I want to start by saying two things. The first is that I love Stan Lee and respect him as a creator, innovator, and public speaker, as well as his dedication to comics. The second thing is that I know is that Josie Reisman has written a wonderful account of the real Stan Lee in their book True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, so comic historians and literary historians are aware of the “real story” with Lee. Reisman scrupulously goes through Lee’s life and delivers a genuine and frank telling of his penchant for fabricating things. It’s the general public and trade media that have a disconnect with the real version of events.
The goal of this article is to remain tactful while still dealing with facts. Stan Lee is a hero to many people, including myself. But the reality of “meeting” your heroes never ends up being what we’ve created in our heads. Unfortunately, there will be times when you find out that your hero had as many flaws as he did successes, and given that he was pretty successful, that says a lot about how many imperfections he had, too. It’s to be expected. These are humans, after all. It’s inexplicable that we’re shocked when our heroes are people. It may be why we’re here.
For the uneducated, Disney+ released a documentary on Stan Lee’s life and history that pretty much acts like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby didn’t exist, they were just there to support Lee’s genius. Ditko had bountiful problems with Lee. They were briefly mentioned in the documentary, but Kirby’s were not. The documentary led to a statement from the Kirby family, written principally written by his son Neal. Neal is a comic historian and was in the building for most of these events, so he wasn’t just defending his father’s honor. Here’s a link to the full statement on Bleeding Cool.
Neal stresses that comics were a team effort and Stan Lee took a lot of personal credit for things that were done by a team because he was the editor of Marvel. Neal isn’t trying to claim his father invented everything, he’s stating that everyone had a role but it’s only Lee that seems to get mentioned or it’s generally assumed he created stuff he really had little to no role in creating. One particular sticking point for Neal was that his father was genuinely knowledgeable in science, mythology, and history. Stan Lee was not.
This might seem like an odd thing to mention, but I promise it gets to the heart of what Neal is trying to prove. Just like I said that comic historians are well aware of Lee’s penchant for stretching the truth, they’re also aware that Kirby’s knowledge of those subjects was immense. It’s also the foundation of the vast majority of characters in the Marvel Universe. If you’re still confused or on the fence, let me give you some examples as I run a YouTube channel that explores comics as modern American mythology. You can click the link above to watch the videos if you’re curious, they’re too in-depth to explain here but I can use some highlights.
It might seem like nothing to use characters like Thor, who have been around for thousands of years. But once you go a bit deeper, you begin to see things like Captain America’s similarities to Achilles and Bucky’s similarities to Patrocles. Perhaps a bit of Oddyseus in Tony Stark. Perhaps reading God Loves, Man Kills introduced you to the plight of two minority groups seeking a home where they’re treated as humans and can live, the Jews and Black Americans. You will see Matt Murdock’s deep devotion to Catholicism and Magneto’s deep devotion to his Jewish heritage.
All of this is rooted in theology, history, and their gadgets, techs, and solutions to problems are often based on science. If all of this stuff is present in Marvel comics and Stan Lee had a critical lack of knowledge in these areas, then it suggests that there’s a lot more to the creation of your favorite heroes than you realize. Simply being an editor and running Marvel gave Lee the ability to slap his name on as a co-creator. These issues are still front and center in discussions today. They weren’t right then and they aren’t right now.
All of this brings me back to the fact that media outlets and other comic creators need to start being honest about who Lee was as a person. It’s long past time to do this and it’s long past time to get Ditko and Kirby the credit they so richly deserve. I get that Lee died a few years ago and some people might see this as being completely disrespectful to him, his family, and his legacy. But let me ask you a question if you’re one of these people.
If it’s disrespectful to discuss Lee candidly now, how disrespectful is it to have your life’s work taken from you by a man who said it was his just because he could? At some point, you’re being “disrespectful” to someone and I just don’t honestly see Lee being held accountable as disrespectful, but I think stealing someone’s work is disrespectful as hell. Honor has to come before pride.
In closing, Stan Lee did a lot of cool and great things for the comic industry. He also hurt a lot of people in his life and routinely lied about things. He’s promoted web projects and comics as being some colorful adjective, but ultimately ended up suing the project for stealing his name, image, and license by tricking him. He later dropped it. But it was just another event in his unheroic life of putting fame before anything.
I don’t think tearing someone down just to tear them down serves anyone. I used to think that way and then I realized the only person I was serving by writing those articles was my ego and thinking I needed to be inserted into the problem. In essence, I was doing exactly what Stan Lee did his entire life, so I really do not have any room to talk about faults and failures. I just think we can do a better job of telling this man’s real life without deifying him and denying the knowledge, art, and truly creative efforts of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee.
Also, go read Reisman’s biography of Stan Lee. It’s genuinely the best account you will find and it deals with cold, hard facts. People are always complicated. Their stories will be complicated. We need to get better as a society when it comes to dealing with complicated because not everything is black and white. Maybe if we start with our heroes, it will become more natural and common.
