Liar, Liar

 Presented as the alternative to decades of propaganda.

As I predicted long ago, with the death of the corporate shill known as Stan Lee, the truth about his career in comics is coming out at a more rapid pace than when he was still breathing. But while it's easier to get the word out concerning his moral crimes, it's no easier to deal with his fans when one is telling the truth about him.

I can only describe his fan base as religious fanatics. They have been fed a line about his divinity and if you challenge this line you are at risk of the same kind of attack you would expect from a crazed fundamentalist, or from a rabid animal. When you tell what really happened at Marvel after Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko transformed the publisher from a faltering outfit into a tremendous success the Liar's true believers will descend on you with knives out.

Here, then, are the basic truths:

What we know of today as the Marvel Universe was created mainly by Jack Kirby. To a lesser extent it was also given commercial success by Steve Ditko. There were additional contributors such as Bill Everett, Wally Wood, Dick Ayers, Don Heck, and others; but the mass of the modern fables emerged from the minds and talents of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

The big liar we call Stan Lee (Stanley Lieber) was the editor for the comics arm of a publishing company started by Martin Goodman. Lee was cousin-by-marriage to Goodman, so his installation into the company was an act of pure nepotism. No talent was involved, and no meritocracy was at work. A relative was shown the ropes and was provided with a steady paycheck at a very young age. Lee's lack of talent is obvious in that he never left the employ of his relative and stayed there over the years, never venturing forth to find gainful employment elsewhere, and never proving himself as anyone valuable enough for a head hunter to come calling. It's often said that Lee was a good salesman, but I always found him to be on a level with a scamming used car salesman. His personality was odious, at best.

But what service did he provide for Martin Goodman? After Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were allowed to create new titles to cash in on the superhero craze of the early 1960s, Goodman needed a salaried employee whose name could be attached to the intellectual property to cement the company's claim to that property. And, as the only salaried employee at the comics arm of Martin Goodman's corporation, Lee fit the bill.

So: the liar's name went on every book as writer. Later, Lee claimed to have created all of the titles and characters at the early Marvel Comics. He claimed to have created the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, the Avengers, the Uncanny X-Men, Daredevil, the Mighty Thor, Dr. Strange, the Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Giant Man, Ant Man, etc. In fact, though, there is zero evidence that Lee invented any of the characters which he claimed to be writing. Also, there are credible claims that he wasn't even writing the parade of successful books appearing from the likes of Kirby, Ditko, Ayers, Wood, Everett, Heck, Romita, and company. Keep in mind that before the explosion of creativity provided from Kirby and Ditko, Goodman's most profitable enterprise was publishing a line of men's adventure fiction magazines. There was a  constant parade of talented writers in and out of the  building who were only too happy to expand dialog already provided  by the artists who were actually not only creating the characters, but plotting and writing them. For a couple of hours work these ghost-writers could earn grocery money. No big deal that another man's name went on. For in those days comic scripting was held in lower esteem than even the pulp fiction they were producing for Martin Goodman. Who cared if a no-talent bum put his signature to it?

Over the following months and years as Marvel's fortunes expanded Goodman sought to sell the company. I can imagine what he was thinking. He'd already seen his comic book business go through a boom and bust cycle from the early 1940s and through the 1950s, and he could have figured he was riding another wave that might soon crest and fall. He wanted to get out while the company was a ripe crop ready to be harvested and sold. Therefore, more than ever he needed a corporate shill that enabled him to claim ownership of the intellectual property that rightly resided with the men who had sweated it out: mainly Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. For that purpose alone, Lee's lying presence was invaluable.

Eventually, Goodman did sell Marvel. For enough cash so that he was able to retire to Florida as a wealthy man. What he never considered was that the value of Jack Kirby's creations was far more than he ever could have dreamed. The publisher never figured that his connivance with Liar Lee was a theft that would someday be measured in tens of billions of dollars. I cannot think of another theft of intellectual property that rivals what was stolen from Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. The monetary value of the likes of X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Avengers, Dr. Strange, etc. staggers the imagination. And as that wealth has increased, so did the lies of the man whose professional existence was provided for that sole purpose. And also continued the willingness for the various corporate owners to go along--they still needed that lie to live on.

