Lee & Kirby: The Discarded Pages from INCREDIBLE HULK #4

37 thoughts on “Lee & Kirby: The Discarded Pages from INCREDIBLE HULK #4”

1. And the reason Kirby ripped up the pages?

   Because Marvel didn’t pay for rejected art. Meaning Kirby wasted several days work.

   And obviously not due to any problems with the art. Lee was rejecting Kirby’s story.

   Tell me again who wrote Kirby’s Marvel comics.

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   1. That’s quite a leap. Equally plausible is that this was a spec story by Kirby that didn’t make the grade. Eyewitness accounts by John Romita and others say Lee and Kirby continued to have collaborative story conferences into at least the mid-1960s.

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      1. Nah. The leap is suggesting that writer/artist Jack Kirby…who had stories in 7 Marvel titles dated that month…was spending his copious free time doing stories purely on spec for one of his regular assignments.This also aligns with the brief period when the editor’s brother was suddenly getting credit on Kirby stories. A point of contention many theorize led to Kirby’s brief abandonment of Thor. Until Stanley realized he couldn’t produce the strip without him. Lieber’s byline quickly disappeared from Kirby stories.Since Thomas and Romita were 3 years from working at Marvel included their names says nothing about the work conditions of 1962. Though Thomas is a witness to the fact that when Lee opened the package containing the first appearance of the Silver Surfer in Fantastic Four #48 his reaction was basically “Who dat man?”

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      2. *Sigh* More standard Stan-bashing. We know Kirby did stuff on spec, like his pages for “The Man Called D.E.A.T.H.” And the plot of this Hulk story — about middle-aged men putting on masks to fix a basketball game — is nothing like the geopolitical soap-opera and the alien/underground invaders of the other Hulk stories. “[M]any theorize”? Anybody can theorize anything anyone wants to — theories mean nothing. If one is an academically trained historian or an established professional journalist who can present an objective case built on concrete evidence without agenda or the kind of “angry young man” bias I see with you people, that could be something worth considering. But untrained, armair fan speculation decades after the fact is as useful as amateur epidemiologists bashing vaccines.

         Second point: Why are you attacking Larry Lieber? He’s as honorable, honest and humble a man as anyone could ever know, and he’s a genuinely good writer in his own right — certainly better than some of the short-lived others who wrote some early Marvel superhero stories. Incidentally, Larry was writing full-script, based on Lee’s plots, and Kirby was working from that … the industry norm of the time at Marvel, DC, Harvey, Gold Key, Archie and elsewhere.

         Third point: Lee has acknowledged over and over again that the Silver Surfer was Kirby’s original idea. As long ago as 1994, Lee told me that in a nationally syndicated newspaper interview I did with him — not the fan press — and I was not the first journalist to whom he said that. Yet as we’ve seen from the printed pages of the comics themselves, Lee’s script brought the Silver Surfer three-dimensional characterization not only with Kirby in the FF and in FF Annual #5 but in the John Buscema-penciled Silver Surfer series … with which Kirby was not involved. Finally bringing the Silver Surfer into this discussion is as random and out-of-left-field as could be.

         I find it interesting that except for Reisman, who I know blatantly lied about Larry Lieber in her book, no other legacy-press author agrees with you people’s “Kirby was god Lee did nothing” flat-earthism.

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      3. No serious person says Stan Lee did nothing. Simply that he didn’t do many of the things he said he did. Like plot his own stories. In fact I’m pretty sure that Hulk was a title where he mucked around considerably, with it’s constant changes of direction and Kirby finally choosing to walk away from the title. Editorial directives are not writing. But sure…misrepresent the position of all who reject your knee jerk pro Lee position.

         The Man Called D.E.A.T.H. was a PITCH, not an ongoing series. Kirby pitched things constantly. See the entire Marvel line for details.

         Attacking Larry Lieber? Well…he says he gave Kirby full scripts. Kirby says otherwise. Why are you attacking Jack Kirby? But seriously…I know nothing about Lieber personally accept how Lee defenders insist he’s the “most honorable man ever.” But 5 stories in a 40 year career…I don’t even have to insist he’s lying deliberately. Details get clouded by time. Read any history book ever written or search your own oft told tales for details. Perhaps Lieber has no specific memory of those stories and simply assumes he wrote them as he claims, as opposed to filling in the blank dialogue like his big brother. Until I see evidence I’ll take the world of Kirby, who was as honorable, honest and humble a man as anyone could ever know.

