Just a few days ago we recommended you here, as the premiere of the week in Disney+the documentary of the famous Stan Lee, father of numerous Marvel comic book characters. Certainly if, instead of us, the writing task had been done by Neal Kirby, son of a Jack Kirbythings would have changed a lot and it is that the descendant of the cartoonist and comic editor has a rather peculiar opinion about what this documentary tells…
A biased documentary?
Since Disney (or rather The Walt Disney Company) owns Marvel Studios, the plan to put on its on-demand content platform a documentary about the life of Stan Lee He looked round. And in principle it was so. Many of us were interested in seeing more about its content after enjoying a trailer that promised to entertain us and tell us more details and secrets about the life of the prolific cartoonist.
However, the joy has not lasted long. Neal Kirbyson of the deceased Jack Kirbyone of the greatest cartoonists and character creators in Marvel history, has protested the documentary’s approach, saying it tells a rather skewed story of what Lee’s work at Marvel was like.
According to Kirby, the co-creators seem to fade into the background here, implying that Stan Lee invented practically everything that moves in Marvel – when his father, for example, is the architect of fantastic four or of ant man. The son of this cartoonist regrets that the only thing Lee had was better access to the media, thus creating and promoting his legendary image for the gallery and becoming the Marvel icon we all know today.
Through his daughter and using Twitter as a platform, he has published the extensive statement that you have below:
My father Neal Kirby (Jack Kirby’s son) has asked me to post this written statement in response to the Stan Lee documentary released yesterday on Disney+. pic.twitter.com/V4be2xyEJg
— Jillian Kirby (Granddaughter of Jack Kirby) (@Kirby4Heroes) June 17, 2023
As you can read in the text, it is explained that «[…] It’s no big secret that there has always been controversy over the stakes that played a role in the creation and success of Marvel characters. […] for several decades he was the ‘only’ man standing, and blessed with a long life, also the ‘last’ man standing (my father died in 1994)«.
Neel also goes so far as to point out that Lee had little knowledge of the mythological world, culture, or even science, important foundations for the development of many of Marvel’s characters, while his father had extensive knowledge of all these topics, such as many acquaintances will be able to corroborate.
Steve Ditko, another enemy of Stan Lee
Kirby hasn’t been the only one to have had problems with Stan Lee’s prolific career. steve ditko He is another cartoonist from the house who also ended up having more and less with the famous creator for the origin of neither more nor less than Spider-Man.
The story is long, but in short, Ditko was in charge of the image that we currently know of Spider-Man -since the one presented by Kirby was not convincing- and worked on several volumes with Lee to shape the view of this iconic character. However, in a magazine interview with good old Stan, he claimed to be the inspiration for an episode of “The Amazing Spider-Man»something that angered Ditko to the point of personally writing to those responsible for the magazine to clarify the attribution of the stories of those famous comics and claim their authorship.
It is clear that during the 60s the issue of copyright was not yet very controlled and perhaps both took advantage of it to give themselves more credit than was due. Possibly it is something that we will never fully clarify.
