On Friday, Disney+ released Stan Lee, a documentary about the (self-described) creator of much of the Marvel Comics canon that makes use of a wealth of archival footage, clips from Lee’s cameos in the superhero films, and a voiceover from Lee himself—recorded at some point before his death in 2018, because the man He was nothing if not a proud self-promoter. Something the documentary doesn’t spend a lot of time on, though, is Jack Kirby – … the visual creator of a large portion of the Marvel Comics canon.
Most comic book fans are aware that there’s a decades-old dispute over who gets credit for creating just about anything in comic books, and by making himself the literal face of Marvel from the ’60s until his death, Lee capitalized on being able to say “I Co-create all this stuff with my imaginative ideas” while no one else – like Kirby or Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko – really had a chance to chime in. This weekend, Kirby’s son Neil Kirby (through his daughter Gillian Kirby’s Twitter account ) Share a statement to respond to the documentary A somewhat sinister takedown of the Stan Lee mythology.
The statement acknowledges that this is a documentary about Lee, so obviously it will be on Lee, but Kirby points out that Lee has always been making things up about himself (especially since Jack Kirby died decades before Lee) even when he’s straining his gullibility. “Shall we suppose it was never the other co-creator who walked into Lee’s office and said, ‘I have a great idea for a character, Stan! ” always his idea.”
Kirby’s post says there is a moment in the documentary that addresses this feud between Lee and Ditko, but Lee’s argument is that Spider-Man was “his idea” and so he “created the character,” but Kirby notes that Opera del Duomo commissioned Michelangelo to make a statue of David in 1501 , but everyone calls him David Michelangelo Because it was his “genius, vision and ingenuity” that really made it happen (leave it to Jack Kirby’s son to convincingly compare Spider-Man to David Michelangelo).
Kirby goes on to say that Lee was “35 years old Indisputable propaganda” since his father retired from comics in the ’80s, and “it’s about time he at least got this chapter of literature/art history right.” He then ended his statement with a very pointed “Nuff said,” a catchphrase Lee uses in his old “Stan’s Soapbox” columns in the back of Marvel comics when he feels like he’s had a tight discussion.
. “Professional creator. Lifelong thinker. Reader. Beer buff. Troublemaker. Evil problem solver.”