Marvel, Please Don’t Digitally Resurrect Stan Lee

Stan Lee had pre-taped appearances for five upcoming movies when his personal manager spilled the beans during a convention appearance 14 months before he died. Concerns were raised that Lee was being exploited by those around him, with people treating him more as a brand or fictional character than a real person.

Maybe everyone should have taken that as a sign of things to come.

Stan Lee Entertainment, which controls the name and appearance of the comics writer, who died in 2018, signed a 20-year deal with Marvel, which will use his name, voice, likeness, and signature across a wide number of applications.

Stan Lee was involved in transforming himself from a person to a brand. It goes back to the earliest days of the company, when he would portray himself and other staff as wisecracking caricatures in editorials and comic strips alike, when he stepped away.

The idea that Lee will be trapped in an afterlife selling products for at least the next two decades, despite the obvious jokes to be made about it being how he spent his time on Earth, is grotesque. The resurrection of Lee is different from the digital recreations of actors in movies or holograms of dead people at festivals. Each of those cases were celebrations and recreations of their subjects' work, which were used to build the digital performances.

This is an extension of the yearslong transformation of Lee into little more than a corporate puppet, trading on fan nostalgia and past goodwill to assure audiences that what they are watching onscreen has the seal of approval of the original generation of the self-proclaimed House.

Lee's death in late last year was sad, but it also brought an end to a difficult, tragic period of his life. Even as his public profile grew bigger than it had ever been before, accusations of elder abuse began to circulate. The true Stan Lee was not seen as a fictional character in the movies, but as a real person.

Stan Lee was never really alive in the first place. The real Stan Lee is ready to advertise whatever the brand wants, not being remembered as a mascot.