When people think of Marvel Comics or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they think of Stan Lee as the creator of that universe, never mind the contributions of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko or any of the other members of the Marvel Bullpen. But this documentary asks us to consider that Stan Lee is more than just the creator of Marvel (and Striperella; even I can argue that everything Lee did after 1970 or so).
Let me let them tell you.
“Many are unaware that Stan Lee purposely set out to repudiate God’s goodness and diminish His power. Lee not only sought to paint God as an inept and uncaring being but, driven by his own infamous ego, sought to exalt himself and his plethora of comic gods and superheroes above God. Did Stan Lee have a dark and nefarious agenda? Did Stan Lee seek to distort God into a bumbling creator unworthy of worship? Did Stan Lee and Marvel Comics portray Satan as the real hero or savior of humanity? Journey with us as we discover more troubling insights in Part 3 of Marvel and DC’s War on God series to discover how one of comics’ most prolific creative leaders, as well as his well-known associates Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, continues to indoctrinate and perpetuate Satanic lies to hundreds of millions of young people among his unsuspecting fans.”
Directed, written and starring Joe Schimmel — “Since 1987, Pastor Joe Schimmel has been equipping Christians with the truth of God’s word. His testimony of the transforming power of Jesus Christ in his own life can be seen in the powerful exposé, They Sold Their Souls for Rock & Roll, and has been heard during live presentations at churches around the world in which he describes his own deliverance from the bondage and satanic influence of Rock Music at the age of 18.” — this breaks down the creation of the Marvel Universe but through a Christian lens.
This often calls Stan Lee Stan Lieber, which seems like a dog whistle to remind us that Lee was Jewish (as was Kirby). Let’s let that go and get into this, which explains that so much of Marvel is based on gnosticism, which is best described as a mindset that “emphasizes personal spiritual knowledge above authority, traditions and proto-orthodox teachings of organized religious institutions.” This might sound fine to you, but these docs always follow the rule that any rebellion is inherently evil.
The documentary’s obsession with Gnosticism is a classic Satanic Panic point. Gnosticism posits that the physical world was created by an inferior, often bumbling or evil deity known as the Demiurge and that true salvation comes through Gnosis or secret knowledge.
To understand why a documentary like Marvel and DC’s War on God exists, you have to understand the vacuum Lee and Kirby filled. In the 1960s, the Marvel Bullpen wasn’t just making funny books; they were crafting a modern American mythology.
Unlike the DC heroes who were often portrayed as pristine, god-like icons (Superman as a literal savior), Marvel’s characters were defined by their humanity and their flaws. Ben Grimm was a monster who hated himself; Peter Parker couldn’t pay his rent; Tony Stark was an alcoholic. To a rigid theological mind, humanizing the “miraculous” or giving “god-like” powers to fallible men isn’t just storytelling. It’s blasphemy.
Here’s an example. The Silver Surfer, who is a character whgo was not created by Lee, but instead drawn by Kirby starting in Fantastic Four #48, as the herald of Galactus, a space god who had come to eat Earth. Lee would eventually dialogue and later write the character, but based on Marvel Style, the plot for the issue was Lee giving Kirby a brief idea of what it could be about, then Kirby going to draw all of that and turning it back in to Lee to dialogue. We can argue Marvel Style if you want and who created who, but that’s not what this movie is about.
In short, from Wikipedia: “When Kirby turned in his pencil art for the story, he included a new character he and Lee had not discussed. As Lee recalled in 1995, “There, in the middle of the story we had so carefully worked out, was a nut on some sort of flying surfboard.” He later expanded on this, recalling, “I thought, ‘Jack, this time you’ve gone too far.” Kirby explained that the story’s agreed-upon antagonist, a god-like cosmic predator of planets named Galactus, should have some sort of herald, and that he created the surfboard “because I’m tired of drawing spaceships!” Taken by the noble features of the new character, who turned on his master to help defend Earth, Lee overcame his initial skepticism and began adding characterization. The Silver Surfer soon became a key part of the unfolding story.”
Kirby told Gary Groth the following:
JACK: I got the Silver Surfer, and I suddenly realized here was the dramatic situation between God and the Devil! The Devil himself was an archangel. The Devil wasn’t ugly – he was a beautiful guy! He was the guy that challenged God.
MARK: That’s the Surfer challenging Galactus.
JACK: And Galactus says, “You want to see my power? Stay on Earth forever!”
MARK: He exiled the Surfer out of Paradise.
JACK: And of course the Surfer is a good character, but he got a little bit of an ego and it destroyed him. That’s very natural. If we got an ego it might destroy us. People say, “Look at him – who does he think he is? We knew him when.” They throw tomatoes at you. Of course, Galactus, in his own way, and maybe the people of his type, are also doing that to the Surfer. They were people of a certain class and power, and if any one of ’em became pretentious or affectacious, they would do the same thing. We would do the same thing. If a movie star walked past you and gave you the snub, you’d give him a hot foot just to show him, “I paid my money to see you – and that’s what you’re living on.” You’re not just a face in the crowd – you’re a moviegoer, you plunk your dough down, and this guy lives off it.
