>Kirby >Ditko >Claremont How do you feel knowing that

The fact that you don't mention Lee proves you're 12.

>>91271024

If Stan never met Kirby and Ditko no one would have a clue who Stan is.

If Kirby and Ditko never met Stan they would still both be successes.

Kinda forgetting about tons of marvel greats like Joe Simon, Roy Thomas, John Romita, Bill Everett, Neal Adams etc.

>>91271139
It's more like of Martin Goodman (Stan's Uncle's brother in law) didn't hire him and then place him in charge when Timely almost went under.

Now we post characters who are creatively tapped and need to be retired for all eternity or get development that changes them forever from their most famous story with no possibility of retcon:

>Jean Grey
>Peter Parker

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I really disagree, plenty of writers have not only greatly expanded on what they've done but tons of original creations have come about as well.

Peter David's Hulk blows anything Lee and Kirby did out of the water. Jim Steranko's Nick Fury was a landmark. Your OP image alone contains art that references works of Bill Mantlo, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman, Steve Englehart, Walt Simonson, Mark Gruenwald, and David Michelinie.

The mid- to late-2000's may have been the most creatively bankrupt era of Marvel's history, so if that's all you've ever read from them, of course you'd believe what you put in your OP.

>>91271139
Yeah, this proves you're a memeing idiot who only knows how to parrot shit they've heard. Yes, Kirby was responsible for the vast majority of Marvel's early success. But Lee was absolutely a great writer back then as well. Lee spent years writing monster comics and other stuff for Atlas before Marvel was even a thing. Lee was still a big figure in the early Silver Age, at least as much as you could be without working for DC. He was the one who brought from those monster comics and Twilight Zone style anthologies the more human aspect that put Marvel on the map. Kirby was a great storyteller with amazingly creative ideas, but like Gardner Fox he couldn't write characters for shit and that's where Lee came in.

And even though Ditko made Spider-Man what it was, Lee absolutely kept him going long after Ditko moved on. He took a lot of undue credit and turned into more of a businessman than a creator after the 60's but this recent meme of him being a talentless hack who contributed nothing has got to stop.

Read Marvel Comics: The Untold Story and learn what the fuck you're talking about before you come back here and spew your uneducated diarrhea all over the place.

>>91271507
>Peter David's Hulk blows anything Lee and Kirby did out of the water. Jim Steranko's Nick Fury was a landmark. Your OP image alone contains art that references works of Bill Mantlo, Roy Thomas, Tony Isabella, Frank Miller, Marv Wolfman, Steve Englehart, Walt Simonson, Mark Gruenwald, and David Michelinie.

Just about all of these creators are just building on what Kirby or Ditko did. Miller was a bigger Eisner / manga fan making him an exception but I'm sure he lifted from Ditko.

>>91271650
Of course they're building on it, that's what the point of a shared universe is. But they're not derivative. And like I said there's oodles of original content there. And of course they're taking influence from their predecessors, for decades comics WERE superheroes, you really couldn't be influenced by anything else.

I mean, Lee may have created Hawkeye but was anything he did with them anything close to what Thomas or Englehart would go on to do?

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>>91270979
This feels like a shitty complaint to throw at modern writers and artists, who for the last 40 years have realized they aren't going to get residuals for work-for-hire contracts.

Sure, they might make a new X-man or a pet side character, but why the fuck would you create "Spawn" today and go, God, I hope I can insert into the Marvel universe? You better be a big name and have a good agent, and even then you'd be better off going independent.

Also, superhero comics and their fans are generally conservative. I don't mean politically here, I mean creatively and financially. Change happens, just at a glacial pace because fans prefer familiarity to sudden, arbitrary changes.

No offense OP, but are you new to comics? These are pretty well-known facts/problems in the industry.

>>91272173
I've been reading comics for 20 years. Fuck off with your low-level trolling.

>>91272231
Me and other people here are the ones trying to explain to you why things are the way they are. Don't be a dick just because you're not getting the answers you wanted.

>>91272340
>>91271852
>>91271507
I'm not the one being a dick here. You people are protecting a creatively bankrupt like fucking house-beaten shills.

>>91272173

You're not disagreeing with the OP post, you're just offering an explanations as to why it is that way.

>>91272556
No shit? There's nothing to disagree over; the problem is the situation is more complex than what OP is talking about. It's like some outsider asking America how they like their shitty health care. The industry is what it is and in a lot of ways we the fans perpetuate the endless cycle.

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>>91272173
>>91272665

Explain this man and what happened to him and his X-Men work at Marvel.

>>91272758
Almost all of it got rolled back in the Whedon run and onward. This what I mean about comics being creatively conservative.

>>91270979
>Not mentioning Romita.
What a pleb.

>>91271139
Stan is more an editor than writer, but editors are really important in the Silver Age.

