Jack Kirby is a hack

[alive she cried]

All info is taken from this Cracked article.

 

Cyclops

 

 

is ripped off of Comet

 

Cartoonist Jack Cole is perhaps best known for creating Plastic Man in 1941 (the first stretchy superhero, way before Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four). But before that, his most popular character was the Comet. The Comet's alter ego, John Dickering, was a young scientist...he...dickered around with more injections until he gained all-out flight. However, there was an unfortunate side effect..His eyes began emitting rays that disintegrated things -- rays that fortunately could also be stopped by ordinary glass. And so, freshly armed with his new "dissolvo-vision," he created a costume complete with protective goggles.

 

There's also some controversy centered around whether or not he deserves to get credit for co-creating Spider-Man with Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, which gets really interesting when you consider the fact that Kirby worked at Fox Comics early in his career -- the company responsible for a character that was awfully similar to ...

 

http://io9.com/53636...ated-spider+man

Spider-Man was discussed between Joe [simon] and myself. Spider-Man was not a product of Marvel. - Jack Kirby

This is, again, misleading; that "Spider-Man" also never saw print, but instead became 1959's The Fly, and was a reworking of a previous Joe Simon character (co-created with artist CC Beck) called the Silver Spider. Simon has suggested that the discussion of a character called "Spider-Man" - or actually "Spiderman," according to the unused logo from that time - led to Kirby suggesting the name to Stan Lee years later, at Marvel Comics.

Spider-Man

 

is ripped off of

 

nobody else has web-slingers -- because that's pretty much Spider-Man's "thing." Sure, the spider sense is cool and all, but if there's one aspect that defines the character, it's his web-slinging. Web shooters, mounted on his wrists, that he uses to swing around and catch baddies ... just like Fox Comics' Spider Queen did in the 1940s, a good 20 years before Peter "Patent Violation" Parker ever experimented with shooting the sticky stuff.

 

Like Spidey, the Spider Queen had a tragic backstory and thought red and blue were appropriate stealth colors. Shannon Kane was the wife and lab assistant of government chemist Harry Kane. After Harry was killed by enemies of the country, she nosed through his papers and found the formula for "spider-web fluid." So then she devised a pair of bracelets to spray the stuff, donned a slutty cheerleader outfit and started busting some heads. And look, she even fired her web bracelets with a flex of the wrist:

And the most iconic of icons Captain America

 

 

is ripped off of

 

The Shield

 

It turns out ol' Cap actually showed up a little late to the Stars 'n' Stripes toga party. In fact, he was beat by two other dudes decked out in Old Glory -- the first of whom was the Shield, whose January 1940 debut landed a good 14 months before el Capitan. The Shield wore an armored costume shaped like a -- wait for it -- shield that repelled bullets and also prevented him from clapping or holding babies.

 

Curiously enough, in his first issue, Captain America had a shield shaped just like that (although he had the good sense to carry it instead of using it as a fashion statement). It was such a conspicuous copy that the Shield's publishers complained, resulting in Marvel changing it in the very next issue to the more practical patriotic Frisbee Cap carries to this day.

 

But the similarities didn't end with the characters' amazing fashion sense. Cap and Shieldy also both took a serum that gave them their powers, and in both cases Nazis killed the doctors who created the superjuice. And the name of the Shield's formula was the clever acronym S.H.I.E.L.D. (Sacrum, Heart, Innervation, Eyes, Lungs and Derma)

 

Incidentally, Pep Comics No. 1 was the first appearance of the Shield and also the Comet. What a strange coincidence! Another odd happenstance is that legendary artist Jack Kirby was the co-creator of both Captain America and the X-Men (and, for that matter, the Fantastic Four, featuring the quite Plastic Man-esque Mr. Fantastic). But Kirby probably didn't even know about these obscure characters -- except that he did do freelance work for Archie Comics in '58, a good five years before he and Stan Lee created the X-Men.

Huh. If we didn't know any better, we'd be tempted to say that Jack Kirby, arguably the most influential comic book artist ever, may have also been the biggest "borrower" in the industry.

