Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (58 page)
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Author’s note: Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from personal interviews, conducted between 2008 and 2012.
Prologue
2 “It took a few days”: Stan Lee, with George Mair,
Excelsior!
Fireside, 2002.
2 “Marvel was on its ass”: Gary Groth, “I’ve Never Done Anything Halfheartedly,”
Comics Journal
134, February 1990.
4 “Marvel often stretches”: “O.K., You Passed the 2-S Test—Now You’re Smart Enough For Comic Books,”
Esquire
, September 1966. The list of “28 People Who Count” appeared in the September 1965 issue.
4 “It isn’t generally known”: “Bullpen Bulletins,” February 1966.
5 “It seems to work out well”: Letter to Jerry Bails, January 9, 1963.
1
9 Eastern soon fell apart: Martin Goodman’s earliest days in the magazine business have been documented with varying degrees of accuracy. Les Daniels’s
Marvel:
Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics
(Abrams, 1991) was one of the earliest published works to tackle the subject; Will Murray’s astonishingly researched introduction to the
Golden Age Marvel Comics Omnibus
(Marvel, 2009) provided several corrections and integrated new discoveries. Blake Bell and Dr. Michael J. Vassallo’s
The Secret History of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire
(Fantagraphics, 2012), which focuses on Goodman’s pulp publications, extends the scholarship.
10 “If you get a title that catches on”: “Big Business in Pulp Thrillers,”
Literary Digest
, January 23, 1937.
11 “little beehive of nepotism”: Joe Simon,
Comic Book Makers
, Vanguard, 2003. Information about the origins of American comic books comes from Robert Lee Beerbohm and Richard D. Olson, “The American Comic Book: 1929–Present,”
The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide
, Gemstone, 2008; Bradford Wright,
Comic Book Nation
, Johns Hopkins, 2001; Mike Benton,
The Comic Book in America
, Taylor, 1989.
14 Timely’s first comic book was published: Matt Nelson, “Marvel #1 vs. Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1: The Chicken or the Egg?,” Classicsincorporated.com.
14 sold 800,000: Arthur Goodman shared this information in conversation with Stephen A. Fishler in 1983.
16 Simon . . . was earning: Simon,
Comic Book Makers.
16 “My mother once wanted”:
Hour 25,
radio program, circa 1986.
16 “I would wait behind a brick wall”: Unpublished Leonard Pitts interview.
18 “I stayed up all night sketching”: Simon,
Comic Book Makers
.
18 “We can’t keep putting out this crap”: Ibid.
18 “He didn’t like them very much”: Jim Amash, “Simon Says,”
Alter Ego
76, March 2008.
19 On Shores’s first day: Mark Evanier, “Jack FAQs,”
Jack Kirby Collector
44, Fall 2006.
19 “seemed to be made entirely”: Stan Lee,
History of Marvel
, unpublished draft, late 1980s.
19 fired from a menial job: Lee, with Mair,
Excelsior!
19 Descriptions of the Timely office interiors are taken from author interviews, as well as Jim Amash, “A Long Glance At Dave Gantz,”
Alter Ego
13, March 2002, and Amash, “Simon Says.”
20 “This is my nephew”: Amash, “Simon Says.”
20 “And when the script came back”: Amash, “Simon Says.”
21 “Jack sat at a table”: Stan Lee panel, San Diego Convention, 1975.
22 “We just stayed”: Roy Thomas interview with Bill Everett, published in
Timely Presents: Human Torch
, Marvel, 1999.
22 slept in shifts
:
Jim Steranko,
Steranko History of Comics
, Supergraphics, 1970.
23 “You guys must be”: Simon,
Comic Book Makers
.
23 “The next time I see that”: John Morrow and Glen Musial, “More Than Your Average Joe,”
Jack Kirby Collector
25, August 1999.
24 “No matter how many new titles”: Quote from Al Jaffee in Gary Groth, “Face Front, True Believers: The Comics Industry Sounds Off on Stan Lee,”
Comics Journal
181, October 1995.
25 In less than two years: Figures are taken from the following sources, via Bradford Wright’s
Comic Book Nation
: “The Comics And Their Audience,”
Publishers Weekly
, April 18, 1942; “Superman Scores,”
BusinessWeek
, April 18, 1942; “Escapist Paydirt,”
Newsweek
, December 27, 1943.
25 “Sometimes we’d put”: Jim Amash, “I Let People Do Their Jobs!,”
Alter Ego
11, November 2001.
26 “We always had backlog”: Amash, “I Let People Do Their Jobs!”
26 He moved into a room: Blake Bell,
I Have to Live with This Guy
, TwoMorrows, 2002.
26 “Like you see in the movies”: Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon,
Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book
, Chicago Review Press, 2003.
26 “I was in love”: David Anthony Kraft, “The Foom Interview: Stan Lee,”
Foom
17, March 1977.
26 “I had three secretaries”: Kraft, “The Foom Interview: Stan Lee.”
27 90 percent: Bradford,
Comic Book Nation
.
27 They moved out of their: Edward Lewine, “Housing History: Sketching Out His Past,”
New York Times
, September 9, 2007.
28 “No thanks, maybe later”: Bruce Jay Friedman,
Lucky Bruce
, Biblioasis, 2011.
28 “Every so often”: Michael Vassallo, “A Timely Talk with Allen Bellman,” Comicartville.com, 2005.
30 Ayers donated: David Hajdu,
The Ten-Cent Plague
, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008.
31 “Talk was no longer”: Jules Feiffer,
The Great Comic Book Heroes
, Dial, 1965.
32 “It was the toughest thing”: Hajdu,
The Ten-Cent Plague
.
