1. Introduction

This essay originally began as an endnote to The Romita Version, which explored John Romita’s recollections of working with Stan Lee on Amazing Spider-Man. It was initially conceived as a compilation of Jack Kirby’s remarks on the ‘Marvel Method’ of story creation, intended to serve as a point of comparison with Romita’s experiences. Over time, this was expanded to include some of Stan Lee’s reflections.  It is now presented here in a more comprehensive form.


The text offers selected commentary from both Jack Kirby and Stan Lee on the broader themes of story development and authorship in the work they produced together from 1961 to 1970 under the ‘Marvel Method.’ It focuses on presenting each creator’s perspective as it evolved over time—highlighting both their differences and the extent to which their views might be reconciled. While some contextual background is provided, the article assumes a general familiarity with Marvel Comics of that era. It concludes with a section of personal reflections and a detailed set of endnotes.


Most readers will already be aware that Jack Kirby’s legacy at Marvel extends far beyond the scope of this piece. His story involves competing accounts of the Marvel Age’s origins and the creation of many of its most iconic characters. It also intersects with long-running debates over creator rights—encompassing questions of authorship, ownership, the return of original artwork, and the broader fight for recognition and fair compensation. These subjects are too wide-ranging to be addressed here and have been explored thoroughly elsewhere. For those interested in these broader historical and legal contexts, a list of suggested readings is included at the end.

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Last Update: April 2026

2. ‘Kind of a John Henry operation’’ – The Marvel Method

As previously noted, this article deals with stories created in accordance with what is now commonly referred to as the ‘Marvel Method.’ Though its execution varied, this approach generally involved the artist working from a premise or brief outline rather than a full script, with dialogue added after the story had been visually plotted. The initial concepts could originate from either collaborator, depending on the project.

This was how Jack Kirby characterized the process in 1969:

“I must admit it’s a kind of a John Henry operation; and I’ll talk over a story with Stan Lee, but the plot has to be worked out here (in Kirby’s home studio). It’s got to be worked out on paper, the gimmicks have to be worked out, and everything has to dovetail.

So it’s all worked out here, and I write the captions for the motivation of the story in the margin of the paper. Then it goes to Marvel, and the dialogue is written in, and the story is sent on to the letterer and inker, and processed down to the engraver.”

— Jack Kirby, August 1969: Jack Kirby interviewed by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing


And this description came from Stan Lee in 1975:

“The way we worked, for those of you who don’t know, is not the way they work at other companies, where the writer writes the script, and it’s given to the artist, and the artist draws it, and that’s the end of it. With us, it’s a marriage of talents.

The artist and the writer will discuss the plots together, then the artist goes off to his little nook where he works and he – without the benefit of script – with only this vague, ridiculous plot that he’s discussed – goes and draws the whole story all by himself…Then , when the writer has to put in the copy, just imagine how much easier it is to look at a drawing and suit the dialogue perfectly to the expression of the character’s face…”

“The artists are great storytellers themselves. They know which sequence to enlarge upon, which to cut short…They’d put in characters I knew nothing about…”

— Stan Lee, San Diego Comic-Con 1975

There is some debate over exactly when this approach to creating comic books first emerged, but it is reasonable to argue that the ‘Marvel Method’ officially began with the first issue of Fantastic Four (November 1961), as this title launched the so-called “Marvel Age of Comics.”

3. In the Beginning – “Jack Kirby and I have many ideas”

Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961) featured no formal creator credits, displaying only the hand-lettered names of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on the splash page. This absence of credits was not unusual for comic books of the era; many creators still worked anonymously, and it was often against company policy to sign their work. Even Kirby—who, along with Joe Simon, had been part of the highly successful ‘Simon and Kirby’ team in the 1940s and 1950s—received no byline on the Challengers of the Unknown strip he produced for National/DC Comics just a few years earlier, between 1957 and 1959.


It was only around a year later, in publications dated late 1962, that Lee began regularly including formal creator credits in Marvel’s publications (as seen in Fantastic Four #9, December 1962). His own role in was described in various ways, but always with phrasing that positioned him as the author—using terms such as “script by,” “written by,” or even “story by.” Kirby, meanwhile, was credited for his artwork.


Even at this early stage, however, Lee was otherwise acknowledging conceptual contributions from Kirby—as in a 1962 letter to fanzine editor Jerry Bails, where he discussed the creation of the Fantastic Four:

“The mag has been better received than any other we’ve produced in a long time.  And Jack Kirby and I have many ideas which we think are somewhat original for future issues.”

— Stan Lee, letter to Jerry Bails dated 8 January, 1962, as published in The Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011


This was also conveyed directly to readers in Fantastic Four #10 (January 1963), which featured cameos by both Kirby and Lee. One scene shows the pair working together to devise a new villain for their in-universe comic book version of the team, set in the “offices of Kirby and Lee” (referred to in the illustration as “Lee and Kirby”). Elsewhere, a caption informs readers that a particular moment is “…as far as Jack Kirby and I got with our story…”, further blurring the lines between fictional narrative and real-world collaboration.


Even so, the general narrative positioned Lee as the writer and Kirby as the artist, as evidenced by the following response from the letters page of Fantastic Four #11 (February 1963):

“Thanks guys, but you must be the only two readers left who don’t know that Stan Lee writes the stories and Jack Kirby draws them.”

Lee expressed a particular affinity for the Fantastic Four strip, and stated at the time that he would create a ‘story plot’ for discussion with Kirby during ‘hasty conferences’:

“FF is easily our favorite book here at the Marvel bullpen.  It’s my baby and I love it.  People have asked for original scripts – actually, we don’t even HAVE any.  I write the story plot – go over it with Jack – he draws it based on our hasty conferences – then, with his drawings in front of me, I write the captions and dialogue, usually right on the original art work.”

— Stan Lee, letter to Jerry Bails dated 9 January, 1963, as published in The Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011


Some written outlines have surfaced over the years (see Endnotes), though there has been ongoing speculation about the extent to which they may have been influenced by Kirby’s ideas. Kirby did not publicly reference these outlines until many years later, at which point he claimed they were based on concepts he had already proposed in earlier discussions:

“The only time I was given any kind of written synopsis was after I’d give Stan Lee a story and take it from what I told him.  I was the one creating the story line, the pictures, the story itself.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘A Comic Book Artist KO’d: Jack Kirby’s Six-Year Slugfest with Marvel’ Village Voice Vol 32 #49, 8 December 1987 (available for viewing online at the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Site).


Kirby would also later publicly reference himself as the writer, while dismissing the accuracy of the published credits:

“I wrote them all. Well, I never wrote the credits. Let’s put it that way, all right? I would never call myself ‘Jolly Jack.’ I would never say the books were written by Lee.”

— Jack Kirby, Comics Scene #2, Interview with Howard Zimmerman, March 1982


Precisely when Kirby began to raise the issue of credits—and the extent to which it was recognized as a problem at the time—is difficult to determine. The two evidently enjoyed an amicable working relationship for at least part of this period:

“Actually, we were pretty good friends. I know Stan Lee better than probably any other person. I know Stan Lee as a person… I never was angry with him in any way. He was never angry with me in any way. We went to the Cartoonists’ Society together. Watching Marvel grow was beneficial for both our egos.”

— Jack Kirby, 1985: An Interview with Jack Kirby by Leonard Pitts Jr. Date determined by Pitts’ letter to Rand Hoppe at the Jack Kirby Museum, 1985. in The Complete Four-Page Series and other Essays, 2020)

 
4. “ESP sessions with the artists” – Nat Freedland’s 1966 New York Tribune Herald Article


In late 1965, Stan Lee arranged for Jack Kirby to join him in what was intended as a demonstration—reportedly staged—of a plotting session, conducted for New York Herald Tribune reporter Nat Freedland. This event, among other things, provided an obvious opportunity to highlight the creative contributions of both men in a high-profile publication aimed at a general audience.


Freedland clearly gained some insight into how the two worked together, but his description of the process would be somewhat ambiguous:

“Lee arrives at his plots in sort of ESP sessions with the artists. He inserts the dialogue after the picture layout comes in.”

He was clearly impressed by Lee, describing him as an “ultra–Madison Avenue, rangy lookalike of Rex Harrison” — a description that contrasted sharply with his portrayal of Kirby:

“Here he is in action at his weekly Friday morning summit meeting with Jack “King” Kirby, a veteran comic hook artist. a man who created many of the visions of your childhood and mine. The King is a middle-aged man with baggy eyes and a baggy Robert Hall-ish suit. He is sucking a huge green cigar and if you stood next to him on the subway you would peg him for the assistant foreman in a girdle factory.”

Freedland observed the two discussing what seemed to be the plot for Fantastic Four #55 (October 1966). While Lee was in exuberant form, Kirby was subdued, and his contributions were essentially non-existent:

“The Silver Surfer has been somewhere out in space since he helped the F.F. stop Galactus from destroying Earth,” begins Lee. “Why don’t we bring him back?”

“Ummh,” says Kirby. “Suppose Alicia, the Thing’s blind girl friend, is in some kind of trouble. And the Silver Surfer comes to help her.” Lee starts pacing and gesturing as he gets warmed up.

“I see,” says Kirby. He has kind of a high-pitched voice.

 “But the Thing sees them together and he misunderstands. So he starts a big fight with the Silver Surfer. And meanwhile, the Fantastic Four is in lots of trouble. Doctor Doom has caught them again and they need the Things help.”

Lee is lurching around and throwing punches now.

“Right,” says Kirby. “The Thing finally beats the Silver Surfer. But then Alicia makes him realize he’s made a terrible mistake. This is what the Thing has always feared more than anything else,  that he would lose control and really clobber somebody.” Kirby nods. “The Thing is broken-hearted. He wanders off by-himself. He’s too ashamed to face Alicia or go back home to the Fantastic Four. He doesn’t realize how he’s failing for the second time…. How much the F.F. needs him.” Lee sags back on his desk, limp and spent.

— Nat Freedland, ‘Super-Heroes with Super Problems’ by Nat Freedland, New York Herald Tribune, 9 January, 1966


Freedland later learned of Kirby’s reaction when he contacted Lee after the article’s publication on 9 January 1966:

“I called Marvel and talked to Stan Lee and said, ‘How come you didn’t put me in your column, now that the thing is out? And he told me about Kirby being upset—I think he put it as, ‘upset about having his feelings hurt’—and I thought, gee, I can see why he would.”

“I feel sad that I was one of the things that made Kirby feel he was being shortchanged, which, in retrospect, decades later, I can see, yeah, he was,” he tells me. “ ‘Girdle factory.’ Oh, God. Oh, poor Kirby. What the hell was I thinking?”

— Nat Freedland, as quoted in True Believer – The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman, Crown 2021

Note: Stan Lee would find his own appearance critiqued in rather unflattering terms in another newspaper article from January 1966 – this time from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. see ‘Endnotes’.

5. ‘Produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’

Kirby’s contribution to storytelling (along with those of other Marvel artists) subsequently received belated recognition in the Bullpen Bulletin page published in issues dated February 1966. For many regular readers, this brief paragraph was likely their first exposure to the (still-unnamed) “Marvel Method”:

“It isn’t generally known, but many of our merry Marvel artists are also talented story men in their own right! For example, all Stan has to do with the pros like JACK ‘KING’ KIRBY, dazzling DON HECK, and darlin’ DICK AYERS is give them the germ of an idea, and they make up all the details as they go along, drawing and plotting out the story.  Then, our leader simply takes the finished drawings and adds all the dialogue and captions!  Sounds complicated?  Maybe it is, but it’s another reason why no one else can bring you that old Marvel magic!”


Some months afterward, discussions between Kirby and Lee led to a change in the official credits that began appearing regularly—though initially somewhat inconsistently—with Fantastic Four #56 (August 1966). Rather than assigning individual roles, the new credits presented Lee and Kirby as a collaborative unit, reminiscent of the “Simon and Kirby” name under which Kirby had previously worked with partner Joe Simon.

Decades later, Kirby recounted this development as follows:

“And finally we started arguing about it, and then they finally put on ‘Produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby,’ but then he wouldn’t continue doing it; he would change it again to ‘written by’ instead of saying ‘produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’ on every one. He would do it for a couple of months and then he would go back to the old way again.”

— Jack Kirby, August 1989-June 1992: Ray Wyman’s conversations with Jack and Roz Kirby, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing


Lee’s recollections similarly indicated that the change was initiated through discussions between the two, with the wording of the revised credit line attributed to Kirby
 
“Kirby never asked me for co-writing credit. It was he who originally suggested the ‘By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’ credit, and as far as I knew he was quite contented with that.”

— Stan Lee, Jack Kirby Collector #33 interview by Jon B. Cooke, conducted 11 October 2001

6. “It was his story”

It was around this time that Jack Kirby received one of his few writing credits at 1960s Marvel, crafting dialogue for a Nick Fury story published in Strange Tales #148 (September 1966). In this case, the specific credit was for the “script,” which Kirby wrote while Lee was on vacation. When recalling this a few years later, Lee stated that both he and Kirby had contributed to the plot. Regardless, Kirby’s role in providing the dialogue was evidently sufficient for Lee to regard the whole “story” as Kirby’s:

“We had both plotted that out before I left, but he put the copy in on that one. I did a little editing later, but it was his story.”

— Stan Lee, Castle of Frankenstein #12, interview by Ted White, 1968


Kirby subsequently received a writing credit for “This is a Plot?”—a short featurette in Fantastic Four Annual #5 (1967) in which he parodied the plotting sessions between himself and Lee. The opening scene shows Flo Steinberg (Lee’s secretary) peeking through a door and exclaiming, “Oh no…Stan and Jack are at it again!” While clearly intended as a humorous piece, the basic scenario aligns closely with Steinberg’s own recollections:

“…I would not be in his office while Stan was having his writers’ conferences, but I could hear them.  And people would go in, like Steve Ditko, or Jack Kirby, or Don Heck, or Dick Ayers, and Wally Wood, and so on.  They would talk, and voices would get raised in excitement, and Stan would be acting out what he wanted the characters to be doing or saying, their actions, motivations.  And there would be jumping around.  And I don’t know if I imagined it or not, but I’m sure Stan was hopping up on the desk, or the chair.  He was very physical, acting out the stuff, and he would run back and forth, and then – “boom-boom-boom”- the sound effects he wanted would come crashing through the walls.”

— Flo Steinberg, The Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011


The collaborative spirit was also promoted in a 1967 publication included in the Merry Marvel Marching Society membership kit. There, Kirby offered light-hearted reflections on his early days at Timely Comics in the 1940s—where he first met a young Stan Lee—as well as on their working relationship at what had by then become Marvel Comics.

“Returning to Marvel Comics was like re-entering the Halls of Ivy. In charge of comics was that young rascal, and now, a bit of an older rascal, Stan Lee. We now share ideas, laughs, and stubby cigars.”

— Jack Kirby, Merry Marvel Messenger, 1967

7. “I take it, and I write it, on the basis of what Jack has drawn”

In a 1967 radio interview on New York’s WBAI-FM, Lee and Kirby appeared together to answer questions and promote the Marvel line. This provided the opportunity for Lee to explain how their stories were crafted while Kirby himself was present:

“I might add, as something that you may not be aware of, we don’t do stories the way most other outfits do.  We kick around a plot very, very loosely and generally, for a story, just discuss it for a few minutes.  I might say, ‘Jack, in the next Thor, how about bringing back Galactus fighting the planet Ego or something?’  And Jack’ll say, ‘Great’ and off he goes.  I don’t know where he goes.  But off he goes.  I don’t see him for a week’  He comes back a week later and the whole strip is drawn.  And nobody knows what I’m going to see on those pages.  He may have come up with a dozen new ideas, you see.  It’ll have something to do with Galactus and Ego.

Then I take it, and I write it, on the basis of what Jack has drawn.  He’s broken it down to continuity for me.  He’s drawn the whole thing, actually.  I put in the dialogue and the captions.  So he doesn’t know exactly what I’m going to write, what words I’m going to put in their mouths.  I don’t know what he is going to draw.  The whole thing is virtual chaos.  But somehow, when it gets together, it seems to hold together pretty well, and we kind of like working this way.”

In the same discussion, Lee credited Kirby with the creation of Ego—a living biosphere that appeared in the Thor title—and noted that Kirby had also created “a whole bunch of Inhumans” for Fantastic Four.

At one point, Kirby was asked whether there would be a story featuring Captain America being sent to Vietnam. In his response, he made it clear that such decisions rested with Lee, emphasizing Stan’s role as editor.

“Well, that’s Stan Lee’s department, and he can answer that. The editor always has the last word on that.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘Silver Age Stan and Jack’, original radio interview by Mike Hodel full transcript by Steven Tice, as published in Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011 (Full audio posted on YouTube: by the Kirby Museum 1967 – “Will Success Spoil Spider-man?)


The following year, during a solo radio appearance, Lee provided a very similar account of the working process while mentioning that Kirby had developed greater autonomy over time:

“Jack and I—well, in the beginning we spent a little more time on the plotting. Now we’ve gotten to work, I think, so well together, that our plotting session will be something like, ‘Hey, in the next Fantastic Four, Jack, let’s let the villain be Dr.  Doom.’ ‘Okay, where does he come from? Where did we leave off with him?’ And I’ll say, ‘I don’t know. Let’s look it up for a second. Oh, yeah, he was fading off into another universe. Find some way to bring him back, Jack, and then we’ll have him attack the Fantastic Four, and let’s end the story with him running off and eloping with Sue Storm or something.’ And Jack’ll say, ‘fine,’ and he goes off, and by the time he brings the artwork back, it might be that particular plot, or he might have changed fifty million things.

And then I take it, and I try to write it and pull it all together. Whatever he has drawn, I try to tell it in my own way. So what happens, I think, is the reader gets the benefit of the best artistic efforts of both the artist and the writer. The artist is uninhibited. He’s not following an actual script, so he can go home and draw whatever he thinks are the most interesting, most dramatic pictures. Then the writer takes those drawings, and he’s uninhibited by any real preconceived notions, and he just writes his dialogue to suit the drawings. So I’d like to feel, when we’re all finished, it’s rather a perfect marriage of art and script, you see.”

— Stan Lee, interviewed by Neal Conan for WBAI-FM New York, 12 August 1968.  Transcribed by Steven Tice,  published in Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011


This same narrative was espoused in a magazine interview from that same year. This time, though, Lee came very close to attributing the role of writer to Kirby:

“Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean, I’ll just say to Jack, ‘Let’s let the next villain be Dr. Doom’… or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He’s so good at plots, I’m sure he’s a thousand times better than I. He just about makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing… I may tell him that he’s gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I’ll give him a plot, but we’re practically both the writers on the things.”

— Stan Lee, Castle of Frankenstein #12, interview by Ted White, 1968


Similarly, Lee referenced Marvel artists in general as doing “quite a bit of the writing…in a sense” when he appeared on the Dick Cavett show on 30 May 1968:

“Well, I do a great deal of it, and we have one or two other writers also who handle the rest of the stories.  It’s a small, well-knit organisation.  We have a few people turning out the books.  Actually unlike most other comic magazine companies, the artists do quite a bit of the writing too in a sense.  I will discuss a plot with an artist and he will go home and draw the script.  Then it comes back and either I or some other writer will put the copy in, so in a sense the artist himself is creating the situations along with the writer.”

Even so, that same interview also provided a clear insight into how Lee defined a ‘writer’:

 “The writer mainly is in on the plot conception and the dialogue.  Writing the dialogue and the captions.”

—Stan Lee, Dick Cavett Show, 30 May 1968, as transcribed by Jeff McLaughlin, Stan Lee Conversations, Edited by Jeff McLauglin, University Press of Mississippi, 2007

8. “An idea can come from me, it can come from Stan…”


There was a general consensus between Kirby and Lee during interviews in the late 1960s regarding the origins of story ideas. Both acknowledged that inspiration could come from a variety of sources—including collaborators, editors, and even readers. As Kirby explained in 1969:

“An idea can come from me, it can come from Stan, it can come from a reader. Sometimes we’ll get ideas expressed in letters from readers that we utilize in the comic. We’ll build a plot around that type of story.”

— Jack Kirby, August 1969: Jack Kirby interviewed by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing


This echoed comments Lee had made the previous year, in which he also described a collaborative and open-ended approach to idea generation. At the same time, though, Lee emphasized that the real strength of Marvel’s stories often lay not in the raw concepts, but in their execution:

“I’d love to say they all come from me, but, actually, you never know. I’ll talk to an artist, or I’ll talk to one of our other editors or writers, and—you know, it’s a funny thing. Most of the ideas—people usually say, ‘How do you get your ideas? How do you think these things up month after month?’ I sometimes wonder if the ideas are as important as the execution, because I think the ideas are about the easiest thing. Some of our best stories had ideas that were fairly simple and commonplace, but I feel, more than the idea, it’s the way you tell it, the way you present it.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan Lee in 1968’ radio interview conducted in the Marvel Comics offices on either 8 or 18^th February, WRSU (broadcasting from the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick) Transcribed by Steve Tice, as published in Alter Ego Collectors’ Item Classics, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2023


From Kirby’s perspective, this execution—particularly with respect to narrative structure, pacing, and emotional tone—was realized in his studio. He was the one physically constructing the story on the page, determining its rhythm and logic through visual storytelling:

“It’s got to be worked out on paper, the gimmicks have to be worked out, and everything has to dovetail. So it’s all worked out here, and I write the captions for the motivation of the story in the margin of the paper.”

— Jack Kirby, August 1969: Jack Kirby interviewed by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing


This perspective was reinforced by Kirby’s tendency to introduce elements that had never been discussed in story conferences or included in plot outlines. He added concepts and characters organically, as the story took shape:

“I’ll create a concept just to keep from being bored.  A new character or a new type of thing might come out of it; a new type of story or format.  I don’t know what will come out of it.  I really can’t say, but it’s really a heck of a lot of fun.  The Silver Surfer was an afterthought.  When I did Galactus, I suddenly realised he was God and I had done something biblical there.  I felt that somehow God in connection with – well, I felt, wouldn’t it be great if I could show a kind of fallen angel type of thing, which the Surfer is.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘There is Something Stupid in Violence as Violence’, interview by Mark Herbert in early 1969, originally published in Nostalgia Journal #30 -31, (November/December 1976).   Republished in The Comics Journal Library: Jack Kirby, Fantagraphics, 2002

9. “The dialogue I have always felt is the most important thing”


While Lee extolled the overall manner in which the Marvel stories were executed, he would notably highlight the role of dialogue:

“We’ve done stories that were quite successful with the readers, judging by the sales we’ve had and the mail we get, and then, after rereading the story, I would say to myself, well, the story was really nothing. It was just the hero meets a villain, fights him, defeats him, and then goes off into the night. But I suspect it was the little subplots, and the little asides, and the little things and depth, the characterization, and so forth, that we throw in that, if anything, makes our books a little better than some others. I think it’s those extra little touches rather than the basic ideas, because I think most of our ideas are pretty much the same from issue to issue. It’s practically the same plot all the time, just tackled from a different direction.“

“The dialogue I have always felt is the most important thing. Just as in a radio show, certainly the dialogue is the most important thing, I think in a motion picture, or in a television show, it’s what the person says that matters. Good dialogue can make a very banal plot seem very important and very profound, and I think bad dialogue can make the greatest plot in the world seem corny and hackneyed. The one thing that everybody seems to go for is realism. It seems the more realistic you can be, the more successful you are, in any media. Now, to me, the thing that gives a story realism is having the characters talk and react, and, of course, you can only tell their reactions by what they’re saying, like real people. Therefore, the thing that we spend, I guess, about 99% of our time on is the dialogue. I will rewrite one sentence a dozen times if I don’t feel I’ve got it right.”

