Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

As a kid Stan Lee was a childhood hero, but as I've gotten older and found out how he marginalized the work of his collaborators/co-creators, I feel I've strongly soured on him.

After hearing him on Fatman on Batman, where he wasn't entirely in his full-on hype machine mode, I began to wonder how real the genial old man persona is? I'd like to think he really is as happy and outgoing as he portrays but his ego has gotten the best of him over the years, but I still can't shake the feeling that maybe it's a facade.

What's your personal opinion of Lee?

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I think he was mainly hype. I get the feeling that he was more of a Co-Plotter/scripter for most of that early stuff and not the out and out writer. I'm not saying he was a Scott Lobdell and just did scripts off of other guys plots but he gets more credit than he probably deserves.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

He's certainly good at hyping himself up, but I think he was also a genuine talent back in the day. Now he's little more than an oddity.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Mostly hype. I like him as an old man ambassador now, but growing up i felt he was a rip off. FF was just a JLA ripoff, and all his other characters applied a simple formula:

Name + power / radioactive something = hero

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

He was a showman who knew how to marshal others' talents to great effect. He was a great organizer and hype artist, something that Marvel needed at that time. He probably took too much credit over the years and certainly mistreated his chief collaborator, Jack Kirby. He deserves both praise and criticism.

My question has always been--why'd he have such a low profile for the first 20 years of his professional tenure and then burst on the scene so loudly and unforgettably in the 1960s? Had he finally attracted the right talent to make Marvel Comics happen the way he wanted it? Was it luck, good timing, or had he laid the groundwork for Marvel's success in the previous 20 or so years?
Just curious.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Stan Lee is great, very personable, and I will be sad when he dies.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I think he just rode the wave of the super hero resurgence that DC and Julius Schwartz started.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

The Fatman on Batman episode with him actually touches on the Marvel explosion.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

His biography suggest that he was an inspired creator with genuine aspirations to being an artist, but stuck with a pulp form of craft and a trashy genre. He was also a clever businessman, and likable enough to take partial credit from others without too much outrage. I appreciate his work in general and like him now a lot better than when he was getting trashed in the 80's and 90's by embittered fellow creators like Jack Kirby and the editors at THE COMICS JOURNAL.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I think there's more to it than that, though. I can go back and bulk-read FF but not JLA--the stories and characters just aren't that interesting, especially over multiple issues. And while the radioactive device was overused, Hulk, Spider-Man, and Daredevil were all very different characters.

How much of the credit Stan deserves, I don't know. And I agree he's become a hype machine of some unworthy stuff. But I met him a few years ago and was pretty taken by his charm and enthusiasm. From my perspective, he's earned at least a fair amount of that credit.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I don't think he is worse than Bob Kane.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I read a Kirby biography (I forget which one) that said Lee was in the trenches every day during the 1960s, writing or co-writing all those titles. Even in his capacity as editor, he put in a tremedous amount of creative work.

Regardless, after working in comics since WWII, he's entitled by now to coast on his persona.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I agree with the sentiments of the first paragraph. Lee has always been able to project a very affable, likable demeanor. He's always had a warm, distinctive speaking voice - which in tandem with his theatrical, over the top enthusiasm makes him fun to listen to. He was a great 'face' for not only Marvel, but the entire industry. Kirby was 'The King', but Stan is one of a kind. He won't be around much longer and when he goes it's going to be a dark day- because nobody has that precise combination of talent, ego, and affability. He reminds me in many ways of Forrest Ackerman. We won't see his like again anytime soon.

As far as the second paragraph goes- one of the great things about the GIT DVD Rom collections is that all the early issues of these ground breaking titles are cover-to-cover and it is very fascinating to read some of the early back-ups that you never see get reprinted now. I'm thinking especially of Tales To Astonish and the early Iron Man back ups, with their sub Twilight Zone, you can see them a mile coming, O'Henry twist endings. You can definitely see Lee getting better as time passes and his collaborators get stronger. Hell even the Iron Man feature starts out fairly weak and you can see him grow. I think the real cream of the crop at Marvel-Kirby, Ditko, Buscema, Romita, etc were all not only peak craftsmen in and of themselves, but they elevated Stan's game as well. He had great chemistry with many different artists-not a small thing.

