Stan vs. Jack

[Gothos]

His scripting per se was, IMHO (as I've long made clear), risibly horrible, but in fairness an editor with any sort of backbone &/or ability could've remedied that without a whole heck of a lot of work.

Either none existed back in those days, or they were so scared that Kirby would scowl in their general direction that they kept their hands off his insanely clunky prose. (I've used the description more than once that he was tone-deaf to the English language. Then again, if you're going to be incompetent, you might as well be spectacularly incompetent, I suppose. Hmmmm ... y'know, without intending to do so, I think I may've just come up with the raison d'etre behind Rob Liefeld's contuining ghastliness. But I digress.)

Or maybe the thinking was that they'd let him sink or swim on his own; unfortunately, of course, he proceeded forthwith to drown.

One good thing about Kirby's editorship deal was that it did force him to show what he could do when forced to be a one-man band. If he'd never made that demand, fans today would never have the slightest idea as to whether he had some untapped wealth of ability overshadowed by Joe Simon and Stan Lee.

To be sure, there are a couple dozen all-Kirby scripts that I think are solidly plotted and reasonably well scripted, even taking Kirby's Kwirks into account. But many are full of plotholes because Kirby was "writing" the same breathless, helter-skelter way he did in earlier eras, but without a Simon or Lee to supervise, to urge the King to mind his p's and q's. It's because we've seen how Kirby scripted his own works that the more critical-minded fans can see how much difference it made when he had a strong editor/ supervisory collaborator.

I say "more critical minded" because I've argued with some fans who *still* don't believe Kirby didn't flawlessly write everything from the 1940s to the 1980s, and that any plotholes are brought about by interference from other parties (mainly Stan). You can show these people literal grammatical flaws in Kirby's 1970s writing and it means nothing to them, often because they grew up loving that Kirby as young readers. It's true that his quirky writing can be fun, but these fans can't see any fool's gold mixed in with the real gold.

I'm dubious as to whether an editor or scripter could've made much difference in the reception of Kirby's 1970s and 1980s work. I have a feeling that his books didn't enjoy spectacular sales because they belonged to the "gosh-wow" brand of fantasy/SF that had lost a lot of its cachet with older fans, while the 1970s marked a period when comic books were losing their hold on the younger audience thanks to bad distribution and competing media. But that's just my POV.

[Gothos]

So -- when did Stan write good scripts?

Not trying to be a smart ass; I've just honestly never read one, and this seems to be a sticking point that I'm not following. He wrote with flair, but I've never read a book he wrote particularly well.

What are those essential Stan Lee scripts that I've apparently missed out on?

While there's many Lee scripts that are bombastic or corny, I think a lot of them hold up as strong melodramatic (albeit juvenile) adventure.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #3 is a favorite of mine. Since it came out during the same year Ditko left, it shows that Lee could construct a strong plot with good characterization even without Ditko's input.

In fact, far more than SPIDER-MAN ANNUAL #1, which is full of inconsequential tossed-off guest-stars, Stan does a great job of giving a consistent voice to Spidey, his support-cast and all of the Avengers. It's not a perfect story, but it indicates to me that Stan brought the element of "individal voice"to the Marvel books, which I don't think either Jack or Steve could've pulled off, either alone or with other contemporary writers.

[Cei-U!]

So -- when did Stan write good scripts?

Not trying to be a smart ass; I've just honestly never read one, and this seems to be a sticking point that I'm not following. He wrote with flair, but I've never read a book he wrote particularly well.

What are those essential Stan Lee scripts that I've apparently missed out on?

The first five issues of Silver Surfer include a number of quite lovely passages in both narration and dialogue that Stan obviously spent far more time crafting than he usually allowed himself, particularly pages 11 and 12 of #4. But these are most definitely the exception.

