http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/05/original-art-stories-don-heck-in-his.html
Henry
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http://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2011/05/original-art-stories-don-heck-in-his.html
Henry
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My response...
"For years the credit for the first Iron Man story had Heck pencilling from Kirby lay-outs, something which, as Heck states in the following, just wasn’t true. Kirby perpetuated this story, stating more than once that he plotted and laid out the story for Heck to pencil"
I've never seen the story credited that way, nor have I seen Jack Kirby claiming he did it. However, it should be noted, Jack Kirby did FULL PENCILS on 3 of the first 5 IRON MAN episodes, so it's possible that led to some confusion. Further, from multiple readings and intense study, I cannot shake the strong feeling that the first 3 episodes were NOT published in the order that they were created. The 3rd episode-- by Kirby & Ayers (often, the "go-to guys" to START a new series at the time) has so much information about the background of Tony Stark, and Iron Man, and features a character who (if you ignore the fact that he NEVER appeared again) appears to be intended as the series' recurring ARCH-ENEMY. Sounds like a "pilot" episode, doesn't it? (I also have the strongest feeling "Dr. Strange" was a re-working of THE YELLOW CLAW, who Kirby worked on in the late 50's. He had a daughter who kept trying to make him give up his dreams of conquest, too.)
There's been reports that IRON MAN was delayed quite a few months before it debuted, as if they were trying to work out the kinks and figure out how they wanted it to go. My belief is that Jack may have pencilled all 3 of his episodes back-to-back, but THEN, Don Heck got brought in to do the ORIGIN, which was published first. If this does happen to be the case (and again, I have no proof one way or the other), then Jack AND Don would both be correct about who did the "1st" story.
"While Kirby did pencil the cover, but there is no evidence, other than Kirby’s own statements (which have been disputed by Lieber, Heck and Stan Lee) to suggest that he had anything to do with the interior of the issue that introduced Iron Man."
Hell, all you have to do is LOOK at it to tell, it's DON HECK's storytelling, NOT Kirby's. Even if Jack provided stick-figures (as I suspect he did when he later worked with Bill Everett), the panel breakdowns and the pacing would be Jack's. The ORIGIN story ISN'T-- it's Don's.
"Drawn by Heck alone, the story was scripted by Larry Lieber, from a plot provided by Stan Lee."
There's a topic for lengthy heated dispute if I ever saw one. What exactly constitutes a Stan lee "PLOT"? 2 sentences spoken verbally? The name of that issue's villain? Or Stan passing on something JACK KIRBY said to him during a conversation??? It has been suggested that a LOT of stories where the "plot" was credited to Stan were actually JACK's ideas, and this very much includes the ones Jack had nothing to do with drawing. The same has been said about John Romita's run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, that John Romita, NOT Stan Lee, was plotting the book virtually solo for the entire length of his run, EVEN on those issues when he had nothing to do with the art (John Buscema, Gil Kane, etc.).
"Leiber has always maintained that he provided a full script for Heck to draw from."
Very possible. I'd bet Don Heck WOULD illustrate a full script handed him by Larry Lieber. As opposed to Jack Kirby, would would make paper airplanes out of it, then do what HE wanted instead.
"The same has been said about John Romita's run on AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, that John Romita, NOT Stan Lee, was plotting the book virtually solo for the entire length of his run, EVEN on those issues when he had nothing to do with the art (John Buscema, Gil Kane, etc.)."
OK, so you're of the school that thinks Stan did nothing but steal credit and sign his name to the stories. That's not my view, from what I've read. NOTHING got into those books without Stan's approval. Marvel's Silver Age comics were a collaboration between Stan and his artists.
The many pages of Don Heck artwork, inked by himself, in the Ant-Man Essentials book, is beautiful stuff. As far as I know, little or none of that had been reprinted before, and it needs to be seen. Heck's later pencils were almost always paired with inkers who did him no favors.
I remember the interview when Gary Groth put the words 'Don Heck' in Harlan Ellison's mouth when Ellison was groping for an example of 'the worst artist,' and also remember Ellison retracting that slur and apologizing later. But it had its effect, and that comment followed Heck ever after. It was a shame.
Interesting blog read about Heck here:
http://www.comicbitsonline.com/2011/07/08/don-heck-by-20th-century-...
OK, so you're of the school that thinks Stan did nothing but steal credit and sign his name to the stories. That's not my view, from what I've read.
We're talking about a lot of comics over many years. It could easily have varied artist by artist, day by day, issue by issue as to how much detail Stan provided and how much the artist provided. There are plenty of stories of Stan leaping around his office, acting out various scenes, and stories of him saying this month's villain was Doc Ock, go to it.
I've got original SA art in which the artist wrote into the margins around each panel what essentially was going on and even suggested dialogue so Stan would understand the thinking. Each of those is marked off as it was dealt with, and most of the time the suggestion is elaborated on at least if not changed substantially.
Add to all that the fact that they were scrambling to do a lot of work with not enough people and they didn't give much thought to documenting who did what each day. They never expected people to still be discussing it so many years later.
As has been said other places, I've seen Kirby and Ditko as writers, and I know Stan was contributing a lot. Ideas are good, but execution is critical to popularity. Without both, it fails.
I think Stan should've been more adamant about ensuring the artists got credit back in the heady days of the 70s as the media got more interested. That probably caused as much anger and declarations that Stan was just the office boy as anything. But he doesn't do that any more, and everyone knows better. Finding the exact division on each issue isn't going to happen.
-- MSA
"I think Stan should've been more adamant about ensuring the artists got credit back in the heady days of the 70s as the media got more interested."
Damn straight.
