Joe Maneely was a superb comic book artist who was pretty much the "star" of the line of comics that Martin Goodman published and Stan Lee edited in the late fifties. This was the line that soon morphed into what we now know as the Marvel Comics Group. Maneely was not around to see it morph, however. On June 7, 1958, he stumbled or somehow fell to his death between the cars of a fast-moving commuter train. He was 32 years old. Here's a question about him that Johnny Achziger just sent me…
Here's a purely speculative question I've occasionally pondered over. Joe Maneely was a terrific artist and did a lot of stuff for Stan in the '50's. My question is, if Joe had lived through the '60's how do you think the Marvel Universe would have been different? I can certainly see him doing Thor, maybe something like Agents of SHIELD. Do you think he would have been a superstar like Kirby and Ditko?
Johnny did not originate this question. It's a discussion topic about once a year somewhere on Facebook or some comic forum. I even tackled it before on this blog back in 2007. But I've had some new thoughts about it so here's my new, improved answer, starting with the easy part of it…
The Easy Part of It: I think Maneely would have been a superstar in comics no matter where he worked or what he worked on. He was very good and very versatile.
Beyond that, it gets a bit tougher. At the time of his death, Maneely was drawing for Stan Lee, who loved his work…but Maneely was also beginning to get work from DC. Atlas/Marvel (whatever you want to call Stan's company) was then a very shaky enterprise. No one would have been too surprised if they'd just closed down as so many other companies did around then. Several folks I interviewed who were around then believed Goodman did decide to discontinue his comic book line — several times. He'd decide on Monday to get out and then change his mind on Wednesday.
He also paid low rates. DC paid way better and was on solid ground.
My speculation is that Maneely would have become a full-time freelancer for DC. He had a wife, young daughters and a lot of expenses due to a new house he'd just purchased. I also think he'd have fit in well at DC — way better than either Kirby or Ditko would have. The DC editors and production folks had some pretty firm ideas of how a DC book should look and some of them spent the sixties dismissing what Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko did for Marvel as quite inferior to anything seen in a DC title.
But Maneely drew the way DC liked its artists to draw. I think they would have found more and more work for him and soon, he would not be working for Stan anymore. Why would any man, who presumably wanted to do right by his family, have stuck with a company that paid less and which might be outta business any day? George Klein was doing some inking for Marvel up until the moment when he was able to get steady work inking Superman for DC, whereupon he fled.
So Maneely would not have been around Marvel during the years that Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, The X-Men (etc.) were launched. Later on, when Marvel was not on the verge of closure and was paying about the same as DC, he might have come back as John Romita Sr. and Gene Colan and a few others did. At that point, he might have been assigned to any book in the place. He could have drawn just about any one of them.
If he had for some reason been at Marvel in the early sixties when they started creating super-hero books, I'm sure he'd have been tapped for them. What he would have done is hard to say because I don't know the answer to this question: Was he one of those artists, like Kirby or Ditko, who could not only draw but contribute mightily to the writing? Some very fine comic artists couldn't do that.
If Maneely was really good at coming up with new ideas for stories and characters, and at fleshing out whatever plots and concepts Stan Lee came up with, then "Stan and Joe" might have created some of the early Marvel super-heroes. I've very certain though that he would not have worked on the first issues of the strips we know; he would not have been the co-creator of Fantastic Four or Thor or Spider-Man or any of those.
Why? Because he was not Jack Kirby, nor was he Steve Ditko. I don't believe Stan Lee came up with any of those wholly on his own and then selected an artist from his stable to draw his creations. Even Stan only claimed that some of the time.
If Maneely wasn't great at plotting and new concepts, he still would have had a place at Marvel but one more like Don Heck or Dick Ayers. I'm not talking here about quality of artwork — just his usefulness to Stan as an artist. In writing about those early days, one must keep in mind that Stan had a hard time finding good artists to work for the money that Goodman paid. He certainly wouldn't have not kept a guy who drew as well as Maneely around.
So that's my speculation. If you have your own, fine. No one can ever prove us right or wrong except, of course, that yours is wrong and mine is right. Or vice-versa.
