Has he ever actually written a good book? I decided to try to

Amazing Spider-Man.

>>94117039
He originated (allegedly) a lot of characters and his writing (allegedly) was quick and good for the time. Did not age well but it was new and unique back in the day.

>Has he ever actually written a book?

>>94117039
Reading old comics you have to take the time into consideration. Comic writing evolves, even Alan Moore and others, as time goes on. While a lot of the text in those books suck the ideas and execution was good.

>>94117039
I'm not fan of Stan, but to be fair to the dude, you pretty much had to fill each panel with text otherwise as a writer you weren't paid. So that, coupled with his older dialog made his stories worse than they could have been.

Spidey is great
Ff is great
Early cap was fun

X-men is widely known as the worst of the classic books, yet it still introduced tons of ideas and characters that are still used all the time

>>94117039
Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four are his good runs. His other co-creations needed someone else on writing duties to get them over.

How will /co/ act when he finally dies? It will be soon.

>>94117039
Have you ever written a good post? I decided to slog through your OP and it is so fucking bad. My hope now is that you become not shit when you stop gargling cocks.

>>94117039
You picked one of his most infamously bad books. Like a year into X-Men was when he had taken on so many books he was barely doing anything anymore. I haven't read any Roy Thomas X-Men but my understanding is that everything pre-Claremont is a curiosity and nothing more.

Read FF, Spider-Man, Hulk, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense during the first ~4 years of Marvel. I think the most pure Lee writing you'll get are the post-Ditko years of Spider-Man, that was the book he paid the most attention to.

>>94118968
>wrote too many characters
>overly wordy
>best work was on Spider-man

Is Lee Bendis's real dad?

>>94117039
For a pothead cartoonist he was a literary genius.
Remember that when he created his most important characters it was the '60s.
The Don Draper era.
Stan had anti-establishment messaging, anti-war messaging, civil rights messaging, feminism messaging, and even general moral and ethical philosophy, complete with differing opinions, peppered throughout all his comics.

50-some years later we're somewhat used to comics pushing those boundaries, but books and TV shows like Game-of-Thrones are just only now catching up to the notion that playing around with the audience perception of who's actually the villain and who's actually the hero, Stan was doing that with characters like The Hulk in 1963!
We've had a few bad years in comics since then (like the late '80s, the '90s) where the trend was to dumb things down, and it's hard to understand how different expectations were in each past generation, but nobody expected early Marvel to do all the things we now take for granted.
Comics are no longer only meaningless stories made to amuse small children.
And we own Stan Lee for much of that.

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>>94119007
bendis didn't make up any characters (of worth) tho

>>94117039
The tone of Spider-Man plays to his strengths best and Ditko was plotting, this is why it's his best work. Lee brought amazing upbeat energy to any comics page but for a book with heavy themes like X-Men or Daredevil were explored with more substance by later writers which kind of made Lee's stuff seem lightweight and silly in retrospect. But Spider-Man has always been a basically lighthearted book with lots of ponderous soapy stuff (another of his specialties) which is why his run still feels like the definitive Spidey voice.

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>>94119132
If you believe Jack Kirby's family, neither did Lee ;)

>>94119278

Kirby's family where just a bunch of shit cunts trying to make a nickle of their grand pappy's name

>>94117039
I'm reading through the first volume of Silver Surfer and it's good shit.

>>94117334
There's a great hidden storyline/backstory for why early X-Men suddenly turned to shit and didn't recover until Claremont took over.

