Crisis On Infinite Midlives

History is written by the victors, and Stan Lee is nothing if not a winner.

At least co-creator of Spider-Man, The X-Men and The Avengers and a fistful of other lucrative and profitable properties (as I’m sure they are referred to in the Disney front office), Stan started as a simple editor, moved into writing, somewhere along the line in the 1970s became the head cheerleader for Marvel Comics, both in the comics themselves in his Stan’s Soapbox column and in the mainstream press, and wound up making himself a deal skimming fat bank off of Marvel for not doing much of anything at all… probably because no viable corporation wants their head cheerleader to start yowling “Marvel fucked me without lube!” in the public prints.

So Stan lucked out, put himself into a good negotiating position and Got His. And while I stand by my continuing opinion that any comic creator – hell, any human being – who doesn’t want to get fucked by a major corporation probably should make sure their contract contains an anti-fuckery clause before signing it as opposed to bemoaning it afterwards, I have always wondered how Stan feels about guys like Kirby and Colan and Ditko, who were at the very least in the room when these icons were created, and rather than winding up with cameos in the multimillion dollar movie adaptations instead wound up humping an empty table at Artists’ Alley, a premature coffin, or worst of all, an Ayn Rand novel.

Well, wonder no more… or at least, wonder no more how Stan would kinda deflect the question if he was asked. Because Alex Pappademas did an extended piece that includes a short interview with The Man for Grantland. And that interview includes a question to Stan how he feels about the recent uproar over creators’ rights:

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