 

Looks like "Jolly" Jack really was the perfect partner for Stan "The Man".

Edited September 25, 2012 by alive she cried

[The NZA]

Liefeld has been banging on about the Fighting American thing for years now (despite jacking pretty much all of his characters), so that's rather well known. a loose 1 out of 5 of the original X-men, and Spidey, a character no one even attributes to being his - and he's a hack, despite creating much of the Marvel U (some DC/others as well)?

 

kinda poor form i think, and only a newjack like ASC could post this. LL doesn't watch movies from before 1975, so i don't usually ask her about classics either....cmon man

 

 

ima make a "e-money's a hack" thread and just wiki link ever intellectual property you "combine", ye whore

 

[Iambaytor]

Yeah this thread is retarded.

 

Borrowing the concept of 2 (we'll call it 3 since there's undeniable similarities between Plastic Man and Mr. Fantastic) characters (Jack Kirby had little to nothing to do with Spider-Man and unsurprisingly there were a lot of flag wearing Nazi punching superheros around the time of World War 2) does not make the man a hack. In fact, by volume, it makes him less of a hack than almost the entire comic books industry. He created the bulk of 2 universe with shit like The 4th World, The Eternals, The Inhumans, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, and a million other concepts so out there nobody else would have though of them and even when he consciously ripped something off (Like with Kamandi the Last Boy or Thundarr the Barabarian) he did it in his own inimitable way.

[alive she cried]

9 views and only 2 -1's? Not bad.

Liefeld has been banging on about the Fighting American thing for years now (despite jacking pretty much all of his characters), so that's rather well known.

Wait, what's your point here? It's well known he stole Cap so it's...okay?

 

a loose 1 out of 5 of the original X-men, and Spidey, a character no one even attributes to being his - and he's a hack, despite creating much of the Marvel U (some DC/others as well)?

I chose to use the term hack, because it's used a lot by people around here for Stan Lee, I'm struggling to see much of a difference between them.

 

kinda poor form i think, and only a newjack like ASC could post this. LL doesn't watch movies from before 1975, so i don't usually ask her about classics either....cmon man

I have read a lot of silver age books, I explained this to you before, when I was telling you about the UK reprints I used to get that would always print a back up classic story in every issue. I know Kirby, and I've never doubted his influence, or talent (as a creator (he was an average artist)), but he may not have been as squeaky clean as many claim/think he was.

ima make a "e-money's a hack" thread and just wiki link ever intellectual property you "combine", ye whore

Slight difference here though, as I again have explained to you before. I never claimed to have created those characters. I always say they are tributes/parodies. Captain America isn't one of the best superheroes ever, he's a tribute to a superhero Kirby used to read. I wonder if he has a redbubble page?

 

Yeah this thread is retarded.

 

Borrowing the concept of 2 (we'll call it 3 since there's undeniable similarities between Plastic Man and Mr. Fantastic) characters (Jack Kirby had little to nothing to do with Spider-Man and unsurprisingly there were a lot of flag wearing Nazi punching superheros around the time of World War 2) does not make the man a hack. In fact, by volume, it makes him less of a hack than almost the entire comic books industry. He created the bulk of 2 universe with shit like The 4th World, The Eternals, The Inhumans, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, and a million other concepts so out there nobody else would have though of them and even when he consciously ripped something off (Like with Kamandi the Last Boy or Thundarr the Barabarian) he did it in his own inimitable way.

 

So as long as one creates loads of cool stuff, they're forgiven for stealing other characters/ideas?

 

Yeah, my friend actually threw away his Jimi Hendrix albums when he found out that Jimi thought Zeppelin were a bunch of music thieving shits. And I just looked at him and went "...but they were."

 

I also think there's a big difference between using a hook from an old jazz song in your new single and having someone go "hey listen to this" and going "Oh, that's cool, I'm going to put that in my song without your permission or consent, and then I'm never going to pay you or give you credit. Also I wear women's pants and looks like a sex offender. I WILL FUCK ALLISON CROUSE IN THE FUTURE!"