32 “If Stan Lee ever calls”: Jon B. Cooke, “John Romita: Spidey’s Man,”
Comic Book Artist
6, Fall 1999.
33 half-dozen artists: Per the research of Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, they were: Dick Ayers, Dan DeCarlo, Al Hartley, Jack Keller, Morris Weiss, and Joe Maneely.
33 Steve Ditko, a quiet thirty-year-old: Blake Bell,
Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
, Fantagraphics, 2008.
35 “Jack never liked”: John Morrow, “Would You Like To See My Etchings?,”
Jack Kirby Collector
10, April 1996.
35 “I would much rather”: Mark Evanier,
Kirby: King of Comics
, Abrams, 2008.
35 “It’s like a ship sinking”: Roy Thomas and Jim Amash, “To Keep Busy As A Freelancer, You Should Have Three Accounts,”
Alter Ego
31, December 2003.
2
38 “We are trying”: Letter to Jerry Bails, August 29, 1961.
41 When Lee asked Steve Ditko: Steve Ditko, “A Mini-History: 13. ‘Speculation,’ ”
The Comics
, 14 (August 2003). More discussion of the Spider-Man/Fly connection appears in Joe Simon,
Comic Book Makers
. In a 2010 videotaped deposition for Marvel’s suit against the Kirby estate, Stan Lee stated that Spider-Man was not, to his knowledge, based on Kirby’s Fly character.
43 “The poor guy only has”: Letter to Jerry Bails, January 9, 1963.
44 He worked from a varnished-pine room: Neal Kirby, “Growing up Kirby: The Marvel Memories of Jack Kirby’s Son,”
Los Angeles Times
, April 9, 2012.
44 “That was a lot of stuff”: Richard Howell, “An interview with Don Heck,”
Comics Feature
21, November 1982.
44 “We seem to exist from crisis”: Letter to Jerry Bails, January 9, 1963.
45 “My job was mainly”: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Sol Brodsky Remembered,”
Marvel Age
22, January 1985.
45 “Martin Goodman started pressuring”: Jim Amash, “I Wrote Over 800 Comic Book Stories,”
Alter Ego
90, December 2009.
45 “I have to go to”: Gerard Jones,
Men of Tomorrow
, Basic, 2004.
46 Rousso, weary of: Mark Gruenwald, “George Roussos,”
Comics Interview
2, April 1983.
46 sixty-five dollars a week: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Fabulous Flo Steinberg,”
Comics Interview
17, November 1984.
50 “Stan wanted”: Mark Evanier,
Kirby: King of Comics
.
50 “Don Heck drew”: Letters pages of November 1965 issues.
51 “like digging into”: Daniels,
Marvel
.
52 “The problem . . . was”: Mark Evanier, “Jack F.A.Q.s,”
Jack Kirby Collector
39, Fall 2003.
53 “the most depressing exchange”: Ethan Roberts, “The 1964 New York Comicon: A Personal Reminiscence,”
Alter Ego
7, Winter 2001.
53 “This isn’t the first time”: Bill Schelly,
Sense of Wonder: A Life in Comic Fandom
, TwoMorrows, 2001.
53 “the tendency to take”: Ditko via Bell,
Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
.
54 “Stan treated it like”: Mark Evanier, NewsFromMe.com, October 12, 2005.
55 “I don’t know what”: Steve Duin and Mike Richardson,
Comics Between the Panels
, Dark Horse Comics, 1998.
56 “We had to write down”: Jon B. Cooke, “Absolutely Fabulous,”
Comic Book Artist
18, March 2002.
57 “You have no idea”: Jim Salicrup, “John Romita,”
Comics Interview
89, 1990.
58 The details of Roy Thomas’s hiring come from Roy Thomas, “Two Weeks With Mort Weisinger,”
Alter Ego
50, July 2005; and Rob Gustaveson, “Fifteen Years at Marvel: An Interview with Roy Thomas,”
Comics Journal
61, Winter 1981.
60 “Marvel Comics are the first”: Sally Kempton, “Spiderman’s Dilemma: Super-Anti-Hero in Forest Hills,”
Village Voice
, April 1, 1965.
60 McClure featured: Bhob Stewart, Potrzebie.blogspot.com, November 13, 2010.
61 “We wrote an unbelievable contract”: Adam McGovern, “Marvel Man,”
Jack Kirby Collector
41, Fall 2004.
61 “living comic books”: Josh Alan Friedman, “Mel Shestack Lives!,”
Black Cracker Online
, March 8, 2010.
61 “They’d come in and giggle”: Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Fabulous Flo Steinberg,”
Comics Interview
17, November 1984.
61 “Mario Puzo would”: Jon B. Cooke,, “Absolutely Fabulous,”
Comic Book Artist
18, March 2002.
62 “I was just kidding him”: Bell,
Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
; Nat Freedland, “Super Heroes with Super Problems,”
New York Herald Tribune Sunday Magazine
, January 9, 1966.
65 “It’s almost like I was watching Laurel and Hardy”: “The Mighty Marvel Bullpen Reunion 2001,”
Alter Ego
16, July 2002, p. 17. Lee’s account of
Herald
fallout from Ro Ronin,
Tales To Astonish
, page 104.
66 “I’ve had theories advanced”: Duin and Richardson,
Comics Between the Panels
.
66 “Not until Goodman”: Bell,
Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko
.
3
70 “I came in one day”: From Mark Evanier, “Jack FAQs,”
Jack Kirby Collector
44, Fall 2005, p. 13.
75 “wasn’t going to have to be paid back”: Jim Amash, “Roy Thomas Interview,”
Jack Kirby Collector
18, January 1998.
