Life in the world of Stan Lee has taken a turn for the dramatic over the last few months.
We’ve seen allegations of elder abuse (including the LAPD being called to Lee’s house), reports of hundreds of thousands of dollars of Lee’s money being stolen from him, sexual abuse allegations against Lee and his manager and, most bizarrely of all, that someone has been stealing Stan Lee’s blood in order to create a special ink to sign comics with.
There’s a lot of ins and outs to this story, but it appears that the comic book icon is pissed off and determined to set the record straight. The thing that’s he’s most annoyed about is that his friend Keya Morgan has been dragged into it all, and in a newly-released video he’s threatened to take legal action if any more stories are printed.
Here’s the transcript:
“Hi, this is Stan Lee, and I’m calling on behalf of myself and my friend Keya Morgan. Now you people have been publishing the most hateful harmful material about me and about my friend Keya and some others. Material which is totally incorrect, totally based on slander, totally the type of thing that I’m going to sue your ass off when I get a chance.
You have been accusing me and my friends of doing things that are so unrealistic or unbelievable that I don’t know what to say. It’s as though you suddenly have a personal vendetta against me and against the people I work with. Well, I want you to know I’m going to spend every penny I have to put a stop to this and to make you sorry that you’ve suddenly gone on a one-man campaign against somebody with no proof, no evidence, no anything, but you’ve decided that people are mistreating me and therefore you’re going to publish those articles.”
I’m going to get the best and most expensive lawyers I can and I want you to know that if you don’t stop these articles and publish retractions, I am gonna sue your ass off.”
Yikes! Given how nice and friendly Stan Lee is in pretty much every public appearance, it’s bit unsettling to see him clearly furious. Then again, reading some of the stories that have emerged over the last couple of days you can understand why.
The reports, published in THR, claim that Lee’s daughter is “a woman with very few adult friends” who’s being taken advantage of by three men with “bad intentions” who are trying to get their hands on Lee’s substantial fortune after his death. The reports make for tough reading, especially when they cut right to the heart of the allegedly fractious relationships within the Lee family.
There’s so much misinformation flying around this case that I suspect only the parties involved truly know what’s going on, but something smells pretty damn fishy here. Perhaps the best summary comes from an anonymous insider quoted by ComicBook.com, who said that the situation surrounding Stan Lee is “an utter shit show.”