Welcome to Tuesday’s Daily Mega Comics Group Updates!

Dave Simons is an inherently notable artist in comics history!  🙂 Dave Simons has been doing comics either inking or penciling or both for the better part of 4 decades! Most of his work has been at Marvel but he has also had some work for DC and some in the animation field as well. Dave has worked on one project or another for nearly every character in the Marvel Super-Hero Universe including Spider-man, Ghost Rider, and Conan to name a few. He has worked with Frank Miller, Rich Butler, Gene Colan and many other notable talents in comics. He has done a large body of work and done it very well. He may not be one of those names that is as recognizable as the ones above because he has always taken the back seat in assignments, being mainly an inker/embellisher and always more concerned with contributing to the team than in gaining notoriety for himself. More on his career in just a moment…

Recently Dave was diagnosed with cancer and the prognosis has not been good. Having worked all his life amassing a large archive of art as his resume but never having garnered a lot of headlines or  generated a lot of royalties. Now, he finds himself struggling to make ends meet with the added cost of medical bills along with the normal day to day bills. The comics community has been finding out little by little because Dave has been keeping it all to himself never to be one to ask for a handout. NHaving learned of the ordeal, Comics Fans and Professionals are rallying to his aid to help a guy who has always helped others, in his time of need.

Dave participated in the big Gala Kickoff Celebration launching the Facebook Comic Con. Several sites have been set up for him and in his honor. Also his own personal web site and his new Wikipedia entry. In addition there are some auctions of his work and other notables who have contributed works to raise money to help ease Dave’s financial burden! The art at the below and to the right is one such piece by Dave himself being auctioned on eBay.

• Facebook Comic Con | Dave Simons

• The Dave Simons Appreciation Society

• Inherently Notable – An Art Jam in Appreciation of Dave Simons

• www.dave-simons.com

• ebay.com- Help Dave Simons

• wikipedia.org entry for Dave Simons

Now here’s a little more about Dave as promised above from his recently added Wikipedia entry by Daniel Best.

Dave Simons is an American comic book writer and artist. Simons has worked in comics since the 1970s and is well known for his work on Conan, Ghost Rider, Howard the Duck, Dracula, Forgotten Realms and more recently Courage the Cowardly Dog. He has worked with some of the giants in the field such as John Buscema, Bob Budiansky and Gene Colan.

Early Years
Dave Simons grew up in New York and always wanted to be a comic book artist. “I always wanted to do comics since I was about eight years old,” Simons said, “so I started making a point of drawing something every day. I figured if I just kept doing that, then eventually I’d get better at it.” After a stint in the Coast Guard, and a chance series of meetings with Frank Robbins, Simons elected to undertake formal training to be an artist. As part of his education Simons attended the now legendary art workshops run by Marvel Comics artist John Buscema. It was while attending these classes that he became friends future comic book artists Ken Landgraf and Armando Gil. It was through Landgraf that Simons produced his first published work, which consisted of mainly commercial illustrations and the occasional soft-core pornographic comic book. Breaking away from Landgraf, Simons and Gil formed an alliance and friendship that continues to this day.

Marvel Career
Approaching then-Marvel editor Rick Marschall at a convention in the early 1980s, Simons was able to get his samples seen and assessed. At the time Marschall was overseeing the black and white magazine line for Marvel and Simons was duly assigned the duty of inking the first issue of the Howard the Duck magazine. After submitting the story Simons was assigned a fill-in Falcon story, which he inked with the assistance of Gil over Sal Buscemas pencils. This marked his first professional work for Marvel and in mainstream comic books.

Simons was then assigned both pencilling and inking jobs for Marvel. One of the artists who’s pencils he inked was Gene Colan. “Gene Colan was always my favorite penciler to work on,” says Simons today. “That was like a match made in heaven because a lot of people didn’t understand Gene’s shading. I thought ‘this is great, this is a great jumping on point if you’re gonna do black and white stuff’.” Simons attention to detail came into high demand in the 1980s and his inking credits include artists such as Keith Pollard, Ron Wilson, Frank Miller, John Buscema, Marc Silvestri, Greg LaRoque, John Romita Jr, Ed Hannigan, Walt Simsonson and more. Titles that featured his inking include Thor, The Thing, Marvel Premiere, Night Thrasher, Iron Man, King Conan, Dr Strange, Star Wars, Star Trek, Thundercats and others.

Simons’s tenure at Marvel wasn’t limited to inking. He proved himself to be a very capable penciler and his pencils and ink combination were featured in titles such as the Spectacular Spider-Man, Team America, What If, Marvel Comics Presents, Bizarre Adventures, Red Sonja, Web Of Spider-Man, King Conan. He also provided cover art to titles such as Power Man & Iron Fist, Ghost Rider, Darkhold, Machine Man, Kull The Conqueror, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two In One, Crystar, Moon Knight and many others. “Pencilling, if you’re doing it right,” said Simons, “is a much tougher gig than inking. Even though I usually liked to know what was going on, with inking you don’t necessarily have to be involved with the story. With pencilling you have to be intimately involved with the story because you’re the one who’s bringing the writers work and intentions across to the readers, as to what he’s trying to communicate there. You have to think of the drama, the camera angles, and the composition, make sure you leave room for the word balloons, all those sorts of things.”

Ghost Rider
Simons’s best known Marvel work was his run on the first series of Ghost Rider. His run on the title saw him first inking veteran artist Don Perlin before joining with Bob Budiansky to create one of the best remembered runs of the characters history. Budiansky and Simons worked with writers Roger Stern and J.M. DeMatteis. “The only speed bump we hit in this whole thing was when Simons, who of that team is the unsung hero, left,” Budiansky recalls. “He used to come to the office dressed in leather. I mean, this was not an act, he’d come dressed in one of these black leather, zipper jackets. I don’t know if he also wore leather pants. He might have worn them. But anyway, the point is, he knew how to ink leather, which was really important for Ghost Rider. So when he left the book we never really were able to replace that look that he gave the book. The rest of the team was all somewhat saddened by his departure.” Marvel attempted to duplicate the highly detailed and rendered look that Budiansky and Simons were able to give the character when the character was relaunched in the early 1990s but never quite succeeded.

DC Career
In the 1990s Simons left Marvel and crossed companies to DC. At DC he worked on titles such as Deathstroke The Terminator, Spelljammers, Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, the latter he inked over Rags Morales’s pencils. “I liked the combination of me and Rags Morales,” says Simons, “He has that Frazetta thing going on and I was hip to that and tried to bring that out a lot.” Simons also worked on a number of cartoon based books during his time at DC and his work is featured in titles such as Cartoon Network Block Party. During this time he also illustrated Roger Rabbit at Disney.

Animation Career
In the late 1990s Simons left the comic book industry and moved into animation. As an artist he provided storyboards to such shows as Captain Planet, Exo-Squad Masters Of The Universe, Zula Patrol, Psi-Kix and Maya and Miguel. Recalls Simons, “The list of shows I’ve worked on is certainly longer than the list of comic books that I’ve worked on at this point.” Simons also directed the show Spy Dogs and worked again with Gil on this show, hiring him as a storyboard artist. Simons has the distinction of working on both an animated TV program and the comic book spin-off at the same time, this was when he worked on the animated show Courage The Cowardly Dog, which he subsequently drew the DC comic book of the same name.

Post Animation
Simons is known as a creator of characters. He has developed his own co-creation, Beastball Saga, with Sebastian Mondrone. He is also developing a new character, Donna Thyme, with writer Daniel Best.

Simons’s most recent work has been on the book Army Of Darkness, along with contributing art to various trading card sets issued by Rittenhouse. He has also contributed art to variant covers for series such as Red Sonja and the ‘100 Hulks’ project. Simons is also active with commissions.

Tomorrow we’ll have a Dave Simons Gallery. Now let’s finish up today with some Mega Comics!

Tess Cover Art Preview

Mega Tales # 1 is a couple of weeks from it’s web debut featuring Greg Legat’s character: Tess! That’s short for tesseract. The image you see to your left is a back cover Mark Poe did back in 1987.

If you don’t know what a tesseract is Wikipedia defines it as: In four dimensional geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube, which is in turn the three dimensional analog of the square.

Below is another artifact from Wikipedia, a neat little gif animation released into the public domain by its author, Jason Hise which gives us a little better undersatanding of the concept…I think.

Anyway, Tess is a young lady who is a living tesseract. She comes from another dimension and in our dimension she can teleport herself or just about anything else, just about any where. She manifests the power in a number of ways other than teleportation and she has a cute little 4th dimensional dog named Nostradamus. The book was originally to be published by Dimension Graphics but unfortunately never saw print.

Greg Legat created and wrote Tess while Mark Poe, and J. Adam Walters did the art. The series for  the web will be in full color.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Click the images to go to the site or for a larger image view.

CU2morrow!

