Although it very prominently says "By Stan Lee" above, this job certainly gives the impression of being 100% pure Toth from layout to lettering, looking nothing at all like a typical Atlas western of that era in any way. Now, I am NOT a Stan-basher but I do think he may have been overreaching for credit on this one.
3 comments:
I have studied all of Stan Lee's work of ths period and it does ave some of the hallmarks of his work. There is the length of the story, no one ever got to do seven agers except Stan himself. The genre, he wrote mostly western stories at that time. The language, he loved using abbriviations and seems to have been the only one using them. And the fact that the center of the story is with the storyteller, even delivering us a moral. The subject, weather a man is yellow or not is one he visited often. I don't see why this should not be a Lee story. He wrote them full script, so the fact that it is handlettered by Toth (who wrote nothing himself at that time) isn't out of place. In fact the only reason to even assume that Stan signing this at this point in his career is to accept the often implied suggestion in the work of reel Lee-bashers that he was a thief who played fast and loose with his credits. I don't buy that in the sixties (he only took credit for stuuf he didn't do himself after the fact, in interviews and promotional pieces - not that that isn't reason to take him to task on it, but he never was fast and loose with credits on the page, which is what you are accusing him of here) and even if you do, there is no reason to extrapolate that behavior to something even more batant eight years earlier. You do not mean to Lee-bash, but by blindly taking over their unthought viewpoints you are placating them. What are you, yeller?
In what way is someone who can't draw not taking undue credit by signing their name alone to a comic? Stan Lee isn't bashed enough---there are plenty of reasons he should be, and by people who have more than "unthought viewpoints" as you so oddly put it----Lee made his name by taking full credit and pay for work other people did. However, if the old bullshitter DID write this, at least, I do like the last line because it could be applied to all the cowards running around with their guns in America right now.
Looking closer, I see Toth DID sign his name on the splash....not so boldly stamped as Lee's brand, but nonetheless there---- it is just colored over, very darkly. So in this case, my crit of Lee is a tad misplaced, but overall true anyhoo, grrr, grizzle.
Post a Comment