Jack Kirby’s son shares pointed statement on Disney Plus’ Stan Lee documentary
Kirby's son says it's time to "get this one chapter of literary/art history right"
On Friday, Disney+ released Stan Lee, a documentary about the (self-described) visionary creator of a big chunk of the Marvel Comics canon that uses a wealth of archival footage, clips from Lee’s cameos in superhero movies, and voiceover from Lee himself—recorded at some point before his death in 2018, since the man was nothing if not a proud self-promoter. Something the documentary does not spend much time on, though, is Jack Kirby—the… visionary creator of a big chunk of the Marvel Comics canon.
Most comic book fans are aware that there has been a decades-long dispute over who gets credit for the creation of pretty much anything in comic books, and by virtue of making himself the literal face of Marvel from the ‘60s right up until his death, Lee had the benefit of being able to say “I co-created all of these things with my fantastical ideas” while nobody else—like Kirby or Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko—really had an opportunity to chime in. This weekend, Kirby’s son Neal Kirby (through his daughter Jillian Kirby’s Twitter account) shared a statement reacting to the documentary that is fairly vicious in its takedown of Stan Lee’s mythology.
The statement acknowledges that this is a documentary about Lee, so it’s obviously going to be about Lee, but Kirby points out that Lee has always made things about himself (especially since Jack Kirby died decades before Lee) even when it strains credulity. “Are we to assume that it was never the other co-creator that walked into Lee’s office and said, ‘Stan I have a great idea for a character!’,” the statement opines, saying no, to Lee “it was always his idea.”
Kirby’s post says that there’s a moment in the documentary that addresses that dispute between Lee and Ditko, but Lee’s argument is that Spider-Man was “his idea” and therfore he “created the character,” but Kirby points out that the Opera Del Duomo commissioned Michaelangelo to make a statue of David in 1501, but everyone calls it Michelangelo’s David because it was “his genius, his vision, his creativity” that actually made it happen (leave it to the son of Jack Kirby to convincingly compare Spider-Man to Michelangelo’s David).
Kirby goes on to say that Lee had “35 years of uncontested publicity” since his father retired from comics in the ‘80s, and it’s “way past time to at least get this one chapter of literary/art history right.” He then ends his statement with a very pointed “‘Nuff said,” a catchphrase that Lee would use in his old “Stan’s Soapbox” columns at the back of Marvel comics when he felt like he had made an airtight argument.