And while he wasn't a perfect human being, I don't begrudge him the praise he got at all as a writer. In fact, I think in a lot of ways his work is stronger than people give it credit for. Just compare the writing, by Kirby himself, in the DC books of the early seventies- or his Cap America from his mid seventies return to Marvel- to the work he was doing with Lee just a few years prior. Lee's writing seems, even today, mostly effortless- that's an honestly creative person firing on all cylinders- not a charlatan imposter.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Agree, mostly.

I think there was something really... odd... magical... strange... going on back in the 1960s. Something about the combination of Lee, Kirby, and Ditko at that time just fucking worked and they created a new and enduring mythology.

Fantastic Four. Spider-Man. Iron Man. Incredible Hulk. X-Men. Thor. Doctor Strange. The Avengers.

I've never been impressed with anything Stan Lee has written outside of the early Silver Age Marvel books (and that's being charitable), but I think that, somehow, those guys played off of each other to great effect.

I also think Lee was able to reign guys like Kirby and Ditko. Kirby, left to his own devices, can get incomprehensible. Exhibit A: Captain Victory. And Ditko, well, when he's left alone he starts pumping out objectivist Chick tracts.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

The answer is that no one was paying any attention to the first 20 years of his professional tenure. Working in comics was the bottom of the barrel and Lee was ashamed to even admit to it. Even the creators of newspaper comic strips looked down on comic book writers/artists. When Marvel took really took off in the 60's the mainstream media picked up on the new vibe and Lee started to get magazine and newspaper reports asking for interviews. He got on TV and was invited to college campuses. Thus the hype machine started.

My personal opinion of Stan is borderline positive. I think he wrote/discussed plots with his artists. When he got busier with the editorial responsibilities of the expanding line of comics and the time demands of the Marvel hype machine he may have contributed scenarios or matchups, but not full plots. I've heard him admit that eventually Steve Ditko did full plots on Spider-Man, submitting the art to which Stan would add dialogue/captions. His dialogue was better than pretty much anything DC was putting out in the 60's though sometimes it was contrary to what was going on in the art.

My main problems are the lack of writing credits given to his artists and his dismissal of the artists role in creating the characters. Even though Jack, Steve, etc. weren't literally typing out the stories on pieces of paper, by virtue of submitting a full comic of story art, with little to no input from Stan, they "wrote" the stories we've all read. Stan was at best co-plotter/scripter or even just scripter. But he wasn't really the writer.

To say that Steve Ditko isn't the co-creator of Spider-Man is insane. C'mon, Stan.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

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Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

In an interview for the UK television documentary, "In Search of Steve Dikto", there's a moment where Lee drops the bluff persona and acknowledges Dikto's contributions - pretty much creating the character based on Stan's original idea and plotting every issue.

It's an excellent documentary if you can track it down.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

^you can watch on Youtube. That's where I watched it. Excellent documentary as you say.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Stan has been pretty explicit about his feelings regarding Spider-Man. Briefly, it is that he came up with the idea of the character, then took it to Ditko who designed the look of the character. In Lee's mind, because he had the original idea, because he presented it to Ditko as a fully developed concept, he (Lee) is the creator. That is not to suggest that Ditko did not make important contributions -- he did, and Lee acknowledges this; he just doesn't think those contributions entitle Ditko to be labeled as "creator." As an aside, Lee went to Ditko second -- originally, he took the Spider-Man concept to Kirby, but Lee didn't like the character Kirby designed to be Spider-Man, so he then went to Ditko. Arguably, this supports Lee's case -- he had a clear vision in mind for the character before any artist got involved -- and arguably, it supports Ditko's -- whatever Lee had in mind, it wasn't something that anyone could put down on paper, since Lee had to step away from Kirby's version and get Ditko to do it.

