"Ya'akov Kurtzberg, King of Comics" - a VisuaLecture by Arlen Schumer - 5 November 2013

At the Jack Kirby Museum's One Week Prototype: Alpha pop-up on New York City's Lower East Side in early November 2013, Arlen Schumer presented an exhaustive retrospective of Jack Kirby and his work.
This video presents only a portion of Mr. Schumer's appearance and VisuaLecture at Prototype: Alpha. We thank him for his unwavering support of Jack Kirby and the Museum's efforts. Be sure to visit his website at arlenschumer.com.

[@pulsarstargrave256]

One thing the presenter fails to mention is the reason WHY Kirby's art "matured". When Kirby returned to Marvel he and Stan developed monster stories and then later, super-heroes; Kirby was trying to get as much work from Marvel as he could in order to feed his family. Between the monster books, super-heroes and co-creating concepts and doing covers to launch them, even if the interiors were drawn by others, at one point Kirby was working on as many as 6-8 books! At that pace, Kirby had to economize when it came to his artwork: meaning that if you compare his early work at Marvel to his output with Simon and later at DC in the late 50s, Kirby's backgrounds were often empty, with the exception of maybe a couple of props. But once Marvel became successful and Stan could hire people like Gene Colan, John Romita and Wally Wood, Kirby's workload lightened and then he could jazz up his backgrounds and contribute even more to the story development.

[@Geoffreydarcy-pv4mq]

Verified. 👍

[@Geoffreydarcy-pv4mq]

🔥💙🔥

[@iandorian611]

Jacob kurtzberg aka Jack the King Kirby

[@DavidWillis1957]

this is cool

[@gorgs1]

Tripod

[@uncleboabie]

Interesting, although there's no attempt at balance. Frequently, his arguments are either weak or allow only one pro-Kirby interpretation of what happened. He's speculating with misplaced confidence. He wasn't in the room when these characters were created. None of us were. It's just the opinion of someone who's already made his mind up.

[@pulsarstargrave256]

Actually, he made his case by showing how many of the themes that appeared in Marvel Comics, Kirby had already explored well before he worked for Marvel. The presenter is just well-versed in comics history in general, not just Marvel Comics. What Stan Lee contributed was his snappy writing and the whole "Super-Heroes With Super Problems" thing which was rare in comics. Lee asked simple questions like: "Why is every super-hero a wealthy playboy? How come no super-hero has to worry about paying rent?" Also, this gentleman is familiar with "The Marvel Method", where plots and ideas are discussed; the artist draws the story based on a synopsis and if he or she is a strong writer or plotter in their own right, they can lay out the story to the point where most of it is completed and Stan (the editor in addition to being the writer) could later come in and add or subtract story elements during the scripting process. I don't know if he mentions it at this point but one of those articles features a plotting session where Stan proposed bringing back Doctor Doom while the Thing decides to fight the Silver Surfer. From this single discussion Kirby and Lee developed a multi-part arc where The Thing does fight the Surfer but later Doom suckers Surfer into Latveria in order to steal his powers! The reason why,relative to Lee and Marvel, this narrator is so "gung-ho" for Kirby is because Stan was often credited as "The Writer" and people outside of comics thought he dreamed all these concepts and stories by his lonesome which is far from the truth. Stan has tried to clarify things but I think he or Marvel haven't thoroughly explained that Kirby, Ditko and others contributed more to the stories than "just" the artwork.

[@Gamer-lq4wl]

@@pulsarstargrave256 I agree with you! "The Writer" thing, the same way the "Stan Lee Presents" thing were the reason for the misunderstanding.