Stan Lee Criticism

[stanthemanfan]

Hello,

I have been lurking on the CBR forums for a while, and I have appreciated many of the posts I have read. That is why I would like to ask you all for some help with a project of mine, because I am not very knowledgeable in the history of the comic book genre. I am writing a paper on Stan Lee, and I have to address what critics (contemporary to him or from following time periods, and can be negative or positive) have said about him or his products.

The only thing I have found is the following:

"With wounded pride, [Jack] Kirby downplayed Lee's importance in creating Marvel comics, insisting that "Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything!" (On other occasions, Kirby could be more generous in acknowledging Lee's importance and regretted the harsh words he uttered in this interview). "

I would be very grateful if anyone could help me with any negative or positive criticism (from articles, journals, internet, or anything really) on Stan Lee.

Thank you.

[gary]

Hi there,

There was a book that came out (in the early 90s, I think) that reprinted various interviews that Jack Kirby had given - I think it was published by the comics journal.

In one of the later interviews Kirby just goes way over the top, stating that Stan never created anything and that he never saw him write a thing in his life. I think this is the interview that your quote concerns - it was a joint interview with Jack and his wife, Roz. If you're looking for criticism of Stan then that may be a good place to start.

Mark Evanier has just published a new biography of JK which may elaborate on some of this. There is an interesting faq. section on his site that deals with the Lee/Kirby conflict:
http://www.povonline.com/jackfaq/JackFaq1.htm

Stan Lee's autobiography, Excelsior contains his version of the conflict with Kirby and Steve Ditko. There was a documentary shown last year in the UK that centered on Steve Ditko, presented by Jonathan Ross. This went into the Lee/Ditko feud in some detail.

Good luck with the paper!

[Carl Creel]

If Stan didnt write these stories did Jack write them??

[Deep_Sleeper]

A lot of people bash Stan Lee. I just think he's had a hand in creating way too many long-lasting characters to be a fluke.

Jack Kirby has created amazing designs and there's no denying the man's ability create the astonishing, but Stan Lee brought out aspects of characters that Jack never could.

[Reptisaurus!]

If Stan didnt write these stories did Jack write them??

Both wrote them.

"Writer" and "artist" aren't really set descriptions - Every working relationship is different.

Both Lee and Kirby were involved in plotting. They'd generally cobble up a quick plot synopsis, couple of paragraphs IF they wrote anything down.

Then Kirby would draw the story. Then Stan would write the dialog. (Mostly- Kirby often wrote in filler dialog and narrative descriptions - Lee would generally, but not always, change Kirby's original words.)

This certainly made Kirby more of a writer than if he was working from a full script - He had pretty much total control of the pacing and nuts and bolts plotting of his stories. But it's categorically untrue that Stan Lee wasn't involved in the writing of anything with his name on it.

Not Kirby, but here's a quote from John Romita Sr. on working with Stan, from the Comics Journal 252.

I felt like a contributor, but I didn't plot the story from scratch. Stan would always come up with a thought. There were times when I got very little, and then built on it. There were times when we would have a 15-minute conference and we would be interrupted, and I would never get back to Stan and I would be stuck with a very skimpy concept that I would have to flesh out. Those are the ones the family did when we were in the car traveling, because I would have a beginning and an end but nothing in the middle. When Stan started to give Jack Kirby plotting credit -- the ultimate was when it became a Stan Lee and Jack Kirby production. When you were saying it was produced, that was the ultimate comment. "Produced by Stan Lee and John Romita," that said I was the co-producer of this story and these characters and this product. It was a very, very good feeling.

[rZi]

A lot of people bash Stan Lee. I just think he's had a hand in creating way too many long-lasting characters to be a fluke.

Jack Kirby has created amazing designs and there's no denying the man's ability create the astonishing, but Stan Lee brought out aspects of characters that Jack never could.

hitting the nail on the head.

[leebrown1990]

One criticism could be that working relationships with him seem to deteriorate, and his alleged mis-treatment of artists. I don't believe this to be all his fault, obviously he is partially responsible but in each case there have been two parties involved; Ditko and Kirby. There is a small section on the former relationship in BBC4's "in search of Steve Ditko."

He is also critiqued for his memory, and even in print he has mistakingly mis-named characters e.g Peter Palmer in spider-man (, they left this unedited in the new Spider-man omnibus lol.) So there's two source of quotes for criticism, provided you don't mind quoting an error, as opposed to a critical description or opinion of him.

Edit: Also just like to say that there were supposedly issues in both Ditko's and Kirby's runs on ASM, were they would write an entire issue without any, or very little input from Stan from the start. Either he would simply say "we could do an issue with Sand-man capturing Mary-Jane ," or Ditko in particular did this; the artist would go straight to the drawing board and just tell the story he wanted too. Then after the pencils were done to complete the story, Stan would take the storyboard and just fill in the dialog etc.

[Iron Maiden]

I think, from having read part of the Evanier book so far, that a lot of the bitterness from Kirby's side comes from his compensation from Marvel, most of which was the fault of the various publishers. First of all would be Stan's cousin in law Martin Goodman. He was notoriously thrifty and the artists and inkers live by the page rates. Add to that was that Jack had no benefit package to speak of , i.e. medical insurance, from what I recall from the book. I think that is still a problem in the industry. Look at what happened with Dave Cockrum. That was the kind of thing Jack Kirby feared...being destitute and not being able to support his family. This is what motivated Kirby to work long into the night. His wife Roz would wake up to find him still at the drawing board.

Naturally, a writer/editor could make more because it takes a lot more effort to draw a panel that has the Mighty Avengers attacking Castle Doom than to write just that. I imagine Kirby thought Stan had it easier than he did and he also felt that he wasn't treated fairly by Marvel. He was no happier in his move to DC either.

As someone else mentioned, I credit Stan for pioneering the concept of giving the creative team prominent credit on the splash pages. We still have Romita Sr and Gene Colan, both veterans from that era and they have no issues with Stan. I also give Stan credit for being sort of the guy who kept every thing running back then, getting the books out on time, assigning the artists, inkers, etc. He created this sense of camaraderie between Marvel and the fans, i.e. with Stan's soapbox and the frequently humerous letters pages, and creating the tongue in cheek pseudo rivalry with the competition dubbed "Brand Echh". As someone who was around to buy them off the old spinner rack, Marvel was just a fun, quirky little line to follow. They were limited to the number of titles they could put out a month because of the arcane distribution practices back then ... DC pretty much controlled it through another company as I recall. That's why there were shared titles like Strange Tales featuring Doctor Strange and the Human Torch and so forth. They also wanted to limit the number of competing titles Goodman's company would come out with since they felt the FF, Avengers, and X-Men were riding on the coattails of DC's successes with team titles.