Marvel Comics: The Untold Story
Page 49
Although this is not an “official” account of Marvel’s history, Marvel’s Arune Singh, and Jeff Klein at DKC were invaluable in arranging interviews and a pleasure to work with. Thanks go to Gregory Pan for the amiable exchanges.
My virtuoso agent, Daniel Greenberg, encouraged this project from the very beginning, and provided sage guidance and good humor throughout. Thanks to him and his team, especially Monika Verma, at Greenberg-Levine. At HarperCollins, my graceful editor, Tim Duggan, applied laserlike focus to an unwieldy manuscript; his contributions were indispensable. Tim’s assistant, Emily Cunningham, navigated the many changes to the book’s moving parts with terrific cheer and efficiency. Rakesh Satyal and Jonathan Burnham were immediate champions of the project; I’m hugely indebted to them for their enthusiastic support. Milan Bozic designed the mind-bogglingly perfect cover. Thanks also to David Koral, Tom Pitoniak, Beth Silfin, Kate Blum, and Katie O’Callaghan, and to Jaime Wolf at Pelosi Wolf Effron & Spates.
I’m hugely lucky to have had a brain trust of genius correspondents and early readers in Andy Greenwald, Joe Gross, Andrew Hultkrans, Jonathan Lethem, Alex Pappademas, Brian Raftery, Gabriel Roth, Gabe Soria, and Chris Sorrentino.
The brilliant Emily Condon spent more time with this book than should be expected of anyone but its credited author; the ways in which she helped give it shape are nothing short of miraculous. For her devotion, patience, and inspiration, I am forever in her debt.
Finally, I thank my mother and father, who set me on this journey, and whose shining examples continue to steady my course.
Notes
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search function of your e-book reader.
Author’s note: Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from personal interviews, conducted between 2008 and 2012.
Prologue
2 “It took a few days”: Stan Lee, with George Mair, Excelsior! Fireside, 2002.
2 “Marvel was on its ass”: Gary Groth, “I’ve Never Done Anything Halfheartedly,” Comics Journal 134, February 1990.
4 “Marvel often stretches”: “O.K., You Passed the 2-S Test—Now You’re Smart Enough For Comic Books,” Esquire, September 1966. The list of “28 People Who Count” appeared in the September 1965 issue.
4 “It isn’t generally known”: “Bullpen Bulletins,” February 1966.
5 “It seems to work out well”: Letter to Jerry Bails, January 9, 1963.
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9 Eastern soon fell apart: Martin Goodman’s earliest days in the magazine business have been documented with varying degrees of accuracy. Les Daniels’s Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics (Abrams, 1991) was one of the earliest published works to tackle the subject; Will Murray’s astonishingly researched introduction to the Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus (Marvel, 2009) provided several corrections and integrated new discoveries. Blake Bell and Dr. Michael J. Vassallo’s The Secret History of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire (Fantagraphics, 2012), which focuses on Goodman’s pulp publications, extends the scholarship.
10 “If you get a title that catches on”: “Big Business in Pulp Thrillers,” Literary Digest, January 23, 1937.
11 “little beehive of nepotism”: Joe Simon, Comic Book Makers, Vanguard, 2003. Information about the origins of American comic books comes from Robert Lee Beerbohm and Richard D. Olson, “The American Comic Book: 1929–Present,” The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, Gemstone, 2008; Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation, Johns Hopkins, 2001; Mike Benton, The Comic Book in America, Taylor, 1989.
14 Timely’s first comic book was published: Matt Nelson, “Marvel #1 vs. Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1: The Chicken or the Egg?,” Classicsincorporated.com.
14 sold 800,000: Arthur Goodman shared this information in conversation with Stephen A. Fishler in 1983.
16 Simon . . . was earning: Simon, Comic Book Makers.
16 “My mother once wanted”: Hour 25, radio program, circa 1986.
16 “I would wait behind a brick wall”: Unpublished Leonard Pitts interview.
18 “I stayed up all night sketching”: Simon, Comic Book Makers.
18 “We can’t keep putting out this crap”: Ibid.
18 “He didn’t like them very much”: Jim Amash, “Simon Says,” Alter Ego 76, March 2008.
19 On Shores’s first day: Mark Evanier, “Jack FAQs,” Jack Kirby Collector 44, Fall 2006.
19 “seemed to be made entirely”: Stan Lee, History of Marvel, unpublished draft, late 1980s.
19 fired from a menial job: Lee, with Mair, Excelsior!
19 Descriptions of the Timely office interiors are taken from author interviews, as well as Jim Amash, “A Long Glance At Dave Gantz,” Alter Ego 13, March 2002, and Amash, “Simon Says.”
