ANOTHER LEE POST

Responding to the comment-thread to this BEAT thread.

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Kudos to Jackie Estrada for the mention of Stan's daughter. I would add that since he stayed married to the same woman until she passed in 2017, that too probably should constitute a "non-problematic" family relationship.

Though I appreciate Mr. Van Hise's attempt to meliorate Mr. Royer's extreme position, I really don't think Lee owed Kirby or Ditko any special treatment. It was a brutally unfair system, benefiting the publishers at the expense of the creators; of that there is no doubt. But it was also a business, and Lee's relationship to Kirby and Ditko was, first and foremost, a business relationship. If Goodman tendered any verbal contracts to Kirby and Ditko, they really should've known that said contracts wouldn't be worth the paper they were printed on. Why should Lee intercede? Why should he chance being fired by the temperamental Martin Goodman-- who, by all accounts, never appreciated what his creators had wrought-- if the artists could not sort out their business affairs themselves?

Does anyone, at this late date, seriously believe that Lee's intervention would have forced the penurious Goodman to make good on verbal promises? If so, are you a native of this planet, or are you an immigrant from Earth-616?