         Yeah, Lee acknowledged Kirby created the Silver Surfer. Because he slipped up once and got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. As for brought the character to life…well, that a matter of personal taste. I’d say he erased an interesting Kirby concept and turned him into a whining mope, deliberately cutting Kirby out in the process. And that the series you seem to revere…well, it had some lovely John Buscema art. So there’s that. But as I said, a matter of taste.

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      4. When I suggested that this one Hulk story about fixing a high-school basketball game was perhaps done on spec, you said Kirby didn’t do anything on spec. When I gave on example, you preposterously said, “Oh, that wasn’t spec, that was a pitch.” Same thing. Jesus.

         You think Larry Lieber only wrote 5 stories in 40 years? That is so hyperbolically false it bears no reply. Though I will ask: When did Kirby claim Lieber wrote Marvel Method before Marvel Method was invented? When did Kirby claim he Kirby wrote all those pre-superhero monster stories? I don’t recall Kirby ever calling Larry Lieber a liar.

         Memories? Exaggeration? Kirby in an interview for a Dick Ayers story I did in 1982 or ’83 told me ALL the early letters to the editor in Marvel Comics were written in-house. Tell that to George R.R. Martin or all the others who got letters printed in early Marvel comics. Even Gary Groth, as ardent a supporter of Kirby as anyone, wrote in the introduction to a long interview with Kirby to take some of Kirby’s claims with “a grain of salt,” as the expression goes. Even the Jack Kirby Museum acknowledges Kirby would exaggerate and misremember: https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/effect/2015/08/27/according-to-kirby-3/

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      5. I wrote a lengthy and detailed response to your post of September 21, 2026 at 5:47 pm that seems to have disappeared. Without trying to remember the whole thing, I asked if you had ever written comics professionally, or ever been part of any professional creative collaboration. I said that if you had, you might know that — as countless examples including Lennon/McCartney and Rodgers/Hammerstein illustrate over and over — that such collaborations are not a matter of percentages of who did what. They are not zero-sum-games. If you had ever done it you would know that collaborators develop a shorthand of expectations of what the other wants, a shorthand of what each’s strengths are, and a “yes-and” building of ideas. It is far more nuanced than the black-and-white hero-and-villain scenario of armchair historians, who are as useful as armchair immunologists talking about vaccines.

         Oh, and I remember this: Leave Larry Lieber alone. He’s one of most decent and honorable human beings one could ever find, and that’s not just my word on it but that of anyone who has ever known or worked with him. That you would denigrate him or say that he didn’t write full-script, beginning with his monster and romance stories, when you have no evidence whatsoever otherwise is beyond the pale.

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      6. No Frank. I said that Larry Lieber had a credit on 5 Jack Kirby stories 60 years ago and could easily have no specific memory and lumped them in with whatever his usual working method was. That Lieber did plenty of other work was precisely my point. I mean sure…it’s possible Lieber was willfully lying but I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt.

         Doing a pitch on spec is completely different from writing and drawing stories on spec for a regular assignment. Although I suppose you could argue that everything done for Lee was on spec, since he could reject anything for any reason or no reason, without payment.

         Plenty of fan letters were fabricated. It’s not really a wild claim if Kirby thought so.

         No one relies entirely on Kirby’s claims. There’s plenty of evidence. His pencil lettering on pages. His margin notes. His decades of work before and after Lee. Lee’s lack of production without Kirby. The consistent stories told by Kirby, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, even Joe Orlando. The corroborating stories told by John Romita, John Buscema, Dick Ayers, even people who didn’t work with him a lot like Neal Adams.

         I don’t recall Jack Kirby ever calling anyone a liar. He was very much a gentleman and usually very circumspect in comments. As he said, “Stanley knows what happened.”

