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Ten signs you may be in a comics cult
Chris Tolworthy
13 September 2016
I was raised in a religion that had many cult like qualities. At the same time I was a fan of Stan Lee's Marvel Comics. I was a true believer twice over! But as I grew older I began to notice disturbing features in my church. And I noticed the same features in my comics.
Now "cult" is a loaded word. A cult is just a group of people who think their leader is awesome. But calling that group a cult means you think this has bad results. Here are ten signs that made me think my church went too far, and would have had bad results, and so was cult like. Do these signs also apply to Stan Lee's Marvel? You decide!
Sign 1. A cult of personality
My church was started by a man who claimed to talk to God. We sang hymns like "praise to the man", and "we thank thee of God for a prophet". If this guy said something was true, then it was true! His word was proof! I got a warm feeling when reading what this guy wrote.
I got the same feelings when I read Stan Lee's "Origins of Marvel Comics." Stan was clearly an amazing man. It was here in black and white. He invented all the Marvel characters, and he wrote all the stories, all on his own. What a genius! And such a generous, humble man: he always praised the artists who worked under him. In later years he even called them co-creators. What a nice guy!
Marvel Comics was all Stan Lee. When he no longer had tme to write the stories, every story had Stan Lee Presents" at the top. Movie directors came to learn at his feet. He filled the Carnegie Hall with is personality. Even now, in his nineties, grateful fans queue up to pay top rates for him autograph a comic. What a legend!
We Stan followers were "true believers" and "keepers of the faith". The religious cult aspect might have been tongue in cheek, but it worked: we paid the money, he became rich.
Sign 2: Us versus them
My church was "the only true church on the face of the Earth". If you were not with us then you only had part of the truth. Only we would get to heaven.
And so it was with comics heaven. "Make Mine Marvel!" A true believer was part of a special club, and "brand ecchs" was clearly inferior, trying to catch up with Marvel but always failing because it didn't have Stan Lee and the Marvel Method!
Sign 3: an empty product
Leader worship and tribalism would be fine if the tribe really was better. But was it? What exactly was being offered? My church promised blessings after you die, and nobody ever came back to complain, right? But was it real? Sure, the church offered a community, but so did everybody else. And the chruch's meetings were unusually restrictive and dull. The church's offer only made sense if the "after death" part was right. And I began to suspect that offer was empty.
And what was Marvel offering? Better stories? No: I had seen plenty of bad stories from Marvel, and good stories elsewhere. So limiting myself to Marvel meant I got less, not more. Was Marvel offering a connected universe? Sure, btut hat's an empty promise. When you start looking into continuity it doesn't add up. Events have no long term consequences. Stan Lee called it "the illusion of change": illusion, not reality.
What's left? A community? How many fellow fans did you actually meet, before Internet days. And if you did, you soon found that a decent sized community requires you to also be a DC fan. Marvel as a identity, as opposed to just a publisher among others, was an empty product.
Sign 4: Claims do not stand up to scrutiny
When people leave my church they often cite church history and teachings: when you examine the claims they do not add up. But I only put this as number 4 in my reasons. Because nobody cares about the problems if the product is good. We accept that everybody has faults. But if the product itself is weak, then the faults become deal breakers. And that's how it was with my church.
The same was true with Stan Lee's Marvel. Once you start to question, Stan Lee's claims all fall apart. I first noticed this when somebody pointed out that the happy bullpen Stan often wrote about didn't exist. These people worked from home and often did not like Stan very much. And Stan's name as writer? By the late 1960s he was not writing the FF, the title I knew best. There's a famous line where Kirby handed in the art with the Silver Surfer and Stan asked "who's this guy?"
So now everybody accepts that Jack Kirby did a lot of the plotting toward the end. but how much? and when did that start? I began to look deeper. The only account we have of the Lee-Kirby story process is a newspaper article in 1966. At first it looks like Stan has all the ideas. but if you check everything he said, none of it is true. He did not know what was going on in the comic, or basic facts about the characters. His personal claims, like winning a writing competition three times, have been extensively researched and found to be false.
But what about the early days? I went back to "Origins of Marvel Comics, about how Stan created the Fantastic Four, and none of the claims stand up. The famous golf game? It never happened. What Stan said about the comics? It was the opposite of what he actually wrote at the time. It's like he was just making it up to make himself look good.