More generally, I think Lee is a very talented creator -- probably one of the top ten best writers ever to do superhero comics. Separate and apart from his skills as a writer, he was also a master of hype. And as Marvel's editor (as opposed to a freelancer), part of his job was going out and selling Marvel. That made him the public face of this company that rocketed to success in the 60s, and there's a natural tendency to recast that as "Lee didn't give Kirby and Ditko credit." But that's not true -- if you go back and look at what Lee has said over the years, he has always given Ditko and especially Kirby tons of credit. But at the end of the day, when Lee goes to college campuses or on Merv Griffin to talk about Marvel, maybe he mentions Jack Kirby a few times, maybe a bunch, but at the end of the day, he's the one who's there talking, and he's the one people remember.

And part of this is backlash. Younger fans may find it hard to believe, but there was a period in the 70s through the 90s when Kirby's name was mud. People wrote in to Marvel demanding he be taken off Captain America and Black Panther. He was referred to as Jack the Hack. He was viewed as a relic, as over the hill, as an artist who stuck around past his expiration date. Coupled with Marvel's battles with Kirby over ownership of his artwork, this meant clear battle lines were drawn -- either you were on Marvel's side or Kirby's side. Most people were on Marvel's side, but a few people were on Kirby's side, and Stan Lee (and Jim Shooter) became the face of the enemy. Then, as Kirby's reputation got rehabilitated (especially after he passed), the idea of "Marvel=Stan Lee=The Enemy" spread. So Jack's reputation got rehabilitated (deservedly so), but at the expense of tearing down Lee's (undeservedly so).

The truth is that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Stan Lee were all creative geniuses, and none of them produced work as good solo as they did in the Lee-Kirby or Lee-Ditko collaborations.

Here's an example of how good Stan Lee was, and how much he contributed it. Check out this page from FF #94:

http://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/kirby/w...Four941970.jpg

Now, by FF #94, pretty much everyone agrees that Kirby had control over the plots. He was having a brief conversation with Stan (at most), and then penciling the issue. Then Stan would get it and fill in the dialogue based on Jack's notes in the margin.

So on this page, Jack's notes in the margin show what he envisioned: in panel 2, Reed asks Ben if he wants to hold Franklin. In panel 3, Johnny tries to stop it -- Ben's a big lug and he's going to hurt Franklin! In panel 4, Ben takes Franklin, but in panel 5, he realizes Johnny is right, that he's a monster who shouldn't be holding Franklin because he'll inadvertently hurt him.

Lee turns the scene completely on its head, transforming it from (yet another) page about how Ben is a thing into a page that strengthens the bond between Ben and the rest of the FF. He is the only one who is not Franklin's blood relative, but this page makes it clear -- he is just as much a part of the family as Reed, Sue, and Johnny are.

That concept -- that approach to the characters and to the page -- is 100% Lee. And not only is that the product of Lee's imagination, he was able to implement it while still being true to the pencils Kirby had put down with an entirely different scene in mind. To me, that's true talent, and a clear demonstration that Lee was just as much a driving force on the book as Kirby.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Just watched the Steve Ditko doc and I'd say when it came to the co-creator/creator debacle, Ditko was ultimately more than a bit petty, especially after the letter Lee wrote.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I don't think this supports Lee's argument at all and lean towards your second point regarding that it supports Ditko's argument. Lee essentially said "I want a hero with spider powers and make him a teenager. Kirby, who was working on most of Marvel's other titles at the time recycled a costume (Captain America) and a concept (the Fly - a magic ring turns a teenager into an adult hero. NOTE: Ditko claims this concept was in Lee's 1st issue synopsis/script, it was the same as Joe Simon's Fly concept so he pointed it out and it was changed to the radioactive spider bite). Kirby claimed several times that he created Spider-Man. Here's Ditko's argument for why that isn't true:

http://i752.photobucket.com/albums/x...manbykirby.jpg

If Lee had a clear vision he should have communicated what the character should look like before the artist designed it. That obviously didn't happen with Kirby. And Lee didn't work that way. Lee going to Ditko is simply an example of Lee acting as the editor of the comics line.

