Revelations about Stan Lee in Riesman's biography

[Iron Maiden]

Sean Howe's book is a travesty in terms of covering the Jim Shooter era, and it's a major defect that Riesman (citing How) perpetuates the black legend but aside from that, Riesman's books has tons of new information and new sources.

Most importantly, Riesman has the most detailed personal interview that Larry Lieber has put on record yet.

I was surprised to read that he gave an interview. I think up until a short time ago he was still working on the newspaper strip. I did a little googling and I found an interview Lieber did with Roy Thomas in his Alter Ego magazine at TwoMorrows. He does give Stan a lot of praise here and I get no sense of bitterness from it. But it is from 1999. He goes into a lot of "behind the scenes" information. He does go into some detail about Stan asking him to give Jack some scripts to draw. Quite honestly, I never knew that Larry Lieber wrote the first Thor stories and came up with the Uru hammer, which has nothing to do with the mythology. Roy Thomas later looked up the the name from the Norse myths, Mjolnir.

Yeah the Jack Schiff stuff is covered. Riesman is careful to qualify Kirby's claims and give Stan the benefit of the doubt when applicable but even with all those asterisks, the empirical evidence points against Stan and towards Jack.

Jack Kirby was blue collar and working-class in his origins but calling Kirby "blue-collar genius" although I am sure you do not intend this, implies that somehow Kirby wasn't smart or didn't have ideas of his own. Kirby was in fact far more well-read and far more culturally attuned than Stan Lee was. Kirby was more progressive in his politics and instincts, a much better writer of women than anyone at Marvel in the '1960s and much more intelligent.

I really don't see how you can think that calling someone blue-collar is an insult especially as I come from a blue collar family. My paternal grandfather was a Polish immigrant who worked as a janitor in the steel mills and my maternal grandfather was a train engineer in Great Britain. Some of my aunts and uncles never even finished high school because in the Depression they left school and went to work instead. Jack Kirby was a product of the Depression also. His family was poor and I remember him recounting how he would draw on the walls of the building. He never had much formal training and found work as a teenager. Most bios say he left high school to go to work so I would guess he never even graduated high school which was common during the Depression. Children would go to work to help the family.

I think there is one common trait of both Lee and Kirby is that in their younger days they did read some of the classics, probably as part of their high school assignments but also went to a lot of the movies. Later in life, Kirby was very interested in the more speculative things like Chariots of the Gods (1968), etc. He probably drew upon that for things like the Eternals and the New Gods, etc. Of course, Kirby was already going for the cosmic with Galactus and the Silver Surfer. So anything along those lines I would credit to Kirby as the source.

One of the shocking things in the book is that the veil of cultural sophistication that Lee often affected was a put-on. A good example is that Denny O'Neil was an intern at Marvel when the Italian director Federico Fellini visited the offices of Marvel Comics when he was in New York. Stan Lee greeted and gladhandled him and then after leaving he asked O'Neil "who was that guy" and after finding out he spent the rest of his life acting as if he was a big follower of international film when he was fairly unsophisticated in tastes.

If that is the kind of thing that Rieseman uses in his bio then I don't respect that very much. Fellini was very art house and his films never got general release in the U.S. My sense is that Stan would be very old school and wouldn't have sought that out. he has mentioned liking things like the Three Musketeers (1935) in his film going days of his youth.

Near the end, when talking about Lee's burst of popularity via cameos in the MCU and other Marvel movies, Riesman notes that Lee attended every red carpet entry but he never sat all the way through on any movie with one associate noting he disliked the superhero movies. Lee liked the limelight but rarely had an interest in the real work.

Well in the late 1940s, Kirby and Simon introduced Young Romance and Romance comics and some of his stuff there is pretty great. Kirby did great stuff in every decade of his career. I mean people nowadays are finding gems in stuff he did in the 1980s.

I also have some issues with this revelation about the films . For one thing, we know Stan was having issues with his vision at this point of his life. We don't know how long he'd been having it but I suspect it goes back to as long as his tendency to wear tinted glasses. He did finally reveal in 2016 he could no longer read very well. I had seen photos of him holding something very close to his face to read them. And we're talking about an elderly guy in his 80s and 90s when the MCU really took off. Sometimes there is an issue with short attention spans. My mother was getting like that at that age and would constantly use the remote to change channels because she lost interest in things very quickly.

[Iron Maiden]

That's a lie, and a polite excuse. Lee's vision was fine enough in his final years.