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      7. The semi-coherent word-jumble of your reply, contradicting things you yourself said in earlier posts, is barely worth a response. I’ll just offer this perspective: Have you ever worked in comics? Ever been involved in a professional creative collaboration? It’s incredibly much more nuanced and much less zero-sum-game than you seem to be able to understand. The classic examples of Lennon/McCartney or Rodgers/Hammerstein speak to the boundary-defying cross-pollination of ideas, of each partner learning the language of the other in terms of expectation and limits and what each will like / is better at. But you people who want a black-and-white villain/hero narrative despite an arena of complex creative people, prevailing industry standards and other such nuanced factors will never understand it’s not that simple.
         And lay the fuck off Larry. Accusing that honest, decent man of any sort of untoward behavior without credible evidence let alone proof is just beyond the pale.

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      8. Sorry you lost your response. That can be frustrating.

         Frank…you’re the one without evidence. Can you or anybody show one script written by Larry Lieber for Jack Kirby? You accuse me of attacking Mr Lieber when I’ve stated at least once by now that it could be nothing more than a trick of memory.

         To all appearances Jack Kirby was one of most decent and honorable human beings one could ever find, though I never had the privilege of meeting him. I’d suggest you are being much harder on him than I am on Lieber. But it’s your nickel. Do what you want.

         I’m not sure how relevant the question I’ve “ever written comics professionally, or ever been part of any professional creative collaboration” is. There are people out there like Dr Michael Vassallo who’ve never written a comic book in their lives but are far more knowledgeable on these subjects than either of us.

         But yes I have. I don’t trumpet it because I barely even qualify as a footnote but I’ve written and /or edited dozens of comics dating back to the 1980s. From small indie publishers to Dynamite to graphic novels at Random House to scholastic publishers to really oddball stuff like custom comics for the US state department. Hell, one of those was even cited by a fistful of deranged politicians who never read it as an excuse for dismantling USAID.

         So I’m not Jack Kirby or Stan Lee or Larry Lieber or even Bill Mantlo. But I’ve circled the block and I know something about collaborating. I’ve worked with artists as well known as Ron Lim and Paul Smith or as unfairly forgotten as Gary Thomas Washington.

         Seriously, show me full script pages complete with panel descriptions and a that Larry Lieber wrote for Jack Kirby and I’ll reevaluate as the evidence warrants.

         Which is exactly what I did when I reread basically all of Jack Kirby’s output from the 1970s, then went back and read tons from the 40s & 50s. Which made it very clear to me that Kirby’s 60s stories were the product of the same writer.

         I could waste time digging up provable Stan Lee contradictions…like how once upon a time Dr Strange “Twas Steve’s idea” but by the Origins books Lee had come up with him because he dug Chandu.

         But I’m not really interested in turning this into an unpaid research project. It’s about as productive as trying to explain to card carrying member of the SCV that US Grant was a much better general than Bobby Lee. You’re dug in too deep.

         And please don’t take that comparison as a guess as to your likely politics. I’d be genuinely surprised if that’s where they are. It’s just the most similarly fruitless argument that comes to mind.

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      9. IF you’ve truly collaborated creatively with others, then you know it’s a give-and-take process, and that each creator feeds on the other to come up with something generally better than each could on their own — the whole greater than the sum of its Parts. It’s not a zero-sum-game or something you can ascribe percentages to. And have you ever written dialog? If so, you know how important it is to characterization and dimension. It’s as integral to final product as any other step of the way. There have been great, well-written comics with highly simple art. But beautiful art won’t make a bad script into a great comic. If you denigrate the role of the scripter, then you’ve never made a great comic.

         Straw-man argument about Larry Lieber having to provide his typewritten scripts from 1958. Virtually NO ONE saved their scripts. And if you claim to know comics, then you know that, so I’m disappointed that you would pull such a tactic.

         Larry, when starting out, even drew thumbnails of the page layout, since he was insecure as a writer but knew how to draw and do layouts. The script came with that, and later he did scripts by themselves. The Marvel Method wasn’t invented yet, and Larry wasn’t comfortable with it when it came along, which is why he mostly did covers later, or write and draw the story as he did with Rawhide Kid.

