Comic Book Nerd Book Review-Jack Kirby & Stan Lee: Stuf’ Said by… by…

April 30, 2024

The author’s name has to be somewhere in this book.

I’m probably too old to be reading superhero comic books. Yeah, I’m at the age now where I enjoy reading about the comics more than I like reading the actual comic books. And for the last couple years, I’ve been fascinated by the creative process (and subsequent conflicts) between Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby.

Last year I even wrote a blog post called Jack Kirby: The True Creator of the Marvel Universe?. I’m not exactly an expert on the topic, but that’s never stopped me (or anybody else) from having an opinion. Now I’ve found a book about Stan Lee and Jack Kirby called Kirby and Lee: Stuf’ Said written by an actual expert (I think), and the book is AWESOME!!!

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The title ***Stuf’ Said*** comes from Stan Lee ending his letter’s page responses with the phrase ”’Nuff said!” But only a Silver Age comic book geek would care about that.

Even if you’re not a Silver Age comic book geek like I am, you might find the format of this book interesting. It’s visually appealing (for the most part) and makes a complicated situation easy to follow. Or maybe the book is easy to follow because I have some background knowledge.

Anyway, I can get long-winded in my blog posts, but this time I might show and not tell for once.

It’s easy to keep track of who said what. Stan Lee is in red. Jack Kirby is blue. Gil Kane gets a word balloon.

The second column here has an interesting philosophical difference between Lee and Kirby.

Here’s a page that establishes the author’s credibility early in the book. You can read the page, or you can just look at the pretty pictures throughout the rest of the book.

Pages like this are a comic book nerd’s dream. Just don’t ask me what that yellow blotch is; I didn’t do that!

COMIC BOOK NERD ALERT!!! Here’s a cool page demonstrating the Marvel process at work with Steve Ditko artwork on an early issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

COMIC NERD HUMOR! A page talking about Steve Ditko has Jack Kirby artwork all over it. Haha!

I’m pretty sure the author didn’t make much or any money on this book, especially if you consider the time and research that had to have gone into it. A book like this take passion to put together, but unfortunately, it’s about a topic that isn’t exactly mainstream, despite the high profile that Stan Lee had for a while.

I’ve read this book from beginning to end. And when my mind doesn’t really feel like reading but I want to be entertained for a few minutes, I randomly page through the book and stare at the graphics. Like I said earlier, I might be too old to read super hero comic books, but I’m still entertained when I read about super hero comic books.

*****

Over ten years ago, I wrote about Stan Lee and a Pulitzer Prize winning book that was kind of like reading about super hero comic books. You can tell that at that time I wasn’t really thinking about how much Jack Kirby and other artists like Steve Ditko had contributed. Man, I can’t believe that was over ten years ago.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon vs. Excelsior by Stan Lee vs. an Actual Comic Book

Kavalier and Stan Lee — The book on the left won a Pulitzer Prize. The guy on the right should have won a Pulitzer Prize just for being awesome!

Comic books created by Stan Lee can do many things. A comic book created by Stan Lee can get a boy through a troubled childhood. A comic book created by Stan Lee can get a bunch of kids who hate reading to suddenly become interested in the written word.

But a comic book created by Stan Lee can never win a Pulitzer Prize. And that’s what a novel about comic books The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay managed to do.

Read more here.

And if you’re reaaally interested in my thoughts about Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, here’s what I wrote last year.

Jack Kirby: Creator of the Marvel Universe?

Here’s a cool Fantastic Four cover drawn by Jack Kirby.

I used to think of Stan Lee as the creator of Marvel Comics. I admit it. I fell for the cheesy mustache and the “Excelsior!” schtick. Then one day I was looking at a bunch of DC comic books that artist Jack Kirby had created in the 1970s after he’d left Marvel, and I asked myself, why did Stan Lee stop writing comic books after 1970?

Once I saw it, it was pretty simple.

Jack Kirby created a bunch of stuff without Stan Lee.

Stan Lee didn’t create anything without Jack Kirby .

Okay, that’s not quite true. Stan Lee created a few Marvel characters without Jack Kirby, but he always had the help of other artists (like Steve Ditko).

Once Jack Kirby and the other 1960s artists left Marvel Comics, Stan Lee stopped writing/editing and became more of a figure head. Yeah, I know that’s an oversimplification of the situation, but this is a short blog post.

You can finish the blog post here if you’d like, but if you do, you might be a COMIC BOOK NERD!!!