Julie Schwartz is more the "creator" of the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern and Justice League (the comics that led to the Marvel superhero comics) than the writers and artists, not that they weren't important but the editor's style is all over them.

Stan wasn't as hands-on an editor and liked to get uncredited story ideas from his artists but you can easily compare the stuff Kirby did as his own writer/editor and see the stuff Stan was obsessed with (love triangles, angsty heroes who complain a lot) that Jack didn't care about.

>>91273258

You're generalizing about what is essentially a meaningless title.

Saying that Stan and Schwartz both played the role in creation because they held the same title of "editor" is way off base.

>>91273300

*both played the SAME role in creation

>>91272966
>>91272758
Despite that, his X-Men run fed Marvel for a decade
>Fantomex got a series, than he always appeared in a team
>Quentin Quire was the darling of Aaron's X-Men, and he will even appear in Thor
>The World appeared in many comics, especially Remender's X-Force
>Remender played a lot with the various Weapon [number]s
>the Stepford Cuckoos are mainstays
>his work led to Phoenix: Endsong and Warsong
>Emma and Scott stayed together for more than a decade
>Sublime appeared in Wood's X-Men
>Xorn appeared in the Ultimate U
>there was another mummudrai in Carey's X-Men
>even Hickman's Avengers picked up a plotline from it (the lost Shiar soldier)

Let's face it: without him, the X-Men comics would have been even more shittier than they were in the past 10-15 years.

>>91272988
Romita is a craftsmen and one of the best in any era. But I would never call him an artist, he stayed on Spider-Man because it was the bet paying gig and he stayed until he was taken off it.

In the Finding Ditko documentary he says he can't understand why Ditko left, because for Romita Sr. a steady page rate meant more than creative control.

Craftsmen aren't lesser than artists, but it is a distinction. Romita and his son, the Kuberts, and the Buscemas were all crafstmen who produced tons of material of a high caliber.

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>>91271139
You've got that totally backwards. Kirby & Ditko were already 20-years comic vets before working with Lee, and were literally whos for it.
They'd "still both be successes" in that they'd had both kept working and have Wikipedia pages (maybe). At most you've got one half of the team that created Cap on your hands, and without a war Cap was a fucking failure. He'd be another Golden Age curiosity like Aarkus or Uncle Sam had he not been reintroduced on Stan's watch.

>>91273773
without him, House of M would never happen, so nope.

>>91271194
Yeah, I'm not sure Ditko contributed as much as Kirby or Claremont in the grand scheme of things.
He only did like 40 issues of Spidey. And people here were calling Dr Strange a "Literally Who E-lister" or whatever for years before the movie.

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>>91270979
Like Englehart was right.
2025's almost here lads, trust in the Hypercrisis.

>>91274107
>and were literally whos for it.

Kirby at that point would've still been known as part of the Simon and Kirby duo and they had produced a lot of proflific work with their distinct style. Calling someone who worked in Golden Age comics a "literally who" is meaningless when up to that point comic fandom only gradually started to take notice of who did the comic books. I mean Carl Barks wasn't even credited on his Disney comics but fans were calling him "The Good Duck Artist" based on clues in his work (he signed his name in the comics with the image of a barking dog) and some figured out his identity in the 1950s. Kirby would've still had a following on the basis of him and Joe Simon creating Captain America.

Ditko I don't know if he would've been as well-known without Marvel since he produced sci-fi/horror/mystery and co-created Captain Atom.

>>91274179
Please tell me how you came to that conclusion

>>91274194
>Yeah, I'm not sure Ditko contributed as much as Kirby or Claremont in the grand scheme of things.

Most of the framework is there in Ditko's run. Writers keep coming back to the "Spider-Man Lifts Heavy Machinery" scene which was Ditko's idea (done at a time when he and Stan weren't collaborating on the plot). Villainwise most of the recurring villains that writers reuse over and over are usually his (Ock, Green Goblin, Lizard, Sandman, Electro, etc) or a variation of them (Hobgoblin, Demogoblin, etc still requires the creation of the Green Goblin).

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>>91270979
Wait hold the fuck up.
Mystique's the only fucking character in that image Claremont created. And I bet she's only even there because the movies went full retard.
He was one of the "derivatives and imitations" you're talking about, since his career mostly revolved around pre-existing characters & concepts. It's how he DEVELOPED them that made an impact. Many Kirby & Ditko creations are virtually unrecognizable now, because they only became popular when later creators fleshed them out.

Smh desu senpai, undermining your own point like that.

>>91274312
>Calling someone who worked in Golden Age comics a "literally who" is meaningless when up to that point comic fandom only gradually started to take notice of who did the comic books
Yes indeedy.
Guess who played a big part in changing that. :^)

>>91274506
Many of these characters & concepts only became worthwhile when later more balanced creators came along.
If issues 1-38 were truly Word of God, Doc Ock would be Spidey's archenemy, Pete himself would be a whole lot less likable, and you can bet your ass none of those villains would have any nuance.

