Stan Lee documentary on Disney +

[Earth 2 Chris]

Just finished the Stan Lee documentary on Disney Plus. It's a surprisingly fair and accurate history of Stan's contributions to comics. It gives plenty of credit to Kirby and Ditko in particular, and isn't afraid to portray Stan in a somewhat negative light. The infamous radio show argument from 1987 when Stan basically called in to give Kirby crap is included, for instance. So it's a celebration of Stan, but a pretty realistic one, I'd say. It's mostly told through interviews with him over the decades, with some neat little "action figures" created to illustrate the history. My one complaint is they basically jump from the mid-70s to the era of the MCU, so it just bypasses all the years Stan was TRYING to get Hollywood to listen and take Marvel seriously. I think that would have been a compelling avenue to explore, but maybe they didn't have the time or budget.

If you're a comic history buff, I recommend it.

[Bruce Banner]

Great documentary overall, especially the archival audio and video clips.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it really rekindled the whole "Stan vs Jack" debate.
Jack's son, Neal Kirby, issued this statement about the documentary:

The 13th-century Islamic poet/scholar Rumi said, "The Ego is a veil between humans and God." In the Disney+ documentary bio of Stan Lee, the veil is lifted. Presented in the first person with Lee's voice providing a running narrative, it is Stan Lee's greatest tribute to himself. The literary expression of ego is the personal pronoun "I." Any decent English or Journalism teacher would admonish their students not to overuse it. So, the challenge is extended to anyone who wishes to count the number of "I's" during the 86-minute running time of Stan Lee.

I (000ps!) understand that, as a "documentary about Stan Lee," most of the narrative is in his voice, literally and figuratively. It's not any big secret that there has always been controversy over the parts that were played in the creation and success of Marvel's characters. Stan Lee had the fortunate circumstance to have access to the corporate megaphone and media, and he used these to create his own mythos as to the creation of the Marvel character pantheon. He made himself the voice of Marvel. So, for several decades he was the "only" man standing, and blessed with a long life, the last man standing (my father died in 1994). It should also be noted and is generally accepted that Stan Lee had a limited knowledge of history, mythology, or science.

On the other hand, my father's knowledge of these subjects, to which I and many others can personally attest, was extensive. Einstein summed it up better; "More the knowledge, lesser the ego. Lesser the knowledge, more the ego."

If you were to look at a list and timeline of Marvel's characters from 1960 through 1966, the period in which the vast majority of Marvel's major characters were created during Lee's tenure, you will see Lee's name as a co-creator on every character, with the exception of the Silver Surfer, solely created by my father. Are we to assume Lee had a hand in creating every Marvel character? Are we to assume that the other co-creator never walked into Lee's office and said, "Stan, I have a great idea for a character!" According to Lee, it was always his idea. Lee spends a fair amount of time talking about how and why he created the Fantastic Four, with only one fleeting reference to my father. Indeed, most comics historians recognize that my father based the Fantastic Four on a 1957 comic he created for DC, "Challengers of the Unknown," even naming Ben Grimm (The Thing) after his father Benjamin, and Sue Storm after my older sister Susan.

Though the conflict between Lee and my father concerning creator credit gets glanced over with little mention, there is more attention paid to the strife between Lee and Steve Ditko, with Lee's voice proclaiming, "It was my idea, therefore I created the character," Ditko's rebuttal being that his art and storyline is what brought life to Spiderman. In 1501, the Opera del Duomo commissioned a 26-year-old Michelangelo to sculpt a statue of David for the Cathedral of Florence – their idea, their money. The statue is called Michelangelo's David – his genius, his vision, his creativity.

I was very fortunate. My father worked at home in his Long Island basement studio we referred to as "The Dungeon," usually 14 – 16 hours a day, seven days a week. Most of the artists, writers, inkers, etc. worked at home, not in the Marvel offices as depicted in the program. Through middle and high school, I was able to stand at my father's left shoulder, peer through a cloud of cigar smoke, and witness the Marvel Universe being created. I am by no means a comics historian, but there are few, if any, that have personally seen or experienced what I have, and know the truth with first-hand knowledge.