— Stan Lee, Feb. 8 (or 18), 1968: WRSU 680AM Radio (campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey) interview with Stan Lee, as quoted in Kirby and Lee: Stuf’ Said, Expanded 2nd Edition, by John Morrow, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2003

Meanwhile, awareness of Kirby’s role in shaping the stories was growing within the fan community. In an interview from this period, he was asked directly about the division of labor between himself and Lee—specifically, whether he was responsible for plotting the stories while Lee provided the dialogue:

“This is Stanley’s editorial policy. As a Marvel artist, I carry it out.”

— Jack Kirby, Late 1967-early 1968: Excelsior #1 interviews with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, by Sal Caputo and “The Kizer”

10. “I feel as Stan does, that these are real people.”

As the 1960s came to a close, Kirby relocated from New York to California, resulting in story conferences being conducted by phone rather than in person:

“…(W)orking at home doesn’t keep you in close contact with the office, but it’s a casual contact and it’s a necessary contact… we don’t discuss everything when I talk to Stanley. We talk about story, we talk about drawing, we talk about sales policy.”

— Jack Kirby, November 1969: Shel Dorf and fans interview Jack Kirby at the Kirby home in Orange County, California, as published in ‘Kirby and Lee: Stuf’ Said (Expanded 2nd Edition)’, by John Morrow, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2003


In describing this evolving working relationship, Lee offered the following account of how their story conferences might unfold—once again emphasizing Kirby’s significant creative input:

“He’s calling from California and we both start cold. I’ll say, ‘What book are you talking about?’ And he says, ‘Thor—is that the one we need next?’ Yeah.’ And so the conversation goes back and forth:
“What do you think we ought to do?”
‘Well, let’s bring back that girl he used to be in love with; that’s a good idea.”
‘Suppose he tries to save her but he doesn’t want her to know it’s him saving her and at the end she figures, ‘Gee, it’s funny; Thor never did come to help me’—not knowing it was really him who saved her.’
‘Great idea, but what do we save her from?’
‘Oh, that’s right—we need a villain.’
‘Well, let’s see—who haven’t we used, or should we make up a new one? How about this crook who wants to use a transplant—he’s old and he’s dying and he’s very rich, and he doesn’t want to die, and he wants to transplant his brain in a healthy body—.’
‘Great!’
‘Hey, Stan, how about the body he wants to use being Thor?’
‘Perfect, okay, Jack, you got it?’

At this point I don’t know what the heck the story is going to be—this is basically the thread, the skeleton outline—that’s all that I discussed with Jack. He will send back 20 pages drawn as he sees it.“

— Stan Lee, ‘Interview with Stan Lee’, Cartoonist Profiles #4, May-June 1969


It was around this period that Kirby was asked who had been responsible for the change in direction of the Thor strip during the mid-1960s—a shift that saw the stories move away from largely earthbound conflicts and toward a more expansive, mythological approach:

“Both of us, in a way.  I researched it and gave my version of it, and Stan gave his version of it.  Stan humanized it in a way where, for instance, I might be concerned about Thor’s relation to the other gods.  I might bring up a Ulik or I might bring up something out of the wild blue yonder, like the Oracle – that great big thing which nobody knew anything about.  I tried to fathom it myself.  And Stan would come down to Earth and find Thor’s relationship with Earth people.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘There is Something Stupid in Violence as Violence’, interview by Mark Herbert, Nostalgia Journal #30-31 November-December 1976.  Interview conducted in early 1969.  Republished in The Comics Journal Library – Jack Kirby, 2002, Fantagraphics


Kirby also publicly praised Lee’s approach to shaping narratives in accordance with readership feedback:

“I feel that Stan Lee is very wise in looking over the letters from the readers, and keeping tabs on the progress that the character is making. Sometimes we’ll do too many science-fiction stories, and we’ll find that the reader is ready for some other kind of events, so we’ll take the character out of the science-fiction atmosphere, and put them back into a credible Earth atmosphere… I feel as Stan does, that these are real people.”

— Jack Kirby, August 1969: Jack Kirby interviewed by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing


Even so, Kirby’s commentary made it clear that he viewed Lee’s involvement strictly in editorial terms:

“Stan Lee is my editor. Stan Lee, I guess, came to Marvel when I was doing Captain America in the 1940s. He was a young fellow, and we were just nodding acquaintances. He was very nice, certainly, and we were nice to each other; we got along. That was about it; there was no evidence that we’d ever get together in any way as editor and artist. It just happened that way, that’s all; I came back to Marvel and Stan Lee was editor.

I went to work for Stan Lee, and whatever Stan Lee’s policies are, they’re my policies. Whatever kind of a job Stan Lee wants done, I will do that job. I feel that’s the artist’s job; to cooperate with the policy of the publishing house. I’ve always done that.”

— Jack Kirby, August 1969: Jack Kirby interviewed by Shel Dorf and Rich Rubenfeld, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing


As for whether he would ever consider doing a book completely by himself (with respect to pencils, inks stories) Kirby replied:

“Not necessarily, no. I don’t feel that I should do everything myself… you know, everybody has that feeling, that ‘boy, if they could let me by myself.’ Nobody does anything by themselves; nobody ever does. When a guy comes out and makes a statement ‘I did this,’ you can be sure 50 people helped him. It’s true. The only time you do something by yourself is when you’re in trouble.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘There is Something Stupid in Violence as Violence’, interview by Mark Herbert in early 1969, originally published in Nostalgia Journal #30 -31, (November/December 1976).   Republished in The Comics Journal Library: Jack Kirby, Fantagraphics, 2002

11. End of an Era – Kirby’s Move to DC Comics

As a new decade began, Kirby was once again given the opportunity to be credited as scripter on a handful of stories—specifically in Amazing Adventures (featuring the Inhumans) and Astonishing Tales (featuring Ka-Zar). One particularly notable example appeared in Chamber of Darkness #4 (April 1970), in which Kirby originally planned to include cameos by himself and Lee (see Endnotes). Neither man ever publicly discussed what prompted this development. Lee was asked, but didn’t recall:

“(A) I didn’t realise he had written them and; and (B) I can’t remember if I invited him to or not,  I don’t think that I ever would have specifically said: ‘Jack, I would like you to write,’ because I never thought of Jack as a writer (but he was certainly a great plotter).  Certainly 90% of the Tales of Asgardstories were Jack’s plots, and they were great!  He knew more about Norse mythology than I ever did (or at least he enjoyed making it up).  I was busy enough just putting in the copy after he drew it”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan the Man and Roy the Boy – A Conversation Between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas’, interviews conducted by Roy Thomas May 1998, Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 1, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000


By the time Kirby’s final’Inhumans’ story in Amazing Adventures #4 (January 1971) was published, he had already left Marvel, having accepted an offer from DC Comics’ Carmine Infantino (see Endnotes). The impact of this transition would later be reflected in both his and Lee’s public commentaries on the work they had produced together.

12. “Most of the plots, I handle myself”


Some months after the news of his move to DC broke, Jack Kirby appeared at San Diego Comic Con. This gave him the opportunity to talk further about his relationship with Stan Lee and how their stories had been created.  In doing so, he acknowledged occasionally working from other’s plots, while maintaining his role in crafting the actual stories:

AUDIENCE: “How does the process work when you’re about to start a new strip with Gardner Fox or Stan Lee or somebody. Do they give you the outline, and tell you how to do that in each panel, or…?“

KIRBY:  “Well, in the case of Marvel, most of the plots, I handle myself. It’s easy enough to do it after 30 years. I would discuss it with Stan, I would tell him what I was going to put in it, and it was either approved, or I would change it, you know, to maybe further the plot. In my case, it was done that way. I’ve always done my own stories. I’ve never done anything else.“

— Jack Kirby, San Diego Comic-Con August 1970


The following year, Kirby publicly cited frustrations over editorial control and a lack of creative recognition as being amongst his reasons for leaving Marvel.  In doing so he made it clear that he viewed his story creation as ‘writing’: 

“I can only say that DC gave me my own editing affairs, and if I have an idea I can take credit for it. I don’t have the feeling of repression that I had at Marvel. I don’t say I wasn’t comfortable at Marvel, but it had its frustrating moments and there was nothing I could do about it. 

When I got the opportunity to transfer to DC, I took it. At DC I’m given the privilege of being associated with my own ideas. If I did come up with an idea at Marvel, they’d take it away from me and I lost all association with it. I was never given credit for the writing which I did.”

— Jack Kirby, Rocket’s Blast Comicollector #81 interview, by Bruce Hamilton, 1971


Kirby had previously portrayed himself as a somewhat independent creative force at Marvel with respect to the storytelling, but he was now actively downplaying any genuine sense of collaboration. Mentions of Stan Lee’s creative input had become increasingly rare, and even when dialogue was specifically raised, Lee’s role was typically framed in strictly editorial terms—for example:

“I didn’t exactly work with Stan Lee. I worked at home and I wasn’t at the office much. I’d come in maybe once or twice a month and deliver my drawings. Stan Lee would usually be pretty busy, being the editor there, and I’d deliver my stuff and that would be all there was to it. I’d tell Stan Lee what the next story was going to be, and I’d go home and do it.

“The policy there is the artist isn’t allowed to do the dialogue, and therefore has to confine himself to the script. What the artist does is the script and the drawing, and the dialogue is filled in by the writer in the balloons. The artist writes the action in the margin of the illustration board and the writer is therefore able to follow the action in each individual panel. What the artist does is make the framework for the dialogue writer.”

— Jack Kirby, Northwestern University’s WNUR-FM, interview Tim Skelly, 14 May 1971


Meanwhile, Lee—who had attained the role of publisher at Marvel—was contracted to write material for a mainstream book titled Origins of Marvel Comics. With Kirby now famously working for the opposition, the creation narratives—essentially extended introductions to reprinted comic book stories—were told largely from a Lee-centric perspective that would become entwined with the official Marvel history. Written in a boisterous, informal, and performative style, the text sections offered relatively little detail about the actual writing process. However, in the introduction to the Fantastic Four, Lee did note that he had created a written synopsis for the first issue only after discussions with both Kirby and publisher Martin Goodman.

“After kicking it around with Martin and Jack for a while I decided to call our quaint quartet the Fantastic Four.  I wrote a detailed first synopsis for Jack to follow and the rest is history.”

— Stan Lee, ‘If One is Good, Four Will be Better’, Origins of Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Simon and Schuster, 1974


The following year, Lee would mention the writing aspect when publicly reflecting on the reasons for Kirby’s departure from Marvel:

“I don’t really know why he left. I think it was a personal thing. Jack never told me. I think it could be as simple as the fact that he got sick of everything he did saying ‘by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’. Maybe he just wanted to do his own thing and have the books saying ‘by Jack Kirby.’ But, as far as I was concerned, if he’d have told me he wanted to do his own book, I’d have said fine, and let him write it and draw it, but he never said it to me.”

— Stan Lee, Feb.-March 1975 interview with Stan Lee, by Charles Murray, Fantasy Advertiser International, April 1975 as published in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing

13. “I feel he needs some control, some editing”

By 1975, it had become clear that Kirby’s work at DC had not achieved the results many had anticipated, despite his creation of successful titles such as Kamandi, along with numerous characters that would later prove highly valuable to the company. His much-anticipated New Gods, in particular, had failed to generate sufficient sales. The reasons for this have been the subject of much conjecture over the decades, though most would likely agree that the stories and dialogue felt noticeably different from his work at Marvel.


It was in this context that Lee shared his thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of Kirby’s solo storytelling, as well as on the contributions he himself had made to their earlier collaborations.

“I will say, in all honesty that I’d like Jack to come back, I want him to come back eventually. I sort of half-expect that he’ll come back when his contract ends—I think he’d be making a mistake not to come back. I’d say he did his best work at Marvel, his style is pure Marvel. Also I must admit that he has had so many books at National that have failed, whereas if they’d been for Marvel, I think they would still be being published—especially New Gods.

“The thing about Jack is that though he’s a good story man, and a good artist, I feel he needs some control, some editing. He tends to get so wrapped up in what he wants to do, that he forgets what the readers might want. I think his material was a little better with us because we exercised some control. I remember on the very first issue of the Fantastic Four, I’d suggested in the synopsis a monster, and Jack drew a hundred red monsters. I said, ‘Jack, it’s more dramatic to have one monster that the reader worries about, than a hundred monsters.’

The trouble with Jack is that he’s so imaginative he tries to put every idea he can think of on every page. He tries to make every page a whole new original thought and action. That isn’t good story. You have to build up a mood. You’ve got to take one idea and stretch it over a few pages and milk the utmost drama out of it. It’s a matter of pacing—you don’t have a chance to catch your breath reading his stories.”

— Stan Lee, Feb.-March 1975 interview with Stan Lee, by Charles Murray, Fantasy Advertiser International, April 1975 as published in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing

(See the ‘Endnotes’ for Carmine Infantino’s recollections of Kirby’s time at DC)

14. “You’re able to do the book in your own way, in your manner.”


With his contract at DC Comics coming to an end, Kirby chose to negotiate a return to Marvel in 1975. This time, however—despite reservations from Lee and others—he secured a role that granted him significantly more creative control, encompassing writing, artwork, and editorial oversight. In an interview for Marvel’s in-house publication FOOM, Kirby explained why he preferred this new arrangement over his earlier tenure at the company. In doing so, his comments offered implicit insight into what Lee had contributed to their past collaborations.

“I feel at ease with full control. It’s not the fact that you want to dominate every book that you’re working on. It’s just that you’re able to do the book in your own way, in your own manner. The book reflects what you want to put in it, and what you want to read in it. Having done editing, writing and drawing for years, I find myself in the happiest situation just working that way. I can mould the characters the way I think they should be. The characters become the kind of people I think the story needs. I feel I can give them a lot more dimension if I work on them individually. I feel that I have nobody else’s concepts blending with mine as far as working out the construction of the type of story I want it to be. So I’m happiest doing it that way.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘Kirby Speaks’, FOOM #11, September 1975, Marvel Comics Group


Regardless, an exception to the general arrangement saw Kirby and Lee unite once more time for the 1978 Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience graphic novel. When discussing the upcoming project for FOOM, Kirby made a point of referencing their partnership in positive terms:

“I’ve always enjoyed working with Stan – we’ve been a successful team. In the collaboration, something good comes out; it’s the chemistry of a good team.”

— Jack Kirby, FOOM #19, September 1977, Marvel Comics Group

15. “Nobody ever wrote a story for me”


Kirby remained at Marvel for only a few years, departing after the completion of his contract. As one of the industry’s most prominent figures, he continued to participate in interviews where he emphasized that he alone was responsible for the Marvel stories of the 1960s (a claim he also made in reference to his earlier collaborations with Joe Simon). Similarly, he reiterated that the only reason he hadn’t provided the dialogue was because he hadn’t been permitted to:

“Stan Lee wouldn’t let me fill in the balloons. Stan Lee wouldn’t let me put in the dialogue. But I wrote the entire story under the panels. I never explained the story to Stan Lee. I wrote the story under each panel so that when he wrote that dialogue, the story was already there. In other words, he didn’t know what the story was about and he didn’t care because he was busy being an editor. I was glad because he was doing the same thing Joe (Simon) did. He left me alone.”

— Jack Kirby, Will Eisner’s Spirit Magazine #39 interview, conducted by Will Eisner, July 1982


Kirby’s commentary during this decade not only minimized Lee’s creative input—it directly challenged the broader perception of Lee as a comic book writer. Lee, Kirby insisted, was simply an editor—one whose authority at Marvel was backed by familial connections:

“Lee wouldn’t let me put the dialogue in. I wrote the story and made up the characters. I had to tell Stan Lee what the story was going to be. He didn’t know. Nobody’s ever seen Stan Lee write a story. I’ve never seen him write a story–not in front of me. Stan was an editor. I argued all the time about doing the word balloons, but I wasn’t allowed to do them. Stan Lee was editor, and his cousin was the publisher and I wasn’t going to argue with that…”

— Jack Kirby, interview by Will Eisner, Will Eisner’s Spirit Magazine #39, July 1982


In promoting his own creative credentials, Kirby would also assert that he had never illustrated a story written by someone else. As evidence of his writing at Marvel, he pointed to his creation of the Silver Surfer—a character that, by Lee’s own accounts, had never been discussed between them prior to Kirby introducing him in the pages of Fantastic Four:

“I was a penciller and a storyteller, and I insisted on doing my own writing. I always wrote my own story no matter what it was. Nobody ever wrote a story for me. I created my own characters. I always did that. That was the whole point of comics for me. I created my own concepts and I enjoyed doing that. That’s how I created the Silver Surfer.”

— Jack Kirby, James Van Hise, “Superheroes: The Language That Jack Kirby Wrote,” article by James Van Hise, Comics Feature #34, March-April 1985.

16. “I’m not trying to attack Stan Lee”


Kirby now spoke not only for himself but also on behalf of other artists who had worked under Lee’s ‘Marvel Method.’ This became especially evident as his relationship with Marvel grew increasingly strained in the mid-1980s, amid a dispute over the return of original comic art—a conflict deeply entwined with competing narratives about who should receive credit for the creation of Marvel’s characters and stories. It was in this context that Kirby would describe Lee’s role as that of a mere “production coordinator”:

“The artists were doing the plotting—Stan was just coordinating the books, which was his job. Stan was production coordinator. But the artists were the ones that were handling both story and art. We had to—there was no time not to!”

— Jack Kirby, Comics Interview #41, interview, conducted by Mark Borax. 1986 (republished in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview Super Special – Masters of Marvel, 1989)


In an interview with Leonard Pitts, Kirby said that his version of events was not a personal attack, but rather an attempt to “give the atmosphere up at Marvel”

“I’m not trying to attack Stan Lee. I’m not trying to put any onus on Stan Lee. All I’m saying is; Stan Lee was a busy man with other duties who couldn’t possibly have the time to suddenly create all these ideas that he’s said he created. And I can tell you that he never wrote the stories– although he wouldn’t allow us to write the dialogue in the balloons. He didn’t write my stories.”

“…I’ll give it to you in very short terms: I told Stan Lee what I wrote and what he was gonna get and Stan Lee accepted it, because Stan Lee knew my reputation. By that time, I had created or helped create so many different other features that Stan Lee had infinite confidence in what I was doing.”

When Pitt attempted to clarify whether Kirby was referring specifically to plotting the stories (with Lee supplying the dialogue), Kirby notably equated plotting with scripting. This was presumably because, in the traditional comic book workflow, many artists had illustrated stories from ‘full scripts.’  Kirby also emphasised that his work was done ‘strictly’ from his own house:

“You can call it plotted. I call it script. I wrote the script and I drew the story. I mean, there was nothing on the first or second page that Stan Lee ever knew would go there. But I knew what would go there. I knew how to begin the story. I wrote it in my house. Nobody was there around to tell me. I worked strictly in my house; I always did. I worked in a small basement in Long Island.”

— Jack Kirby, 1986/7 Jack Kirby Interview by Leonard Pitts, 1986/7 Jack Kirby Interview | The Kirby Effect, posted by Rand Hoppe, 6 August 2012

Lee himself would give an example of a time where Kirby had opened a story in a manner that hadn’t been previously discussed just a few years later, when talking about X-Men #1 (September 1963):

“When Jack brought in the first story, it opened with all the X-Men fighting in a place they called the Danger Room, where they were trained.  That was Jack’s idea.  And it was the most brilliant opening because it started with action and showed all their abilities immediately.”

— Stan Lee, Marvel – Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Heroes, by Les Daniels, Abrams, 1991

17. “Jack never felt that the script itself, the dialogue I wrote, was part of the story.”


As Kirby’s recollections circulated through various interviews and articles, Lee was providing his own version of events.  In doing so, he continued to acknowledge Kirby’s “plotting” contributions, while maintaining his own involvement – particularly in the initial story discussions:

“It’s quite true, a lot of the stories – the plotting of them – he created. I would give him a couple of words and he did the rest. I’ve never taken that away from him. He was wonderful at that.”

— Stan Lee, ‘An Interview with Stan Lee’ interview by Leonard Pitts Jr, 1981. Published in Stan Lee Conversations, Edited by Jeff McLaughlin, University Press of Mississippi, 2001


In 1986, Marvel—then celebrating its 25th anniversary—began publishing a series of hardcover collections (‘Marvel Masterworks’) that reprinted its earliest stories in chronological order for the first time, with Stan Lee providing many of the introductions. Written in his signature performative style, these reinforced the narrative of Lee as the primary creative force, with frequent praise for Kirby’s artwork and some subtle acknowledgment of his general contributions to plotting and storytelling. (The front matter and dust jacket interiors credited Lee and Kirby solely in their broad roles as “writer” and “artist,” respectively.)


In interviews, Lee maintained that Kirby’s storytelling contributions took place within the framework of a collaborative partnership. At the same time, he emphasized that he had initiated and directed the creative process, suggesting that Kirby was granted greater creative freedom only after the strips had been firmly established:

“Jack is a very creative artist. He’s one of the best, most imaginative people I know, and it was wonderful working with him, as it was with Ditko and the others. And after a while these guys were so good at telling stories in pictures that I would just give them the kernel of a plot and they would illustrate the whole thing and put in a million ideas I hadn’t thought of, and I would then put in the dialogue and captions and refine and polish what they had drawn, and try to give it the style I felt the strip needed. So it was very much… they were all very much collaborations; collaborative efforts.”

— Stan Lee, Daily Variety interview by Tom Bierbaum, 17 September 1986


When directly responding to Kirby’s commentary, Lee often pointed to a core disagreement between them: the importance of his dialogue in the overall creative process. While Kirby’s accounts emphasized that the stories—including character motivations—were essentially complete (and, in his view, already “written”) when he submitted his artwork and margin notes, Lee asserted that his character dialogue—or “script,” as he typically described it—was a crucial component of the final product:

“As far as him doing the stories, Jack never felt that the script itself, the dialogue I wrote, was part of the story. Very often, Jack would make up the plots. We would discuss a story before it was done, and I’d say ‘Let’s bring Dr Doom back. Let’s let him capture Reed Richards or do this and that.’ Jack would say okay, and I left most of the details to Jack.”

“Then he would bring me the drawings. I would put in all the dialogue and all the captions. I have a feeling that Jack considers that relatively unimportant. You know, ‘Anybody can put the dialogue in.’ I would like to feel that the style I gave the stories by putting the dialogue in was quite important. After all, the manner of speech is really what gives the characters their personality.“

Lee also specifically pointed to Kirby’s DC work as evidence of what he had brought to their work:

“As a matter of fact, when Jack left Marvel, his stories never read the same again, the ones he did without me. They may have been better or worse, but they were never the same.”

— Stan Lee, ‘An Interview with Stan Lee’ interview by Leonard Pitts Jr, 1981. Published in Stan Lee Conversations, edited by Jeff McLaughlin, University Press of Mississippi, 2001


These opposing perspectives persisted throughout the decade. As a growing counter-narrative emerged—casting Kirby as the primary creative force behind Marvel—Lee continued to reaffirm his role in developing the basic storylines, together with the pivotal importance of his writing in the company’s success:

“I would give Jack an outline or tell him the plot I wanted and let him break it down to determine what each drawing would be. When I got them back, I would put in the dialogue to inject whatever personality I wanted. Kirby was doing what he’d always done, drawing beautiful pictures. While they were not as sophisticated and polished as some artists, they had a raw power.

But what brought about the renaissance of comics was the style change in the writing, my writing.”

— Stan Lee, Village Voice interview, 8 December 1987

18. “It wasn’t like that at all” – The Earthwatch Interview with Kirby and Lee


The question of how each party viewed Lee’s dialogue and their other respective contributions came to a head on August 28, 1987, during a segment of the radio program Earthwatch, hosted by Robert Knight and joined by interviewers Warren Reece and Max Schmid. The segment began as a solo interview with Kirby, held in recognition of his 70th birthday, during which he was asked about the creative environment at Marvel during the 1960s:

KNIGHT: Well, let’s turn then, to the environment, which may be equally as important, the environment out of which Spider-man was created. Of course, you were involved in the historic partnership with Stan Lee at Marvel. So, what was the working environment like there? How was it different from the other companies? What was the Merry Marvel Marching Society like?

