Stanley Martin Lieber, known to generations of Marvel Comics readers as Stan Lee, last weekend launched yet another creation: a line of comics for young kids. But he hasn’t actually written a comic in decades. Even when he did, his definition of “writing” probably wouldn’t have lined up with yours. Lee’s work, for the most part, involved unleashing a torrent of plot points at one of his artists and acting out fight scenes. The artist would then repair to his drafting table to attend to the work of shaping a given story’s layout, pacing, tone and—in many cases—even its characters and dialogue.

It’s largely because of this division of labor—which has since come to be called “The Marvel Method”—that Lee’s status as the Beloved All-Father of Modern Comics discomfits fans and comics historians like me. Lee’s grinning, mustachioed mug should, by all rights, share the Mount Rushmore of Comicdom with the aggrieved, scowling visages of artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. It was Kirby and Ditko who established the trippy visual language that drove the “Marvel Revolution” of the early 1960s and the creative ascendancy that followed.





And as that decade wore on, Lee devoted less and less time to plotting comics, eagerly transforming himself from Marvel’s head spitballer to a role that can only be described as Flack-in-Chief. Ditko (who co-created Spider-Man and Dr. Strange), Kirby (who co-created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and many of the other classic Marvel characters familiar to non-fans) shouldered more and more of the narrative load, alongside scripters and “co-plotters”—an ambiguous role that is to comics what “associate producer” is to film.

In comics, credit—the proper apportioning of it—matters hugely. That’s partly about remuneration: Many writers and artists who’ve created iconic characters have argued, correctly, that their work makes Marvel and archrival DC Comics millions in licensing alone. But they rarely see that money: Both publishers keep vast legal departments leashed like hounds, and set them loose with nigh-limitless resources to argue that any such creations represent work-for-hire. Despite temporary victories for the little guy, pretty much every battle between a beleaguered creator and a megacorporation like Marvel or Warner Bros (DC’s owner) ends the same way.

These legal wranglings are about rights and recompense, yes. But more deeply they are about reputation, about having your name forever attached to a character who will, thanks to fan devotion (and, in no small measure, to licensing deals and cross-platform synergy) outlive you. For the most part, today’s generation of mainstream comics writers and artists acknowledge this state of affairs with a resigned shrug. A lucky few, like The Walking Dead’s Robert Kirkman, can swear off working for The Big Two at all and still make money. Many others alternate between creator-owned projects at publishers like Image and work for DC or Marvel.