My father retired from comic books in the early 1980s and of course, passed away in 1994. Lee had over 35 years of uncontested publicity, much naturally, with the backing and blessing of Marvel as he boosted the Marvel brand as a side effect of boosting himself. The decades of Lee's self-promotion culminated with his cameo appearances in over 35 Marvel films starting with "X-Men" in 2000, thus cementing his status as the creator of all things Marvel to an otherwise unknowing movie audience of millions, unfamiliar with the true history of Marvel comics. My father's first screen credit didn't appear until the closing crawl at the end of the film adaptation of Iron Man in 2008, after Stan Lee, Don Heck, and Larry Lieber. The battle for creator's rights has been around since the first inscribed Babylonian tablet. It's way past time to at least get this one chapter of literary/art history right. 'Nuff said.

[Earth 2 Chris]

^Yeah, I read that after I posted this. I don't blame Neal for taking up for his father one bit, but I think this documentary did a pretty good job of illustrating how much Jack, Ditko and the other artists were responsible for Marvel's success. Even when Stan said otherwise (and his take waffled over the years in the various interviews and sound bites), that just made him look a bit egocentric, at best.

[Bruce Banner]

Roy Thomas has also presented his own thoughts on the documentary via The Hollywood Reporter:

“Stan Lee was his own greatest creation.”

That’s a line that’s often tossed around these days — the more so since Stan died in late 2018 and isn’t around to respond in person to it — and there’s an argument to be made for it, as anyone who watches the new David Gelb documentary Stan Lee, now streaming on Disney+, can testify.

After all, a young Stanley Martin Lieber (though around age 18, not 16 as he misremembers early in the doc) did coin the name “Stan Lee” as a pseudonym with his very first story, written for Captain America Comics No. 3 around the end of 1940.

Then, beginning in the 1960s when the new “Marvel Comics Group” and its heroes erupted on the scene and gained pop-culture traction, he increasingly turned “Stan Lee” into a spokesman for comics in general, for Marvel in particular, and arguably for himself even more in particular. Stan Lee, as I knew him from mid-1965 till the end of his long life, was not a man with a fragile ego. Or, if fragile it was, it was far better shielded behind that winning smile and glib tongue than Tony Stark’s heart is behind Iron Man’s armor.

The real question, I suppose, is whether he deserved his status as the major creator of the so-called Marvel Universe.

Gelb’s documentary wisely lets Stan himself narrate his story from start to finish. Virtually the only voice we hear during its 1½-hour length that speaks more than one or two sentences in a row is Stan’s, in extended sound bites harvested from a host of TV appearances, comics convention Q&A sessions, award ceremonies, previous documentaries, and radio guest shots — enlivened by the occasional deathless line of dialogue from one of his many late-life movie cameos.

This is a refreshing way to encounter Stan the Man, and Gelb and his producers (which include Marvel Studios) are to be congratulated for letting him tell his own tale his way. By and large, the effort is successful and entertaining … and, so far as I can tell from my long association with him (which includes writing a humongous “career biography” of him for Taschen Books in the 2010s), it presents a reasonably accurate portrait of the man as he saw himself, and as the world came to see him:

As arguably the most important comicbook writer since Jerry Siegel scribed his first “Superman” story back in the 1930s…

As the creator (or at the very least the co-creator) of a host of colorful super-heroes and related comics characters…

…And as the creator (or at least the major overseer and guiding light) of a four-color phenomenon that became known as the Marvel Universe, and which formed the underlying bulwark of the now-even-more-famous Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most successful series of interconnected motion pictures in the history of that medium.

But of course he didn’t do it alone … and that’s where all the mostly ill-considered criticisms of Stan Lee’s life and work begin to kick in.

As recorded in the film, simply because he often (not always, but often) fails to credit the artists he worked with, Stan often seems to be claiming full credit for milestones, be they the powerful Hate Monger yarn in Fantastic Four No. 21 or such concepts as the Hulk and the X-Men. This is partly just a verbal shorthand, yet it is also in accordance with his expressed belief that “the person who has the idea is the creator,” and that the artist he then chooses to illustrate that concept is not. In L.A. in the 1980s (admittedly, at a time when I was not working for him), I argued that very point with him one day over lunch, maintaining that an artist who rendered and inevitably expanded that original idea was definitely a co-creator. I made no headway with my past and future employer. And clearly, when he wrote his celebrated letter, quoted in the doc, that he had “always considered Steve Ditko to be the co-creator of Spider-Man,” he was doing so only to try to mollify Steve and those who might agree with him. Later, he admitted as much.

