Scans_Daily

Flashman's baldness (which I don't think came up again in later treatments of the character) is arguably the most vicious stab in this story full of vicious stabs. Lee was sensitive about his balding head and wearing a hairpiece at that point. In Kirby's eyes, that was a visual metaphor--fake hair, like everything else about Lee was fake.

While that bit was drawn from life, Flashman's Southern roots were, as far as I'm aware, almost pure invention. Kirby might argue Lee was an "inheritor" since his uncle got him his position at Timely/Marvel at first. But Lee was a born and bred New Yorker, and I don't think his Jewish family (the Leibers) had any Southern wealth in it. It wouldn't be the last time that Marvel was compared to a slave plantation: Todd McFarlane was also fond of that metaphor. He might've gotten it from this.

Neither Lee nor Thomas said anything about this story publicly to my knowledge, but there's no way it would have escaped their notice in the close-knit community that was 1970s comics production. Whatever Lee's short-term feelings about it, he did work with Kirby again later in the decade, and his public statements about Kirby don't seem to have changed in tone much before and after its release.

Thomas, on the other hand--and I say this as a guy who grew up loving Thomas's work--doesn't seem to have ever gotten over it.

I do think the line "like all his endless kind" in the last panel is interesting. When we hate someone or feel they've wronged us, we often tend to elevate them to superlatives: "He's the nastiest, pettiest cheat anyone could ever imagine!" It wouldn't be hard for Kirby to do a similar elevation here: "The Norse had the trickster god Loki--Eden had the snake--and the modern era is 'blessed'--or rather CURSED--with the ultimate expression of smiling, slithering slander and subterfuge: FUNKY FLASHMAN!" Instead, he implies that Funky is just one of thousands out there, breeding like flies.

(For a character who was closer to a "god of lies," flip to the next page of the Kirby alphabet and check out Glorious Godfrey.)

That could be a sign of Kirby's mature storytelling instincts triumphing over his grudges: by making Flashman a more everyman figure in the end, he gave the story more weight and meaning for those readers who DIDN'T know about his feud with Lee or care. "Sure, you haven't met Funky yourself, dear reader, but ask yourself: have you met ANOTHER of his endless kind?" Or it could be just one more jab at Lee, in its way: "In the end, this clown isn't even one of the BETTER KNOWN clowns."