TIL: George Bell (Early Marvel inker) was the pen name of George Roussos when he inked. Roussos was one of the EC horror artists and also was the Marvel in-house colorist from the mid 70's until the 80's. There are VERY few of the EC artists who also worked at Silver Age Marvel, so it's pretty amazing to me.
George “Inky” Roussos was a darn good inker. I particularly liked him over Mort Meskin. Their collaborations for DC were usually outstanding. He was a decent penciler too.
There were actually a fair number of former EC artists who did work for Marvel in the ’60s: Gene Colan, Wally Wood, Alex Toth, Marie Severin (EC’s colorist), John Severin, and Johnny Craig—and Roussos, of course—all did at least a few jobs for Marvel. That’s seven out of about three dozen. Not bad. And then, of course, Al Williamson did a lot of stories (mostly westerns) for Atlas in the mid-’50s to 1960 (post-EC), many of which Marvel reprinted in the early ’70s.
But the one thing that I learned is that Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby BOTH left Marvel for the same reason, and it wasn't Stan Lee hogging credit or any of the other theories.
No, Stan Lee hogging the credit was actually part of the reason Jack Kirby left. It's in Mark Evanier's biography of Kirby. Don't get me wrong, Goodman had a lot to do with it too, but Stan Lee, whether it was deliberate or not, took the credit for Kirby's stories and that stung. I'll paste quotes from the book if anyone's interested. And it wasn't just about the credit, too. It was about respect. Take the Silver Surfer series. Kirby wasn't consulted to pencil that series when it was pitched, and he was the creator. They only asked him to pencil and script the series around #18 when sales were dismal and on the brink of cancellation. And by then Lee had completely altered Silver Surfer's origin, much different than what Kirby had envisioned. Kirby knew he had to leave or he'd keep getting screwed over like that. So yes, financial security was instrumental for Kirby in leaving Marvel, but it must've hurt as well if everyone thought you didn't write the stories but instead took diction from Stan The Man. Imagine if you wrote the Galactus Trilogy and didn't get credit for it. How pissed would you be?
Those thing were certainly apart of it all, but Jack didn't sign a new contract with Martin Goodman (who was the money guy) because there were financial things Goodman had promised that he refused to put into the contract. Jack continued to work at Marvel (and withheld new creations) knowing that if he waited until AFTER the new contract, he'd get bonuses for any that caught on. He worked for while without a contact, and when DC came knocking, he signed with them, finished his current jobs for Marvel and quit.
And according to Greg Theakson's book, Jack saw the situation at Marvel as him vs Management, and he simply saw Stan as part of management.
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There were actually a fair number of former EC artists who did work for Marvel in the ’60s: Gene Colan, Wally Wood, Alex Toth, Marie Severin (EC’s colorist), John Severin, and Johnny Craig—and Roussos, of course—all did at least a few jobs for Marvel. That’s seven out of about three dozen. Not bad. And then, of course, Al Williamson did a lot of stories (mostly westerns) for Atlas in the mid-’50s to 1960 (post-EC), many of which Marvel reprinted in the early ’70s.
And it wasn't just about the credit, too. It was about respect. Take the Silver Surfer series. Kirby wasn't consulted to pencil that series when it was pitched, and he was the creator. They only asked him to pencil and script the series around #18 when sales were dismal and on the brink of cancellation. And by then Lee had completely altered Silver Surfer's origin, much different than what Kirby had envisioned. Kirby knew he had to leave or he'd keep getting screwed over like that.
So yes, financial security was instrumental for Kirby in leaving Marvel, but it must've hurt as well if everyone thought you didn't write the stories but instead took diction from Stan The Man. Imagine if you wrote the Galactus Trilogy and didn't get credit for it. How pissed would you be?
And according to Greg Theakson's book, Jack saw the situation at Marvel as him vs Management, and he simply saw Stan as part of management.