(The funny thing is that, stretched to its logical conclusion, Stan’s argument could be marshalled to make Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, not himself, let alone himself in conjunction with Jack Kirby, the “creator” of The Fantastic Four. After all, it was Goodman who directed Stan to devise a team of super-heroes to compete with DC’s Justice League of America.)

But surely Steve Ditko, as closely paraphrased by Stan in Gelb’s film, is also wide of the mark when he states that “an idea is only an idea,” and that it was his drawing it that had made Spider-Man real. For, without the idea in the first place, the character and story events would not exist. Surely it took both men, but they are each simply too myopic to see it.

It’s certainly true that Stan doesn’t give his most talented collaborator, Jack Kirby, ample credit in every instance for his contributions to the early days of Marvel, from Fantastic Four onward. In a way, however, that’s only human nature: Stan could best remember the things he brought to the table in 1961 — just as Jack could best recall what he had done. Neither was an omniscient observer of the mind or actions of the other.

One thing is clear almost beyond argument: Lee often gave Kirby credit, both in writing and when speaking, for much that was good about The Fantastic Four and their related co-creations. The documentary records him as saying that Jack often drew a story after a plot conference that covered only the barest essentials of the storyline; in print in the comics themselves, Stan often went even further than that. You can look it up.

One seems to look in vain, alas, for any acknowledgement whatever by Jack Kirby of Stan’s value or contributions to their collaborations. And we can be pretty sure that, had Jack credited Stan thus, David Gelb and his researchers would have tracked them down and included them in the film’s soundtrack, if only to bolster their case concerning Stan’s talents. Instead, the most we get is Jack saying, when speaking of Thor, that Stan gave him the opportunity to do such a feature and that he gave it his all. Where is his admission or even suggestion that Stan’s dialogue and captions (to say nothing of his editorial guidance and his contributions to the storylines) added any value whatever to the feature?

Nowhere, that’s where.

Now, Jack Kirby had a right to his viewpoint — that he himself was the major, if not the sole, genius behind the success of the Fantastic Four, Thor, and all the rest. But that does not mean that we need to accept that viewpoint.

What is really called for, clearly, is first a documentary about Jack Kirby and his contributions to Marvel Comics — and then another one about the career of Steve Ditko. Both of those features would be potentially welcome additions to the filmic examination of Marvel. I’d be waiting eagerly in line (and online) to view either or both.

But if/when we do get full-fledged Kirby and Ditko docs, I hope they are at least as fair to the talent, contributions, and legacy of Stan Lee as Stan’s words were to the talents, contributions, and legacies of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

My own voice is heard only near the end of Gelb’s documentary, but I modestly suggest that I uttered what could be taken as the final word on the controversy, when I said (referring primarily to Stan and Jack, though it could also refer to Stan and Steve) that “neither of them could have done it without the other.”

But I also believe, most sincerely, that Stan Lee was the one who had a vision of a Marvel Universe (even if he himself didn’t invent that phrase) of overlapping characters with all-too-human emotions that defined and limited their super-powers. After all, he was not just the scripter but also the editor — the man who had been placed in charge of story and art, to deliver sales for the company that became Marvel Comics. No one else had that responsibility; almost certainly, no one besides Stan was looking at the big picture, from first to last, day in and day out.

Without Stan Lee, there might have been some good stories … some splendid art … but it’s highly unlike that there would have an overarching Marvel Universe.

And David Gelb’s able marshalling of the aural evidence underscores that point.

In the end, then, I suppose I disagree with the quote with which I began this piece.

In my mind, Stan Lee was not the greatest creation of Stan Lee.

The Marvel Universe was.

[monitor_ep]

I plan on watching this but I am in no hurry. I was one of those lucky ones to talk to Jack Kirby at SDCC, and even Stan Lee. I reminded Stan that most of those Marvel characters were "borrowed" from past literature and that made him mad and the debate began. My one regret is this was back in the day before camera phones where you could record without have one of those big cameras.

[palitoy]

I didn't enjoy it, I think I'm just being crabby. I've heard all this stuff before and I've read like 3 books on the subject so this didn't really give me much new.

Also, I'm bored to tears about this argument.

