kirbyfanatic wrote:
I've read accounts from Mark Evanier, either in his book or in The Jack Kirby Collector, where Evanier says that Kirby tried and tried to negotiate with Marvel prior to his leaving the company in 1970. So it's plainly incorrect for anyone to say that Kirby simply left Marvel in a huff without so much as a goodbye.  Evanier is on this board, he can correct me if I'm wrong.

Allen Smith


Not to beat a dead horse, Mark Evanier is no doubt an honest and honorable man, but he is hardly an impartial observer when it comes to Kirby. Particularly about things that happened in the 60's, which he didn't witness firsthand but is simply reporting what Kirby told him at some later date. There's no way to tell how much Kirby may have embellished his version of what happened many years earlier.

At any rate, "tried and tried" can mean different things to different people. It could mean weekly meetings in Stan's office, involving heated negotiations, or it could mean a couple of vague references to his level of compensation, made in passing, in phone conversations about other subjects. All we have to go on are Mark's retelling of Kirby's (likely slanted) recollections of the event, many years after the fact.

Don't forget the fact that Kirby was capable of telling some whoppers. Like the time he rode into Marvel's offices on a white horse, where he found Stan curled up in a ball in the corner, crying and desperate, whereupon he picked up crumbling remnants of Martin Goodman's company, placed them on his broad shoulders, and singlehandedly created the Marvel that would become the industry leader just a few short years later. Emot_ohreally