In 1970, when Jack Kirby moved from Marvel to DC, he became the writer-editor-artist of his work. There was some criticism of his drawing, though most of that went away when Mike Royer became his inker. What was left was mainly folks who simply didn't like Jack's style…or were horrified to see Marvel-style art in a DC Comic. There wasn't much he could do about that.
The dialogue and captions in his DC work, which definitely did not sound much like Stan Lee, proved to be more controversial. Some folks loved it. Some did not. I gave one interview in which I said some negative things about it and I can't for the life of me understand why I said that. I didn't really feel that way and in the years that followed, I came to really love the unique voice that Jack put into his work.
My pal David Seidman sent me this question to be answered here…
How did Jack Kirby respond to criticism of his work? I'm particularly interested in the criticism of his dialogue. From the 1970s to this day, readers have said that Kirby was a visual genius, but his characters spoke in ways that were too cornball, old-fashioned, or overblown even for the hyper-stylized world of costumed heroes. Did Kirby know about this viewpoint, and did it affect him?
As I said, some people liked it and some didn't. I think those in the "didn't" group would be shocked at how many there were (and now are) in the other group. I feel quite certain that over the years, the tide has swung wildly in his favor. There was a time there where it felt like DC was calling me every few months because they were reprinting that material again and wanted to consult with me and/or have me bang out a foreword. You don't reprint something that often unless people love it.
Even at the time Jack was doing that work, he got plenty of praise for his writing, much of it from people within the industry that he respected. What criticism he got from within DC was from the same folks who insisted that he should try to draw more like Curt Swan. In some cases, he felt (as did I) that the folks offering that criticism just wanted that end of his job for themselves.
I think what bothered Jack was that the folks saying he couldn't write were under the impression that writing a comic book was only about writing dialogue. When I discuss this with people, I'm reminded of something that screenwriter William Goldman wrote in his book about his craft, Adventures in the Screen Trade. The following excerpt is edited somewhat to get to the point quicker. Goldman was talking about a lesson he'd learned while writing one of his early scripts…
…I was approaching what I believe to be the single most important lesson to be learned about writing for films and this is it:
SCREENPLAYS ARE STRUCTURE.
Yes, nifty dialog helps one hell of a lot; sure, it's nice if you can bring your characters to life. But you can have terrific characters spouting just swell talk to each other, and if the structure is unsound, forget it.
Writing a screenplay is in many ways similar to executing a piece of carpentry. If you take some wood and nails and glue and make a bookcase, only to find when you're done that it topples over when you try and stand it upright, you may have created something, but it won't work as a bookcase. The essential opening labor a screenwriter must execute is, of course, deciding what the proper structure should be for the particular screenplay you are writing.
If you read the rest of that book and/or listen to some of Goldman's interviews, you'll see that he divided the role of screenwriter into two parts: (1) Writing the Dialogue and (2) Everything Else. And "Everything Else" included the plot — what the story was about — and what should be established in each scene in order to tell the story…in other words, The Structure.
I doubt Jack ever read Goldman writing about writing but it was clear to me that Jack looked upon writing a comic book in much the same way. I'm not sure that in his entire career in comics, he ever got any criticism whatsoever for the part of writing a comic book that he felt was most important — i.e., The Structure. So he was satisfied he was doing his job well. And he was annoyed that there were people who talked about "the writing" as something that did not include The Structure.