I would welcome a documentary about Ditko and Kirby but as Thomas says, they at times made some pretty dumb statements inflating their part in this. Stan was outgoing, larger than life, and getting a lot of love and attention. He was also misrepresenting his role IMO but again, he was trying to help the medium be respected. This may have been self serving but everyone's boat did rise.

For two humble, shy, hard working artists who never got the credit or rewards they deserved, it must have been infuriating. I get that they wanted to lash out but it's probably best to look at this with less feeling.

I doubt Disney would sanction a decent doc on either artist though, as it doesn't paint Marvel in a great light but those things should exist.

[B-Lister]

I am 100% Team Jack.

I honestly believe the Marvel Universe is 80% Kirby, 19% Ditko, and 1% Lee.

And I'm being generous to Lee.

I have zero desire to watch a fluff piece about "The Man" at the expense of "The King".

[Werewolf]

I would welcome a documentary about Ditko and Kirby but as Thomas says, they at times made some pretty dumb statements inflating their part in this. Stan was outgoing, larger than life, and getting a lot of love and attention. He was also misrepresenting his role IMO but again, he was trying to help the medium be respected. This may have been self serving but everyone's boat did rise.

Yeah, I think Kirby deserved more credit but Lee was hardly a monster and Ditko was just plain weird.

[Nostalgiabuff]

i watched it last night and enjoyed it. i am glad they did include the discussion, however briefly, about the artists contribution. either way, Stan was the face of Marvel and the driving force behind its success

[Earth 2 Chris]

Sigh. You just can't mention Lee without igniting this debate over and over. Leslie Iwerks is a top-flight documentarian. The fact that she even mentioned the controversy over Stan's take on who created what is a credit to her, in what is ostensibly a "fluff piece" as many have been saying. Should they have probed further into this? Probably not in a documentary meant to celebrate Stan Lee. If this was called "Creating the Marvel Universe", most definitely. But this was Stan's story, in his own words. Those words are often not self-flattering. His phone bombing of Kirby's radio interview doesn't paint him in a particularly great light. I thought that was actually pretty bold for this film, which is meant to make Stan look good. As I said before, having read histories of Marvels, and hearing all sides for decades, given the focus of this film, I think it's pretty fair. And Roy Thomas seems to agree, and he was actually there.

[warlock664]

I honestly believe the Marvel Universe is 80% Kirby, 19% Ditko, and 1% Lee.

And I'm being generous to Lee.

Lol.
That’s the beauty of opinions, everyone has a right to their own.
But anybody who believes that the Marvel Universe is only 1 percent Stan Lee is ignoring facts to justify their point of view.
Kirby was a dynamic artist and a great idea man and designer, but he lacked the polish and refined touch to fully realize the potential of those ideas. All one needs for proof of this is to examine the material he produced after his parting with Lee.
His New Gods/Fourth World stuff, while still being mined today, is a directionless, muddled mess with stilted dialogue as produced by Kirby.
His mid-70s Captain America is an embarrassment after the thoughtful and nuanced run by Steve Englehart that preceded his return to the book, where he basically ignored everything that had come before.
None of Kirby’s self-edited material sold well enough to avoid cancellation; Kamandi lasted the longest, and the basic premise of that series was a blatant rip-off of Planet of the Apes, including the iconic Statue of Liberty plastered on the cover of issue #1.
The Marvel Universe doesn’t happen if Lee doesn’t mold it with his scripting and editing. Kirby lacked the vision to create a multifaceted and interrelated universe of characters ; he was concentrated solely on the page in front of him.
And Ditko? His objectivist point of view would prevent any variety in characterization. What did he “create” after he left Marvel that approached the popularity and appeal of Spider-Man or Dr Stange? The Creeper? Hawk and Dove? Shade, the Changing Man?
1 percent Lee.

[sprytel]

Sigh. You just can't mention Lee without igniting this debate over and over. Leslie Iwerks is a top-flight documentarian. The fact that she even mentioned the controversy over Stan's take on who created what is a credit to her, in what is ostensibly a "fluff piece" as many have been saying. Should they have probed further into this? Probably not in a documentary meant to celebrate Stan Lee. If this was called "Creating the Marvel Universe", most definitely. But this was Stan's story, in his own words. Those words are often not self-flattering. His phone bombing of Kirby's radio interview doesn't paint him in a particularly great light. I thought that was actually pretty bold for this film, which is meant to make Stan look good. As I said before, having read histories of Marvels, and hearing all sides for decades, given the focus of this film, I think it's pretty fair. And Roy Thomas seems to agree, and he was actually there.