I can understand where you're coming from but not a second after Lee tells the story about writing the letter saying that he was willing to "consider" Ditko to be the co-creator he turns around and says that he really doesn't believe that to be the case. That he, Lee, is in fact the sole creator.

Ross: But do you, yourself, believe he (Ditko) co-created him?
Lee: (long pause)...(shrug)...I'm willing to say so.
Ross: That's not what I'm asking.
Lee: No. That's the best answer I can give you.
Ross: So it's a no then.
Lee: No. I really think that the guy who dreams the thing up created it. You dream it up then you give it to anybody to draw it.

Ditko knew the letter was carefully worded to be disingenuous and was rightfully unsatisfied with Lee.

Lee had an idea. Ditko turned that idea into a comic book character. In my mind that makes them co-creators:

http://www.dialbforblog.com/archives...ge_v5_1999.gif

I'd like to see Lee/Marvel try to sell a t-shirt, or pajamas, or bed sheets with just his idea on it.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Lee is a legend, and a hell of a great pitchman. But if you've been reading Marvel for decades on end (coming up on 40 years for me), if you remember every last Marvel TV show, movie, Broadway show, tour, ice capade, whatever, that Stan hyped and pitched and frothed at the mouth furiously over, that NEVER came to fruition, then you know how entirely full of poop he can be. But that's part of the fun with Stan the Man. :up:

As far as creator recognition, I'm more upset about Bill Finger's marginalization.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Well that's not really fair. I mean, there's no doubt whatsoever that Robert Kirkman created the Walking Dead. Do you think people would buy T-Shirts that said "It's a book about a man who wakes up from a coma to find a zombie apocalypse has occurred. He and a handful of other remaining human survivors must band together to survive, but the focus is more about the way the humans attack each other than about the way the zombies attack them." Of course not. Comics (and T-shirts) are a visual medium, and you absolutely need a visual artist to bring them to life. That doesn't mean that the artist who draws the book is necessarily a co-creator of the underlying concept.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

When I first got into comics, I tried going back to the beginning, but Silver Age stuff is really really, hard for me to read with a modern eye. The interviews I have seen with Lee make him look like a very amicable guy, though I have heard stories about him having more unsavory business practices that weren't exactly beneficial to artist, but how much of that is true, I'm in no position to say. I'm highly inclined to agree with the criticisms being thrown at him over his so-called "co-creator" comments, especially since it's the visual identity that winds up on the merchandise.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

However, I've seen many comics that share creator credits between writer and artist. Sam Keith is credited as co-creator of many of the characters in Sandman because he drew the first six or so issues, where many of them first appeared.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Lee is the creator of Spider-Man
Ditko is the conceptional creator of Spider-Man

Calling Ditko the co-creator of Spider-Man is kind of like calling Ralph McQuarrie the co-creator of Darth Vader, Chewbacca, R2-D2 and C3PO. I haven't heard Ralph calling out George Lucas over creator status. Obviously, in the entertainment world (be it print, art, movies, TV, theater, whatever...with the possible exception of books, and even then there's often artwork involved) a lot of cooks are involved making the soup.