When did this begin? I tracked down Stan Lee's book "secrets behind the comics" from 1947. And it was the same. Most of the book seemed designed to say that Martin Goodman was responsible for Captain America, and that is simply not true: Goodman just bought a pre-existing product. But in 1947 Siegel and Shuster were fighting to gain control of the product they created, Superman, and Stan Lee seems to have written "Secrets" to stop Joe Simon and Jack Kirby doing the same with their product, Captain America.
The more I read, the more it became clear: Stan Lee's career was spent claiming credit for others' work, and writing his name big. Now like I said, this would not matter as much if the finished product was better. But it wasn't. Jack Kirby did just as good work with or without Stan (some would claim better). It really looked like Stan's only concern was selling Stan.
Sign 5: the leader has no attachment to the product he claims to produce
I really believed in my old church. But the leaders seemed more interested in making money. They would not defend the doctrines: they were so vague, so non-committal when anything was controversial. but they had plenty of time to run multiple houses and invest in real estate at members' expense. They didn't seem that committed to their own religion, and that bothered me more and more as time went on.
I got the same vibe about Stan Lee. In "Origns of Marvel Comics" he said he wanted to leave comics back in 1961. Then when the comics got successful he stayed for twelve years, until his income was super safe, then he left comics and never looked back. As far as I can tell he barely read a single comic after 1973. But I thought he loved this medium? He had told me comics were important, just as good as any other form of literature. And he had supposedly created all these amazing characters and written these amazing stories. How could he just walk away from writing comic books, the first chance he got?
Sign 6: no evidence they can produce anything alone
In my church we spoke of our founder as if he was a creative genius. But what had he ever created except a church? And when we looked closer every part of that church was copied from others: every part of the key text could be traced to elsewhere. All the money came from others. The sacrifices and struggles were all by others. And it's the same for his later successors as leaders of the church. They generally had comfortable lives, sometimes employed by the church for their whole career. What had they actually done? Now sure, running a church is a job. But I was looking for something to distinguish them from scam artists, and I was coming up empty.
It was the same with Stan Lee. Without Jack Kirby and others, Stan did nothing of note, his writing was just not very good. In contrast, Jack and others produced plenty of amazing stuff for others: their talent is not in doubt. but what exactly was Stan adding? An empty brand yes.
Did Stan increase Kirby's sales? No, because Kirbys biggest sales were in the 1940s (Captain America), when Stan openly admits (in Origins) that he didn't add any creativity. And Kirby's later work sold pretty well, and is still homaged today. Indeed, there is a lot of evidence that Kirby's later sales were under-reported. Whereas the success of mid 1960s Marvel had a lot to do with Batman TV show raising the profile of comics in general: if Stan's superheroes were so successful, why did everybody in comics think that superheroes were dead by the early 1970s?
So again, what was Stan adding?
Sign 7: cult leaders do not like threats to their power
Cult leaders rely on followers. So as long as you folow them they will heap praise on you, and make your life as comfortable as they can. Followers can therefore find no shortage of quotes saying the Dear Leader is such a nice man, so fair, so generous, etc. But when a party member gains their own following, and starts to criticise the Dear Leader, they become a potential threat, and the gloves come off.
This was very clear in my church. In the early days anybody who criticised the prophet was denounced in the strongest terms possible: thrown out of the church, and typically accused of adultery or worse. Once out of the church no faithful member would take them seriously: they have "lost the spirit" and just become "bitter" and "unfair".
And so it is with Stan Lee's comics. There were plenty of talented people who posed zero threat t Lee. They would be treated well, and have glowing quotes about how Lee wrote well, paid well, and was an all round good guy. But look at the talents who became potential threats and we see a different story.
I mentioned earlier that Stan's account of the origins of the Fantastic Four falls apart under scrutiny. But there is a much simpler explanation: the FF were just like Jack Kirby's Challengers of the Unknown. He told his son Neil that he saw them as a continuation of the series he did for DC. There is mountains of evidence that jack wrote the FF and other titles, and Stan merely edited it. But if this came out then Stan would lose his position. So Jack was never credited, and never paid for his writing. Jack complained at first and was always reassured things would work out. But finally left and said exactly what he thought.
