The Tainted Legacy of Stan Lee
I was five years old when I first knew who Stan Lee was. In 1981, I would religiously wake up before my parents did on Saturday mornings to watch Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Stan Lee would voice a preface for each upcoming episode, and I remember knowing that the sound of his voice would mean a quality show was to come.
It was doubly so when they would later add the Incredible Hulk to make it a full hour of Marvel characters. The cartoon would direct me to start picking up comics at the local convenience store (I know now that was exactly the intent, to expand Marvel’s brand and sales of comics). Within Marvel’s comics, on the opening splash page, would be labeled “Stan Lee presents,” as well as “Stan’s Soapbox,” which was his editorial that would be promoting some new Marvel series. Stan Lee is, of course, indelibly tied to Marvel comics.
As I grew into my teens, I never much thought of Lee besides that of an old, hokey self-promoter. His comics weren’t edgy enough compared to much of the mainstream comics during the late 80s and early 90s (he tried an awful endeavor to reimagine DC characters with a darker slant).
However, as I started to become a comic creator myself in my early 20s, I began to read and hear stories of Stan Lee that almost every serious cartoonist knows:
Stan Lee f*cked over a lot of people.
Most people on the street know Stan Lee’s name, but are also almost entirely unaware of the other comic industry giants who made all of Marvel’s characters possible. People like: Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Bill Everett, and Joe Simon contributed as much, if not more, to many of the beloved and iconic characters we know so well today. Stan Lee usually created narratives in interviews implying he was the sole creator of such characters as Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, or Black Panther while the truth was much more complicated.
Stan Lee taking full credit for most of the Marvel characters had deep repercussions for many of his co-creators and their families. While the Marvel business empire grew with merchandise and tie-ins which are still ubiquitous today, many, if not all, of the co-creators did/do not see a dime for their creations and have their artwork plastered across t-shirts, lunch-boxes, and toy packaging.
It’s only recently that many of the Jack Kirby’s creations go credited to him, while they fill the movie screens across the world raking in billions. But Stan Lee himself was not immune to the machinations of kid-product capitalism. Lee wasn’t the exec at Marvel, but he worked himself to be the face of Marvel, because he probably knew better than many other creators that the assembly line of comics production provided little job security for its creators. When the Marvel movies began, Lee had to sue to receive royalties from his co-creations.
Similar to Steve Jobs, who was the face and name of Apple Computers, while only the ardent talked about Steve Wozniak, so too is it the way of Stan Lee. And Stan Lee deserves a lot of credit for both the creations he helped bring to life as well as his penchant for championing racial equality to many young readers.
He spoke out against bigotry often in his editorials and storylines. Would Marvel be where it is today if not for Lee’s constant promotion? Undoubtedly not. The hard truth is that the Marvel comics we see today, whether on the page or on screen, would not exist without Stan Lee. He just didn’t do it alone.
-Excelsior!
A version of this article originally appeared in Suspect Press.
