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Lee took credit for others' ideas Patrick Ford 15 September 2016 Based on recent comments from Chris Tolworthy and Aaron Noble I went looking at some old interviews and noticed another example of Stan Lee taking credit for something which Kirby came up with. In this case it's not the creation of a character, but the direction of a book. We know that Steve Ditko has written Ditko was responsible for the focus on Peter Parker and his personal life and problems with family, schoolmates, and coworkers. According to Ditko, Lee complained Ditko should be spending more time focused on Spider-Man in costume and in action sequences. Later on once Ditko's ideas proved popular with fans, Lee took credit for them. Here's another example. In 1969 Mark Hebert asked Kirby about the weird schism in the Thor stories where it looked like the series was being pulled in two different directions. Chris Tolworthy went to a good deal of trouble to document this divide in a long series of posts which examine the first 18 Thor stories of which nine are not by Kirby. Kirby explained to Hebert that it was Kirby's inclination to have Thor dealing with the other Norse gods and it was Lee who wanted the stories set on Earth. In looking at the 1968 Ted White interview I noticed that White asks Lee basically the same question Hebert asked Kirby, and wouldn't you know? Lee takes credit for Kirby's idea. Patrick Ford: LEE: "I will admit I myself would like to keep him Thor." Oh? So is Lee saying that it was Kirby who "humanized" Thor by writing about Donald Blake? Patrick Ford: We know that the whole Thor-Nurse-Blake thing was not something Kirby ever wanted. This thread by Chris Tolworthy documents that fact. http://classiccomics.org/thread/3689/thor-lee-review-thread Aaron Noble: I find Thor fairly painful to read, but the impression it left me with last time I read a run of them was of Stan not really having a handle on the book in the way he sort of did on FF. He undermines Kirby, as always, but doesn't achieve a very consistent alternate result. My guess is Stan really didn't have any strong opinions on this book and just said whatever popped into his head during the interview. Patrick Ford: Reading anything that has passed through Lee is a real chore for me. Basically Lee's style is that of a huckster and that sort of thing just isn't something I find entertaining even in small doses. It may have been the '80s when I first noticed that fans of Lee began praising Lee for being insincere. That from the same sort of people who are huge super hero fans, still talk about "realism, " still agonize over thought balloons and exclamation points. Basically people who desperately want super heroes to be taken seriously. And yet somehow Lee's phony act, his glib nonsense not only became acknowledged, but was seen as an attribute. At the same time I began to see Kirby's work described at "thumpingly earnest." As if somehow an author with a serious message is behaving like a child. You would think fans of Lee would all be tremendous fans of the '60s Batman television show. And yet they generally aren't. Except when it's Stan Lee they are seriously committed to the "realistic" super hero.

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