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Happy Birthday, Stan Lee!


Panch

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so, i'd debated moving some posts from here to form a thread just about Lee himself (rather than keep mucking up panch's birthday one) but i've been reading Untold Tales of Marvel lately and it's really insightful as to Stan's actual role, and why Kirby & Ditko had such disdain for him. it's not, however, a comparable situation to say, Bill Finger & Batman because Lee did in fact have a hand in co-creation, but i wanted to get into Stan a bit more here, and found a great piece: True Believers

 

Because of his steadfast support of the company line against artists and other creators who spoke up against Marvel, he is also an ethically toxic figure. While much of the world without any extensive knowledge of the issues at hand consider him to be synonymous with Marvel, and surely the prime mover behind the company’s greatest achievements, many in the comics community conversely underrate his contributions for those reasons. He will remain a vexing figure for cultural historians for so long as Marvel remains an object of fascination and study – that is, for many decades to come.

 

If he had done just a few things differently, just a few decisions and decisive actions across a career spanning over eighty years, this conversation would be different. And a part of me hates him for that, hates him for having imprinted himself on generations of readers who grew up loving Smilin’ Stan only to later learn the truth of the matter. He’s not a hero but he’s not quite a villain, either – his great sin was to have been consistently wrong about almost every major ethical challenge he faced as both a creator and a businessman. At every turn he thought he was making the right decision for the good of his company. He won every battle but lost the war.

 

For decades he almost certainly considered his lifelong struggle with Goodman (Marvel’s founder, his uncle, and constant foil) to be the defining conflict of his professional life. Now Goodman is a minor player in the story of Lee & Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko, one of the great morasses of comics history, coming in third only to DC’s barbaric treatment of Joe Siegel and Jerry Shuster following the creation of Superman, and that company’s erasure of Bill Finger from the creation of Batman. Unlike the faceless businessmen who stole Superman for a song – and certainly unlike Bob Kane, whose portrait runs in the dictionary alongside the definition of “shitheel” – it is impossible to hear Lee speak now and not hear some degree of honest regret in his treatment of Kirby and Ditko. But regret for what, exactly, he seems unsure. Where his own culpability begins is a question he cannot begin to answer.

 

It didn’t have to be this way. Because he did write those comics. He did co-create those characters. Both Kirby and Ditko are immensely talented creators whose solo work, while enduringly great, is also inescapably eccentric. Every creator to tackle Kirby’s solo characters in his wake has struggled to replicate his magic combination of bombast and guileless invention. Every attempt to revamp Ditko’s solo work has began with the wholesale jettisoning of the uncompromising and astringent integrity at the heart of his vision of the world. But Spider-Man endures, and does so in large part because he speaks in Stan Lee’s voice. The Fantastic Four endure not just because of the visual splendor at the heart of the concept but because Lee framed the stories as grounded domestic comedy. That’s him. His name deserves to be on that creator credit just as much as any of his collaborators, even if it also deserves an asterisk.

 

related:

 

There's a certain kind of comics reader who takes the line of "Kirby and Ditko were the auteurs and behind it all and Lee was a fraud who just put his name on everything," which I think really came into its own in the 90s when Kirby was suing Marvel but it's also reductive. He *wasn't* a businessman who contributed nothing, but it's also ahistorical to not mention how much Kirby and Ditko resented him over the undue credit they felt was given to him, especially in the early years.

 

earlier in this thread/years ago i was definitely one of said people, and i have come to appreciate the nuance here - it's just that, as this piece shows, you grow up picturing Similin' Stan as the face of Marvel - bigger than Disney to me, by far - and it's upsetting when you first learn about him siding with the company at the bigger turns vs those who built the house of ideas with him. There's definitely shadier stuff the industry did during his long reign as Editor/etc but initially learning about the history taints the image of a face you grew up wanting to love.

 

In the years since - again as this piece points out - ive softened a great deal, as Stan himself has shown regret & wished he did things differently, nevermind learning more about just how much trailblazing these pioneers were doing with a business which went from a throwaway market to circulating literally millions of copies during the war/etc, the shifting changes they had to deal with as the comics code forced the death of pulp, etc...likewise, i think it's important that it was pointed out here that even in their solo work (Kirby's was out there but still great, Ditko seems to have gone further down that objectivist spiral) you could see the absence of Stan's hand, and it reinforces just how much their joint creative forces were needed to make the icons we still celebrate.

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While this isn't news, there is some deeper enlightenment here. Still, siding with the company isn't such a bad thing when you think that, had he not, we wouldn't be here today. Just like Spider-Man and the Dr. Strange, Stan Lee is just another character that he created that has stood the test of time. One that he's had to keep constant throughtout the years. The "smilin'" part of "Smilin' Stan" is just his web-shooters or Eye of Agamoto.

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8 hours ago, Da Cap'n 2099 said:

He was hospitalized for shortness of breath. Sure, a guy his age, that's cause for concern, but he's fine.

 

Google is a helluva tool.

You're quite the tool as well. Let's not discuss anything, chaps, let's just Google everything and speak as matter of fact.

Anyone read any of his later material such as the manga he did? I always wondered post-retirement what his work was like, and if it was up to modern standard or still had an old-man, classic vibe. I always imagined him hating Deadpool as well because he swears and aint the atypical hero.

Edited by Lorelei
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After Lee's cameo as a strip club DJ I don't think he's as stuffy as people think. Heck, the Mallrats scenes he's in were a little risqué with the dialogue even by today's standards; and though Lee was playing the straight man, for him to even do it should have been a hint that he can appreciate dirty jokes.

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On 2/7/2018 at 2:16 PM, Drifter said:

After Lee's cameo as a strip club DJ I don't think he's as stuffy as people think. Heck, the Mallrats scenes he's in were a little risqué with the dialogue even by today's standards; and though Lee was playing the straight man, for him to even do it should have been a hint that he can appreciate dirty jokes.

I'd always see the "Stan Lee Presents" and, being cynical, thought he'd barely have time to keep on top of what he was 'presenting' i.e. knew nothing about the more adult themes being introduced since the death of Gwen. Especially 'pool, but then I did see him in the film which endorses the character.

Edited by Lorelei
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Yeah, the reason I specifically brought up the DJ scene in Deadpool and not all his other cameos and appearances (even other Deadpool works) was because of the bare tits that were all over the place. He HAD to know what kind of material he was working with even if he'd never seen it before; It wasn't just him and a crew filming in front of a green screen; he HAD TO KNOW. And he was still okay with it. Same with the Mallrats scene, Jason Lee was saying that shit right in front of him... and as I hear it Lee's nailed more chicks than Jagger. So I don't see how Stan Lee would have a problem with the character. Ah well.

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