         The specificity of Larry Lieber’s memories, which have been consistent in interviews for decades, is more convincing to me that Jack Kirby’s exaggerations. As I said, he exaggerated something in an interview with *me* that I knew wasn’t true. And I earlier provided a link to the Kirby Museum where its writer acknowledges that Kirby exaggerated — as has Kirby supporter Gary Groth. Kirby has even gone so far as to say “Stan Lee never wrote a thing.” (quote approximate) Do we need a tranche of Lee’s scripts to know that this isn’t true? One can be honorable and still believe one’s own exaggerations.

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      10. I don’t actually expect a tranche of Larry Lieber scripts from 1960ish to show up. I’m simply following your position to its logical conclusion. You insist that I’m denigrating Mr Lieber without evidence. While you insist that he wrote scripts that Jack Kirby says he wrote for himself. With no evidence. So I’m I’m a little unclear on how my position denigrates Lieber while yours does not denigrate Kirby.

          I could take offense at your “IF”…why on earth would I lie about such a thing…but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and treat it as the caps lock sticking.

          I write very good dialogue. I actually write dialogue better than I plot. I’ve even played fill in the blanks on a page a time or two when something went wrong. Not in my wildest dreams would I compare playing fill in the blanks on an otherwise already plotted pages as writing an entire story from scratch.

          I don’t really know what Stan Lee wrote from scratch, if anything. He added dialogue to other people’s stories. He asked artists for story ideas. He told Stan Goldberg to never tell him he didn’t have an idea for a story again. He signed his name to pinups and fashion pages in Millie the Model. He gave editorial directions; I’m sure he likely told Jack Kirby to get the Hulk out of the Avengers and Captain America in. I’m sure he told Jack Kirby to bring back the Sub-Mariner. But is that writing?

          We certainly know plenty of examples of others ghosting for Stan Lee. The Spider-Man newspaper strip. I think I remember Gerry Conway saying he ghosted some Spider-Man issues before he took over. My best friend wrote Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics. Stan diddled with a few lines. He was supposed to me listed as cowriter but they screwed him and just stuck his name in the acknowledgements. Whether that was done by the publisher on his own hook or the request of Lee, I’ve no idea.

          I don’t think every dialogue job by Lee is ghosted. But clearly there are times it happened.

          But yes…one can be honorable and still believe their exaggerations and faulty memory. And thus I give the elderly Mr Lieber the benefit of that doubt.

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      11. So you’re saying Jack Kirby and not Larry Lieber scripted “Fin Fang Foom” and, what, Larry just put his name on it? Really?

          And are you really denigrating the art and skill of scriptwriting as if it’s nothing? I did it for 6 years at Marvel and elsewhere, and in my experienced opinion, scriptwriting is a highly important part of the story. I can’t believe I have to say that.

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      12. And, no, my caps-lock key did not get stuck. Unlike you, I use my real name. Anyone can claim anything hiding under a pseudonym. IF you really collaborated with others — collaborated, not told them what to do — then you’d know that what I said about the nature of collaboration is true.

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      13. Yes. Jack Kirby wrote Fin Fang Foom. All by himself. There are no credits on the original story. Any claim to it by the Lieber brothers were invented later. There is no Stan Lee signature on it, though it appears the Kirby/Ayers signature…which Ayers would add…has been removed. As Lee began doing around the time of Fantastic Four #1.

          I believe Lee began to lay claim to the pre Fantastic Four #1 monster stories around 1998, coached on stage by Roy Thomas. Though they may have discussed the subject ahead of time.

          You’re getting pretty arrogant Frank. If you’re trying to provoke an angry reaction you’re highly unlikely to succeed. My capacity for being angered by online strangers is pretty sight.

          I have no idea who you are but I’ll accept your claims at face value. Honestly, it’s the comment section of a blog post. Nobody but you and me are ever going to read this. If you were making up stuff here that would be pretty sad.

          What you call a pseudonym is just my WordPress user name. I haven’t given a thought to how it appears here. Though it matters not at all my real name is David Lawrence, though if you search it you’ll have to wade through a whole lot of hits for a former mayor of Pittsburgh before you find me.

          No relation.

          My comic book writing career is pretty minor. As minor as yours. Maybe a little more so. Maybe a little less. I don’t really care. That’s not significant. As a said, there are people who’ve never done this who know more facts about the case than both of us put together.

