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Resolving the Question of the Marvel Universe's Origins and Architecture. . . Once and For All (PART III)
Lest we forget:
CREATOR -- n. a person who creates.
CREATE -- n. 1.) bring into existence; make; or cause. 2.) originate.
-- The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary
Questions #3 and #6 were:
3.) Who was it who actually created the overwhelming bulk of the "primary" Marvel Comics characters of that era, and plotted their published adventures?
6.) What are the assessments of those who were actually there at the time, re: Jack Kirby's creative primacy?
Mark Evanier -- who served for years as Kirby's personal assistant and aide-de-camp; and who has a more intimate and thoroughgoing familiarity with Kirby's publishing and artistic history than does any other professional in the industry today -- informs us:
"I can say with some authority -- and with quotes from both Stan
and Jack to back me up, and much existing paperwork -- that
most of the 'Lee and Kirby' comics were done as follows: Stan and Jack
would sometimes get together and talk out the general direction
of the
story, and then Stan would sometimes type up a plot incorporating
both of their ideas. That's sometimes... NOT always."
"At some point, Jack would go to the drawing board and pencil
out
twenty pages or whatever, writing notes in the margin explaining
to Stan what's going on. If you come across original Kirby artwork
of the period, you can still see those notes, easily."
"When Jack handed the pages in, Stan would find out what the
story was about; would take the pages home; and would write the copy
that would go in the balloons."
"Now, you can debate forever as to who's the 'writer' of a book
done
this way. Obviously, not to give Jack any credit for the story
is wrong. [...] he made up plot points and characters and ideas and
controlled the structure of how the story was told. [...]
Jack did what he did without any advance input from Stan at all.
Well, I don't believe you can 'write' a comic after it is penciled any
more than you can write a movie after it's filmed." [emphasis
mine] (16)
Note, if you will, the devastatingly telling "points" to be gleaned from the aforementioned quote:
"Jack did what he did without any advance input from Stan at all..."; "...he made up plot points and characters and ideas and controlled the structure of how the story was told..."; "... writing notes in the margin explaining to Stan what's going on..." "... and then Stan would find out what the story was about..."
Damning enough evidence, surely, versus the modern-day fanboyish cant that "Kirby didn't create any of the baseline Marvel Comics characters; Lee did," all by its lonesome.
In conjunction with all of the following, however... it becomes positively
lethal as counter-evidence:
"Everybody [during Marvel's Silver Age] recognized Jack's
contribution to comics generally, and to Marvel specifically, in
the same way they recognize that God created the heavens and the Earth.
[...] It wasn't merely that Jack conceived most of the characters
that are being done, but more than that -- Jack's point of view
and philosophy [...] became the governing philosophy of the entire
publishing company..."
-- Gil Kane [emphasis mine] (17)
"There were superheroes before, but Jack took them to new heights, and his wonderful characters are a part of our culture. His creations will live on, and many people owe their livelihood to this wonderful man [...] The more you look at all the things that he developed, the more amazed you become that he could create so many wonderful things."
-- Don Heck [emphasis mine] (18)
It goes without saying, of course, that both of the aforementioned gentlemen were artistic contemporaries of the late Mr. Kirby; working alongside him during the creative heyday of the Marvel Comics Silver Age.
In other words: They Were There. 
"Jack Kirby -- and ONLY Jack Kirby [...] co-created CAPTAIN AMERICA; NEWSBOY LEGION; THE GUARDIAN; MANHUNTER; SANDMAN, and many others. In the '50's, he co-created the love comics genre; BOY'S RANCH; CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN; FIGHTING AMERICAN; and many more. In the '60's, he was responsible for the style and creation of almost every Marvel character."
