Company Stan Lee sued for $1 billion now developing a “Stan Lee Universe”

Stan Lee, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 95, is a legend in the world of comics. This is the guy who, working for Marvel, created characters like Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, and more. He’s basically responsible for superheroes as we know them.

But Lee also had a career outside of Marvel, creating other, lesser-known characters on his own like Lightspeed, the Condor, and Lucky Man. Now, POW! Entertainment — which Lee founded in 2001 to manage his creator rights and licenses — has teamed up with brand management company Genius Brands to make use of over 100 original Stan Lee creations. We’re not 100% sure what they want to do with them, but we know the new joint venture will hold “the worldwide rights to the name, physical likeness, physical signature, live-action and animated motion picture, TV, online, digital, publishing, comic book, merchandising and licensing rights to Stan Lee and his IP creations,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

TV shows, movies, books…the sky’s the limit. The aim seems to be to create a “Stan Lee Universe.”

There are some causes for concern here. Most obviously, I dunno if we want another big shared superhero universe. It worked wonderfully for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, yes, but not everything needs to be a shared universe. Warner Bros. has had less success with its DC Extended Universe, and the prospect of another one kind of sounds exhausting.

There’s also the issue of Stan Lee suing POW! Entertainment for $1 billion only six months before his death, alleging that they had taken advantage of his despair over his ailing wife, who was on her deathbed at the time, as well as his macular degeneration to trick him into signing over “the exclusive right to use [his] name, identity, image and likeness on a worldwide basis in perpetuity” when he just thought he was signing a non-exclusive license to use his name and likeness in connection with works owned by the company.

The suit was eventually dropped, but there’s a real question whether Lee would be okay with this development were he alive. So at the least, this new deal isn’t cut-and-dried good news. What do you make of it?

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h/t Io9