Documentary reignites Lee-Kirby debate

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1965

A documentary about the life of Stan Lee has gotten people talking again about how much Lee was responsible for Marvel’s success or whether he stood on the shoulders of Jack Kirby.

The documentary, simply titled Stan Lee, on Disney + primarily features the voice of Lee from various interviews and other sources. As a result, the documentary reflects Lee’s standpoint. There are a few audio clips from Kirby and an excerpt from a radio show with Kirby and Lee called in. The tension was evident.

Lee was the long-time editor at Marvel Comics. He succeeded Jack Kirby who, with his then-partner Joe Simon, had been editors and then departed. Years later, Kirby returned as an artist. Upon that return, Marvel turned out Lee-Kirby credited titles such as the Fantastic Four in 1961, the Hulk and Thor in 1962, and The X-Men and The Avengers in 1963.

The Disney Plus documentary describes much of this as Lee’s ideas. But Kirby’s family criticized the documentary.

Neal Kirby, Jack’s son, put out a statement, which was posted on Twitter by Jillian Kirby, the artist’s granddaughter.

Neal Kirby said the documentary was “Stan Lee’s greatest tribute to himself…It’s not any big secret that there has always been controversy over the parts that were played in the creation and success of Marvel’s characters.”

For example, Neal Kirby writes, much of the Fantastic Four was based on a comic Jack Kirby created for DC, Challengers of the Unknown. The FF’s Ben Grimm was named after Jack’s father and Sue Storm after one of Kirby’s daughters.

Over the decades, Stan Lee emerged as the voice and face of Marvel, even after he left the company. Lee got cameos in many movies based on Marvel characters. Jack Kirby got a cameo as a police artist in the 1970s Incredible Hulk television series. Also, Kirby died in 1994. Lee lived until 2018.

Jack Kirby was more than an artist. He did much of the plotting, though that wasn’t clear from the credits in Marvel comic books. On the original pages, Kirby wrote notes on the margin describing what was happening.

In the 1960s, Lee even acknowledged in a “Bullpen Bulletins” he didn’t provide Kirby much guidance. A major Fantastic Four story arc introduced a god-like character called Galactus. When Kirby delivered the pages to Lee, there was a character the editor didn’t recognize.

He was the Silver Surfer. Kirby explained to Lee that Galactus would need a herald. Roy Thomas, Lee’s assistant at the time, witnessed the exchange. The Surfer went on to be a popular Marvel character.

Lee had similar disputes with Steve Ditko, the co-creator of Spider-Man. Ditko also had the idea for Dr. Strange. Late in the documentary, we hear Roy Thomas commenting about what Lee, Kirby, and Ditko accomplished over the space of a few years.

The three men are all gone now. Movies based on their characters have generated hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lee helped make such characters popular but it’s hard (impossible) to imagine such popularity without Kirby and Ditko. The debate generated by the new documentary is yet another reminder of that.