Last week, Bleeding Cool reported concern from the comic book industry regarding Stan Lee's current situation. Lee's friends and acquaintances report being cut off from contact from the man since last month, and ask regarding Lee's reported pneumonia, as to why he is not in hospital, and how much of this is about control.

This also concerns the sacking and exclusion of his manager of 14 years, Max Anderson. After Neal Adams raised such concerns, comic book creator J. Scott Campbell and acquaintance of Stan Lee wrote to Bleeding Cool, echoing such concerns.

He writes:

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I wanted to strongly echo the words Neal Adams expressed regarding his concern about Stan Lee's wellbeing, and this bizarre smear campaign against his friend and manager of the past years Max Anderson, apparently instigated by these new mysterious "caretakers" of his. I've known Max for years and I completely agree with Neal, Max always looked after Stan and his wife Joan like the doting son they never had. He adores Stan and Stan adores Max.

Besides almost single-handedly architecting Stan's tremendous financial turnaround this past decade through aggressively negotiating appearances all around the world, I happen to have personal knowledge that Max has also quietly looked after him by accompanying him to the sets for all his cameos in the Marvel films, regularly took him to his medical appointments, would often just visit Stan when he'd get lonely, the list goes on and on. In fact, Max and Stan have been very visible and regularly in public together for a decade, practically inseparable.

Forcibly cutting Max out of Stan's life, and so soon after his wife Joanie has passed seems particularly cruel to the both of them and has caused a lot of us in our industry to talk, much of it about our collective concern about the mystery of who exactly is taking care of Stan now and why is he being kept out of sight and in his home, especially given these reports that he's been battling pneumonia. I mean, think about it, instead of being taken to a hospital, this ill 95-year-old man is being kept hidden away in his house, the only glimpse of him filmed for exploitive TMZ videos?

Max took much better care of Stan than this. I have great concern for Stan and I do hope more in our industry start speaking up, start asking more questions and start shining more of a bright light on this situation to find out what's exactly going on here before it's too late.

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This is the TMZ videos that Campbell refers to.

It is in contrast to the video posted a week previously, when Stan was being treated in hospital.

Here's an image of Stan by Campbell.