The same went for other potential threats: Steve Ditko, who made Spider-man a hit, Carl Burgos, who created the Human Torch, Wally Wood and Harvey Kurtzman, legends in their own right: whenever you find somebody who is a potential threat to Lee they have bad stories to tell.
Sign 8: followers attack critics, but will not examine the evidence in any detail
If a member criticised my old church they quickly found they were no longer a member, and were treated as having "lost the spirit". But nobody would address their issues in detail. or on the rare occasions they did, this caused more people to leave, because the church defenders had to admit that a lot of the bad stuff was actually true.
The attitude to critics is "you have become a bitter 'anti' and are no longer objective". This is a shame, because many of the critics stil love the church, and simply want it to improve. Others may dislike the church but their scholarship is impeccable, unlike the ever changing documents the church produces.
And so it is with critics of Stan Lee, in my experience. If you examine the claims made by critics they are all fully sourced. Just check out numerous articles on the Kirby Museum site, or do the research yourself: it's not hard. Just compare the art and dialog in any Lee-Kirby comic, and think through the implications about who must have created the story. But if you discuss this with a true Believers you will be dismissed with weak arguments or simply labeled a Kirby Kultist. You need to have experienced a real cult (and left) to appreciate how this feels.
Sign 9: the leader has a poor reputation before starting the cult
The guy who started my church was charged with sex crimes in every state he lived in (and he had to move house a lot, sometimes being run out of town). He was convicted of fraud before starting the church (though followers will argue technicalities). He can be convicted by his own writings: he produced a revelation that said if a man sees a virgin and wants her then he can have her, even if his wife objects. (And in practice he did not restrict himself to virgins: no woman was safe.) The guy did not have a good reputation, yet none of us church members knew this. We thought he was the greatest man of god who ever lived.
I'm not saying Stan Lee was anything like that bad. But his reputation for taking credit for others' work was well known in the 1960s and before: it even appears in comics (Google "Stan Lee" and "Stan Brag" among others - this is long before Funky Flashman). And those who worked with him paint an unflattering picture (Google references to whistles, CCTV, whips, grease pencil, making people re-draw perfectly good art for no money, etc., etc: there is no shortage of stories). Now nobody is perfect. The comics industry is full of managers who people do not like to work for. But this does not fit with the cult of personality. It doesn't sit right.
Sign 10: appeal to feelings
The last defense when the facts are against you is feelings: it feels right. The skilled apologist will even go post modern, and say "so what, all communities are built on lies, the community spirit is what matters". This is especially easy with comics, as we can say "it's just comics, it's all just stories, so what if Stan told stories about himself too? It's just fun! Relax, bro!" Obviously this offends reason, but it feels right to the apologist. Where do those feelings come from?
As a church member I hated the term brain washing. I could cite studies that proved it did not exist: you cannot force somebody's mind to believe the opposite of what they believed before. But that is not how cults work. They take somebody who does not know the other side of the story (usually a child) and wash over them wave after wave of positive messages. After a lifetime of hearing positive things you get a warm feeling when you see your hero.
This even works with non-believers. Outsiders have no interest in my church: despite what the leaders said, my church was very insignificant. So when the leaders say something, outsiders say "whatever" and accept it. And if somebody say otherwise, legions of faithful followers go on the Internet to correct the message. So the party line can be spread far and wide, in reputable magazines, and it won't be seriously challenged because outsiders have no reason to care.
Once the message has washed over enough brains, the alternative just FEELS wrong. And a savvy corporation (or church) will adjust the message so that counter claims can be easily rejected, without the follower needing to go down the "anti" rabbit hole. So when somebody says Stan Lee lied it feels so unfair. He's such a nice guy! Sure his memory isn't perfect, but he's such a nice guy! He now admits this was a co-creation, because he's a nice guy! Look how he smiles! Look at his charismatic personality and his self deprecating humour! My whole childhood was based on him being a nice guy, are you trying to ruin my childhood? You monster!
So the idea that Dear Leader is a fraud becomes literally unthinkable. And when an idea is unthinkable then you know you are in a cult.
