THE 'LOST' KIRBY 'SPIDER-MAN' PAGES...

Page from The Fly.  Art by Jack Kirby, images copyright relevant owner

Okay, this is a difficult one, so bear with me.  Everyone knows that STAN LEE has a pretty poor memory, something which he himself readily acknowledges, so I'm not saying anything with which he'd disagree.  Stan's not the only comicbook icon who suffered from this 'handicap' though, as his long-time collaborator JACK KIRBY was similarly afflicted.  This, of course, has sometimes led to discrepancies between both men's accounts in the 'who created what?' arguments that have raged for decades.

I'm of the opinion that Stan is basically an honest man, who - whenever his memory fails him - fills in the dots with whatever seems probable in order to make sense of events.  True, in the best storyteller tradition, he sometimes hyperbolically embellishes his reminiscences to make them more entertaining, but I don't believe he deliberately distorts anything out of a selfish intent to deny others credit.

Page from The Fly.  Art by Jack Kirby.  Do I detect Bill Everett inks on the last three panels?

That doesn't mean, though, that distortion doesn't sometimes inadvertently happen.  Case in point: SPIDER-MAN first appeared in AMAZING FANTASY #15, which was the final issue of the mag.  It now seems clear that, at the time of preparation, it wasn't actually intended to be the last issue, but rather the first ish of a 'new direction'.  Publisher MARTIN GOODMAN, however, noticed the low sales figures for previous issues of AF and ordered its immediate cancellation - despite Stan's 'rescue' plans for the title.

In Stan's mind, looking back after the fact, all he recalled was that Spidey appeared in AF's final issue.  Relating events years later in ORIGINS Of MARVEL COMICS, Stan tells what seemed to him at the time the most likely account of why things happened as they did, perhaps even unknowingly confusing the details with a similar situation involving another character and title.

C.C. Beck's earlier pencils for The Silver Spider.  Compare to Kirby's page at the top of the post

We've all done it - remembered things as we think happened, rather than as they actually occurred.  A good example of this, as related in a recent blog post, is that I recall two RONNIE HILTON songs from my childhood as being sides A & B of the same 45 rpm record.  When I decided to hunt down and re-acquire the record a few weeks ago, I discovered that they were, in actual fact, two separate singles - not the one, as I'd seemed to recall.

Now consider the creation of Spider-Man.  In Stan's account, he came up with the character, gave it to Jack Kirby to draw, saw the first few pages - then thought "Nah, that's not what I'm looking for!"  So he turned the job over to STEVE DITKO and the rest is history.  Jack's recollection of events is different, but first, let's backtrack a few years.  According to JOE SIMON, he and his brother-in-law, JACK OLECK, had come up with a hero called Spiderman (no hyphen), later changed to the SILVER SPIDER, which was given to former CAPTAIN MARVEL artist C.C. BECK to pencil.  (Before the name change, Simon had already lettered a large Spiderman logo for the proposed strip.  This was around 1953.)

Spiderman/The Silver Spider.  Art by C.C. Beck

The idea never got off the ground 'til around six years later, by which time the insect-hero had metamorphosed into The FLY, drawn by Jack from Simon's original Spiderman script, and published by MLJ/ARCHIE COMICS in 1959.

Now, here's where it gets interesting.  Steve Ditko recalls seeing Jack's first few pages of 'Spider-Man' and noticing they bore an amazing resemblance (plot-wise) to The Fly.  He informed Stan of the fact, who jettisoned JK's version and reworked the concept, which he then had Steve draw.  For years now, fans have dreamt of seeing Kirby's rejected Spidey pages so they could compare them to Ditko's, but so far, they remain undiscovered.

Or do they?

Logo by Joe Simon

In Jack's account, he took Simon's Spiderman logo to Stan and suggested the idea for the character.  The pages he showed to Lee may well have been redrawings of the Spiderman/Fly pages, as they were essentially based on the same script, which may've been why Ditko mentioned to Stan they were too close to Archie's The Fly, resulting in the reworked concept that became MARVEL's very own Spider-Man.  (It's interesting to note that, had Jack indeed taken the idea to Stan, in later claiming he'd created the character, he never mentioned Simon's, Oleck's or Beck's involvement in the original process, thereby depriving them of their rightful credit.)

So - might we have actually already seen versions of the Kirby 'Spider-Man' pages of which legend tells?  And if so, does it discredit Stan's account of the creation of the ol' Web-spinner?  Not necessarily.  Even if Jack had suggested the name to Stan and shown him some pages, the finished product by Lee and Ditko bore no relation to the character Jack may have presented (and which was dreamt up by Simon & Oleck, remember).  And, of course, Stan may have come up with the idea, and Jack submitted un-inked stats or redrawn pencils of his earlier pages, thinking that they would serve what Stan had roughly in mind.

Apparently, Kirby's Spider-Man looked similar to the above figure

Alas, it seems that nobody will ever know for certain.  Even were Kirby still alive, his memory seems to have been no more reliable than Lee's, so the issue would doubtless remain unresolved anyway.  However, it's an intriguing notion, don't you think?  Regardless of whether Stan first approached Jack, or Jack first approached Stan with the idea, you may now be looking at something very close to the rejected pages which Stan himself mentioned in his Origins book back in 1974, and for which comics historians have been searching ever since.

Feel entirely free to register your thoughts, theories and fancies in our ever-lovin' comments section.