In fact, though, we all know who created the characters. Kirby, Ditko, Everett, and others did. Who wrote the books? The artists who illustrated it were expected to plot and also write them. The editor placed his name on the credits page as "writer" when there is zero evidence he ever wrote anything other than poorly rendered promotional blurbs and columns, and an occasional butchering of dialog and scripts in some issues. The corporations claimed ownership for everything because of the existence of a sole salaried employee.

Today, as I said, the truth is emerging. We now know who created the characters and wrote and illustrated the stories. It wasn't the lying editor.

But telling this simple truth can still be a tough row to hoe. One has to deal with the army of zealots who believe the fallacy that a slimy grifter created the characters they love. These fans equate the face of a gleaming, grinning slug with their beloved comics. And there are the professional sellouts working in the comics industry who still feel the urge to kiss corporate ass after the lying bastard they once worked for is dead and rotting. Hopefully, these prostitutes will come to their senses and find enough dignity to stop lying for a dead thief and the corporate master he served. Maybe that will happen. But I doubt it.

ACCORDING TO JACK KIRBY by Michael Hill. Highly recommended.

The Amazing Spider-Man. Created by, plotted by, written by, penciled by, inked by Steve Ditko.

Two New Pickups for the Comic Collection

I nabbed two more comics for the collection today. I rarely pass up a chance to get a rare Jack Kirby comic, and I did so with HEADLINES #33. This was one of the crime titles that he did for Harvey Comics in the 1950s when he and Joe Simon were producing book with their studio. There's a really nice amount of Jack Kirby artwork in this one. There is part of a page missing from one of the Kirby stories, but I doubt I'll see this book again any time soon.

HEADLINE COMICS #33 with a great Jack Kirby cover!

The other book I picked up is an old Atlas title. I'm not sure, but the cover looks to have been illustrated by John Severin, but I could be wrong. The first story was illustrated (and probably written) by George Tuska. There are also two stories that look like Dick Ayers did them.

I wasn't really looking to pick up another Atlas comic for my collection, but it was the right price for a really decent condition copy of OUTLAW FIGHTERS #1. I'll take it.

OUTLAW FIGHTERS #1. (Is that a John Severin cover?)

Fantastic Four #20.

I landed another back issue for my FANTASTIC FOUR COLLECTION. This one is a decent copy of #20. The story features as its villain, the Molecule Man, a character who can control the molecular structure of any non-organic material. Which makes him one very dangerous fellow. The book also features another of Kirby's amazing creations, The Watcher. We had first seen him in issue #13 of the book, so this was a bit of a surprise to see him pop up again. As always, he breaks the rule that he is not supposed to interfere with the history of the human race, in this instance to explain the arrival of the Molecule Man and to give the Fantastic Four a head start in preparing to meet him.

The plot is relatively simple and does not display much of the story-telling maturity that Kirby would later use to great effect. But you can already see that he is building up a mythos, adding to it with each issue of the book. The Watcher is a great device to use to further a plot, and Kirby had already grasped the richness of being able to fall back on it from time to time.

This issue features some spectacular layouts by Kirby, and you can see that he was really enjoying utilizing Ben Grimm as a battering ram to move the action along. The inks by Dick Ayers are okay...a bit heavy for my tastes, but serviceable. There were always less capable inkers to use on Kirby's pencils, and Lee didn't hesitate to use them, unfortunately. In this case, though, Ayers did a decent job.

The cover to my copy of THE FANTASTIC FOUR #20.

I always loved this opening page. It tells so much about Kirby's ripening storytelling abilities. Reed was content to plod along, carefully, but Ben seizes the moment.