Waaaaay back in the beginning Stan Lee had this idea: superhero school.
But remember: Stan Lee was a radical 1960s hippie pothead.
And what was the radical 1960s hippie pothead youth culture all about back then?
Dropping out of school and fighting "THE MAN" and the establishment's oppression through lies and propaganda . . .
So Stan writes the X-Men as a youth counterculture story: the mind-controlling Professor X (who rats on his fellow mutants to the FBI) sends his own students up against the vilified political radical, Magneto . . .
Early issues had Magneto's "evil" schemes being the announcement to the world that this hidden population of mutants exist, conquering a South American dictatorship in order to establish a mutant homeland, and recruiting powerful mutants to his cause.
Given that early empowered feminist icon, Marvel Girl was already questioning Xavier's motivations in issue #1, it's not hard to see what was planned.
But what happened was MARVEL EDITORIAL stepped in and changed the ending to the issue where Professor X turns on his students and tries to kill them, so Stan tried to kill off Professor X ... and MARVEL EDITORIAL stepped in and Xavier was retconned back to life the very next issue ... and so then Stan Lee wrote Magneto out with an alien abduction and quit the book.
Of course, that didn't protect the character from MARVEL EDITORIAL meddling and Magneto was soon returned as a stereotypical dastardly villain with no moral compass.
Without Stan's plan the X-Men were the worst comics of the 1970s. And you'll notice that in the '80s Claremont tried to turn Xavier into a villain, but was stopped by MARVEL EDITORIAL too.
From then on Stan-friendly writers have portrayed Xavier as a secret arch-villain doing secretive asshole things all the time.
But ultimately, "THE MAN" won.

>>94117039
Spider-Man is great.

>>94117039
Try to read the yellow boxes in Stan's voice.

>>94117039
X-men is his and Kirby's worst running series together. Don't touch that shit. The only things worth knowing from that period is, the original 5, Magneto and the brotherhood were their archfoe, sentinels, Polaris and Havok. Giant Size X-men fills you in on practically all the essential details.

>>94121411
Stan left the series long before Claremont. The Havok, Polaris and Sentinel arcs aren't a bad read at all and the art is fucking stellar.

>>94120153
I think it was better they didn't go that route. Last thing they needed was more Doom Patrol parallels. And I think having Xavier do more morally questionable things in a subtle manner made him more interesting. It also makes his dynamic with Magneto more fascinating.. Instead of just presenting one as all good and the other all evil, then just reversing the roles, they have them both in these comfortable levels of gray.

>>94117039

Silver Surfer is where Stan shines. Can't remember the book he did with the French artist, but it's pretty good.

Also his Daredevil isn't bad.

>>94117039
He's a bad comic writer but was a great publicist. There's a straightforward reason as to why Ditko, Kirby et al have made good comics without him and he's never made a good comic without a collaborator.

That said, in spite of Lee's dialogue and captions, silver age Spider-Man and Fantastic Four are great comics.

Stan Lee's books are super fucking dense, it's insane. The old style of writing with constant explanation marks makes reading each page in your head take longer, and it interrupts the action and flow of the comic. I would say most other writers did a better job at writing comics. Stan Lee's real talent was giving characters a unique voice.

But Silver Age Spider-Man and Fantastic Four were good. There's a point where his writing really smooths out and the panel layout gets interesting, where FF and Spider-Man pick up speed.

>>94118015
This.
I'm reading Marvel in a production order now and so far Amazing and F4 seems like the only good comic books (aside from maybe pre-regular Ant-Man Tales of Astonish)

>>94120153
This sounds like bullshit, IIRC in the very first issue Magneto tries to blow up the world with nuclear missiles.It was Claremont who made him a sympathetic figure.

>>94119472
>>94121883
This. There's a certain irony to the fact that Stan's absolute best work is on a character he really wasn't involved in the creation of.

>the secret origin of the silver surfer
>jack, who's this silver guy flying around?
>I figured galactus needed a herald, stan
>we didn't discuss this, jack
>I know, stan
>I wish you wouldn't do things like this, jack
>I know, stan, but I gotta follow my muse

>>94119278
i think staniel thought of them, and they drew them

He writes dialogues for the stories of the artists. Lets not pretend he has any imput in the plots.

>>94117039
ASM
FF
TOS Cap
All well past "good," the're some of the best comics ever.
Roy Thomas on a anything other than Conan is a plodding disaster that makes Stan look terse and poetic.

>>94119448
Not really. Kirby in life always said this. Not because he wanted money (he didn't go to trial) but because it was the truth.

>>94124232
His contribution is still worthy, especially in regards ro making a nMe for everyone involved.

>>94124210
Stan did some awesome things, but lets not get carried away.

>>94117039
His dialogue on ASM and FF is pretty good

>>94117039

Ravager 2099 was good stuff.

>>94124245
Quote him.

