Jack Kirby: Happy 96th Birthday

Oh yeah, "Battle" it is!

Happy Birthday to the King.

Happy Birthday to The King

A simple post. i won't bother typing out my interactions with Jack Kirby, all one of them as it was, frankly, completely unremarkable in the grand scheme of his life. (My favorite personal Kirby story can be found here, actually.) It was, however, remarkable in mine only for the chance to actually talk with the grand man of comics for a while. No great anecdotes were shared I'm afraid. I knew Jack, like most, through his art.

Jack was one of the great creative forces of American culture in the 20th Century. It simply took much much longer for anyone to realize it given the poor status of comics socially. But millions of people read his books. Millions. And then another generation came and read them and passed them around... and then another generation... From 1939 in the 1980's we had a creative genius who struggled to make ends meet and never reap the rewards of his fertile imagination.

Think about that. The Beatles changed culture with their music world wide and they were recording for six years. Six years. Jack was active for well over 40 years. Astonishing.

Reproduced here is one of my favorite Kirby panels of all time, from Fantastic Four #55 just to say, well, thanks Jack. You were one of a kind.

In Memory: 5 for Jack Kirby

My answers to Tom Spurgeon's request for the top 5 Kirby Issues -

(You might wish to read my blog post on the dinner after the NYC con where all the Defiant crew, Shooter, Alan Weiss, myself, and others raised our glasses in honor of Jack. Its one of my favorite memories, and worth reading if you've not found it on the blog before).

On to the comics -

Fantastic Four #51



















Thor #156



















The Demon #1



















Challengers of the Unknown #7



















Fantastic Four #25

5 Favorite Single Issues: The Comics Reporter

I missed answering Tom's Friday Question: "Name Your Five Favorite Marvel or DC Comics Single Issues, Nothing From The Same Series Twice." This is how I would have responded:

Master of Kung Fu #39



















Detective Comics #475



















Captain Marvel #29



















Fantastic Four #49



















Avengers #162


This isn't a bad little collection of artists and writers here: Doug Moench Stan Lee, Jim Shooter, Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, Jack Kirby, Marshall Rogers, George Perez, Paul Gulacy.

Some of them are the beginnings of the story, some the end, some the middle, what matters here is that each of the issues is pitch perfect, from splash page to final panel, and each one presents characters that we grown to love at their peak.

I'm not parting with these fer nuttin'.

Edit: amended two days later, but in a post above, original post not edited for clarity of thought process.

Comics as Metatext: These Are The Days of Our Lives

So why is it that I know more about Tony Stark’s heart condition than I do my own father’s? Why am I more curious about Wolverine’s past than my family’s own checkered and mysterious past? Why, sadly, do most fanboys know more about Diana Prince’s bust than… well… then about any real busts?

Are comics the true metatext for our times? Have the long running series developed a life of their own in our memories, and our discussions, and our continuing their lives into other media? Have the Fantastic Four become more real to those that had their brains permanently scarred by Lee and Kirby, or those whose chromosomes were altered by Claremont, Byrne and Austin?

For all those that will claim movies as our fictional consciousness, can six hours in the life of Indiana Jones compete with months and years of following the minutea of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben? Like the album that was playing when you had your first kiss, your first break up, your first make up sex, these serials become the soundtrack to our lives. I can recall not only the 7-11 where I would purchase the X-men comics, but also all the little bits surrounding going down there on Wednesdays after school, getting that hideous Charleston Chews to go along with the new comics. What else can make all that come back?

As well, comics have provided the same sort of story stability the music can provide. When all else is going to hell, you can go back, again and again, to stories and watch everything going to hell, and somehow come out all right yet again. Comics can personify the cathartic element in storytelling as our heroes confront an endless series of troubles that should seem to overwhelm them, and yet somehow do not. While we might expect that somehow there will be a point where they breakdown over the troubles and yet they do not.

If there is a furthering of the metatext, then it is in the addition of the breakdown that has taken heroes one step further than they ever went before. Daredevil breaks down with Karen Page as she returns from her drug addiction, and takes his life as Matt Murdock down with it. Jack Knight, father and girlfriend gone, breaks down with his newborn son in his arms, his precious Opal City no match for his personal losses. Comics grow up when our characters face real dangers, but those dangers act as a real advancement of the characters, which is a danger to the corporate metatext. Perhaps the only way to continue then is to follow the prince Valiant path, where the characters do age, obviously not in real time, but slowly and surely, so that their path eventually mirrors our own.