And how would you know? Here is a story from 2016....and it's very likely had been going on for a while. I remember going to C2E2 when he appeared there several years ago and I did get into the area where you could pay to have Stan sign something. In retrospect I regret that now because it was probably around the time that the people around him were taking advantage of him. I recall that he had to hold the comic close to his face

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I was surprised to read that he gave an interview. I think up until a short time ago he was still working on the newspaper strip. I did a little googling and I found an interview Lieber did with Roy Thomas in his Alter Ego magazine at TwoMorrows. He does give Stan a lot of praise here and I get no sense of bitterness from it.

Lieber for most of his life was, and still is, a very private individual and also someone who doesn't value his career in comics at all. That Alter-Ego interview to Roy Thomas, per Riesman, was mostly him telling Thomas whatever he wanted to hear (which is probably the reason Thomas had such a personal response to the book). Riesman acknowledges and quotes that Alter-Ego interview when relevant and even insists that Larry Lieber should be seen as the third major creative figure alongside Kirby and Ditko in building the house of Marvel but the point is that interviews to fanzines and stuff like that while useful and valuable, aren't the same as actual journalism.

Leiber poured out his heart for the first time ever to Riesman in this biography.

I really don't see how you can think that calling someone blue-collar is an insult especially as I come from a blue collar family.

That's why I said "although I am sure you do not intend this".

In the case of Kirby, insulting his working-class origins and using that to imply he was dumb was gaslighting that Stan Lee used as a power move right through the '60s as a way to suggest he was the smart guy who came up with the smart ideas. Stan Lee would claim that he created Thor because he had an interest in Norse Myths which Riesman notes has zero documentation whereas Kirby's love for myths and ancient legends is well known and he had used Thor in Pre-Marvel stories a few times. So that's what I was trying to get at. I apologize if you misconstrued that.

If that is the kind of thing that Rieseman uses in his bio then I don't respect that very much.

There's more to the book than even what I am suggesting here. I am possibly not a good advertiser for it. So go ahead and please read it. The stuff I mentioned about Fellini isn't presented as any "gotcha" moment if that's what you are getting at. I am just bringing that up because the impression I had of Stan Lee was that he was someone sophisticated and worldly and it turns out he wasn't.

I also have some issues with this revelation about the films . For one thing, we know Stan was having issues with his vision at this point of his life. We don't know how long he'd been having it but I suspect it goes back to as long as his tendency to wear tinted glasses.

He started wearing tinted glasses around 1970-1971, that's when he designed the classic "Stan Lee look" (The cameo in AVENGERS ENDGAME where Stan Lee is introduced in his '70s guise has him sporting those shades). Riesman covers this. It wasn't designed to cover up any failing eyesight.

And how would you know?

Riesman's biography covers this. His eyesight was fine and workable to see a movie certainly.

Here is a story from 2016....and it's very likely had been going on for a while.

In this context, Lee is using his failing eyesight as a way of explaining why he personally doesn't write scripts anymore and needs collaborators to do it and this from a period when he and his company were involved in a series of dead-end hustles.

IN any case, the previous poster was mentioning Bendis citing Lee's failing eyesight as a reason why he didn't sit all the way through Raimi's Spider-Man movies but that was 20 years before he passed away, it's possible his eyesight declined in very final years but again it never went to a point where he couldn't see a movie or anything since it's documented that he watched TV and other stuff.

[JackDaw]

-- Larry Lieber is the real heartbreaker of this book. I heard of him of course but I never cared enough to know more but wow. Stan Lee certainly wasn't "my brother's keeper" in any sense.

Well except in the original biblical sense, that the brothers really didn't like each other? ( In the story of Cain and Abel, after Cain killed Abel, Our Lord asked Cain "Where is your brother?" and Cain replied "Am I my brother's keeper?")

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Well except in the original biblical sense, that the brothers really didn't like each other? ( In the story of Cain and Abel, after Cain killed Abel, Our Lord asked Cain "Where is your brother?" and Cain replied "Am I my brother's keeper?")

Perhaps.

Or if you want a more secular analogy, here's the scene from On the Waterfront:


Larry Leiber is Marlon Brando in my allegory here.

[Iron Maiden]

With the issue of Stan Lee and his brother Larry Lieber I think you have to take into account the fact Stan went out to the West Coast back in the 1980s IIRC while Larry stayed out East. That doesn't sound like much but I experienced that with two of my siblings. Time zones come into play....when they'd be getting off work, it would be late in our time zone. These days Facebook helps a lot in that regard since we have a private invitation only family page.

