Sean Howe posted a moving Fred Hembeck strip today over at his Marvel Comics: The Untold Story Tumblr. It seems to have been originally published in 1986 on the occasion of Marvel’s 25th anniversary, but it’s still relevant 27 years later.

And yeah … I know that, and you know that … but I don’t think they know that.

Since I’m always bitching to you when I see fine art interpretations of comics go for big bucks while images by the artists who toiled in the field go for peanuts—as when I complained that a pop artist’s version of Green Lantern sold for 7,723 times more than one by the man who created the character—I owe it to you to share that for once, the comics field won.

You may have heard that a page of Jack Kirby and Joe Sinnott artwork from Fantastic Four #55, one starring the Silver Surfer, was sold earlier this month by Heritage Auctions for $155,350.

But what you might not know (and what I only just remembered) is that Sharon Moody, a fine artist about whom I’ve written at length before, is either offering for sale or has already sold her own interpretation of that same page. (more…)

Well, that was fast! Less than an hour after putting out the call, I had scans for all the Captain America and Black Panther letters pages I wrote while at Marvel back in the ’70s.

So what will they reveal? Was there truly an orchestrated effort by us staffers, as some have claimed, to use the letters columns to sow seeds of dissatisfaction with Kirby among fandom?

Since I assembled many of those columns, I thought it important to respond with the facts, because as far as I know, none of those making such claims have done more than repeatedly make the claim, without evidence. What does a look at the actual texts of six such pages I put together for Kirby-created comics actually reveal?

(And a big thanks to Sean Howe, author of the upcoming history of Marvel in the ’70s, for responding so quickly!)

So let’s dig into Captain America 202, shall we?

Lots of positivity there, beginning with a letter that includes the line, “THIS is the Kirby I remember.” While the column does include is a letter hoping Kirby doesn’t do away with the characterization of the previous creative team, when isn’t there a letter like that whenever someone new is at the helm?

Since the column for issue 203 was about all-important issue 200, I managed to squeeze in 13 letters. And the ratio? (more…)

Do you have easily accessible copies of Captain America 202, 203, 205-207, or Black Panther 2? Are they reading rather than slabbed copies? Would you be willing to scan the letters columns and send me .jpgs?

If so, you might be able to help me dispel a Marvel Comics myth.

Yesterday, I posted a response to Robert Steibel’s commentary on my post of last year in which I recoiled from Jack Kirby’s mid-’70s run on Captain America.

Though he didn’t bring up the following point in his essay, Steibel and I exchanged a few emails, and in one of them he claimed that Marvel staffers were weighting the letters columns against Kirby in an attempt to orchestrate a campaign within fandom to get The King kicked off the books he was writing at the time.

I’d never heard such an accusation before, but when I searched online, I found that he didn’t originate the concept, that it had been comics hearsay for quite awhile, and that some even claimed staffers were creating fraudulent letters to make the Kirby backlash seem even worse. For example, Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon reported on this in their 2003 biography, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book.

The thing is, though the charge of faking negative letters has been bandied about, it all seems to be vague rumor and speculation. I’ve yet to see anyone point at a specific column and say that such-and-such a letter was cobbled together by an Assistant Editor.

Since I only just heard the charge for the first time this weekend, it took a day for the idea to sink in, and for me to realize—

Wait a minute! I was the one who wrote many of the letters columns that appeared in Kirby’s books. I’m the one being accused of fakery! (more…)

Over at the Kirby Museum, Robert Steibel has something to say about a post I wrote a year back which explained how, when I was working for Marvel in the ’70s, I disliked the work Jack Kirby was doing upon his return there, and how I dislike that work still. By work, I don’t mean the energetic as always images Kirby was drawing, but the text he supplied once he was responsible for both words and pictures, without Stan Lee to complement him. As I wrote in that post, “The art could still be the stuff of dreams at times, but the words that came out of his characters’ mouths seemed more like a nightmare.”

When it comes to the Stan vs. Jack wars, I am a partisan of neither. Once the duo disbanded, I don’t think either of them ever worked separately at the level they did when together. They needed each other. So I wasn’t slamming Kirby to elevate Lee, merely making an observation that when the King tried to do it all, it was far from satisfactory.