Edited September 25, 2012 by alive she cried

[Thelogan]

This is adorable.

[Iambaytor]

So as long as one creates loads of cool stuff, they're forgiven for stealing other characters/ideas?

 

Depends on what you mean by stealing. If you mean, taking credit for another's work? No. If you mean using a similar powers from another character then that's just dumb. Every character who is strong and flies ever made is stolen from Superman. Every character with a robot suit is stolen from Iron-Man. And I do find it weird you quoted my post about Led Zeppelin stealing music because it's actually the same parallel.

 

Jack Kirby used 1 concept (Guy with laser vision/Guy wearing stars and stripes with a Shield that fights Nazis), applied it to his own character with their own independant origin story, personality, and supporting cast.

 

Stan Lee said "So, Jack, what've you got today?"

 

"Well I've got this team of astronauts who get hit with cosmic radiation: one becomes stretchy like a rubberband, one can light himself ablaze like the Human Torch, one turns into a giant rock man, and the other one can turn invisible."

 

"Man, that is a good idea Jack. Aren't you glad I thought of it?"

 

I respect Stan a great deal more than every Non-Panch here, but there's still a big difference.

[Panch]

Where has it been said that Kirby "suggested" the ideas and Stan took the credit? Where? Show me the proof.

[the division of joy]

I don't know what is going on but will +1 ASC out of national backing-up-man-ship.

[The NZA]

ASC - no its not a justification, but with the birth of any medium, i imagine a lotta early ideas get shared...have you ever looked at how many Supermen there were? im with baytor here, which lable do you think didnt have a super-soldier looking super american & punching nazis around WW II? try to imagine how wide circulation was back then, how many more small labels were on the block, etc.

 

i do think there's gray area here - being influenced by the blues vs ripping off their tetrameter/lyrics wholesale, for instance. the overlap back then vs now is a wide rift in my mind, you can't honestly point at a few of Kirby's characters having the same traits/look as something earlier and say that's like what image did in the 90s, for instance. i'm not telling you things get a pass but you really should see the differences in early points of an era, especially in a medium legendary for shitty creator rights.

 

 

really figure you should've known the e-$ wiki links thing was in jest, despite the neg you caught - wasnt meant as anything personal man

 

 

Where has it been said that Kirby "suggested" the ideas and Stan took the credit? Where? Show me the proof.

 

my proof has always been stan fighting for more facetime/royalties on said characters, especailly when the movies took off - but when kirby's family/estate needed him in the early 90s and marvel was being shitty & not releasing his art/royalties etc, he opted to be a company man and stayed quite while the man who created most of the works he takes credit for got fucked. frank miller and numerous other writers saw the writing on the wall & left, the long-term damage to marvel's brand for creator rights was done, and smilin' Stan was okay with the status quo, giving no indication he wanted right done by his "partner". nothing he's done since indicates any change for me - i respect the guy and his works, but that's shitty, even for a man who often jokes that he takes credit for anything not nailed down.

 

ive read a few intereviews recently that talk about how salty Kirby was with him/the stituation later in life, but a few younger wrtiers say they were both hard to deal with in their older age - Stan'd say something and be quoted on it years later and deny it, etc. at that age, i kinda understand, so i get some fo the early details being murky at this point, but even so.

 

ps do we have a thread for Kamandi the Last Boy? the last few years i swear ive heard on & on about how far ahead of its time that book was, and i know about as much about it as Toyfare would discuss.

[alive she cried]

Kirby stuff

I get what you're saying. The thread title was just to grab attention, as I said I have great respect for him and I don't think he was a hack. I just think Lee gets a bad rap, despite his shit. He's a legend and most legends are forgiven their faults, even if they be major.

 

really figure you should've known the e-$ wiki links thing was in jest, despite the neg you caught - wasnt meant as anything personal man

I kind of knew, but you've made similar comments two or three other times since the Sega shirt regarding my redbubble stuff. And even though they were all humourous, I thought maybe you were hiding actual sentiment behind comedy. But yeah, no worries.