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

No, that’s not a Kirby Original Pencil Sketch. 🙂 We wish it was. This is a detail from the Dave Simons’ Tribute cover art Mark is doing as a commission for the folks over at the Facebook Comic Con. This is one of 3 cameo images on the cover which we showed a few days ago. A thumbnail sketch of the whole can be seen below in a previous post. The original sketch is one Jack Kirby did in 1975. Mark reported he had a blast recreating this from the scan of the original he had. “You get a new appreciation for the artist when you attempt to recreate their art line for line.” Mark has started the Gene Colan cameo and then will go on to the John Romita piece. He has a little of the large image of Dave penciled as well. He says he is trying to do this as much “old school” as possible since this represents Dave and the artists from the ’60’s and ’70’s. So it is being penciled on Bristol board, and then the inks will be done directly over the pencils with brushes and India ink. The logos and masthead will be done on computer but then printed out and pasted on for the finished old school look. We’ll keep scans of pencils and inks and do a color version in the computer also. Click on the image to see a larger version in a separate window. 😀

Remember the Atlas Comics titles from the mid ’70’s? Mega Comics Group certainly is not the first to be inspired by the ’60’s and ’70’s Marvel titles. One of the first, if not the first, was Atlas Comics which was around in 1974-75. This was the second company to be called Atlas. The first was a predecessor of Marvel back in the ’50’s. This Atlas, which is often referred to as Atlas/Seaboard so as not to confuse it with the elder Atlas and since Seaboard Periodicals was the parent company, was started by former Marvel publisher Martin Goodman. Mr Goodman was really ticked off at Marvel and Stan Lee, his nephew, in particular for ousting his son Chip Goodman from the Editor-in-Chief position he had been promised to retain after Martin sold Marvel to Cadence Industries. There seems to have been some valid reasons for Chip’s firing but Martin would not hear of it. He started Atlas Comics and made Chip the publisher, at least in title, to get back at Marvel. He was succeeding and Atlas was on it’s way to ousting Marvel from the position they had stolen away from DC just a couple years prior with a ingenious marketing ploy which Martin Goodman used to outmaneuver and finally outsell DC. At Atlas he had hired away a lot of Marvel‘s top talent and brought back legends like Steve Ditko and Wally Wood to super hero comics. he installed the first original art return and royalties program which later Marvel and DC would adapt.  However, as is the case all too often, when bosses try to micromanage the talent pool, they dry it up. Infighting, resignations by key personal as well as the inability to weather market storms put Atlas and Seaboard out of business after one year. Rather then gaining his much sought revenge on Marvel, Goodman merely proved that Stan Lee, with his ability as the go between Editor-in-Chief at Marvel between Publisher Martin Goodman and the talent pool was one of the biggest reasons for Marvel’s success and managing to hold onto most of it’s top talent, like Jack Kirby and Roy Thomas, through those crucial years of the ’60’s and ’70’s. It is noteworthy, however, that even Stan was unable to prevail and keep everyone happy which resulted in Marvel losing Steve Ditko and Wally Wood early on and later Jack Kirby. Read more about it at the Atlas Archives web site.

Friday will be the day for the next Tess page update. Yes, we will announce now that Friday will be Tess Day. It’s better all around if we just go ahead and target Friday’s as our new page release day of our Summer Schedule. But we’ll still do a Wednesday Blog update as well… if we have anything left to talk about. 😉 So be here Wednesday for a new Blog and then back Friday for page 20 of Mega Tales #1! Thanks for stopping by. 😀

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Check out Friday‘s posts for Mega Tales! CU Wednesday!

Welcome to Wednesday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Progress Report: Dave Simons’ Tribute  Art!  🙂 Mark Poe, publisher in training and part-time cartoonist, has been working, every chance he gets, on the  Dave Simons’ Tribute cover art commissioned by some of the folks over at the Facebook Comic Con. We showed you the thumbnail concept sketch he did a few days ago, and we have also pasted in below so you can compare it to the current piece. Mark reports he is in stage 2 of the process, penciling the image on Bristol board. He has gotten most of it, as the scan to the right shows, but still have a little more to complete on the top. He started with the  Jack Kirby piece and worked around. “Why?” we asked. He said the Kirby cameo was the most detailed so he wanted to get that one out of the way first. He said the Gene Colan and John Romita pieces were challenging just to match the style but Kirby’s background  was the hardest on detail of the 3. Mark will try to finish the pencils this week and start the inking and do the logos and lettering. Click on the image to see a larger image in a new window.  🙂

Here you see the original thumbnail of the art. You can click this image to see a bigger one and compare to the work in progress. The original thumbnail was not proportionally correct so the layout was adjusted for the full size penciled version. and below is the original cover Dave Simons did which this Tribute was inspired by  🙂

Mega Tales #1 Page 20 will here Friday. We hope you can join us. Thanks! 😀

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Check out Last Friday‘s post for Mega Tales! CU Friday!

Welcome to Monday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Saturday night Gene Colan was honored at the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS) banquet. Marv Wolfman spoke about his long-time collaboration on such comics as Tomb of Dracula, Night Force, Curse of Dracula and many others. He also talked of being a  fan of such Marvel Comics titles as Gene’s Tales of Suspense featuring Iron Man and Daredevil long before he ever got a chance to work with him. He wanted Gene to  know how much he and his work meant to him. Marv Wolfman along with several other writers at Marvel that started in the ’70’s were fans of the Marvel Age in the ’60’s.

Others in attendance and speaking were, Mark Evanier, Gerry Conway, Sergio Aragones, as well as CAPS President, Pat McGreal. Former CAPS president and publisher over at Bongo Studios, Bill Morrison, introduced the evening as Master of Ceremonies.

Not in attendance in person was Mr. Colan himself. Due of health issues, Gene and his wife Adrienne could not attend the event in Los Angeles, but thanks to the marvel of video conferencing technology and Skype to be specific, Gene and Adrienne were seen on screen live in New York, could hear everything said and speak to attendees as well. See Marv Wolfman’s site for more details. To see some awesome Gene Colan art go to his Mr. Colan’s site.

The Yankees did it! Yes, last night the New York Yankees beat the LA Angels 5-2 to secure the American League pennant and a trip to face the Philadelphia Phillies, in the World Series opener on Wednesday evening. It should be a good one!

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

Check out Friday‘s posts for Mega Tales! CU Wednesday!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Remembering Dave! It has been almost a year since the passing of comics’ great artist and inker,  Dave Simons. In the months since we lost him  Bob Almond and the guys over at the Inkwell Awards came up with the idea of the  Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship which will be honored at the Joe Kubert Art School. The scholarship will accomplish what Dave often did during his life which was to help young artists get the training and encouragement they need to break into the comics field. Follow the link over to the page and  see how you can  get these two high quality prints, Atomic Robo by Blake Wilkie and Tribute to Dave Simons by Mark Poe which are available for anyone who donates $25 (cash only donation) or more to the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship.

Mark’s Remarks. I had the privilege of meeting Dave Simons on Facebook in early 2009. He and I were part of the Facebook Comic Con. I joined one of the Fan Pages for Dave. Dave had a re-occurrence of cancer in late 2008 which he had beaten a few years prior to this event. When I got to meet him was right after he came back from the hospital after an extended stay. Dave didn’t talk about the cancer much, he really didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for him or obligated to help him. He was more interested in talking about what he loved to do which was to draw.

As anyone can see from examples of his work, he was a very skilled artist. But even though he loved to draw, most of his art career had been spent embellishing over other artists pencils with ink. He was very good at that!  Inking over another artist is a talent not all pencilers possess. Some pencilers can’t even ink their own art much less that of anyone else! Inking is not just going over the artist’s pencil lines with ink. If that is the inkers approach he will only ruin a great penciling job. An inker can make or break the pencil artist.  The inker has to emphasize what the pencil artist did in graphite with india ink. It’s a lot easier said than done! Yet it has not always gotten equal billing with penciling but rather thought of as an after thought of the drawing.

Dave understood all this and it  showed his true character. See, Dave loved to draw and ink but, even more so, he loved to talk to people and loved to help them.  This trait was evident in the man throughout his career at Marvel, and everywhere he worked and even through the very painful days he endured the last couple years he lived. Dave wasn’t out to get the best deal for himself and let everyone else fend for themselves. He wanted to help others have the chance to make it just as he had.

Dave was very prolific in his career which spanned almost 40 years. He churned out a lot of work in that time. He was dependable  and could make deadlines two qualities which alone will earn the respect and a lot of work  in the business.

Dave learned his craft from two of the best Marvel had in the early days. John and Sal Buscema. Looking at Dave’s pencils  and John’s, it is easy to see who was Dave’s main influence in the beginning.   Dave was inspired by John’s work on such titles as Silver Surfer and the Avengers in the ’60’s. Dave began his inking career over Sal’s pencils. Working to impress the Buscema’s, particularly John, lead Dave to the next level: inking over Gene Colan’s work! Just as not every comic artist can ink another artist’s pencils, not every inker, even the most skilled could interpret Mr. Colan’s detailed, moody drawings. Having learned at the feet of the Buscema brothers, Dave was ready to tackle the challenge of inking Gene’s art.  He did not shy away from it in the least and went on to ink a lot of Gene’s work.  Gene, years later, said Dave was one of the few who actually knew how to ink his pencils.  Praise doesn’t get much better than that! The approval of one of the first Marvel Bullpen artists who was instrumental in laying the foundation for Marvel Comics along with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita and John Buscema is not an easy thing to come by.

