Category: 03 Marvel Comics Page 9 of 10

(NOTE:  I wrote this a long time ago, but it’s germane to the tales of old Marvel I’ve been telling.) 

During my time at Marvel the people that held the position of Art Director were John Romita, Sr., Marie Severin (briefly), and John Romita, Sr. again.  Dave Cockrum shared duties with John Romita for a while, as did Don Perlin toward the end of my tenure.

First of all, the title “Art Director” at Marvel during the 70’s and 80’s is completely misleading.  It was a staff artist position.  Of course, it made sense to have a really outstanding artist on staff.  Things came up constantly for which a quality piece of art was needed, for presentations, PR, whatever, and if you had to track down a freelancer each time, it would be a nightmare.  Stan trumped up the title “Art Director” so he could pay outstanding, versatile artist John Romita more money.  The brass above Stan would never have agreed to pay a “staff artist” as much, but an “Art Director?”  Sure.

Fortunately, the brass was completely ignorant of what went on in the comics creative department, so they were easily fooled.  Seriously—most of the upstairs execs and the brass of parent company Cadence Industries had never opened a comic book, and they were proud to say that.  Few had ever even ventured onto the floor we occupied.  We scared them, I think.

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The Benevolent Lapping Scam – Benign Malfeasance

Around the beginning of December, 1977, Marvel President Jim Galton offered me the Editor in Chief job, replacing Archie Goodwin.  (How that came to pass is another wondrous strange tale, coming soon.)  Archie was going to step down as EIC and become a contract writer-editor.

The plan was for Archie to finish out the month and for me to begin on the first working day of January, 1978.  Stan thought it would be best not to announce the change until just before it went into effect.

The month of December, 1977 was a traumatic time for Marvel.  John Romita resigned as Art Director to work full time on the Spider-Man syndicated strip.

And, Production Manager John Verpoorten died at the age of 37.

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The Benevolent Lapping Scam – Background Info

While Stan Lee was the editor, from 1941 till Roy Thomas took over as Marvel’s first Editor in Chief in 1972, Marvel Comics was run like a mom’n’pop operation.  Stan was the boss, and did or governed all things creative.  For a while during the 1950’s, and again from the early 1960’s through the early 1970’s, his “right hand man” was Sol Brodsky, Production Manager.  Besides overseeing the mechanics of getting the books created and printed, Sol handled anything legal, financial, technical or complicated, that is, anything Stan didn’t want to be bothered with. 

In 1972, Roy Thomas took over from Stan, who had been made President.  That didn’t work out.  The bureaucratic crap and administrative duties involved didn’t suit him, so Stan became Publisher instead.  

By then, Sol had left for a while to start ill-fated Skywald Publications, which promptly failed.  Sol needed a job, and approached Stan, but a new Production Manager had been hired in Sol’s absence—John Verpoorten.  Stan convinced the Cadence Board to create a new position for Sol, “V.P. of Operations.”  Essentially, he was Stan’s right hand man again.  More on that later.

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When I took over as Editor in Chief of Marvel on the first working day of January 1978, I didn’t know it, but the place was rife with corruption.  Most of it was small-time, but some of it wasn’t so small. This is the tale of one of the smaller, but still very damaging instances.First, in my early days as Editor in Chief at Marvel, I went to a lot of conventions, trying to promote the books. I was on the road two or three weekends a month. I paid my own expenses—that is, Marvel paid my expenses. I had an expense account. So, con organizers were glad to have me, a professional guest for free.In case you don’t know, in those days, comics companies never sent creators or even staffers to conventions, or on any kind of promotional trips.  It just wasn’t done. Con organizers had to pay all expenses to get professional guests to come, unless the pro lived in the neighborhood.  Then, all they had to do was provide a free table.

Anyway, I did a lot of panels talking about, and talking up Marvel projects. These speeches were usually followed by a Q&A.

Inevitably, someone in the audience would complain that they had subscribed to one or more Marvel titles, but no books ever came. Why? Once, in Chicago, I asked the crowd if anyone had subscribed to any Marvel titles and received no books. A dozen hands went up.

I told them that I would look into it.

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JayJay here. Someone has stated that Kirby never actually filed a lawsuit against Marvel and has made a number of comments about Jim’s recollections. Here is his reply:

You may be correct, possibly the suit was never filed. I was Editor in Chief, not company counsel. Around the office, the matter was routinely referred to as the “Kirby lawsuit.” We certainly received a barrage of letters and demands from Kirby’s attorneys, many of which I saw.

If Jack and Roz had no interest in suing Marvel, you sure couldn’t tell that from Marvel’s POV. Their lawyers came at Marvel pretty aggressively.

I attended a panel at the San Diego Con, misleadingly titled, which turned out to be a Marvel-bash-fest MC’ed by Gary Groth. I don’t remember the year. ’79? ’80? Thereabouts. Groth opened with a diatribe against Marvel and its horrible unfairness to Jack. Then he turned the mic over to Jack. 

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Before the mid-seventies, no one got artwork returned. Actually, few cared about it. As the collector market grew stronger, and the artwork became valuable, artists started caring.

By the time I became editor in chief at Marvel in 1978 (and therefore was in a position to have a voice in the Marvel management), both Marvel and DC had instituted art return policies. Marvel’s, set up by Roy Thomas, gave writers a share of the pages. Go figure. As soon as I could, I changed that — one reason why a few writers like Moench and Thomas didn’t like me. Tough. I did what I believed was right.

Kirby worked for Marvel during that period and had art returned to him just like everybody else. The dispute arose over the old art, from before the return plan was instituted, which was in a warehouse.

I was on the side of Kirby and all the other old artists. I tried at every opportunity to convince Marvel’s brass to return the old artwork. There were many reasons cited by the corporate counsel, financial officer, etc. why this was a problem — i.e., the art could be considered an asset, and couldn’t be disposed of with no benefit to the stockholders of a publicly traded company, tax issues and lots of other nonsense.

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