But let’s leave for another time the debate as to who’s right about the quality of Kirby’s prose. (Though it looks like that time won’t be too far off, as Steibel’s post, after all, was the first of two, and his second will deal with exactly that issue.) What I’d like to address here, and what it seems as if Steibel is most interested in having me address, is my behavior when I was on staff at Marvel in the ’70s, whether there was a conspiracy of some kind to cause Kirby to be fired, and if we were trying to get the scripting duties of his books for ourselves.

Steibel wrote:

Clearly they were all ambitious kids who wanted to take Jack’s place. They wanted to write comics and pointing out what they considered flaws in Jack’s work was a step in that direction. Push Jack aside and move in.

No, no, a million times no.

But to be more specific … (more…)

I recently ran across an interview I did way back in 1976 for a newspaper called Compass, and while I’m surprised by what I’ve forgotten since then, I’m also a little surprised by what I remember now that I didn’t seem to remember then.

Let’s see what those forgotten facts are/were, shall we?

I said: “I remember picking up Fantastic Four #1. I guess I was bored by comics before then—I can’t remember anything before that. There may have been others, but if there were, I’ve forgotten them.”

And yet … how could that be? Because today I remember, among other things, reading copies of pre-Fantastic Four issues of Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and The Brave and The Bold, particularly the issue of that latter title that included the first appearance of the Justice League of America. Did I only read them as used copies traded for or bought later? But surely I read comics before FF #1. Am I misremembering now or was I misremembering then? There’s no way to know now!

And what’s this? I sold a story to Marvel the year before I went on staff there as an editor? And Craig Russell was going to draw it? Really?

I have zero memory of this, but apparently, five years before my short horror story “Picasso Fever” appeared in the DC Comics’ title Secrets of Haunted House, Tony Isabella had accepted it to appear in an issue of Monsters Unleashed—to be drawn by Craig Russell! When I now tell the story of how I got into comics, it all begins with my job in Marvel’s British reprint department. If I hadn’t read this anecdote with the words quoted as coming out of my own mouth, I’d never have believed it! But man, I sure would have loved to have seen what Craig would have done with that story!

There was a lawsuit threatened over the Scarecrow? Really? (more…)

I headed to Manhattan Saturday for a visit to the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery so I could see for myself those Sharon Moody paintings which had so ticked me off three weeks ago. Would experiencing the real-world art hung on a gallery wall, as opposed to seeing them diminished into relatively small .jpgs, change the way I felt? Would attempting to see the artwork with the guidance of gallery director Frank Bernarducci lessen my irritation about what I saw as an obvious attribution issue?

I believed both the art and the artist deserved a shot at changing my mind, so it was worth a trip before the exhibition closed, which it will do on the 15th. So if you want to see it yourself, you’d better hurry.

[And since I don’t want to recap everything I’ve said before, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, and want to catch up, check out this, this, this, this, this, and this, in that order.]

But first, before diving into the visit itself … a tangent.

One reason I’m sensitive to this issue is because the artists whose work has been repurposed here are more than just names to me. Sure, some of them I may know from their work only (albeit work that affected me deeply and helped transform my life), but there were others who were far more than that to me. I worked alongside many of these creators during my days on staff at Marvel Comics (and yes, that’s what I looked like below, seen with my then-future wife in photos from the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention program book) and later as a freelancer for both Marvel and DC.

So I think of these people as friends and colleagues. And when I see an image by Jack Kirby or Ross Andru or José Luis García-López (the last of whom actually drew one of my own stories) or any other comics creator used without even a tip of the hat, I take it personally.

Ironically, even the gallery visit itself was personal. Because 37 West 57th Street happens to be only a block and a half away from 575 Madison Avenue, where I spent so many years working for Marvel during the ’70s. Whenever I’m in that part of midtown Manhattan, I usually pause in front of the building to remember of how my life was changed there. So you can see how wading through the geography of comics past to speak up on behalf of comics past might have gotten me a little verklempt.

But enough misty-eyed nostalgia … (more…)

Some who’ve read my recent posts “A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists“, “A few further thoughts on the artwork of Sharon Moody,” “Brian Bolland’s brilliantly blistering rebuttal,” and “Why a comic book isn’t a Hershey’s bar” seem to have gotten the erroneous impression that I’ve have a thing against mashups, smashups, allusions, sampling, remixing, tributes, homages, or whatever word you’d prefer to use for the act of performing alchemy on existing works to make something new.