20 “This is my nephew”: Amash, “Simon Says.”
20 “And when the script came back”: Amash, “Simon Says.”
21 “Jack sat at a table”: Stan Lee panel, San Diego Convention, 1975.
22 “We just stayed”: Roy Thomas interview with Bill Everett, published in Timely Presents: Human Torch, Marvel, 1999.
22 slept in shifts: Jim Steranko, Steranko History of Comics, Supergraphics, 1970.
23 “You guys must be”: Simon, Comic Book Makers.
23 “The next time I see that”: John Morrow and Glen Musial, “More Than Your Average Joe,” Jack Kirby Collector 25, August 1999.
24 “No matter how many new titles”: Quote from Al Jaffee in Gary Groth, “Face Front, True Believers: The Comics Industry Sounds Off on Stan Lee,” Comics Journal 181, October 1995.
25 In less than two years: Figures are taken from the following sources, via Bradford Wright’s Comic Book Nation: “The Comics And Their Audience,” Publishers Weekly, April 18, 1942; “Superman Scores,” BusinessWeek, April 18, 1942; “Escapist Paydirt,” Newsweek, December 27, 1943.
25 “Sometimes we’d put”: Jim Amash, “I Let People Do Their Jobs!,” Alter Ego 11, November 2001.
26 “We always had backlog”: Amash, “I Let People Do Their Jobs!”
26 He moved into a room: Blake Bell, I Have to Live with This Guy, TwoMorrows, 2002.
26 “Like you see in the movies”: Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, Chicago Review Press, 2003.
26 “I was in love”: David Anthony Kraft, “The Foom Interview: Stan Lee,” Foom 17, March 1977.
26 “I had three secretaries”: Kraft, “The Foom Interview: Stan Lee.”
27 90 percent: Bradford, Comic Book Nation.
27 They moved out of their: Edward Lewine, “Housing History: Sketching Out His Past,” New York Times, September 9, 2007.
28 “No thanks, maybe later”: Bruce Jay Friedman, Lucky Bruce, Biblioasis, 2011.
28 “Every so often”: Michael Vassallo, “A Timely Talk with Allen Bellman,” Comicartville.com, 2005.
30 Ayers donated: David Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008.
31 “Talk was no longer”: Jules Feiffer, The Great Comic Book Heroes, Dial, 1965.
32 “It was the toughest thing”: Hajdu, The Ten-Cent Plague.
32 “If Stan Lee ever calls”: Jon B. Cooke, “John Romita: Spidey’s Man,” Comic Book Artist 6, Fall 1999.
33 half-dozen artists: Per the research of Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, they were: Dick Ayers, Dan DeCarlo, Al Hartley, Jack Keller, Morris Weiss, and Joe Maneely.
33 Steve Ditko, a quiet thirty-year-old: Blake Bell, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, Fantagraphics, 2008.
35 “Jack never liked”: John Morrow, “Would You Like To See My Etchings?,” Jack Kirby Collector 10, April 1996.
35 “I would much rather”: Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics, Abrams, 2008.
35 “It’s like a ship sinking”: Roy Thomas and Jim Amash, “To Keep Busy As A Freelancer, You Sho
uld Have Three Accounts,” Alter Ego 31, December 2003.
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38 “We are trying”: Letter to Jerry Bails, August 29, 1961.
41 When Lee asked Steve Ditko: Steve Ditko, “A Mini-History: 13. ‘Speculation,’ ” The Comics, 14 (August 2003). More discussion of the Spider-Man/Fly connection appears in Joe Simon, Comic Book Makers. In a 2010 videotaped deposition for Marvel’s suit against the Kirby estate, Stan Lee stated that Spider-Man was not, to his knowledge, based on Kirby’s Fly character.
43 “The poor guy only has”: Letter to Jerry Bails, January 9, 1963.
44 He worked from a varnished-pine room: Neal Kirby, “Growing up Kirby: The Marvel Memories of Jack Kirby’s Son,” Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2012.
44 “That was a lot of stuff”: Richard Howell, “An interview with Don Heck,” Comics Feature 21, November 1982.
44 “We seem to exist from crisis”: Letter to Jerry Bails, January 9, 1963.
45 “My job was mainly”: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Sol Brodsky Remembered,” Marvel Age 22, January 1985.
45 “Martin Goodman started pressuring”: Jim Amash, “I Wrote Over 800 Comic Book Stories,” Alter Ego 90, December 2009.
45 “I have to go to”: Gerard Jones, Men of Tomorrow, Basic, 2004.
46 Rousso, weary of: Mark Gruenwald, “George Roussos,” Comics Interview 2, April 1983.
46 sixty-five dollars a week: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Fabulous Flo Steinberg,” Comics Interview 17, November 1984.