Patrick Ford: And yet for years it has been perfectly acceptable to ridicule fans of Kirby by labeling them "Kirby Kultists." This is most often directed at people who are fans of Kirby's work apart from Lee. The usual rational is that to like Kirby's post Marvel work is evidence that a person has no compass which allows them to separate the wheat from the chaff. A person who likes all of Kirby's work must be a cultist because "everyone" agrees that the Marvel Silver Age work is the standard of greatness.
Michael Hill: Opening line of the perpetual response (see Kirby-L archives or any comment thread where someone suggests Kirby could write), "There seems to be a lot of Stan Lee hatred around here." First, I don't hate Stan Lee, I'm just not ignorant of his devices. Second, the implication is that you can't be objective unless Lee is your best buddy.
Chris Tolworthy: "There seems to be a lot of Stan Lee hatred around here." That is such a cultish statement. Members of my old church would say "there is a bad spirit here" and use that to not consider your argument. Different words, but exactly the same meaning: appeal to emotion on their side, and saying that your criticism must be an appeal to emotion.
Michael Hill: My latest experience...
Me: 'Nick, it's too bad you didn't comment on the veracity of the plot/script credits. I know it's part of the accepted version of history, but with the enormity of Lee's fraud and theft coming to light, it would look better on comics historians if they added the disclaimer, "Of course Kirby claims to have written and plotted the stories, so the published credits were simply a mechanism for directing a portion of Kirby's page rate to Lee and his brother." '
Kid: 'Seems like a lot of hate against Stan Lee on this page.'
Aaron Noble: My latest experience: "I love all of Kirby's work but it discourages me when people feel as if they have to put down Lee in an effort to prove Kirby was great. That is a disservice to Kirby's legacy and given what I've read about him, I dont think he would approve."
Patrick Ford That's another good one. The people who speak for Kirby. They know Kirby would not be critical of Lee.
Aaron Noble: The entirety of Mister Miracle 6 would seem to be the best response to such an assertion, but I've noticed that there isn't that much actual reading going on with some of these folks.
Aaron Noble: We had a discussion over on the Jack Kirby! page recently, where Kirby/Lee is polling well ahead of solo Kirby work (71-42 at last look). Allen Milgrom made this argument for Stan: "I disagree, Aaron. Kirby was always great and I loved his DC stuff...but...Despite your opinion of Stan's dialogue (which I believe was more "human" than Kirby's and read much more smoothly) the stuff they did together at Marvel was far better artistically and certainly commercially. Let's not overlook Stan's contribution as a Editor. He kept Jack on point, reeled him in when he went too far afield or devoted too much space to lesser/secondary plot lines. Jack's Fourth World books were wildly original and entertaining--but they jumped around and lost track of plot elements. Maybe it's because Jack was plotting across 4 separate titles (itself a brilliant and novel idea!) but as a result the stuff tended to lack consistency and coherency. IMHO"
Patrick Ford: Apparently Milgrom is an imbecile.
Patrick Ford: The way these people all repeat the same Catechism book is telling.
Aaron Noble: Also this: "But at the very least, Jack could've used an editor at DC to make sense of some of his sonky dialogue. What was the one? Machines not built on earth don't function as they would on earth? Still can't figure out what he was trying to say there."
Patrick Ford: I could explain it to him. I suppose most anyone could.
What it means is a top is not built to work under water so it does not function under water as it would on dry land.
Aaron Noble: I'm not sure you could!
Chris Tolworthy: Future generations will see this as such a tragedy. Comics began as kids stuff. Kirby (and a few others) began to raise the standard. But Lee dumbed the stories down to make them easy. And here we are, FIFTY YEARS LATER, an comics have barely moved on. We still want super easy stories. In "normal" books we can accept stories with richness and depth. In "normal" books we accept poetry, we accept stories that need to be read several times to fully appreciate. But in comics? If it isn't ten year old level then we vote it down, then we say it isn't artistic.
When are mainstream superhero comics going to grow up? Yea, rhetorical question, I know.
Patrick Ford: Aaron Noble , Yeah, You're right. I tried for a time on the old Kirby-List. At the time I was not aware others had tried before I came along. At some point they left the building.
Michael Hill: It's kind of funny that there are so many pros at the I Hate Jack Kirby! group.
Patrick Ford: As I recall Allan Milgrom is a pal of Greg Theakston. Give me a second.
