Jack Kirby’s Son Slams Disney’s ‘Stan Lee’ Documentary

For greater than 50 years, there may be one title extra related to comics greater than every other: Stan Lee. The gregarious author and editor of Marvel Comics throughout its Sixties glory days, and the co-creator of many of the firm’s most well-known characters from that interval just like the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the Avengers, Lee largely stopped actively writing Marvel’s books by the mid-Nineteen Seventies. But he remained with the corporate for many years in a wide range of administration roles, and spent a lot of time touring the world and evangelizing about comics normally (and Marvel particularly).

He additionally performed himself in Marvel TV and flicks, and the extra he performed “Stan Lee,” the larger-than-life face of Marvel, the extra he grew to become inextricably linked not solely with the corporate, however with its characters — to the purpose the place the artists he labored with creating all of these characters and comics usually bought missed. Lee did have a tendency to provide a bit extra credit score to artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko in his later years, and Marvel has begun to credit score these males of their comics and flicks. But to numerous laymen, should you ask who created Marvel or Spider-Man, odds are numerous them would say one title: Stan Lee.

That notion will solely be strengthened by Stan Lee, a brand new documentary about his life that’s now streaming on Disney+. As one would count on for a movie that’s streaming on the service of the corporate that owns all of Lee’s most iconic work, it largely tells a easy, uplifting story in regards to the rise of Marvel. It solely spends a handful of minutes on any of the animosity between Lee, Kirby, and Ditko over the authorship of their creations. And it’s virtually fully narrated by Lee himself, in interviews and thru archival audio of “The Man.” It could be very a lot Stan’s story.

And that didn’t please Neal Kirby, the son of the late Jack Kirby, who died in 1994, and who co-created the Fantastic Four, Thor, the X-Men, the Hulk, and plenty of extra nice Marvel characters. In an announcement posted to Twitter, Neal Kirby wrote “The challenge is extended to anyone who wishes to count the number of ‘I’s’ during the 86-minute running time of Stan Lee” — that means Stan Lee is all about what Lee did, to the detriment of what Marvel’s artists like Kirby did.

READ MORE: Marvel Makes Deal to Use Stan Lee’s Likeness In Future Projects

Neal Kirby added:

“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.”

The exact authorship of Marvel Comics’ characters is difficult. While Lee was the author on Marvel’s comics all by way of the Sixties, he was so busy managing a whole line of comics, that he additionally employed a inventive technique, mentioned within the Stan Lee documentary, the place he gave his artists solely a top level view of a narrative to attract. They would go off and illustrate the comics virtually fully by themselves, then return the artwork to Lee, who would then add his dialogue on high of what they drew.

That course of — the place the artists have been actually producing numerous the story, however usually solely getting the credit score for the artwork — would solely gasoline the arguments about who did what. If I inform you to make a comic book a couple of super-wizard, let’s say, and also you come again and also you’ve named the character and also you’ve given him his backstory and also you’ve designed his costume, who’s the true “creator” right here? And that’s simply the matter of a personality’s authorship; the emotions in regards to the characters’ possession, which is all within the palms of Marvel and Disney, is an entire different can of worms.

In closing his assertion, Neal Kirby wrote “The battle for creators 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.” If you need to watch it and see how this story is informed for your self, Disney’s Stan Lee documentary is now streaming on Disney+.

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