A documentary about Marvel’s Stan Lee that debuted on Disney+ last week has, no surprise, proven controversial. The family of Jack Kirby, co-creator with Stan Lee of the Fantastic Four, Thor, the Hulk, the X-Men and more, has issued a statement in response to the film.
The heart of the controversy is one that has raged since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby first started working together to create the Marvel universe — while both Kirby and Lee played significant roles in Marvel’s success, their contributions and the extent of their involvement in the creation of these characters has always been a subject of debate. While the conflict between the two is brought up in the documentary, it’s not explored in any great detail.
“… most of the narrative is in his voice, literally and figuratively,” Neal Kirby said in his statement. “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.”
According to Marvel, the documentary, which was directed by David Gelb, “weaves together personal recorded footage from Lee, along with recorded recollections of his career never before seen by the public. These are accompanied by archived interview clips, newsreels, and models that immerse viewers in Lee’s world, in addition to hearing from some of his closest friends and collaborators.”
Rolling Stone’s David Fear, in his review, called it a “lame infomercial” and that the documentary feels “like it’s just shy of being nothing but a shill.” Variety was a bit kinder in their assessment.
Jillian Kirby, Jack Kirby’s granddaughter, shared the statement from her father on Twitter:
And here’s the statement in full:
Statement from Neal Kirby, Jack Kirby’s son, regarding Stan Lee documentary/bio released 6/16/23 on Disney+:
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 (ooops!) 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 it was never the other co-creator that 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 1980’s, 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.
Neal Kirby (Jack Kirby’s son)