KIRBY: Well, it wasn’t… it wasn’t… well, I didn’t consider it merry. I considered it very… well, in those days, it was a professional type thing. You turned in your ideas and you got your wages and you took them home. It was a very, very simple affair. It’s nothing that could be dramatized or glorified or glamorized in any way. It was a very, very simple affair. I created the situation and I analyzed them. I did them panel by panel. I did everything but put the words in the balloons. But all of it was mine, except the words in the balloons.

Kirby was then asked directly about his story conferences with Lee, with the interviewer possibly having some familiarity with Kirby’s own ‘This is a Plot?’ featurette from Fantastic Four Annual #5 (1967):

REECE: But Jack, what about these legendary story conferences of you and Stan, or Stan and whomever, acting the stories out, in the office, jumping up on the desks and so forth, making things considerably more lively than when it was just an office consisting of Stan and Fabulous Flo Steinberg, having people stick their faces in the door, from Magazine Management, going, “Hurry up, little elves, Santa will be coming soon!”

KIRBY: Uh, I’d have to disagree with that. It wasn’t like that at all. It may have been like that after I shut the door and went home.

— Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Robert Knight and Warren Reece, interview for Robert Knight’s Earthwatch, conducted by Warren Reece and Max Schmid, WBAI New York, 28 August 1987. Transcript posted on The Kirby Effect: The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, audio available on Youtube


It was at that point that Knight informed Kirby that they’d been joined via a call-in from Stan Lee.  Having exchanged pleasantries, Lee praised Kirby artistic talents:

LEE: I just… I want to wish Jack a happy birthday. This is a hell of a coincidence. I’m in New York, and I was tuning in the radio, and there I hear him, talking about Marvel, and I figured I might as well call and not let this occasion go by without saying, “Many happy returns, Jack.”

KIRBY: Well, Stanley, I want to thank you for calling. I hope you’re in good health and I hope you stay in good health.

LEE: I’m doin’ my best! and the same to you! You know, you were talking earlier about your drawing and people sometimes criticized your figures, and so forth. I always felt that the most important thing about your drawing was, I remember when I was a kid and I first saw Captain America, it wasn’t the correctness of the anatomy, but it was the emotion that you put in. To me, nobody could convey emotion and drama the way you could. I didn’t care if the drawing was all out of whack, because that wasn’t important. You got your point across and nobody could ever draw a hero like way you could. And I just want to say, without getting too saccharine, that one of the marks, I think, of a really true, great artist, is he has his own style. And you certainly had, and still have, your own style. And it’s a style that nobody has even been able to come close to and I think that’s something you can be very proud of. And I’m proud of you for it.

KIRBY: I have to thank you for helping me to keep that style, Stanley. And helping me to evolve all that. And I’m certain that whatever we did together, we got sales for Marvel. And I…

LEE: I think it was more than that, Jack. We certainly got the sales. But whatever we did together, and no matter who did what, and I guess that’s something that’ll be argued forever, but I think that the product that was produced was really, even more than a sum of its parts. I think that there was some slight magic that came into effect when we worked together. And I am very happy that we’ve had that experience.

KIRBY: Well, I was never sorry for it, Stanley. It was a great experience for me and certainly, if the product was good, that was my satisfaction. I’ve always felt like that. I think it’s the feeling of every good professional. It’s one of the reasons that I respect you, is the fact that you’re certainly a good professional and you’re certainly fond of a good product. And I feel that’s the mark of all of us.“

— Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Robert Knight and Warren Reece, interview for Robert Knight’s Earthwatch, conducted by Warren Reece and Max Schmid, WBAI New York, 28 August 1987. Transcript posted on The Kirby Effect: The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, audio available on Youtube

Later, the discussion turned to the question of who was responsible for the dialogue in their work. During the exchange, Kirby noted that he had included written material alongside his artwork, while Lee emphasized his own role in supplying the final dialogue.

REECE:  I would also like to put to you gentlemen, that what made your work so tremen… you know I, really, when it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter whether or not, you know, who exactly did what, although it would be interesting to know whether or not Galactus’ exit speech in FF # 50 was an example of Jack’s dialog or Stan’s. But you j…

LEE: Well, I’ll say this: every word of dialogue in those scripts was mine.

REECE: (laughs) I don’t want to..

LEE: Every story.

REECE: I don’t want to get into controversy about that. What I want to stress to you, and to anyone who would be hearing this, is that you two gents together, when you said the whole equals more than the sum of its parts, it is very true. I think that was success behind the Beatles, behind the Byrds, behind many of the rock groups, there seems to be…

KIRBY: I can tell you that I wrote a few lines myself above every panel that I…

REECE: Yes! I’ve seen those…

LEE: They weren’t printed in the book!

REECE: All right, look! Both of you… hey, kids! Both of you guys…

LEE: Jack isn’t wrong, by his own rights, because Jack, answer me truthfully…

KIRBY: I wasn’t allowed to write…

LEE: Did you ever read one of the stories after it was finished? I don’t think you did! I don’t think you ever read one of my stories. I think you were always busy drawing the next one. You never read the book when it was finished.

KIRBY: …dialogue, Stanley

LEE: Huh?

KNIGHT: Let me get in there with them.

KIRBY: … in my own dialogue. And I think that’s the way people are. So, whatever was written in them, was insig.. well, it, you know, it was the action I was interested in

LEE: I know, and I really think, and look, Jack, nobody has more respect for you, than I do, and you know that, but I don’t think you ever felt that the dialogue was that important. And I think you felt well, it doesn’t matter, anybody can put the dialogue in, it’s what I’m drawing that matters. And maybe you’re right! I don’t agree with it, but maybe you’re right

KIRBY: No I, I’m only trying to say is that I, you know, I think that the human being is very important. If one man is writing and drawing and doing a strip, it should come from an individual. I believe that you should have the opportunity to do the entire thing yourself.

— Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Robert Knight and Warren Reece, interview for Robert Knight’s Earthwatch, conducted by Warren Reece and Max Schmid, WBAI New York, 28 August 1987. Transcript posted on The Kirby Effect: The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, audio available on Youtube

In the years following this interaction, Lee continued to emphasize the influence of his scripting. In a 1988 interview with Will Murray, he remarked that becoming Marvel’s publisher in 1972 meant he no longer had to “dream up” stories. Instead, he expressed a preference for simply providing dialogue for already-drawn strips—adding that this still allowed him to shape the stories to some extent:

“That’s fun. It’s like doing a crossword puzzle. There are the panels in front of you. Very often you don’t like what the story is, and you say, ‘I’m going to find a way to make it good.’

In the later days, I did that with Kirby a lot. Most of the plots, he had much more to do with than I did. When he did give me the art work, a lot of times they were not the way I would have wanted to do it. So I would change them in the copy and the story ended up not being what I’m sure Kirby expected. It was fun doing them. But I don’t miss the sitting and dreaming up the plots.”

— Stan Lee, 1988: Will Murray interview with Stan Lee, as quoted in ‘Stuf Said – Expanded Second Edition’ by John Morrow, 2019, Two Morrows Publishing

19. “Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything!” – the 1989 Comics Journal Interview


By 1989, Kirby had spent many years challenging the official narratives that credited Stan Lee as both a writer and the primary creative force behind many of Marvel’s iconic 1960s characters. He was dealing with a range of health issues and remained locked in a bitter dispute with Marvel over the return of his original artwork. In a particularly noteworthy interview from this period—conducted with his wife Roz at his side—Kirby continued to assert, forcefully, his authorship of the stories. For example:

“On the Fantastic Four, I’d tell him what I was going to do, what the story was going to be, and I’d bring it in—that’s all… I didn’t particularly care to talk to Stan, and I just gave him possibly some idea of what the next story would be like, and then I went home and I conceived and put down the entire story on paper.”

The question of whether Lee may ever have suggested that Kirby go in a different direction was promptly dismissed:

“No, no, no, he took them verbatim.  If Stan Lee had ever done that, I would have been over to DC in about five minutes.”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990):


Kirby also offered several reflections on his storytelling process — discussing his spontaneous, intuitive approach and his strong personal connection to both the work and the characters:, e.g.:

“I didn’t plan out the entire story.  I had to do it panel by panel because I had to think for each individual.  Sometimes even after I thought it out, the story would come out different because on the way something would happen and this guy would have to make different plans.”

“…(I)f you look at some of my old pages, notice the expressions on the people, they’re very real expressions.  I was totally immersed in the characters.  I pencilled fast, I wrote fast.  Nobody could have written a story for me because they couldn’t have understood the situation or what to do”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990)


In explaining what had shaped his work, Kirby now asserted that the was the only one who viewed the characters as ‘real people’: 

“I was a student of science fiction and I began to make up my own story patterns, my own type of people. Stan Lee doesn’t think the way I do. Stan Lee doesn’t think of people when he thinks of [characters]. I think of [characters] as real people. If I drew a war story it would be two guys caught in the war. The Fantastic Four to me are people who were in a jam.  Suddenly you find yourself invisible, suddenly you find yourself flexible.”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990):


The idea of Lee being capable of any creative input, even from an editorial perspective, was dismissed – with his role now being likened to an ‘office worker’:

“Stan Lee has never been editorial minded. It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things or old things for that matter. Stan Lee wasn’t a guy that read or that told stories. Stan Lee was a guy that knew where the papers were or who was coming to visit that day. Stan Lee is essentially an office worker, OK? I’m essentially something else: I’m a storyteller.”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990):


As for the question of how Lee had come to receive credit as the writer in their work, Kirby asserted that it was a scenario motivated by jealousy and financial incentive.  He alleged that he’d been quite content creating stories by himself until he was required to share credit with a man who “never wrote a line in his life”:

“It was a happy time of life. But. But, slowly management suddenly realized I was making money. I say “management,” but I mean an individual. I was making more money than he was, OK? It’s an individual. And so he says, ‘Well, you know…’ And the old phrase is born. ‘Screw you. I get mine.’ OK? And so I had to render to Caesar what he considered Caesar’s. And there was a man who never wrote a line in his life — he could hardly spell — you know, taking credit for the writing. I found myself coming up with new angles to keep afloat. I was in a bad spot. I was in a spot that I didn’t want to be in and yet I had to be to make a living.”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990):


At one point in the interview Kirby was asked specifically about the monster stories that he had drawn during his early years at Atlas/Marvel.  In responding, he made further broad claims concerning his work with Lee: 

“Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything! I’ve never seen Stan Lee write anything. I used to write the stories just like I always did.”

“If Stan Lee ever got a thing dialogued, he would get it from someone working in the office. I would write out the whole story on the back of every page. I would write the dialogue on the back or a description of what was going on. Then Stan Lee would hand them to some guy and he would write in the dialogue. In this way Stan Lee made more pay than he did as an editor. This is the way Stan Lee became the writer. Besides collecting the editor’s pay, he collected writer’s pay. I’m not saying Stan Lee had a bad business head on. I think he took advantage of whoever was working for him.”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990):


The published interview naturally attracted significant attention within the comics community. An angered Lee publicly disputed many of Kirby’s comments and reportedly even considered legal action (see Endnotes). Even so, in a book published to celebrate Marvel a year later, Lee’s own remarks continued to support the narrative of Kirby’s freewheeling approach to story construction:

“He (Kirby) was so inventive.  He kept getting new ideas, and whenever he’d get one he’d put it in the story.  And I’d say ‘Jack, save that for the next issue or the one after that.  It’s too much.’”

— Stan Lee, Marvel – Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Heroes, by Les Daniels, Abrams, 1991


A few years later, after a long period of declining health, Kirby passed away on February 6, 1994.

20. “Jack deserved a lot of credit”

In 1996, two years after Kirby’s passing, Lee was interviewed by Wizard Magazine’s Tom Russo: 

RUSSO:  “Speaking of those early days, It seems like it’s become more and more fashionable since Jack Kirby died to say that maybe you get too much credit for your work together and that Kirby doesn’t get enough.”

LEE:  “(Speaking in a soft, sombre voice) It may be true.  Jack deserved a lot of credit.  I don’t think these stories would have been as successful if Jack hadn’t worked on them.  I was inspired to a great extent by the art.  When he did a story, there were always things that he would add to it that we didn’t discuss.  I have never tried to take that away from him.  As for whether I got too much credit, who knows?  The words that you read in all the stories were mine. I’d say, ‘Jack, I want you to do a character called the Hulk, and this is the kind of character I want it to be’ And so forth, with all the books. Now, after we got started, Jack made great contributions to the plots.  And, after a while, some of the plots were Jack’s.  I mean, he would just bring me many of them, and it didn’t matter to me – he was so good at it, it made it more fun for me to write.  I always thought we had a wonderful working relationship.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan Lee – The Wizard Interview’, interview by Tom Russo, Wizard Magazine #53, January 1996


This remained the core narrative Lee expressed for the rest of his life—portraying himself as the writer, emphasizing his central role in shaping the early storylines, and acknowledging Kirby’s plotting contributions, though not as equivalent to authorship or “writing” in the traditional sense.

“…I never thought of Jack as a writer (but he was certainly a great plotter)…”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan the Man and Roy the Boy – A Conversation Between Stan Lee and Roy Thomas’, interviews conducted by Roy Thomas May 1998, Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 1, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000


 In 2010, Lee—presumably in accordance with advice/coaching from Marvel’s legal team—gave a deposition in a lawsuit involving Marvel Entertainment and the heirs of Jack Kirby. Due to his central role at Marvel during the creation of many iconic characters, Lee was a key witness. The case centered on the issue of copyright ownership for several major Marvel properties and included detailed questions about how he and Kirby had worked together:

“At any rate, this is the way the conferences went. Very often Jack would say more than ‘mm-hmm.’ You know, he might contribute something or he might say, ‘Stan, let’s also do this or do that.’ I mean, we had conversations. But aside from that, yes, we would get together. I would tell Jack the main idea that I wanted, and then we would talk about it, and we’d come up with something.”

“…I would give Jack a rough idea for what the story should be, and he went home and he drew it in his own way, laying it out the way he thought it would be best, he would put in the borders, the margins of the pages, he would put little notes letting — so I would understand what he was getting at with each drawing, and he would sometimes put dialogue suggestions also.”

“I might add, that as time went on, and we had been working together for years, the outlines I gave him were skimpier and skimpier.  I might say something like: In this story, let’s have Dr. Doom kidnap Sue Storm, and the Fantastic Four has to go out and rescue them.  And, in the end, Dr Doom does this and that.  And that might have been all I would tell him for a 20-page story.

And Jack would just put in all the details and everything.  And then it was – I enjoyed that.  It was like doing a crossword puzzle.  I get the panels back, and I have to put in the dialogue and make it all tie together.”

“Now, when he drew the strip, he might introduce a lot of characters that he came up with in the story. He might have decided to have Dr. Doom send some giant robot to get Sue Storm, and he would make up the robot. Or there might be some other people. Sure, Jack would often introduce a lot of new characters in the stories.”

— Stan Lee, ‘The Stan Lee Deposition on The Origins of the Marvel Universe for Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit’ Bleeding Cool online article by Mark Seifert, published 9 Mar 2011  (Transcript available online at 201000 Marvel v Kirby – Full Deposition of Stan Lee, Los Angeles, May 13, 2010 – Flipbook by Terka S | FlipHTML5)

The Kirby family reached a settlement with Marvel (owned by Disney) in September 2014, just days before the U.S. Supreme Court was set to decide whether to hear their appeal in the copyright termination case. The exact terms have never been made public, though Marvel has since prominently credited Kirby in marketing, merchandise, and film materials, especially in connection with characters he co-created.

Kirby was posthumously inducted as a Disney Legend on July 14, 2017, during the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. This honor recognized Kirby’s pivotal role in creating iconic characters such as the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Hulk, which laid the foundation for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Stan Lee would pass away four years later, on 12 November 2018.

21. Some (Strictly) Personal Thoughts

Conflicting accounts of creative credit are common in the entertainment industry, and the differing narratives of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee—even when confined to issues of authorship and credit under the Marvel Method—are a prime example. Over time, many have attempted to move the conversation beyond their personal recollections by examining narrative patterns, surviving materials such as artwork and plot outlines, and reflections from colleagues and contemporaries. While these sources offer valuable insights, they also introduce additional elements that are open to interpretation and debate.

This article has taken a more focused approach, concentrating primarily on the public statements of Kirby and Lee. While this inevitably leaves certain dimensions unexplored, the aim has been to enable a clearer comparison of their respective accounts—minimizing extraneous factors—in order to uncover insights and points of agreement that might otherwise be overlooked.

Generally speaking, the commentaries of both men strongly support Kirby’s primary role in story development. During the period in question, Lee did not use full scripts, and his own remarks suggest that many of their planning discussions were fairly general in nature. While either man could contribute story “ideas,” it was Kirby who ultimately translated them into plotlines while working in his studio.

In 1970, Jack Kirby stated that he had originated “most” of the plots at Marvel himself, which allows for the possibility that Stan Lee contributed some of his own on occasion. However, the plots Lee described in interviews were typically quite general. In the absence of more detailed direction, the responsibility would have fallen to Kirby to flesh out specific scenes and character moments. Moreover, given that he was known to introduce new elements or take narratives in unexpected directions, it could still be argued that Kirby was effectively the primary architect of the stories.

Lee is on record as saying that he and Kirby worked more closely during their earlier collaborations, which presumably involved longer story conferences and more detailed written outlines. However, Lee also acknowledged Kirby’s conceptual input from the outset, while Kirby maintained that any outlines were always based on ideas he had originally proposed. It is therefore possible that this closer collaboration largely took the form of editorial oversight—intended to ensure that Kirby’s creativity did not stray too far from Lee’s own vision.

Lee’s commentary often credits Kirby with devising many of the later storylines entirely on his own—a point that clearly aligns with Kirby’s version of events. While Lee occasionally tempered such statements by noting that he always provided some initial (if minimal) direction, it seems reasonable to assume that their recollections are most reliable where they overlap.

Regardless of the nature of Lee’s input during the planning stages of a story, it is evident that Kirby viewed Lee’s role as editorial rather than authorial. As such, Kirby saw himself as the true creator of the stories—a perspective that likely informed his later assertion that he and Lee had never truly “collaborated.”


Lee, of course, often credited himself with the actual writing in addition to his role as editor. He emphasized that Marvel comics were created in stages, and from his perspective, the story was not complete when he received Kirby’s penciled pages. While the plotting may have been done—with or without his input—editorial adjustments could still be made, and the pages lacked final dialogue. Crucially, Lee viewed writing that dialogue as the key act that brought the characters and narrative to life—something he equated with writing the story itself. This belief underpinned his continued status as the writer, even as he acknowledged Kirby’s contributions to plotting.

“I’d get some pages of artwork, and I wrote the copy and I turned [it] into whatever I wanted the story to be.”

— Stan Lee, interview with Jon B. Cooke, Jack Kirby Collector #33, 2001, TwoMorrows Publishing

Given this context, the 1987 Earthwatch program is particularly interesting for two reasons. First, Kirby was confronted with the now-famous image of the Marvel “plotting conference”—a scene he had playfully helped stage for a 1967 Fantastic Four Annual featurette. What he was thinking at the time will likely never be known, but the image undeniably contributed to the public perception of the Lee–Kirby partnership—an image he would later come to reject.

Second, Earthwatch marked the only occasion on which Lee and Kirby publicly addressed their respective roles face to face. Their exchange offered a rare glimpse into what each man believed was most important—and how they reacted when directly challenged by the other in real time. Lee steered the conversation toward dialogue, while Kirby emphasized the primacy of visual storytelling and the significance of his margin notes. A degree of mutual respect was evident, and perhaps—had the moment been handled differently—it might have served as a turning point in their relationship. As it stood, however, the conversation accomplished little beyond allowing each man to reaffirm his own view of authorship.


Two years later, in the 1989 Comics Journal interview, Kirby revisited the subject with sharper conviction. Among his claims was the assertion that Lee “never dialogued anything.” Some commentators have dismissed this as an emotional exaggeration or as a reflection of Kirby’s declining health. Others suggest it reflected a belief that Lee merely paraphrased Kirby’s margin notes—or that it alluded to occasions when Lee received uncredited assistance from others in the office. Yet another possibility is that Kirby simply misspoke and might have revised the comment had he been given the opportunity to clarify it prior to publication.


In the same discussion, Kirby asserted that Lee had taken writing credit primarily to secure higher pay. When this opinion formed—or whether it reflected a considered belief rather than a long-held frustration—is impossible to say, and Lee’s personal motivations can only be guessed at. In any event, Kirby maintained that he was just as capable of providing the dialogue, stating numerous times over the years that the only reason he hadn’t done so at Marvel was because he wasn’t allowed to. There were some instances when he was the credited writer or scripter—though it’s difficult to determine how much of the final wording was shaped by Lee’s editing. Whether stories scripted entirely in Kirby’s unfettered style would have altered Marvel’s trajectory in the 1960s remains an intriguing question, one that can never be answered with certainty.


As noted at the outset of this article, Jack Kirby once described Marvel’s creative system as a “John Henry operation.” While he may have intended to say “Henry Ford operation,” referencing Ford’s assembly-line model, the allusion to John Henry—the laborer who outperformed a machine at the cost of his life—is arguably more revealing. The Marvel machine operated on a relentless production schedule, placing immense demands on those expected to keep pace. Kirby undeniably shouldered much of that creative burden, constructing characters, plots, and entire worlds directly on the page. For him, this wasn’t merely one part of the process—it was the critical stage where the real creativity, and the real writing, took place. Working alone to craft stories in his studio gave Kirby a deep, personal connection to the characters and narratives as they emerged under his pencil—one that he described as follows:

“I see that story first. I feel that story first. I know those people first. When I put them down they’ve already lived. And I’ve put them down as I’d like them to live on those pages.”

— Jack Kirby, Masters of Comic Book Art, 1987

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Endnotes

 

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1.1. “The text offers selected commentary from both Jack Kirby and Stan Lee on the broader themes of story development and authorship in the work they produced together from 1961 to 1970 under the ‘Marvel Method.’“


This excludes instances in which Stan Lee was credited with the plot but the dialogue was credited to another writer. For example, Larry Lieber—Lee’s brother—was credited (sometimes retroactively) as the scripter for many early Marvel superhero stories featuring characters such as Thor, Iron Man, and Ant-Man. However, his contributions received relatively little attention until the 1990s. Lieber recalled working under the traditional ‘full-script’ approach, rather than the ‘Marvel Method.’


The following is from a 1999 interview with former Marvel writer/editor Roy Thomas: 

LIEBER: Stan made up the plot, and then he’d give it to me, and I’d write the script. Tudor City had a park; and when it was nice, I’d sit there and break the story down picture by picture. I was unsure of myself just sitting down to write a script. Since I knew how to draw, I’d think, ‘Oh, this shot will have a guy coming this way… this shot we’ll have a guy looking down on him,’ and later I’d sit at the typewriter and type it up. After a while, I’d just go to the typewriter. I would follow from Stan’s plots.

THOMAS: Would Jack have already penciled the story?

LIEBER: No. These were all scripts in advance.

THOMAS: So this wasn’t “Marvel style” yet? I asked Stan recently just how that style started. He felt maybe Fantastic Four #1 was the start of it, but I wondered if, by 1961 and before, he was already doing some things plots-in-advance for Jack and others.

LIEBER: No, I think it started with Fantastic Four, or around the time he did the super-heroes.

THOMAS: So you’d turn Stan’s plots into a full script for Jack or whoever?