50 “Stan wanted”: Mark Evanier, Kirby: King of Comics.
50 “Don Heck drew”: Letters pages of November 1965 issues.
51 “like digging into”: Daniels, Marvel.
52 “The problem . . . was”: Mark Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s,” Jack Kirby Collector 39, Fall 2003.
53 “the most depressing exchange”: Ethan Roberts, “The 1964 New York Comicon: A Personal Reminiscence,” Alter Ego 7, Winter 2001.
53 “This isn’t the first time”: Bill Schelly, Sense of Wonder: A Life in Comic Fandom, TwoMorrows, 2001.
53 “the tendency to take”: Ditko via Bell, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko.
54 “Stan treated it like”: Mark Evanier, NewsFromMe.com, October 12, 2005.
55 “I don’t know what”: Steve Duin and Mike Richardson, Comics Between the Panels, Dark Horse Comics, 1998.
56 “We had to write down”: Jon B. Cooke, “Absolutely Fabulous,” Comic Book Artist 18, March 2002.
57 “You have no idea”: Jim Salicrup, “John Romita,” Comics Interview 89, 1990.
58 The details of Roy Thomas’s hiring come from Roy Thomas, “Two Weeks With Mort Weisinger,” Alter Ego 50, July 2005; and Rob Gustaveson, “Fifteen Years at Marvel: An Interview with Roy Thomas,” Comics Journal 61, Winter 1981.
60 “Marvel Comics are the first”: Sally Kempton, “Spiderman’s Dilemma: Super-Anti-Hero in Forest Hills,” Village Voice, April 1, 1965.
60 McClure featured: Bhob Stewart, Potrzebie.blogspot.com, November 13, 2010.
61 “We wrote an unbelievable contract”: Adam McGovern, “Marvel Man,” Jack Kirby Collector 41, Fall 2004.
61 “living comic books”: Josh Alan Friedman, “Mel Shestack Lives!,” Black Cracker Online, March 8, 2010.
61 “They’d come in and giggle”: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Fabulous Flo Steinberg,” Comics Interview 17, November 1984.
61 “Mario Puzo would”: Jon B. Cooke,, “Absolutely Fabulous,” Comic Book Artist 18, March 2002.
62 “I was just kidding him”: Bell, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko; Nat Freedland, “Super Heroes with Super Problems,” New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine, January 9, 1966.
65 “It’s almost like I was watching Laurel and Hardy”: “The Mighty Marvel Bullpen Reunion 2001,” Alter Ego 16, July 2002, p. 17. Lee’s account of Herald fallout from Ro Ronin, Tales To Astonish, page 104.
66 “I’ve had theories advanced”: Duin and Richardson, Comics Between the Panels.
66 “Not until Goodman”: Bell, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko.
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70 “I came in one day”: From Mark Evanier, “Jack FAQs,” Jack Kirby Collector 44, Fall 2005, p. 13.
75 “wasn’t going to have to be paid back”: Jim Amash, “Roy Thomas Interview,” Jack Kirby Collector 18, January 1998.
76 “I never saw his collection”: Jim Amash, “The Privacy Act of Carl Burgos,” Alter Ego 49, June 2005.
77 “We’ve had movie offers”: Fantastic Four 50.
77 “Simon said he created Captain America,” Simon, The Comic-Book Makers.
77 “I felt that whatever I did”: Sworn statement from Jack Kirby, posted in “Marvel Worldwide, Inc. et al v. Kirby et al.—Jack Kirby’s 1966 Statement,” 20th Century Danny Boy, April 3, 2011.
78 In February 1956: “Admit Stealing 25 Cars in State,” Gettysburg Times, February 6, 1956.
78 “None of the things”: Robin Green, “Face Front! Clap Your Hands, You’re on the Winning Team!” Rolling Stone 91, September 16, 1971.
80 “The kids were unbelievable”: McGovern, “Marvel Man.”
80 “sold 50,000 printed t-shirts”: “O.K., You Passed the 2-S Test—Now You’re Smart Enough for Comic Books,” Esquire, September 1966.
80 “Marvel often stretches”: “As Barry Jenkins, Ohio ’69, Says: ‘A Person Has to Have Intelligence to Read Them,’ ” Esquire, September 1966.
80 shaving cream and cars: Leonard Sloane, “Advertising: Comics Go Up, Up and Away,” New York Times, July 20, 1967.
81 “I couldn’t believe that a guy”: Roy Thomas, “Fifty Years on the ‘A’ List,” Alter Ego 9, July 2001.
