I’m not a big Stan Lee fan which likely puts me in a minority.
Mind you I met Stan once a long, long time ago and he was a genuinely nice person and he is indeed a nice person when you meet him. He’s a social person, in a big way but even though he is I can’t say over the years I’ve grown to be a big fan of his, if anything I’ve gone entirely in a different direction after having grown up suckling at the teat of Marvel’s ‘Golden Age’ back in the sixties and the seventies.
The big reason for that is I realized some time ago if you go back and look, really look at what Stan was without Jack Kirby it’s remarkable.
Stan was Martin Goodman’s nephew by marriage meaning in a very small company he was related to the big boss. When Jack Kirby started at Timely, Stan Lee was a gopher, there‘s just no other way to put it. Jack created Captain America which was a huge hit at the time (among the many other things Jack did).
How did Timely do without Jack?
In the sixties if you go back and see Jack’s notes in the margins of pages he pencilled things become a lot clearer about who was doing the heavy lifting in that ‘partnership.’
Let‘s put it this way... what has Stan done in the ensuing years afterwards, after Jack left during that Golden Age. What work can you point to that stands out?
You know, Jack left and went to DC... the guy is penciling AND WRITING in some cases over 100 pages a month. The material he’s writing? The New Gods, Darkseid, Kamandi, OMAC, Jimmy Olsen, Mister Miracle... any of those sound familiar?
And then, he goes back to Marvel works on Captain America some more and also creates the Eternals, Devil Dinosaur and Machine Man just to name a few.
There was a big campaign throughout the eighties to have Marvel return Kirby’s originals to him in the meantime after Martin Goodman sold his company Stan (NEPHEW BY MARRIAGE) got a nice little golden parachute of a million dollars per year (which Stan gets for LIFE).
And then there’s the movie cameo thing... I’m sorry, but to me it’s just Stan jumping out to grab the limelight again after a lifetime of doing that.
Mind you I met Stan once a long, long time ago and he was a genuinely nice person and he is indeed a nice person when you meet him. He’s a social person, in a big way but even though he is I can’t say over the years I’ve grown to be a big fan of his, if anything I’ve gone entirely in a different direction after having grown up suckling at the teat of Marvel’s ‘Golden Age’ back in the sixties and the seventies.
The big reason for that is I realized some time ago if you go back and look, really look at what Stan was without Jack Kirby it’s remarkable.
Stan was Martin Goodman’s nephew by marriage meaning in a very small company he was related to the big boss. When Jack Kirby started at Timely, Stan Lee was a gopher, there‘s just no other way to put it. Jack created Captain America which was a huge hit at the time (among the many other things Jack did).
How did Timely do without Jack?
In the sixties if you go back and see Jack’s notes in the margins of pages he pencilled things become a lot clearer about who was doing the heavy lifting in that ‘partnership.’
Let‘s put it this way... what has Stan done in the ensuing years afterwards, after Jack left during that Golden Age. What work can you point to that stands out?
You know, Jack left and went to DC... the guy is penciling AND WRITING in some cases over 100 pages a month. The material he’s writing? The New Gods, Darkseid, Kamandi, OMAC, Jimmy Olsen, Mister Miracle... any of those sound familiar?
And then, he goes back to Marvel works on Captain America some more and also creates the Eternals, Devil Dinosaur and Machine Man just to name a few.
There was a big campaign throughout the eighties to have Marvel return Kirby’s originals to him in the meantime after Martin Goodman sold his company Stan (NEPHEW BY MARRIAGE) got a nice little golden parachute of a million dollars per year (which Stan gets for LIFE).
And then there’s the movie cameo thing... I’m sorry, but to me it’s just Stan jumping out to grab the limelight again after a lifetime of doing that.
Stan is a LIKEABLE GUY, he’s very charming but whenever I see one of these movies, I think of Steve Ditko who lived in poverty and Jack Kirby among others who did a lot more to establish those concepts and create those characters and who don’t quite get the same level of acknowledgement outside of comics fandom.
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