It is perhaps The Batman who personifies the longest running metatext currently available to those of us who follow popular fiction. Superman has been rebooted enough times that only the very basics of his Jewish origins have stayed true: Ma and Pa Kent, Smallville, and a few others. Batman, on the other hand, has been the true Gilgamesh, whether written by Kane, Fox, Miller or Moore, he’s never quite been able to shake Joe Chill pulling the trigger on his parents. Whether it was from a distance or so close that the pearls break and spill to the ground, it matters not. Two-Face will always be Dent on his worst day, the Joker always the rogue force of chaos, Catwoman his own self with a looser set of morals and a greater sense of who she really is.

Bob Segar once sang, “Come back baby, rock and roll never forgets” but comics do forget. DC and Marvel have, in some measure forgotten where they came from. There is nothing wrong with adult heroes, but we need the heroes of our children as well. While Civil War was heavy handed allegory, Secret Invasion takes the very underpinnings of the Marvel Universe and spins a tale out of Skrull cloth whole. Right now, the Marvel Universe is an odd mix. DC had dragged the entire universe into Morrison’s world, and it is not a happy place with Final Crisis. Oddly enough, Grant knows almost better than anyone how to mix the light and the heavy into a delightful stew that many different ages can enjoy (see his All Star Superman). Somehow, in all the politics and editorial decisions seem to have driven the fun out of it. A selective memory is what is called for here.

And memory is what its all about, then, isn’t it?

Vinnie Colletta Redux: Its not the man, its the work

Nothing seems to keep getting the email like my post on Vinnie Colletta from almost a year ago. Lets go back and revisit the subject because, like most people, I hate getting emails that attack the messenger for the message.

Lets go back to what I hope my point was: that Vinnie rushed through his work, that much we know and can all agree upon, not that he was a bad artist. In re-reading my original post, I wanted to make sure that I did not make the cardinal mistake of attacking man, and no, I don't think that I did anywhere in there.

Facts: I never met Vinnie, and have no knowledge of him other than all the stories that I heard from the people who actually knew him. I'm a generation removed from actual Vinnie stories. I have no doubt, as McSplurge below says, that conversation rings true. The conversation in question shows that the comic business is as petty and as much a business as any other, and that the people are more than human in their faults. I have my own issues with Shooter (and not with Levitz or DeFalco as I simply didn't work with them), so I don't need Vinnie's issues. But I didn't call anyone to task for being a "lowlife", this is all about the art.

And the reality, I believe, is this: Vinnie could ink, when he wanted to take the time. I actually like his approach to Thor with the thin crowquill lines. They added an interesting look and texture that old metal printing plates were actually able to keep up with. It really complimented the "feel" of the book, which was very different from what Kirby/Sinnott were doing over in the FF. As well, we know from the romance stuff from the '50's that Vinnie could draw when he wanted to, or when he took the time. But many times on Thor, and even more often on his DC work in the late 1970's, Vinnie continually took shortcuts and didn't give the work his due. That is what pisses me off. And that is why I applauded Evanier's post at the time. Just because someone has died, I don't feel the need to make them a saint. I'm sorry that it might hurt people's feelings, but the printed work is the printed work, and much of what went out with Vinnie's name was substandard work, because he felt the need to take it all on and crank it out.

I dislike sloppy, careless or just plain bad work. And I reserve the right to call anyone on that. Including myself. Not everything that I did was gold, believe me. And I would never claim it as such. But from a professional standpoint, Vinnie didn't take care of business, which in my book is delivering your money book, not just hitting the deadlines, in this case Thor in the '60's, in pristine condition.

Rule #1 for the working inker: Don't over commit yourself so much that you can't deliver the pages in good condition. Rule #2 for the working inker: Don't use politics to cover up your mistakes. Eventually, it won't work. That is the problem with depending on connections to get inking assignments: eventually the regime changes, and if your work doesn't speak for itself, you're in trouble. That's Marvel in the early 1980's for Vinnie right there.

Below is a list of the comments from my original post. You're welcome to reread the original post as well to see if I actually attacked the man himself.

McSplurge said...