LEIBER: Or for Don Heck, or someone. Stan liked writing his own stories for Ditko. Jack I always had to send a full script to. Also, what Stan liked was that I made up names. As a matter of fact, I made up the name “Henry Pym…“

THOMAS: That would be in the “Man in the Anthill” story in Tales to Astonish #27, which led to Pym returning as Ant-Man. You probably made up a lot of names that people assume Stan or Jack coined. Didn’t you make up “Don Blake” when you scripted the first Thor story?

LEIBER: I probably did. I wrote a full script and sent it off to Jack.

THOMAS: You were still writing full scripts when you did Thor? I know it’s got to be hard to remember after almost forty years. You wrote the first half dozen or so Thor stories.

LIEBER: I wrote that many? I thought it was just two or three; but I remember Ant-Man. I think I wrote that the same way I wrote the other scripts, with a full script.

THOMAS: I never knew that. Stan probably doesn’t remember. I always assumed Jack broke down the stories, because that’s what he was doing for Stan.

LEIBER: Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t swear to it, but I have no recollection of ever writing a story that had already been penciled. A full script is the only way I know how to write. No, wait… I remember that I did write at least one story from the artwork, but that was in the ’70s. I remember that the penciler had left me a lot of empty space to fill up with dialogue, and I didn’t want to use it all… so I drew in some more art to fill up the space!

— Larry Lieber, A Conversation with Artist-Writer Larry Lieber, Conducted & Edited by Roy Thomas, Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson From Alter Ego Vol. 3 #2 Autumn 1999


In a 2008 interview Lieber stated that plots Lee provided him were “usually typed, just a paragraph or so.”  He also recalled that making up the term ‘uru hammer’ for the Thor strip.

— Larry Lieber, interviewed by Danny Fingeroth, 28-29 January 2008, The Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011


Among the scripts attributed to Larry Lieber is the debut of Iron Man in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963). However, artist Don Heck later recalled receiving the plot for that story verbally from Lee.

“He (Lee) just called me up and told me he was going to have this character, Iron Man, and he said “Tony Stark,” and the way he wound up where he was over in I guess it would be considered Vietnam. And he’d pitch this synopsis over the phone. We didn’t actually sit down and work out the characters.”

“I knew what the costume looked like because I got the cover in the mail.”

— Don Heck, ‘The Secret Kirby Origin of Iron Man’ by Will Murray, as published in Alter Ego Collector’s Item Classics TwoMorrows Publishing, January 2023  


A possible explanation is that either Lieber or Heck was recalling the general process, and that the first Iron Man story was an exception. 


Given Kirby’s many statements about doing his own writing, some have speculated that the plots Lee gave to Lieber may have originated during discussions with Kirby — a possibility that author Abraham Riesman put directly to Lieber:

“Maybe he did.  See, I was never there when the two of them were there.”

— Larry Lieber, True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman, Crown, 2021


That said, there is also some leeway for Kirby working with material provided by others, given that he’s on record as stating he handled ‘most of the plots’ himself (see 12 in main article).   


Marvel editor Tom Brevoort has examined original art pages from a Human Torch story in Strange Tales #103 (December 1962), for which Larry Lieber was credited as the scripter and Stan Lee for the plot. In doing so, Brevoort noted handwritten dialogue and narrative by Jack Kirby in the word balloons—a practice also seen in some other stories involving Lieber. If Lieber’s recollections are accurate, Kirby presumably added this text to ensure there was enough space for the pre-written text:

“There’s lettering for the credits as well, and the handwriting on those credits doesn’t appear to be Lee’s. In fact, they look more to my eye like Kirby’s–though it’s difficult to say that 100%–might have been somebody else’s, such as Sol Brodsky. But if it was Jack’s handwriting, why would he be inscribing credits that were incorrect and robbed him of the authorship of the story?”

— Tom Brevoort, Torch Lee & Kirby: The Provenance of STRANGE TALES #103 – The Tom Brevoort Experience


It has also been speculated that the penciled dialogue may have originally been written by Kirby and later revised or edited by Lieber. However, if Lieber was indeed receiving credit for that dialogue, Kirby never publicly expressed any dissatisfaction with the arrangement. On the contrary, in a 1986 interview, he spoke of Lieber in notably positive terms—especially in contrast to Lee:

“I know…Larry has nothing to prove – he knows who he is.  Larry Lieber’s a wonderful guy, you could talk to him and you’ll both have a great time.”

— Jack Kirby, Comics Interview #41, interview, conducted by Mark Borax. 1986 (republished in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview Super Special – Masters of Marvel, 1989)

2.1. “There is some debate over exactly when this approach to creating comic books first emerged. Nevertheless, it can be said to have officially commenced with the first issue of Fantastic Four (November 1961), as this was the title that launched the so-called ‘Marvel Age of Comics.’“

One of Jack Kirby’s contemporaries at Marvel was Stan Goldberg, a colorist/artist/writer who began his career with Atlas/Timely in 1949. By the early 1960s—at the dawn of the so-called ‘Marvel Age’—Goldberg was working with Stan Lee as the illustrator on titles such as Kathy and Millie the Model. He recalled the emergence of the ‘Marvel Method’ from an artist’s perspective:

“He (Lee) was (writing full scripts for Kathy) at the very beginning. Then things started exploding at Marvel, and Stan needed to cut some corners at his end so he would come with new ideas. That’s when he developed the ‘Marvel Style’ of writing stories, where the artist did most of the plotting and he did the dialogue. He didn’t trust too many other writers, and this was a good way to keep control of the stories.

Some people weren’t happy about it, because Stan was putting work on the artist for no extra pay. Some artists resented it, but that was how it was done. I wasn’t happy about it at first, but I learned how to do it. I wanted to tell stories. So I’d start with something big happening, so I’d get the reader caught up in the story. And I wanted to keep on working and please Stan. And Stan was pleased with what I was doing.

I’m not sure if I was doing this before Kirby and the others. I know Jack was getting detailed outlines even before they started doing ‘The Fantastic Four.’ Whether they had talked the story out before that is something I can’t be sure of. The scripts Stan wrote became less detailed as he got busier. He went from full scripts to a detailed synopsis to the Marvel Method…”

— Stan Goldberg, ‘The Goldberg Variations’, interview by Jim Amash, Alter Ego #18, October 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing

(Note: Further information concerning Goldberg and his experiences working with Stan Lee can be found in The Ditko Version article, available on this site)

3.1. “Although Kirby had been accepting assignments at Atlas (Marvel’s predecessor) since the late 1950s…” 


Both Jack Kirby and his creative partner Joe Simon had previously produced work for Timely Comics—Marvel’s precursor—in the 1940s under publisher Martin Goodman. Their most notable co-creation from that period was Captain America, which proved to be very successful for the company.  Simon later recalled the reasons behind their departure:

“(W)e were supposed to receive 25% of the profits on Captain America. The rest of the stuff was all thrown in, but since we started Captain America clean, we thought that we deserved that. We had an agreement, we did a handshake on it. We didn’t get, like, $3 royalties after the book sold out; and instead of confronting Martin, which we should have done, we contacted Jack Liebowitz at DC Comics. He was running DC Comics.

He was very happy to hear from us. We were really the stars of the whole industry at that time, coming up from nowhere to million-a-month sales on these. Not only Captain America but we were boosting up USA, All-Winners, Young Allies. I stole that from Boy Allies. (laughter)

The books were selling well, so they were happy to give us a very good contract at DC. Anyway, we had a minimum according to what we produced; we could make more, but the minimum was $250 each a week. Jack had been making $75 at Goodman’s and I had been making, what, $85? So, I thought that was a pretty good deal–we were both pretty happy about it.”

It was around this period that Simon and Kirby first encountered a young Stan Lee:

“Meanwhile, we had to come up with new characters, although it didn’t depend on the content–they were paying us anyway. We were finishing up the stuff for the last issue of Captain America; we hadn’t announced to Martin Goodman that we were leaving. We thought we were justified since we were getting such a screwing on the royalties, in our estimation.

Anyway, Stan Lee… we rent another hotel room and we went there at night and started creating new characters like Super Sherlock Holmes and stuff like that; stuff that never occurred. And Stan Lee used to tail after us. He was a little 16-year-old, y’know? We liked him, and we let him tail after us.

This story’s never been told; so we came back to Timely and sat down and we both worked on Captain America, and Stan was there while we were penciling up Captain America. Suddenly, we’re surrounded by the brothers and the uncles; it was like they formed a ring around us, and accused us of working for other publishers. I remember Abe Goodman. He says, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” He says, “You’re fired.” And then one of the other guys says, “But first you have to finish this issue of Captain America.” (laughter)”

As for how Goodman found out:

“Stan said he didn’t do it. (laughter) Jack said, “The next time I see that little son-of-a-bitch, I’m gonna kill him.” (laughter). 

And then, the next thing I knew, he went back to work for them (Marvel), so you do what you gotta do, right?”

— Joe Simon, ‘More than Your Average Joe’, 1998 transcription by Glen Musial, published in Jack Kirby Collector #25, August 1999, TwoMorrows Publishing  TwoMorrows Publishing – Joe Simon – Kirby Collector Twentyfifth Issue


“In fairness to Stan, I wasn’t at all convinced that he was the one to spill the beans, so to speak.  There must have been over a dozen guys at DC Comics who knew of our arrangement and could gain points with Martin Goodman by telling him of our plans.”

— Joe Simon, The Comic Book Makers, by Joe Simon with Jim Simon, Vanguard Press, 2003


Kirby returned to the company (now often referred to as Atlas) in the mid-1950s after encountering challenges concerning his short-lived newspaper strip Sky Masters and related difficulties at National/DC Comics.  He then spent a number of years doing assignments on various pre-hero titles, including westerns and monster stories, prior to the creation of Fantastic Four #1.


By this point, Stan Lee had long since progressed to the role of writer-editor. He was working with artists such as George Roussos, who was already familiar with Kirby’s reputation. Roussos had been impressed by Lee as well and predicted that success lay ahead for both men:

“I liked Stan right away. There’s something alive about him, and I always felt that he would amount to something. He always gave me work and I always had a feeling that someday he was going to be successful. That’s the reason why when Jack came over, I said that those two are really going to go places. I even told that to Stan, who said, ‘When I see the sales figures, I’ll believe you, George.’  When sales went up, he never said a word to me.

I always call him ‘The Sign of the Sun.’  Y’know how we all reach for the sun when it comes out? He’s got the same kind of energy. When we were all half-asleep, he would come into the office, and you could feel the energy. It was a stimulating place to work. You need an environment of that kind.”

— George Roussos, ‘George Inky Roussos Interviewed’ ,interview by Jon B. Cooke, Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998. TwoMorrows Publishing


While working at Marvel in 1967, Kirby opted to give a relatively light-hearted recollection of encountering the younger Lee.  His anecdote had Lee suggesting an idea for the Captain America strip, perhaps foreshadowing what was to come in the 1960s:

“While working on Captain America for Marvel Comics in the dawning ‘forties’, I was producing at a furious rate.  I remember slowing down only once, when a young rapscallion, peering into my cubicle, suggested I show more of Cap’s home life, his aged, kindly mother, his wicked Aunt Agatha, and the stark, heart-rending background of Cap’s early years.  ‘Begone!’, I cried, sorely put to drubbing him.  ‘Take off and become an editor or something!’  Well, by golly, he did.”

— Jack Kirby, Merry Marvel Messenger, 1967

3.1. “(T)he ‘Marvel Age’ of comics officially began with Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961).”

As with many of the characters and strips they collaborated on, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee offered differing accounts over the years regarding the origin of the Fantastic Four series. While a detailed exploration is beyond the scope of this document, it’s notable that in their earliest recollections, both men claimed primary credit while still acknowledging the other’s contribution.


In a 1968 fanzine interview Lee was asked who—between him and Kirby—had created the Fantastic Four team:

“Both – t’was mainly my idea but Jack created characters visually.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Excelsior #1’ (fanzine) 1968


A couple of years later, Kirby provided his own response:

“It was my idea.  It was my idea to do it the way it was; my idea to develop it the way it was.  I’m not saying that Stan had nothing to do with it.  Of course he did.  We talked things out.”

— Jack Kirby, ‘A Talk with Artist-Writer-Editor Jack Kirby’, interview by Bruch Hamilton, Rocket’s Blast ComiCollector 81, 1970

In material written for the 1974 Origins of Marvel Comics, Lee stated that he prepared a story synopsis for the first issue following discussions with both Kirby and publisher Martin Goodman:

“Little by little it all took shape.  We’d have the leader of the team and his lady love.  She’d have a kid brother whom the readers could empathise with – but not too young.”

“After kicking it around with Martin and Jack for a while I decided to call our quaint quartet the Fantastic Four.  I wrote a detailed first synopsis for Jack to follow and the rest is history.”

— Stan Lee, ‘If One is Good, Four will be Better’, Origins of Marvel Comics, Simon and Schuster, 1974

A plot outline for the first chapter of Fantastic Four #1 does exist and has been published multiple times, including in Marvel’s Masterworks and Omnibus collections. However, in a 1989 interview with Gary Groth, Kirby specifically denied ever having referenced it:

“I’ve never seen it and of course I would say that’s an outright lie.”

— Jack Kirby, The Comics Journal # 134, interview by Gary Groth, Summer 1989 (published Feb. 1990)

3.2. “This was not unusual, as comic books of the era often lacked formal credits, and many creators in the industry still worked anonymously.”

During the early 1960s, many writers and artists were likely accustomed to receiving little or no public recognition. The comic book industry, considered relatively low in prestige and primarily targeted at young children, had never established a standardized system for crediting creators, nor were publishers generally obligated to do so. In contrast, newspaper strips offered greater potential for recognition and financial reward—often catering to an older audience—but they frequently relied on anonymous ‘ghost’ creators working behind official bylines.


Even creator-run studios in the 1940s and 1950s, such as the successful ‘Simon and Kirby’ studio, employed uncredited writers and artists to help generate content. In a 1970 interview, for example, Kirby was asked whether some of the strips signed “Simon and Kirby” had included work by others:

“Yes.  We had, for instance, Eddie Herron, the man who created Captain Marvel.  He was an editor for Fawcett who Fawcett who later became a writer for DC.  He also created the Red Skull, which I used in an early Captain America.  Compared to Captain Marvel, that became his biggest hit.  In fact the Red Skull stands out as a kind of all-time villain.  He proved to be a great character – but I didn’t create him.  And I used him to good effect.  We had things like that from time to time.”

— Jack Kirby, interview by Bruce Hamilton for Rocket’s Blast ComiCollector # 81 fanzine, 1970.


Writer Paul Kupperberg, who had a script illustrated by Kirby in the 1980s, later reflected on this scenario while emphasising that it was “the way the comics industry worked”:

“Jack and Joe Simon headed up more than one comics publishing company in the late-1940s and early 1950s. All those issues of Fighting American were signed “Simon & Kirby,” even if they were drawn by George Tuska or Bill Draut. When those stories were reprinted in a 1989 hardcover, over thirty years after they were originally published, Jack and Joe’s names were the only ones to be found in the credits and the respective introductions they penned for the volume.  And I never did ask George Tuska if Jack and Joe’s Prize Group Comics company ever returned his original art for the stories he drew for them or if Jack made sure he got a royalty check for the reprints, but I’m willing to bet damn near anything that neither of those things ever happened.

Why? Because that was the way the comics industry worked. Writers and artists went into the business knowing it was that way and either accepted the terms or found some other way to make a living.”

— Paul Kupperberg, ‘Stan and Jack and Steve and Mort and Jerry and Joe’, Paul Kupperbeg: And Then I Wrote…(Blog), posted 26 January 2014

3.2. “Even Jack Kirby—who, along with Joe Simon, had been part of the highly successful Simon and Kirby team during the 1940s and 1950s—received no byline on the Challengers of the Unknown strip he had produced for National/DC Comics just a short time earlier, between 1957 and 1959.”


There is some conjecture over who wrote the dialogue for Challengers of the Unknown. Dave Wood is frequently credited as a co-writer in DC reprints—such as DC Showcase: Challengers of the Unknown Volume 1—also collaborated with Kirby as a writer on the Sky Masters newspaper strip during the 1950s. But Jack Kirby has stated that he wrote the strip himself:

“Yes, I wrote Challengers.  I wrote everything I did.”

— Jack Kirby, “I’ve Never Done Anything Half-heartedly’ interview conducted Summer of 1989 by Gary Groth, Comics Journal #134, February 1990


There is also some question concerning the creation of Challengers, with Joe Simon stating that it was something that he and Kirby had developed together:

“I think that the last thing we did together was at DC: Challengers of the Unknown.”

— Joe Simon, Excerpts from Joe Simon’s panels at the 1998 Comicon International: San Diego, Transcribed by Glen Musial, and edited by John Morrow From Jack Kirby Collector #25TwoMorrows Publishing – Joe Simon – Kirby Collector Twentyfifth Issue

Challengers of the Unknown, with its four male protagonists who survive a plane crash and commit themselves to a life of adventure, is often cited as a thematic and structural precursor to the Fantastic Four:

“Yes, there were always precursors to the Fantastic Four – except the Fantastic Four were mutations.  When people began talking about the bomb and its possible effects on human beings, they began talking about mutations because that’s a distinct possibility.  And I said, “that’s a great idea.”  That’s how the Fantastic Four began, with an atomic explosion and its effects on the characters.”

— Jack Kirby, “I’ve Never Done Anything Half-heartedly’ interview conducted Summer of 1989 by Gary Groth, Comics Journal #134, February 1990


(Note: Kirby’s reference to the atomic blast creating the Fantastic Four is obviously incorrect. He is possibly confusing it with an atomic blast shown at the conclusion of the first issue, or with the Incredible Hulk strip)


There are numerous articles noting the similarities between Challengers and Fantastic Four.  For example, Challengers = Fantastic Four (Part of the The Great American Novel site) is an excellent online essay that provides many examples of imagery, plot points and even characters possibly repurposed by Kirby for Fantastic Four, together with speculation concerning Kirby’s original intentions.


If Fantastic Four was a conscious take on Challengers then it could be considered the second example of Kirby repurposing a concept previously worked on with previous partner Joe Simon for Marvel, with another being the Spider-Man prototype (see The Ditko Version for further information).


While the Challengers comparison may seem compelling, many of the similarities were never publicly recognised by Kirby himself.  It’s also worth noting that there are other explanations for the Fantastic Four’s genesis. For example, there are obvious similarities between the characters and story elements in Fantastic Four #1 and the popular 1959 film adaptation of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth:

• Both feature teams comprising of four protagonists—three men and one woman.
  
• Each team faces a stockily built antagonist, who also comes from the surface world.
  
• The comic’s villain, the Mole Man, embarked on a quest years earlier to find the ‘legendary center of the Earth.’ The movie’s villain, Count Saknussemm, is seeking to follow in the footsteps of a descendant who previously located the Earth’s center.
  
• Both stories involve a descent deep underground (though in Fantastic Four, it’s unclear how deep below ‘Monster Isle’ they actually are).
  
• In each case, the characters encounter giant monsters as well as a jeweled cavern in their adventure (though in Fantastic Four, the cavern seems to serve no real narrative purpose).

Martin Goodman’s company was well-known for chasing popular trends—including those in film—and Journey to the Center of the Earth was a major box office success at the time. And Stan Lee himself would even make the following connection to Verne’s story during an introduction for the 12th episode of the 1995 Fantastic Four animated series (which was aired as part of the Marvel Action Hour):

“Hi True Believers! Remember Jules Verne’s incredible story ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth?’ I’ve always loved it, and it was probably in the back of my mind when I wrote the Fantastic Four’s first epic, ‘The Menace of the Mole Man!’ It’s a real kick for me to present it to you, now fully animated with sound an music and lots more story twists and dangers than we had room for in our early comic books!”

— Stan Lee, ‘Marvel Action Hour Intro #12’ (‘Mole Man’) currently available on YouTube (downloaded by the Sir Stack channel in 2010)


Some commentators have suggested that the second half of Fantastic Four #1 may have originally been conceived as either a standalone monster story or the beginning of a series featuring non-powered protagonists—something more in the vein of Challengers of the Unknown or Journey to the Center of the Earth. According to this theory, the origin story in the opening chapter was added later, with the second chapter reworked to incorporate the characters’ superpowers. While this is unlikely to ever be proven, it would help explain why the surviving synopsis for the first issue covers only the origin sequence in the first chapter. It could also explain why the story structure in Fantastic Four #1 is so unusual. (Another possibility, of course, is that the first issue combined short stories originally intended for anthology titles.)


Whether speculation that Journey to the Center of the Earth was the one true inspiration for the Fantastic Four is correct or not, it demonstrates the broader challenge in identifying creative influences: multiple plausible sources can exist simultaneously, each seeming equally convincing.

3.3. “I write the story plot – go over it with Jack – he draws it based on our hasty conferences – then, with his drawings in front of me, I write the captions and dialogue, usually right on the original art work.”


Jack Kirby denied ever seeing the synopsis for the opening chapter of Fantastic Four #1, but he did acknowledge the general use of written outlines. In the 1980s, he recalled these as having been prepared based on his own ideas:

“The only time I was given any kind of written synopsis was after I’d give Stan Lee a story and take it from what I told him.  I was the one creating the story line, the pictures, the story itself.”

— Jack Kirby,  ‘A Comic Book Artist KO’d: Jack Kirby’s Six-Year Slugfest with Marvel’ Village Voice Vol 32 #49, 8 December 1987 (available for viewing online at the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Site).

A partial outline for the first portion of Fantastic Four #8 (November 1962) was published in retyped form in the fanzine Capa-Alpha #2 by Jerry Bails in 1963. Both the outline and the fanzine are reproduced in Stan Lee Universe, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2011). Notably, the outline provides no direction for the story’s conclusion, which many commentators have observed bears an obvious resemblance to the ending of a Simon and Kirby story published in Black Magic #4 (September/October 1952).  There is no record of Kirby ever commenting publicly on this specific outline.


The following document was evidently prepared to give general guidance and direction for Jack Kirby in relation to the following issues from 1966: Thor #134–135, Fantastic Four #57–60, and Tales of Suspense #84. (This has been published in Stuf’ Said – Expanded Second Edition, John Morrow, TwoMorrows Publishing 2019)

The brief section concerning Tales of Suspense #84 states:

“Adaptoid gains powers of all Avengers, when they come by briefly and look at him.  (This would include Cap, Hawkeye, Goliath, Wasp, maybe even Thor and Iron Man if you wish, this is optional.)  After they leave, he fights Cap.

Other elements: The Adaptoid wishes he were human, perhaps also feels lost since AIM, that created him, has been destroyed.  He perhaps is confused of his exact mission.  Also, change the locale, so it isn’t all at Avengers HQ, and be sure not to irretrievably destroy the Adaptoid!”

Whether this represents Lee’s original notes that were subsequently discussed with Kirby, or Lee’s directions as to what he determined should be in the story (after discussions with Kirby) is unknown.


While most of Stan Lee’s written outlines and directions were presumably never retained, at least some were reportedly found in the Jack Kirby Estate:

“As for documents: Jack’s widow gave me all of Jack’s personal papers and stuff he had in his files, which includes memos and Stan Lee plot outlines and old interviews and correspondence.”

— Mark Evanier, 20 January 2008 response on ‘Ask Mark Evanier’ thread, Collected Editions.Com


To date, these apparently had restrictions placed upon them and have never been made public.  Over the years, Mark Evanier has referenced them in online articles and discussions about Stan Lee and the ‘Marvel Method’, e.g.:

“The way Stan worked varied from issue to issue and artist to artist. Sometimes, Stan would write what was for him a fairly detailed plot. I have about 50 Stan Lee plots in my files and none of them are anywhere near as detailed as the plots that guys like Len Wein, Gerry Conway or Marv Wolfman would do in the seventies.”

