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Thursday, June 07, 2007

Stan Lee Signs with Disney, Seen on FOX

That's right: Stan "The Man" Lee, (co-)creator of the Marvel Universe, has joined forces with Disney, the Mouse Kingdom, to develop something like 60 superhero characters for them. While the ideas he generates will be for use with cartoons, movies, video games, books, and comics, what it basically boils down to is that he is going to create Disney's superhero universe, much the way he created Marvel's.

Stan Lee was the driving force behind such characters and teams as The Uncanny X-Men, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Daredevil, and many, many, many more. Some historians will tell you that Lee was unfairly credited for many of these, citing that his co-creator(s) were the artists with whom he worked. In fact, the legendary Jack Kirby and Lee had a falling-out, as Kirby felt Lee was unfairly given too much credit for the characters Kirby helped create.

But what goes around comes around and Lee had to fight for the rights to a percentage of returns on many of these same characters who are now the feature of many major, motion pictures. He also recently settled a court case against some of his former business associates, whom he called "rogue opportunists," over the rights to Spider-Man, himself!

The 84-year old Lee said that he has millions of ideas and a file cabinet full of characters and ideas in various stages of development. The BBC says that 20 of these characters are "in active development," with another 40 poised to be introduced.

Stan Lee can also be seen this month on the FOX Movie Channel (FMC) in a brief interview with three students as part of the network's ongoing Life After Film School series. In it, he discusses his creations, as well as how much fun he had playing cameos in the films and how they "couldn't get rid of him" after his spots were done.

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