-- Marv Wolfman [emphasis mine] (19)
"When Marvel was worried about the loss of Jack crippling their line, it was that Kirby was this incredible fount of ideas that nurtured not just [his] books, but everyone else's. How much mileage has Marvel gotten out of the Skrulls? Or the Negative Zone? Or the Inhumans, or the Black Panther, or S.H.I.E.L.D., or Doctor Doom, or the Watcher, or umpteen others? [...] One of the reasons Marvel didn't suffer the loss of Kirby much is that he'd left them this incredible cache of characters and concepts. You could put John Buscema on drawing FANTASTIC FOUR, and it would still be a good-looking comic... but John Buscema is not going to suddenly concoct a new Silver Surfer, or a new Puppet Master."
-- Mark Evanier [emphasis mine] (20)
Evanier's bona fides in this matter have already been established, and are unassailable. Wolfman was one of the first of the young "fan" writers to break into the comics industry, back in the 1960's.
Again: They Were THERE.
The following quote is a long-ish one... but: an invaluable one, in its entirety:
"A more common Marvel myth of its own origins has Stan Lee as
the first cause of everything really significant, and Jack Kirby as an
unusually clever artist who developed Lee's ideas with a few twists of
his own; for example, making up the Silver Surfer to accompany Galactus,
whom Lee claims to have created, to fight the fantastic Four, whom Lee
also claims to have created.
[...] "Well, forget it. That's the company's version,
and it suits the company's ends. We have studied the early Marvel
Comics supposedly "Written by Stan Lee, Penciled by Jack Kirby."
We have studied Kirby's work without Lee, both right before his
Marvel years -- CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN [etc.]-- and right after
(the "Fourth World" comics for DC; etc.).
"We've also studied Lee's work with other artists during the same years he worked with Kirby -- Steve Ditko; Don Heck; Dick Ayers; John Romita; Gene Colan; and others. We're forced back to the same conclusion over and over again, in our research: Jack Kirby was the creator.
"We don't deny that Stan Lee scripted those stories. Certainly the wording is Lee's, and probably so are most of the character nuances and quirky relationships. We don't want to downplay them [...] But as for who created the characters themselves; who plotted all their adventures; who gave them their basic essences, and their tragic dilemmas, and their mythic force... that had to be Kirby.
"The very first issue of THE FANTASTIC FOUR is full of more ties to earlier Kirby work than can be enumerated. The four friends whose lives are changed by a crash landing; a gang of heroes eerily severed from normalcy; transformation through cosmic rays; the deformed and obsessed villain; huge, rampaging monsters... and on, and on. Even the structure of the early issues -- full-length stories (an oddity then) divided into four chapters, each with its own title -- is straight out of CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN.
"The big themes of the 'Lee/Kirby' comics were Kirby themes. Gods and god-like aliens; super-races set far apart from man; [...] the element of tragedy; the gangs of driven adventurers; [...] super-science in a context of savage violence... it's all pure Kirby.
[...] "In short: without Jack Kirby, there would be no Mr. Fantastic, no Thing, no Invisible Girl, no Dr. Doom, no Watcher, no Galactus, no Silver Surfer, no Black Panther, no Psycho-Man, no Eternals (or Celestials, or Deviants). There'd have been no Medusa or Black Bolt; no Inhumans at all. There wouldn't have been a Fantastic Four, or any of the villains and supporting characters they introduced. There wouldn't have been any Skrulls, or star-spanning Kree (and, therefore, no "Kree/Skrull War"), and no Captain Marvel for Jim Starlin to get "cosmic" about. There wouldn't have been a "Him," either... and, therefore, no Warlock.
"There wouldn't have been a Hulk, or any Marvel versions of Thor or Loki Or Hercules or [an] Asgard at all, with its trolls and giants and norns and demons. There wouldn't have been an Avengers, a Captain America, an Ant-Man/Giant-Man, or a Wasp. No Nick Fury, no S.H.I.E.L.D., no Hydra, no Red Skull. The Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch would probably have never come back. It's not even certain there'd have been a Spider-Man, since more than one source, INCLUDING LEE, states that Kirby was involved in the character's design, and (perhaps) conception.
"And -- lets all remember -- there would have been no Marvel mutants. No Professor X, no X-Men. No Cyclops. No Jean Grey (and thus, no Phoenix). No Beast, Angel or Iceman. No Sentinels. No Magneto.
