My amigo Fred Hembeck has one of the best comics weblogs out there. He writes about his love of the medium. He offers up historical artifacts. He even prints Fred Hembeck cartoons.
In the middle category, he's currently offering two bits of funnybook history. One is this 1966 article on Will Eisner from the New York Herald-Tribune Sunday magazine section. The author, Marilyn Mercer, knew Eisner pretty well, having worked for him for years.
The other is this 1966 article by Nat Freedland, also from the New York Herald-Tribune Sunday magazine section. It's a profile of Stan Lee and, peripherally, Jack Kirby…and it was one of the dozen-or-so factors that destroyed that partnership. Jack was furious at how little he was mentioned, how unflattering the few mentions were, and most of all at how Stan was depicted as the sole genius of Marvel Comics. Jack's wife Roz read the article early the Sunday morning it came out, woke Jack up to read it…then Jack phoned Stan at home to wake him up and complain. Both men later recalled that the collaboration was never the same after that day, and it was more than just an injured ego at work.
Jack had then been promised he would soon receive a hefty raise and some bonus for the way his art was being used in Marvel merchandising. Shortly after the article came out, things changed. The raise turned out to be minimal and the bonus disappeared because (he said) Marvel's business folks elected to believe the article, or at least to use it as a reason to deny him his due. According to Jack, when he argued his worth to the company, someone there would cite Freedland's piece as independent verification of how things were. It pretty well firmed up Kirby's view that he was being swindled because he was contributing mightily to the creation of the characters and stories but being credited only for artwork. Not long after, in an attempt to appease Jack, the credits on most Marvel books were altered so they didn't say who did what. Instead of saying "Written by Stan Lee, Drawn by Jack Kirby," an issue of Fantastic Four would say something like "by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby" or "A Lee-Kirby Production." As far as I could tell, most readers did not appreciate the difference. They just figured it was a different way of saying Stan wrote it and Jack drew it. (The less-specific credit format had been used occasionally before Jack and a few other artists complained, but it became standard for a while in response to those complaints.)
There were other, more serious events that drove Kirby from Marvel a few years later…and I think I describe them all in the bio of Jack I hope to finish in the next year or three. But this had a major impact, and I'm sure we all thank Br'er Hembeck for making it available for us to read.