I can relate somewhat to Dave’s experience starting out working with one of his chief inspirations. I’ve penciled and  inked a few independent comics. Dave was one of my chief inspirations for inking when I was a kid. During the ’70’s, specifically, when I really began to understand how to do art for comics. I studied the books I collected just as Dave did. I had my favorite pencilers, Jack Kirby,  John Romita, John Buscema, Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Neal Adams and others. But I also had my favorite inkers: Joe Sinnott, Wally Wood, Dick Giordano, Dave Simons, Terry Austin and others. These are not listed in preference but more in order of when I discovered them. When I joined up with the FBCC I did an early tribute to Dave. It was an inked drawing of Daredevil and Dave. The first one didn’t impress Dave much. He gave me a few tips and I corrected it. The revised one won Dave’s approval. That was a proud moment for me! It would have been enough just to get to meet one of my childhood hero artists, but to actually get to work on some art for him and gain his approval was awesome! I did another tribute with several of the characters Dave had done over the years which he also liked. Of course I’m the least of some of the artists Dave helped out. The list is larger than I can show here but among them are great names like: Mike Mignola , Armando Gil, Gerry Acerno and many more.

When I first learned Dave passed away, last June it was a very sad day to say the least. I had been thinking of ordering a commission from Dave. I had almost narrowed down my list to the one character I would ask him to draw when Stacey Aragon contacted me with the news. The emotion I felt was very similar to when I heard of Jack Kirby’s passing back in ’94, but this one hurt just a little more. As much as I admired him, I never got to meet and become friends with Kirby. Stacey and Daniel Best both let me know how much it meant to Dave that he had so many fans. Daniel said at one point Dave had questioned whether his career really had any meaning. After the great show of affection he received from fans, largely at the FBCC, he was reassured he had.

A few days later Stacey Argon asked me to do another tribute to Dave. I jumped at the chance! I spent several days trying to think of what would honor my friend’s life and work. I finally arrived at the idea inspired by Dave’s cover for What If # 53. It was not an easy piece of art to do. I was trying to do the actual art as much like I thought Dave would do it as I could. Such an undertaking was hard enough with my hectic schedule at the time. Then factor in the emotions of Dave’s passing and the difficulty level is increased three fold! The effort was worth it in the end and  though I had refused payment for the job from Stacey, I was rewarded a few days later with a surprise gift from Stacey and Bob Shaw. The great drawing of Power Girl Dave had done now hangs in a place of honor in my office. This to me was far better than any monetary payment I could have ever received!

But it did not end there, the last tribute I did honoring Dave is now one of two posters which are given to for anyone who donates $25 or more cash to the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship. The other piece of art is the awesome Atomic Robo by Blake Wilkie!

Each year the Joe Kubert Art School will select a promising student who  will be granted $1,000 to assist in their tuition, in Dave’s name. The first series of funds have  already been handed to the Kubert School and the current round of auctions will see funds handed over after this years Inkwell Awards for the 2011 intake.

All of the money for the Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship is supplied by the sale of donated art. Donations come from all sources and from all kinds of people. You can checkout all the details over on the Inkwell Awards site: Dave Simons Inkwell Memorial Scholarship.

We have a couple of YouTube videos of the character which Dave was most associated with and for some of us the first work we remember being credited to him: Ghost Rider!

Archives Spotlight

We continue our look back at our previously posted web comics. We’ll be looking at all that’s come before with this feature and adding new comments as well. This month we are reviewing Project: New Man! Stay tuned to this section Monday, Wednesday and Fridays for more news on our archived titles.

Project: New Man #1 – Page 8 – Okay, here’s the action everyone asked for, just 8 pages into the story! Hold onto your socks, it won’t be slowing down any for a few pages!

Looks like New Man was right on the money with his hunch! The perp uncovers some very heavy duty fire power in the back of his truck. New Man doesn’t hesitate to act on his training thanks to Dr. Johnathan “Chief Thunder” Thunderstorm and his team which we will soon meet: The Thunder Hawks! However, the results are not exactly what Dave had envisioned.

Mark’s Remarks: I caught a lot of flak for the design of the automatic weapon the Mall Killer used. The consensus was it was not very realistic and that I should have used reference. This was in the days before the internet so getting reference was not so easy as it is now. However, I did use reference. I had an old G.I. Joe which carried a weapon like the one I drew up. I was somewhat vindicated a year or two later when Rob Liefield and company drew up some of the biggest, most unrealistic weapons which could be imagined! 😉 But if I had it to do over I think I would have given him an M-16.

Any questions or comments? All are welcome.

CUMonday!

Welcome to Thursday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Happy Birthday Stan Lee! 😀 That’s right today’s “The Man’s” 95th birthday!

Here is an in depth biography of the career of Stan Lee courtesy of those wonderous folks at Wikipedia:

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber, December 28, 1922) is an American comic-book writer, editor, film executive producer, and publisher. He was formerly editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, and later its publisher and chairman before leaving the company to become its chairman emeritus, as well as a member of the editorial board.

In collaboration with several artists, including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, Black Panther, the X-Men, and many other fictional characters, introducing a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he challenged the comics industry’s censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to it updating its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

He was inducted into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. Lee received a National Medal of Arts in 2008. He has had many cameo appearances in films and TV, he holds the number one spot in terms of total revenue generated by all the films an actor has appeared in over their lifetime.

Marvel Revolution 

In the late 1950s, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz revived the superhero archetype and experienced a significant success with its updated version of the Flash, and later with super-team the Justice League of America. In response, publisher Martin Goodman assigned Lee to come up with a new superhero team. Lee’s wife suggested him to experiment with stories he preferred, since he was planning on changing careers and had nothing to lose.

Lee acted on that advice, giving his superheroes a flawed humanity, a change from the ideal archetypes that were typically written for preteens. Before this, most superheroes were idealistically perfect people with no serious, lasting problems. Lee introduced complex, naturalistic characters who could have bad tempers, fits of melancholy, and vanity; they bickered amongst themselves, worried about paying their bills and impressing girlfriends, got bored or even were sometimes physically ill.

The first superhero group Lee and artist Jack Kirby created together was the Fantastic Four, based on previous Kirby superhero team Challengers of the Unknown published by DC Comics. The team’s immediate popularity led Lee and Marvel’s illustrators to produce a cavalcade of new titles. Again working with Kirby, Lee co-created the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and the X-Men; with Bill Everett, Daredevil; and with Steve Ditko, Doctor Strange and Marvel’s most successful character, Spider-Man, all of whom lived in a thoroughly shared universe.  Lee and Kirby gathered several of their newly created characters together into the team title The Avengers and would revive characters from the 1940s such as the Sub-Mariner and Captain America.

Comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that in the 1960s:

DC was the equivalent of the big Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC’s reinvention of the superhero … in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had run into a creative drought by the decade’s end. There was a new audience for comics now, and it wasn’t just the little kids that traditionally had read the books. The Marvel of the 1960s was in its own way the counterpart of the French New Wave…. Marvel was pioneering new methods of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing more serious themes, and in the process keeping and attracting readers in their teens and beyond. Moreover, among this new generation of readers were people who wanted to write or draw comics themselves, within the new style that Marvel had pioneered, and push the creative envelope still further.

Lee’s revolution extended beyond the characters and storylines to the way in which comic books engaged the readership and built a sense of community between fans and creators. He introduced the practice of regularly including a credit panel on the splash page of each story, naming not just the writer and penciller but also the inker and letterer. Regular news about Marvel staff members and upcoming storylines was presented on the Bullpen Bulletins page, which (like the letter columns that appeared in each title) was written in a friendly, chatty style. Lee has said that his goal was for fans to think of the comics creators as friends, and considered it a mark of his success on this front that, at a time when letters to other comics publishers were typically addressed “Dear Editor”, letters to Marvel addressed the creators by first name (e.g. “Dear Stan and Jack”) By 1967, the brand was well-enough ensconced in popular culture that a March 3 WBAI radio program with Lee and Kirby as guests was titled “Will Success Spoil Spiderman”.

Throughout the 1960s, Lee scripted, art-directed and edited most of Marvel’s series, moderated the letters pages, wrote a monthly column called “Stan’s Soapbox”, and wrote endless promotional copy, often signing off with his trademark motto, “Excelsior!” (which is also the New York state motto). To maintain his workload and meet deadlines, he used a system that was used previously by various comic-book studios, but due to Lee’s success with it, became known as the “Marvel Method“. Typically, Lee would brainstorm a story with the artist and then prepare a brief synopsis rather than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the allotted number of pages by determining and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist turned in penciled pages, Lee would write the word balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists were co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Lee built upon. Lee recorded messages to the newly formed Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club in 1965.

