STAN LEE, CREATOR OF MARVEL

I chose this title in reaction to this Slate obituary for Stan Lee:

PLEASE STOP CALLING HIM "CREATOR" OF MARVEL


The problem with Slate's essay is that it can't see the forest for the trees.

Yes, it's incorrect to call Stan Lee the creator of any single character, setting, or "tree" on which he collaborated with an artist. Even those artists who just drew whatever they were told to draw must be counted as co-creators.

But the guy who created the "forest" was Stan Lee.

Here's one version of Lee's off-told reminiscence about how he came to launch the Marvel style, from HOLLYWOOD REPORTER:

As the 1960s began, a discouraged Lee, nearing his 40th birthday, told his wife, Joan, that he was thinking about leaving his job. She told him that before he quits, why not try to write one story he really liked.

It's true that there's no way to prove that this conversation ever happened as Stan Lee said it did. However, in the 1960s Marvel editor Lee was the only person, aside from owner Martin Goodman, who had the authority to order a "new trend" of any kind.

In later interviews, Jack Kirby claimed creative credit for everything he worked on, which of course would include the first major Marvel title, FANTASTIC FOUR. However, Kirby had already been working for Marvel for about five years previous to the publication of the heroic quartet, and Kirby hadn't exactly burned up sales charts with his creations, even allowing for editorial interference.

In short, I think Lee had the seminal idea to experiment with superheroes in ways that hadn't been seen before-- like having money troubles, a trope seen in many of Stan Lee's teen comics-- and that the artists he employed either embraced this idea fully or just did whatever they were told to do to earn a paycheck.

And if I'm correct that Stan's was the seminal idea, then even though he didn't create a single "tree" by himself, he did indeed create the idea of the "forest."