Is it actually possible?  I mean, is there something bad you can say about the guy?

He's a comics writer and editor, but not a saint, so it's not like he's purer than the driven snow. But he certainly has this vibe around him that he's a genuinely kindly, fun, benign guy who just likes what he does and knows that hyperbole is entertaining.

I just don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything bad about the dude.  

Have they?

His glasses suck! I ain't got anything else...:what:

If they had I'm certain Marvel would have crushed them with out mercy.

He's an utterly terrible writer.

He's had a few decent hits with character concepts, but by and large his actual writing is dismal in the extreme.

The last Stan Lee book I tried to read was an old Wolverine TPB, and after the umpteenth explanation of just how full of rage Wolfie was, I wanted to find him and stab him repeatedly in the chest whilst screaming "SHOW DON'T TELL!" over and over again.

His fame as a creator of great comics and iconic superhero characters is largely derived from working with far more talented people who were far less competent self-promoters -- namely Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.  Take a look at the long list of characters "Created by Stan Lee and ______":

• Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
• The Fantastic Four, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
• Thor, by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby
• The Hulk, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
• Iron Man, by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, and Jack Kirby
• Dr. Strange, by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko
• Daredevil, by Stan Lee and Bill Everett
• The X-Men, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

I can't think of a character created by Stan Lee alone that wasn't a pile of steaming dookie, and yet he promoted himself far better and more vigorously than this co-creators, to the point where he claimed sole credit for creating the Marvel Universe.  Kirby and Ditko, both had a number of bad things to say about the man, like Kirby's charicature of Lee in the form of Funky Flashman.

I've also heard people compare the Image Comics phenomenon of the early 90s, with the rampant self-promotion of the likes of Liefield, to Stan Lee and Marvel of the late 60s.

!i!

Huh.  Interesting stuff.  Kinda like Gygax/Arneson?

If you ever get a chance to watch one of the Roger: The Stan Lee Experience skits on G4's X-Play, I highly recommend it.

Here's one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8zB6zm860

(NOT SAFE FOR WORK)

Sort of, yeah.  From the sound of things, there was a lot of let's-work-together-to-get-this-done! enthusiasm, but then, later on, it was difficult for everyone to decide who was truly responsible for what. There's little doubt that, without Lee leading the charge, we wouldn't even be talking about any of those great Marvel titles today, so he definitely needs to be credited as a driving force.  But his actual talent as a writer and creator are generally over-stated.

!i!

If you followed comics through the end of the 90's-- by the time Jack Kirby was in bad health, and other stuff was going on.. Stan didn't really come off so well. I'm not sure that Kirby himself was all that down on Stan by the end, but there was an undeniable rift. And it carried over so that if you had a certain set of .. preferences you tended to come down on one side or the other. It is very much like the Gygax Arneson split, now that you mention it.

Same thing if you were following Ditko's career very closely. Both of those guys ended up where they were saying "I'll never work with Stan Lee again".

So by that time, you were either a "Stan Lee Guy" or you were a "Jack Kirby guy".

That said, there's comes a time when you have to forgive Stan, even if you still sort of identify with one of those (or other artists). Even if you feel like Marvel ripped off an artist you really cared about.

The issue with Stan Lee and Kirby is complicated. Supposedly-- during the 1990s "creator-owned" comics craze, Kirby successfully sued to have all of his pencil work returned to him or to his family. And then suddenly most of his work mysteriously "disappeared" from Marvel's possession. That stuff could have made lots of money for Kirby's family, especially during that time period.  Who took the blame for that? Well, despite the fact that he didn't even work at Marvel anymore, many Kirby fans fingered Stan Lee as the figurehead of Marvel. And there *was* a personal rift between Kirby and Stan Lee that lasted years. So all of that blurred into one big thing.

So that's when people started getting negative on Stan Lee as I remember it. Me being a Stan Lee guy. I remember reading really long mean letters in some of the comics journals. And we'd all point to Funky Flashman and laugh, hoho. Funky Flashman is about as loving as a caricature could be, though. Even if he was a charlatan.

Anyhow, I think Stan Lee is truly a good guy, and he's gotten better with age. He's also a cheesy old goofball.

Here's something you might find interesting:

The rift between Kirby and Stan Lee is over the Silver Surfer. This was Jack's character, that Stan eventually took over as the fans responded positively to it.

The rift between Stan Lee and Steve Ditko has to do with the Green Goblin. Ditko wanted the goblin to be revealed as a random criminal, but Stan built it up into a mystery with it finally being revealed as Harry Osborn. This pissed Ditko off so much, that he quit.

Ok, in both cases- the artist completey invented the character in question, and sort of wrote the character into the script. Stan Lee wasn't involved, until he then seized editorial control and took over the character. The argument over the Goblin was supposedly kind of an epic in itself.

 I would also say that Lee undoubtedly improved the character in both cases, and I'm a major of fan of both Ditko and Kirby. Ditko had an amazing visual style and created wonderful characters, but Stan made them human.