Following Ditko’s departure from Marvel in 1966, John Romita Sr. became Lee’s collaborator on The Amazing Spider-Man. Within a year, it overtook Fantastic Four to become the company’s top seller. Lee and Romita’s stories focused as much on the social and college lives of the characters as they did on Spider-Man’s adventures. The stories became more topical, addressing issues such as the Vietnam War, political elections, and student activism. Robbie Robertson, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #51 (August 1967) was one of the first African-American characters in comics to play a serious supporting role. In the Fantastic Four series, the lengthy run by Lee and Kirby produced many acclaimed storylines as well as characters that have become central to Marvel, including the Inhumans  and the Black Panther, an African king who would be mainstream comics’ first black superhero.

The story frequently cited as Lee and Kirby’s finest achievement is the three-part “Galactus Trilogy” that began in Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966), chronicling the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to devour the planet, and his herald, the Silver Surfer. Fantastic Four #48 was chosen as #24 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel’s readers in 2001. Editor Robert Greenberger wrote in his introduction to the story that “As the fourth year of the Fantastic Four came to a close, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby seemed to be only warming up. In retrospect, it was perhaps the most fertile period of any monthly title during the Marvel Age.” Comics historian Les Daniels noted that “the mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s”, and Lee soon discovered that the story was a favorite on college campuses. Lee and artist John Buscema launched The Silver Surfer series in August 1968.

The following year, Lee and Gene Colan created the Falcon, comics’ second African-American superhero in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Then in 1971, Lee indirectly helped reform the Comics Code. The U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare had asked Lee to write a comic-book story about the dangers of drugs and Lee conceived a three-issue subplot in The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (cover-dated May–July 1971), in which Peter Parker’s best friend becomes addicted to pills. The Comics Code Authority refused to grant its seal because the stories depicted drug use; the anti-drug context was considered irrelevant. With Goodman’s cooperation and confident that the original government request would give him credibility, Lee had the story published without the seal. The comics sold well and Marvel won praise for its socially conscious efforts. The CCA subsequently loosened the Code to permit negative depictions of drugs, among other new freedoms.

Lee also supported using comic books to provide some measure of social commentary about the real world, often dealing with racism and bigotry. “Stan’s Soapbox”, besides promoting an upcoming comic book project, also addressed issues of discrimination, intolerance, or prejudice.

In 1972, Lee stopped writing monthly comic books to assume the role of publisher. His final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man was #110 (July 1972) and his last Fantastic Four was #125 (August 1972).

Later Career

In later years, Lee became a figurehead and public face for Marvel Comics. He made appearances at comic book conventions around America, lecturing at colleges and participating in panel discussions. Lee and John Romita Sr. launched the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip on January 3, 1977. Lee’s final collaboration with Jack Kirby, The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, was published in 1978 as part of the Marvel Fireside Books series and is considered to be Marvel’s first graphic novel. Lee and John Buscema produced the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk (February 1980), which introduced the female cousin of the Hulk and crafted a Silver Surfer story for Epic Illustrated #1 (Spring 1980). He moved to California in 1981 to develop Marvel’s TV and movie properties. He has been an executive producer for, and has made cameo appearances in, Marvel film adaptations and other movies. He occasionally returned to comic book writing with various Silver Surfer projects including a 1982 one-shot drawn by John Byrne, The Judgment Day graphic novel illustrated by John Buscema, The Parable limited series drawn by French artist Mœbius, and The Enslavers graphic novel with Keith Pollard. Lee was briefly president of the entire company, but soon stepped down to become publisher instead, finding that being president was too much about numbers and finance and not enough about the creative process he enjoyed.

Peter Paul and Lee began a new Internet-based superhero creation, production, and marketing studio, Stan Lee Media, in 1998. It grew to 165 people and went public through a reverse merger structured by investment banker Stan Medley in 1999, but, near the end of 2000, investigators discovered illegal stock manipulation by Paul and corporate officer Stephan Gordon. Stan Lee Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2001. Paul was extradited to the U.S. from Brazil and pleaded guilty to violating SEC Rule 10b-5 in connection with trading of his stock in Stan Lee Media. Lee was never implicated in the scheme. In 2001, Lee, Gill Champion, and Arthur Lieberman formed POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment to develop film, television and video game properties. Lee created the risqué animated superhero series Stripperella for Spike TV. In 2004 POW! Entertainment went public. Also that year, Lee announced a superhero program that would feature Ringo Starr, the former Beatle, as the lead character. Additionally, in August of that year, Lee announced the launch of Stan Lee’s Sunday Comics, a short-lived subscription service hosted by Komikwerks.com. On March 15, 2007, after Stan Lee Media had been purchased by Jim Nesfield, the company filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment for $5 billion, claiming Lee had given his rights to several Marvel characters to Stan Lee Media in exchange for stock and a salary. On June 9, 2007, Stan Lee Media sued Lee; his newer company, POW! Entertainment; and POW! subsidiary QED Entertainment.

In 2008, Lee wrote humorous captions for the political fumetti book Stan Lee Presents Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying? In April of that year, Brighton Partners and Rainmaker Animation announced a partnership POW! to produce a CGI film series, Legion of 5. Other projects by Lee announced in the late 2000s included a line of superhero comics for Virgin Comics, a TV adaptation of the novel Hero, a foreword to Skyscraperman by skyscraper fire-safety advocate and Spider-Man fan Dan Goodwin, a partnership with Guardian Media Entertainment and The Guardian Project to create NHL superhero mascots and work with the Eagle Initiative program to find new talent in the comic book field.

In October, Lee announced he would partner with 1821 Comics on a multimedia imprint for children, Stan Lee’s Kids Universe, a move he said addressed the lack of comic books targeted for that demographic; and that he was collaborating with the company on its futuristic graphic novel Romeo & Juliet: The War, by writer Max Work and artist Skan Srisuwan. At the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International, Lee announced his YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, which airs programs created by Lee, Mark Hamill, Peter David, Adrianne Curry, and Bonnie Burton among others. Lee wrote the book, Zodiac released in January 2015, with Stuart Moore. The film Stan Lee’s Annihilator, based on a Chinese prisoner-turned-superhero named Ming and in production since 2013, is set for a 2015 release.

In his later career, Lee’s contributions continued to expand outside the style that he helped pioneer. An example of this is his first work for DC Comics in the 2000s, launching the Just Imagine… series, in which Lee re-imagined the DC superheroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Manga projects involving Lee include Karakuridôji Ultimo, a collaboration with Hiroyuki Takei, Viz Media and Shueisha, and Heroman, serialized in Square Enix’s Monthly Shonen Gangan with the Japanese company Bones. In 2011, Lee started writing a live-action musical, The Yin and Yang Battle of Tao.

This period also saw a number of collaborators honor Lee for his influence on the comics industry. In 2006, Marvel commemorated Lee’s 65 years with the company by publishing a series of one-shot comics starring Lee himself meeting and interacting with many of his co-creations, including Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, the Thing, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Doom. These comics also featured short pieces by such comics creators as Joss Whedon and Fred Hembeck, as well as reprints of classic Lee-written adventures. At the 2007 Comic-Con International, Marvel Legends introduced a Stan Lee action figure. The body beneath the figure’s removable cloth wardrobe is a re-used mold of a previously released Spider-Man action figure, with minor changes. Comikaze Expo, Los Angeles’ largest comic book convention, was rebranded as Stan Lee’s Comikaze Presented by POW! Entertainment in 2012.

At the 2016 Comic-Con International, Lee introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s ‘God Woke’, with text originally written as a poem he presented at Carnegie Hall in 1972. The print-book version won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.

Whew! Stan has done more in 95 years than most could accomplish in 200! Supposing someone could live that long. 😉 What an inspiration! ’nuff said!

Happy New Year! CU in 2018!

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Happy Birthday, John Romita!

Happy Birthday, John Romita! John V. Romita Sr., better known among his peers and fans as simply John Romita was born January 24, 1930. The week was his 88th Birthday. For those younger folks who may not know, he is an American comic-book artist best known for his work on Marvel Comics’ The Amazing Spider-Man and for co-creating the character The Punisher. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2002.

Romita is the father of John Romita Jr., also a comic-book artist, and husband of Virginia Romita, for many years Marvel’s traffic manager. (Source: Wikipedia)

Spider-Man – John Romita is best remembered for his rendition of Spider-Man. Romita has more than once admitted how intimidated he was to take over the book from the departing, co-creator of the character, Steve Ditko. He did have some big shoes to fill, but he came through like a champ and re-established the look of Spider-man and his supporting cast and with Stan Lee turned it into Marvel’s biggest selling title, even bigger than their flagship book, the Fantastic Four.

Mary Jane Watson – In the ’60’s Romita was responsible for the look of Mary Jane Watson, Peter Parker’s soon to be girlfriend and eventual wife and ex-wife. Romita was the first to draw Mary Jane Watson who Lee and Ditko had teased readers with references to in dialog but did not show her until Romita assumed the penciling chores on Amazing Spider-Man.

Art Director- Romita acted as the Art Director at Marvel from the late ’60’s up until the late ’80’s. Romita was responsible for designing the look of the Marvel line.

He was responsible for designing packaging for merchandise, titles and character concepts. He designed the first costumes of The Punisher and Wolverine. Although the designs have been altered over the years the basic elements Romita assigned to them have endured the passage of time. Before he assumed the role of Art Director Stan and Jack shared that position with Stan having final say in most everything.