Michael Hill: Didn't Milgrom used to ink Kirby covers?
Patrick Ford: From THeakston's blog "Chatter Box": Thursday, June 9, 2011
Jack Magic V.2 Pt.2
In May of 1981 rumor of the sale of the Marvel art warehouse lit up the collector grapevine and I immediately contacted Roz and Jack. He was grateful and promised that he’d put his lawyers on it. It was the first volley in a war that would last four years and take a terrible toll.
In July of 1982, just before a New York City comics convention, the grapevines lit up again, but this time it wasn’t a rumor. One art dealer offered me a dozen complete issues by Kirby from 1962 and ’63 and he was one of bunch of dealers offering similar material. I found out on a Tuesday and immediately called Jim Shooter to advise him to check the doors of the warehouse. His secretary said he’d get back to me. I tried again on Wednesday and no answer, so I called Richard Reen, chief of security for Cadence Corporation (Marvel owners, ) and left a message there as well. Thursday afternoon I was tanning on tar-beach at my studio on Lexington Avenue and 45th St. The phone rang and when I answered the caller quizzed, “I understand that you have Marvel original art for sale.” I replied, “This must be Richard Reen. Apparently you didn’t get the whole message.”
I explained what had happened and he promised to get on it. Now, if there seems to be some urgency here it’s because there was a Comics convention scheduled for Saturday and Sunday and most of the material would be there for sale.
On Friday I called Reen again and was informed that Cadence wasn’t interested in pursuing it and that he’d been instructed to drop the matter. In an effort to get to the bottom of things, I called my long-time friend Alan Milgrom, who was editing at Marvel at the time. He explained that Shooter had recalled from the warehouse most of the artwork from the company’s first few years shortly before their move to Park Avenue. Once the move had been completed Shooter wanted them out of his office and the thigh-high stack was moved to the break room, adjacent to the freight elevators. This shocked me somewhat, because I’d seen those boxes and had no idea what they’d held.
Late on Friday I finally reached Shooter who said he was aware of the theft and would be doing whatever he could, though no explanation like from Milgrom.
Patrick Ford: If I'm not mistaken both Milgrom and Theakston are from Detroit. Water, heavy metals, etc..
Michael Hill: Milgrom inks.
Aaron Noble: I think he inked Kirby a couple of times, not many.
Patrick Ford: It just now hit me that the Jack Kirby! FB page is the Erik Larsen page. No wonder it's populated by True Believers.
I often wonder if the Keepers of the Flame have sat down and read either a Lee dialogued or Kirby dialogued comic book in the past thirty years. It's just so bizarre to me that people think Lee had any talent for dialogue at all.
Aaron Noble: I had a really surreal debate with Erik about the content of a Mr. Miracle panel, but I gently withdrew when it dawned on me that he wasn't even reading Jack's actual text on the page.
Patrick Ford: My experience with Larsen was on the old Jack Kirby Fan page. The page which Bray and Flemming turned over to Mark Gordon. Mark Gordon and Erik Larsen then set up the Erik Larsen page.
I had been posting commenting on the page for around a year when Larsen showed up one day and began behaving as if he was the group moderator. I was barely aware of the guy at the time. I knew the name and that was the extent of it. He was incredibly abusive and insulting. A real troll of the worst kind. Since I knew nothing about him and was interested in his behavior I took to Google to find out more about him and quickly discovered he had a long history of intense public flame wars with other professionals.
Patrick Ford: Steve Ditko (THE COMICS, 2003): "One can't reach a mind unwilling to be reached. When closed with his faith, the dogma of a 'true believer' , that mind will always seek to evade, deny, rationalize, in order to protect it's comfortable, accepted dogma."
Chris Tolworthy: Patrick Ford "the Jack Kirby! FB page is the Erik Larsen page". Sorry to keep harping on, but again this approach is so familiar from a religious point of view. If you cannot defeat an idea then embrace it then change it.
My old church had a problem with apologetics. The amateur apologists were unwittingly turning people away from the church because in providing "answers" they drew attention to the problems. Much as people celebrating Kirby tend to turn people away from Lee, because once you see the issues then Lee's position crumbles. So as a cultist what do you do? You can't shut down enemy sites because they just pop up again. So you proclaim yourself to be on their side, and use your superior numbers. In Larsen's case he creates a pro Kirby site that is designed to support Lee. In the case of my church it invited the apologists into the official church university and gave them a building and funding. And after that the apologists' leader was sacked and their organisation stopped publishing anything of note.