He told an early San Diego Comic Con audience in 1970:
AUDIENCE: What was your inspiration for the Silver Surfer?
KIRBY: Gee, I don’t know. The Silver Surfer came out of a feeling; that’s the only thing I can say. When I drew Galactus, I just don’t know why, but I suddenly figured out that Galactus was God, and I found that I’d made a villain out of God, and I couldn’t make a villain out of him. And I couldn’t treat him as a villain, so I had to back away from him. I backed away from Galactus, and I felt he was so awesome, and in some way he was God, and who would accompany God, but some kind of fallen angel? And that’s who the Silver Surfer was. And at the end of the story, Galactus condemned him to Earth, and he couldn’t go into space anymore. So the Silver Surfer played his role in that manner. And, y’know, I can’t say why; it just happened. And that was the Silver Surfer, I suppose you might call it – I don’t know, some kind of response to an inner feeling.
The idea that the Surfer is the devil and Galactus is God, something Kirby says he moved away from, comes up here, as does the Lee and Moebius story Silver Surfer: Parable, which writes Galactus as the Old Testament-style, fire-and-brimstone God and the Silver Surfer as a self-sacrificing figure who lives poor and rejects anyone worshipping him; less like Satan and more like Jesus. Yet in this movie, this story is used as proof that the Surfer is the devil and Lee is against God. If anything, this story inspired me.
To wit:
- Galactus arrives and tells humanity he is their God.
- Humanity immediately falls into religious zealotry, war and chaos in his name.
- The Silver Surfer serves as a pacifist martyr, suffering so humanity can learn to think for itself.
If anything, Parable is a scathing critique of blind fanaticism. the very thing Schimmel’s documentary represents. It suggests that a God who demands worship through fear is not worth having and that true divinity lies in self-sacrifice and compassion.
Kirby wasn’t drawing from Gnostic texts; he was drawing from the Old Testament. Galactus isn’t a bumbling creator. He is closer to the Cosmic Awe, the I Am That I Am that is beyond human morality. Kirby was trying to visualize the scale of the divine, which is often terrifying.
“Many leading comic book writers have admitted that they are using seduction, manipulation, the occult, and even the Bible to influence children to view the God of the Bible from a twisted slant,” says Pastor Schimmel. “Our series aims to help families recognize these underlying messages and equip them with a biblical response.”
If you’ve seen They Sold Their Souls for Rock n Roll, this is very much the same, only about comic books. Ditko escapes most of the tarred brush here — oh wait, the second part is all about Dr. Strange — but this one goes hard after Kirby, saying that he was possessed by demons as a child.
When it comes to religion in comics, I found this quote — from Michael Kobre’s “The Common Man Is Coming Into His Own” — interesting: “Though Kirby and Lee—the former Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Leiber—were both first-generation American Jews (like so many other creators who built the American comic book industry), Judaism exists as a kind of lacuna in their published work, a fact of both men’s backgrounds that’s conspicuous by its absence.”
Why is that? The author says that it was about something simple: survival.
“My generation lied to survive,” Kirby told a group of fans in a 1972 conversation when he was explaining why he changed his name from Jacob Kurtzberg. “When I tell you my generation lied or died I’m not kidding,” he said, going on to explain how he was perceived as “a total alien” by the kind of men from the Midwest or Texas with whom he served in the army, even citing one soldier from a small rural town who refused to believe Kirby was Jewish because he didn’t have horns.”
It upsets me that Kirby gets insulted so many times in this, a man who worked back-breaking 14-hour days in his studio to take care of his family in a world where he was told he was disposable and not the man who truly created so much of what we know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Kirby often wrote of gods, Norse and New, Inhumans and end-of-the-world realities, places where he could explore how he saw religion in his head. I think Jack Kirby would be hurt by what was said here; a man can do a comic book called Spirit World or The Demon and still be a good man. That’s what I believe, if not the people who made this. A demon, Etrigan, is trying to work with a human, Jason Blood, and they are both looking for redemption. That seems something maybe worth celebrating.
Kirby, a man who literally fought Nazis in WWII and was nearly killed in the infantry, is being accused of indoctrinating children by a man sitting in a studio. Kirby’s work was obsessed with theology. From The New Gods (which features a literal Source or Godhead) to The Eternals, Kirby was a man constantly searching for the divine in the stars. To call his work demonic is to ignore the profound morality at its core: the idea that even a monster like The Hulk, The Thing, or yes, Etrigan can choose to do good.
It is a bitter irony that Kirby, a man who spent his life creating a universe where anyone, no matter how alien or different, could be a hero, is being painted as a villain by those who claim to preach love.
Buckle up when you watch this and other films in this series. They move quickly, change subjects more often than I do, and are just as scattered as having a conversation with me.
You can watch this on Fawesome.
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