10 Shocking Cover Ups Marvel Comics Wants You To Forget
5. Stan Lee Is Sued By Stan Lee
Although Stan Lee may not have been the genius superhero creator that many remember him as, there is no denying that he was a super savvy businessman who knew how to publicise and market the Marvel brand. With the rise of the internet in the late nineties, he applied this business know-how to found a start-up company called Stan Lee Media, which would focus on creating new superhero media for the web.
When the company began to lose money fast during the dot com meltdown of the early 2000s, Lee himself decided to leave and focus on his new venture, POW! Entertainment. You would think that the departure of Stan Lee himself would spell the end of Stan Lee Media, but the shareholders did not think the same way.
As a company bearing the name Stan Lee, they decided that they must be partial owners of everything the real Stan Lee had ever created, and began to sue just about anyone they could in an attempt to cash in on that name. What followed was a series of ridiculous and frivolous lawsuits, spanning over 15 years, with Stan Lee Media going up against Marvel, Disney and even Stan Lee himself. Can you imagine the confusion of going up in court against a company that beared your name, but was in no way connected to you?