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Part of the reason Hollywood doesn't value ideas is because you can't put them on a T-shirt. But you can't visualize them sometimes either. Everyone knows Darth Vader's voice courtesy of Jones and his image courtesy of McQuarrie. THAT'S what's on the lunchboxes and T-shirts, and I'd imagine that Lucas is the one who gets money for those, not McQuarrie or Jones. They may well have done it as work-for-hire under contract and have no legal right to it, but that doesn't mean I don't understand why they object ethically and personally. I'm an armchair moralist, I know, I'm not the producer or creative force who put my millions on the line by giving them work on something that could've turned out disastrously. I get that. But I fully understand the point-of-view of artists in other fields who've made contributions and feel slighted creatively or financially. Obviously, where you stand on it in personal terms will vary from one individual to another, and of course legally, it's obvious where things stand. But I do get why some people feel the way they do.

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It is interesting. So much of what we identify with Star Wars comes from Ralph McQuarrie. Take away his designs, substitute them with someone's else's, and it's not going to be the same thing.

(Though I would be really curious to see what Moebius' Star Wars would look like.)

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Yeah, that's one of those things that seems weird. Sandman just feels so much like Neil Gaiman's singular vision that crediting Sam Kieth as co-creator seems kind of odd.

Same with Walking Dead, where Tony Moore gets credit for being the guy who drew the first six issues. The book just feels like Kirkman's baby, regardless of who's drawing it.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

The difference is how much variation in designing zombies and human survivors would have occurred between Robert Kirkman's descriptions and resulting comic had Kirkman gone with a different artist? Most Walking Dead comic shirts aren't instantly recognizable without the logo title there.

You don't need a title for Spider-man to be recognized. Which means that just the artistic contributions alone made by Ditko, contributed a substantial amount to the popularity of the character.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

And to "spoil" that podcast and answer the question - Lee was just a comic writing mill. He was writing anything and everything they were throwing out there in the market as well as editing the other writers. He was getting tired of the stories being rather meaningless and for kids (I think with particularly the western and romance books - perhaps this was during the period where capes fell out of favor?) and was on the verge of quitting. So his wife told him to write a story he would want to read, and he turned around and wrote Fantastic Four. Lee started writing the stories and characters he wanted to. But even he admits Fantastic Four was a response to either JSA or JLA. It was still a business. He was still just pumping out book after book and couldn't even remember the first name he gave Banner and was writing wrong ones into the Hulk books. And as someone else pointed out, it was DC that really drove the superhero wave back in, so that's what Goodman wanted Lee to put out. Lee just did it his way, and his way worked out for everyone involved.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Just watched the documentary. Pretty damn good and compelling stuff.

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Are we talking about Spider-Man or are we talking about Walking Dead and Star Wars? Apples and oranges, folks. And, Shannon, I'm assuming you typed "Kirby" twice when you meant to type "Ditko".

Ditko didn't just design Spider-Man's look, he took a few of Lee's thoughts and turned them into 18 to 22 pages of story. He didn't sit behind a typewriter but he did "write" those stories. Eventually, Lee stopped bothering to give him any story ideas and just waited for Ditko to deliver the art, then Lee dropped in dialogue and captions. There's a much greater role in what Ditko did than what McQuarrie did.

As to Kirkman & Moore, another completely different story. If I can borrow from JasonF, Kirkman didn't go to Moore and tell him "It's a book about a man who wakes up from a coma to find a zombie apocalypse has occurred. He and a handful of other remaining human survivors must band together to survive, but the focus is more about the way the humans attack each other than about the way the zombies attack them" and expect Moore to come back with 6 issues of story/art. My understanding is that Kirkman developed his ideas fully and provided Moore with full scripts which Moore's job was to illustrate. Completely different scenario than Lee & Ditko.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

That's the beauty of creativity. When it is done right, it looks obvious and simple because the answer is staring you in the face. The man figured out the right formula for comic book heroes at that point in time and it worked brilliantly and Marvel became a major contender to DC. He deserves his credit.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I just don't agree with this. Gambit was created by Chris Claremont and Jim Lee. Who came up with every single concept of the character I don't think matters., same with Spidey. If Spider-Man was created in the 90's both would have gotten credit, however since he was created in a writer dominated era the artist was marginalized.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I didn't know about McQuarie until fairly recently thanks to my Great Star Wars Divorce of 1997, but I'm inclined to agree. Film is a medium worked on by hundreds of people too, lets we forget, and those who opine the auteur theory are probably more likely to side with the director. I've long felt that Wes Craven was slighted by New Line on the Freddy Kruger character, but have I ever thought about David Miller not getting any of the profits? It's a tricky issue with no easy answers.

