When I was small I thought Stan Lee (born Stanley Leiber) must have been the greatest — or at least the most prolific — writer ever, given all the comics he wrote. Later lawsuits suggested things were a bit more complicated. A gifted self-publicist and judge of artistic talent,
Lee was part of the “work-for-hire” system which saw young artists sign away their creations for a pittance. Stan would give an artist a sketchy plot and — once they’d finished drawing 20 pages of story — Stan added dialogue and claimed he wrote the whole thing.
For the three-part 1966 Fantastic Four saga, where an angelic herald selects the Earth as the next meal for the planet-eating celestial giant Galactus, Stan’s entire initial creative input had reputedly been to give Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg) with the four word instruction
“Have them fight God”.
I’m not saying Stan Lee is a super-villain or anything, but next time you see Stan cameoing in a billion-dollar movie starring Robert Downey Jr, remember it was Jack Kirby who ‘co-created’ Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.
And if the film has Spider-Man or Doctor Strange, well, they’re mostly Steve Ditko’s. Stan just put his name to the words in their mouths.
In 1989, an embittered Kirby told the Comics Journal:
“Stan Lee and I never collaborated on anything! I’ve never seen Stan Lee write anything. It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things – or old things, for that matter. Stan Lee wasn’t a guy that read or told stories.”
The man who created or co-created much of what would one day become the largest cinema franchise in history – by 2017 earning approximately $13 billion – despaired.
“I should have told Stan to go to hell and found some other way to make a living, but I couldn’t do it. I had my family, I had an apartment. I just couldn’t give all that up.”
On February 6, 1994, at the age of 76, Jack Kirby died of heart failure. Stan Lee attended the funeral, with Roz’s permission. Toward the end of the ceremony, he slipped away quietly. Roz saw him go, and called out to him, but he didn’t hear her.
Marvel was shamed into giving Roz a pension and she vowed to live long enough to claim every cent she believed Jack was owed. She died four years after Jack.
In 2014, Marvel agreed with Kirby’s estate to honour “Mr Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history”.
Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber) December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018 #Excelsior
