Lee/Kirby FF - Classic Or Dud?

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This Thread, This Monster!

― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 28 November 2004 19:12 (twenty-one years ago)

The startling betrayal of ILC! Possibly the most dramatic twist in contemporary literature!

― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, 28 November 2004 20:37 (twenty-one years ago)

it's great reading these threads about the ILC winners before reading the poll results.

I officially love the Lee-Kirby FF run, but have read very little of it.

My own view is that the Claremont-Larocca FF run is sadly under-rated.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Sunday, 28 November 2004 21:44 (twenty-one years ago)

It really is! Especially in light of just how few good FF runs there are.

― Tep (ktepi), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I have been in Lee/Kirby heaven today as I've found people online with big collections of the FF not yet essentialised and the Thor not yet essentialised too.

― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I would like to read the Galactus story arc.

― Jordan (Jordan), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:26 (twenty-one years ago)

It is really truly very good. If you get Essential Vol 3 then you get 7 or so issues leading up to it so you can get used to the Silver Age ways of doing things and let the Galactus arc hit you properly.

― Tom (Groke), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

GALACTUS!!!

― H (Heruy), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:37 (twenty-one years ago)

But is the Visionaries reprint in COLOR?

― Jordan (Jordan), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Essentials Vol. 3 is truly brilliant. Vols 1 and 2 have their charms, and the momentum is constantly building, but 3 explodes into an orgasm of superheroic joy.

― Wooden (Wooden), Sunday, 28 November 2004 22:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, Jordan, the FF issues in the Kirby Visionaries book are in color. That book is great.

Byrne's run on FF is great as well, though this is likely a heretical opinion.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Monday, 29 November 2004 02:39 (twenty-one years ago)

are you best off starting with vol.3 or letting it improve from vol.1?

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 29 November 2004 13:12 (twenty-one years ago)

My first issue of FF was #102, which was the last issue Kirby drew, so I'd recommend starting there and working backwards.
Hey, worked for me, though Marvel UK reprinting the whole lot in order from the beginning a few years later certainly helped.

Start wherever you like, Vic old boy, because it's all great.

David

― David Simpson (David Simpson), Monday, 29 November 2004 13:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I would start from the beginning with the Essentials - Vol 1's rather basic, but fun in a slightly kitschy way. they're all dead cheap, so you might as well.

― Wooden (Wooden), Monday, 29 November 2004 15:03 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, DV, you are better off w/ the slow burn towards Vol. 3 - as Wooden said, the first two volumes have plenty to offer (Cow Skrulls! Sub-Mariner! Dr. Doom! The Mad Thinker & Awesome Andy! The Infant Terrible! The Molecule Man! FF v. Avengers! Reed & Sue's wedding!) in a happy-go-lucky Pop Art! vibe, and it's worth getting all this internalized before hitting the mother lode.

Praise be to Joe Sinnott, BTW.

― David R. (popshots75`), Monday, 29 November 2004 15:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Are Reed and Sue like the fastest supercouple to get married ever, or what? With the timeline squished down by "Franklin is six, Franklin is always six" logic, they became the FF on Monday and got married on Tuesday!

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 29 November 2004 15:34 (twenty-one years ago)

Who else finds Reed Richards an insufferable twat?

― Wooden (Wooden), Monday, 29 November 2004 18:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Nearly always, yeah, and when he isn't, he doesn't seem like Reed very much. The team needs Ben Grimm and his mood swings with Reed for it to work -- likewise, you can only really get what Sue sees in Reed when you realize her other major love interest is Namor, so she must really like arrogant posturing drama queens.

― Tep (ktepi), Monday, 29 November 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

I like Reed! I don't like Ben or Johnny much, though.

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 29 November 2004 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Ben's the heart of the FF! The group dynamic totally revolves around him.

When they had scenes of him playing with Franklin I always really wanted him to be my uncle.

― Wooden (Wooden), Monday, 29 November 2004 19:00 (twenty-one years ago)

I know he's the heart of the FF! I just don't like him much.

― Tom (Groke), Monday, 29 November 2004 19:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Grant Morrison "4", C/D?

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 29 November 2004 19:47 (twenty-one years ago)

I enjoyed it, but maybe not as much as I might. I understand that it's a back to basics story, but I don't know enough about either the basics or the crud that came inbetweentime.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 29 November 2004 19:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, very much back to basics. I haven't read that much FF, so while I thought it was very good (but not mindblowing), afterwards I didn't feel the need to read more.

It's like the Fantastic Four Cliff's, er, Grant's Notes.

― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 29 November 2004 20:08 (twenty-one years ago)

The first two FF Essentials are full of magnificent stuff - it may not be as great as volume 3, but there are only a handful of other superherocomic runs that are as good as the first 40 issues. And the way they send the Skrulls away in their first appearance is one of the funniest endings ever.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 23:02 (twenty-one years ago)

nine months pass...

so i finally got "vol 3"--my first "essentials"

it's awesome!! never really read kirby/lee stuff before. totally wicked. the art blows me away... the tone is INSANE, so unique and weird. love. it.

...but i wish it were in colour!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 17 September 2005 01:17 (twenty years ago)

does anyone know anything about the specifics of the lee/kirby creative partnership?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 17 September 2005 01:19 (twenty years ago)

Rough rule of thumb -

Early on: Lee plotted in mild detail and wrote all the dialogue when the pages came back. Medium on: Lee said: "have someone come to earth TO EAT IT, the FF fight him, the end." Later on: Kirby mailed in pages with rough dialogue pencilled in the borders, Lee rewrote it.

― kit brash (kit brash), Saturday, 17 September 2005 01:41 (twenty years ago)

Hey, s10cki, you might want to consider dishing out for the FANTASTIC FOUR OMNIBUS, which is issues 1-36 in full color with covers and such for something like fifty bucks (maybe more, can't remember for sure.) And yes, they're planning on a second volume, too.

And I swear, you could kill someone with this book. It's like a freakin bible or something...

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Saturday, 17 September 2005 02:19 (twenty years ago)

i reread FF 45-51 the other night and it's still one of my favorite things ever. after finishing it i felt a bit like i'd just chugged 7 rum-laced mountain dews in a row.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 17 September 2005 03:09 (twenty years ago)

s1ocki have you read lee/ditko spiderman? i'd recommend that next as fas as the essentials go, in some ways B&W almost suits the stories better than color.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 17 September 2005 03:12 (twenty years ago)

Kit, I doubt that Lee plotted in mild detail for Kirby early on. What comics are you talking about? I am absolutely convinced that there is minimal input from Lee into the plots of any early FFs, for instance. It's hard to imagine a more 100% Kirby blend of personality types or origin story (given that it's a virtual copy of his Challengers origin, with which Lee certainly had no connection) or villain (see later Eternals and New Gods characters resembling the Mole Man), to take FF1 as one example.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 17 September 2005 07:25 (twenty years ago)

martin what do you think lee's input was on the stuff in FF3?

and is there a consensus that he's a bit of a charlatan?

and JD, which spidey essentials are those? the first ones? def'ly thinking of checking out those next...

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 17 September 2005 14:11 (twenty years ago)

I don't mean to suggest any charlatanism. He was the editor, and I'm certain he rewrote most of the words that got lettered, and he added the matey house style which was hugely important to Marvel's success, and he gave the likes of Kirby and Ditko room to do their stuff, and supported a modest increase in the target reading age for superhero comics - these are all fine achievements. I don't believe he created anything worth mentioning.

Re #3, sadly I am between having sold my Masterworks and buying the 1st Essential volume. Miracle Man, right? A real dud. Still sounds Kirbyish on a few levels - he returned to an interest in big illusions a few times, but also I remember a TCJ interview quoting an exchange during the New Gods days between Evanier and Kirby, where the former mentions Miracle Man and Kirby admitted in a pained tone that he did have his off days - no attempt to say that that was Lee's. I'd have to reread it to try to assess any other stylistic cues.

My main reason for thinking Kirby was the writer in every sense but the actual words on the page is a familiarity with their careers before and since. Graph the creativity and story excitement on two graphs - Kirby starts high with Cap around 1940, and even though the '60s Marvel stuff might rank highest, there's no sharp change, no big peak, and he carries on in much the same way after moving to DC, before a gradual later decline. Lee's is a square wave, nothing before Kirby, world class with him, nothing after. What exciting new heroes has he created post-Kirby? She-Hulk? Solar Man is the next one that I can think of.

First two Spidey Essentials have all the Ditko - these are among the all-time greatest superhero comics. Many people love the Romita issues following, and love the next few Essentials too, but I lose interest.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 17 September 2005 15:24 (twenty years ago)

I think Lee likes pretending to be a charlatan--he thinks it's funny. Hence the whole moustachioed huckster persona.

When I interviewed him a few years ago about Spider-Man and his working relationship with Ditko, he was very quick to give Ditko a whole lot of credit. I think it's fair to say that Lee co-created a whole lot of characters, and gave them a lot of their psychological depth: a pure-Kirby FF would have been as close to unreadable as the Fourth World stuff, maybe more so. (And right, the Fourth World comics are striking to look at and full of high-concept material, but Kirby had zero grasp of dialogue and character interactions: there are no relationships in his solo comics anywhere near as interesting as... the relationship between basically any two significant characters in FF. Reed/Ben, Sue/Namor, Johnny/Ben...)

