The Stan Lee Tribute Thread

[skicoak]

I have a problematic relationship with the myth of Stan Lee.

I wouldn't have wished actual ill will on the guy, since by all accounts he seemed to be a nice guy personally, but Lee's role in the creation of the iconic Marvel characters was significantly less than mainstream PR would have us believe. He was an excellent huckster for early Marvel. A role he was truly a good fit for but eventually he started believing his own hype and the company propped him up further so they could use this rhetoric to stomp down other creator's rights.

Guys like Kirby and Ditko were turning in finished pages with suggested dialogue penciled in the margins. Lee tweaked these suggestions in his role as "writer". Plotting was limited to one sentence suggestions about who to make villain of the month. Kirby was creating characters like the Silver Surfer with no Lee involvement. Ditko reached a point where he refused to even talk to Lee.

This stuff isn't hearsay, it's documented by dozens of comic historians. And it makes mainstream reporting on his death today kinda cringe worthy. One of the best examples, every time you see Stan Lee posed near Captain America.... a character he proudly, and repeatedly, took credit for... remember he was created years before by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...not Stan Lee.

[indigodrawing]

[Lennart]

[vfinnigan]

Where was that, if you don't mind me asking? I've donated copies to several libraries in my area.

[vfinnigan]

Yes, yes. I think a lot of us, if not most of us, are already familiar with all this. Remember, this is a tribute thread.

[Azifri]

It was in Blacksburg VA! Their graphic novel section was my place to go after school

[vfinnigan]

Yeah, I know the guy who donated that copy! Anyway, tell the library staff to take good care of it. The book's out of print, so finding a replacement will be nigh impossible.

[skicoak]

It does a great disservice to any of his actual accomplishments to allow falsehoods to be what many are paying tribute to.

[vfinnigan]

A tribute is to celebrate someone's life and achievements, their positive impact, not the bad things that person's done. Nobody's trying to declare him a canonized saint, so he doesn't need a devil's advocate.

And mainstream reporting on comics stuff usually is simplistic and reflects zero understanding of the industry.

[OttoGruenwald]

Funky Flashman was complicated. He never did anything illegal, but he knew how to promote himself and he knew business which gave him an edge over his collaborators which he exploited to the fullest. The "Marvel Method" of storytelling gave the writer undue credit as a writer when artists like Kirby and Ditko often did everything on the story but the dialog, but its not as if his collaborators didn't know this. Comics have always been awful for creators due to how their work for hire system works where a a struggling creator makes an IP and gets a single paycheck while the IP farm gets to cash in with toys and video games and movies. Funky Flashman just knew how to survive in that kind of system while his friends didn't.

[vfinnigan]

Stan also tried to promote others in the bullpen like any good impresario. And while he did write (yes, writing improvements on suggested dialogue counts as writing), I always considered him more of an impresario, a showman.

As for the Marvel way of creating comics, that's actually far more artist-friendly in my opinion than script driven comics, which gives almost full power to the writer. And I think it's fair that in comics, artists tend to be far more famous than writers. Now I can name as many Marvel writers as artists if I think about it, but can the average comic reader?

[vfinnigan]

trib·ute
/ˈtribyo͞ot/
noun
1.
an act, statement, or gift that is intended to show gratitude, respect, or admiration.
"The video is a tribute to the musicals of the '40s"
synonyms: accolade, praise, commendation, salute, testimonial, homage, eulogy, paean, panegyric.

This is not simply doing a tribute "your way."

I know people who've worked with Stan Lee. Every single one of them loved the workplace and the family-like atmosphere in the old Marvel bullpen. Can you please let people celebrate the positive impact a person had on their lives without trying to ruin it?

[OttoGruenwald]

"Every single one of them loved the workplace and the family-like atmosphere in the old Marvel bullpen."
Okay look. There's being fair to the man and then there's misinterpreting reality. I'm sure some people loved working with Stan Lee, but there's lots of people that got burned by him and burned hard. Jack was the biggest example but far from the only one.

I'll always remember Stan Lee as my gateway drug to the marvel universe through his playstation Spidey game voiceovers and for the "Stan Lee presents" tagline on my comic books. But he did some bad stuff to the people that worked with him. You can't accurately praise the man for the things he did and his role in taking Marvel from Timely/Atlas the nobody to a competitor with National/DC without admitting he did some bad stuff.

[vfinnigan]

I know. My day job is caring for the dying, and by law, if I am aware of any abuse of a child or a vulnerable adult, I have to report it. When some mutual friends expressed grave concern about his care and how his affairs were managed, I looked into it, saw several things that raised a lot of red flags (like evidence of "friends" embezzling money from him or outright stealing from him), I tried to report it to the appropriate authorities, but they wouldn't take my report because I didn't know his personal address.

I worry about his daughter, because of her tendency to trust all the wrong people, and there are far too many people who will do anything for a piece of that estate.

I also worry about how John Romita will take the news.

[vfinnigan]

It's not misrepresenting reality to talk about positive contributions a person has made to my own life and the lives of my friends.

[A-weird-girler]

Well he was the first person whose art got me interested in comics in the first place. Shame I never got to meet him in this small island in Lake Atitlan

[OttoGruenwald]

Clearly he meant a lot to you and on a personal level I can't comment on. But his actions as a person were not perfect. His interactions with his collaborators were not perfect, and you have to mention that in tributing the man. Otherwise you're tributing a shadow, a representation of the man, and not the man himself.

If you want to hear nice things about Stan then how about this. It's a common meme around the Internet that Stan couldn't write. This isn't true, he actually could write well on his own and did. Silver Surfer: Parable that he did with Moebius was one of the better Silver Surfer stories.

[Jenny-Toons]

I liked Stan Lee.
Liked seeing him in his movie cameos -- him moving around and being/acting so young for his age just reminded me of my own family and the elders I live around. It's a chill vibe, you know?
And I liked the comics he worked on.
-shrugs- I can definitely acknowledge that he wasn't the sole backbone to Marvel. I think it'd be silly to assume so, and I feel it's also silly to assume more people assume so. I definitely know that there are artists and writers he worked with that should've had more credit and reputation.
But...I think it's because I know these things that I can pay tribute to him fully. Won't stop me from still liking what he made and what he brought to Marvel. If anything, I think knowing that he was a human with flaws is better than anything. Makes me, as a creator, feel relief.
He wasn't perfect, no. But he was chill. And that's the image I'll remember him as.
On that note, I really hope there will be a nicer vibe for the thread.
I feel the previous discussion could've been on a different one, and it did feel like a hijack. We don't have to pretend that he's perfect just because he's passed. But at the same time, we don't have to be quick to point out flaws when all most people wanna do is pay respects.
Give some time.

[OttoGruenwald]

He'll always live on as the many, many stan lee legos you have to rescue in the lego videogames. I still haven't gotten them all.

When I think of Stan I like to think of the early Marvel days when Spidey had webbing under his arms and Daredevil wore yellow. There was such an energy in that era of Marvel that I don't think was ever really recaptured, and a lot of that energy came from Stan being a the face of the company. He was the guy behind the Merry Marvel Marching Society (later FOOM) and Stan's Soapbox and those little in house add descriptions that would appear at the bottom of pages and no prizes and the general flavor of early marvel that made it feel like a magical clubhouse you could lose yourself in.

[BobbyjoeX]

i'll admit, i wasnt a big fan of Stan Lee but i do respect him, being a cartoonist myself

as for the thread... did you guys seriously have to turn it into a flame war? who cares if you didnt like the guy, let the fans do what they need to pay respect