Mark’s Remarks: John Romita was a great influence on my artwork early on even more so than Jack Kirby. The reason for this is I did not start getting Marvels until the close of the ’60’s. Because of the Spider-Man animated cartoon series I came into comics collecting as a Spidey fan. I went on to become an even bigger fan of the FF later. Being a Romita fan first is somewhat ironic because Kirby influenced Romita as well as every artist at Marvel for decades. I did not know that until years later. I was not as a big fan of Kirby’s early Marvel work which I accessed mainly through Marvel’s reprint series. Some of this was due to Kirby’s evolving style as the 60’s went on. Kirby peaked at Marvel from ’65 through 67. He was still great after that period but his style kept evolving and became more abstract after the peak years. In my younger years I favored more realism in the artwork like that of Neal Adams. Another reason for this was the quality of the reprints. I was fortunate to latch onto some low grade original issues of the Fantastic Four years after their initial print runs and the quality compared to  the reprints blew me away!

One of my most cherished memories of the ’70’s Marvel line was the return of Jack Kirby to  Captain America!  Cap #193 leaped off the stands at me, it seemed, with an awesome cover by my two favorite Marvel artists of that time, Kirby and Romita! Both men could do some great work on their own but it was something special when Romita inked Kirby. It reminded me a great deal of occasions when Wally Wood would ink Kirby’s pencils.

The ’60’s and ’70’s were some great years to be collecting comics and developing my cartoon art skills. I had inspiration not only from Romita and Kirby but also Gil Kane, Wally Wood, John Buscema, Sal Buscema, Rich Buckler, Jim Steranko, Marie Severin, John Severin, Bill Everette, Don Heck, Steve Ditko, Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, Frank Brunner, Dave Simons, Gene Colan, Val Maynerick, Jim Moony, Barry Windsor-Smith, Neal Adams, John Byrne, Frank Giacoa, Joe Sinnott and more than my ol’ memory can recollect at this time. It was a special time and fun to recall.

Onward!

Mark

______________________________

Archives Spotlight

Archive’s Spotlight is designed to look at all which has come before and add new comments as well. This posting we are reviewing Project: New Man #4 pages 25-26!

______________________________

Project: New Man #4 – Page 25 – No art changes on this and the next page. Panels 4 & 5 of page 25 has some minor script changes. Every panel got script changes on page 26. Again since we are prepping these books for printing with Ka-Blam Comic Book Printing and digital sales at IndyPlanet as well as DriveThru Comics, we are revising script and art which needs adjusting before going to press. See if you can spot the changes.

CU Next Week!

Fair Use reference to intellectual property of other companies are intended for historical and informational accuracy only. Mega Comics Group™ or Mega Graphics, LLC™ does not represent or have any relationship to any other company or entity or their intellectual property unless otherwise clearly noted. Mega Tales™ and © 2010 Mega Graphics LLC, unless otherwise noted herein.  Project: New Man™ and  Humants™ and © 2010 Freazie White, Jr. D.B.A. Legacy Comics. Tess, the Living Tesseract™ and © Stephen Greg Legat and Mark Poe. All rights reserved. Mega Graphics LLC, licensor.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

Monday we were told the sad news of Marvel Comics founding father’s passing. Stan “The Man” Lee died Monday, November 12,  2018 at the age of 95. We posted the news that day, just a plain black background with Stan’s signature, his date of birth and death and the word “Excelsior!” which we borrowed from the TheRealStanLee.com web site. We were so numbed by the news that’s really all we could think to do. But it seemed appropriate. Today, we want to do a bit more. We’ve started with the basic information from Wikipedia, and added our own memories from readings of articles and books about the Marvel Age and Stan Lee and added photos and pieces of art from all over.

Stan Lee • 1922–2018

A cool animated gif we found on the web. We could not find the artist’s name to credit him, but it’s so cool we just had to share it.

Co-Creator of

Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Mighty Avengers, Daredevil, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, The X-Men and MORE characters and titles than we have room to list!

Stan and his Marvels!

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber on December 28, 1922. He passed on November 12, 2018. He was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher and briefly president of Marvel Comics Group, as well as fulfilling some of these roles for other companies. He is best remembered as the writer, co-creator and editor-in-chief presiding over the founding of Marvel Comics,  during the Marvel Age lasting from 1961-1970 and leading to its expansion from a small division of a magazine publishing house to a large multimedia corporation in itself.

Stan Lee working with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and several artists—co-created the fictional Marvel comic book characters: Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Panther, the X-Men, and—with his brother, co-writer Larry Lieber—the characters Ant-Man, Iron Man, and Thor. He pioneered a more complex approach to writing superheroes in the 1960s, and in the 1970s challenged the standards of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to it updating its policies.

After retiring from Marvel, Stan remained a public figurehead for the company, and frequently made cameo appearances in movies based on Marvel characters. Meanwhile, he continued independent creative ventures into his 90’s until his death in 2018.

Stan Lee was inducted into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2008.

Early Life

Stanley Martin Lieber was born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City, in the apartment of his Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia (Solomon) and Jack Lieber. His father, trained as a dress cutter, worked only sporadically after the Great Depression. Stan had one younger brother named Larry Lieber. He said in 2006 that as a child he was influenced by books and movies, particularly those with Errol Flynn playing heroic roles.  By the time Stan was in his teens, the family was living in an apartment in The Bronx. Stan described it as “a third-floor apartment facing out back”. Lee and his brother shared the bedroom, while their parents slept on a foldout couch.

Stan attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. In his youth, he enjoyed writing, and entertained dreams of one day writing the “Great American Novel”. Stan said that in his youth he worked such part-time jobs as writing obituaries for a news service and press releases ; delivering sandwiches for the Jack May Pharmacy to offices in Rockefeller Center;  ushering at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway; and selling subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. He graduated from high school early, aged 16½ in 1939, and joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project.

Early Comics Career

One of the last series Stan wrote for Marvel was “Stan Lee Meets…”. This one featured Spider-Man. Other “meetings” featured the Thing, the Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange.

Stan Lee became an assistant in 1939 at the new Timely Comics, a division of Martin Goodman’s pulp magazine company, with the help of his uncle Robbie Solomon. Timely, by the 1960s, would evolve into Marvel Comics. Stan Lee, whose cousin Jean was Goodman’s wife, was formally hired by Timely editor Joe Simon.

Stan was not much more than a “go-fer” at first. “In those days the artists dipped the pen in ink, so I had to make sure the inkwells were filled”, Lee recalled in 2009. “I went down and got them their lunch, I did proofreading, I erased the pencils from the finished pages for them”. Marshaling his childhood ambition to be a writer, young Stanley Lieber made his comic-book debut with the text filler “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge” in Captain America Comics #3 (cover-dated May 1941), using the pseudonym, Stan Lee, which years later he would adopt as his legal name. This initial story also introduced Captain America’s trademark ricocheting shield-toss.

Two issues later, Stan graduated from writing filler to actual comics scrpting with a backup feature, “Headline Hunter, Foreign Correspondent.” Stan’s first superhero co-creation was the Destroyer, in Mystic Comics #6 (August 1941). Other characters he co-created during this era which fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books include Jack Frost, debuting in U.S.A. Comics #1 (August 1941), and Father Time, debuting in Captain America Comics #6 (August 1941).

When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left in 1941, Martin Goodman promoted Stan, who was only 18 years old, to be the interim editor. Stan showed a knack for the business that led him to remain the comic-book division’s editor-in-chief, as well as art director from that time until 1972. 30 years as interim editor has to be a record! 😉 He remained in that capacity until he succeeded Goodman as publisher.

Stan Lee served in the U.S. Army Signal Corp. His function eventually was a writer of publications.

Stan Lee entered the United States Army in early 1942 as a member of the Signal Corps, repairing telegraph poles and other communications equipment. He was later transferred to the Training Film Division, where he worked writing manuals, training films, slogans, and occasionally cartooning. His military classification, he says, was “playwright”; he adds that only nine men in the U.S. Army were given that title. Vincent Fago, editor of Timely’s “animation comics” section, which put out humor and funny animal comics, filled in until Stan returned from his World War II military service in 1945. Stan was inducted into the Signal Corps Regimental Association and was given honorary membership of the 2nd Battalion of 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord at the 2017 Emerald City Comic Con for his prior service.

In the mid-1950s,  Stan wrote stories in a variety of genres including romance, westerns, humor, science fiction, medieval adventure, horror and suspense. In the 1950s, Lee teamed up with his comic book colleague Dan DeCarlo to produce the syndicated newspaper strip, My Friend Irma, based on the radio comedy starring Marie Wilson. By the end of the decade, Stan had become dissatisfied with his career and considered quitting the field.

The Marvel Revolution

In the late 1950s, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz revived the superhero archetype and experienced a significant success with its updated version of the Flash, and later with super-team the Justice League of America. In response, publisher Martin Goodman assigned Stan Lee to come up with a new superhero team. Stan’s wife, Joan, suggested that he experiment with stories he preferred, since he was planning on changing careers and had nothing to lose.

