There's a newly-made documentary on Disney+ about Stan Lee. I have not seen it yet and judging from some of the online reviews, it might be good for my blood pressure if I didn't watch. I probably will soon but at the moment, the Stan Lee Tribute TV Special which aired on ABC on 12/20/19 has been sitting unviewed on my TiVo for all this time.
My opinion of Stan Lee is complicated and not easy to explain. It falls somewhere between "He did everything" and "He did nothing." It includes massive disappointment with some (not all) of the things he said over the years, some (not all) of the things he did. It became clear to me at times that he did not believe in the phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility."
With the exception of one ugly falling-out we had, Stan was very nice to me…as he was nice to almost everybody when his reputation and continued employment were not at stake. He could be a charming man and I absolutely understand why some people love(d) the guy. But I think that the notion that he was the primary creator of those properties is utter…what's the word I'm looking for here? Oh, I know: Bullshit.
Note that I am not saying he did nothing. You could not be in his position and contribute nothing even if you tried. But I think the driving force behind those properties was Jack Kirby — in at least some cases by a wide margin — and I think Steve Ditko was the driving force behind Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.
Since I haven't seen the documentary, I don't want to say much more than that if it suggests those two artists contributed nothing more than the visuals, it's wrong. (And let's be honest here: Even if all they'd contributed were the visuals, they both deserve more creator credit than they've received at times. All Joe Shuster contributed to the creation of Superman was the visuals and no one ever disputed his full status as the co-creator.)
Marvel finally — too little, too late — agreed to always credit both as co-creators of the properties they helped launch. Actually, it was more Disney than Marvel that agreed to that…so I really don't understand why there's now a documentary that suggests otherwise.
One reason I believe it suggests otherwise is that I read this letter which was released the other day by Jack's son Neal. Neal is a very smart guy and if the documentary says what Neal says it says, the documentary is definitely wrong.
I am still working on my long-promised exhaustive biography on Neal's father. In it, I go into far greater detail about all this than I can on this blog. My conclusions were arrived at by extensive conversations with both men. I think I'm the only person alive who worked — at different times, of course — for both Stan and Jack. Stan could sometimes be surprisingly fair in his recollections of who did what when there wasn't a tape recorder running.
I also talked, often at great length, with Ditko, Don Heck, Stan Goldberg, Bill Everett, Sol Brodsky and others who were around at the time. Not one of them thought all Jack or Steve did was draw what Stan dreamed up. Some felt the credit should just be 50-50 and we should leave it at that. Some felt the artist end of it should be higher. No one felt it should be lower.
Yes, yes…I need to finish and publish this book that I keep talking about. This documentary may be all the push I need to do that. In the meantime, read what Neal Kirby has to say. Here's that link again.