Captain America wasn't a Kirby creation, either, he was a Simon-and-Kirby creation.

― Douglas (Douglas), Saturday, 17 September 2005 16:12 (twenty years ago)

so the feeling is SL filled in the character stuff? that makes sense. largely i love the FF character beats, although the sue stuff makes me a little sad, the 100th time she freaks out and reed thinks "i better not tell her the full extent of the danger or the poor woman might faint!"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 17 September 2005 17:45 (twenty years ago)

This discussion is extremely interesting. I'd always blithely subscribed to the 'Lee was a charleton' school of thought, but it seems I should revise my opinions.

― chap who would dare to thwart the revolution (chap), Saturday, 17 September 2005 18:57 (twenty years ago)

I think the Fourth World comics are among the best-written superhero comics of all time, so I can't go along with this stuff at all. I do think Lee wrote better dialogue - certainly more naturalistic, which helps get into the people - but I think the relationships are all down to Kirby. This is why the character types and their relationships are almost exactly the same ones he'd been mixing and blending since, say, his 1940s kid gang comics. If you read any of those (or, to mention them again, his Challengers comics), you can hardly think the relationship dynamics are much to do with Lee.

Well yes, Simon was there on Cap too. Feel free to plot another of those graphs for him. If I team up with my old pal Grant Morrison (let's say out of pity on his part) and we write a great comic together, and on the back of it I get other work that is uniformly terrible, are you seriously going to credit me with much of what was good about our collaboration, whatever account I give?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 17 September 2005 19:08 (twenty years ago)

there's a great article in that comics journal jack kirby special analysing the writing in FF and the writing kirby did before and after - basically it concludes that the attitude, philosophy and flavor of FF is so different from kirby's other work that lee has to be given a lot of credit for it.

here's a page from FF 75 with kirby dialogue scribbled on the top: it's hard not to conclude just from this example that lee added quite a bit: http://www.twomorrows.com/kirby/articles/09ff75galactus.html

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 17 September 2005 22:35 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, there's no denying that the words on the page are mostly Lee's. A good friend of mine has a Kirby Thor page, where Thor first meets Tana Nile and feels compelled to bow to her. The final version has text explaining how Jane Foster is astounded to see the mighty Thunder God show obeisance to, etc., while the original pencilled text is 'Thor's gal is flabbergasted!' All this is a very important contribution.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 18 September 2005 08:58 (twenty years ago)

haha! it's very true though--the dialogue & the particular way it is stylized is so important to the comics' tone.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 18 September 2005 14:16 (twenty years ago)

I think not only did Stan rub off the very rough edges, having a consistent verbal style across Marvel helped a great deal. DC were very disunited then - the Supes and Bats titles were just about a separate company from the JLA/GL/Flash titles, let alone war and western stuff. There was more sense of Spidey and the FF and the Avengers sharing the same city than DC ever offered, and that was helped by their sounding much the same. Also, the hipness, lame as it looks in retrospect, really caught an audience at the time - DC seemed hopelessly staid and old-fashioned in comparison. When I say that I don't believe Stan created much of what mattered or plotted much (look at the weakness of the stories and villains on Daredevil, about the only major early superhero title with no Kirby/Ditko connection), that is not to say that his contribution wasn't vital.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 18 September 2005 14:42 (twenty years ago)

i think the hipness is great!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 18 September 2005 15:49 (twenty years ago)

and lee's dialogue, plus his "first-person" interjections i think really radically alter the comics' style, giving it a kinda knowing voice that plays really well against kirby's great grand intergalactic mythos.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 18 September 2005 18:35 (twenty years ago)

Like the Peter Falk role in The Princess Bride (maybe)!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Sunday, 18 September 2005 22:35 (twenty years ago)

yeah--well there's the voice of lee-as-lee, which i think overlaps with but is not identical to the voice of the comic itself--which also includes dialogue etc. you know what i mean?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Sunday, 18 September 2005 22:46 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Has anyone actually gotten/seen any of the Marvel Omnibus collections. If so, how are they? Have they been re-colored? Did they do a decent job? Are they worth owning or are we better off with the Essentials collections?

― JN$OT, Sunday, 25 February 2007 11:10 (nineteen years ago)

Hey, I have the first FF Omnibus. It's brilliant, and Amazon usually have cheap copies in the Marketplace (where I got mine), so it doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. Aside from reprinting the lettercols and etc, it also features a new reprint of FF #1 that is way better than previous ones... pretty close to spot-on, to these eyes, so well worth getting all round.

As to Stan's input earlier with FF, I have to say I think he was much more heavily involved. I'm guessing the Challs elements crept in as a result of a brainstorm with Kirby before the plot was typed up, but there's no doubt he supplied fairly detailed plots. Also, I have seen (that is, inspected in the flesh up close) some original artwork from FF #3, and it might surprise you to know that Stan sketched very detailed thumbnails (which Kirby followed quite closely) on the back of the art pages.