The same happens in business. Microsoft saw that Open Source was a real problem, so they adopted it, changed the standards, and thus removed its key advantage, compatibility. Critics called the process "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and gave numerous examples.
The same thing happens in politics all the time. A "reformer" (say, Tony Blair in the British labour party) embraces the movement, rises to the top, then changes it to be the opposite of what it once was.
Now obviously this policy is not a permanent solution. People notice. But the process of noticing and adapting takes literally generations, and so the status quo is extended for another twenty years, and another, and another. In the case of Kirby, history has been rewritten. If I recall correctly, the question of returning art in the 1980s hinged on trying to force Kirby to renounce his rights to the characters he created. But the Lee camp has managed to bury that and the narrative is now "Marvel was slow to return his art, but finally did the right thing" And since they say Kirby had no legal right to the at this becomes a celebration of Lee's generosity.
Cults, religions, businesses, and organisations in general, evolve very sophisticated ways to silence their enemies,
Patrick Ford: Yup. And I think Lee had help. My opinion is at the very start Goodman did not know or care. He was ready to shut down comics. And I think Lee began extracting a kickback (the writing money) early on. Certainly by 1961. Later Lee using his power as the editor in control of assignments (he held the purse strings) in order to collect the whole writers page rate (and credit as of Nov. 1962) worked to the advantage of Goodman and the later corporate owners.
I would guess that by 1969 Lee was being prepped by corporate copyright attorneys. I think everything that went out under his name was edited, coached, and signed off by the legal department.
That does not excuse the fact that if Lee had not abused his power in exchange for a kickback that Kirby would have been the credited writer, and none of the corporate abuse would have been possible.
One last point. Editors in comics at that time frequently extracted kickbacks. Jack Schiff at DC tried to extract a kickback from Kirby using the threat of cutting off assignments. When Kirby resisted he was cut off by Schiff and Schiff filed a lawsuit against Kirby. That was Kirby's freshest memory when he began selling monster stories to Lee.
Dave Rawlins: I expect the general public and casual fans to swallow what's fed to them. It's the obstinate refusal of pros and historians to seriously weigh in on the veracity of Lee's claims versus Kirby's and Ditko's that saddens me.
Patrick Ford: Steve Ditko (THE COMICS, 2003): "One can't reach a mind unwilling to be reached. When closed with his faith, the dogma of a 'true believer', that mind will always seek to evade, deny, rationalize, in order to protect it's comfortable, accepted dogma."
Chris Tolworthy
20 April 2017
This situation reminds me so much of my old church. A charismatic leader makes huge claims, and enough people buy it that he has an army of people to swamp the media with his story. The evidence for what really happened is all out there, but the average person doesn't know where to find it, and lacks the motivation to put in the time.
In the case of my church, a couple of years ago one person summarised the evidence in such a newbie-friendly way that his site (and forthcoming book) has become the go to place for the mildly curious. Plenty of people had tried summarising the evidence before, but he hit the sweet spot for presenting it in a gentle yet damning way that anybody could follow. Now whenever people talk skeptically about my church they only have to mention the name of the site (it's brilliantly named as well, but I won't name it here).
With such a well polished presentation he church has no answer, and basically once people visit that site the church gives up ever trying to persuade them. All the church can do is put up lame rebuttals and hope people read the rebuttal and not the original text.
It seems to me that the story of Marvel is the same. If somebody could summarise the case in the just the right way then it would be game over. The facts speak for themselves. I know there are good sites out there, I'm not asking for links. I'm just observing that nothing has yet grabbed outsiders. Most people are not seeing the facts.
Patrick Ford:
Back in the '70s I met a guy named Brain Hubbs who was a comic book collector. We shared an interest in E.C. comics. I had only the hardcover Nostalgia Press collection the Ballantine paperbacks and the East Coast comic book reprints. Brian had a growing collection of the real thing.