My father has never read a comic book in his life and has never seen any of the films.

This is Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man:
http://www.collectorsquest.com/uploa...86-620x436.jpg

This is Steve Ditko's:
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/7937/753580015.jpg

This is Erik Larsen's:
http://www.spiderfan.org/comics/imag...derman/023.jpg

This is Mark Bagley's:
http://images.wikia.com/spiderman/im...ark_Bagley.jpg

My dad would know instantly that all of these were supposed to Spider-Man. He knows what Spider-Man looks like. That's because of the visual identity Ditko created for the character. Ditko created that, not Lee. Does that mean that Lee doesn't deserve credit for making the character relatable, coming up with the origin story, and so forth? Certainly not, he absolutely does. But it was a creative collaboration. Now, as to who deserves more credit for what, who knows?

Yeah, but in some ways, art is in the eye of the beholder and comes after the fact. When Stuart Galbraith IV interviewed many tokusatsu creators for his book Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo: The Incredible World of Japanese Fantasy Films, he talks about how many creators were shocked that there was anyone who care about their work, much less on the other side of the world who didn't even speak the language. They weren't self-consciously making "art," just doing their jobs. But that doesn't negate the artistic validity of what they did. Really, a lot of this is personal preference too. Howard Hawks and John Ford found their treatment in Cahiers du cinéma hilarious, and look at Room 237, with all of the weird theories people opine. These people were artists in the confines of what they had to do, not bohemian rebels. But art takes on a life of its own.

I think the principle is the same though.

Again, we're also sorting this out after the fact. One of these groups is from an era where the fanbase rabidly analyze things like this, the other wasn't. Do I think Kirkman had more to do with The Walking Dead than the artists? Yes. Does that mean that the artists don't deserve co-creator credit? No, I don't think so, anyway.

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The thing about superhero characters is that they are created by committee. There's usually not one single creator.

Look at Wolverine.

Wolverine was a fairly forgettable character who appeared in a couple of issues of The Incredible Hulk. Wolverine was initially created by writer Len Wein (at the behest of Roy Thomas), costume designed by John Romita Sr, and drawn in the comics by Herb Trimpe.

Then Wolverine has the good fortune to end up in Giant Size X-Men #1 by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum (who redesigned Wolverine's costume into the familiar form).

But then, further refinements by Claremont and Byrne -- personality traits and backstory -- gave the character his identity.

I would argue that, while Wolverine may have been created by Wein and Romita, it was Claremont and Byrne who gave him his identity. They took an empty shell and filled it.

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They deal in absolutes. Personality traits aside, the initial Wolverine design and redesign was Wein with Romita.

Lee and Ditko (or Ditko) didn't consider personality traits or whatever. The LOOK is what they're talking about.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

I have always thought Lee's public persona was a huge put-on, because he thought fans and Marvel wanted it as the face of comics.

I would credit Ditko with a bigger share of why Spider-Man became the biggest comic book icon since the introduction of Superman and Batman than Stan Lee. Comics are a visual medium and Spidey's costume is instantly recognizable. Lee's genius was doing things entirely differently than DC had until that point. Make the superheroes real people with real problems, set in a coherent universe around New York City.

Re: Stan Lee: Genuine or Phony?
 

Lee is comic's ultimate pitchman. I'd say he is easily the most recognizable person involved in comics.

BTW: What the hell is with that Todd McFarlane picture? I know Spiderman's limber, but how the hell does someone get into that pose?