Shortly before Stan Lee died, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story claiming that the Spider-Man and X-Men co-creator had been the victim of elder abuse. The finger was pointed squarely at his daughter, JC Lee, and she's now hit back at those accusations in a new Business Insider interview.
JC denies that she physically abused Stan and her mother, Joan, and calls the stories about her "a lie." She adds, "I never ever touched my parents."
Many of those in Lee's inner circle were accused of exploiting him, and as recently as this year, footage surfaced showing the elderly comic book creator seemingly being coerced into signings and convention appearances despite being physically exhausted and potentially even mentally unwell.
It was put to JC that, in 2014, she grabbed Joan's arm and slammed Stan's head into the back of a chair after discovering her new Jaguar was leased in her father's name. While she admits to being volatile and prone to emotional outbursts, she reiterated that things never got physical between them.
As for why she's chosen to speak out now, JC says that, at the time, she took the advice of those around her and declined to publicly comment. "You think I haven't regretted it to this day?" she said. "They are all lies. That photo is insane. I never did it."
James MacLean, JC's former assistant and business partner, also spoke to the site (as did five others who said they never saw her physically abuse her parents) and explained, "They were equally abusive, the way they screamed at each other. But then it would be like, 'Let's sit down and have dinner.' That was their relationship."
Reflecting on her father's death, JC said she arrived as he was being loaded into the ambulance. "They wanted to do all these terrible things to his body to see if they could bring him back. I said no. He appeared to be gone."
While JC has attempted to monetise her father since his passing with new t-shirts and a board game, those haven't taken off, and complicated deals mean various people own the rights to newer creations the comic book writer had been working on.
JC concludes, "I feel these people have taken my life, and they're eating off gold utensils and I'm eating off plastic." It's previously been reported that the majority of Stan's fortune was left to his only child.
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