Originally, Stan didn't do this because STAN was getting paid for the PLOTTING he wasn't doing. Later, he was being PAID as company spokesperson to maintain that "MARVEL" created the stories and the characters, not mere freelancers.
The breach between Lee & Ditko where STAN stopped talking to Ditko occured because Ditko started getting PAY and CREDIT for his plots. I suspect both Lee & Ditko care more about the PAY. With Steve, Stan stopped getting it, and he was pissed about it.
Craig Boldman wrote:
"The many pages of Don Heck artwork, inked by himself, in the Ant-Man Essentials book, is beautiful stuff. As far as I know, little or none of that had been reprinted before, and it needs to be seen. Heck's later pencils were almost always paired with inkers who did him no favors."
I have ALMOST all of Don's Iron Man episodes in TALES OF SUSPENSE in the original printing. Reproduction ALWAYS suffers in reprints, but some artists' work suffers more than others, and Don Heck was one of the most extreme casualties. He used a variety of line widths, but his THIN lines were EVEN THINNER than anything Vince Colletta ever did, and in reprints they tend to completely disappear.
The printing quality always varied at Marvel, but presumably so did deadlines. Don't solo work varies GREATLY from episode to episode. Some of it is painful to look at, but SOME of it is GORGEOUS, even STUNNING. TOS #57 gets my vote for the BEST-looking episode where Don inked himself. Every panel is glorious, not only the layouts, but the finishes. He was really on top of his game that issue.
Which makes it such a shame that, when he started doing THE AVENGERS, he didn't have time to continue doing both pencils AND inks. The quality of the inks he received also varied greatly. Dick Ayers took around 3 whole episodes, apparently, to figure out what he was doing on Iron Man. But I never cared for his work over Don on AVENGERS. When Mike Esposito debuted on Iron Man, it was STUNNING!! Mike's inks on his 1st episode were SO sharp, SO precise, it looked like a MACHINE did them, not a human being. How did he do that? However, it didn't last long. Esposito is the first of many inkers I've seen working for Marvel who started out FANTASTIC, then quickly plunged in quality once those monthly deadlines kicked in. Within 6 months, the quality of Esposito's inks sank to the level they stayed at for most of his time at Marvel (not counting that period in the mid-70's when they got MUCH WORSE).
Wally Wood over Don Heck was GORGEOUS. People often accuse Wood's inks of being "overpowering". What I see is more his inks are faithful to the intent of the penciller, while simultaneously making them sharper, cleaner, BETTER than any other inker ever managed. I really wish Heck-Wood had been a long-term team.
I also loved the one issue of AVENGERS by Heck-Romita. Heck-Giacoia was also VERY, very nice. But by the time Don began inking himself on the book, it was AWFUL. GHASTLY!!! I have one of those in the original printing-- and it's worse than I could believe, considering it wasn't a reprint. When George Roussos takes over and he's a huge improvement, you know there was a problem.
A few years ago i finally filled the holes in my AVENGERS collection,getting the ESSENTIAL book with the end of Roy's run and the beginning of Steve Englehart's. I was surprised at how many issues Dave Cockrum inked, working over Rich Buckler, George Tuska, Jim Starlin, and Don Heck. the Don Heck collaboration really bothered me. Back then, Dave was one of the BEST new inkers the company had ever seen. And half of that issue was inked by Joe Sinnott, who I still consider one of the best they ever had. And that issue just didn't look right. If Dave & Joe were working hard to "drag" Don's work UP, it appeared they were fighting a tough battle, as Don's pencils by then were DRAGGING them down at the same time. Instead of an issue that should have looked great, it was more like, "what's wrong here?"
Having subsequent issues inked by Frank McLaughlin, Mike Esposito, Frank Bolle didn't help. Having Heck ink over Bob Brown or John Buscema didn't help, either. Somehow, the quality of Don's work had really taken a nosedive by the early 70's. I was pleasantly surprised when he began receiving better inks once he went to DC, but only sometimes. My favorites included Joe Giella (on STEEL) and Brett Breeding (on a JLA 2-parter).
Back in the late 60's, my other favorite inkers for Don include Tom Palmer (on X-MEN) and Syd Shores (CAPTAIN MARVEL #16). That CM issue was SO damned good, it made me wish the team who'd done it had been on the series from the beginning. That also goes for Archie Goodwin, who did better than anyone else had to that point, including Arnold Drake. It's sad they didn't get the chance to do more, due to behind-the-scenes office politics. (Gil Kane REALLY wanted to do the book, which apparently made him a rarity, and he got the chance; but the team who preceded him were kicked off in his favor, BEFORE their single episode even got to the printer.)
What was the complaint about Heck's cover? Did Stan think it looked too "busy" and might confuse readers? Kane's cover was obviously last minute. The figures, especially Wanda, are very stiff looking in Kane's version.
There was an obvious gap between the first and second Iron Man stories, the second had what looked like short reviews of untold stories. Also Iron Man was incredibly powerful at this point. When he switched to the red and yellow armor later he seemed a lot weaker than he did in ToS#40.
Iron Man being delayed would explain why Tales of Suspense didn't get a superhero until several months after the other three anthology books did.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who's been here a while, but personally I thought Heck got the shaft. He was an extremely talented artist, who had the misfortune to show up and work at the same company as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, John Romita and John Buscema. Easy to dismiss someone's work as "hack-work" when you're comparing it to some of the best artists to ever pick up a pencil.
I'm surprised he didn't get more horror work in the 70s. He would have been good on Werewolf By Night or the Living Mummy.
Heck's problem was more that he was assigned to the Avengers, and that wasn't his forte, whereas the others adapted to it well. Almost anything else would've been better and been less action-oriented. His work on Iron Man is pretty good, He also was helped by some inkers, especially himself, and not by others.
-- MSA.
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