Vince Colletta made everyone around him better-Jack Kirby, Jim Shooter, Stan Lieber, Marvel and DC as a whole...I loved reading the transcript of the conversation and it rings absolutely true. As someone who knew Vinnie for many years I can say that. As for the lowlifes of the business, Paul Levitz, Carmine Infantino, Stan Lieber, Tom DeFalco...your destinies are, for now, unknown but as we all know, what goes around, comes around.

5:13 PM

McSplurge said...

By the way, who is this nobody named Mark Evanier?

5:15 PM

Dan McFan said...

Thor was late because they threw Vince an X-Men or other book that needed to be inked over the weekend. Did this happen every month? Go find out instead of patting Mark Evanier on the back. "Good for him"? Exactly. Self-serving crap. I am blogging Evanier at http://ismarkevaniermentallyill.blogspot.com/

6:06 PM

Anonymous said...

Good article except for the editorializing. I agree with the commenter who took you to task for writing "good for you". I thought Colletta's work was OK and also that he never got a fair shake from "fans" like you.

In Review Of: the Fantastic Four by Millar and Hitch

One of the oddities of the last twenty or thirty years is the marginalization of what used to be Marvel's first family, the Fantastic Four. Certainly it was paid homage to by the generation of writers and artists that had come of age upon the magnificent Lee and Kirby issues, but that also placed them in the difficult position of trying to follow stan and Jack, and very few of them were up to the challenge of taking that on. Wolfman and Perez actually succeeded for a while, but it took someone like John Byrne to channel the same zeitgeist that made the Lee/Kirby work a success. (And to be fair, John didn't hit it right out of the gate either. His first four or five issues were him feeling is way, and they were a bit clumsy compared to where he was 10 issues later.)

So I decided to wait out the first story arc of the Millar/Hitch series and see how it all wrapped up. And now we know. At the start of the second story arc we can officially say that Mark Millar has no feel whatsoever for the Fantastic Four.

Many of the elements that you would hope for are there: the multiple storylines happening all at once, the introduction of amazing new concepts just around each page turn, the long standing family bickering that you would expect.

And yet somehow all that adds up to nothing. Primarily, we always thought that Reed cared too much about, well, everything. He could hardly take anything lightly really. So we expect him to care about Nu-Earth, about the C.A.P. robot, but there is never a sense of him being all that involved is what is going on. There is also the matter of a terrible deux ex machina to finish off the four issues that is so awful I can't really figure out how to make fun of it.

Ben's character is not as "off" as Reeds, but the funny thing is, he is the most ignored character in the book. Time was, the Torch was given one label, "hothead", given about three petulant lines in the book and Ben Grimm, the heart and soul of the team, given to being the "go-to" character for a good moral or some decent comedy. Millar doesn't know what to do with Ben. And worse, Hitch can't draw the character. The Thing has different body dimensions from an ordinary human, and Hitch hasn't taken the time to figure them out. He "looks" wrong proportionately.

The flow of ideas that Millar is producing should work for the book: Sue decides to put together an all female side team, the kids need a new nanny (one who is clearly more than she seems), but there is just nothing but a resounding silence of emotion where the characters should be. Johnny seems to be the best defined, but then that has also been the case for the movies as well, so the characterization should come as no surprise there.

Hitch is working twice up on the art, and it is giving him the ability to really over do detail, in ways that are not making the art work. There is something of the scope that Jack had when his artwork was done twice up, but Hitch makes us feel that the letterboxing has somehow gone awry on the art. FF #556 is a mess art wise. the snow storm is so over done that it is almost impossible to make out the work beneath. As well, look at the two cover versions. One, sans balloon, is almost a compelling image, while the other has Ben saying something that, well, just isn't Ben.

Maybe he's a skrull.

Ooops. Just kidding.

I would rather that Millar is a skrull than admit that this is the best FF that he can do. It doesn't work as a comic, a deadpan series of scenes that look fun but don't add up to much. The first family of Marvel, not the X-Men, deserve better.

Ben Grimm: Blackbeard

Pope never ceases to amaze me, and this illustration that I culled from his blog is great. Understated as hell, and a great nod to the early Lee/Kirby days when the Marvel Universe wasn't so ordered or so crowded that the amazing couldn't happen every issue.

And in the FF, it usually did.

In Review Of: Fantastic Four #555 by Millar and Hitch

I'm really wanting to like this series, as I was very happy with Millar's reinterpretation of the Avengers in Ultimates, but I'm not too sure that its working. The question is: why?

