Stan Lee hooks up with Disney
The BBC reports that Stan Lee is teaming up with Disney to create new characters for film and animation projects. On one hand, good for Stan. It’s nice when 80-somethings can still find work. On the other hand, I seem to recall that about every year or so, there’s some new Stan Lee creation coming out, and I’ll be darned if I remember any of them.
Sure enough, I had to look no further than the sidebar of related stories from the BBC to find a story from 2005 about ‘Foreverman,’ a Paramount project that “…will focus on a character who has to face problems in everyday life as well as using his special powers to save the world.”
“‘We believe it to be truly a whole new franchise,’ said Gill Champion, president and chief executive of Lee’s POW! Entertainment” –in March of 2005.
No doubt that Stan Lee was once relevant. But now he’s apparently become like a Dusty Rhodes of comics and film – bouncing around from failed venture to failed venture, but always able to convince someone he’s got some money-making ideas in his back pocket.
Due to the success of the films inspired by comics he helped create nearly 50 years ago, he’s somewhat of a charming, wrinkled, self-promoting poster child of comics that’s more than happy to cooperate with reporters. Thus, he and his projects have become the recurring characters in the limited coverage comics receive in mainstream media.
No wonder they’re having trouble attracting new readers.
image lifted from the Sequart Research & Literacy Organization article Against Silver Age Marvel, the Cult of Stan Lee, and Fantastic Four (Annual) #1 / For Comic Books as Literary Art by Julian Darius
At least he’s not working as a greeter at Wal-Mart. And I stand by my disgrace that he appeared on that crappy NBC show Identity. The guy’s complete failing at a graceful retirement makes his industry look bad.
Too bad he doesn’t have a pansexual gold-painted son who slinks around behind him while basking in the twilight of his own terminally ill career.