This sounds like a dumb question but I wonder if Stan remembered Larry in his will? It's quite possible that everything went to his troubled daughter Joan.

[JackDaw]

Perhaps.



Larry Leiber is Marlon Brando in my allegory here.

I enjoyed that, thanks. (And should have mentioned before...enjoyed reading this thread, you and others obviously put a lot of thought into it.)

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I enjoyed that, thanks. (And should have mentioned before...enjoyed reading this thread, you and others obviously put a lot of thought into it.)

Thanks. I enjoy your posts too, here and elsewhere.

With the issue of Stan Lee and his brother Larry Lieber I think you have to take into account the fact Stan went out to the West Coast back in the 1980s IIRC while Larry stayed out East.

Stan neglected Larry right throughout their lives. He didn't spend time with him when they were kids, and even if both of them had difficult relations with their Dad, Stan never stepped up for Larry. When their mother died in the mid-50s, Larry (age 16) who had been living with his parents had to move out because his father made it clear he didn't want to be a single parent, so Larry had to move in with Stan and his wife Joan and then left after a few months to stay with his cousin because Stan and Joan didn't want to take care of him.

Mark Evanier really sums it up when he points out that Stan Lee in his dealings with Kirby never once lived by the creed of "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility" and that's true in his personal life. When you consider that his most famous character Spider-Man is all about familial duty and obligation, his Aunt and Uncle who took him in after his parents died, and Peter devoting himself to his Aunt May...it's kind of jarring that Stan in his life was all about himself.

Over the decades, whenever Stan came to New York he never knocked on his brother to check how he was doing.

This sounds like a dumb question but I wonder if Stan remembered Larry in his will? It's quite possible that everything went to his troubled daughter Joan.

That's covered in the book but basically Stan Lee's power of attorney was absconded by shady types and somehow his daughter got it all. And Larry doesn't care anymore.

[gurkle]

Personally I think Lee's barely-disguised contempt for superheroes is part of what makes the '60s Marvel comics fun. I can understand why Kirby fans wouldn't like this, but I love that "Thor" is often a tug of war between Kirby, who takes the Norse Mythology stuff very seriously, and Lee, who treats it all as a big joke with that ridiculous mock-Shakespearian dialect.

I also think Lee is not as bad a writer of women as he's sometimes made out to be, though it's definitely true that he didn't like women to punch and fight, and there's the famous thing that Kirby would sometimes draw a woman doing things on her own, and Lee would dialogue it by having a man tell her what to do. But while he's definitely sexist, so are a lot of writers, and I thought he wrote women with some humor and charm and differentiation in their characters (e.g. Jean Grey and Scarlet Witch, who many subsequent writers wrote as if they were the exact same character). My mom was a comics reader in the '60s and from what she's told me, I think he had a pretty good grasp of what female comics readers were into at the time, and did a good job of incorporating elements of humor and romance comics into the testosterone-fueled world of superheroes.

I think it's good that it's starting to get out to the mainstream that Lee wasn't a creative genius or even the primary creative force behind his most famous books. I don't feel guilty about liking some of what he brought to the table though.

[Iron Maiden]

Personally I think Lee's barely-disguised contempt for superheroes is part of what makes the '60s Marvel comics fun. I can understand why Kirby fans wouldn't like this, but I love that "Thor" is often a tug of war between Kirby, who takes the North Mythology stuff very seriously, and Lee, who treats it all as a big joke with that ridiculous mock-Shakespearian dialect.

I also think Lee is not as bad a writer of women as he's sometimes made out to be, though it's definitely true that he didn't like women to punch and fight, and there's the famous thing that Kirby would sometimes draw a woman doing things on her own, and Lee would dialogue it by having a man tell her what to do. But while he's definitely sexist, so are a lot of writers, and I thought he wrote women with some humor and charm and differentiation in their characters (e.g. Jean Grey and Scarlet Witch, who many subsequent writers wrote as if they were the exact same character). My mom was a comics reader in the '60s and from what she's told me, I think he had a pretty good grasp of what female comics readers were into at the time, and did a good job of incorporating elements of humor and romance comics into the testosterone-fueled world of superheroes.

I think it's good that it's starting to get out to the mainstream that Lee wasn't a creative genius or even the primary creative force behind his most famous books. I don't feel guilty about liking some of what he brought to the table though.

