Stan Lee’s Daughter JC Blasts Marvel And Disney, Claims They Disrespected Stan the Man
Without Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, there would be no Marvel Comics, let alone a Marvel Cinematic Universe. The only Marvel characters most people have ever heard of that one of the three of them didn’t have a hand in creating is basically just Wolverine, Deadpool and some of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
With Disney possibly having to face the reality of a Marvel Cinematic Universe without their most popular character in light of Disney’s frankly insulting offer to Sony to share Spider-Man, everyone is taking sides, and Stan Lee’s daughter JC is siding with Sony over Marvel.
In a statement to TMZ, JC laid into Marvel over their treatment of her father and his legacy.
As for how the Lees feel about it, JC tells us … “Marvel and Disney seeking total control of my father’s creations must be checked and balanced by others who, while still seeking to profit, have genuine respect for Stan Lee and his legacy.” AKA … cameos don’t cut it.
She goes on … “Whether it’s Sony or someone else’s, the continued evolution of Stan’s characters and his legacy deserves multiple points of view.” “When my father died, no one from Marvel or Disney reached out to me. From day one, they have commoditized my father’s work and never shown him or his legacy any respect or decency.”
JC’s parting words … “In the end, no one could have treated my father worse than Marvel and Disney’s executives.”
You might want to disagree with JC and side with Marvel and talk about how well Marvel treated their creators, but… not so fast.
Bill Mantlo, creator of Rocket Raccoon and the eponymous stars of Marvel TV series Cloak and Dagger, was left permanently disabled after being hit by a car while rollerblading in 1992. His family was forced to set up a GoFundMe (that didn’t meet its goal) to pay for his medical expenses despite the fact that Disney made roughly $6 billion dollars on movies that characters he created appeared in.
Jack Kirby’s family was involved in a legal battle with Marvel for years seeking to take back the rights to the characters he created under an arcane clause in the copyright law from the 1978 extension that allows for creators to terminate sales of copyrights made to companies when those copyrights would have originally entered the public domain. The basic gist was that Kirby wasn’t getting credit or royalties from Marvel for the use of characters he created. During the trial, John Romita, Sr., a contemporary of Kirby, Lee and Ditko and one of Marvel’s most prolific artists, testified to receiving about $7,000 a year in royalties from Marvel.
Now, Stan Lee made a lot of money. But he got millions for his creations while executives like Ike Perlmutter and Bob Iger got billions. And what he got he mainly got by becoming an executive himself, along with smartly marketing himself as the face of Marvel comics.
So what Marvel is trying to do in their fight with Sony should be no surprise, it’s what they do best: take as much money as they can for work someone else did.
Mr. Karnes, you couldn’t be more factually wrong. First, there was NEVER a GoFundMe campaign set up to pay for Bill Mantlo’s medical expenses. That campaign was set up by ME, Michael Mantlo (Bill’s brother) to assist ME in trying to eradicate the debt that I had gotten MYSELF into. Bill Mantlo was NOT INVOLVED IN ANY WAY! Next, your inference that Bill hasn’t benefited from, or been compensated by Disney/Marvel after “Disney made roughly $6 billion dollars on movies that characters he created appeared in”, is COMPLETELY FALSE. Bill was, in fact, fully compensated for EVERYTHING he did at… Read more »
Can you people at ‘The Blemish’ actually do any credible research or are you that damn desperate for clicks??
PATHETIC.
Some of us know the truth and don’t fall for the clickbait garbage..,,.
Very sloppy article.