The Watcher appears to warn the team of what they are about to face. I liked this early version of the character, but the later, more human form was probably the best for the fans.

The Molecule Man makes his appearance! I love that long shot of the streets of New York City.

Absolutely wonderful action featuring Ben and the Torch at work against their adversary, who is obviously superior to them in power and abilities.

STRANGE TALES #115

I love this comic. Not for the cover story, but for the backup tale. By this point in the title, Lee and Goodman had relegated the monster stories to very few and far between. I have always assumed that there was still a backlog of work that had already been completed and paid for by Marvel, but by this time the superheroes had completely elbowed that material out of the way.

So issue #115 had a Human Torch story followed with a Dr. Strange tale.

The Torch story had art by Dick Ayers. Mostly when Heck or Ayers had worked with the superheroes at this point it was over layouts by the unstoppable Jack Kirby. But the artwork in this one is so crude that I suspect that it was all done by Ayers, including the layouts.  Mr. Ayers was a decent inker, but he was not among the most skilled of pencil artists. I always found his work to be very crude, and this story is no exception. The only thing that stands out about the tale is that the villain of the piece is The Sandman, from the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man comic as trumpeted on the front cover.

The backup story, however, is pure gold. In this one we see the origin of the character Dr. Strange. Strange had made his first appearance in issue #110 of Strange Tales, so his origin story was overdue. And Strange is one character that even Stan Lee admitted that he had nothing to do with creating. Even by the blowhard's own admission, Ditko was the sole creator of Dr. Strange, although that has not stopped him in later years from taking half the credit (none of which is due to him).

Sometimes Ditko would produce work that was--even for him--unusually adept. This story is one of those. Ditko's artwork in this story is pure magic. It holds up favorably with the finest of the stories he produced for The Amazing Spider-Man, and those are, to my way of thinking, the best superhero comics ever done.

Someday I may upgrade my copy of Strange Tales #115, but for now at least I have a copy.

My low-grade copy of STRANGE TALES #115.

Tales of Suspense #44

Here's an interesting book from my collection. For a while, after superheroes became the obvious way to go at Marvel (thanks to Jack Kirby's vision and Steve Ditko's help), the company allowed the super-folk to take over all of the monster and science fiction titles. However, there was apparently still quite a backlog of the monster and alien tales that Lee had been using to keep his uncle's comic book publishing ship afloat. The work had already been paid for, of course, and it was just gathering dust. So...to fill out what had been the various anthology titles Lee and Goodman parsed out the inventories of genre tales written and illustrated by Kirby, Ditko, Heck, Reinman, Ayers, Larry Lieber, and company.

This issue of TALES OF SUSPENSE is pretty much what the fans could expect early on in Kirby's superhero revival at Marvel Comics. The reader got a cool new Iron Man tale (with the massive, clunky Kirby armor before Steve Ditko altered it in a stroke of pure genius), followed by a Larry Lieber story (Marvel in those days was nothing if not nepotistic) and a great Ditko yarn. The Ditko story art is credited completely to him, but I suspect someone else (or several someones) had a hand in the finishes. While some of the panels look like Ditko's inks, others do not. I suspect Dick Ayers may have been recruited to complete the inks, but I could be wrong.

My copy of Tales of Suspense #44.

STRANGE TALES #93

Here is the cover to STRANGE TALES #93. Despite the obvious hand of Ditko on this one, I never liked this cover. I never liked it even when I first saw it when I was a kid of about seven years old. It's just terribly bland and was not at all like the dynamic covers generally produced for these monster books by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

I'm not even sure of the authorship of the art. Ditko definitely did the finishes, but it could have been over Kirby layouts, or pencils by Dick Ayers, or Paul Reinman. It's very hard to say. It just doesn't look like something Ditko would have concocted on his own unless he was rushed by a looming deadline or instructed specifically to create such an image.