I think if Ditko had been working with Stan Lee on the Creeper in 1963, we would have been talking about Tobey Maguire as the Creeper in 2007, and not Spider-Man.

That said, I'd fucking kill to see a Raimi-directed movie of the Creeper.

OK, I'll add my hearsay to the pile: I've heard that Ditko's beef was specifically that revealing the Goblin as someone important to Peter (nitpick: Norman osborn ) was a betrayal of Peter. Ditko apparently had very specific philosophical views on the delineation of good guys and bad guys, or something like that. Which jives with what else I know about Ditko's political views.

And I agree that it's a vast improvement, what Stan did. My only beef there is that, reading over those stories again, the intro of Norman as a character was rather abrupt, obviously being introduced in order to have him revealed as the Goblin. "Hey, I've got it! The Goblin could be. . .Harry's dad! . . .oh shit! Better introduce Harry's dad!"

Which is somethning that decades of comics refinement, retconning, and reimaginging (to say nothing of film) has been able to improve on. When you're NOT making it up as you go, month after month, you can plan these things out and give them some satisfying pacing.

Peace,
-Joel

To weigh in on the meat of the topic:

My love for Stan Lee stems from two things: one, the concepts and characters he created (or helped create, and certainly breathed a lot of life into), and two, his irrepressible and infectious chutzpah.

His whole persona, cheezy, overbearing, and often clueless as it is, I find irresistably loveable. He's a crazy old uncle, who I wouldn't deny for a minute is crazy, but who I would hate to not have around. I don't look to him for a sober or insightful musings on his chosen field and artform. I certainly don't come to him for brilliant writing. I look to him for pulse-pounding platitudes of pusilanimous prose! I look to him for high schlock of the "Face front, True Believer!" variety. I look to him for cheesy goodness like his appearance in Mallrats and his Marvel movie cameos of varying quality. I was profoundly disappointed in his flat and lifeless role in "Who wants to be a super-hero?" I wants me some ever-lovin', alliteratin', smack-talkin' Stan!

On a sadder note, I've heard a story about how Stan and Jack met late in (Jack's ) life at a banquet or somesuch, following their years-long rift. And Stan was trying to say to Jack, "Hey, all that stuff over the years, I feel horrible, can we just make up and be friends again?" And Jack's wife just druig Jack off with the whole "You stay away from him, you evil man!" vibe, leaving Stan standing there all deflated and alone, and never to see his old friend again.

Mind you, all these anecdotes are just stories traded around by the local comic shop clerks and regulars; I have no idea how reliable they are. But for me they form a pretty powerful mythology around these people who've iconically shaped my imagination.

Peace,
-Joel

It's been pointed out to me that Lee's wish-fulfillment tendencies began to loom larger in Spider-Man about the time Ditko left the book: Peter goes from glasses-wearing high-school nerd to swingin' college student who's down with the ladies.

Lord Hobie

Quote from: MelinglorOn a sadder note, I've heard a story about how Stan and Jack met late in (Jack's ) life at a banquet or somesuch, following their years-long rift. And Stan was trying to say to Jack, "Hey, all that stuff over the years, I feel horrible, can we just make up and be friends again?" And Jack's wife just druig Jack off with the whole "You stay away from him, you evil man!" vibe, leaving Stan standing there all deflated and alone, and never to see his old friend again.

Mind you, all these anecdotes are just stories traded around by the local comic shop clerks and regulars; I have no idea how reliable they are. But for me they form a pretty powerful mythology around these people who've iconically shaped my imagination.

Peace,
-Joel

That would have been Roz Kirby. There were a lot of incidents that will probably never be forgiven by the Kirby family: one of them I remember hearing about is at the wrap party for the Fantastic Four saturday morning cartoon (the one with "Herbie the robot")-- at the last second, Jack was uninvited by someone from Marvel, and they had this picture of all of the FF creators drawn up on like a promotional placard kinda thing. Anyhow, at the last second, someone from Marvel ordered Jack to be removed from the picture.

And really, the Fantastic Four was sort of Jack's creation, a direct carryover from the Challengers of the Unknown. So I don't blame the protective way people around him treated him, certainly not Roz, who we all loved.

There's a radio interview with Kirby floating around somehwere on the internet where he talks about his attempts to get his art back.

Ditko is still alive, and I happen to be a member of a community where there's someone who visits him every once in a while (Blake Bell). (Ditko doesn't use the internet and doesn't really do interviews.)
That's kind of a whole other issue.

All I can say definitively is that 1963 is such a long, long time ago.

I think Stan was probably the most important guy in any collaboration.  The brake man.  The guy who says, "NO" when the writer goes too far or the art isn't up to snuff.  Inevitably nobody comes out loving the brake man but his contribution remains essential.

I'd argue that editors are generally brake men but not all brake men are editors.