On the face of it, the elements are there: the evil, or well meaning scientists, the outlandish concepts, the multiple sub-plots. All of these are great descriptions of the Lee/Kirby high point on the book: issues #45-65. Hitch is clearly putting in some long hours at the drawing board and it shows. There is very little shorthand on the pages. Jack would smile at the work ethic I'm sure.

Part of the problem is that we don't get to start with a cohesive FF at the beginning. One of the problems here is that the FF used to function as a kind of home base in the Marvel Universe: they were the first family, and a lot revolved around them. This current version of the FF reminds me more of the splintered FF circa 1973, a time of an unpopular war and a great deal of social unrest and a time when the nature of family was being challenged by the new generation. Yes, the Gerry Conway version of the FF is back, the unpopular war has shifted from Vietnam to Iraq and the social unrest brought on by Wategate and Nixon has been transferred to Bush, Cheney and Halliburton in the form of Civil War and the realignment of the Marvel Universe's loyalties.

So, sadly, we have a rather splintered FF that Millar inherited, as opposed to a cohesive group that he could introduce difficulties into. It gives us little chance to enjoy the group before everything hits the fan. Why this matters has as much to do with story arc construction as it does my personal taste of why I think that the FF works, and when it works, why they matter in the Marvel Universe.

In reality, the FF haven't functioned as the touchpoint of the Marvel Universe for some time, essentially since the Byrne era. The X-Men, and their various spinoffs functioned as that for a good decade, and then, in the Bendis era, the Avengers and their permutations. If we want to see the FF back in the position of prominence, then the group has to be written as such. There was a time when every damn piece of machinery had a "Richards" or "Stark" logo on it. The rest said "Pym" or they were imported from Latveria.

I'm interested to see where the book goes, even though I know that I'm not going to get the FF functioning as the group that faced down Galactus for a while yet. And the fact that instead of this group of scientists creating "Him", they've created yet another stupid giant robot that we will have to subdue, but what the hell. "The Thing versus a Giant Kirby Robot" isn't such a bad plot devise for the twenty odd pages.

Last complaint: Hitch, while he can draw absolutely lights out, doesn't get Ben's unique anatomy, and its driving me crazy. The Thing has a distinct anatomical build and Brian just isn't drawing it that way.

Marvel's Kirby Covers: the editor's speak

Tom Breevort has an interesting collection of Kirby's covers over at Marvel.com and makes a number of small but interesting comments on each cover as you scroll down.

Interestingly enough we get to see the design sense of Kirby down through the ages, ones that likes a certain number of motifs and layouts, and reuses them many times. Obviously Kirby relied on a short hand in his work, similar figures, similar layouts, and it is this shorthand that most people draw when they do a kirby homage or parody, but it was a shorthand that he created over all those years of work.

Kirby's covers were very often masterpieces of having more than one level to them, so that even the most static told a story, or the teaser of a story, that made you want to decide to pick the book up. Many of the same static poses used today on covers are simply that, static, without life or energy. I sometimes wonder that artists haven't figured out that you can use story elements as compositional devices that will give you an exciting cover, a good pin-up piece, and something to grab the reader's eye. Is this truly brain surgery?

It is interesting to note that many of the Kirby covers lean left, and I wonder if this is because, as many folks have mentioned, that Jack would start at the left corner of the cover and and work his way right? Maybe he just thought out the cool elements and started over there and went further right. Perhaps it was because he knew, knew, that Stan was going to put a hyperbolic caption somewhere on the cover, and he had to leave some negative area for the lettering.

Perhaps we should ahve a Jack Kirby Collector style article with all the rejected covers that he did, alongside the ones that ran, so we could try to get a handle on the rejected material as well. That might prove interesting.

Fantastic Four: Review of the Silver Surfer

OK, I fully admit this is pretty damn hard to write a review of. We get the inevitable "Kirby whirlwind" in this movie . Seriously. A whirlwind. When was the last time that you saw one of those since "Twister" came out?
For years we've been decrying Hollywood messing up perfectly good comic stories by having to change and add and tweak the source material, material that clearly worked perfectly well on the printed page. "Why would you mess with the Galactus Trilogy?" we ask.

