Jack Kirby’s Son Slams Disney+ Stan Lee Documentary

In the wake of a newly released Disney+ documentary about the life of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby’s son released a searing statement calling out its furtherance of the narrative that Lee was the one and only driving force behind Marvel Comics. Condemning the documentary as “Stan Lee’s greatest tribute to himself,” Neal Kirby jabbed at Lee’s “self-promotion,” accusing him of using “the corporate megaphone and media” to “create his own mythos as the creation of the Marvel character pantheon.” Kirby challenged Lee for taking the lion’s share of the credit for the creation of most of Marvel’s best-known characters, saying, “Are we to assume that Lee had a hand in creating every Marvel character? Are we to assume that it was never the other co-creator who walked into Lee’s office and said, ‘Stan, I have a great idea for a character!’ According to Lee, it was always his idea.” He went on to accuse the documentary of skimming over his father’s own contribution to the canon, noting that while his father had quietly retired and later died in 1994, “Lee had over 35 years of uncontested publicity.”