The thing about Stan, though, is that unlike nearly all of his contemporaries he wasn't just a writer. He was also editor, de facto art director and PR man of an entire line of comic books, with both business and creative responsibilities. The Marvel Method was born out of sheer necessity because Stan simply didn't have time to write full scripts for his artists and was only rarely allowed to farm out work to other writers, at least until he hired Roy Thomas and Denny O'Neil. Considering he was by 1965 co-plotting and dialoging more than a dozen titles (Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, X-Men, Thor, Daredevil, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Sgt. Fury and several Western and teen humor books), it's kind of miraculous that his writing is as readable as it is.

Cei-U!
I summon the workhorse, effendi!

[emb021]

One thing I think is needed is a clarification on terminology.

What do we all mean by scripting, plotting, writing, etc? It gets a bit confusing to me.

For me, many writers can have plot holes. I've seen some whoopers over the years (situations or characters forget, etc).

With Kirby's solo work, the only issue I have is with his DIALOGUE. Now, I don't know if others call that 'writing' or not. I don't, because for me writing including things like plotting, etc, which I thought was fine. Ditko has the same issue. He's great a plotting/writing, but his dialogue sucks at time. Both of them needed someone to convey their message but in a more naturalistic way.

I think this is part of what caused the riff between Kirby & Ditko and Stan Lee. Stan Lee would put in dialogue that were at odds to how Kirby or Ditko had plotted/written the scene to be. I seem to recall seeing scans of original art from Kirby (from FF and Thor) where he wrote notes as to what was going on, and Stan Lee then dialogued stuff that was totally different.

[JKCarrier]

The reason Jack and Stan were such an effective team was because their strengths perfectly complimented each other. Jack was a font of mind-blowing concepts and amazing characters, while Stan was the detail guy who sweated the nuts and bolts of the presentation. Jack dug up diamonds, Stan cut and polished them to perfection. It's no surprise that Jack's later work was mostly great ideas that could've maybe used some help in the presentation, while Stan's later work has mostly been weak ideas served up with a certain amount of flair (e.g., "Stripperella" is a terrible concept, but a fairly entertaining cartoon, because Stan knows how to pace action and stage jokes).

That said, I do love Kirby's solo work, including his dialogue, precisely because it is so weird. It's strange to me that we celebrate Kirby's visual quirks, but certain people get so bent out of shape because his writing turned out to be equally stylized and idiosyncratic.

[Cei-U!]

One thing I think is needed is a clarification on terminology.

What do we all mean by scripting, plotting, writing, etc? It gets a bit confusing to me.

There are several different methods of writing in commercial comics. The most common method is "full script," in which the writer concocts the plot, breaks the action down into pages and panels (sometimes with thumbnails included), and writes all the narration and dialogue in advance of it being assigned to an artist. In the "Marvel Method," by contrast, the writer provides what in motion pictures is called a treatment: a short plot summary, how short varying from writer to writer and how detailed often depending on the degree of advance input the penciller has. The artist then draws the story, making decisions about staging, pacing, mise-en-scene and other story elements determined by the writer in the full script method. The pencilled pages then either go back to the plotter or to an assigned scripter, who adds the dialogue and captions. Many creative teams' method falls somewhere between these extremes (and of course folks doing both the writing and art do whatever suits them personally) but that's roughly how it works.

Cei-U!
Hope that helps!

[shaxper]

Silver Surfer: Parable is probably the least whince inducing Lee script I've read. It occasionally pushes the philosophy in corny directions at times, but it doesn't lose itself in alliteration or lame attempts at wit. It's pretty damned restrained for Stan.

I definitely enjoyed that one, but more for the concept than the scripting itself. Lee's narration can make me laugh when it's at its most playful, but beyond that, his words hold no real power for me, and I'm a writer.

[shaxper]

While there's many Lee scripts that are bombastic or corny, I think a lot of them hold up as strong melodramatic (albeit juvenile) adventure...Stan does a great job of giving a consistent voice to Spidey, his support-cast and all of the Avengers. It's not a perfect story, but it indicates to me that Stan brought the element of "individal voice"to the Marvel books, which I don't think either Jack or Steve could've pulled off, either alone or with other contemporary writers.