Stan Lee and Marvel Cinematic Universe Characters

Stan acted on that advice, giving his superheroes a flawed humanity, a change from the ideal archetypes that were typically written for preteens. Before this, most superheroes were idealistically perfect people with no serious, lasting problems. Stan introduced complex, realistic characters who could have bad tempers, fits of melancholy, and vanity; they bickered amongst themselves, worried about paying their bills and impressing girlfriends, got bored or were even sometimes physically ill.

The first superheroes Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created together were the Fantastic Four, inspired by the Kirby adventure team, Challengers of the Unknown, Jack did for DC Comics a year or so prior to returning to Marvel. The team’s immediate popularity led Stan and Marvel’s illustrators to produce a cavalcade of new titles. Again working with Jack Kirby, Stan co-created the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and the X-Men; with Bill Everett, Daredevil; and with Steve Ditko, Doctor Strange and Marvel’s most successful character, Spider-Man, all of whom lived in a thoroughly shared universe. Lee and Kirby gathered several of their newly created characters together into the team titled The Avengers and would revive characters from the 1940s such as the Sub-Mariner and Captain America.

Stan Lee’s Auto-biography: Excelsior

Comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that in the 1960s:

DC was the equivalent of the big Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC’s reinvention of the superhero … in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had run into a creative drought by the decade’s end. There was a new audience for comics now, and it wasn’t just the little kids that traditionally had read the books. The Marvel of the 1960s was in its own way the counterpart of the French New Wave… Marvel was pioneering new methods of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing more serious themes, and in the process keeping and attracting readers in their teens and beyond. Moreover, among this new generation of readers were people who wanted to write or draw comics themselves, within the new style that Marvel had pioneered, and push the creative envelope still further.

Stan meets the Thing in 2006.

Stan Lee’s revolution extended beyond the characters and storylines to built a sense of community between fans and creators. He introduced the practice of regularly including a credit panel on the splash page of each story, naming not just the writer and penciller but also the inker and letterer. The credits and even the story introductions and sometimes  the narration in the middle of the story spoke directly to the reader with a friendly, chatty style. Stan remarked that his goal was for fans to think of the comics creators as friends. A sign he was succeeding showed up in fan mail they received which began with “Dear Stan and Jack” rather than the customary “Dear Editor.” Letter columns became a focal point of each issue and fans would buy the books and quickly flip to the back to see if their letter made it into he letter sections. The letter pages grew from 1 to as many as 3 pages, some of which were filled with the latest news and goings on of the Marvel Bullpen. The regular news soon found its own page in each issue in addition to the letters page as the Bullpen Bulletins page. Another extension of this friendly policy was Stan’s recorded messages to the newly formed Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club in 1965. The record contained not only Stan’s voice but the voices of most of the Marvel Bullpen artists.

The Stan Lee meets the Thing cover was a homage to the classic FF # 51.

Throughout the 1960s, Stan acted as the head writer, art director and editor in chief for all of Marvel’s new super-hero and adventure titles. He moderated the letters pages, the Bullpen Bulletins pages which included his monthly column called “Stan’s Soapbox”, signing off with his trademark motto, “Excelsior!” (which he borrowed from the New York state motto) and wrote endless promotional copy for ads. Stan would probably never been able to pull this off without adapting a system that was used previously by various comic-book studios. Stan’s version and the success he had with using it, inspired it becoming known as the “The Marvel Method”. Typically, Stan would brainstorm a story with the artist either in his office or on the phone and then prepare a brief synopsis rather than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the allotted number of pages by determining and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist turned in penciled pages, Stan would write the word balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists were co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Stan built upon.

Stan’s greatest innovation would come back to bite its master. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko gradually became disillusioned with the Marvel Method and wanted credit and more pay for the extra work they were doing which they saw as actually writing the stories. They felt Stan was just filling in the words from their notes in the margins. There was a little more to it than that. Actually, Jack and Steve should have gotten paid more and plotting credit, which was something later artists would receive. But at this time in Marvel’s beginnings it just wasn’t happening. Martin Goodman was the publisher and the guy who signed the paychecks. He looked at the bottom line. He was not concerned with the way the books were produced as long as they produced a profit. He wasn’t going to give any of the artists any more than he had to. Stan has said many times he would have done things different if not for Publisher Goodman’s veto.

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were great as a creative team on Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Unfortunately, the two both had their own vision for the characters which eventually lead them in different directions altogether.

Following Steve Ditko’s departure from Marvel in 1966, John Romita Sr. became Stan’s collaborator on The Amazing Spider-Man. Within a year, it overtook Fantastic Four to become the company’s top seller. Lee and Romita’s stories focused as much on the social and college lives of the characters as they did on Spider-Man’s adventures. The stories became more topical, addressing issues such as the Vietnam War, political elections, and student activism. Robbie Robertson, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #51 (August 1967) was one of the first African-American characters in comics to play a serious supporting role. In the Fantastic Four series, the lengthy run by Lee and Kirby produced many acclaimed storylines as well as characters that have become central to Marvel, including the Inhumans and the Black Panther, an African king who would be mainstream comics’ first black superhero.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s finest achievement was the “Galactus Trilogy” that ran in Fantastic Four #48-50 (March-May 1966). The continued storyline chronicled the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to consume all the planets natural resources, proceeded by his herald, the Silver Surfer. Fantastic Four #48 was chosen as #24 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel’s readers in 2001. It seemed to many at the time and looking back years later that after only 4 years of the Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were really just getting started. It was perhaps the pivotal milestone of the Marvel Age. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that “the mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s.” Stan  would soon discover the the story was a favorite on college campuses. Lee and artist John Buscema launched The Silver Surfer series in August 1968.

Stan “The Man” Lee in 1975

The following year, Stan Lee and Gene Colan created the Falcon, comics’ first African-American superhero in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Then in 1971, Stan indirectly helped reform the Comics Code. The U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare had asked Stan to write a comic-book story about the dangers of drugs and Stan conceived a three-issue subplot in The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (cover-dated May–July 1971), in which Peter Parker’s best friend becomes addicted to prescription drugs. The Comics Code Authority refused to grant its seal because the stories depicted drug use. The anti-drug context was considered irrelevant. With Goodman’s cooperation and confident that the original government request would give him credibility, Stan had the story published without the Comics Code seal. The comics sold well and Marvel won praise for its socially conscious efforts. The CCA subsequently loosened the Code to permit negative depictions of drugs, among other new freedoms.

Stan also supported using comic books to provide some measure of social commentary about the real world, often dealing with racism and bigotry.  “Stan’s Soapbox”, besides promoting an upcoming comic book project, also addressed issues of discrimination, intolerance, or prejudice.

In 1972, Stan stopped writing monthly comic books to assume the role of publisher. His final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man was #110 (July 1972) and his last Fantastic Four was #125 (August 1972).

Stan Lee Presents:

In the 1970’s Stan the Writer / Editor In Chief became Stan the Publisher.

In later years, Stan became a figurehead and public face for Marvel Comics. He made appearances at comic book conventions around America, lecturing at colleges and participating in panel discussions. Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. launched the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip on January 3, 1977. Stan’s final collaboration with Jack Kirby, The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, was published in 1978 as part of the Marvel Fireside Books series and is considered to be Marvel’s first graphic novel. Stan Lee and John Buscema produced the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk (February 1980), which introduced the female cousin of the Hulk and crafted a Silver Surfer story for Epic Illustrated #1 (Spring 1980).

Stan moved to California in 1981 to develop Marvel’s TV and movie properties. He was an executive producer for, and made cameo appearances in Marvel film adaptations and other movies. He occasionally returned to comic book writing with various Silver Surfer projects including a 1982 one-shot drawn by John Byrne, the Judgment Day graphic novel illustrated by John Buscema, the Parable limited series drawn by French artist Mœbius, and The Enslavers graphic novel with Keith Pollard. Stan was briefly president of the entire company, but soon stepped down to become publisher instead, finding that being president was too much about numbers and finance and not enough about the creative process he enjoyed.

Stan Lee’s The Traveler

Peter Paul and Stan Lee began a new Internet-based superhero creation, production, and marketing studio, Stan Lee Media, in 1998. It grew to 165 people and went public through a reverse merger structured by investment banker Stan Medley in 1999, but, near the end of 2000, investigators discovered illegal stock manipulation by Peter Paul and corporate officer Stephan Gordon. Stan Lee Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2001. Peter Paul was extradited to the U.S. from Brazil and pleaded guilty to violating SEC Rule 10b-5 in connection with trading of his stock in Stan Lee Media. Stan was never implicated in the scheme. In 2001, Stan Lee, Gill Champion, and Arthur Lieberman formed POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment to develop film, television and video game properties. Stan announced a superhero program that would feature Ringo Starr, the former Beatle, as the lead character. Additionally, in August of that year, Stan announced the launch of Stan Lee’s Sunday Comics, a short-lived subscription service hosted by Komikwerks.com. From July 2006 until September 2007 Stan hosted, co-created, executive-produced, and judged the reality television game show competition Who Wants to Be a Superhero? on the Sci-Fi Channel. On March 15, 2007, after Stan Lee Media had been purchased by Jim Nesfield, the company filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment for $5 billion, claiming Stan had given his rights to several Marvel characters to Stan Lee Media in exchange for stock and a salary. On June 9, 2007, Stan Lee Media sued Stan Lee; his newer company, POW! Entertainment; and POW! subsidiary QED Entertainment.