>>94124280
Agreed.
His Ben Grim actually makes me lol every now and again.
It's just a diiferent style. You get very used to it. If you go back and read mostly or nothing but comics from the 60's to the 80's for a year ot two, which I did, once Marvel turned to shit, today's stuff Suffers HARD by comparison.

>>94124210
Lee would say "Jackie boy, gimme a story where the FF fight God!" And Kirby would go and create a whole detailed story, plot and visuals, for that brief little plothook that Stan supplied. He'd send the finished book back with notes, that Stan would often ignore, and Stan would then add in his trademark dialogue.

So Stan helped generate the ideas, and scripted the final product (often to Jack's chagrin) but he didn't really create the characters or stories beyond providing Kirby that initial spark to let loose.

>>94117039
If you want a legit answer to this question, read his Silver Surfer series. It's Stan writing a philosophical character, with a lot of fun moments, that avoid a lot of Marvel cliches at the time.
Silver Surfer tries to learn about humanity, despite not being human himself, and not being able to understand out simple concepts.

If you want to get to the best part, just read Silver Surfer (vol 1.) #3-8

>>94124434
But Denzel Washington told me Jack Kirby's Silver Surfer is the only true Silver Surfer.

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>>94117039
>Has he ever actually written a good book?

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>>94117039
>Has he ever actually written a good book?
Yes he has.

>>94117039
Silver Surfer, ASM, Fantastic Four, Avengers.

Silver Surfer is one of my favorite Marvel runs. Completely underrated. Norrin's interpersonal struggle was perfectly mixed with zaniness like aliens and Mephisto.

People constantly forget that Stan is a major piece of the creation of the Silver Age, whether they like it or not. He knew where to aim his artists and get the best out of their creativity. ASM was still great with Romita Sr., and #39-40 and 50 were some of the best stories.

>>94124712
>ASM was still great with Romita Sr.
I honestly prefer the Lee/Romita run over Lee/Ditko.

>>94124513
It's actually from the Atlas era.

>>94124745
This. Ditko opposed the idea of making Norman Osborn the Green Goblin because he thought it would glorify crime or some shit.

>>94117229
>to be fair to the dude, you pretty much had to fill each panel with text otherwise as a writer you weren't paid.

Anon... he was the Editor in Chief. He could have written 5 words per comic and gotten paid the same rate.

>>94117039
Nobody liked X-Men for the first decade. The only reason they survived at all is that Lee kept them in reprint until New X-Men.

>>94117146
>allegedly

Did. Not allegedly. You've got nothing to cover for here; allegedly is an unwarranted adverb.

>>94120153
>MARVEL EDITORIAL

By 1963 Stan Lee had been editor-in-chief of Timely/Atlas/Marvel comics for 18 years straight, 19 years if you count his '41-'42 stint.

But he only wrote what 36 issues of X-Men or so because... it didn't sell. At all. He loved the concept of mutants and a secret conflict between "children of the atom", but he couldn't get it to sell. Hulk was a similar bind; but with Hulk, he had more stories to tell, so instead of leaving it in a reprint loop, he wrote more in Tales to Astonish as back-up features.

>>94124344
You're over simplifying it. Maybe they would be that abbreviated in the later years, but Stan's synopsis would normally be about a page to two pages long.

>>94117039
Silver Age X-men is shit. The worst book of anything Marvel put out during the Silver Age. Even Kirby was phoning it in. The X-men literally only existed so Stan wouldn't have to come up with reasons for people to have powers anymore.

Just because Lee's X-men is shit doesn't mean the rest of his books are. Just that X-men had 0 effort put into it, even by Kirby who didn't give a fuck about the X-men either. Kirby even said that he didn't like the X-men and thing he design for it that he had any fondness for were the Sentinels. Really says a lot that the only thing Kirby liked about the X-men were the mutant-hunting robots.

>>94124913
No, he wanted the Goblin to be some random guy because he thought that having some connection to Peter Parker would be to hoaky.

>>94124947
Nope. He was a very honest editor. The reason creators began being credited at all on comics is - Lee thought they should be, so he argued it out with Goodman, and then they were.

He'd have paid himself the same page rate - someone else would have been checking anyway - because anything else would be dickish.

