Rights Reversion to Stan Lee’s Femizons From Marvel to New Publisher

Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics, Stan Lee | Tagged: Femizons, Slam-Girl, Stan Lee Holdings

The Omniverse Collection of IP comprises more than a hundred characters and storylines Stan Lee created, including the Femizons.

In 1971, Marvel Comics published Savage Tales #1, a non-Code Conan anthology black-and-white comic magazine that featured Ka-Zar and the first appearance of Man-Thing, and The Femizons or The Sisterhood (the name differed on the cover and inside the comic) which was credited as being created and written by the late Stan Lee and drawn by John Romita Sr, who passed away two weeks ago.

This was Stan Lee’s “women’s liberation” comic inspired by feminists and their “picketing, bra-burning”, and you can pretty much guess what’s coming. A bunch of women in very little clothing running around a future fantasy world where women have established themselves as the dominant gender. Savage Tales was cancelled after the first issue, and when it returned, it was without the Femizons. But now, it seems, they are to return.

The Omniverse Collection of IP comprises over a hundred characters and storylines Stan Lee created at Stan Lee Media between 1999 and 2000 and is now being claimed by Stan Lee Holdings, including Slam-Girl, The 7th Portal, The Drifter, and The Accuser. The Omniverse Collection also includes the Femizons, the rights to which apparently reverted back to Stan Lee’s company as part of an employment contract, previously unknown until now.

Stan Lee Media was founded in 1999 as the largest internet animation studio in Hollywood at the time, employing 150 writers, artists, and animators, to create and produce original superheroes for the internet as a then-new medium. The dot com bust happened, and the studio went under. Stan Lee Holdings was apparently set up to acquire the assets.

They do clearly state for the lawyers, The Omniverse Collection created by Stan Lee, SLH Ltd, or SPACEMOB are not affiliated with Marvel, POW!, Genius Brands, the Estate of Stan Lee, or Stan Lee Universe.

Shirrel Rhoades became executive vice president of Marvel Entertainment in 1996, succeeding Stan Lee as publisher of Marvel Comics during the bankruptcy years. In 2001 he was let go, replaced by Bill Jemas, and Rhoades moved to Reader’s Digest, one of many publishing jobs he has had. He wrote the textbooks A Complete History of American Comics Books and Comic Books: How the Industry Works and, at one point, joined  Red Giant’s board of directors. The publisher that tried to give a million copies of comics away for free, funded by advertising, and had a massive presence at San Diego Comic-Con. Until they suddenly didn’t.

And now he’s back, working with Stan Lee from beyond the grave as director of Stan Lee Holdings is working with Spacemob CEO Eric Keith, who has apparently secured the rights to these Stan Lee IPs. Spacemob states that they will serve as the Business Development, Creative Development, and Business Affairs Agency for Stan Lee Holdings’ properties. “This content is going to be a gift to superhero fans all around the world and a tribute to the legacy of Stan Lee. The characters and stories are fantastic, and I am honored to be representing them,” stated Eric Keith.

Spacemob states, “The role that Stan Lee played in the early days of the internet as an entertainment medium has largely been lost to history. As both Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Stan established Stan Lee Media. This studio produced the internet’s first high-concept animated “webisodes” (a term coined by Stan Lee himself).” Was it? Possibly, Wikipedia has it as the “first public use of the word webisode, attributed to Stan Lee Media in the marketing and promotion of The 7th Portal online superhero series created by Jesse Stagg and Steven Salem“. So there you go. Stan Lee Media closed in 2000.

Slam Girl was Lee’s intended female counterpart to Spider-Man, credited with Spider-Man and X-Men animation director Will Meugniot, and is now a series of NFTs. Stan Lee Holdings states that “Stan adopted the perspective of a Millenial slacker 20-something anti-super heroine” and “Stan wondered how a budding feminist from the Millenial generation would relate to the burdens created by the uninvited imposition of multiple superpowers that would turn her mundane slacker experience into the 21st-century symbol of female empowerment.” Basically, Femizons Mark Two.

“Having worked side-by-side with Stan Lee at Marvel, I was honored when asked to curate his later works,” says Shirrel Rhoades. “I was amazed to find characters I’d never heard of, superheroes designed for the Internet Age. Among these were long-lost creations like Slam-Girl, Stan’s planned successor to Spider-Man, and The Drifter, a superhero with alien DNA who jumps among the multiverse. These characters will indeed put fresh luster on Stan’s reputation as one of the greatest creators America has ever produced,” stated Shirrel Rhoades.

That reputation may be argued with, especially by those who objected to the recent hagiographic Stan Lee documentary on Disney+. Maybe those will find it fitting that the eventual fate of these creations is blockchain NFTs after the market’s height for such things. But as Marc Toberoff has been successfully fighting for the estate of comic book creators to get their rights reverted for all manner of Marvel comic book creations– or rather get a massive payout for a new deal, it’s intriguing to know that Stan Lee managed to set the groundwork for the reversal of his own rights decades ago, and signed them over.

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