues.
He shows the job numbers indicate that those stories were probably
written a month or two after issue 15. Thus contradicting Stan. Ditko
has not addressed this in his articles in Snyder's Comics. At least as
far as I know.
Patrick Ford: Lee: "when you drop a magazine, nobody cares what you
put in the last issue because you’re dropping it anyway."
As no one cares what is in the issue so Lee:
-Publishes an 'important announcement' on the fan page informing
readers the magazine will change direction a feature the continuing
adventures of Spider-Man.
-Has Kirby draw a Spider-Man story based on a story and character
Martin Goodman "hated" and then rejects Kirby's story and has Ditko
draw yet more pages (which Goodman is paying for) illustrating the
story and character which Goodman hated.
-Has Ditko draw a cover for the character and story Goodman hated. And
then has Kirby draw another cover for the character and story Goodman
hated.
Mark Ricard: Contradictions abound.
Patrick Ford: THE FOUR PAGE SERIES, "The Silent Self-Deceivers"
© 2012 S. Ditko).
STEVE DITKO: Stan rejected my cover and used Kirby's even though it
contradicted his published claim that he did not want Spider-Man to
look like the usual muscular hero type.
Stan told me about the magic ring that transformed a teenager into an
adult hero.
Leonard Pitts, Jr., a Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary in 2004,
journalist, and novelist, interviewed Jack Kirby in 1986 for a book
titled “Conversations With The Comic Book Creators”
PITTS: Now, Stan has said many times that he conceived Spider-Man and
gave it to you and that he turned down the version you came up with
because it was too “heroic” and “larger than life”-looking for what he
had in mind.
KIRBY: That’s a contradiction and a blatant untruth.
Patrick Ford: Notice Ditko says, "Stan told me about the magic ring
that transformed a teenager into an adult hero."
Patrick Ford: Lee has never acknowledged a version of Spider-Man who
used a magic ring.
This is one of the blindingly evident facts about the creation of the
Spider-Man character which all "historians" have failed to notice.
Patrick Ford: Another piece of evidence that as Ditko said, "Someone is lying."
Patrick Ford: And yet the typical fan "knowledge" is Ditko supports
Lee and disputes Kirby.
A completely bizarre contention unsupported by anything aside from the
collective knowledge of fandom and the absolute failure of historians.
Mark Ricard: Really? I can't imagine the two of them agreeing on anything.
Patrick Ford: They don't. Ditko's comments about Lee are more
extensive and harsher by far than anything Kirby ever said. And yet
the collective fandom wisdom "knows" that Ditko supports Lee.
This is because collective fandom has never seen Ditko's essays and
advocates for Lee who keep up with Snyder/Ditko publications are
diamond hard MMMS "True Believers" who willfully do everything they
can to prop-up Lee. It's unfortunate that Ditko has only a few hundred
people still interested in his work. And 90% of them are only
interested because he's a living link to Silver Age Marvel and they do
everything they can to preserve the myth of the "happy bullpen."
Mark Ricard: Yes,it is really a shame more people have not read those
essays. Do you know if they will ever sell a book just on his essays
about creating Spider-Man. I am sure that really get a lot of interest
from people and sell more copies than most of their stuff.
Patrick Ford: I don't know. Based on the very muted (more like
completely ignored) reaction to Ditko's WHY I QUIT essay I don't think
there is anything Ditko could do to gain acknowledgement.
Comics fandom and comics "historians" are just about 100% behind Lee
and I don''t think anything could change that short of a major piece
of journalism by someone who is completely outside comics fandom.
Patrick Ford: I mean "Why I Quit" had a fair amount of time to gain
interest and it was completely ignored.
Patrick Ford: There is also the fact that even outside the Marvel Guy
v. DC Guy nexus of comics the alternative comics types have all
declared the KIrby/Lee issues to be a kind of industry wide
embarrassment which the hip and cool people ignore.
This in spite of the fact the around 100% of them grew up as MMMS
"Keepers of the Flame."
Mark Ricard: Where I Why I Quit published? The Comics? What issue?
Patrick Ford: Mark, I never read the Blake Bell book.
The "Why I Quit" essay was published in THE FOUR PAGE SERIES #9 which
can be purchased here:
http://ditko.blogspot.com/p/ditko-book-in-print.html
home