Sunday, March 17, 2013

And Not a Word Was Spoken-Dick Ayers-1962


Some absolutely lovely and detailed art from Western comics veteran Dick Ayers in this early Marvel Age cowboy story. Note that Stan Lee is credited with script and yet, outside of the title, a poster and one caption, there IS none.








3 comments:

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

There war a mite more words on that poster at th' end than were really necessary, warn't there?

mr ed said...

I have to wonder if Lee's application of "credits" wasn't acting as Marvel's invoice system. The published comic book credits the writer or artist, and the writer or artist is paid for what ever number of pages. Here is a curious example. In Alter-Ego magazine Dick Ayers said he wrote a story called for TWO-GUN KID #61 called "And Not A Word Was Spoken." The story was designed to be nearly wordless and contained no dialogue. Ayers says when he requested a story credit Lee told him, "Since when did you develop an ego? Get out of here!” Ayers then submitted a payment requisition to Lee feeling he should be paid. Lee agreed to pay Ayers for five pages of lettering. What's interesting about this is the story was nearly wordless having lettering only on the first page and Lee took credit and I would assume payment for the Ayers script.

Barry Pearl said...

Dick Ayers told that story to me. It wasn't Stan who decided if Dick got paid, it was Martin Goodman and Sol Brodsky on Goodman's behalf. Stan lobbied them to get the money.