In 2008, Stan wrote humorous captions for the political fumetti book Stan Lee Presents Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying? In April of that year, Brighton Partners and Rainmaker Animation announced a partnership POW! to produce a CGI film series, Legion of 5. Other projects by Stan announced in the late 2000s included a line of superhero comics for Virgin Comics, a TV adaptation of the novel Hero, a foreword to Skyscraperman by skyscraper fire-safety advocate and Spider-Man fan Dan Goodwin,  a partnership with Guardian Media Entertainment and The Guardian Project to create NHL superhero mascots and work with the Eagle Initiative program to find new talent in the comic book field.

Stan promoted Stan Lee’s Kids Universe at the 2011 New York Comic Con. In October 2011, Stan announced he would partner with 1821 Comics on a multimedia imprint for children, Stan Lee’s Kids Universe, a move he said addressed the lack of comic books targeted for that demographic; and that he was collaborating with the company on its futuristic graphic novel Romeo & Juliet: The War, by writer Max Work and artist Skan Srisuwan. At the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International, Stan announced his YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, which airs programs created by Stan, Mark Hamill, Peter David, Adrianne Curry and Bonnie Burton, among others. Stan wrote the book Zodiac, released in January 2015, with Stuart Moore. The film Stan Lee’s Annihilator, based on a Chinese prisoner-turned-superhero named Ming and in production since 2013, was released in 2015.

Stan Lee Re-imagined Batman with Joe Kubert.

In his later career, Stan’s contributions continued to expand outside the style that he helped pioneer. An example of this is his first work for DC Comics in the 2000s, launching the Just Imagine… series, in which Lee re-imagined the DC superheroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Manga projects involving Stan include Karakuri Dôji Ultimo, a collaboration with Hiroyuki Takei, Viz Media and Shueisha, and Heroman, serialized in Square Enix’s Monthly Sh’nen Gangan with the Japanese company Bones. In 2011, Stan started writing a live-action musical, The Yin and Yang Battle of Tao.

This period also saw a number of collaborators honor Stan Lee for his influence on the comics industry. In 2006, Marvel commemorated Stan’s 65 years with the company by publishing a series of one-shot comics starring Stan himself meeting and interacting with many of his co-creations, including Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, the Thing, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Doom. These comics also featured short pieces by such comics creators as Joss Whedon and Fred Hembeck, as well as reprints of classic Stan Lee-written adventures. At the 2007 Comic-Con International, Marvel Legends introduced a Stan Lee action figure. The body beneath the figure’s removable cloth wardrobe is a re-used mold of a previously released Spider-Man action figure, with minor changes. Comikaze Expo, Los Angeles’ largest comic book convention, was rebranded as Stan Lee’s Comikaze Presented by POW! Entertainment in 2012.

At the 2016 Comic-Con International, Stan introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s God Woke, with text originally written as a poem he presented at Carnegie Hall in 1972. The print-book version won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.

Cameos

Stan Lee received the National Medal of Arts in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Stan Lee and his collaborator Jack Kirby appear as themselves in The Fantastic Four #10 (January 1963), the first of several appearances within the fictional Marvel Universe. The two are depicted as similar to their real-world counterparts, creating comic books based on the “real” adventures of the Fantastic Four.

Stan was parodied by Jack in comics published by rival DC Comics as Funky Flashman. Jack later portrayed himself, Stan, production executive Sol Brodsky, and Flo Steinberg as superheroes in What If #11 (October 1978), “What If the Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four?”, in which Stan played the part of Mister Fantastic. Stan also made numerous cameo appearances in many Marvel titles, appearing in audiences and crowds at many characters’ ceremonies and parties, and hosting an old-soldiers reunion in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #100 (July 1972). Stan appeared, unnamed, as the priest at Luke Cage and Jessica Jones‘ wedding in New Avengers Annual #1 (June 2006). He pays his respects to Karen Page at her funeral in Daredevil vol. 2, #8 (June 1998), and appears in The Amazing Spider-Man #169 (June 1977).

In 1994, artist Alex Ross rendered Stan Lee as a bar patron on page 44 of Marvels #3.

Stan Lee’s How To Draw SuperHeroes!

In Marvel’s “Flashback” series of titles cover-dated July 1997, a top-hatted caricature of Stan as a ringmaster introduced stories that detailed events in Marvel characters’ lives before they became superheroes, in special “-1” editions of many Marvel titles. The “ringmaster” depiction of Stan was originally from Generation X #17 (July 1996), where the character narrated a story set primarily in an abandoned circus. Though the story itself was written by Scott Lobdell, the narration by “Ringmaster Stan” was written by Stan, and the character was drawn in that issue by Chris Bachalo.

Stan and other comics creators are mentioned on page 479 of Michael Chabon’s 2000 novel about the comics industry The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon also acknowledges a debt to Stan and other creators on the book’s Author’s Note page.

On one of the last pages of Truth: Red, White & Black, Stan appears in a real photograph among other celebrities on a wall of the Bradley home.  Under his given name of Stanley Lieber, Stan Lee appears briefly in Paul Malmont’s 2006 novel The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

In Stan Lee Meets Superheroes, which Lee wrote, he comes into contact with some of his favorite creations. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby appear as professors in Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #19.

Stan Lee’s Mighty 7!

In Lavie Tidhar’s 2013 The Violent Century, Stan appears – under his birth name of “Stanley Martin Lieber” – as a historian of superhumans.

There were many more projects Stan had a hand in. Some were successful while others were not. We mentioned mostly the best. Stan Lee was never at a  loss for ideas. A few he had he may well have preferred they be lost after less than favorable receptions, but those were the rare exceptions. Of course, as we wrote in the opening paragraphs of this tribute, when it’s all said and done, what Stan Lee will be remembered for was The Marvel Age of Comics from 1961 through 1970 which laid the foundation for the Marvel Universe and the multimillion dollar enterprises which were born out of it. It’s hard to imagine how the world would have been if Stan Lee and the Marvel Bullpen had never been. It would have certainly been a lot less entertaining.

Welcome to Friday’s Mega Comics Group Updates!

A heart warming cartoon which made the rounds on Facebook last week. It’s signed but we could not identify the artist.

The world still mourns the passing of Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee. Stan was 95 years old and had some health issues the past year so it was not a big shock that he passed away. It was more or less expected but not something any of us was looking forward to of course. We had just lost Steve Ditko and Marie Severin a few months before, and Flo Steinberg last year. To those of us who grew up reading these guy’s work and admiring their art, this is a sad time. Jack Kirby, Sol Brodsky, John Buscema, Don Heck, Wally Wood, John Severin, Chic Stone, John Verpoorten, Gil Kane, Frank Giacoia, Mike Esposito, Gene Colan, Ross Andru, Bob Brown and Dan Adkins all passed on years ago. There may be others as well we can’t recall at the moment.  There are not many of the original Marvel Bullpen of the ’60’s and ’70’s left.  Our generation’s heroes are passing away and an era is coming to an end. 🙁

Roy Thomas and Stan Lee Together Again

Roy Thomas visited Stan Lee on November 10 just 2 days before Stan passed away. Long time Marvel fans will recall Roy was the first full time writer with the Bullpen Stan hired back in 1965. Roy worked on several fillers at first and had long stints on Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, X-Men, Avengers and Conan. He later wrote nearly every series at one time or another for Marvel and succeeded Stan as the 2nd Editor In Chief over the Marvel line in 1972 once Stan became Publisher.

In an article on the HollwoodReporter.com Roy wrote:

 

This may be the last photo of Stan taken before he passed on 2 days later. It’s great that old friends Stan and Roy got to visit again one last time.

“I was just with Stan on Saturday. It was arranged a week earlier for me to come from back east. I was told Stan said he didn’t want to see anybody, but when they mentioned my name, he said, “I’d like to see Roy.” Which was very flattering. I was just with him for half an hour, less than 48 hours before he passed away. He was on the sofa, facing the swimming pool, had kind of a view. He was nattily dressed and so forth. He just didn’t have the energy that he had the last time I saw him. He looked frail, but he could get around when he needed to.”

Roy always complimented Stan’s style in his own writing and often ghosted for him on Bullpen Bulletin pages as well as the Spider-Man newspaper comic strips. As Editor-in-Chief Roy maintained the spirit of the Marvel Age of the ’60’s during his tenure. In short he came closer than any of the Chief Editors in doing it like Stan would have. It’s was good to know Roy got to see Stan again before he passed on.

Roy has another article on the HollwoodReporter.com: Roy Thomas on Life at Marvel in the 1960s you might enjoy.

The Marvel Creator Controversy

Who created what? Do the artists deserve more credit than Stan gave them?

