The Stan Lee Myth Is Safe — for Now

About a quarter of the way as a result of the new Disney+ documentary about Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, we listen to previous interview footage of him defining his creative reason. “I’ve started off noticing,” he states, “to most people today, the most vital matter is currently being entertained — finding satisfaction out of anything.”

The bluntly titled Stan Lee, directed by David Gelb, unquestionably aims to remember to Lee’s most die-tough lovers. It reinforces their sincerely held perception that the comics maven was the singular innovative power powering the Marvel universe. It has great matters to say about the skills of onetime collaborators Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and it nods towards some spats among them and Lee. But it is, in general, a satisfied story about a charming male born Stanley Martin Lieber who grew to become a legend less than a pen identify, thanks to ingenuity and a optimistic mind-set. The tale it tells (or, really, that Stan tells — the narration is virtually solely composed of interviews with him) is a single of joy and inspiration.

It also happens to be totally useless as objective heritage. Stan Lee, to put it simply, is just as fictional as the hottest Spider-Gentleman photograph.

I have not occur to do a point-check out or a takedown. I have now accomplished that quite a few, lots of periods. I’ve used tricky proof to inform the fandom who he truly was, from his outstanding virtues (relentless assistance of his wife and daughter, pro internet marketing, hepcat prose, heat fan interactions) to his endlessly intriguing troubles (theft of artistic credit score, abandonment of his delivery relatives, explosive racism and homophobia, and thousands and thousands of dollars in fraud, to identify just a several). Critics raved about True Believer, my 2021 biography of Lee, which was constructed on far more than 150 interviews and thousands of pages of individual paperwork, amongst other materials. Its conclusions had been written about in all places, from The New Yorker to Spain’s El País. I foolishly assumed it could possibly adjust the narrative about him.

This documentary is proof that I was incorrect. The venerable and really lucrative Stan Lee Myth is harmless. For now, at minimum.

Stan Lee is, extremely actually, a trademarked manufacturer. Disney, which has owned Marvel for almost 15 a long time, has no desire in presenting a legitimate story about him — it would be considerably too depressing. This documentary is leisure articles in the eyes of the execs, aimed at drawing and retaining streaming subscribers, and the basic math is that far more individuals would fairly enjoy a satisfied tale about Stan Lee than a unfortunate one about Stanley Martin Lieber. Do you feel you could persuade Bob Iger or Kevin Feige that it would be wise to acknowledge their empire is constructed on a foundation of deception and theft?

There has been a little something of a backlash to the film so far. Critiques have been damaging, and Kirby’s son, Neal, introduced an open up letter that memorably began, “The 13th-century Islamic poet/scholar Rumi mentioned, ‘The Moi is a veil among individuals and God,’” and then raged versus the noticeable lies in the movie for a few vicious pages. The tweet in which the letter was unveiled was retweeted by far more than 5,200 persons. This sort of force is justified and required.

It also could be futile. We are not living in a rational or scientific age anymore. Individuals want to think in a thing, and perception is virtually impervious to correction. Marvel is the most thriving pop-lifestyle franchise in the planet. Millions of folks venerate the figures and recount their epic sagas the way we used to talk about the Exodus or the Gospels. The Marvel publications with Stan’s name on them are held up as scripture — perhaps dated but of paramount worth. And each and every holy reserve needs a holy writer, lest the entire organization drop apart under the body weight of skepticism.

Displaying a really hard-main Marvel fan evidence that Stan Lee lied, cheated, and stole will get you about as considerably as you would get exhibiting an Evangelical evidence that Christ in no way existed. They’ll both be furious with you or cheerfully overlook you, but they won’t feel you. For the two the government higher clergymen and the regular worshippers of Marvelism, the gnostic gospel of Stanley Martin Lieber amounts to heresy. Only praise and affection are correct for their dead god.

This sort of hagiography is, of study course, akin to a lot of deeply troubling designs in modern American politics, types that rarely require to be shown. But it also does a disservice to Stan, in its way. By praising him to the substantial heavens and staying away from subjects that might make a viewer unpleasant, Stan Lee has no regard for its subject’s astounding and eminently human existence.

Stan was a towering American unique, and, at the conclusion of his nearly 96 years on earth, he was the target of horrific elder abuse. Disney didn’t look to elevate a finger to cease people who ended up tormenting Stan although he was alive, and this new documentary lets his abusers off the hook by deleting them and their steps from Stan’s lifestyle. But the admirers who purport to really like him the most are the kinds the very least possible to even want to understand, enable by yourself treatment, about his suffering.

“It looks to me that you get pleasure from factors you’re acquainted with,” Stan muses at one particular position in the documentary. Certainly. Suitable now, the Stan Lee Myth is intact simply because we’re familiar with it. But I hold out hope that, numerous centuries from now, it won’t be so familiar. His first enthusiasts, the boomers, are dying off, and we will all observe suit one day. Stan will no extended be a residing memory, a acquainted encounter, a fatherly impact. He now is fantasy, but he will someday be ancient background.

Possibly that will signify objective seems at his electrifying and ethically questionable existence. Probably these persons of the upcoming will examine how Stan fooled the entire world and what that claims about this nervous age. Probably men and women will find out to stop venerating fallible humans as magnanimous gods. We can only pray.