There's been a lot of headlines about Stan Lee in the past year, and all of them appear to point to the fact that the rampant schedule he used to keep is getting to him. Now, it appears Lee is scaling back his public appearances and no longer doing public signings as Bleeding Cool reports the following from one of the people looking after Lee, his ex-manager Max Anderson:

To be very clear, Stan is 100% not doing any conventions / public signings. In the last few years his well being had been compromised by people for monetary gain and that practice is over. His private signings had also been paused for a month while Stan’s life gets back to normal and time could be given to review signing deals made by previous people involved in Stan’s life. As of this week Stan is signing a very small amount of items per week at his discretion, some for Desert Wind. This has proven frustrating for some as people are used to Stan signing hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of books a day, however my concern is for Stan’s health and wishes so he signs what he wants when he wants, which is as it always should be.

Private signings will continue, but as those who've sought them out might've noticed, the price is skyrocketing. Basically, Lee is able to do less and less signings than he used to, which means the amount of things he signs is becoming more and more scarce. Personally, I think folks just need to leave him be, as it has to be hell at 95 to know you have to sign about 1,000 things period...let alone in the span of a couples of days.

Perhaps that's what Lee wants to do, and far be it from me to say he has to slow down if he doesn't want to. That said, I can't imagine having to be one of the witnesses who sits there and watches him struggle to sign things like he did in that video we saw not that long ago. It feels like he's being taken advantage of, and it's heartbreaking.