Depending on just how much you know of the comic book industry history, you may or may not have ever heard of this controversy. For a number of years there has been a debate in fandom concerning how much of the Marvel Universe Stan Lee created and wrote as opposed to how much Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko contributed as well as other Marvel Bullpen members. Average fans would probably logically conclude it was a 50/50 split. However, there are those who say that is not so. Some very devoted Kirby fans say Jack wrote all the stories and Stan just did a little editing and put his name on it. Why would they say that? Because Jack was reported to have said similar things in several fanzines for several years, mainly in the ’80’s. Did Jack actually say these things? The interviewer may have merely exaggerated or else misunderstood what Jack was saying. That had happened on more than one occasion with Jack on various subjects. Jack was known to have an opinion about most things but he also had a strong sense of professionalism, so Jack giving an opinion in private or in what he thought was a private conversation was often different than what he would say publicly. This was fairly common practice in the World War II Generation. There were similar rumblings from fans of Steve Ditko over the years but we are not sure whether Steve ever made similar complaints to those of Jack. Steve Ditko was a very private man and as a rule didn’t give interviews. He did not often like to talk about past work, he was more interested in what was next.

A Good Article On the Subject

Daniel Best is a comics fan, writer, author, historian and public speaker. Daniel is a good friend of Bob Almond of The Inkwell Awards (see the ad to the right of this blog). Bob has also inked a lot of Marvel Comics and others for about the past 20 years. Daniel knows a lot of folks in the comics industry in addition to Bob. He has some great insight into all this he has shared in a great article on his blog regarding the controversy. Here’s a couple excepts:

“The Fantastic Four were the flagship of the Marvel line and clearly both Stan and Jack had a fondness for the characters. They were the first in a long line of super-heroes, and they marked the longest continuous collaboration that the two men had, as they worked on the title for 102 issues, plus a handful of annuals from its inception in 1961 through to 1970, creating a volume of work and characters that is still unmatched today.  The characters and concepts that were introduced make up the foundations of the Marvel Universe as we know it – the Silver Surfer, Galactus, The Black Panther, the Inhumans, Adam Warlock and countless others all had their introductions in the Lee/Kirby run.  Even so there is still conjecture as to who did what on the title.

“In one corner are those who firmly believe that Stan Lee had a strong hand in the writing and editing of the book.  This would also mean that Lee had the controlling say over the direction of the title and Lee also took more than an active hand in the creation of the characters.  In the other corner are those who equally believe that Jack Kirby did it all.  This means that Kirby wrote, or, at the very least, plotted every issue, suggested dialogue, created all of the characters alone and controlled the direction of the title.  While it’s true that there are strong arguments to be had for both sides of the fence, such as the fact that Stan Lee never created characters as strong away from Kirby as he did with him, and Jack Kirby’s dialogue left a bit to be desired without Lee’s editing, the absolute truth may never be known as Kirby and Lee were certainly at odds when it came to giving the other man credit for their efforts, although Lee has been more charitable when it comes to giving Kirby his due than Kirby did for Lee.”

You can read the rest of Daniel’s opinions on the research he has done at his blog: OhDannyBoy.blogspot.com

The Return of Jack Kirbys Original Art

An example of Jack Kirby’s pencil art. This was for a Marvel Calendar for, perhaps, 1978.

During the late ’70’s through the mid ’80’s the feud heated up as professionals and fans were taking sides. Lawyers were hired by Marvel and by Jack Kirby and a legal battle ensued. Beginning sometime in the ’70’s it became customary for publishers to return the original art of comic book artists after an issue was published. However  due to some copyright disputes regarding whether or not Jack retained some of the rights to some of the Marvel characters , Marvels legal department held hostage several hundred pages of Jacks original art. It was important to Jack to get his art back. A nice income could be had from the sale of those original art pages to the relative new original art collectors who began to surface in the ’70’s. Jim Shooter was the Marvel Editor In Chief at this time. He wrote on his blog concerning the return of the art:

 

Jim Shooter was the Editor In Chief of Marvel from 1978 until 1987.

“So then because he was suing Marvel, the lawyers felt that the artwork couldn’t be returned — it’s complicated, but doing so could tend to support his claims. In fact, they wouldn’t let me return artwork to anyone while the case was pending. Imagine the frustration of guys like Joe Sinnott and the Buscemas.

“The legal sparring went on a long time. Starting, as most lawsuits do, with a period of threats and legal maneuvering, in 1978 the Kirby side began an aggressive legal and PR attack on Marvel that ended (or lessened somewhat) in mid-1986 when the matter was settled. Though it was a complex case about who owned the characters the way it was pitched to the public by their side was that Marvel — and in particular, I wouldn’t give Kirby his art back.

“During this time, I’d run into Jack at conventions; he couldn’t have been nicer to me. If you look at what Jack said from the podium in those days, he’d acknowledge he had a dispute with Marvel, but he’d also say, “We’re trying to work it out.” He was very gracious about it. Some people around him would get pretty vicious. There was one time I was at a show; I’d sit in the back of the room if I ever went to a panel. Jack was on the panel so I went. There were some other people up there, some of the people who kind of gathered around him; some for genuinely noble reasons, some for self-serving reasons. I think it was Gary Groth who worked this crowd into a frenzy, shouting, “If you see anybody from Marvel, go after them with 2x4s!” I’m in the back of the room, and there’s 300 people between me and the door, and I thought, ‘Hmm, this is going to be interesting.’ “

So Jim Shooter was caught in the middle and took heat for something that was not really his fault. He had to do what the Marvel Legal Department told him got do to keep his job. But Jack did finally get his art back as Shooter recounts:

“So Jack, with his lawyer’s help, sent us a letter refusing to accept the artwork back unless he were given credit as sole creator on all the old stuff he and Stan worked on together. He specifically insisted that Stan would get no credit, and that Jack must get credit, or Jack would not accept his artwork back. That just blew my mind. Shortly after that, I met with Jack in San Diego, and I talked with him. I said, “Doesn’t Stan deserve some credit?” Jack said, “Yeah, he does.” And I said, “So you’d be okay if we put ‘Stan and Jack’?” He said yes. I said, “And another thing, Jack, in your letter you insist you created Spider-Man, and I know you developed a version of Spider-Man, but it wasn’t the one that was actually used. The one that was actually used was the one Steve did.” He said, “Yeah, you’re right, that’s his.” Jack was fine with it; he had no problem. So we settled, and he got his artwork back.

Another example of Jack Kirby’s original art. Thor # 154 form the late ’60’s.

“Finally, Kirby got his art back. But to this day, no one has a clue who Jim Galton was or his role in this. Very few people know the people behind the scenes who were calling the shots in this thing. To the average fan, Marvel was Jim Shooter, and why did he do this? I was in a position where, unless I was willing to get out there and badmouth one of our founding fathers, or badmouth the people who were paying my checks, what could I do? I wasn’t willing to talk bad about Jack certainly, and I felt honor-bound to represent Marvel as best I could, even though I disagreed; not with the legality of their stance, but with the intelligence of it. It was just an idiotic position. I kept hoping I could work something out. From my point of view, no one on this planet fought harder for Jack and his interests than me, ever. I’m the most vilified human being in the world when the subject of Jack Kirby comes up, and it wearies me. It really does. Probably no one will believe me, and at this point, so be it. I’m not interested in proving my case. I’m not interested in getting into a debate over it. I’ve said my piece. They can take it or leave it.”

This reckoning of these events does match other articles and books we’ve read of what really happened. There was a struggle over copyright and returning art which then evolved into who should get the credit for the creation of the characters.

Who Created What?

So did Stan create the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man or did Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko create them?  There is no way to know exactly. Outside of Stan, Jack and Steve there would only be a few others who would possibly know for sure. Some of those have already passed on as well, so the absolute truth in the matter may never be known. None of us were there so we only have second hand knowledge. It should be noted here many who claim they know, base their belief on second hand knowledge as well, so though their intentions may be honorable, their facts may or may not be completely accurate. It is with this in mind we examine the publicly known reports.

Conclusions

Jack Kirby and the Marvel Characters.

What have we learned? We have examined a few reports of the events which occurred leading up to the birth of the Marvel Age. So who created the Marvel Universe? As Daniel Best wrote there are strong arguments from both camps. Those who are ardent fans of Stan lee take his side while those who adore the work of Jack Kirby maintain he created it all. It’s remindful of some of the great Football Rivalries! Who’s the best? It depends on the fan viewpoint!

Stan Lee and the Marvel Characters.

Here at MCG we are torn. We admire both men and their work both together and separate. Most we talked to on the subject do tend to agree on one thing; Stan and Jack did their best work together on the Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, Captain America and their other varied Marvel masterpieces. The same can be said concerning Stan lee and Steve Ditko. It would seem that this could be the strongest argument. Their best work was on titles with both their names in the credits. So maybe it was closer to a 50/50 split than any of them remember or wanted to admit or some bias fans would concede.

Regardless of whose side you take, who you believe created what, like those football rivalries, let’s keep it all in perspective. These are some of our favorite comics from a bygone era. Let’s be thankful for that and NOT let the argument of who did the most work ruin our enjoyment of the books. That’s fair isn’t it?