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      14. I thought it would’ve been clear I wasn’t referring to one single specific story when I said “Fin Fang Foom”; I presumed any writer would understand a metaphorical reference to all those pre-superhero monster comics. Lieber scripted the vast bulk of them, based on Lee’s plots and monster names. I don’t recall Kirby ever saying he scripted those stories, and anyone who has read Kirby’s 1970s comics scriptwriting can catalog all of Kirby’s eccentric scripting quirks that do not appear in any of those monster stories. Y’know, it’s one thing that you people cast Lee as some supervillain who never wrote and who stole credit (even though virtually no comic books credited anyone until Lee standardized credit boxes!). But none of you have ever been so over-the-top as to accuse Larry Lieber of doing the same.

          ”Minor” comics writer is relative. Minor in terms of Marvel writers, sure (though for Marvel I co-created the Power Rangers franchise’s first iteration of the Dark Rangers, had a creator-owned Epic miniseries, and saw one of my Hellraiser stories included in a Checker Publishing best-of collection alongside people like Neil Gaiman; there was also my independent-press publishing award for editing a graphic novel — you can look all this up easily). But in terms of comics writers in general industrywide, it’s hardly minor to have written for Marvel for six years, including for comics starring Dr. Strange, Blade, Ghost Rider, Alpha Flight and others, with artists including Steve Ditko — nothing I ever brought up here except in response to your gratuitous dig at me. So, no, I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say there’s any comparison between your self-described minor career and my much more substantive one.

          I’ve also written comics-history stories for the likes of Newsday and Entertainment Weekly, so there’s that. I’m neither, like you, a Kirby-did-everything-Lee-(and-now-Lieber-somehow)-did-nothing fanatic nor a Lee worshipper. I’ve talked above about the almost mystical, melding nature of collaboration … and that middle ground is what responsible professional journalists, authors and academics also have found.

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      15. And I would’ve presumed that such a prominent writer/historian would’ve asked the question he meant to. Live and learn I guess.

          But it honestly matters not a whit whether you are asking about Fin Fang Foom or the entire pre Fantastic Four #1 Atlas Kirby oeuvre. Because the answer is the same.

          Kirby wrote them and drew them without any input from either of the Lieber brothers. Excluding any edits that Stan Lee might have ordered.

          There is zero contemporary evidence. Stan Lee signed everything he worked on. Back to the beginning of his career. He signed There are no Lee signatures on any of those stories. So unless you have some grand insight on why he eschewed a 20 year habit on Kirby and only Kirby stories…that seals the deal for me.

          No post mortem Monsterbus revisionism is going to convince me. And yes, I’m very much aware that credit boxes were not a standard feature yet. That’s why Lee’s signature or lack of is important.

          I don’t argue that Lee didn’t write the text on later stories where he took a writing credit. I don’t argue that Lieber didn’t write the text on stories where he got a credit. I don’t argue that Lee didn’t have editorial input once the Marvel super-hero revival started. I don’t think it was for the better but that’s personal taste. You can toss up as many strawmen as you like but I’ve never argued that Stan Lee didn’t do anything. At least until he got to hire more staff in the middle 1960s I’m sure running Marvel was very much a full time job.

          Congratulations on your credits. I’m happy that they mean so much to you. But working for Marvel in 1990 or whenever gives you no special insight into 1961.

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      16. No, but having written about comics since the 1970s, including for major publications, and having interviewed many of the Silver Age people for such publications and chatted with others, and having a library of more than 200 books on comics history does. Certainly more than so than an armchair quarterback who has not written notably on comics history.

          And that’s rich, acting as I’m putting on airs by mentioning my comics-writing work when I never mentioned a word of it until your inaccurate — surprise, surprise — allegation about my purportedly “minor” career. Look who’s talking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lawrence_(writer)

          Lee never signed the Lieber-scripted stories. Anyone with a modicum of knowledge of Atlas history knows that. You make a ridiculous assumption that this means Kirby wrote them and that Larry Lieber sat around doing nothing and not making a living from 1958 until formal credits came in. In your laughable assumption, Larry Lieber was sitting around not working, never paying rent or buying groceries, and never wrote any of those stories. Larry can tell you the specifics of how he came up with the names of Henry Pym (note: pre-superhero), Tony Stark, the term uru and more. I have never seen anything anywhere in Kirby claims to have come up with those names — which the scriptwriter would have come up with.