— Mark Evanier, response posted 30 October 2020, ‘How Did Stan Lee Actually Write his Stories’ thread, Collected Editions.Com

Another prominent Marvel artist of the 1960s, Steve Ditko, recalled working from Lee’s synopses on a number of features including Spider-Man, the Hulk and Dr Strange.  Related quotes can be found The Ditko Version article available on this site.

3.4. “I wrote them all. Well, I never wrote the credits. Let’s put it that way, all right? I would never call myself ‘Jolly Jack.’ I would never say the books were written by Lee.”


In a 1982 interview Jack Kirby also asserted his role in the writing, while brushing aside an attempt by Eisner to talk about dialogue:

KIRBY: I’ll tell you from a professional point of view. I was writing them. I was drawing them.

EISNER: But you do not necessarily subscribe to the idea of someone else, regardless of who it is, putting balloons in on a completely penciled page. I have a prejudice on it but I want to get your opinion.

KIRBY: My opinion is this: Stan Lee wrote the credits. I never wrote the credits.

— Jack Kirby, interviewed by Will Eisner, Will Eisner‘s Spirit Magazine #39, July 1982.

3.5. “Actually, we were pretty good friends. I know Stan Lee better than probably any other person. I know Stan Lee as a person… I never was angry with him in any way. He was never angry with me in any way.”

Elsewhere, Jack Kirby would state:

“If there’s anybody who knows Stan Lee, I’m the guy who knows him. Stan Lee as a person is no better or worse than anybody else. I wasn’t competing with Stan. I got along very well with Stan. We were very good friends.”

— Jack Kirby, Comics Scene #2, Interview with Howard Zimmerman, March 1982

In later years, Lee recalled a seemingly good relationship even after Kirby had moved to California:

“In fact, when he was in California, I remember we were still very friendly. I came to visit him a few times at his house. I even went to his… I forget now, his son’s wedding or his daughter’s wedding. We were very friendly until the very end.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan Lee Interview’, by Jon B. Cook, Oct. 11, 2001, Jack Kirby Collector #33, November 2001

3.6. “Precisely when this became an open point of contention —and to what extent it was seen as a problem—is difficult to determine. The two evidently enjoyed an amicable working relationship for at least part of the 1960s”


Writer Roy Thomas joined Marvel around July 1965 and later recalled:

“Jack and Stan were still getting along pretty well. They’d go out to lunch together occasionally when Jack would come in.”

— Roy Thomas, ‘Roy Thomas Interview’ conducted by Jim Amash in September 1997, Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998


Artist Herb Timpe, who began working for Marvel in 1967, also remembered Lee and Kirby interacting amicably:

“I really wasn’t privy to what went on when they separated, but they had a great relationship as far as I could tell. I don’t know what Marie’s take is on it, but my sense was that it was a very good relationship. I never heard how their story conferences went, but it was very good.”

— Herb Trimpe, ‘Herb Trimpe Interview’, interview by Jon B. Cooke,Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998, TwoMorrows Publishing


Artist Gil Kane also began taking on assignments for Marvel in 1967. In various interviews, he recalled encountering a clearly agitated Jack Kirby—albeit one who acted differently with Lee in the office environment:

“Jack Kirby, with all that hostility and aggression in his work, was the most blithe person. When you dealt with him directly and he had any antagonism – as he did towards Stan Lee – it never came out in any discussion between them, but come lunchtime with a few friends you’d think he was having a fit, he was so angry.

And yet he’d come into the office, Stan would say ‘Jack, would you change this?’ and he’d say ‘Sure.’ All of that frustration came out in the work which obviously made it richer…”

— Gil Kane, 1986 interview, published online ‘An interview from 1986 with one of the great veteran comic artists’ by Steve Whitaker posted online 11 February 2027, FA – The Comiczine.


“We used to go out to lunch, and Jack would say about Stan, ‘I’m going to break this guy! I’m gonna do some work for someone else! I’m gonna start a new company! I’m gonna see this guy run out of business!’ And then we’d come into the office and Stan would say, ‘Jack, I need you to change something.’ And Jack would comply without question. That’s the way it was, and don’t let anyone bullsh*t you about anything else.”

— Gil Kane, Comic Book Artist #2, Summer 1998, TwoMorrows Publishing

4.1. “In late 1965, Stan Lee arranged for Jack Kirby to join him in what was intended as a demonstration – reportedly staged – of a plotting session for the benefit of New York Herald Tribune reporter”

Neither Jack Kirby nor Stan Lee are on record as stating whether the plotting session was real or a reconstruction for demonstration purposes.  However, Steve Sherman—a friend of Kirby’s—has offered commentary over the years based on their conversations. The following was published in John Morrow’s Stuf’ Said (TwoMorrows, 2019):

“Jack told me the details of that famous interview with Nat Freedland. Jack said that Stan basically put on a show. As Jack said, ‘Stanley was jumping on the desk, waving his arms like a crazy man. I just sat there on the couch and watched him. It was nutty. When it was over, I said a few words and went back to work. The article comes out and the guy writes what an amazing writer Stanley is. Who could work like that? By the time he was through jumping around, I had three pages done.’”

— Steve Sherman, email quoted in Stuf’ Said – Expanded Second Edition, John Morrow, 2019 TwoMorrows Publishing

In this quote, Kirby’s reported remark about having ‘three pages done’ by the time Lee finished is open to interpretation. It could suggest that he had already started drawing the story, or that he could have completed three pages in the time he felt was wasted during the encounter. The context suggests the comment was likely rhetorical rather than literal—perhaps Kirby’s way of expressing that his time would have been better spent working in his studio.


In 2021, author Abraham Riesman provided a quote from another friend of Kirby’s friends, Mark Evanier, that was markedly less ambiguous:

“Jack said that there was not a plotting session for a real issue.  They had already plotted that issue beforehand, and they were basically recreating it for the reporter.  And one of the reasons Jack didn’t say more in the meeting was he wasn’t thinking about a story.  He wasn’t gonna take anything home and draw that story.  The story was done for him.”

— Jack Kirby, True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, by Abraham Riesman, Crown, 2021


In 2026, an account by Marvel writer Roy Thomas—who was actually present at the end of the session—provided the strongest evidence that it was indeed a demonstration. At the same time, he noted Kirby’s passive participation:

“Naturally, I’ve no direct knowledge of what went on between Stan, Jack, and Freedland behind closed doors before Stan called me in, mostly I suppose as a sort of witness to the final portion of a mostly-bogus plotting session between him and Jack. I retain only the general impression of Stan being as loquacious, Marvel-boosterish, and physically boisterous as he tended to be when talking to an artist or writer about a storyline…while Jack simply sat there in his chair, saying little and looking a bit ill at ease, the more so since this was not really an authentic plot conference, only an after-the-fact simulation for a reporter…something apparently everyone present (except the Herald Trib guy) realized.”

— Roy Thomas, Roy Thomas: A Life In Four Colors 1940-1966, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2026

4.2. “Freedland later learned of Kirby’s reaction when he contacted Lee after the article’s publication on 9 January 1966”


Roy Thomas would later recall the aftermath of Freedland’s article and provide the following thoughts:

“The other incident I remember was one of the seminal problems that I know Stan has always felt led to — not exactly a final break between Jack and Stan, but heaping more coals on the fire of animosity that Jack felt, I think more than Stan, probably because Stan’s position was more secure. Jack was the key artist. No one was going to replace him, but on the other hand he had no real secure situation like Stan.

There was a big article in the New York Herald-Tribune, where some reporter came in and interviewed Stan and Jack. For some reason, I was called in to be a witness or whatever, because I certainly took no part in it. We’re talking within six months or a year of when I started there.

Stan is always “on,” and he’s promoting Stan, but he’s also promoting Jack. I saw that, y’know? And Jack would jump in with his own pronouncements, and Stan strides around, and Jack just kind of sits there, but he was eloquent enough in his own way. And the reporter is more interested in Stan, but at the same time is talking to Jack. And then the article came out, which of course Stan didn’t have any prior approval of.

The article is somehow very unfavorable toward Jack. It talks about him sitting there in a Robert Hall suit, and Stan saying something, and Jack falling off his chair in glee. It sort of put down Jack in a way that made Stan very embarrassed, and Jack very upset. Stan always had the feeling that Jack felt Stan had somehow maneuvered that. And other than Stan being Stan, and Jack being Jack, and this reporter having his own agenda, I just didn’t see any of that.

There was no jockeying between Stan and Jack as to who was the top person, but of course Stan was the editor, and he’s the person who was doing the writing, and he’s a little more eloquent in speaking, maybe, than Jack was. But it was just one of those unfortunate situations that I think really did heap a lot of coals on the fire, and Stan always considered it an important turning point in his relationship with Jack. But there’s no way to prove that or straighten it out. How do you say, ‘I didn’t do it. I wasn’t responsible for what this reporter wrote?’

— Roy Thomas ‘Interview with Roy Thomas’, interview by Jim Amash, Jack Kirby Collector #18, January 1998


Artist John Romita, who worked in the offices at the time, shared the following perspective:

“I had heard all of the inside stuff, like from the Herald-Tribune article that insulted Jack, that he thought Stan was a part of. Stan could not convince him of that, and certainly could not convince Roz that Stan hadn’t encouraged the writer to make fun of Jack.

I know for a fact that Stan would rather bite his tongue than say such a thing, because Jack’s success would’ve been his success. There’s no reason to run Jack down. Stan had the position; he didn’t have to fight Jack for it. I don’t think Jack ever wanted the editorial position; if he wanted credit, he deserved credit. Stan used to give him credit all the time; he used to say most of these ideas are more than half Jack’s.

Why they would think Stan would try to make him look bad in print is beyond me; but from that time on—which is very close to when I started there in the middle ’60s—when the Herald-Tribune article came out, there were very strained relations, and I thought it was a matter of time before Jack would leave; but I thought he would never leave, because I always figured if I had a success like Fantastic Four and Thor and Captain America, I don’t think I could leave; so I always assumed he’d stay grumbling, but Carmine made a deal Jack couldn’t refuse.”

— John Romita, John Romita Sr: Spidey’s Man Yakkin’ with Marvel’s (de facto) ‘70s Art Director, Comic Book Artist # 6, Interview by Jon B. Cooke, Fall 1999

There is no record of Kirby publicly commenting on the experience.  Lee, however, would recall receiving a call at 3.00am from Kirby’s wife, Roz, immediately following the article’s publication:

“…(S)he was almost hysterical, and she shouted ‘How could you do this?  How could you have done this to Jack?’  I didn’t know what she was talking about.  They must have run out the night before and gotten an early edition.  So I went to get the paper and when I saw the write-up, I could understand why she made the call.  She had every reason to be upset.

About four fifths of the article was about me, and made me out to be the most glamorous, wonderful human being who ever lived, and the very last few paragraphs were about Jack and made him sound like a jerk.  And it was horrible.  And Jack and Roz, who were lovely people, were not incredibly sophisticated, and there was no way that they could have understood that I had no control over what this guy wrote.  And it took a long time before that hurt on their part subsided.

Maybe it never fully went away.”

— Stan Lee, Tales to Astonish, Ronin Ro, 2004, Bloomsbury

4.3. “Note: Stan Lee would find his own appearance critiqued in rather unflattering terms in another newspaper article from January 1966 – this time from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. see ‘Endnotes’.”

Lee was referenced as follows:

“In all fairness, Lee doesn’t look like a god. He is a balding, 42 year-old son of a dress-cutter, with crow’s foot wrinkles around his eyes and a toothy grin.”

Some have speculated that this description – along with other comments reportedly received by colleagues – led him to begin wearing a toupee, which was eventually followed by a hair transplant during the latter decades of his life.

5.1. “Rather than assigning individual roles, the new credits presented Lee and Kirby as a collaborative unit in a manner reminiscent of the “Simon and Kirby” name under which Kirby had previously worked with partner Joe Simon.”

Joe Simon had found success in the 1960s with Sick, a MAD-style humor magazine. In issue #48 (November 1966), he wrote a parody of both Marvel and Stan Lee titled The New Age of Comics. The piece satirized Marvel’s approach by depicting a fictional comics company that produced characters who were ‘all the same,’ and mocked Lee through a character named ‘Sam Me,’ who was credited on all the work. The parody also referenced Marvel’s revival of Captain America—a character originally created by Simon and Kirby.

“It was believed in the industry that the Sick magazine piece…was part of a vendetta to get even.  In reality, Stan was shown the script in advance.  His comment: ‘Very Funny.’”

— Joe Simon, The Comic Book Makers, by Joe Simon with Jim Simon, Vanguard Press, 2003

5.2. “And finally we started arguing about it, and then they finally put on ‘Produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’”

A 1995 interview with Roz Kirby suggests that she played a significant role in her husband requesting the change to the credits.  Given the timing, and her reported reaction, it’s possible that this was connected to fallout from the 1965 New York Herald Tribune article.

“He used to ask for it all the time…We always asked for a lot of things all the time, and finally they put down ‘Produced by…’ because it’s just ridiculous, you know. I don’t think Jack would’ve fought if I didn’t kick him in the pants. I think I was more angry than he was.”

— Roz Kirby, ‘Would You Like to See My Etchings?’ interview by John Morrow conducted 12 December 1995, Jack Kirby Collector #10, April 1996, TwoMorrows Publishing

5.3. “Kirby never asked me for co-writing credit. It was he who originally suggested the ‘By Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’ credit, and as far as I knew he was quite contented with that.”


The following recollection from Jack Kirby suggests that he specifically requested a writing credit, only to be given a ‘plotting’ credit instead:

“Stan Lee is a charming guy to talk to. He can get along with anybody. But when I began asking for a little more credit, say, a writer credit, he cut the horse up fine and said it was ‘plotting.’”

— Jack Kirby, ‘A Comic Book Artist KO’d: Jack Kirby’s Six-Year Slugfest with Marvel’ Village Voice Vol 32 #49, 8 December 1987 (available for viewing online at the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Site).


It’s difficult to know what Kirby what trying to recall here, as he was never given consistent credit for “plotting” while working with Lee.


Kirby’s fellow artist Steve Ditko did receive a regular plotting credit during the 1960s; however, that was given after Lee had withdrawn entirely from their story conferences. (See The Ditko Version).

6.0. “It was around this time that Kirby received one of his few writing credits at 1960s Marvel, crafting dialogue for a Nick Fury story published in Strange Tales #148 (September 1966).”


Although Stan Lee is on record as having reservations about Jack Kirby’s dialogue, he presumably approved the following message that appeared in the Bullpen Bulletins page for Fantastic Four #54 (September 1966):

“And, for the most unexpected surprise of all, Jumpin’ Jack Kirby himself wrote the script—in addition to doing the lay outs—for Nick Fury’s S.H.I.E.L.D. thriller in Strange Tales #148! (You’ll be amazed at learning that the King’s writing style has the same power and punch as his spell binding artwork!)”


There has been speculation that Kirby may have scripted Fantastic Four #6 (September 1962), a theory put forward by Michael Breen in The Jack Kirby Collector #61 (Summer 2013). This view has also been endorsed by Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort in his blog post The Mystery of FANTASTIC FOUR #6 (22 December 2019), where he also noted signs of minor editorial changes. The issue itself contained no formal writing or art credits, though both Lee and Kirby (abbreviated as “J. Kirby”) were named on the chapter title pages.

6.2. “Kirby subsequently received a writing credit for “This is a Plot?”—a short featurette in Fantastic Four Annual #5 (1967) in which he parodied the plotting sessions between himself and Lee.”


Artist John Romita is on record as stating that he witnessed Jack Kirby and Stan Lee discussing storylines on two occasions: 

“I was present at at least two plotting sessions of John – Jack and Stan Lee. They were the same as my plotting sessions and the same as Gene Colan’s and Herb Trimpe’s and John Buscema… Jack Kirby would come in, I was at the office, we would plot in Stan’s office, and with Stan and Jack, most of the time – some of the times Jack would – Stan would drive both of us home on a Friday night or whatever night he was in plotting. They would finish or almost finish and then Stan would say, “come on, I will drive you guys home.” He would drop me off first and then he would take Jack, who lived about twenty minutes past me in the same general area of Long Island. So I was in the back seat of Stan’s Cadillac on two occasions that I remember distinctly, maybe more, where they were continuing what they had not finished in the office, continued plotting.

I remember one particular Fantastic Four plot about the birth of the son of the two major characters in the Fantastic Four. Mr. Fantastic and The Invisible Girl were having a baby and it was a boy and they were discussing whether the boy would be gifted, a mutant like they were and gifted with powers and talents, or whether he would be a normal boy, and I remember the reference — I even referred to them and said it’s like the Munsters. There was — in the Munsters television show they were all bizarre mutated people except for the little boy who was raised — or there was a girl. I think there was a girl. She was the only normal person. So I said you could make the kid a normal guy in a family of mutants. And then they said they considered that, and then said, ‘well, I don’t know’ — and I was thinking to myself, wow, wouldn’t it be great if they had him and you never know if the kid has powers and slowly but surely he would exhibit — for instance, he would levitate a glass or something.

And so I am thinking all these things while they are talking and I remember them talking. One guy would make a suggestion, Jack would say, ‘that’s not a bad idea, but what if we did it this way,’ and then Stan would say, ‘okay, but only if we did it that way’ and ‘only if we did it this way.’ They were both talking different plots…”

— John Romita, The John Romita Deposition For The Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit


“And when Stan got the script (Kirby’s pages), I could hear him saying, ‘Jack forgot everything we were talking about!’ And that’s what led to making slight changes in Jack’s stories, because Stan was under the impression that Jack had forgotten what he said. And Jack was under another impression. So they were hysterical to watch.”

— John Romita, ‘John Romita at the Mighty Marvel Bullpen Reunion’, Alter Ego #16, June 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing

7.1. “In the same discussion, Lee credited Kirby with the creation of Ego—a living biosphere that appeared in the Thor title—and noted that Kirby had also created “a whole bunch of Inhumans” for Fantastic Four.”


Another example would be the ‘Negative Zone’, a concept that appeared in numerous Fantastic Four stories.  In the letters page from Fantastic Four #89, August 1969 the following response appeared in relation to a reader who had offered an explanation for how the zone operated:

“Your explanation sounds pretty much like what King Kirby had in mind when he suggested the idea to Smiley—.”

7.2. “Jack and I—well, in the beginning we spent a little more time on the plotting”


Stan Lee sometimes mentioned providing Kirby with written outlines (‘synopses’) on their early work, e.g.:

“In the beginning I’d give him written-out plots, like the outline for the first Fantastic Four.  After a while, I would tell what I thought the story ought to be.  Then, after a while, I would just give him a few words.   He could practically do the whole thing by himself, y’know?  Very often I didn’t even know what the hell he was going to give me.  I’d get some pages of artwork, and I wrote the copy and I turned into whatever I wanted the story to be.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan Lee Interview’, by Jon B. Cook, Oct. 11, 2001, Jack Kirby Collector #33, November 2001


In terms of documentary evidence, the partial synopsis for Fantastic Four #1 arguably indicates Stan Lee’s involvement in shaping the story, outlining various directions and ideas for the issue’s opening chapter—though not all of them were utilised in the final version and Jack Kirby denied ever referencing it.   (Even so, there was at least one occasion in which Kirby stated that he and Lee had “talked things out” prior to the creation of the issue. See 3.1.).


Original artwork from Fantastic Four #3 also shows very rough layouts by Lee on the back of various pages, again indicating some sort of active participation in the storytelling process.

The apparent synopsis for the opening section of Fantastic Four #8 is relatively detailed and further indicates Lee’s involvement in structuring the narrative. However, as with the synopsis for issue #1, it remains impossible to determine how many of the ideas or situations originated with Kirby. The outline may reflect Lee curating and formalizing concepts—possibly drawn from Kirby—in order to guide the final execution in line with his own editorial vision.

A surviving document providing directions for 1966 storylines (see 3.1.) shows more general directions for multiple titles of the period.


It’s possible that further insights will emerge if additional outlines (particularly those from the Jack Kirby estate) are released or published in the future.

7.3. “And then I take it, and I try to write it and pull it all together. Whatever he has drawn, I try to tell it in my own way. So what happens, I think, is the reader gets the benefit of the best artistic efforts of both the artist and the writer.”

On occasion Stan Lee would use his editor/writer role to move the story in a different direction:

“Very often you don’t like what the story is and you say, ‘I’m going to find a way to make it good.’ In the later days, I did that with Kirby a lot. Most of the plots, he had much more time with them than I did. When he did give me the artwork, a lot of times the plots were not the way I would have wanted to do it. So I would change them in the copy and the story ended up not being what I’m sure Kirby expected.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan Lee Looks Back: The Comics Legend Recalls Life with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Heroes’, interview by Will Murray, Comics Scene vol. 3 #1, May 2000


There are numerous documented examples of such cases, including the following online article by Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, which looks at a Thor storyline involving Galactus: Lee & Kirby: THE TROUBLED BIRTH OF THOR #169 – The Tom Brevoort Experience

8.0. “An idea can come from me, it can come from Stan, it can come from a reader. Sometimes we’ll get ideas expressed in letters from readers that we utilize in the comic. We’ll build a plot around that type of story.”


Despite this statement from Jack Kirby, it’s difficult to find any examples where he acknowledged a particular idea as coming from Stan Lee.  For example, during a 1990 interview Kirby stated that the idea of killing off the Bucky Barnes character (in Avengers #4, March 1964) wasn’t his.  But while he acknowledged “it was good for the story” he didn’t allocate any specific credit:

Host:Why the killing off of Bucky, Captain America’s protege?

KIRBY: I don’t think I was the one that killed him off.

Host: Oh, you weren’t…

KIRBY: No.

— Jack Kirby, interviewed by J. Michael Straczynski and Larry DiTillio on the 13 April 1990, Hour 25 radio show (1990 April 13 – Jack Kirby Interview | The Kirby Effect)


This may have stemmed from the differences that developed between Kirby and Lee—and Marvel more broadly—in later years. Reportedly, however, Kirby acknowledged at least one example of Lee’s creative input, as recalled in the following anecdote by his friend Mark Evanier.  This concerned the creation of Nick Fury, Agent of Shield:

“One day he (Kirby) met with Stan to discuss an idea that had come up: a ‘super spy’ feature built around Nick Fury, the sergeant from the war comic.  This version would be set in the present day, and to differentiate it from the older Fury, Stan suggested giving the character an eyepatch.  Kirby was stunned, here he was, worried about losing the use of the left eye, and a character he viewed as his alter ego had just lost an eye.  Life imitating art imitating life he called it.”

— Mark Evanier, Kirby King of Comics, Mark Evanier, Abrams, 2008

8.1. “The Silver Surfer was an afterthought.  When I did Galactus, I suddenly realised he was God and I had done something biblical there.”


There is a possibility that Galactus, who first appeared in Fantastic Four #49 (April 1966) was inspired by a letter written by fan Lee Hanson. In a Facebook posting dated 5 March 2024 Hanson provided an image of a postcard he received from Marvel in September 1964:

“I had sent a story idea and drawings to Stan and Jack! I was thrilled they answered me!

I had created an all powerful villain named PLANET MASTER…who consumed planet resources…in 1964.”

— Lee Hanson, Facebook posting 5 March 2024 on the Fantastic Four Fans Site page

Jack Kirby spoke more about both Galactus and the Silver Surfer during the 1970 San Diego Comic-Convention:

“The Silver Surfer came out of a feeling; that’s the only thing I can say. When I drew Galactus, I just don’t know why, but I suddenly figured out that Galactus was God, and I found that I’d made a villain out of God, and I couldn’t make a villain out of him. And I couldn’t treat him as a villain, so I had to back away from him. I backed away from Galactus, and I felt he was so awesome, and in some way he was God, and who would accompany God, but some kind of fallen angel? And that’s who the Silver Surfer was. And at the end of the story, Galactus condemned him to Earth, and he couldn’t go into space anymore. So the Silver Surfer played his role in that manner. And, y’know, I can’t say why; it just happened. And that was the Silver Surfer. I suppose you might call it—I don’t know, some kind of response to an inner feeling.”

