In Search Of Steve Ditko

PCLivehack

BBC4 this Sunday. Jonathan Ross hosts this documentary on former Spider-man artist and co creator Steve Ditko.

Anyone looking forward to this?

Fysh

If I had BBC4 I would be, the Beeb's whole Comics Britannia thing seems pretty interesting. I particularly want to see the Stan Lee scene mentioned in this column.

the Shades

Ditko had nothing to do with the creation of Spider-Man he was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Simon's claim probably referred to the character 'The Spider' that he co-created with Kirby as the main villain for their pre-Timely comics hero 'The Fly.'

The BBC referring to Ditko as writer of Spider-Man is probably because it's largely true. Lee would give Ditko a plot idea for the early issues which Ditko then fleshed out and drew as the full comic, Lee then later simply added dialogue to what Ditko had drawn. Lee's 'exaggeration' of his involvement in the books during that period is why he's fallen out with Ditko and fell out with Kirby in later years. It's also why many creators object to the 'Stan Lee presents...' lable plastered on many comics.

Eamo71

the Shades wrote:

Ditko had nothing to do with the creation of Spider-Man he was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. Simon's claim probably referred to the character 'The Spider' that he co-created with Kirby as the main villain for their pre-Timely comics hero 'The Fly.'

The BBC referring to Ditko as writer of Spider-Man is probably because it's largely true. Lee would give Ditko a plot idea for the early issues which Ditko then fleshed out and drew as the full comic, Lee then later simply added dialogue to what Ditko had drawn. Lee's 'exaggeration' of his involvement in the books during that period is why he's fallen out with Ditko and fell out with Kirby in later years. It's also why many creators object to the 'Stan Lee presents...' lable plastered on many comics.

Good lord!

First of all Ditko created the look and feel of Spider-man, designed the costume and the look and feel of many of Spidey's early rogues gallery. Stan came up the name Spider-man, the idea for the character his personality traits, his home life situation and so on.
Because Stan was writing the entire Marvel range at one point, he would give his artists a few lines of plot as to what the issue was about and leave it to the artist to flesh it out. This gave rise to what's known as the Marvel Method.
From around the 20s or so Steve started to ignore Stan's plots and plotted many of the stories himself which Stan dialogues. The man reason they fell out was because Stan wanted the Green Goblin to be Norman Osbourne while Steve wanted it to be someone we'd never seen in the strip before. Though looking back on those issue I think it was suggested very early that Osbourne was tied up in something so it seemed like a natural choice.

As for Jack Kirby -- no he did not create spider-man. Stan gave jack first pass at the character but he didn’t like Jack's designs and the character sketches I've seen of Kirby's version of Spider-man didn’t look much like the finished product. For instance Kirby had Spider-man’s costume come out of a ring. No T'was Stan and Steve who were the creators of Spider-man.

And to say Stan simply added dialogue as if it wasn’t important. It was the dialogue that gave all these character from the FF to Spidey and so on their particular traits and personalities. Stan was very good at giving the character different voices. And if you've ever read a comic written by Kirby or Ditko the quality of the dialogue is very poor in comparison to Stan's.

Yes I agree Stan has probably gotten too much credit in many ways but he's always been quick to acknowledge Steve and Jack.
Stan Lee hasn’t worked as a staffer at MArvel since the early 70s. The reason his name was plastered on the comics is because he became so famous that many people, read Mavel because of Stan and the company feared readers would leave if the essence of Stan wasn’t around. Remember Stan was just an employee of Marvel as were Steve and Jack. Stan just became the more famous one and the figurehead for the company.

Fysh

You talk about the Marvel Method as if it's the greatest thing ever, rather than an approach to writing/making comics with its own strengths and weaknesses. Yes, it allowed artists greater freedoms when putting pages together and there's a lot to be said for that. But there's a reason comics have moved on since the heyday of the Marvel Method, and that reason is that the wider comics audience no longer consists exclusively of readers for whom crafted dialogue and a more tightly-developed plot are secondary concerns.

As for the whole "Stan Lee presents..." thing. Your explanation of it is certainly an explanation of it, and it's definitely the explanation Marvel would be happiest with people believing. But it requires more or less the same kind of thinking that led to people suggesting that everyone vote for Stan Lee to get some award for a recent (and by all accounts mediocre) piece of work, because he'd never won a comics award for his older stuff which everyone liked and if anyone deserves an award it's Stan Lee.

Don't get me wrong, the guy made a huge contribution to comics and was a big part of comics history in the 60s. But that doesn't mean his work is flawless, nor that he actually is the genial guy we see in interviews. Especially not when you think that this is the guy who built the massive company known as Marvel Comics, while some of his collaborators along the way lost all their rights to the work they did. It's not necessarily what Stan set out to do, but there do seem to be some factions out there that think Stan's a saint because he was part of the team that made up Spiderman, and to be honest you sound like one of them.

Eamo71

Fysh wrote:

You talk about the Marvel Method as if it's the greatest thing ever, rather than an approach to writing/making comics with its own strengths and weaknesses. Yes, it allowed artists greater freedoms when putting pages together and there's a lot to be said for that. But there's a reason comics have moved on since the heyday of the Marvel Method, and that reason is that the wider comics audience no longer consists exclusively of readers for whom crafted dialogue and a more tightly-developed plot are secondary concerns.

