In 2014, the Jack Kirby estate reached a settlement with
Marvel that saw the late comics artist/writer finally receive credit for his
multitudinous contributions to co-creating the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee.
Comics historian John Morrow was an expert witness for the Kirby family in the
case. Five years later, Morrow has published his own investigation into the
matter of whether Kirby or Lee can be called the true father of Marvel in the
form of an oral history called Kirby
& Lee: Stuf’ Said!
The book is a chronological he said/he said narrative that
essentially picks up steam in the early sixties and continues through the
settlement. Oral histories tend to be unreliable, and Stuf’ Said! certainly comes with its own baggage. Stan Lee was a
shamelessly self-aggrandizing self-promoter who believed that writers are the
true creators. Jack Kirby was bitter and sometimes lashed out in both
interviews and satirical comics that depicted Lee as a talent leech. Despite
input from many of the people closest to these two men, a definitive answer to
Morrow’s central question remains elusive.
However, examining that question—which should really only be
of concern to the Kirby and Lee estates despite some fans treating it like some
sort of pro-wrestling rivalry— isn’t really the main draw of Stuf’ Said! The book is much more
interesting as a close examination of the ups and downs of a working
relationship between two very influential creative people with their own
personal foibles told largely in their own words without too much editorializing
by the author. Although Morrow’s role in the settlement may raise eyebrows, he
does an admirable job of remaining neutral throughout the book, occasionally
making an attempt to interpret the intent behind a statement while framing that
interpretation as something that needs to be taken with a grain of salt (which
he conveniently and cleverly signals with a little graphic of a salt shaker).
Morrow’s efforts to cover the men’s public opinions of each
other is certainly thorough, though there is the unavoidable issue of imbalance
since Lee was so addicted to performing interviews and writing editorials and
Kirby was not. There is also a lot of repetition to wade through as the men
tended to say the same things in a lot of these interviews: Lee incessantly explains
how it was his idea to create superheroes with foibles, Kirby regularly insists
he was behind the X-Men and the Fantastic Four because he was concerned about
radiation, Lee loves to say that Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hyde inspired him
to create the Hulk, and so on. Occasionally there are minor variations in these
statements that Morrow seizes on to point out an inconsistency in the speaker’s
memories, but all that repetition doesn’t always make for the most compelling
reading.
Still, fans who feel they have a pony in this race will find
Kirby & Lee: Stuf’ Said! fascinating, and like all books by Morrow’s TwoMorrow’s Publishing, it is great
to look at with oodles of color and B&W artwork and a witty format.