          But y’know what? I get all you Black-Hat-Stan-Lee haters. But when you make baseless, defamatory claims about the highly decent and talented Larry Lieber, that shows an armchair expert too far gone to reason with.

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      17. Well…clearly you mentioned it before I referred to it as minor. How as would I have known about it? I’m not obsessed enough to google every person who talks to me on the internet.

          Who says Larry Lieber did nothing until 1958? I know he did a lot of romance comics. Think I remember he did some westerns. The only thing I’ve said he didn’t do is write stories for Jack Kirby.

          Yes, he wrote dialogue for about 5 Kirby stories where he received credit. Nobody has anything against Mr Lieber. I’m pretty sure Kirby only mentio.ned him once but said he was a great guy. He just isn’t a great guy who did anything with Jack Kirby besides a handful of dialogue jobs. He had a long journeyman career…which is nothing to belittle.

          I have no quibble with the notion that Lieber might’ve named Don Blake or Uru. Well within a dialogue writers bailiwick in an era when strips weren’t launched with bibles.

          But that doesn’t alter the fact that Kirby plotted his own stories. And unless dialogue writer is credited he did that too. His you read them they read like Kirby. His language is far more elevated than Lee’s. Fin Fang Foom is about as Kirby a story as you can get.

          The Lieber brothers never laid claim to Kirby’s Atlas stories until Kirby was in the ground. Somehow in your mind accepting that in light of Kirby’s claims, his long history, and even physical evidence like his penciled text on original art pages I believe his claims of authorship of I’m attacking Larry Lieber.

          While you assigning Kirby’s stories to Lieber or Lee based on nothing but claims made decades after the fact are merely being fair and balanced.

          Where have I heard that tagline before?

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      18. I find it amazing that you think you’re debating with me when you’re debating against, like, 95% of all comics scholarship by actual professional academics, historians, journalists and others. You remind me of Jon Adams’ “New Yorker” cartoon where a man at his laptop calls out to his wife: “Honey, come look! I’ve found some information all the world’s top scientists and doctors missed.”

          We’ve all see the Gary Groth interview where Kirby literally — literally! — claims Stan Lee never wrote ANYTHING, and that he, Kirby, wrote all the pre-superhero monster stories. (https://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/). Even ardent Kirby support Groth said some of Kirby’s assertions should be taken “with a grain of salt.” (Milo George, Editor. The Comics Journal Library, Volume One: Jack Kirby. Fantagraphics Books. Seattle. May, 2002.)

          Your research technique of “If Jack Kirby said it, then it trumps all other evidence, interviews, ephemera, etc.” is patently ridiculous — any serious historian would laugh at that as a research standard. And if I may, having read Kirbys 1970s scripting: It was terrible — and simply in terms of objective technique (such as Kirby’s trademark long opening preambles) it bears no resemblance to any of the monster-story scripts we’re discussing.

          Rail against the wind all you want. Larry Lieber wasn’t sitting around doing nothing to make money to pay the rent and buy groceries all those years. He was scripting pre-superhero Marvel stories. He didn’t just get the assignment to launch Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man etc. with no writing experience.

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      19. Compare like to like. If you wish to compare Kirby’s 1958-1961 text to other Kirby text I’d suggest something more contemporaneous, like his mystery and romance stories from just a few years earlier.

          If you truly believe that Kirby’s 1970s work is terrible…well, you’re entitled to your opinion. I question the taste of a man who thinks The Pact, The Glory Boat and Himon…three of the greatest comics ever produced and done by Kirby in the space of less than six months…are terrible. But it’s opinion. And certainly not objective.

          I think Stan Lee’s text is uniformly awful and childish and frequently does little more than reinforce the action in front of the readers eyes. His text is hand handed and heavy fisted and his jokes fall flat. He couldn’t write female characters to save his life. Those are my opinions. Though shared by many it doesn’t make them “objective” truth. You are welcome to enjoy what you like.