Hey, I’ve got no problem with any of those acts—I’ve committed many of them myself. But I do believe one should always act honestly, openly, and with full disclosure, especially when one is borrowing from another artist who could be considered il miglior fabbro.

I actually love that kind of comics-related art when done appropriately. Here are some examples that intrigue or entertain me rather than offend.

You should make a habit of visiting the Covered blog, where contemporary artists reinterpret classic (and some not so classic) comics covers.

Check out Brodie H. Brockie’s take on Flash #175.

One thing to note is that beneath these images, in addition to crediting Brockie, Covered also stated, “Original cover by Carmine Infantino and Mike Esposito; DC 1967.” The correct and classy thing to do. (more…)

I was reading the December 12 issue of the New York Observer when I spotted something that irked me.

Now understand, finding something in the Observer that offends me isn’t at all unusual. Not an issue goes by when I don’t discover something to offend me in the salmon-colored pages of this snide, smarmy rag, which encapsulates just about everything I dislike about New York. It’s a publication for the 1%. When I think of its intended readership, what comes to mind is that picture going around of champagne-swilling bankers smirking while looking down at Occupy protesters from a restaurant terrace.

And to answer your unasked question—which I assume would be, “Well, then why did you subscribe?”—my subscription was entirely accidental. I had expiring air miles—from Delta, I think—and used them to sign on for a bunch of magazines and newspapers. I’d never read the New York Observer before then, and once the issues started arriving and I saw what I’d gotten myself into, I looked forward to the sub ending so I wouldn’t be tortured by its worldview. I’d read each issue while metaphorically holding my nose, doing my best to treat it as an anthropological study of a zeitgeist I despise.

And now that I’ve gotten that rant out of my system …

What was it in particular that I suddenly felt a need to bring to your attention? Something I saw in a half page ad for the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery. It offered for sale a single painting: “Mjolnir—To Thy Master!”

Take a look for yourself.

The artist’s name was … Jack Kirby, right? Wrong. It’s the work of an artist named Sharon Moody, and Kirby’s name was nowhere to be seen. I investigated a little further, and discovered other similar paintings. (more…)

I’d thought enough time had passed that I could forgive Jack Kirby. But I just learned I was wrong.

I was on staff at Marvel Comics in the mid-’70s when the King returned and tried to pick up where he’d left off. At the time, as I sat there in the Bullpen with my blue pencil and proofread the original art for some of his initial issues of titles such as Captain America, which he not only drew, but wrote and edited, I was horrified. The art could still be the stuff of dreams at times, but the words that came out of his characters’ mouths seemed more like a nightmare.

The buzz from us kids in the office wasn’t kind. I’ll admit it. Kirby was a god to us for what he did during the ’60s, but what he was doing at Marvel in the ’70s made us wince, and we didn’t have the tact or maturity to say it appropriately. So we acted like ungrateful punks. But now that the years have passed, as I read some of those issues of Captain America over again, I’m wincing still.

The reason I’m subjecting myself to them once more is because two of the backup stories I wrote at the time have been reprinted in The Essential Captain America Vol. 6, and after first rereading my own work (of course!), I decided to give Kirby’s another shot.

The powerful artwork still made me smile, and the frenetic pacing caused my childhood to rush back again, but as for the words on the page—Ouch!

Not only do none of the characters talk the way people actually talk—or even the hyperbolic, melodramatic way superheroes talk—but they are barely coherent. And what’s worse, in Captain America #207, old winghead, after discovering that a tyrannical dictator in a banana republic was torturing his people, decided to do NOTHING, basically declaring it none of his business!

Here’s that disturbing panel.

Until this rereading began, I was only offended by the crudeness and incomprehensibility of Kirby’s dialogue, but now, decades later, I’m also repulsed by Cap’s decision, no matter how well or poorly it was phrased.

Shame on you, Captain America!

If I ever needed a reminder of how much Stan Lee and Jack Kirby needed each other, neither ever creating separately at anywhere near the level they did when together, man oh man, this was certainly it.