— Jack Kirby, San Diego Comic-Con August 1970



In a 1975 convention appearance Stan Lee recalled the genesis of the storyline as follows:

“Jack and I were doing the Fantastic Four, and we came up with this plot; something to do with Galactus and our usual crazy stuff. I was telling Jack, he wasn’t listening, and I wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying. He went off and drew something. The way we worked, for those of you who don’t know, is not the way they work at other companies, where the writer writes a script, and it’s given to an artist, and the artist draws it, and that’s the end of it. With us, it’s a marriage of talents. (laughter) The artist and the writer will dis cuss the plot together, then the artist goes off to his little nook where he works, and he — without benefit of script! — only with this vague, ridiculous plot that he’s discussed, goes and draws the whole story all by himself.

Jack and I had discussed a story dealing with Galactus. All I remember is we were saying, “We’ve already had Doctor Doom, we’ve already had Sandman, and all these powerful vil lains. What can we do to top what we’ve done? The only thing to do is get a villain who’s practically a god… who doesn’t want to conquer the earth; a villain who destroys whole planets!” Well, that sounded good.

“It was easy for me to say it; now it was up to Jack to go home and draw it. (laughter) I don’t remember; Jack may have come up with the name Galactus, or I might’ve. I probably wanted to call him Irving. (laughter) The thing came back, and lo and behold, Jack had Galactus, and I loved it. Well, I love everything Jack does. I’d look at these drawings and I couldn’t wait to start writing the copy. All of a sudden, as I’m looking through the drawings, I see this nut on a surfboard flying in the air. (laughter) And I thought, ‘Jack, this time you’ve gone too far.’ (laughter) And under his cigar, Jack said, ‘No, no, Stan. I figure anybody like Galactus, who’s that big and powerful and travels through space, needs a herald.’ That was about as logical as anything else we’ve ever done, (laughter) so I figured the Silver Surfer will be the herald.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Excerpts From The 1975 Stan Lee Panel’, Held at the 1975 San Diego Comic Con, transcript published in Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998


Roy Thomas was present at the Marvel office when Lee first saw Kirby’s pages introducing the Silver Surfer.  This is mentioned in the following quote, where Thomas also provides some other thoughts on the nature of the Lee/Kirby relationship:

“Stan would always talk about Jack as being this great artist, but he didn’t always play up Jack’s other contributions. Yet from the very beginning, he’s always been clear about the fact that Jack invented the Silver Surfer, and just tossed him into a story where Stan had not suggested any character like that. I know for a fact, having seen the pages in pencil when they came in, that the character was just called “The Surfer” in the border notes, not “The Silver Surfer.” The name “Silver Surfer” at the very least was Stan’s, and the speech patterns.

Jack wrote all these border notes, and they were great. They told the story, and would’ve made a nice comic book sometime. But Stan didn’t tend to use much of the dialogue from those notes, because he had his own style. I think he sometimes deliberately veered away from Jack’s notes; not out of resentment or disrespect for Jack, but because he had his own way of doing things, and he was the writer. Sometimes he was changing the emphasis of the story; even without changing the pictures, he would change the emphasis and some of the motivations from what Jack had. And Jack would resent that, and I can understand it. Sometimes I wonder if Jack read the stories carefully enough to notice Stan had written totally new dialogue and changed the motivation. Jack may have thought Stan just took his notes and turned them into dialogue, which was almost never the case.”

— Roy Thomas, ‘Roy Thomas Interview’ conducted by Jim Amash in September 1997, Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998


Scans of penciled artwork for Fantastic Four #49 (April 1966) reveal that Lee re-named one of the characters—a robotic servant referred to in Kirby’s notes simply as “brute”—as “the Punisher.” He would later reuse that name for one of Marvel’s seminal 1970s creations.

“Gerry Conway was writing a script and he wanted a character that would turn out to be a hero later on, and he came up with the name the Assassin. And I mentioned that I didn’t think we could ever have a comic book where the hero would be called the Assassin, because there’s just too much of a negative connotation to that word. And I remembered that, some time ago, I had had a relatively unimportant character … (who) was one of Galactus’ robots, and I had called him the Punisher, and it seemed to me that that was a good name for the character Gerry wanted to write—so I said, ‘Why not call him the Punisher?’ And, since I was the editor, Gerry said, ‘Okay.'”

— Stan Lee, “Stan Lee’s Amazing Marvel Interview!”, transcript of 2005 interview by Brian K. Morris, Alter Ego #104, August 2011, TwoMorrows Publishing

9.1. “The dialogue I have always felt is the most important thing”

Stan Lee professed to place a particular value on dialogue and its role in shaping character—elements he saw as crucial to elevating a story beyond its basic plot. By his account, it was the voices of the characters—their distinctive speech patterns, emotional nuance, and realism—that gave the stories their true impact. In this light, writing was less about inventing narrative beats and more about how those beats were expressed in words on the page.


From a speculative standpoint, Stan Lee’s view of dialogue as the essential ingredient in storytelling may help explain why he often reserved the term “writer” (and the credit “written by”) for those literally responsible for the written word. 

10.1. “I feel that Stan Lee is very wise in looking over the letters from the readers, and keeping tabs on the progress that the character is making.”


Stan Goldberg, who was working as an artist and colorist at Marvel in the early 1960s, recalled some of the early feedback on Fantastic Four that prompted Stan Lee to introduce their iconic costumes:

“I remember seeing the first issue of The Fantastic Four and they were just a bunch of letters and I remember Stan said, ‘We just got these letters suggesting we ought to put the Fantastic Four in costumes.’“

— Stan Goldberg, ‘The Goldberg Variations’, interview by Jim Amash, Alter Ego #18, October 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing

11.1.  “Kirby was given the opportunity to once again be credited as scripter on a handful of stories—specifically in Amazing Adventures (featuring the Inhumans) and Astonishing Tales (featuring Ka-Zar).”


Roy Thomas provided the dialogue for one of Jack Kirby’s Ka-Zar stories:

“Jack did a couple of those Ka-Zar lead-ins in Astonishing Tales. Again, I dialogued one of those. I’m listed as writer, but it was really his plot, just like the couple of Dr. Stranges I did with Ditko. They’re really Ditko’s plots, not mine; it’s just the way we did it, and we didn’t question it at the time. Neither did Jack or Ditko. We weren’t worried about the credits, because there wasn’t any money involved.

It’s only later you begin to say, ‘Hey, why didn’t I take credit for this or that? Why didn’t I put my name down as plotter?’ Whenever Tomb of Dracula#1 is reprinted, Gerry Conway gets all the royalties, and I did the whole plot! (laughter) But I didn’t put my name on it. I plotted one or two Spider-Mans with Gil Kane for Stan to dialogue, but I didn’t put my name on them. But then, Gerry and others anonymously plotted a few stories for me, too!”

(Thomas refers here to his plotting of Amazing Spider-Man #106 from a general direction by Lee – see The Romita Version)

— Roy Thomas ‘Interview with Roy Thomas’, interview by Jim Amash, Jack Kirby Collector #18, January 1998

11.2. “There was also a particularly notable story in Chamber of Darkness #4 (April 1970) in which Kirby originally planned to include cameos by himself and Lee (see Endnotes).”


Original artwork for ‘The Monster’—a story published in Chamber of Darkness #4 (April 1970)—reveals that Jack Kirby originally scripted a playful ending in which both he and Stan Lee appeared as the story’s presenters. However, significant edits—presumably by Lee—reworked the conclusion into a more conventional ending. This is discussed in detail in a blog post by Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort, available here:
Lee & Kirby: The Desecration of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4

A ’Bullpen Bulletin’ announcement provided the following promotion for the story:

“And how’s this for an eye-opener?  JACK (KING) KIRBY has done both the script and the pencilling for a dynamite thriller in the current issue of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS!  For those of you who never knew that the Jolly One is as gifted a writer as he is an artist, this will be a real serendipity.  And, speaking of J.K., he and his radiant Roz are now building their own home in sunny California. He should worry about how much we have to spend on postage stamps!”‘

Marvel Bullpen Bulletins’, publications dated April 1970

11.3. “These would be among Kirby’s final projects for the company during this period, which concluded after he accepted an offer from DC Comics’ Carmine Infantino” 


Elsewhere, Jack Kirby spoke of a lack of control over his work and creations at Marvel:

“There were times at Marvel when I couldn’t say anything because it would be taken away from me and put in another context, and it would be lost—all my connection with it would be severed. For instance, I created the Silver Surfer, Galactus and an army of other characters, and now my connection with them is lost… You get to feel like a ghost. You’re writing commercials for somebody and… It’s a strange feeling, but I experienced it and I didn’t like it much

“It wasn’t recognition so much—you just couldn’t take the character anywhere. You could devote your time to a character, put a lot of insight into it, help it evolve and then lose all connection with it. It’s kind of an eerie thing; I can’t describe it. You just have to experience that relationship to understand it.

— Jack Kirby, Northwestern University’s WNUR-FM, interview by Tim Skelly, 14 May 1971


DC Editor Carmine Infantino played a key role in Kirby’s departure from Marvel, and recalled the following:

“We knew each other very well from the old days.  I knew him and (Joe) Simon very well.  I don’t remember who called who one day – I honestly don’t remember – but I said to him, ‘Jack, I’m going to be out there on some business and how would you like to have a drink?’  He said, ‘Absolutely.’  We met in my hotel room.  He brought over some things and told me how unhappy he was at Marvel.  He then trotted out these three pieces, The New Gods, Mr Miracle and Forever People,  He said, ‘These I want to do but I won’t do them for Marvel,’ and I said, ‘Do you want to come to DC?  Would you like to?’ and he said, ‘I’d love to.’  I said, ‘Okay.’  And he wrote a contract by hand right there and we signed it.  We were in business.  It was that simple.”


Infantino also shared his thoughts concerning Kirby’s return to Marvel:

“I caught a lot of flak for hiring Jack.  He was not liked at DC because of some kind of thing that happened between him and Jack Schiff.  There was a bad taste left because apparently he screwed over a number of people, so I put my neck out on the line taking Jack on.  We tried.  But when he left, we left as friends.  He felt that he could do better at Marvel again and apparently he didn’t do too well the second time. 

Unfortunately Jack’s writing was not up to par.  He could plot well – that’s why he did so well with Simon and Lee, because he would plot and they would tie it together beautifully; so I guess his dialogue wasn’t strong enough, but I really don’t know what the answer was.  It just didn’t sell.  God, I wanted him to sell more than anyone else in the world because I put my neck out, but it didn’t work – but neither did Simon on his own.”

— Carmine Infantino, ‘Director Comments – From Art to Publisher: The Infantino Interview’ by Jon B. Cooke, interview conducted 28 February and 1 March 1998.  Published in Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 1, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000

12.1. “Some months after the news of his move to DC broke, Jack Kirby appeared at San Diego Comic Con.”


News of Kirby’s departure appeared as early as the March 1972 edition of the fanzine Newjangles (which went to press 12 March 1972):

“What happened is this: Carmine Infantino, DC editorial director, had heard that Kirby has been unhappy with Lee for some time. (The way we get it, and this may not be completely true, is that Kirby didn’t like the way Lee writes the scripts around his stories; he wants to do his own writing, which is why he was given those solo stories in the Marvel weirdbooks to do.)”

12.2. “Most of the plots I handle myself”


Another segment from Kirby’s appearance at the 1970 San Diego Comic-Con went as follows:

AUDIENCE: In the Marvel line in the 1960s, what part exactly did you play in creating the line? Besides art; I mean also plot and characterization of all the magazines you worked on in the early issues when they were just developing. What part did you play besides art?

KIRBY: Quite a substantial part. That’s all I’m gonna say. [laughter]

AUDIENCE: Would you say that Stan Lee added revolutionary ideas to comics?

KIRBY: I’d say that Stan Lee quoted me quite a good deal. [laughter] Are there any other questions?

— Jack Kirby, San Diego Comic-Con August 1970


While Kirby mentioned handling ‘most’ of the plots, he never publicly provided any examples of working from someone else’s storylines at Marvel.  One instance would presumably be his re-draw of the story ‘Bare Knuckles in Boonville’ , a short Western tale originally credited to Stan Lee and Jack Kelleher in Rawhide Kid #36 (October 1963)

According to Mark Evanier, a successful writer who was also a friend of Kirby’s, the plots during the last year or so of the Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four did not originate with Kirby:

 “In the last year or so of Jack’s work on the Fantastic Four, his relationship with Stan Lee deteriorated for reasons I’m sure everyone understands.  Jack was determined not to give them another Silver Surfer.

“He basically started saying to Stan, ‘Hey, if you’re the writer of this book, you give me the plot.’  The last two issues were instances of Jack drawing these vague plots he was sent.  I don’t know if Stan wrote them or if he had people in the office put them together, which he occasionally did at the time.

Jack basically drew what he was handed.  The next-to-last one was about Janus, the last one was the Sub-Mariner story, which didn’t make a lot of sense.  Stan could not dialogue the stories into anything coherent, so they put the Janus one on the shelf with the intention of printing it the same month New Gods #1 came out to kind of blunt the impact of Kirby not being at Marvel any longer.”

— Mark Evanier, ‘To And From The Source: Mark Evanier’, interviewed by John Morrow, The Collected Jack Kirby Volume 1, 1997


If Evanier’s account is accurate, it would have taken place during a period when the generic “Lee and Kirby” credits were already firmly established. Neither Kirby nor Lee appear to have commented on this particular scenario.

12.2. “With Kirby now famously working for the opposition, the creation narratives—essentially extended introductions to reprinted comic book stories—were told largely from a Lee-centric perspective that would become entwined with the official Marvel history.”


Stan Lee had earlier asserted his role in creating titles like Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four, but it was the 1974 publication of Origins of Marvel Comics—released by major publisher Simon & Schuster—that solidified his public image as Marvel’s primary creative force. Written in Lee’s signature performative style and aimed at a general audience, the book offered the first widely distributed, mainstream account of Marvel’s early years, told from his perspective as editor and writer. While artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were certainly acknowledged as key figures, it was largely for their visual contributions; Lee’s narrative foregrounded his own role, occasionally using “we” instead of “I” to suggest collaboration, but ultimately emphasizing his creative leadership.

Over time, much speculation has surrounded Lee’s approach in Origins. Some have noted that there were clear personal benefits to emphasizing—or even exaggerating—his role as a central figure in Marvel’s success, which aligned with his ongoing position as the company’s public face (and publisher). By contrast, both Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were working for rival publishers, which may have made it easier—or even strategically sensible—for Lee and Marvel to downplay their roles in the company’s origin story. Lee was also writing years after the fact and may have had gaps in his memory. In any case, given the book’s general audience and promotional tone, he presumably had little incentive to research or present a more balanced or detailed account of events.


Others, such as Alex Grand, have suggested that Lee’s evolving public image was influenced by his 1972 contract with Marvel, which may have helped solidify his transition from a collaborative creator to the perceived sole architect of Marvel’s most iconic characters. Grand explores this topic in greater detail in a video essay, available here: Secret Stan Lee Marvel Contract Leaked! || Docuseries-75 by Alex Grand


Roy Thomas has also stated that there may have been legal considerations at play; by emphasizing Lee’s authorship, Marvel could strengthen its claims of ownership over its characters in potential copyright disputes:

“The problem there may also have been the legalities. Back in the 1960s, both Joe Simon and Carl Burgos initiated lawsuits, about Captain America and the Human Torch. They never came to very much, and Jack of course made some depositions on behalf of Marvel about Cap at that time when he was still there. It led to Bill Everett, who had created the third big 1940s character — Sub-Mariner — being given a loan by Martin Goodman that wasn’t going to have to be paid back, so he wouldn’t sue, which he never intended to do, anyway. I don’t know how the Burgos thing was settled, but it was probably settled reasonably amicably. But once these things happen, you don’t necessarily want to play up the other person.

— Roy Thomas, ‘Roy Thomas Interview’ conducted by Jim Amash in September 1997, Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998


Lee’s brother, Larry Lieber, was perhaps the only artist/co-creator mentioned in the book to specifically comment on its publication. He viewed Origins, together with its follow-up, Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, as books that emphasised humour and exaggeration, rather than strict historical accuracy:

“The anecdotes in Stan’s book are comical exaggerations. He wanted to be funny in a cute sort of way. For anybody to take them literally, or even worse, to use them to make claims against Stan, is just plain wrong. For instance, in ‘Sons of Origins of Marvel Comics’, Stan writes that when he came up with Iron Man, ‘Laughin’ Larry Lieber happened to be in the Bullpen at the time, and also happened to be between scripts. Eagerly I pounced on him, told him the plot, headed him toward a nearby typewriter, chained him to a chair, and the rest is history.’

To me, that is nothing more than meant-to-be-fun hyperbole that may or may not come off as intended. I guess it’s a matter of taste. But believe me, nobody pounced and nobody chained me a to a chair.”

“I had to have been in his office, because that’s the only place he ever gave me plots or discussed things with me. I was probably dropping off a monster script or maybe a Thor script when he handed me the written plot for a new super hero, Iron Man. It was a complicated story, and Stan wouldn’t have been foolish enough to just tell me that and hope I would remember it accurately.”

— Larry Lieber, ‘Remembrance’, Origins of Marvel Comics (Deluxe Edition), Gallery 13, 2024


In any event, the broad narrative established in Origins of Marvel Comics went largely uncontested in the mainstream, especially as Ditko remained private and Kirby’s more forceful rebuttals wouldn’t surface until later. As a result, Origins became the foundation for how Marvel’s story was told in popular culture—widely accepted, frequently cited, and difficult to dislodge, even as more nuanced and contested versions of that history began to emerge in subsequent decades. 


Following the book’s publication, Lee settled into the general narrative that he was responsible for at least the initial ideas behind the development of most of the major Marvel characters, with Kirby and others being primarily acknowledged for their artistic contributions (see, for example, Lee’s autobiography Excelsior – The Amazing Life of Stan Lee, by Stan Lee and George Mair, 2002).

At the same time, however, it is important to acknowledge that there were various occasions in which Lee specifically referenced various Marvel characters as “co-creations.” Notably, Lee provided the following commentary for the 1986 edition of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, which recognised Marvel’s 25th Anniversary:

“…I had the unbelievable good fortune to work with the most incredibly talented artists of time. There was Jack Kirby, with whom I co-created The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, Nick Fury Agent of Shield and The X-Men, just to name a few. Then there was Steve Ditko, my collaborator in the creation of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. And leave (sic) us not forget Don Heck who toiled with me so mightily to bring forth Iron Man, while Bill Everett was my partner in creating Daredevil.”

— Stan Lee, Overstreet Comic Book Guide #16, 1986


Lee also penned a carefully worded public letter in 1999 to Steve Ditko concerning credit for Spider-Man (see The Ditko Version for more on this).  Such actions represented at least a partial concession to the growing awareness of the contested narratives surrounding the origins of these iconic characters. 

 
Roy Thomas once recalled a conversation from the late 1980s in which he and Stan Lee debated the meaning of the term creator—and whether legal credit always reflects actual creative contribution:

“I remember Stan and I got into a good-natured argument about it ten years ago in L.A. I wasn’t even working for Marvel at the time, and we had lunch. He talked about people like Stephen J. Cannell and television, saying if Cannell comes up with a general idea, and wants a few people running around doing this and that, and calls them the A Team, he’s created that. It says “Created by Stephen Cannell.” And I said yes, but that’s a function of power, not of creativity. It means Stephen Cannell has the power to say he created that thing alone, and other people buy into that by agreeing to sell their work for work-for hire, or for other financial deals. But it doesn’t mean he really created the whole thing just because it says so on paper. That’s a legal thing. It’s caused by his power; you either play by his rules or you don’t play.”

“I think we agreed to disagree in a friendly way. He knew I always felt he got a raw deal from the more Kirby-oriented part of the press. I sometimes felt they just didn’t want to listen to his side of it. He didn’t like to be vocal about it, because he felt no one could win that kind of argument. Not that Jack was a small man, but it’s the old thing about “never fight anyone smaller than you, because if you win you’re a bully, and if you lose you’re a bum.” Here, fighting Jack was fighting the guy who left Marvel Comics and did not own a piece of these characters. To the extent that Stan ever said anything, he looks like he’s trying to bully Jack, or take advantage of his position; and if Jack got the better of him, then he really looks bad. (laughter) I think he really just preferred to keep out of it, but I know he was hurt by the situation sometimes because of his admiration for Jack. I’m sure that sometimes he was resentful, too. Neither Stan nor Jack were perfect human beings.”

— Roy Thomas, ‘Roy Thomas Interview’ conducted by Jim Amash in September 1997, Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998

13.1. “By this point it was evident that Kirby’s work at DC – while generating some successful titles and many new characters that would later prove very valuable to the company – had not yielded the results that many had anticipated.”

Kirby had apparently hoped to engage a number of other artists to help illustrate his DC work, amongst them John Romita:

“Just a day or two after Kirby left Marvel, he called me up and said, ‘John, here’s the story—you know I’m going to DC.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Here’s what I’d like you to do: I would like you to come over with me and help me. What I want to do is, I want to write more than I draw.’

“In other words, he envisioned writing a line of books, like Stan, and he wanted to get me to draw some of his main characters. I might have worked on New Gods or Mister Miracle… probably Mister Miracle. He said he’d love to have me do the pencils for his stuff, and we could set up some kind of a stable. He said, ‘I got some great inkers ready to work on your stuff. It would be great for me, and I think I can make it worth your while. It would be a terrific idea.’ And I said, ‘You know, I got to think it over, Jack.’

I told Virginia, and she almost had a heart attack. She said, ‘First of all, if you go with Jack, you’re going to be a Jack Kirby clone.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know how. I’m not going to be working on his artwork. He’s going to be writing and I’m going to be pencilling’— although he might have broken them down for me. But he could break down a hundred stories for me and it wouldn’t affect me, because he didn’t do details on his breakdowns. He did silhouettes and rough scribbles. She said, ‘No, you’re going to end up working for Kirby. Your personality will be buried and nobody will know anything about you.’ I couldn’t argue with it, but I was tempted.”

— John Romita, 2001: Interview with John Romita, by Roy Thomas, TwoMorrows Publishing – Alter Ego #9 – John Romita Interview

14.1. “This time, however—despite reservations from Lee and others—he secured a role that granted him significantly more creative control, encompassing writing, artwork, and editorial oversight.”


Although Jack Kirby was credited with scripting during his time at Marvel prior to his move to DC Comics, it is difficult to determine how much of his writing was edited to fit the established Marvel/Lee style. Regardless, the distinctiveness of his dialogue became more apparent in his DC work—and this stylistic approach would carry over into his solo Marvel projects in the mid-1970s.

Roy Thomas recalled that concerns were raised at Marvel when Kirby was negotiating his return:

“Some doubted whether he (Kirby) should be writing these books.  When Stan asked me what I thought of Jack coming back (he didn’t specify names, but Stan knew there were people who were not wild about Jack returning), I said ‘First, I think it’s great; you should have Jack back under any circumstances.  Second, don’t let him write.’  Even though Jack had written good material back to the ‘40s and up the New Gods, I didn’t think it was going to work out from a sales viewpoint if he wrote.  I didn’t think the readers would like it, but Stan said ‘Part of the deal is that he’s going to write.’   I thought that it was still better to have Jack back, even if he wrote than not at all.  Stan said that’s how he felt, though the decision was made anyway, he was glad to have me confirm it.”

Thomas also clarified that, in discussing ‘writing’ – the two were referring to dialogue:

“Yeah, because everyone knew that Jack plotted.  When I was going to do the Fantastic Four in the mid-70s, I offered Jack plotting credit with his name first, but he just didn’t want to do it.  He said that he would do it if I did a panel-by-panel breakdown for him, but I thought that was ridiculous.  Doing that, we’d have such a closed-off relationship it was wasn’t worth doing.  So I dropped the idea.”