[Iambaytor]

Stan Lee does get a bad rap, he definitely had a ship-rat mentality when shit started falling apart which was kinda shit but he was a symptom, not a cause. He's just never afraid to turn down praise for anything even if he didn't really earn it. Like for his writing for example: it's not good. I don't think he wasn't capable of not writing I just think he didn't take it seriously because comics were just stupid entertainment for kids when he got big in the business, he's often hinted this might be the case. But it's fairly obvious when he was writing and when Kirby/Ditko/etc were. He still was instrumental in a lot of great moments early in the Marvel years, he just wasn't as big as he wants you to think.

 

But yeah, the only straight-up thievery as far as I can tell is the Spider-Man/Spider Queen thing and seeing as Kirby's Spider-Man had a "web gun" then that was on Steve Ditko/Stan Lee. I've never attributed Kirby to Spider-man because he "created" Spider-Man the same way that Bob Kane created Batman. I won't say there's not a lot of similarities between Cap and The Shield but well... they were two among MANY (John Steele, Commander Steel, and Uncle Sam come to mind immediately)

 

I shall go and make a Kamandi thread now.

[Panch]

Ok, lots of words being typed but still no proof. Everyone talks like they were there. Ok, you're writing a Wikipedia article and you need references. Go!

 

Since everything is hearsay anyways, here's my take:

 

Stan and Jack created those characters TOGETHER. There's never any way of knowing who thought up who, but Stan WAS there at the inception ALONG WITH Kirby. Stan wrote the words and Jack drew the pictures. And as far as that is concerned, is anyone saying Kirby ORIGINALLY wrote those words and Stan took credit? No, Stan still wrote those words and is the guy behind the stories that made them last this long. ALONG with Kirby that is responsible for the iconic look of these characters (except for Spider-Man, that was all Ditko).

 

I can't speak on all the "Lee said, KirBY said". Stan obviously made mistakes and Jack probably deserved more. And in the very least, support from Stan. We will never know now (God rest Jack's soul). But back to what I was saying:

 

There's is no doubt that the iconic look of these characters have driven kid's minds crazy for decades, but it is those stories that has us even talking about this today. Baytor, you say Stan was a horrible writer? It is those stories that have made those characters what they are today. Those concepts of power and responsibility, family, perseverance are what truly make the character. You guys are all hung up on names and costumes, but at the end of the day, it was Stan that contributed THE MOST to the legacy of these characters. Characters, that even as unoriginal as they seem, have concepts that had never been seen up to that time in the genre. And that still hold up today! That's what Stan did...

[Iambaytor]

There's is no doubt that the iconic look of these characters have driven kid's minds crazy for decades, but it is those stories that has us even talking about this today. Baytor, you say Stan was a horrible writer? It is those stories that have made those characters what they are today. Those concepts of power and responsibility, family, perseverance are what truly make the character. You guys are all hung up on names and costumes, but at the end of the day, it was Stan that contributed THE MOST to the legacy of these characters. Characters, that even as unoriginal as they seem, have concepts that had never been seen up to that time in the genre. And that still hold up today! That's what Stan did...

 

See, not really. Reading the first couple years of Spider-Man you can almost see the barrier where Stan started writing less and other people took over, I mentioned in my reviews ages ago how the only actual deep characters (aside from Peter of course) are Jameson and Flash, only after Stan's name started fading off the credits did anyone else get a chance to shine, Mary Jane doesn't even become a real character until Gwen Stacy dies and Gwen Stacy isn't even a good character.

 

However, the most egregious example of Stan Lee writing is in Journey to Mystery starting with the first appearance of Thor. Thor is an endearing book based largely around concepts created by Jack Kirby, I can tell they are Kirby's because they have his flavor to them. However the issue to issue story writing is atrocious and makes silver-age Superman look mature by comparison. Stan toed the line and I can't in all fairness say he didn't come up with some of the memorable heart of stories, but it's painfully obvious in back issues when someone else stepped in and injected a bit of heart or intelligence into a story and considering these things were both obvious in spades in solo Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko work and not in solo Stan Lee work it's not difficult to see that maybe Lee's getting more credit than he deserves here. While Flash and Jameson may have had interesting stories in spite of their prickishness I'm only really willing to attribute Flash's surprising depth in early issues to Stan, Jameson I think was always intended to be a not-so-subtle caricature of Stan it seems more apparent in later years but a lot of Jameson's traits echo things I've heard about Stan and Jameson's depth seems to be a lot of writers' subtle way of saying "Yeah he's a prick, but he's a nice guy at heart."