Brian also happened to be a Mormon. This assisted him with his business and hobby because having gone out on Missions for the LDS church he was absolutely fearless when it came to knocking on doors. He had a business where he painted house numbers on curbs and while doing this he would typically inquire as to whether or not the people attached to the house number on the curb might have any old comic books around.
I was highly skeptical of the LDS church primarily because of Joseph Smith. Brian never spent a lot of time trying to convert me. And I didn't say much since I was the guy painting the numbers on the curb and profiting form his business. I guess my eye rolling must have been "eloquent" because years later we touched base and he thanked me for getting him the leave the church.
Patrick Ford: What I'm saying is arguing with people who have a strong opinion is not only a waste of time, it is counterproductive. The argument causes people (people with a strong opinion) to become more and more personally entrenched as they invest more and more in their public stake. Those same people if left to themselves might eventually come around. I've seen it happen. I have never seen it happen while people are more or less in hand to hand combat.
Patrick Ford: So why did Brian credit me when I never presented a case against Joseph Smith aside from rhetorically saying things like "Really? Golden Plates" "Really? Magic reading glasses?"
I suppose he already had heard all the arguments. So maybe somehow I convinced him because I didn't argue with him. I just didn't take the whole Joseph Smith story seriously and that was the path for him to convince himself.
[...]
Chris Tolworthy: I agree that we can't persuade people who are invested. But in the case of Marvel, there are legions of movie fans who are mildly curious about the company but have no dog in the race. And Lee as supervillain makes a good story.
Patrick Ford: Chris, That is exactly my thought. Not arguing with advocates for Lee's version of events does not mean dropping the topic and not discussing it. The vast majority of people who believe Stan Lee is a comic book Thomas Edison are most likely not invested in that thought.
The difficulty comes in trying to find a forum where a challenge to the accepted "history" of Marvel can be pursued without being heatedly attacked. At one time I thought groups advertising themselves as "Jack Kirby" groups would be a good place to discuss the two diametrically opposed versions of events as told by Kirby and Lee. I quickly learned that was not the case. In every instance it became apparent that "Jack Kirby" groups were seen as "Silver Age Marvel" groups.
I once joined a group called "Ditko-Kirby" and brought up some of my observations and one of the very first remarks was, "It's beginning to smell like the Kirby-List around here." As if there was something foul about believing Jack Kirby and a group which had his name painted on the shingle.
Groups advertising themselves as "History" based are no better.
So my conclusion was to come up with this FB page which is dedicated to challenging the widely accepted "history" of Marvel.
Aaron Noble: Perhaps the time is coming for a Marvel Method/ Kirby Underground summit meeting to take place?
Chris Tolworthy: I think it would be nice to create a simple summary, full of hooks for journalists to use, and have it ready before Lee eventually dies. Then when publicity spikes, we could email any journalist that covers it and suggest a follow up piece.
Patrick Ford: Aaron Noble, The Jack Kirby Fan Underground was set up to focus exclusively on Kirby.
Chris Tolworthy: Possible hooks for journalists:
* "superhero guy was really a supervillain"
* "slick corporations have wild west past"
* "comics best kept secret"
* "the man who out-Barnum-ed Barnum"
I think the Barnum angle is the best, as it does not threaten the love people have for the old shyster. I would argue that Lee was a more successful showman than Barnum:
FIrst, Lee has perfected the faker's art. Barnum actually needed hard work and talent, but Lee focused purely on self promotion and got others to do everything else. He didn't even need a single idea, yet to this day gets his face on everything and in the popular mind he the power behind it. That is some achievement! He's a cult leader who manages to have the general public like him as well. Has that ever been equalled?
Second, Lee's circuses are bigger than Barnum's. What are Marvel movies except modern day circuses? Full of amazing people doing impossible things, all colour and light and noise. Lee's circuses reach far more people than Barnum's ever did.
Patrick Ford: Chris, Yes it's the sort of story media might be attracted to. Unfortunately there is no evidence that they are and Lee being absorbed into Disney makes it very unlikely anything will change.
I could see a BIG EYES type film perhaps capturing the public's attention. Or ideally a journalist or scholar not associated with comics would become interested in the story and do the research. It could never be anyone from the comics circle or anyone writing a book aimed to appeal of fans of comic books. It would have to be an investigative work designed to appeal to people who are interested in biography and business history.
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