What he did do, and he's been very open about, is his gaming of that same system to create verbose characters whose speech/thoughts/narration boxes took up more room and meant more money for him. It's something people always seem to ignore when they argue the Marvel Method was just him writing over an existing story that someone else came up with - the artist had to leave space for Lee's extremely lengthy dialogue, so they had to be working together knowing each other's needs. Jack needs to draw a dinosaur, Stan needs to paste pages from the thesaurus in.

>>94117039
You pretty much picked his worst comic.

STAN LEE COMIC TIER LIST:

>BEST EVER TIER
Fantastic Four
Amazing Spider-Man

>FUCKING AWESOME TIER
Silver Surfer
Doctor Strange

>COOL TIER
Thor
Hulk

>SHIT TIER
Daredevil
X-Men

>HILARIOUSLY BAD TIER
Ravage 2099

>OK tier
everything else

>>94125073
The point is he didn't want there to be that additional conflict.

>>94124245
Not according to Jim Steranko, i.e. the only completely objective person in the whole debate.

Steranko has always maintained that Lee was a COLLABORATOR and that he deserves SOME of the credit, but not ALL.

So it's not as simple as "STAN LEE IS THE BOB KANE OF MARVEL" like you fucking retards want to believe it is.

>>94117182
>Reading old comics you have to take the time into consideration. Comic writing evolves, even Alan Moore and others, as time goes on.
Very much this. It's a "we can reach great heights, because we stand on the shoulders of giants" thing.

>>94125129
>it's a "Jim Steranko punches Bob Kane" episode
Wish I could see it.

>>94125153
Jim didn't punch Kane.
He bitch-slapped him.

>>94125101
Ravage is a masterpiece.

>>94124434
>If you want to get to the best part, just read Silver Surfer (vol 1.) #3-8
you might as well read all 18 issues. I've been reading it this past week and it was issues 10-11 that made me realise how impressive the series is.

>>94124051
Yeah, what happened to that whole thing about Xavier being Mandela and Magneto being Malcolm X
You hear all kinds of stories about what early X-Men was supposed to mean and what was supposed to happen

>>94125129

Don't forget this from Mark Evanier, Kirby's close personal friend and biographer.

>Who did what on the Lee-Kirby collaborations?

>Ooh…tough one to start with. Well, it's safe to say Jack did all the penciling. Beyond that, we run into all sorts of semantic arguments having to do with definitions of the word "writing" and with the fact that Mssrs. Lee and Kirby both have / had notoriously poor memories. You also have the fact that, when two creative talents get together and come up with an idea, each of them might honestly believe that he suggested at least the core of the concept if not the entire thing. This happens in any collaboration anywhere and, ultimately, you usually have to just say that they both had the idea. Ergo, I say that the Lee-Kirby creations are Lee-Kirby creations.

>Some of the ideas sound more like Stan to me, some sound more like Jack and there's some documentation and other evidence that suggests that certain ideas flowed more from one gent than the other. Even then, even where one person contributed 80% of the notion, they are still Lee-Kirby co-creations. The plots came from both, though Stan has acknowledged that once Marvel started to grow and he became busier, Jack was largely on his own to figure out the details of each story, if not the basic plotline. Stan's dialogue sometimes closely paraphrased marginal notes that Jack wrote while drawing, and sometimes deviated altogether. I do think Stan has been unfairly maligned by those who've said that all he did was retype and polish Jack's notations. I also think Jack was wronged by credits that gave him no credit for anything other than drawing because he certainly did more than that.

>>94126167
>Ergo, I say that the Lee-Kirby creations are Lee-Kirby creations.
I think this is really sums it up. When two people are collaborating there is no way to go back and say who created what. You springboard ideas off each other until something takes shape.

>>94122153
Some of his other stories are good but ASM and FF are the only constant good runs. Then again Lee was writing too many books to have all of them written well.

>>94120153
This sounds like nothing that's in the book really

>>94126194
This quote is the most perfect quote I have ever read when this argument came up about Lee's credibility.

>>94126662
I thought Thor was consistently good, although Stan did have other writers to help pick up the slack when he couldn't focus on it.