I think one thing that gets neglected in the conversation about Stan is he was the reason why Marvel fandom expanded and eventually overtook DC. You can't get a sense of it now because Marvel Unlimited and TPBs never include Stan's Soapbox column and the letters pages. He struck a chord with us readers that made you feel like you were part of a cool kids club. You will find some future comic book writers letters sprinkled in there. One caveat....the first few letters pages had some "plants" as you can see in the examples here...one is signed by S. Brodsky . Roy Thomas's letter is printed in FF #5...and here is a list of others that the article cites. I can recall comic book historian Peter Sanderson got a few letters printed in the 1970s. He also became a contributor to Marvel at one point. I remember a piece of his was part of a Fantastic Four annual.

Paul Gambaccinni (famous British DJ, FF9)
George R. Martin (of Game of Thrones fame, FF20)
Dave Cockrum (FF36)
Gerry Conway (FF50)
Denny O'Neil (FF53)
Tony Isabella (FF74)
Don McGregor (FF80)
Alan Kupperberg (FF101)
J. M. DeMatteis (FF101)

I have the CD "44 Years of the Fantastic Four" that were done by the Gitcorp using "graphic imaging technology" and a smaller disc with 100 issues of the Avengers from Jan. 1998 to December 2006. Basically, they scanned in the best version of a comic book they can find and created a linked series of images so that you could page through it on your PC. I missed out on a chance to get the 40 years of Avengers disc since it was already sold on my next trip to the comic shop. Marvel then decided not to renew their license to release any more collections in 2007. They had quite a catalog of comics but of course they are more a curiosity now

In the 60s, Stan's writing of women was mostly a reflection of the times. Watch any film from that era....40's to the late 1960s and women always needed rescuing. Or in a horror film where the hero and the girl are running from some peril, 9 times out of 10 the woman trips and falls. The man has to pick her up and carry her out of danger. One thing that is common the comics of those early days of Marvel is that Susan or Wanda would frequently get faint when using their powers too much. Or as mentioned earlier, Reed was always instructing Susan about how to use her powers. One thing that changed that IMO was the success of the British series The Avengers. We wouldn't get the Honor Blackman / Patrick McNee version until later in syndication. Then ABC paid $2 million dollars to import 26 episodes of the Avengers in 1965 that were filmed in color with Diana Rigg. I think it is fair to assume that Emma Peel influenced the Black Widows makeover.

[gurkle]

I think one thing that gets neglected in the conversation about Stan is he was the reason why Marvel fandom expanded and eventually overtook DC. You can't get a sense of it now because Marvel Unlimited and TPBs never include Stan's Soapbox column and the letters pages. He struck a chord with us readers that made you feel like you were part of a cool kids club.

It's been said that the only character Stan Lee really created was Stan Lee, but that's actually quite an achievement.

Even Kirby's "Funky Flashman" character sort of acknowledges this, because Funky is a scoundrel, but he's also really entertaining, he has some charm and a way with words -- and the fact that his charm is a put-on just makes it impressive that he managed to create this persona. Only Stan Lee could upstage the main characters in a comic made specifically to dunk on him.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think one thing that gets neglected in the conversation about Stan is he was the reason why Marvel fandom expanded and eventually overtook DC.

Stan Lee would never have done anything without the work and creations of Kirby and Ditko. Without an actual Marvel Universe with stories and characters and art and panels, all of which he had little to no involvement in, you wouldn't have had a fandom because you can't have a fandom around nothing, a fandom without products and creations to offer. Riesman points out that Marvel used Kirby's art to create animatics for pitches of show and used it to make cheap animation and also reproduced the art to make the first merchandise, all of that without pay and credit. That's just exploitation pure and simple.

Now someone wil say that Kirby and Ditko wouldn't have found fame without Lee' marketing and publicity and that's fair. People have said that without their managers, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones wouldn't have succeeded as well as they did, that without the big studio publicity and support, Alfred Hitchcock wouldn't have been quite as famous. But again, nobody says that the managers are the real creators of the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, nor do people say that the publicity departments of Paramount or Warner Bros or Universal were the ones who created Hitchcock's movies.

The issue with Lee, and with Lee's fandom and supporters, is that he conflated publicity with creativity, and wasn't content being recognized as a great editor/publicist/impressario in the mould of William Gaines, but rather his claim to fame was that he was the real creator and major driving force of the Marvel Universe.

