In a row that began before Lee died, his chief artistic collaborators, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, always claimed they had far more of a hand in the comics than the illustrations they were credited for. Last week, after the release of the documentary, the family of Kirby, who died in 1994, said Lee had “the fortunate circumstance to have access to the corporate megaphone and media” and made himself “the voice of Marvel” – overshadowing the parts other people played.
He founded the company. Of course he was its voice!
Kirby’s son Neal told the Observer: “If you were to look at a list and timeline of Marvel’s characters from 1960 through 1966, the period in which the vast majority of Marvel’s main characters were created, you will see Lee’s name as a co-creator on every character, with the exception of the Silver Surfer, solely created by my father. Are we to assume Lee had a hand in creating every Marvel character?” Are we to assume that it was never the other co-creator that walked into Lee’s office and said, ‘Stan, I have a great idea for a character!’?”
Do you understand the term 'co-creator'...? It doesn't sound to me as if you've really grasped it, have you?
The families of both Kirby and Ditko – who died a few months before Lee in 2018 – have been calling for more formal recognition for their part in creating the characters, especially now that Marvel is owned by Disney.
And this is purely motivated by concern for their legacy. And not, heaven forfend, filthy lucre...
One person gets it:
Mark Millar is a Scottish writer who worked for both Marvel and its rival DC in the 1990s. For the former, he created with artist Bryan Hitch the series The Ultimates, which was heavily borrowed from for the first Avengers movie.
For Millar, his generation of comics creators went in “with their eyes open”. He says: “We knew that if we were working on characters owned by a company, we would never have any claim on them. It’s like if a decorator comes into your house. It’s their work and it looks great, but they don’t own your house!
Nice analogy. Accurate, too.
“For people who came on board at the same time as me writing for Marvel was satisfying a childhood dream, but it also gave us an audience so we could create our own comics.”
Why did Kirby and Ditko not do that? Perhaps they didn't feel as aggrieved as their relatives do. It's funny how their relatives waited until they died, isn't it?
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