I don't know how many have ever seen Kirby's original ideas for Spider-man, but here's a rendering by Sturdy Steve himself:



~Bob

I've always been a little fuzzy on this little historical tale. Did Lee come up with the basic concept, and Ditko and Kirby both do costume designs? Obviously, we'll never really know how much was Lee and how much Ditko, but what exactly did Kirby contribute?

There's a great article by Ditko that accompanies that piece. Essentially, as Ditko tells it, Kirby designed the costume you see, and drew 5 pages of a story (IIRC, Ditko was supposed to ink it). One page was a classic Kirby hero splash, and the rest were the hero in civillian ID, an aunt, and an uncle who was a cop (who was mean and didn't like the kid). Ditko doesn't mention if the names were Peter Parker, Ben and May or not. That was the extent of what Kirby did (per Ditko).

I'll try to summarize the article, since I don't have access to a scanner (on my list of things to get).

~Bob

I've read elsewhere that Kirby's ideas were something of a rehash of a character he developed in the 1950s. That character eventually became the Fly over in Archie's superhero line. In fact, I think some of his "Silver Spider" drawings were posted here many moths ago when we were discussing this topic.

Part of the article discussed that. Kirby had proposed that there was a magic spider ring involved, and Ditko mentioned it sounded like the Fly.

I'll try to get that article in here soon.

~Bob

Thanks, Frank.

You rock, Frank! Thanks!!!

~Bob

No problem!