          95%? God…you could at least try to be remotely serious when you make up numbers. I don’t rely ONLY on the the testimony of Jack Kirby. Steve Ditko and Wally Wood tell very much the same tale. Joe Orlando quit working for Marvel because Stan Lee would hand him nothing more than a stub and make him redraw page after page because the story wasn’t working. Stan Goldberg was warned to never tell Lee he didn’t have an idea for a story. Even John Romita…overall pretty friendly to Lee…says he was plotting Spider-Man.

          There are the original Kirby art pages out there with Kirby’s script lettered directly on the page. Too bad we don’t have all those pages. Maybe they would answer more questions. But repeated thefts at Marvel left so many scattered to the wind. Kirby got less than 20% of his Silver Age art back.

          So many of Kirby’s works echo earlier stories and are echoed later. Marvel’s Thor was his third. And unlike Lee and Lieber he knew the hammer was named Mjolnir. Not even you can deny the remarkable parallel between the Fantastic Four and Challenger of the Unknown origins. Yeah, mystic power of collaboration. Not writer Kirby reusing his own stuff.

          You’re obsession with Lieber’s groceries is…odd. According to his own testimony he lived at home until 1958. He got a job due to nepotism. As his big brother had. Magazine Management was rife with Liebers and Goodmans and Solomons. Doesn’t mean they didn’t acquire some level of competence.

          Lee never laid claim to Kirby’s monster stories until the 1974 Origins book. Which is rife with lies. Or mistakes. Or exagerations. “I invented Dr Strange” because I liked Chandu” when he had already said a decade before it was Ditko’s idea. “I say a fly and I thought up Spider-Man” even though Kirby brought him the idea…even a logo for god’s sake. Yes, the published Spider-Man is mostly Ditko obviously but Lee didn’t dream up the name watching a fly.

          Lieber’s name wasn’t attached to the monster stories until 1998. Nearly a decade after Kirby said he wrote them. 4 years after Kirby’s death.

          I could almost admire your devotion to Larry Lieber. I’ve never heard a bad thing about him. Kirby said he was a great guy. But claims made 40 years after the fact simply aren’t convincing.

          No matter how badly Larry Lieber’s parents cupboard needed refilled.

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      20. You skimmed my remark about 1970s Kirby — I clearly said his “scripting.” I think everyone agrees his plotting, character conceptions and world-building were some of the best in the medium. But go back to contemporaneous writing in 1970s fanzines and you’ll see bewilderment at the eccentric, let’s say, scripting. (Why he thought Don Rickles was something that would appeal to kid/teen comics readers is a separate issue entirely.) By the way, I own Kirby pages with notes, and countless such pages have appeared in articles. There is NO comparison between the bare, almost shorthand plot points in the margins and the dialog full of characterization and background and all the other things a scriptwriter puts in. You may not like Lee’s writing but certainly huge numbers of people did since Marvel comics — with not just Kirby art but that of many other artists — sold well enough to have it eventually become the dominant publisher in the field.

          I’ve seen the hackneyed Challengers / FF comparison before. Like a team of four adventurers in comics is unusual. Like a team of superheroes is unusual. The Challs never fought each other or had money trouble of any of that. And Lee produced an FF creation synopsis that has been widely published, but I’m sure you subscribe to the conspiracy theories about that. But even Mark Evanier — an excellent historian and equally excellent writer, easily one of the best people in the field, and someone who knew Kirby as well as anyone outside his family — says in his book “Kirby: King of Comics,” “Among those who worked around them at the time, there was a unanimous view: that ‘Fantastic Four’ was created by Stan and Jack.” I could give countless examples.

          Which brings me to “95%.” Obviously, “95%” is a rough estimate, based on my years of writing about the topic and having, as mentioned, a library of about 200 books on comics (and probably another 200 issues of Jack Kirby Collector, Alter Ego, Comic Book Artist, Write Now!, Amazing Heroes and others). I can provide photos of them for you if you’d like.

          Wood — never the easiest person to work with, given his Mad magazine ouster — Orlando and someothers were disgruntled. That’s their right. Not every worker loves the working conditions. But Gene Colan, Don Heck, George Tuska, John and Sal Buscema, John Romita Sr., Herb Trimpe and other giants had no problems with the working condition and often even extolled the freedom it gave them.