In the 60s, Stan's writing of women was mostly a reflection of the times. Watch any film from that era....40's to the late 1960s and women always needed rescuing. Or in a horror film where the hero and the girl are running from some peril, 9 times out of 10 the woman trips and falls. The man has to pick her up and carry her out of danger. One thing that is common the comics of those early days of Marvel is that Susan or Wanda would frequently get faint when using their powers too much. Or as mentioned earlier, Reed was always instructing Susan about how to use her powers. One thing that changed that IMO was the success of the British series The Avengers. We wouldn't get the Honor Blackman / Patrick McNee version until later in syndication. Then ABC paid $2 million dollars to import 26 episodes of the Avengers in 1965 that were filmed in color with Diana Rigg. I think it is fair to assume that Emma Peel influenced the Black Widows makeover.

I also think Lee is not as bad a writer of women as he's sometimes made out to be, though it's definitely true that he didn't like women to punch and fight, and there's the famous thing that Kirby would sometimes draw a woman doing things on her own, and Lee would dialogue it by having a man tell her what to do. But while he's definitely sexist, so are a lot of writers, and I thought he wrote women with some humor and charm and differentiation in their characters (e.g. Jean Grey and Scarlet Witch, who many subsequent writers wrote as if they were the exact same character). My mom was a comics reader in the '60s and from what she's told me, I think he had a pretty good grasp of what female comics readers were into at the time, and did a good job of incorporating elements of humor and romance comics into the testosterone-fueled world of superheroes.

Stan Lee's writing of women is especially weak when you consider that this was a guy who was very close to his mother (much more than to his father), that he was totally bestotted to his wife and spoiled his daughter rotten. For a guy who in his personal life was a lot closer to women than to men, it's a little odd that none of that resulted in effective female characters.

The only great female character that Lee himself directly created and wrote was Mary Jane Watson and her fame and success was completely against his intentions. Later writers fixed and touched up Susan Storm, Jean Grey, Jane Foster but little reason to credit Stan for that.

It's been said that the only character Stan Lee really created was Stan Lee, but that's actually quite an achievement.

It's entirely possible to find value in your connection with the persona of Stan Lee while still acknowledging the reality of what that guy did.

As for whether the character "Stan Lee" created qualifies as an achievement, I am not sure that's the case when you read about his final decades because Stan Lee emerges as a tragic figure when you read the full book, someone with qualities and someone who might have done a lot more if he was more honest to himself and others, more courageous. Because believe me Lee's final years were pretty horrific and his life certainly didn't lead to any kind of "happy ending".

Fred van Lente (former writer of Marvel who has recently written a play with his wife on Jack Kirby) reviewed the book and he wrote about Lee's final years pretty accurately:
(https://13thdimension.com/the-sad-co...y-of-stan-lee/)
"Kirby and Ditko partisans who took dark glee in watching their nemesis get ripped off by hucksters vastly more venal than he ever was should have their Schadenfreude cured by Riesman’s harrowing account: this is not-even-on-my-worst-enemy stuff."

[Thor-Ul]

After reading some comments, I am starting to believe than Stan Lee was the greatest creation of Stanley Lieber.
Because take on notice, than his work was to sell comics and he did it.

[kcekada]

I'm somewhat ambivalent about Stan -- because I know he's not everything he claimed to be, but I don't think he's the devil. I certainly would not have missed his cameos in Marvel films. The latter ones, particularly, seemed very forced.

[gurkle]

Stan Lee's writing of women is especially weak when you consider that this was a guy who was very close to his mother (much more than to his father), that he was totally bestotted to his wife and spoiled his daughter rotten. For a guy who in his personal life was a lot closer to women than to men, it's a little odd that none of that resulted in effective female characters.

The only great female character that Lee himself directly created and wrote was Mary Jane Watson and her fame and success was completely against his intentions. Later writers fixed and touched up Susan Storm, Jean Grey, Jane Foster but little reason to credit Stan for that.

Personally I disagree. I don't think he was a great writer of female characters but I don't think he was a bad one, which is not to deny the sexism and his dislike for having women actively involved in fighting.

Part of this probably stems from the fact that the Scarlet Witch is my favorite character and Lee wrote her a little spunkier and more assertive than many later writers did. I'm not sure why exactly. But I also like some of his writing of Crystal and, yes, even Sue (sometimes... there's no defending some of the writing like "forgive me for turning feminine").

It's entirely possible to find value in your connection with the persona of Stan Lee while still acknowledging the reality of what that guy did.

Absolutely.