— Roy Thomas, ‘The Heir Apparent – In deep with Marvel’s Writer/Editor, Roy Thomas’, interview conducted by Jon B. Cook, Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 2, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000


Jim Shooter was Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief and had some interaction with Kirby during his return to the company, particularly in relation to the dialogue:

“I mean, the thing is, when I get done going over it, I’d say, ‘Jack, is it okay if I take out some of these exclamation points?’ Because he’d put 10 exclamation points after every sentence. And he’d say, ‘You do that, young man.’ And sometimes, he’d make little mistakes here and there, and I’d help him fix them. I’d say, ‘Look, you kind of did this scene twice. But if we’d do it, if I change the dialogue a little bit, it’ll look like it’s like on purpose. It will look… It’ll be good.’ … ‘Oh, you do that young man.’

And so, I’d worked with him. But then, those kinds of mistakes were probably because he was getting older. And I remember the first year, I was there, they wouldn’t let him drive anymore because he crashed into a tree, because he forgot he was driving. And also, he had trouble finding his way home. He had some loss of memory, so a few things went wrong.

But still, at the end of these conversations I had with him, if he had time, I’d started asking him questions, ‘Jack, how did you come up with this? Why did you do it this way? Why did you choose this angle? What were you thinking?’

“… When he was talking comics, he was sharp as a tack. I mean, when he was talking shop, the guy was right back there, and he knew exactly what he did and why he did it and he would tell you. And I learned a lot from him, he was tremendous.”

— Jim Shooter, Jim Shooter Biographical Interview by Alex Grand & Jim Thompson – Comic Book Historians

(Note: Although Kirby was the sole author of the regular titles he worked on at Marvel during the mid-1970s, he and Lee did reunite one final time to produce a Silver Surfer graphic novel published in 1978.)

15.1. “Kirby remained at Marvel for only a few years, departing after the completion of his contract. As one of the industry’s most prominent figures, he continued to share his views in numerous interviews. In these, he consistently emphasized that he alone was responsible for the Marvel stories of the 1960s (a claim he also made in reference to his earlier collaborations with Joe Simon).”


To some extent, the differing ways Jack Kirby and Joe Simon recalled their working relationship mirror the contrasting narratives that emerged around the Kirby/Lee partnership. This includes conflicting accounts of the creation of strips such as Captain America, Young Allies, and Challengers of the Unknown. In his autobiography The Comic Book Makers (Vanguard, 2003), Simon often positioned himself as the primary force behind several of the Simon/Kirby team’s major accomplishments, including their pioneering role in the creation of the romance comic genre. That said, the Kirby/Simon partnership remained notably free of the public acrimony that would later characterize Kirby’s relationship with Stan Lee.


With respect to the writing aspect, Kirby usually claimed full credit. For example, in a 1983 interview with James Van Hise, Kirby was asked how much of the writing he had been responsible for while working with Simon:

“All of it. I’ve always done my own writing.  When I got into comic books I began needing people like Joe Simon, and finally Joe and I got together to do Captain America. We were both professionals and we were both capable of writing the stuff, but Joe did most of the business. He was a big guy, six foot three, very impressive, and he had college experience which I didn’t have— but I had a unique storytelling ability, so although he was quite capable of doing so, he never had to write the stories.

I’d write the stories on Captain America or whatever we’d be working on and Joe did business with the publisher because he could meet the publisher on an equal footing. I was younger and I was the kid with the turtleneck sweater who was always working.”

As for who did the pencilling and inking, Kirby replied that Simon’s time was largely spent on editorial duties: 

“Well, I did most of it and Joe did some of it, but I did most of it because I had the time. I was constantly working. Joe had duties as an editor and he might be an editor in the publishing house and he’d be having contacts with the publisher that I didn’t.”

— Jack Kirby, Jack Kirby In The Golden Age, interview by James Van Hise, originally published in The Golden Age of Comics # 6, November 1983, republished in Jack Kirby Collector # 25 August 1999


“We’d get scripts from DC, and we’d get scripts from Marvel, but I’d throw them out the window. I threw them out the window! Which is what I once did with a violin that my mother brought me. It was something I didn’t want to do. I literally threw the violin out the window.”

— Jack Kirby, 1990 April 13 – Jack Kirby Interview | The Kirby Effect


Joe Simon provided his own perspective during a 1998 Comicon appearance, where he was asked how he and Kirby had worked together:

 “Let me tell you something about collaborations. Everybody in this industry collaborated. Everybody worked with other people. There was so much to do. There wasn’t any one way that we did it. Before we went into the service, DC wanted us to turn out several years’ worth of Boy Commandos, and the quickest way we possibly could. So at that time, I would write the stories on the drawing board. Jack would pencil it, we would have another guy outlining it, we’d have a guy lettering it. And Jack and I most of the time would pitch in and throw the blacks in. Other times, when we weren’t working so much, we weren’t so busy, the ideal way we’d like to work was Jack did the pencilling and I did the inking.

 We both could handle the writing real well–neither of us like writers. We didn’t appreciate them–whatever we got, we re-wrote and re-wrote until there was very little left of the writing. So, there was no one way that we collaborated.

If we were out of work, if we didn’t have anyone, our way of working would usually be to write the script right on the drawing paper. We used that heavy board–everybody hated us for that. You know, we’d get through with the book and we’d have a pile like this. It took a couple of people to carry it. (laughter) There was a reason that we had for using the heavy board; the drawing table has a little edge here, and it’s on a slant, and the board just fits; you don’t have to thumbtack it down or tape it down. And you could move it back-and-forth; have a t-square to get your lines horizontal and vertical. For a long time, we used that board just because it was easier to work on.

All the artists, y’know–Will Eisner had Lou Fine working with him and you don’t know which is which a lot of the time. Terry and the Pirates; how many artists did they have? You don’t know. We did the best we could. We had to make a living. We never thought that we’d be here in this position talking about this stuff. That was the farthest thing from our minds.”


Simon also asserted that Kirby’s declining health had affected some of his later commentary:

“Later in his (Kirby’s) life, he got a little crazy and started talking about ‘I never worked with someone else’s script,’ and I said, ‘What if you got a script?’ and he said, “I’d throw it out the window.’ He’d come up with ridiculous statements like that. I think he was having problems then.”

— Joe Simon, Excerpts from Joe Simon’s panels at the 1998 Comicon International: San Diego, Transcribed by Glen Musial, and edited by John Morrow, Jack Kirby Collector #25, April 1999 TwoMorrows Publishing

The Simon and Kirby studio employed a number of uncredited creators to help produce material, including writers Kim Aamodt and Walter Geier, both of whom shared their insights in a 2003 interview.

“…Simon and Kirby wrote the plots.  They sat there and wrote them, and that’s what we followed.  They were the only people who ever gave me plots. 

And sometimes Walter and I would be sitting with them in a little anteroom that was their office.  They’d be in there smoking big cigars, facing each other.  It looked like two fireflies mating.  Cigar smoke covered the room, and it was hilarious to watch them, because they ignited each other and developed a story between them.  Then they’d say ‘That’s the story, kids’.  Jack did more of the plotting than Joe.  Jack’s face looked so energised when he was plotting that it seemed as if sparks were flying from him.”

“We never got credit for what we wrote there (Black Magic and romance stories).  In fact, we had to sign a paper that gave Simon and Kirby all the rights.”

— Kim Aamodt, interviewed by Jim Amash, ‘Ghost Writers in the Sky!’ Alter Ego #30,November 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing


“Jack Kirby was great…he always came up with the plots. Jack had a fertile mind. …Jack was the idea man. Joe didn’t talk much. He could come up with decent plots, but it was usually very sketchy stuff. A lot of times Joe would say, ‘Awww…you figure out the ending.’Jack would give me the ending, because he was good at figuring out stories. It was not hard to work with Jack. They were Jack’s plots. I just supplied the dialogue.” 

Joe was good, but not as creative as Jack was.  Joe had his own ideas, though.  I always thought that Joe Simon was the businessman, and Jack Kirby the artist.  They made for a great combination.”

— Walter Geier, interviewed by Jim Amash, ‘Ghost Writers in the Sky!’ Alter Ego #30, November 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing

15.2. “Kirby would also assert that he had never illustrated a story written by someone else.”


Jack Kirby reiterated this claim in his 1989 Comics Journal interview with Gary Groth.  It is probably best regarded as hyperbole, as there is compelling evidence that he followed at least some scripts during his lengthy career.


For example, writer Paul Kupperberg has stated that Kirby followed his script for the 1985 DC mini-series Super Powers:

“I admire and respect Jack Kirby and do indeed believe he was and will always be the King of Comics. One of the high points of my career was when Jack penciled a six-issue Super Powers miniseries I wrote, based on the 1980s action figure line of the same name. Me getting to share a credit box with Kirby?! Hell yes! I had written the miniseries as full scripts, not knowing who the artist was to be, and when editor Andrew Helfer presented me with Kirby, I did a happy dance that gets repeated every time I look at that project.

But…several years later, Jack and Roz gave an interview to, I believe, The Comics Journal, in which Jack stated that he had been the writer of everything he ever drew. Stan was the dialogue man, but the stories came from Jack. Everything…including, apparently, my fully-scripted Super Powers miniseries, which he followed to the letter. When you know one thing a person claims is the absolute truth isn’t, how can you not be suspicious of all their similar claims on the same subject? But he was Jack Kirby and I wasn’t, so I kept it to myself and didn’t bother pounding out an indignant letter to set the record straight.”

— Paul Kupperberg, Stan and Jack and Steve and Mort and Jerry and Joe | Paul Kupperberg

16.1. “The artists were doing the plotting—Stan was just coordinating the books, which was his job. Stan was production coordinator. But the artists were the ones that were handling both story and art. We had to—there was no time not to!”


Artists who worked with Stan Lee during the 1960s under the “Marvel Method” expressed a range of views about who was actually responsible for creating the stories. For example, Steve Ditko, who collaborated with Lee on strips such as Amazing Spider-Man and Dr. Strange, stated:

“The Dr Strange stories were mostly mine.  About half of the Spider-Man stories were mostly mine.”

— Steve Ditko, 13 April 2018 ‘Correspondence, An Exchange of Ideas’, 32 Page Series Vol V Curtain 


Ditko eventually assumed full plotting responsibilities for both strips. Nevertheless, unlike Kirby, he would still acknowledge Lee as being responsible for the ‘writing’, e.g.:

  “…I gave Stan typewriting paper showing my rough ideas of what was being said in the story broken down into panels.  Stan never wanted me to write any actual dialogue or names.  That goes back to our 5 -page days. Writing, editing, dialogue, sound effects, captions, were all Stan’s division of labor at Marvel.”

— Steve Ditko, ‘#45: Why I Quit S-M, Marvel’ The Four-Page Series 9, September 2015


Additional quotes from artists such as Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Don Heck, John Buscema, and others can be found in both The Ditko Version and The Romita Version.

16.2. “In an interview with Leonard Pitts, Kirby said that his version was not a personal attack, but an attempt to “give the atmosphere up at Marvel”


Despite their well-known rift, the relationship between Jack Kirby and Stan Lee remained complex and occasionally cordial. In Mister Miracle #5 (February 1972), Kirby included a scathing parody of Lee and Roy Thomas as “Flunky Flashman” and “Houseroy,” a move some believe was partly in response to the appearance of Captain America’s Sgt. Muldoon—a gruff, Kirby-like character introduced in issue #139 (July 1971).

Yet, following this incident, the two appeared together at an event at Vanderbilt University in April 1972, where they exchanged brief but amicable remarks.


During Kirby’s brief return to Marvel later in the decade—by which time Lee had stepped away from day-to-day editorial duties—the two had occasional contact. Notably, in October 1975, Kirby made a friendly surprise call during a live radio appearance by Lee on KABC in Los Angeles.


However, the tone of Kirby’s public comments shifted more sharply in the 1980s. In an interview with journalist Leonard Pitts, he offered a new account of his 1970 departure while comparing Lee to Sammy Glick, the title character of Budd Schulberg’s 1941 novel What Makes Sammy Run? (adapted to TV in 1959). Sammy Glick was a ruthless opportunist who rises from copy boy to Hollywood mogul by stealing credit, betraying colleagues, and exploiting others.

“I could see things changing and I could see that Stan Lee was going in directions that I couldn’t. I came in one night and there was Stan Lee talking into a recording machine, sitting in the dark there. It was strange to me and I felt that we were going in different directions… I realized I was creating something I didn’t want to create.

“Read What Makes Sammy Run.  Sammy, in that book, is the kind of a character you wouldn’t want to be responsible for developing. I felt that I was developing a Sammy– which I was, in Stan Lee. I felt it was my time to go.”

Leonard Pitts, Jr., conducted in 1986 or 1987 for a book titled “Conversations With The Comic Book Creators.” Posted on The Kirby Effect: The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center.

Kirby’s comparison of Stan Lee to Sammy Glick echoed—and may have been influenced by—similar criticisms voiced by artist Wally Wood in his self-published Woodwork Gazette in 1980. Wood, who faced numerous personal struggles, had fraught relationships with several figures in the industry and was particularly critical of Lee and the so-called ‘Marvel Method’ of comic creation (see also The ‘Romita Version‘ for more on Wood’s time at Marvel). Late in his life, Wood published a scathing diatribe explicitly likening Lee to Sammy Glick:

“Well, he DID come up with two sure fire ideas… the first one was “Why not let the artists WRITE the stories as well as draw them?”… And the second was … ALWAYS SIGN YOUR NAME ON TOP …BIG”

 — Wally Wood, ‘What Makes Stanley Run?’, Woodwork Gazette v1n5, 1980.


Despite his increasingly critical public statements, Kirby remained cordial in personal interactions with Lee. For example, former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter recalled a friendly meeting between the two in 1986:

“In 1986, again at San Diego Comic Con, I met with Jack. After that meeting — both Jack and Roz were there — I said, ‘Y’know Jack, we’re having our 25th anniversary party tonight. It would mean a lot to me if you would come.’ He said he’d see, and Roz didn’t look too happy about that idea. Anyway, the party’s in full swing in this huge hall in the U.S. Grant hotel. Stan and I are standing way in the back, fairly near the doors. All of a sudden I look up, and in the door come Jack and Roz. I ran over to them and shook his hand and escorted them over to where Stan was standing.”

“Just a moment before they arrived–you know how Stan does the big gesture sweeping his hands around? He had a glass of wine in his hand, and he whacked it against a pillar, and the glass broke, and his hand was slashed; he was bleeding buckets. So here’s Stan; he’s got his handkerchief pressed over his right hand, bleeding, probably going into shock, and I walk Jack over. Jack sticks out his hand, and this panic goes over Stan’s eyes. He sticks out his hand, and Jack shakes his hand — and then Stan has to wipe the blood off of Jack’s hand with his handkerchief. He’s clutching this handkerchief in his right hand, having this conversation with Jack, and it was a really cool moment.”

Obviously these guys hadn’t had a real chat for a long time, and I felt privileged to witness it. He invited Jack to come up to his house, and Jack said, ‘Why don’t you come down?’ It was really cool; I felt like they were becoming friends again after a very long estrangement. Then Stan says, ‘Just once more — I don’t care who owns it or gets credit — I’d like to do a story with you sometime. It doesn’t even have to be Marvel; you can publish it.’ And Jack said he’d like that–and Roz said, ‘Bite your tongue.’ Then she kind of led Jack away, and that was the end of that.”

Jim Shooter, Reminiscing About Jack Kirby posted 30 March 2011

Kirby himself recalled the 1986 discussion shortly after the event:

“It was me, him (Lee) and Jim Shooter.  I told him he should be more like his brother Larry (Lieber) and just relax, and have a great time…He agreed!  We got along amicably.”

At the same time, however, Kirby was frustrated by negotiations with Marvel for the return of his original art work, as well as the official narrative that portrayed Lee as the primary creator/writer of Marvel:

“The only thing is, I’m trying to get my pages back, and I can’t understand why there’s such a struggle over who did what or who created what. There’s no reason for that, ‘cause Stan and I know. Nobody else knows. And if—if Stan would only come out of that hiding place and just tell it to the world, see – everything would go great.”

When asked if time may have obscured some of the details, Kirby was emphatic – but also somewhat resigned:

“No! It hasn’t obscured it.  He knows it.  I know it.  How we’re gonna prove it, I don’t know.”

“I think that people don’t change.  They can’t change.  Sometimes it’s too late.  And you’ll just go on being what you are, and I’ll go on being what I am because I’m just like that.  It’ll be something that, maybe lawyers will resolve for us.  Human beings remain human beings.  I can predict anything Stan will do and, uh,…”

(When asked if Stan can predict what Kirby will do):

“Possibly he can.  He knows I’m a right guy, and I’m not gonna hurt him in any way, and vice versa.”

— Jack Kirby, Comics Interview #41, interview, conducted by Mark Borax. 1986 (republished in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview Super Special – Masters of Marvel, 1989)
 

A year later, the two would interact on the 1987 Earthwatch radio segment (see 18. in the main article).  And, while the two would argue, there was an obvious level of cautious respect evident on both sides.


1989 would be the year that Kirby gave his well-documented interview with the Comics Journal, containing his strongest public criticisms of Lee. There, while explaining why he would never work with Lee again, he made comparisons with the mindset held by the Schutzstaffel, or SS, whom he had encountered during World War Two:

“It’ll never happen. No more than I would work with the S.S. Stan Lee is what he is. I’m not going to dehumanize him, I’m not going to default him. He has his own dreams and his own way of getting them. I have my own dreams but I have my own way of getting them. We’re two different people. I feel that he’s in direct opposition to me.

There’s no way I could reach the S.S. I tried to reach them, I tried to talk with them and say, ‘Hey fellas, you don’t believe this horsesh*t.’ And they said, ‘Oh yes we do.’ They were profound beliefs. They became indoctrinated.

And Stan Lee’s the same way. He’s indoctrinated one way and he’s gonna live that way. He’s gonna benefit from it some ways and I think he’ll lose in others. But he doesn’t have to believe me. Nobody else’ll believe me if they don’t want to but that’s my opinion. I can only speak for myself.”

— Jack Kirby, “I’ve Never Done Anything Half-heartedly’ interview conducted Summer of 1989 by Gary Groth, Comics Journal #134, February 1990


It was therefore a surprise to many when, in 2018 a photo came to light of Kirby and Lee meeting at the 1989 San Diego Comic-Con. It was taken by Scott Anderson, who was 15 at the time:

“(I) managed to find Jack and Roz (Kirby) walking the aisles of the Civic Center. Got an autograph from Jack and was showing him my artwork, when Stan came strolling down the aisle. They warmly greeted each other and embraced, and were chatting it up like long-lost friends… I had a small camera with me and asked the two legends if I could get a shot of them… I remember how Stan really pulled Jack in when he put his arm around him, and you can see the genuine smiles on both of them.”

— Scott Anderson.  ‘A Long Lost Photo Of Jack Kirby And Stan Lee Has Surfaced’ by Heidi MacDonald, Comics Beat online article, 16 November 2018

18.1. “Kirby was then asked directly about his story conferences with Lee, with the interviewer possibly having some familiarity with Kirby’s own ‘This is a Plot?’ featurette from 1967”

It’s possible that the interviewers had received this account of the story conferences directly from Flo Steinberg, as she had also been invited to appear on the show:

REECE: Thank you, Robert. First of all, to both of you gents, I have regards from Fabulous Flo Steinberg who is too shy to be in the studio today. She lives about ten blocks from here but sends happy birthday wishes to you, Jack, and love to both of you.

— Warren Reece, Robert Knight’s Earthwatch, conducted by Warren Reece and Max Schmid, WBAI New York, 28 August 1987. Transcript posted on The Kirby Effect: The Journal of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center, audio available on Youtube

(This planned appearance of Steinberg may also indicate that Lee’s call-in had also been pre-arranged, with the possible intent of reuniting the three on the occasion of Kirby’s 70^th birthday)

18.2. “But Jack, what about these legendary story conferences of you and Stan, or Stan and whomever, acting the stories out, in the office, jumping up on the desks and so forth?”


Artist Sy Barry, who later gained fame for his work on The Phantom, did some work for Marvel during the first half of the 1950s. He recalled his interactions with Lee, then working in an editorial role, as follows:

“I got in touch with Stan Lee…a really funny guy, very nice guy…very pleasant. He was an absolute…dedicated individual in comics. I mean this guy lived and breathed it all…his waking hours. He was a very dedicated editor and he had marvellous ideas. And I thought he was a pretty brilliant guy…”

“…[T]here were two personalities. There was this adult who ran the business, ran the editing business, but he was also a child. He loved stories, you know, and he talked to you like a child. He would tell you a story. He would give me a script and describe the script to me and he would actually go into the action of acting it out.

And there was this one story where this guy was up on a cliff and there’s a coach coming by, and he leaps down off the cliff onto the coach and so he…gets up on a chair and then onto the table and jumps off the table and makes like he’s rolling on the coach, you know? I mean, this is how excited he’d get about a story…”

He was an unusual person, I must say. I had a very good relationship with him. He was really a fine guy.”

— Sy Barry, ‘Interview with the Phantom Comic Strip Artist Sy Barry’, CAF+ YouTube channel, posted August, 2026


Artist Herb Trimpe was one of the last artists to work ‘Marvel Method’ with editor/writer Lee during the 1960s:

“It’s probably become mythic how Stan would act out the kinds of things he wanted to see the characters doing. He’d act out the expressions, the positions of the figures, that kind of thing. He was a very good teacher; he didn’t just say what he wanted — he wanted to make you understood what he wanted. So he did that in any way he could. He’d use examples in reference to somebody in a movie or on TV, or he would show you physically how it worked.”

— Herb Trimpe, Alter Ego #18, October 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing

18.3. “In a 1988 interview with Will Murray…(Lee) remarked that becoming Marvel’s publisher in 1972 meant he no longer had to ‘dream up’ stories—and that he now preferred simply providing dialogue for already-drawn strips”

Lee continued writing strips for a couple of years following Kirby’s departure.  Writer Steve Englehart recalled Lee working on the Fantastic Four in the early 1970s:

“When I came to work in the Bullpen, Stan was still in his office at the right rear (he was 49). He was cheerful and open to me—he was Stan—but we didn’t go out for beers. He was the editor-in chief, and I was a six-week fill-in editorial assistant. However, I ended up staying on, and a few months later, he called me into his office and asked if I had any Fantastic Four ideas. I didn’t, but the next day I had a complete plot for him. It was a follow-up to FF #39-40, when Daredevil guest-starred. Stan read it and said, ‘We’re in a different place now.’ Then he created Gabriel, the new herald of Galactus. A few months later he gave up his writing and turned his attention to Hollywood. So I had only a few months in the same bioregion with him, and that’s what they consisted of—but I am damn glad I got to know Stan Lee in whatever way.”

— Steve Englehart, Alter Ego Collectors’ Item Classics, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2023

19.1. “In a particularly noteworthy interview from this period—conducted with his wife Roz at his side—Kirby continued to strongly assert his authorship of the stories.”


Gary Groth subsequently came under some criticism following the publication of this interview, as some critics felt that he should have acted to ensure some of Jack Kirby’s more extreme comments were reviewed:

“This interview was the source of much complaint by Kirby partisans at the time it was published in 1990, who felt that Kirby was too reckless in his comments about his affiliation with Stan Lee during the ‘60s or that, alternately, I didn’t “protect” Kirby sufficiently from himself in the editing process.  A handful of factual errors having to do with date and chronology (due to the Kirbys’ faulty recollection of such details) have been corrected, but otherwise the interview remains untouched.

