Quote:
the G-man said:
Maybe its me, but the more I read about Kirby it seems the more he comes off as a "perpetual victim," claiming that everyone ripped him off: Jack Schiff, Stan Lee, Carmine Infantino, etc. Every five or so years he'd decide whichever company he worked for was ripping him off, so he'd quit in a huff and go over to the other company.


I both agree and disagree with this notion.

I think Kirby did see himself as a victim to some extent.

I don't recall the precise details, but apparently Joe Simon may have been taking more than his financial share of the Simon & Kirby art-team revenues, and at least the perception of that resulted in the quiet dissolution of their partnership in 1955.

Kirby saw himself as a victim in the Jack Schiff thing, and what was no doubt a mutually hostile departure from DC in 1959.

Kirby saw himself as a victim in his 60's period at Marvel, where Stan Lee became rich on Kirby's contribution to developing Marvel's "Universe" of characters, while Kirby not only didn't share in that financial success, but also had characters he created taken away from him and developed in ways he didn't like.
I think this loss of creative control, more than money, was the reason he left and went to DC in 1970. Because at DC, Kirby wrote and edited in addition to pencilling what he created, and thus got full full creative control and credit for the characters he created.

But again, at DC, despite arguably good sales, for reasons that were never logically explained to Kirby, his most treasured series, NEW GODS and FOREVER PEOPLE, were cancelled out from under him.
And the remaining title, MISTER MIRACLE, was forced to change direction away from concluding the Fourth World storyline as well.

So again, Kirby saw himself as a victim, who was jerked around, and he probably would have left DC immediately if he could have in late 1972.
But because he had a contract with DC, he stayed until late 1975, and gave us KAMANDI, THE DEMON, OMAC, SANDMAN, and several other new series.



And at Marvel from 1975-1978, Kirby again felt mistreated and jerked around by his editors.

But to Kirby's credit, I think there is considerable evidence to support Kirby's perception of mistreatment at various publishers.
Many back Kirby's account that in the 60's he was plotting as well as drawing Marvel's titles, and that Lee was taking the credit for what Kirby created.
Steve Ditko left Marvel for virtually the same reasons: a lack of creative control, and a lack of credit for his plotting contribution.




Years after their cancellation in 1972, many have looked at the DC sales figures for FOREVER PEOPLE, NEW GODS and MISTER MIRACLE and said they were good.
I offered my own conspiracy theory in the WTF topic, that the books were cancelled to prevent Kirby from killing off marketable characters that DC owned.





And there are many accounts to back up what Kirby said about his mistreatment at Marvel from 1975-1978.
One particularly scathing was Jim Starlin's account, in a COMIC BOOK ARTIST interview, of how editors would paste up Kirby's art pages on the wall with derisive remarks like: "the dumbest story ever told" and so forth.




And Kirby, when he didn't like the way he was treated, did leave and go somewhere else.

But I think the frustration for him through the 50's, 60's, and 70's was: Where else can you go ?!?
Once you've been fucked over by both Marvel and DC, and the other smaller publishers pay a fraction of what Marvel and DC do, where else can you go, except to leave the industry that you love?
Which is what Kirby finally did in 1978, when he left Marvel to do animation for cartoons.



In some of the cases, I think Kirby had legitimate complaints and limited options.

In other cases, it could have been oversensitivity and getting overly angry about the realities of working in the creative field, and a bit of "he said/she said" rather than actual mistreatment.

And in the cases of leaving Marvel and DC in the 1940's to pursue more lucrative work, and in the case of Jack Schiff who arguably just wanted compensation for brokering sale of the SKY MASTERS series, it could be argued that Kirby fucked over other people !



To some extent, it's in the eye of the beholder.

And like yourself, G-man, whatever happened behind the scenes, it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of Kirby's work at Marvel, DC or any other publisher.