Good points. Individual voice is definitely not a Kirby strong-point, in my experience. It's that "juvenile adventure" aspect that turns me off, though. I like to take my comics seriously and (contrary to popular belief) I think there was a lot of room to do this with comics prior to the Bronze Age. Lee/Ditko's Dr. Strange team-up is a great illustration of this. Ditko was taking the work VERY seriously, and the plotting is pretty damn dire up until the climax (which was absurd), but Lee's "Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth" nonsense seemed to fly in the face of all that.

The first five issues of Silver Surfer include a number of quite lovely passages in both narration and dialogue that Stan obviously spent far more time crafting than he usually allowed himself, particularly pages 11 and 12 of #4. But these are most definitely the exception.

There were definitely a few quotable narration bits in those issues, but the dialogue just plain hurt.

The thing about Stan, though, is that unlike nearly all of his contemporaries he wasn't just a writer. He was also editor, de facto art director and PR man of an entire line of comic books, with both business and creative responsibilities. The Marvel Method was born out of sheer necessity because Stan simply didn't have time to write full scripts for his artists and was only rarely allowed to farm out work to other writers, at least until he hired Roy Thomas and Denny O'Neil. Considering he was by 1965 co-plotting and dialoging more than a dozen titles (Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, X-Men, Thor, Daredevil, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, Sgt. Fury and several Western and teen humor books), it's kind of miraculous that his writing is as readable as it is.

Oh, I thoroughly agree with all of this, but I would therefore argue he was potentially comicdom's best editor, not a great scriptor. And, since, there's so many questions surrounding what character concepts and story plots were his, I'd argue that puts a pretty big question mark next to just how outstanding a talent he really was. We have a far clearer idea of what Kirby was capable of from his earlier work with Simon and his later solo work.

I don't know -- maybe what Stan and Jack chose to do after parting ways best reveals where their strengths truly were. Jack was a plotter and artist at heart. Stan was a PR man, probably the best. Feel free to disagree with this sentiment, but maybe it's those great PR skills that convinced so many fans that he was also a great writer/creator when he was mostly partnering with, and doing the work of a great editor with, the greatest talents of the time.

Again, I'm clearly showing my bias here, so feel free to disagree.

[berk]

Even with his often clunky dialogue I'm still glad Kirby had full control over his solo comics. There's no guarantee an editor or scripter would have understood what he was trying to do in those comics, and we might well have lost some very important moments - moments where Kirby captured the essence of a character or a theme in just a few words. I'll put up with the occasional "Funky corn, Sersi!" rather than lose Darkseid's "tiger-force" speech or the narration over the "epilogue" that begins the New Gods. There's every reason to fear that an editor would have missed the point altogether and drastically altered or misrepresented Kirby's intentions.

[BDiogenes]

Boris Karloff, Ray Harryhausen

Very nice!

I thought those names would resonate. FJA did do one thing which disgusts me, and I tried to ask him about it, but he never answered his phone. Neither did Robert Clarke, if I had the right one, when I rang to praise him for his masterwork in the face of pathetically mundane criticism. That figurative list of mine, of course, also includes those who have influenced me detrimentally through injury, etc.. The icon after a poster's name enables one to view the entire quote, I believe.

shaxper, I respect you and what you were trying to do in this thread and acknowledge your qualifications in how you wanted us to proceed. I question whether the discussion serves any productive purpose. Why can't we just appreciate these pros' strengths without exposing their flaws? Why can't we celebrate them separately or together? We're darn lucky to have had them as long as we did because they unlike rock artists don't travel much (including in dubious aircraft the prescient Ray Bradbury would avoid) and don't partake in substance abuse and other chaos. If it's still possible, shaxper, could you edit your title to read "and" or at least "or"?; the "vs." sounds like King Kong with Godzilla or a court case. But if you wanted to get down to brass tacks in this thread...yet in the process exposing raw feelings and risking harmony.