As for the whole "Stan Lee presents..." thing. Your explanation of it is certainly an explanation of it, and it's definitely the explanation Marvel would be happiest with people believing. But it requires more or less the same kind of thinking that led to people suggesting that everyone vote for Stan Lee to get some award for a recent (and by all accounts mediocre) piece of work, because he'd never won a comics award for his older stuff which everyone liked and if anyone deserves an award it's Stan Lee.

Don't get me wrong, the guy made a huge contribution to comics and was a big part of comics history in the 60s. But that doesn't mean his work is flawless, nor that he actually is the genial guy we see in interviews. Especially not when you think that this is the guy who built the massive company known as Marvel Comics, while some of his collaborators along the way lost all their rights to the work they did. It's not necessarily what Stan set out to do, but there do seem to be some factions out there that think Stan's a saint because he was part of the team that made up Spiderman, and to be honest you sound like one of them.

Hey Fysh,

I think you've misinterpreted some of what I've said. First of all I'm not advocating the Marvel method at all. I think full script comics are generally better. I'm more of a believer in the writer having more power over what he's doing rather than having 2-3 paragraphs of ideas and let the artist work it out.
It worked for Lee cos he was so busy. There is no writer these days that had his turnover (in the 60s) of monthly books.
Stan was no saint. You don’t get to his status in life by being Mr Nice...that’s for sure. And I would never advocate voting for someone's work just because his back pages are littered with classics. That’s what happened when Newman won the Oscar for Colour Of Money and Scorsese for The Departed.
I don’t belong to any faction as far as I know. Lee has his faults and even his classic stories are full of corn. But he was part of the revolution. I think because of the imbalance in favour of Stan there was a backlash in the late 80s and early 90s against him. But I think it’s probably gone too far the other way know when pole talk about simply putting dialogue in the characters mouths.
Finally, collaborators losing rights… did they have any rights to begin with? All that effort was work for hire. These people were adults when they signed the contracts. Anything they come up with is the property of the company. Stan Lee doesn’t own, Spider-man, the FF, Hulk, X-man and so on… Marvel does.
Having said that he does seem to have some sort of deal with Marvel cos he got a million from them and Sony for the first Spidey movie.
So chill, while I admire Mr Leiber I’m not one of his disciple regardless of him creating my favourite comics character and the best superhero of all time – Spider-Man. :-)

Fysh

Hero for our times and defender of the Comics Forum - FyshMan, with the power to jump to tall conclusions in a single post!

Sorry about that, I was reading your post as if you were an out-and-out Stan Lee fanboy. It's not that I have anything against him as such - it's more that he was part of the revolution back in the 60's and has since been superseded, as is natural and to be expected. But unlike most creators who've been in the business that long, Lee has not faded into the background - he's still actively involved in comics, but as far as I can tell, with the same ideas and mentality he was using in the 60s. I'm not sure he's relevant any more and to be honest, I don't really give a damn what he has to say today about comics because unlike Eisner, Stan doesn't seem particularly interested in pushing ahead within the genre any more....

(And yeah, I think he still has some deal with them, possibly related to the quasi legal way a few people reasonably high up in the company tried to give him the boot a few years ago...)

the Shades

Eamo71 wrote:

As for Jack Kirby -- no he did not create spider-man. Stan gave jack first pass at the character but he didn’t like Jack's designs and the character sketches I've seen of Kirby's version of Spider-man didn’t look much like the finished product. For instance Kirby had Spider-man’s costume come out of a ring. No T'was Stan and Steve who were the creators of Spider-man.

I think you'll find most comic historians credit Kirby with the original creation of Spider-Man with Lee and credit Ditko for refining the original designs. Certianly Kirby and Simon's earlier creations of a spider themed character can't be ignored and Kirby added so many characters to the MU it's more likely that the idea originated with him. Anyone who's read about the history of the industry knows that it's a difficult job to resolve exactly who did what and how much credit they should be given, but looking at earlier published work should give some very clear clues.

Eamo71

the Shades wrote:

I think you'll find most comic historians credit Kirby with the original creation of Spider-Man with Lee and credit Ditko for refining the original designs. Certianly Kirby and Simon's earlier creations of a spider themed character can't be ignored and Kirby added so many characters to the MU it's more likely that the idea originated with him. Anyone who's read about the history of the industry knows that it's a difficult job to resolve exactly who did what and how much credit they should be given, but looking at earlier published work should give some very clear clues.

Yes the comics past is quite murky and there's no doubt Kirby had some influence. But I think Lee and Ditko are the main two in this instance. Stan's idea and ultimately Steve's designs.

Eamo71

Fysh wrote:

If I had BBC4 I would be, the Beeb's whole Comics Britannia thing seems pretty interesting. I particularly want to see the Stan Lee scene mentioned in this column.

Not quite the scene he had made it out to be. Nothing more than Ross pressing Lee on Ditko's co creation status. And Lee agreeing though he still believes the person who came up with the original idea is the creator.
Interestingly he told Ross that he sent Ditko an open letter to say he had always considered Ditko to be Spidey's co creator. This wasn't enough for Ditko who didn't like the word considered.

Nevyn

It is up on you tube

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=BaBuYz2A90M