It is rare when I feel Jack Kirby has gotten too much credit for something. Over the years, I've often felt my friend (and one-time employer) was not properly hailed as a creative genius, and I've winced as he went unmentioned or damned with faint praise during talk of his many co-creations.
But this article in tomorrow morn's New York Times comes close to overcompensating. In a discussion of The Hulk, Fantastic Four, X-Men and Thor, Stan Lee goes almost unmentioned. And, yes, plenty of articles have erred in the opposite direction, and the scale isn't close to balanced…
…but we all know what two wrongs don't make. Particularly excessive is that the article is illustrated with a drawing of the X-Men — not by Kirby, not featuring his version of those characters, and not noting that the current, money-making version is a couple of revamps removed from what Jack helped bring into the world.
(And a small point: Jack left Marvel and went to DC in 1970, not 1971.)
The quotes from Michael Chabon and Jules Feiffer are spot-on, and Jack deserves every ounce of praise for his unbounded imagination. As much as he brought to comics, I don't think we even got 50% of what he had to give. Still, it would be nice if we could sing his praises without turning his collaborators into mumbled asides.