One of you sought a great Stan script: A. Spider-man 97, with some of the greatest quotations. In the board contest I voted old Spidey stories top 50 as I knew later would amass many; 122 was doing very well in the lists inadvertently visible. Stan's work on Daredevil about the Jester minus JK & SD rumbles, and I also loved Stiltman. I read "New Gods", "Forever People", "Mr. Miracle", and "Kamandi" (don't think I bought "The Eternals", which came later). Many of those didn't last long; you had to give Jack time to create his mythos and generate the kind of momentum Stan built with years of foundation, as well as to come into his own as a writer. FF by Stan can't be excluded from being THE greatest com, but not in 5 or 10 issues. Notice that I defend both pros, not the concept of this thread. dan bailey, if you read this, it bugs me you hate SS. He was a stroke of genius, though not primarily a factor in my adoration of the Galactus trilogy.

Shellhead, for great Steve Ditko writing, "The Creeper". I read those five issues incessantly. One of the greatest atmospherics of all time. Akin to the written Sherlock Holmes. I bought them used a little bit after release and not for SD, who might as well have been Santa Klaus to an ignorant kid.

Which kind of makes sense, in that comics didn't often tell great stories before the '80s.

!?! Objectionable and indefensible and fightin' words in a forum devoted to classic (vintage) coms (but I don't want to fight)! In effect, Shellhead is opining I wasted my comic book life. In retort and retaliation, I say if I am god and if and when the DC and Marvel characters fall into the public domain (Cei-U! can explicate as he excels at such) I will junk and redo everything from Daredevil 130 (1976) onward. Howsa 'bout them apples, Shellhead?

[destro]

On Stan's scripting, I think it's only fair to compare it to other writers/scripting at the time. We are going back and judging his work with adult standards when it was clearly written for children. That adults could enjoy the stories as well was just a bonus.

Were there any other writers at the time who were doing a better job scripting? I certainly can't think of anyone at DC who was comparable. I'm talking early to mid 60s time range here.

[Aaron King]

Were there any other writers at the time who were doing a better job scripting?

Scripters from the time that I enjoy more than Stan Lee:

Bob Haney (Metamorpho)
Arnold Drake (Doom Patrol)
Harvey Kurtzman (MAD, the war books)
Archie Goodwin (Blazing Combat)
Shane O'Shea/Richard Hughes (Herbie)
Carl Barks ($crooge)

I can't say they're better, but I definitely read them more than read Lee.

[Sean@CharitablePress]

On Stan's scripting, I think it's only fair to compare it to other writers/scripting at the time. We are going back and judging his work with adult standards when it was clearly written for children. That adults could enjoy the stories as well was just a bonus.

Were there any other writers at the time who were doing a better job scripting? I certainly can't think of anyone at DC who was comparable. I'm talking early to mid 60s time range here.

Scripters from the time that I enjoy more than Stan Lee:

Bob Haney (Metamorpho)
Arnold Drake (Doom Patrol)
Harvey Kurtzman (MAD, the war books)
Archie Goodwin (Blazing Combat)
Shane O'Shea/Richard Hughes (Herbie)
Carl Barks ($crooge)

I can't say they're better, but I definitely read them more than read Lee.

For the most part, every title you listed above was written for a different audience than the one that Stan was targeting. I know you mentioned that you weren't saying any of them were better or worse than Stan, but it's a tough comparison because of the demographic differences.

And THAT brings us to a form of creativity that really hasn't been talked about too much so far: Marketing and Brand Development.

If we're going to ask who the "most creative" of the two men could be, then we have to look at their ENTIRE body of work. Jack Kirby was an artist, writer, and storyteller. Stan Lee was a writer and an editor. If you would look at that from a "comic book skill set" standpoint, then Jack was the more talented of the two, simply because he could do more. I don't personally believe that his writing was anywhere near Stan's, but Stan's artwork is way worse than Jack's writing.

But that doesn't mean that I believe Jack is more talented.

