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Topic: Kirby’s Spider-Man concepts. (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Michael Connell
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 7:52am | IP Logged | 1  

I know we've most likley all heard the story of how Stan Lee came up with the Spider-Man concept a million times, he saw a fly climbing on a wall thought that would be a great power for a Super-Hero, ran down the list of insect names until he came to "Spider-Man". He took the idea to Jack Kirby who did several sketches that Stan thought were too powerfully built, so he went to Steve Ditko and history was made.

But.....does anyone know if Jack's original Spider-Man concept sketches survived? And if so were they ever published in any format? I've often wondered what Kirby's "Spider-Man" looked like, if Ditko designed the costume of the Spider-Man we know, what did Kirby's Spider-Man look like? (Makes you wonder if a Lee/Kirby Spider-Man would have become the runaway hit the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man became.)

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Mark Spiridakis
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 8:27am | IP Logged | 2  

Didn't Kirby draw the cover for Amazing Fantasy #15?
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Michael Connell
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 8:56am | IP Logged | 3  

Looks like it, but that's Ditko's Spider-Man design. I was wondering what Kirby's original costume designs looked like.

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Jesus Garcia
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:11am | IP Logged | 4  

I don't have a reference handy but Ditko responded to the "Who created Spider-Man" question by mentioning that Kirby had a first crack at it. Apparently Kirby drew 3-4 pages of stoty establishing that Peter lived with an elderly couple.

In the article, Ditko re-drew Kirby's Spider-Man costume as he remembered it. It looked to me like a standard Kirby trunks-on-the-outside job with a holster to carry a web-gun and a half-face mask.

 

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Michael Connell
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:19am | IP Logged | 5  

Sounds like one of the "Spider-Man" costumes seen in this issue of What If?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:24am | IP Logged | 6  

Kirby's version of Spider-Man began as a Simon & Kirby character called the Silver Spider. That never saw print, evolving instead into the Fly. From what I understand, Kirby's Spider-Man was a very literal reinterpretation of that character, including the "magic ring" motif.

That Ditko drawing of Kirby's version of the costume has been posted to this Forum before. Anybody know where to find it?

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Michael Connell
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:30am | IP Logged | 7  

While looking on the net for Kirby's Spider-Man I found this article about Kirby & Spider-Man

http://rodrigobaeza.blog-city.com/jack_will_probably_claim_h e_does_that_too.htm

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Knut Robert Knutsen
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:30am | IP Logged | 8  

It's a bit different from how Kirby described it, which was (I think- I don't have the books to hand) that he had an idea about a spider-named or -themed hero which was a bit like Captain Marvel in that he was a kid who transformed into the Hero only using a magic ring. This was something left over from his collaboration with Joe Simon many years previously.

So Jack Kirby pitched a "spider-man" or "spider-something" to Stan Lee which was rejected, and a while later Lee approached  Ditko with a different "spider" idea that they developed together.

This might include a scenario where Lee came to Kirby first in order to develop the new idea, but the gist of it is that the characteristics that make Spider-man stand out were part of Lee and Ditko's development process.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:34am | IP Logged | 9  

In ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS Lee reported his having approached Kirby to develop the "Spider-Man" concept which he, Lee, had come up with. Kirby then turned in a version that wasn't what Lee was looking for, so he went to Ditko, who was a much more "street level" talent than Kirby. There was no mention of Kirby having pitched the character and been rejected. If that was the case, I wonder why it took Kirby so long to dispute Stan's version?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:37am | IP Logged | 10  

There is an odd mirror image of the creation of Batman in these stories of Spider-Man's beginnings. In Batman's case, the guy who really did most of the work, Bill Finger, didn't get the credit he deserved, while in Spider-Man's case the guy who had almost nothing to do with the creation of the character, Jack Kirby, tried to claim credit he did not deserve.
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Michael Connell
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:40am | IP Logged | 11  

In the article it says
 QUOTE:
STAN: Well, I think that Jack has taken leave of his senses.

I wonder if in his later years Jack truly believed he had created most of Marvel's characters himself or if it was just a ploy to garner attention for himself?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 02 June 2007 at 9:43am | IP Logged | 12  

I think there were a lot of people dripping their
poisons in Kirby's ear.
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