Kirby was surrounded by various friends, writers and hangers-on who have since come to form a protective circle around his name and legacy, some of who expressed the opinion that leaving in Kirby’s candid comments about Lee and his slightly fanciful descriptions of his creative contributions to Marvel in the ‘60s did him a disservice.  I do not. 

This is Kirby, unmediated by his handlers.  He had just spent several years of his life fighting with Marvel Comics over the ownership of this original art.  He was clearly bitter over the experience and over his experience with Marvel in general, and was in no mood to mince words.  This is the only interview I’m aware of in which Kirby spoke honestly about his feelings toward Marvel and Lee; he was usually more discreet and politic.  He is also somewhat uncharacteristically immodest when claims to have written the Marvel books; in fact, he did write them in a very real sense, although Lee clearly dialogued them.”

— Gary Groth, The Comics Journal Library – Jack Kirby, by Gary Groth, Fantagraphics 2002



Artist John Romita, who joined Marvel in late 1965, would offer the following thoughts on the context for some of Kirby’s stronger claims, and on the narrative they fostered regarding Lee’s status as a writer:

“Jack was always nonconfrontational. But I gather that when he was with his wife and some of his hangers-on, there would be all sorts of grumbling.

The truth of the matter is a lot of the artists, including me, used to say Stan left a lot of plotting to us. But I never went so far as to say that Stan never wrote anything original. Some of Jack’s compatriots would say things like that, that Stan never did an original job on any of Jack’s work, that he just used Jack’s notes.”

— John Romita, Tales to Astonish, Ronin Ro, Bloomsbury, 2004

19.2. “No, no, no, he took them verbatim.  If Stan Lee had ever done that, I would have been over to DC in about five minutes.”


This can be compared to Kirby’s earlier comment at the 1970 San Diego Comic Con:

 “I would discuss it with Stan, I would tell him what I was going to put in it, and it was either approved, or I would change it, you know, to maybe further the plot.”

— Jack Kirby, San Diego Comic-Con August 1970


Many articles discuss storylines that were heavily influenced by Lee’s editing and direction after Kirby had provided the initial pages of the story (pages tended to be submitted in batches rather than whole stories). Numerous examples appear in publications such as The Jack Kirby Collector (published by TwoMorrows).

In his 2010 deposition for the Kirby Family vs Marvel Lawsuit, Larry Lieber recalled seeing Kirby tear up original artwork from a never-published Hulk story after meeting with Lee in the early 1960s:

“… Jack Kirby came out of Stan’s office from — and from the direction of Stan’s office. He may, probably, he had come out of Stan’s office, and he seemed upset. And he took the drawings, he had these drawings, he took them and he tore them in half and he threw them in a trash can, a large trash can.

“And I, since I was such a big fan of his, I knew that at the end of the day, they would be discarded, you know, and would be trash. And I — I saw it as an opportunity to have some of his originals to keep, to look at and study, and so I took them out of the trash can.

“And there were other people in the office, but nobody else seemed to have noticed this, which I was glad about, and I just took them, walked over to where I was sitting and put them in my case. And I took them home and I taped them together, you know, I taped them all, and I kept them and I’ve kept them all these years to look at them and, as I say, to study them.”

— Larry Lieber, The Larry Lieber Deposition For The Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit, available online published 9 March 2011 by Rich Johnston, Bleeding Cool (Note: scans of the artwork are available on the Kirby Museum website)

Artist Gil Kane recalled Kirby making various changes under Lee’s direction while working at Marvel in the late 1960s. For example:

And yet he’d come into the office, Stan would say ‘Jack, would you change this?’ and he’d say ‘Sure.’”

— Gil Kane, 1986 interview, published online ‘An interview from 1986 with one of the great veteran comic artists’ by Steve Whitaker posted online 11 February 2027, FA – The Comiczine.


A late example of Lee significantly editing a Kirby story is Chamber of Darkness # 4.  This is discussed in Tom Brevoort’s online article Lee & Kirby: The Desecration of CHAMBER OF DARKNESS #4, posted 12 March 2022

19.3. “It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things or old things for that matter. Stan Lee wasn’t a guy that read or that told stories. Stan Lee was a guy that knew where the papers were or who was coming to visit that day. Stan Lee is essentially an office worker, OK?”


Although some of Jack Kirby’s more pointed remarks directly questioned Stan Lee’s role as a creative force, they should be considered within the broader context.

It is certainly evident that Lee—who was involved in a vast number of comic book stories over the decades—had few reservations about obtaining ideas from other creators. He acknowledged this in 1968:

“I’d love to say they all come from me, but, actually, you never know. I’ll talk to an artist, or I’ll talk to one of our other editors or writers…”

— Stan Lee, ‘Stan Lee in 1968’ radio interview conducted in the Marvel Comics offices on either 8 or 18^th February, WRSU (broadcasting from the campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick) Transcribed by Steve Tice, as published in Alter Ego Collectors’ Item Classics, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2023


Comic book creations credited to (and usually signed by) Lee date back to the early 1940s. They include a number of Timely super-heroes, though none achieved the level of success of Simon and Kirby’s Captain America, Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner or Carl Burgos’ Human Torch. Some examples are Father Time (Captain America Comics #8, August 1941), The Destroyer (Mystic Comics #6, December 1941), and Jack Frost (USA Comics #1, August 1941). There is very little information available concerning the circumstances under which they were created or written.

Golden Age artist Bob Fujitani recalled Lee contacting his friend Charles Biro for ideas during the pre-Marvel era, when Lee was the editor/writer for a range of titles (all of which contained multiple stories):

“Stan always got his ideas from someone else.  He used to call up Charles Biro all the time for ideas.  I know because I was there a couple of times when he called Charlie.  Biro’d hang up the phone and say ‘Gee, this guy wants me to do everything for him.  Give him ideas for this and that.”  This was when Crime Does Not Pay (1942 – 1955) was riding high”

— Bob Fujitani, interview by Jim Amash, Alter Ego #23, April 2003, TwoMorrows Publishing


Writer Daniel Keyes (author of Flowers for Algernon) sold scripts to Timely Comics (a precursor to Marvel) between 1952 and 1955 and interacted with Stan Lee in a business capacity. He was unaware that Lee was also writing at the time—despite Lee’s signed work appearing in titles such as Menace—and had no sense of him as a creative person.

“He edited, I guess. He was a businessman, as far as I was concerned. And a shy businessman is almost an oxymoron. I’ve never thought of Stan as a writer at all.

“Of course, he may have been turning in comics for a few extra bucks, doing it under pen names so that Martin Goodman wouldn’t know about it. I never thought of Stan as a writer. He says that he created Spider-Man. I never thought of him as a creative person. It could be that one of the writers created it and sent in a synopsis. And it got picked up.”

— Daniel Keyes, ‘A Timely Talk with Daniel Keyes – Charly, Stan and Psychoanalysis’ by Will Murray, Alter Ego #13, March 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing


This can be compared to accounts from those who worked more closely with Lee. For example, writer Paul S. Newman recalled the following anecdote concerning Lee’s input as an editor:

“I started writing for Stan Lee about 1950, probably with a story for Patsy Walker, and quickly went on to write for his science-fiction, “horror,” and other books. Stan was a smiling, encouraging editor to work with. I would bring in a plot outline, and Stan would immediately say “yes … no … ” or suggest a way to save it. Once, Stan seemed even more helpful, advising me that he would “give” me a plot, stating, “A man checks into a hotel …” I wrote that down rapidly. Stan continued, “They assign him a room on the 13th floor …” I noted that and there was a pause. I looked up from my pad. “And then, Stan?”

“Make it five pages, Paul.”

— Paul S. Newman, quoted by Scott Edelman, “Recollections of a Comic Book Writer of (almost) 50 Years” by Paul S. Newman ‹ Scott Edelman


Al Jaffee, who was on staff at Timely for around four years (1946–1950), also witnessed Lee in action:

“What I recognised more than anything else was that Stan Lee always had a ‘can-do’ attitude.  He just never equivocated.

Here’s a good example; when he made me an editor, Stan made up all the cover ideas.  I’d go into his office and say ‘Stan, we’ve got deadlines coming on eighteen covers.’  Stan would say ‘Okay, sit down.’  He was almost like Hollywood’s version of a young hotshot ‘can-do anything’ director.  He’d say, ‘What’s number one?’

I’d say, ‘On my list there’s Patsy Walker’. He’d say ‘Okay.  Put Patsy in a bookstore.  Have Buzz standing on the other side of the bookshelf, looking through the books and saying ‘That’s a very interesting image I see.’  That’d be a very typical teenage gag of its time.  That’d be a wrap, and take about three minutes.  By the way, Stan knew the names of all the characters.

So Stan would say ‘What’s next?’  I’d say ‘Frankie’, and we’d go through all eighteen covers, and be out of there in fifteen minutes.  I’d go back, write them all up from my shorthand notes, and tell my assistant, Leon Lazarus, to call in the proper artists and tell them what their covers are.

Stan Lee was extremely efficient.  The only criticism was that Stan was recirculating the same teenage gags over and over again.  But Archie publications did it, too.”

“The typical teenage gags, but Stan would put them in a new setting so that it looked enough different.  And he did it quickly, month after month.  The guy was always popping with ideas.”

— Al Jafee, ‘It Was A Fun Time – Al Jafee Talks about His Years at Timely Comics – And Why He Went MAD’, interview by Jim Amash, Alter Ego # 35, April 2004

Stan Goldberg, himself an artist/writer/colorist who worked for Atlas/Marvel in the late 1950s and 1960s, knew both Kirby and Lee.  He viewed the creative nature of the Lee/Kirby team as follows:

“It was a bringing of two giants together.  It was the best collaboration in the business, and Jack was so great.  When Jack would work on something, he’d do it for just two or three pages and get tired of it and come up with another premise.  Those ideas were happening so fast in his head that after 2 or 25 pages, it’d be hodgepodge of things.  Stan was very methodical and would corral all of Jack’s ideas and work them into a format that started Marvel off.  Stan held the reins of Jack as Jack burst at the seams with creativity.”

Goldberg had his own thoughts as to who may have been responsible for the majority of the creative input:

“I think it was Jack.  But Stan was great at plotting, concepts, and dialogue.  He was not an artist, he himself acknowledged.  But I remember when Stan would sit down with me and I didn’t know where I was going storywise.  Here was a non-artist teaching me, and I’m where I am today because of Stan.  Stan could direct me or Jack into thinking and developing, and Jack just ran with it.”

— Stan Goldberg, ‘The Goldberg Variations’, interview by Jim Amash, Alter Ego #18, October 2002, TwoMorrows Publishing


Other Marvel artists of the 1960s reported varying experiences in working with Lee with respect to his creative input.  Many of their accounts can be found online or in publications such as those produced by TwoMorrows publishing.  Online articles on the Comic Book Historians site (including ‘The Ditko Version’ and ‘The Romita Version‘) provide relevant quotes from artists including Steve Ditko, John Romita, Stan Goldberg, Don Heck, Herb Trimpe, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando, Gene Colan and John Buscema. 


The following recollection comes from Herb Trimpe, who was one of the last artists to start working with Lee under the ‘Marvel Method’ in the 1960s:

“When an issue would come up, you’d go into the office and go, ‘Stan, we’ve got to get together on a story.’ ’And he’d say, ‘Ok.’ And he’d shut the door, and he always ordered grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches; that’s what he ordered every day for lunch. (laughter) And he’d say, ‘Okay, what happened last month? Who were the characters?’ and we’d go from there. If we introduced a new character, you’d do it right there. They’d be conceived; it’s not like today, where they kick things around for three months, and it’s gotta be an executive decision.

Things happened very quickly. You’d be in there maybe half an hour, and you’d walk out with something in your head. That was it. I’d go sit at my desk and write down very quickly what I remembered. I’d write a plot outline from our discussion, which would be a paragraph.”

— Herb Trimpe, ‘Herb Trimpe Interview’, interview by Jon B. Cooke, Jack Kirby Collector # 18, January 1998, TwoMorrows Publishing


Jim Shooter, who later became Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief, worked briefly at Marvel for three weeks in 1969. During that short stint, he observed Lee at work and even contributed a plot for a single (undisclosed) issue of Silver Surfer:

“Well, the first time I met him, and we talked about comics, you could tell this guy more than knew what he was talking about. He was a genius.”

“He would get everybody into his office, everybody, and we would plot stories together. He would say, ‘Where did we leave Iron Man?’ Somebody would tell him where the last one left off. And he would say, ‘I’m thinking of doing something like this…’ And people would offer suggestions and stuff. And so, we’d come up with that month’s plots.

And then one of my jobs also, was to write plots. I wrote a plot for one of the Silver Surfer books, and he liked it, and they used it.”

— Jim Shooter, Jim Shooter Biographical Interview by Alex Grand & Jim Thompson – Comic Book Historians


Shooter was one of several writers who provided plots for Stan Lee on the Spider-Man newspaper strip, which ran from 1977 to 2019 (later completely ghost-written by Roy Thomas).  

“I worked closely with him. I worked with him for two years or so, on the Spider-Man newspaper strip. And just every conversation you had – he was full of ideas; he had a command of the form… Okay, so, talking to him all the time, and also hearing some of his stories about things that went on… The way he told me was credible and believable, and it made a lot of sense because you see, I worked with Jack Kirby too.”

“… I worked very closely with Kirby for two and a half years. I worked with Ditko… I got him back to Marvel… I worked with him there, and I work with him at all three of the companies I started. When I was at Marvel, I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people. So, I found out what really happened. I talked to the Flo Steinberg. I talked to Sol Brodsky. I talked to Marie Severin. I talked to George Roussos and Morrie Kuramoto; people who had been there. Right?

 So, that knowledge, I’ll save for a minute, but at the time, yeah, I was really influenced by Ditko because I love how he did it. And Kirby, you can’t argue with Kirby, it’s just great stuff. But the dialogue was important to me too… I assume that it was Stan’s story. But I didn’t know, I assume… And years later, it’s popular now to say, ‘Oh no, it was all Kirby.’

 Baloney. I worked with these guys; I know Stan was the man. I mean, there’s no question about it. You don’t have to pad Kirby’s resume. He was the greatest creator we ever saw. But, don’t take anything away from Stan. He was the man. He was in charge. He made it happen. It was his stories. It was his plots and for the most part, his characters.

Now, did Jack and Steve help? Yeah, of course. I mean, Spider-Man, for instance. I asked Steve, I said, ‘Percentage wise, what is it?’ He said, ‘70 me, 30 Stan..’ I said to Stan, “What was it?” He said, ‘50/50.’ I don’t care. They both did contribute.

Jack tried to say that everything was his… And then I talked to him for a while, and he conceded that I was right. He’d said, ‘No, you’re right. Spider-Man was Steve and Stan. Stan contributed to everything…’ I mean, like I said, you don’t have to pad anybody’s resume. This guy’s a genius, Stan. He was a genius, and you don’t have to take anything away from Kirby to say that.”

— Jim Shooter, Jim Shooter Biographical Interview by Alex Grand & Jim Thompson – Comic Book Historians

19.4. “And there was a man who never wrote a line in his life — he could hardly spell — you know, taking credit for the writing.”


Lee’s first published comics work was a text story titled ‘Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge,‘ which appeared in Captain America Comics #3 (cover-dated May 1941), while both Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were still working for Timely. Lee was the credited writer on many subsequent strips during the 1940s and 1950s, though it’s obviously difficult to determine the manner in which individual stories were produced.


Kirby’s remarks about spelling were possibly inspired by occasional misspellings found in comics scripted or edited by Lee. Several such errors appear in Fantastic Four #1. Whether these mistakes were made by Lee himself or by the letterer remains uncertain.

 19.5. “If Stan Lee ever got a thing dialogued, he would get it from someone working in the office. I would write out the whole story on the back of every page. I would write the dialogue on the back or a description of what was going on. Then Stan Lee would hand them to some guy and he would write in the dialogue.”

There are a number of statements in the 1989 Comics Journal interview that are particularly difficult to reconcile with other commentary. Here, Jack Kirby seems to be claiming that Stan Lee simply gave his pencilled pages to someone else who then wrote in the text using Kirby’s dialogue/directions.

In examining the relationship between Kirby’s margin notes and the published dialogue or narration, numerous examples of original art—with his border annotations largely intact—are readily accessible online and in publications like The Jack Kirby Collector (TwoMorrows Publishing). These allow for direct comparison, offering insight into how closely the final text followed Kirby’s cues. In some cases, Kirby’s notes were incorporated to varying degrees; in others, they were largely disregarded.


The broader claim that Lee never provided dialogue is contradicted by other statements from Kirby and is perhaps best understood as hyperbole. However, it remains possible that Lee occasionally employed others to assist with or provide scripting under his name—particularly given how common ghostwriting has been in the industry. For example, some have suggested that Ron Whyte, who briefly worked at Marvel around 1966 before his employment was terminated, may have contributed ghostwriting for Lee during that time. A small number of scripts attributed to Lee were reportedly found in Whyte’s estate, though these may simply have been provided to him as part of his training. Former Marvel staffers, including Linda Fite and Roy Thomas, have also stated that Whyte’s role was limited to a small amount of credited work on minor titles. In any event, there is no indication that Whyte was involved in any of Kirby’s stories. (see The Romita Version for further discussion).


Kirby also states here that he wrote his dialogue/directions on the back of the pages. Surviving original artwork (and stat copies) indicate that such notes were typically written on the front, within the page borders alongside the artwork.  But perhaps he was recalling a period when he worked differently.

19.6. “The published interview naturally attracted significant attention within the comics community. An angered Lee publicly disputed many of Kirby’s comments and reportedly even considered legal action (see Endnotes).”


According to Stan Lee, this particular interview almost prompted legal action:

“That was when I called the lawyer and I said, ‘Should we sue him?’  He said we could, said it’d cost a lot of money, but Marvel could afford it, and it’d cost Jack a lot of money to defend it.  I said, ‘Well, forget it.   I don’t want Jack to go broke.’  Because most of the people who have written to me and said ‘Look, we know it isn’t true, we’ve worked with you, we know what stories you wrote.’

He had a lawyer call me months after that, saying ‘You know, Jack would really like to make this up, what do you say?’ I said, ‘It’s fine with me.  All Jack has to do is write a letter to the Comics Journal which says all the things he said weren’t true, and I’ll be happy to make up.’  But how can I make up with him now?  If I’m friendly with Jack, it’ll sound like he was telling the truth.  Like I’m not angry about it.  So I never heard from the guy again.”

— Stan Lee, ‘Graphic Mogul, Stan Lee’, by Alastair Abbott, originally printed in The List, December 1991.  Republished in Stan Lee Conversations, Edited by Jeff McLaughlin, University Press of Mississippi, 2007


Perhaps the closest that Lee got to a retraction came in a 1995 interview with Kirby’s widow, Roz:

“I’m not gonna take anything away from Stan. He was a talented man. He did well with the books, with putting in the words and things. He was always very friendly with us… I think we went to Stan’s house once. We met Stan’s wife Joan a couple of times. She was a very sweet lady.”

— Roz Kirby, ‘Would You Like to See My Etchings?’ interview by John Morrow conducted 12 December 1995, Jack Kirby Collector #10, April 1996, TwoMorrows Publishing

20.1. “In 2010, Lee—presumably in accordance with advice/coaching from Marvel’s legal team—gave a deposition in a lawsuit involving Marvel Entertainment and the heirs of Jack Kirby.”


In further deposition, Stan Lee was asked if Jack Kirby had ever suggested the actual dialogue:

“Not orally, but what he would do, when I would give Jack a rough idea for what the story should be, and he went home and he drew it in his own way, laying it out the way he thought it would be best, he would put in the borders, the margins of the pages, he would put little notes letting—so I would understand what he was getting at with each drawing, and he would sometimes put dialogue suggestions also.”

— Stan Lee, The Stan Lee Deposition On The Origins Of The Marvel Universe For Kirby Family Vs Marvel Lawsuit

21.1. “I’d get some pages of artwork, and I wrote the copy and I turned [it] into whatever I wanted the story to be.”


As artists would often bring in sections of the story (rather than the artwork for the complete issue) for editing/scripting, Lee had the opportunity to influence the storyline as it was being laid out.


On occasion Lee also had the opportunity to script fully drawn stories which he’d had no plot involvement. Artist Barry Windsor-Smith recalled the following with respect to a Dr. Strange tale that appeared in Marvel Premiere #3, July 1972):

“Not only did Stan dialogue the story after I created it, but, marvel of marvels, he ignored my plot and wrote another story entirely over my staging. Remarkable feat, actually.”

— Barry Windsor-Smith, ‘Alias Barry Windsor-Smith’, interview by Jon B. Cooke. Published in Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 1, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2000

21.2. “I see that story first. I feel that story first. I know those people first. When I put them down they’ve already lived. And I’ve put them down as I’d like them to live on those pages.”


Kirby’s perspective differed markedly to that of fellow artist John Romita, who credited Lee with playing a vital role in shaping the final narrative of their collaborations:

“…(W)hen he wrote my stuff, he almost invariably made the stuff more believable. In other words, I would have misgivings when I would turn in a story from a plot. There would be a 20-page story with no dialog, no captions. I would half believe it. In other words, I worked on it as well as I could, I would make it as airtight as I could, but I didn’t have a lot of faith in it. By the time he scripted it, and I read the script and his placement of the balloons, it looked as though every single panel was thought out carefully between two people. He was a magician.”

“Stan was doing the best story he could come up with, and if he could refine it – in other words, when the artists were doing the ‘silent picture’ drawings, Stan would add stuff that he wouldn’t have thought of if he were writing a full script.  When Stan saw the drawings, a million new ideas popped into his head.  What he saw was a chance to get a subtle twist in there, that wasn’t even imagined when we were discussing the plot.”

— John Romita, ‘John Romita: The 2006-2007 Interview’, John Romita…And All that Jazz! TwoMorrows, 2007 interview by Jim Amash

Romita’s view of his collaboration with Lee appears to align more closely with Lee’s own perspective on the artist’s role in their working process. Unlike Kirby, Romita enjoyed a very different relationship with Lee (see The Romita Version), and by his own admission, he was never entirely comfortable with plotting or co-plotting:

“Jack Kirby thrived on it because he was a writer.  I was never a writer.”

— John Romita, The John Romita Sr. 2001 Shoot Interview by David Armstrong – YouTube

Further Reading


There are many publications articles that delve into Jack Kirby’s extraordinary career and his contributions and experiences at Marvel.  The following is a list of suggested reading for those wishing to know more.

• Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center (website)
• ‘Jack Kirby: TCJ Library Vol.1: The Comics Journal Interviews’, by Gary Groth, 2002
• ‘Kirby and Lee: Stuf’ Said (Expanded 2nd Edition)’, by John Morrow, TwoMorrows Publishing, 2003
• ‘The Jack Kirby Collector’ – ongoing fanzine published by TwoMorrows
• Kirby: King of Comics (Anniversary Edition)’, Mark Evanier, Abrams 2017
• Comic Book Historians (website)
• ‘Creators of the Superheroes’, Thomas Andrae, Hermes Press 2011
• ‘Tales to Astonish’, Rojin Ro, Bloomsbury, 2004
• ‘According to Kirby‘, and ‘Kirby at Marvel – Not the Official Version Vol 1: 1956 – 1963‘, both by Michael Hill, Lulu
• ‘The Comic Book Makers’ by Joe Simon with Jim Simon, Vanguard Productions, 2003
• The Great American Novel (website – this is a comprehensive Fantastic Four analysis), Chris Tolworthy
• Stan Lee Conversations, Edited by Jeff McLauglin, University Press of Mississippi, 2007
• Understanding Superhero Comic Books: A History of Key Elements, Creators, Events and Controversies, by Alex Grand,  McFarland & Company, 2023

 

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Copyright © 2025 Rosco M
This article contains original commentary and excerpts quoted under fair use for educational, journalistic, or critical purposes.
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