Amid petitions and death threats and cries of #sayitaintso, Marvel has found at least one supporter for the decision to turn Captain America into a double agent for fascist organisation Hydra: comics legend Stan Lee.

The plot twist that the all-American superhero has been a sleeper agent for the sinister group was revealed in the latest Captain America comic last week. “This is not a clone, not an impostor, not mind control, not someone else acting through Steve. This really is Steve Rogers, Captain America himself,” Marvel writer Nick Spencer told Entertainment Weekly. Spencer later faced death threats on social media – “I can’t respond to 9,000 tweets per second, but if I could, I would say I admire your passion,” he wrote on Twitter – while a petition, now signed by almost 10,000 people, was launched to “get Marvel to stop Hydra Captain America”.

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The petition pointed out that the creators of the character, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, were both Jewish, and “to then have this story of Captain America actually be for the Nazi-like organisation of Hydra gets rid of everything he stands for, and that should not be how the character is honoured after 75 years of progress”.

But Lee, the legendary creator of characters from Spider-Man to the Incredible Hulk, said this weekend that he was on board with the twist.

“It’s a hell of a clever idea; I don’t know that I would ever have thought of it for him to be a double agent, but it’s going to make you curious. It’s going to make you want to read the books, they’ll probably do a movie based on it,” Lee said at MegaCon, Comicbook.com reported. “So I can’t fault it … I think it’s crazy, but it’s a good idea.”