Ditko inks, for sure. But pencils could have been by any of the guys at Marvel then, up to and including Ditko. One of the most lackluster covers from this period at Marvel.

Tales of Suspense #20 Interiors

Zowie!

This is one of my favorite Kirby covers from the pre-hero Marvel period.

Here is what the the production of the early Marvel bullpen looked like as the teams were coalescing, waiting for the day when Marvel would make the move to go toe-to-toe with DC Comics in the creation of new superhero books.
Most of the monsters created by Jack Kirby made a single appearance. He wrote and illustrated hundreds of such stories. But every once in a while he would go back to a creature he'd created before, or perhaps there was enough fan reaction (generally in the form of sales) so that Stan Lee would ask for another story featuring one or another of Kirby's monsters. So it was with Colossus. Kirby seemed willing and able to revisit this monster with this yarn: "Colossus Lives Again"!

Kirby would often break up a story into parts or chapters. He'd end with something of a cliff-hanger or story break, and continue the tale with a unique chapter title. He excelled at imaginative ways to delineate a story by way of text and balloons and sub-titles. Here we see him at work with this gimmick, but without as much flash as in some of his stories.

Don Heck was generally called upon to do one of the stories in the sf and horror books. But in this issue it was Dick Ayers who got the job. Ayers was one of Stan Lee's go-to journeymen. He was mainly an inker, working with just about everyone who did pencils for Goodman's outfit. But sometimes he was given a job to pencil. This one was just such a situation.

A typical and absolutely wonderful Ditko title page. He excelled at these things. Every time I open one of these pre-hero Marvels I find myself wondering if Ditko was perhaps challenged by the older and frankly more talented Kirby. Did he use the other man's work as a kind of goal, or a bar against which he might measure himself? I sometimes think so, and at times he met and exceeded that bar.

I love this last page. The story is one that I can see appealing to Ditko. The mindless masses too stupid and incurious to grasp a chance when it comes to them. One sees the wise, bearded philosopher-king at the end. That last panel is intriguing, too. It pre-dates both Roger Dean's and AVATAR'S airborne islands.

Tales of Suspense, Covering Previous Territory

By the time TALES OF SUSPENSE was an entrenched title at Martin Goodman's publishing outfit, the art team assembled for the book was also well established. Stan Lee was always searching for artists who could produce the work in a timely manner and who also had a certain style that would appeal to the fans. In Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Don Heck he had managed to assemble such a reliable team. I think Lee was always looking for someone like Joe Maneely who had died in such a horrible manner some years earlier. Maneely could draw anything and do it well and on time. He was the glue that held the books together and Stan Lee had him exclusively for a time. Just before Maneely's untimely death he was getting ready to head out for greener pastures, wider exposure, and richer pay checks. His death had been a major blow, especially to Stan Lee who had come to depend on him.

Well, it didn't take him too long to land several more artists to fill that creative void. Jack Kirby in particular was a workhorse unlike any other the comics industry had seen. I've read that in one year he produced well over 1,200 pages of penciled pages. This is a phenomenal pace, especially when you understand that he was also writing most of the stuff that was credited to a certain someone else. Most of the monster and sci-fi comics that Goodman was publishing were held up by the three guys editor-in-chief Lee came to depend upon: the already mentioned Kirby, Ditko, and Heck.

Often joining in to add to that triumvirate was Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers and a host of other artists who later filtered into the Marvel offices as the small company grew into a publishing juggernaut. But in those early days it was mainly Kirby, Ditko, and Heck.

I already had a copy of this issue (#5), so I'll sell off the lesser of the two books.

This was another book I kept trying to nab on Ebay but always failed to get. There's something about the cover that I really like. It's not the monster--Kirby created some really striking monsters and this isn't one of them. I think it's just the construction of the scene that appeals to me.

I've never run across this book before, so it's going to be fun to see what's inside. I'll post interiors of some of these books after I've read them and gone through the tales.