It's always tempting to sell Stan's role short, as he's such a huckster, but fair's fair, whatever misleading crap he's said over the years (i.e. lots) his contributions shouldn't be overlooked...

― chrissie_, Sunday, 25 February 2007 13:24 (nineteen years ago)

Incidentally, I am stressing (sort-of) credit to Kirby for the Challs elements -- I'm sure he said, 'How about they go up in a spaceship and it crashes?' And Lee used it. The idea for a group book per se came from Martin Goodman, for whatever that's worth.

Interesting detail on Kirby's input... Ditko recalls being asked to ink Spider-Man and Lee showed him the five pages Kirby had already drawn. He said, 'But this is exactly the same as S&K's The Fly.' (Which was published a year earlier.) Subsequently, Kirby was removed from the book and the plot that saw print in Amazing Fantasy #15 was handed to Ditko to DRAW... so we can assume that plot (which Ditko admits was fully-formed) was substantially Lee's work.

The Fly (young orphan rubs ring and turns into hero) was itself a Joe Simon idea originally titled Spiderman (no hyphen), then Silver Spider, intended for CC Beck (who drew sample pages), due to it being a Captain Marvel rip-off! Kirby had copies of this stuff when he drew the Fly and resubmitted the idea to Lee with little-to-no change for Spider-Man! So whose idea was it, exactly?!

Frankly, Lee's reworking in the plot was a huge improvement, so kudos to Stan there, as well as to Steve for visually realising it so brilliantly.

The provenance of the Challs is under some question too, as it is fairly well accepted that... guess who... Joe Simon was involved it the development of the idea during its planning stages. The S&K partnership was slowly dissolving so he didn't take part in the series. But who came up with what is a big question mark lost in time.

Two of the early FF plots (Impossible Man and the fake movie set idea thing) were lifted pretty blatantly from Fighting American stories. Were they Kirby ideas originally? Or Simon ideas? Hell if I know. The only thing that is clear is that Kirby was throwing a lot of ideas at Lee from stories he'd worked on (in whatever capacity) in fairly recent memory.

I get a brain pain if I think about all this TOO much. ;-)

― chrissie_, Sunday, 25 February 2007 13:48 (nineteen years ago)

(Final note: Kirby had no involvement in Spiderman/Silver Spider -- from around 1953 -- until it was morphed into the Fly in 1960. And the plot was identical to the one CC Beck drew. So we can gather two things: (1) the plot, such as it was, was 100% Simon's; (2) Kirby was happy to re-use it almost verbatim on Marvel's Spider-Man -- apparently, we have Mr. Ditko to thank for this not happening!)

(Apologies for rambling...)

― chrissie_, Sunday, 25 February 2007 13:56 (nineteen years ago)

You've more or less sold me on the Omnibus editions. Sure as hell hope they're worth it, the damn things are expensive.

― JN$OT, Sunday, 25 February 2007 16:58 (nineteen years ago)

Top hint for parents! Read the early FF aloud - the humour and pacing in Stan's dialogue really comes to life. I tried it (to entertain my wife as much as my 3-month old, though he seemed to get off on his Dad getting animated and doing different voices) last night and it was awesome fun.

― Groke, Sunday, 25 February 2007 20:26 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

What a pile of cosmic turd.

― chap, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:05 (eighteen years ago)

No purple shrimp-fork hat, no credibility.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:13 (eighteen years ago)

I know, they really don't get it do they?

― chap, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:14 (eighteen years ago)

Right - we don't love this stuff DESPITE the wackiness. Quite the opposite.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:17 (eighteen years ago)

Oh come on! It would be nigh-impossible to get the fork hat to look properly majestic & goofy. Better they do this, I think, than try to do something along the lines of those Incredible Hulk TV movies.

― David R., Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:24 (eighteen years ago)

Your sensible arguments mean nothing to me, I'm sulking. I WANT GALACTUS.

― chap, Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:25 (eighteen years ago)

HERE'S YR GALACTUS

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/9/93/250px-ULTEXT001_cov.jpg

― David R., Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:29 (eighteen years ago)

BTW, the first issue of the Spider-Man / FF mini by Jeff Parker & Mike Wieringo is FANTASTIC! Best use of the Impossible Man since ever!

― David R., Thursday, 19 April 2007 14:30 (eighteen years ago)

Thanks for saving me money, creators of the Fantastic Four movie sequel! The possibility of awesome Galactus spectacle was the only thing that was sort of tempting me to see this steamy load.

― Deric W. Haircare, Friday, 20 April 2007 04:58 (eighteen years ago)

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