[...] "Where the hell would Marvel be without mutants; without the Fantastic Four; or the Hulk; or cosmic drama; or... any of it?
"Nowhere. It would be dead.
"What would there be? Dr. Strange; Iron Man; maybe Spider-Man. There would only have been villains like the Eel, the Porcupine, the Melter and the Matador. There might have been a Daredevil... if the company had managed to drag itself along until 1964. But: it's doubtful."
-- Will Jacobs and Gerard Jones [emphasis mine] (21)
"Neal Adams." "Carl Barks." ""C.C. Beck." "Robert Crumb." "Harlan Ellison." "Steve Englehart." "Jules Feiffer." "Steve Gerber." "Burne Hogarth." "Jerry Iger." "Gil Kane." "Frank Miller." "Alan Moore." "George Perez." "Julie Schwartz." "Jerry Siegel." "Art Spiegelman." "Roy Thomas." "Marv Wolfman."
-- an extremely abbreviated (but representative) sampling of the comics industry writers, artists and editors who willingly signed their names (and lent their support) to the "We, the Undersigned..." petition dent to Marvel Comics in 1986, in the attempt to have Jack Kirby recognized as Marvel Comics' principal creative architect. (22)
The standard razz of the "Kirby Was Just a Hired Pencil" clan is -- and has always been: "Find someone in the industry other than Kirby himself who honestly believes that he was Marvel's principal creator."
The only sensible response to such willful foolishness -- given all
of the foregoing -- is: "Find someone in the industry other than Stan
Lee himself who doesn't."
In point of fact... you might even have a little trouble getting Mr. Lee to take that position:
"When he [Kirby] brought it [the first "Galactus" issue of FANTASTIC FOUR] to me so that I could add the dialogue and captions, I was surprised to find a brand-new character floating around the artwork -- a silver-skinned, smooth-domed, sky-riding surfer on a surfboard. When I asked ol' Jackson who he was, Jack replied something to the effect that a supremely powerful gent like Galactus [...] would surely require the services of a herald who could serve him as an advance guard."
-- Stan Lee (23)
"Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean, I'll just say to Jack, 'Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom...'; or I may not even say that. He may tell ME. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing."
-- Stan Lee (24)
He. Makes. Up. The. Plots. For. These. Stories.
ALL. I. DO. IS. A. LITTLE. EDITING.
Question #3 was: "Who was it who actually created the overwhelming bulk of the "primary" Marvel Comics characters of that era, and plotted their published adventures?"
Question #6 was: "What are the assessments of those who were actually there at the time, re: Jack Kirby's creative primacy?"
Answer, in both instances: Kirby did it.
His contemporaries and peers say so. (Gil Kane; Don Heck; etc.)
Those fans who comprised the first "wave" of new talent in the comics industry, in the late '60's/early '70's, say so. (Marv Wolfman; Mark Evanier; etc.)
Stan. Lee. Says. So.
I've heard it mentioned -- on more than one occasion -- that the notion that of Jack Kirby As Principal Marvel Creator and Architect is a "crank" notion.
Kirby. Kane. Heck. Miller. Evanier. Wolfman. Jones. LEE HIMSELF, for the luvva Odin.
How many "cranks" does it take to make a consensus, anyway...?
At this stage during the rhetorical back'n'forth, the diehard "Kirby Didn't Create or Plot Diddley-Squat" faction generally falls back on their last, "best" argument:
"Well... then... dammit... what about all those issues of SPIDER-MAN? And IRON MAN? And DAREDEVIL? Huh? Huh? Howzabout dem dere comical-type books? HUH -- ?!?"
Check out the final page in this entry, diehards...
... and: prepare yourselves.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
The DC Comics Sub-Directory
The Marvel Comics Sub-Directory
The Miscellaneous Comics Sub-Directory
The "Gotta Find That DC Character" Menu
The "Gotta Find That Marvel/Miscellaneous
Character" Menu