Jack Kirby was a fountain of ideas in the house of ideas. He created nearly ALL of the characters from Marvel's Silver Age, as well as a doozy from the Golden Age (amongst others). Stan Lee co-created the vast majority of these same characters....but he also created Marvel Comics the COMPANY. It was under his watch and marketing savvy that Marvel grew from near ruin to an utter juggernaut. By the time he was narrating The Incredible Hulk/Spider-man and his Amazing Friends cartoon hour, Marvel was a true powerhouse. His no-prize idea, his soapbox, his foresight to brand the characters, FOOM, Marvel Animation, etc., ALL foretold the marketing giant that has evolved today into billion dollar movies, video games, branded merchandise, etc. etc. etc.

Jack simply wasn't the creative businessman that Stan was, and you can love or hate either man for the difference.

He gave Stan the ability to build the company, don't get me wrong. Stan knew that he could hand a book off to Jack with very little in the way of plot or design specifics, and Jack would come back with a killer book. I'm just saying that there are DIFFERENT forms of "creativity" than just writing and drawing. I know that the original post said "based on artistic merit alone." The thing is, the things that Stan did in regards to creating the Marvel brand WAS more art than science.

Both of these men are giants.....I'd call it a tie.

[dan bailey]

Neither did Robert Clarke, if I had the right one, when I rang to praise him for his masterwork in the face of pathetically mundane criticism.

Ummm ... The Hideous Sun Demon? The scene(s) I glimpsed on TV at age 4 or 5 certainly resonated with me, & when I finally watched the whole thing a few years ago I liked it fine, but I don't know that I'd call it a masterwork.

dan bailey, if you read this, it bugs me you hate SS. He was a stroke of genius, though not primarily a factor in my adoration of the Galactus trilogy.

Standing around between fights & dramatic poses & wringing one's hands while whining, in polysyllabic form, "woe is me" over & over again will never be the way to my heart. Or my shelves. (I've noted before that the SS volume is the only Silver/Bronze Age Essential or Showcase Presents that I don't own -- other than various Spider-Man & Legion runs that I already have in full-color format -- or have any interest in ever owning.)

The Not Brand Echh "Silver Burper" version was wonderful, though.

!?! Objectionable and indefensible and fightin' words in a forum devoted to classic (vintage) coms (but I don't want to fight)! In effect, Shellhead is opining I wasted my comic book life. In retort and retaliation, I say if I am god and if and when the DC and Marvel characters fall into the public domain (Cei-U! can explicate as he excels at such) I will junk and redo everything from Daredevil 130 (1976) onward. Howsa 'bout them apples, Shellhead?

Sounds about right to me, except that with most of the really iconic characters I'd go back to 1969 or so. That way, I could pretend (as I tend to do anyway) that silliness like "Kryptonite No More" & 6- or 32- or 144- or however-many-armed Spider-Man never happened.

[BDiogenes]

Aaron King (and AdamYK), I absolutely adore (to employ that word anew) Metamorpho. Never knew of Bob Haney or Ramona Fradon - in those days I wasn't a credits person. Literati would term M. offbeat. Man, the surrealism! Too bad DC was past its era of great cover coloring. Did you get the B & B with Metal Men? El Dorado. I snagged at least MM 25 new and would have to check the covs to ascertain any prior obtained thus. By a feat of memory I pulled out a title almost 40 years on, "And Hellgrammite Is His Name!" to feature in a game I play with a childhood sweetheart. Hope I recall his alter ego correctly. Bought some new from my first candystore, where I initially purchased any coms steady, owned by Greek people, hence my pet name The Greek Store, near the northwest corner of 8th Ave. and 45th St., what I would now dub Heaven, and 1 1/2 blocks up, The Mean Store where I bought SS 1, another candystore. Maybe I stepped on Steve Ditko's footprints. Got a grease stain on one M. cover. What about a teamup with Ultra? Nirvana. Ommmmmmm! By another feat on a separate occasion I systematically remembered Ultra's name, which was remarkable for someone who never collected MS. I'd picked up one ish in Grand Central, and yes, I could specify the site. I could talk forever.