Agreed. It is a bit of a "fluff piece". You honestly don't even learn that much new about Stan Lee. But you get to hear him tell it himself. And you get to see all the beautiful panels from those vintage books. That was enough for me to enjoy it.

I'm not going to add flame to the debate. The documentary gave us Stan's position on the debate (again, in his own words), and left it up to the viewer to decide. I don't think either Stan or Kirby come off looking particularly "right"... it more helped you understand why there is a debate, especially for more casual fans who may be unfamiliar with the controversy.

[B-Lister]

Lol.
That’s the beauty of opinions, everyone has a right to their own.
But anybody who believes that the Marvel Universe is only 1 percent Stan Lee is ignoring facts to justify their point of view.

Stan worked for Marvel for fifteen years before FF#1 hit stands. In those fifteen years he never created anything notable.

In that same time frame, Jack Kirby created dozens of characters remembered to this day.

And the FF wasn't Stan's idea. It was Martin Goodman's and Jack Kirby adapting his Challengers of the Unknown.

But the most telling thing is...all of Stan's best "ideas" suddenly stopped when Jack and Steve left. And Stan never came up with ANYTHING after that, of note.

But Jack and Steve did.

So yeah, 1% and I'm being EXTREMELY generous.

[MIB41]

Artistic ventures intended for public consumption are often collaborations that can be as simple as an artist seeing something that provides inspiration or many people sitting in different rooms, combining their talents towards a common goal to create the final product. In that great examination, I’ve found that its infinitely more interesting to look at ALL the factors and ALL the players who were in the right place at the right time to provide something we see as one singular vision.

Did George Lucas make Star Wars by himself? Did the Beatles invent their image and sound on their own without Brian Epstein or George Martin? Does Gene Simmons ever figure out his white sailor suit doesn’t match his vaguely applied demon makeup without Bill Aucoin tapping his partner Sean Delaney who has extensive stage/theatrical experience? Is Jaws still an all time classic if the mechanical shark always works or is it Verna Fields artful editing and John Williams soundtrack that save it? And so it follows. Does Steve Ditko’s Spiderman or Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four ever capture the publics’ imagination without Stan Lee breathing life into those creations and telling us they matter?

Did he take liberties in that expression when he decided he would be the mascot/ring leader to the narrative? Well of course he did. But you know what? We followed. It captured our imaginations and so we invested ourselves. It inspired generations of artists and writers to go out into the world and build new characters and find that inspiration to be more than just the four walls in their bedroom.

So in the final analysis I believe most enduring creations in pop culture are the end result of many factors coming together, which is why they end up touching so many different groups of people for generations. The best recipes often have more than one ingredient. (;

[TRDouble]

Artistic ventures intended for public consumption are often collaborations that can be as simple as an artist seeing something that provides inspiration or many people sitting in different rooms, combining their talents towards a common goal to create the final product. In that great examination, I’ve found that its infinitely more interesting to look at ALL the factors and ALL the players who were in the right place at the right time to provide something we see as one singular vision.

Did George Lucas make Star Wars by himself? Did the Beatles invent their image and sound on their own without Brian Epstein or George Martin? Does Gene Simmons ever figure out his white sailor suit doesn’t match his vaguely applied demon makeup without Bill Aucoin tapping his partner Sean Delaney who has extensive stage/theatrical experience? Is Jaws still an all time classic if the mechanical shark always works or is it Verna Fields artful editing and John Williams soundtrack that save it? And so it follows. Does Steve Ditko’s Spiderman or Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four ever capture the publics’ imagination without Stan Lee breathing life into those creations and telling us they matter?

Did he take liberties in that expression when he decided he would be the mascot/ring leader to the narrative? Well of course he did. But you know what? We followed. It captured our imaginations and so we invested ourselves. It inspired generations of artists and writers to go out into the world and build new characters and find that inspiration to be more than just the four walls in their bedroom.

So in the final analysis I believe most enduring creations in pop culture are the end result of many factors coming together, which is why they end up touching so many different groups of people for generations. The best recipes often have more than one ingredient. (;

Well said!