And we have our answer here. And its not an easy one to assess. We have a movie that is closer to the source material that any movie has come to, barring only X-Men 2. I was actually thrown by the early scenes in New York, with the FF in the Baxter Building, because the tone was so different from the first movie, and then I realized: I was actually seeing a Lee/Kirby comic, somewhere around FF #25 or so, brought to life. Ben and Johnny fighting, Reed and Sue having their small spats, using their powers casually amidst the banter. And it makes sense that they would, when you consider that we shouldn't have to see all the drama of Johnny flaming on, and Ben using his strength, the powers simply become an extension of what the characters do and who they are.

So, does all the Lee/Kirby banter and play translate to the big screen? Not entirely, although it seems to be a noble attempt. Someone really went back and read their Marvel essentials to try and get this right, and they almost did. I have to say, I love Alicia as a black woman, and think that it would be really cool to see her father, an African-American Puppet Master at some point.

When you consider that the first FF movie was one of the very worst superhero movies that has ever come to screen, stunned was a damn good description of just how different this script is. And I can't help but think if we had spent more time with this version of the characters, as opposed to the morose "grim and gritty" versions from the first movie, that we would care more and feel more feeling for when everything goes wrong in the second act.

And what a second act it is, really. A great combination of FF #49 and #60 which should be one hell of a winning storyline when you think about it. Doom, the Surfer and a weird cloud thing called Galactus (don't get me started on this one yet). And yet... despite a great helicopter crash sequence, the tension never really rises as much as it should, and the return of Doom falls far flatter than it should with Julian McMahon's missing the mark performance. But the whole thing simply never jells. I suppose I keep thinking that this would have been a great season finale, when we'd had time to share all the earlier adventures with them.

Alas we don't have that time. We do get treated to a Surfer that looks a whole lot like Kirby's version, and we even get a whole mess o' Kirby action, although forgive me if, for some reason, I thought that the action also seem choreographed somewhat by George Perez. I wish that we had more Ben Grimm in it to tell you the truth. Perhaps the next movie will be The Thing vs. The Hulk two parter.

And, at the last, Galactus as a huge cloud. Perhaps I'm alone in this, and believe me, I inwardly cringed more than most when I read about this one on the internet, but I have to say that I'm not sure if the comic book Galactus would have worked. Really. I'm not saying that the illegitimate son of V'Ger is really working for me, but it is better than some of what they would have come up with.

I don't think that this is a great movie by any stretch of the cinematic imagination, and yet, it is so damn superior to the first that it shines far more brightly than I think it should. Props to all for trying.

In Review Of: Vinne Colletta

20th Century Danny Boy offers up a fascinating post two days ago, which, if you go back to '80's Marvel and the Jim Shooter reign, dredges up a ton of dirt and manure and doesn't even attempt to bulldoze it back into a recognizable form when all is done. Danny gives us a scan of Colletta's "exit interview", a scathing letter written to other Marvel editors, and a long, anonymous interview/discussion with Vinnie about Shooter's firing. It's behind the scenes more than you ever wanted to do, and its fascinating as all hell. Once and for all it should dispel any rumours that all was well and good at the House of Secret Wars, and it should also dispel the idea that editors pick artists for a book solely on their brush lines.

He also indeed did take a lot of shortcuts in his work, in some cases he erased the pencils so he'd not have to ink them. Jack Kirby would draw detailed backgrounds only to see them simplified by Colletta. Yet there were other sides to Vinnie.

Eddie Campbell joins in with a very on target appraisal of Colletta's strengths,

his finishing style was distant from the superhero house styles at both DC (Murphy/Giella) and Marvel (Sinnott/Giacoia). But he was fast and dependable. Ah Fate! An artist's strength becomes his undoing.

as well as noting something that I noticed years ago: you can't judge by reprints, which most folks have to do. This directly effects those who use small lines, whether by brush to feather out (and the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby/Syd Shores '40's Captain Americas suffer greatly in this regard) or using a crow-quill pen, which Vinnie used a lot of in Thor and elsewhere.

So how to appraise Colletta without damning him or covering over his faults? If you liked his talents, and clearly he knew his way around a pen nib, then enjoy the original printings of his Thor. If you didn't like his work, and I thought that most everything he did was crap, even if he did get it in on time, then forget it and move on.

