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…)

As you learned yesterday, someone—I always assumed Stan Lee, and Roy Thomas has since agreed with me on that assumption—felt that Professor X should sound like Leslie Howard … without an English accent.

But how about Captain America? What was he supposed to sound like?

Would you believe … Rock Hudson?

From discussions with others who worked with me in the Bullpen (and some who worked there long before I arrived), I’m leaning away from these having anything to do with educating the writers who’d come after Stan or arming the merchandising department with the ammunition it would need to better sell the characters, and toward them having been written to pitch the characters for cartoons, maybe even the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes series.

I could be wrong … but that’s what my gut’s saying for now.

Check back tomorrow to find out which two actors are supposed to come to mind when you hear the voices of Don Blake and Thor!

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.

Over at the wonderful ’80s comics site Blinded Me With Comics—which is a companion site to the great ’70s comics site Diversion of the Groovy Kind—a recent post highlighted Captain’s America’s run for the presidency.

This all took place back in a 1980 story arc by writer Roger Stern and artist John Byrne, though the post also reprinted the letters page from Captain America #250 in order to give credit to the two guys who first suggested that concept—Roger McKenzie and Don Perlin. (more…)