[Thelogan]

I just think he didn't take it seriously because comics were just stupid entertainment for kids

 

This exactly.

[Iambaytor]

I remember they had this thing where famous people wrote letters to their younger selves and Stan's was all about "Don't dismiss those funny books as low art. Be proud of what you do and take it seriously because they're gonna be big." I think he threw softballs for years and later realized he could've done something amazing and missed his chance.

[The NZA]

Ok, lots of words being typed but still no proof. Everyone talks like they were there. Ok, you're writing a Wikipedia article and you need references. Go!

 

what are you asking for here? im not getting into the extent that Stan made stuff, because im not digging through articles/old wizards i cut up to find a rare bit of Ditko saying stan wanted " a teenager with spider-like power" and how much of that he had to conjure. we're arguing %'s there and i made a thread years back kinda asking how much of a "creation" you attribute to a given writer vs artist, depending on their input...vs the creative teams that fleshed them out later (ie batman, who has a lot more resemblance in my mind to Neal Adams that any golden age creator, etc). i agree there's gray area here, as ive said.

 

if you need evidence that Lee stood by while Kirby died without any of his due...seriously? google that shit, there's a ton spoken/dug up over at CBR and newsarama on this stuff. the writer exodus didnt happen because of a trend: shooter & co (as i recall, i wanna say he was EIC around then) fucked perhaps their single largest creator out during his hour of need. it's why we have causes like ACTOR now, this is pretty well established stuff.

 

Stan and Jack created those characters TOGETHER. There's never any way of knowing who thought up who, but Stan WAS there at the inception ALONG WITH Kirby. Stan wrote the words and Jack drew the pictures. And as far as that is concerned, is anyone saying Kirby ORIGINALLY wrote those words and Stan took credit? No, Stan still wrote those words and is the guy behind the stories that made them last this long. ALONG with Kirby that is responsible for the iconic look of these characters (except for Spider-Man, that was all Ditko).

 

while youre pointing out that we weren't there: likewise, assuming stan filled in the word balloons everytime after Kirby drew up the art/thereby the plot (as was his patented method at the time) is equally subjective. im willing to believe from old stuff that stan phoned in or just ok'd more than a few things...though unlike what im taking from baytor's words, ive usually agreed with you that i thought early ASM was pretty standout for its time, as far as relatability and the pace of new villain creation. granted its been years since i read my 1st volume masterworks book but i did numerous times in the past & was pretty impressed at how it held up, as i recall.

 

... but at the end of the day, it was Stan that contributed THE MOST to the legacy of these characters. Characters, that even as unoriginal as they seem, have concepts that had never been seen up to that time in the genre. And that still hold up today! That's what Stan did...

 

see, i know he's the living figurehead/pop culture association with all of this, and sure ill feel bad if he doesn't pull through soon, but even with the few silver age books ive genuinely read, i gotta disagree - on creative credits alone, i wanna say Jack is tied to more central marvel characters than anyone else. at a glance, wiki puts stan on a larger number of notable characters, but Kirby has key Avengers, FF & X-Men. if ASC's link is to be believed that he had input on Spidey, this is literally the backbone of the marvel U here.

[Panch]

Everyone at the time had imput due to the Marvel Bullpen. The writer's room/roundtable discussion was unheard of in the genre. That's how Stan did stuff back then so at the end of the day it was their combined effort. I'm not taking anything away from anyone, but I'm also not so dumb to think that Kirby did the whole story on his own and Stan just wrote "zap, boom, bap". Even halfassed Stan wrote some of the most iconic stories to date.