82 Lee himself was asking for changes: “An interview with the Romitas,” Mike Harris, Comics Feature 22, December 1982.
82 Women’s Wear Daily: “Original Art Stories: John Romita,” 20th Century Danny Boy, October 21, 2010.
82 “goddamn automobiles and skyscrapers”: Roy Thomas, “An Avengers Interview—Sort Of—With John Buscema,” Alter Ego 13, March 2002.
84 “a lonely sort of guy”: “1966 Kirby Keynote Speech,” Jack Kirby Collector 43, Summer 2005.
84 “share ideas, laughs”: “Meet Jack Kirby,” Merry Marvel Messenger, 1966.
84 “Marvel’s been very kind”: “1966 Kirby Keynote Speech.”
86 “I’m not going to give them another”: Mark Evanier interview in Jon B. Cooke, “The Unknown Kirby,” Comic Book Artist Special Edition, December 1999.
87 clicked his heels: Green, “Face Front! Clap Your Hands, You’re on the Winning Team!”
88 While DC’s forty-eight titles: Leonard Sloane, “Advertising: Comics Go Up, Up and Away,” New York Times, July 20, 1967.
88 “eventually outstrip us”: Gene Reed, “A Conversation with Arnold Drake,” Comic Reader 192, July 1981.
90 “I guess I treated the whole thing”: David Anthony Kraft and Jim Salicrup, “Stan Lee,” Comics Interview 5, July 1983.
91 “Good evening”: Otto Friedrich, Decline and Fall, Harper & Row, 1970.
92 roughly the amount that the company: Variety, June 28, 1968.
92 “Stan, . . . I’ll see to it”: Excelsior!
92 “We’re going to make a fortune”: Chris Welles, “ ‘Post’-Mortem,” New York, February 10, 1969.
93 “They didn’t believe”: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Fabulous Flo Steinberg,” Comics Interview 17, November 1984.
93 In May, instead of: John Morrow, “A Tale of Two Contracts,” Jack Kirby Collector 41, Fall 2004.
93 Thomas . . . returned to a lecture: Roy Thomas, “So You Want A Job, Eh?,” Alter Ego 6, Autumn 2000.
93 “He was predictably thrilled”: Timothy Wylie, Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, Feral House, 2009.
94 When makereadies: Roy Thomas, “ ‘Echh’ Marks the Spot,” Alter Ego 95, July 2010.
94 “the fact that the heroes”: David F. Nolan, The New Guard, June 1966.
95 “People were congratulating me on this particular issue”: Jon B. Cooke, “John Buscema Interview,” Jack Kirby Collector 18, January 1998.
95 “We had one sequence”: From The Dick Cavett Show, May 30, 1968; printed in Jeff McLaughlin, ed., Stan Lee: Conversations, University Press of Mississippi, 2007.
96 “Our thinking”: Speech at the 1968 Comic Art Convention.
97 Lee had an assistant: Alan Hewetson, Skywald! The Complete Illustrated History of the Horror-Mood, Headpress, 2004.
97 “You implied that the Panther”: East Village Other, April 23, 1969.
98 “sort of a Sidney Poitier”: Don Allen, The Electric Humanities, Pflaum/Standard, 1971.
99 “I started thinking about”: Jim Amash, “Writing Comics Turned Out to Be What I Really Wanted to Do with My Life,” Alter Ego 70, July 2007.
100 “You lose the very young kids”: Saul Braun, “Shazam! Here Comes Captain Relevant,” New York Times, May 2, 1971.
103 “You fellas think of”: Shel Dorf, “Speak The Language of the ’70s,” Jack Kirby Collector 42, Spring 2006.
103 “I can’t understand” Conversation with Alain Resnais recorded by Stan Lee, May 14, 1969.
104 “I’m out”: “Ackerman Decides to Shun Limelight of Corporate Life,” New York Times, March 20, 1969.
104 set himself up with: “Ackerman Named Adviser at Perfect,” Robert E. Bedingfield, New York Times, August 26, 1969.
105 “Magazines were dying”: Jon B. Cooke, “John Romita: Spidey’s Man,” Comic Book Artist 6, Fall 1999.
105 So in a cautious: Mark Evanier, post to Crisis on Infinite Comics forum, November 1, 2009.
106 The next time Carmine Infantino: Jack Kirby Collector 46, p. 68.
106 “the bullpen had become”: Green, “Face Front! Clap Your Hands, You’re on the Winning Team!”
107 provides visual evidence: Jon Riley, We Love You Herb Trimpe, 1970.
107 When artist Barry Smith visited: Jon B. Cook, “Alias Barry Windsor-Smith,” Comic Book Artist 2.
108 “Jack’s on line two”: “1997 Kirby Tribute Panel,” Jack Kirby Collector 17, November 1997.