But... as Eddie brings up, there is the notion that artist can get trapped in his own reputation. I got caught in the same trap that Colletta did: I made a point of making myself as someone that never missed a deadline, and in making myself valuable by getting work out, I compromised the work, thinking that the editors would finally reward me with the good job on a regular deadline... and instead they start to look at you as a hack. (Nice. Nice way to get people to work hard for you.)

The question here is: why would Thor or the FF ever be late? We know the speed that Jack could produce pages, its documented fact. There is no reason that Thor should ever be late. Or FF #40 for that matter. Two of the fastest guys in the business and they can't keep up on the regular deadlines for the book? Doesn't jibe for me. Occasional rush issue fine, but month after month?

Any answers?

edited to add: Mark Evanier brings up the same point about Thor not being late in his column here that I did. And doesn't mince words on how bad Vinnie's work was. Good for him.

Still Kirby After All These Years: Fantastic Four #3

Just a quick post to show you how easy it is for things to slip past even the most hardened comic trivia buff. Case in point, I had no idea that there was a rejected cover to Fantastic Four #3, much less that it was a finished cover with inks and colors. And I'm someone who was not only bothered by the missing 4th Skrull from FF #2, that I eagerly read the Kree/Skrull War for some clever Ret-Con to take care of it!



So without any more ado: the lost cover to Fantastic Four #3. Yay!

Fantastic Four #102: Lost and Found

Over on the TwoMorrows blog is a great post about the recreation of FF#102, which was Kirby's last issue on the title. Rejected, the artwork was cut up and used, in part to create FF #1o8. Well, it looks like we'll finally get the chance to see it in this form:

Enter Tom Brevoort, who got the inspired idea to have Stan finally dialogue Jack’s pencils, and Joe Sinnott ink them (I’ve seen the new inks, and man, Joe hasn’t skipped a beat in the 37 years since he was inking Jack on the FF). Tom’s also getting a current Marvel writer and inker to do their interpretations, and both finished versions (plus Kirby’s uninked original, and a short article about it by your’s truly) will appear in the one-shot special.

This great news, just the finally get the director's cut of the issue the way that it should have been done. Kinda like getting to sit down and read those old Strange Tales with the Torch and the Thing, and its discovering a whole parallel universe to the regular FF book. Finally Kirby's bow out on the book he helped to create will see the print the way that it should have been done back before his jump to DC.

TwoMorrows while I don't always agree with their editorial position on everything, generally does a great job with their publications, very classy, and I am quite happy to own more than a few issues on the shelves of my studio.

The Great Jack Kirby Mystery

Somewhere back in the dawn of time when I started this blog I was deliriously ecstatic by finally being able to get a 2x up Kirby FF page to add to the my collection. I still am ecstatic about it, and have not had the thing put into the frame as I like to pull it out and look at it up close. There is something very visceral about large art of that sort. It takes over the drawing board and is very physical to handle. Inking something that large involves your entire fore arm, not just a wrist. I like to imagine jack working vigoriously away on these pages at night.

But there is something interesting about the piece that has been bugging me. and I thought that I'd put it out to the assembled internet-land:
the liner notes on the page are wrong.

Below is the piece that I picked up: FF #20, page 14. Scanned off of the essential FF book as it's too damn big for my scanner. Now, thanks to the Jack Kirby collector, we've been fortunate enough to see pages and pages of stats of Jack's pencils, and we've been able to see many of Jack's liner notes that he did for Stan. Even more, much of the artwork that exists out in collectorville and dealerland all have the notes still on them. jack typically wrote in a strong, all caps style, examples of which you can see in the first illustation at the top of this post, and below this paragraph:



page 14, on the other had only has two liner notes, both in a tight scribble. Both are scanned here. The first is from just below jack's sig:

and the second to the left of panel 3:







So the question remains: why is the handwriting so different? Why no liner notes on the rest of the page? Any guesses anyone?

I'd love, if anyone has any further information about where this page has been before ending up in my hands, to know about it as well.

Edited to note: I fired off this info to Mark Evanier to ask his opinion and here is what he said:

I don't know who did that Jack Kirby signature but it wasn't Jack Kirby.

The other handwriting you noted on the margins of the F.F. page looks
like Stan's to me but I'd have to see it in person to be sure. Perhaps
he rewrote a Kirby marginal note just as a note to himself. The margins
of pages from that era are full of editorial notes from Stan and from
Sol Brodsky.

I'll follow this up with any more data that I can find on Lee's handwriting or Sol Brodsky's.