>>91274699
EC Comics? Cause they started a fan following that paid attention to the artists.

Even after EC went away, fandom gradually started organizing itself. Jerry Bails started up the fanzine Alter Ego in 1961 (emphasis on that time was the DC revival), months before Fantastic Four #1 was published.

>>91275016
Dude, you're on /co/. Most people here have surface level of comic book history and even those who THINK they have deep knowledge have only snippets of shit they've heard.

>>91274904
>If issues 1-38 were truly Word of God, Doc Ock would be Spidey's archenemy,

And arguably he still was after Ditko but up to a point. Norman's only major thing up until the 80's was killing Gwen off, but you could remove any references to Gwen or Norman and most of the 70's comics would still be intact as is. Harry didn't become the Green Goblin until 1974 and then didn't become him again until 1978 to stop Bart Hamilton, and then pretty much forgot about it until the Hobgoblin returned. But Ock appeared a lot in the comics while Norman was absent.

Norman didn't get that reputation for being Spider-Man's greatest enemy until maybe the 80's (his actions indirectly caused the creation of the Hobgoblin) or 90's (his actions indirectly and directly caused Harry's eventual death; then he masterminded the Clone Saga and returned)

Honestly I can't tell if making Norman the big baddie was a good thing or not because I find most post-1996 Norman stories generally terrible. Even that Thunderbolts run didn't hold up that well as I remembered.

>>91275355

MAYBE IF EC REPRINTED THEIR LIBRARY IN AFFORDABLE COLLECTIONS THEIR PLACE IN HISTORY WOULD BE BETTER KNOWN BY FANS

Ree

>>91270979
Whoever says Stan didn't and couldn't write should really check Silver Surfer: Parable.

Enough with this "Stan was a hack" meme. He could have taken a lot of credit from Ditko and Kirby, but the truth is somewhere in the middle, and a lot of what made Spider-Man and FF successes came from Stan as well as the other guys.

>>91273773

Most of those things are so minor they don't prove anything.

>>91276043
It's not a meme, shithead.

>>91274508

Sure, Xlaremont is in no way responsible for the popularity of Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, and all the other 70s/80s X-Men. And what's Jean Grey best known for?
2/10 bait.

Other writers and artists have managed to build upon the framework that Kirby, Ditko, and Lee laid out. On the other hand, the X-Men franchise began decaying after Claremont left.

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>>91276043

Yeah, there was alchemy of the bullpin from all these greats. Stan fucked most of them over and people are over correcting as time goes on bc funny meemes

and Ditko is amazing but Jazzy John is as important to Spidey.
and Marvel's biggest hero right now is one that everyone got a hand on (Don Heck underrated as fuck)

>>91276311
We're... kinda on the same page here, dude.
Maybe finish reading a post before you start getting mad?

>>91275355
I'm always on the lookout for snippets of deep knowledge, it's annoying when people who know less than me act like they're experts because I have to work out that they're full of it. I try to remember to say things like "I've heard" or make it clear I'm asking a question but this is the internet and people read into things what they want to.

>>91276599
Come to think of it the red/gold armor design was Ditko's.

>>91274508
>Many Kirby & Ditko creations are virtually unrecognizable now, because they only became popular when later creators fleshed them out.

Such as?

>>91276950
>it's annoying when people who know less than me act like they're experts because I have to work out that they're full of it.

I get that feeling on this board from time to time. But on the other hand this place is better than some other similar boards I've been to where it's worse.

>>91271139
>If Kirby and Ditko never met Stan they would still both be successes.

I really doubt that

>>91277521
I only half agree, see >>91274312
Kirby would probably be known. I don't know for sure about Ditko.

>>91276043
>He could have taken a lot of credit from Ditko and Kirby

And the bizarre thing is he doesn't take any credit from them. He's always, consistently praised them.

It's the contrarian fags who are always screaming that Lee stole everything.

Everyone is missing the point about Kirby and Ditko succeeding or being known without Lee.

With a few exceptions, their most popular, enduring creations were in collaboration with Lee: Spider-Man, the FF, the Hulk, etc. Without Lee they would be respected figures in the comics community, but would never have the monumental cultural impact that they did through their Marvel creations.

Kirby and Ditko both, by an enormous margin, achieved their greatest successes in collaboration with Lee. Without him they'd have done fine but never reached those heights.

>>91277725
It's also pretty much impossible to speculate on what-ifs like this because the American comic industry would be so different without Marvel's 60s boom. It's entirely possible that American superhero comics in general would have continued to flounder and die without their Silver Age resurgence and the industry landscape in 2017 would be so different from ours that we can't even guess at what it would look like.