          Again, for a self-described writer — is that what do you for living? — you seem to have no understanding of metaphor. “Rent” and “groceries” in context clearly refer to “working to make money to live on.” You act as if Larry Lieber never worked and, what, was on welfare? Also, he didn’t live in a house but in a small ground-floor apartment in the designed-for-middle-income Manhattan complex Tudor City.

          Your research standards are virtually nonexistent. You go into this topic with bias. Go ahead and take the last word, knowing you gratuitously defamed Larry Lieber with remarkable, unsupportable claims, and that you echo every standard talking point of the Jack-Kirby-is-God-Stan-Lee-is-a-villain clique. I will try very hard to not reply.

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      21. Can this be taken elsewhere? I get constant notifications on it and I’d have to turn off all notifications about the whole blog to stop seing them.

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      22. I’d asked Tom a couple of days ago for comments to be closed, or at least comments by us two if that were possible. So I did try.

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      23. Sorry about that Steve. I had no idea other people were being bothered with this. You can rest assured that this is done.

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      24. Thank you. I do have an opinion on the topic based on bits and pieces I’ve come across in over fifty years of reading comics but the key thing here is neither of you are going to come to any sort of agreement. The only thing I think it’s possible for you to agree on at all is that you will never agree.

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2. I came to Marvel late (with Walt Simonson’s Thor) and only started reading the early issues when they reprinted them in Marvel Masterworks. However, I never got Hulk and have never read his solo titles. However, I have always loved learning about behind the scenes making of stuff, be it movies, TV series, or comic books. It’sgreat to be able to see unused/discarded artwork from so long ago.

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3. Not a couple of Kirby’s greatest pages, but there’s still so much to enjoy in these modest, quiet pages:

   The horse and carriage at the top of the first page are so solid — the perspective of those wheels, the weight of that horse.

   The fact that in that wall of money on the second page, Jack drew little bill details on every single bill!

   The little guy peeking around the wall to get a look at Rick.

   The delicate, spare penciling of Rick’s face in close-up at the bottom of page.

   Good stuff!

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   1. The bills blew me away when I noticed them too. What a chore before cut and paste…

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   2. Jack Kirby’s drawing is so beautiful. I’m always grateful to see his pencils, even with more limited efforts like this.

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4. To bad Stan Lee didn’t think to turn this story from the mob fixing a basketball game and into the early introduction of the Maggia [ The Avengers#13 ( February 1965 ) ] whose plan was to kidnap Rick Jones as bait to get their hands on the Hulk( Maybe they plan to mind-control him through hypnosis or mind-control tech ). Sure they could have grabbed Rick before or after the basketball game but this way it should still be possible to use what Jack already drew. Plus if the Maggia are given advance technology they have in later stories a blast from one of their weapons could sever Rick Jones’ telepathic link with the Hulk and restore him to normal.

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   1. PANEL 6 : I’VE INVESTIGATED YOU-YOU’RE SEARCHING FOR SOMEONE-I’LL HELP YOU FIND HIM IF YOU THROW GAME. So was the HIM his Father/Grandfather/Uncle/Male Cousin/Younger Brother/Twin Brother( identical or Fraternal ) who was adopted or kidnapped ( Older Brother would be looking for him ) or a Friend? For MY mob was to get their hands on the Hulk panel 6 changes to: I’ve investigated you-you’re searching for someone-I’ll help find him if you set up a meeting with the Hulk. By grabbing Rick then the game would have been fixed.

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5. Nice pages.

   And look! It’s the Funky Flashman and Houseroy of Earth-Marvel! And Roy wasn’t even there yet!

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6. It seems hard to believe, but I’m now the proud owner of that second page above. I think Heritage might have gotten more for it — not that was it cheap — if they’d noted this historical Hulk background you provide and which has been written about before … and not said that it came from a “Rick Jones story”!

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7. That panel of the horse and carriage on the city street is so good, you wish it was a larger part of the page.

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8. Pingback: Lee & Kirby: More Discarded Pages from INCREDIBLE HULK #4 – The Tom Brevoort Experience

9. P.S. Where exactly did Kirby say Larry Lieber wasn’t giving him full scripts? I’d like to see precisely what Kirby claimed.

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