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Stan Lee‘s daughter, J.C. Lee, has spoken out about previous allegations that she abused her parents in their old age, calling them “all lies.”
In a new interview with Business Insider, the daughter of the Marvel Comics legend denied that she exploited Stan Lee and physically abused him and her mother, Joan. “I never ever touched my parents,” she said.
A few months before Stan Lee’s death in November 2018, the Hollywood Reporter published an investigation including claims that he was the victim of elder abuse, both by business associates and J.C. Lee. The article alleged that Stan and J.C. had a “powder-keg relationship” and the latter would lash out when her demands for money were not met, including one claim that she attacked her parents in 2014 after learning her new Jaguar was leased in her father’s name instead of her own.
According to the Hollywood Reporter article, J.C. Lee “roughly grabbed” her mother’s arm, resulting in a bruise that THR claimed to have seen photos of, and slammed Stan Lee’s head against the back of a chair. The elder Lees did not get the police involved with the matter because of J.C.’s “emotionally fragile” state, according to THR.
J.C. Lee told Business Insider that though she often screamed at her parents, she did not get physical with them. She said she was advised not to issue a public denial when the article was published, but now regrets that decision. “They are all lies,” she said. “That photo is insane. I never did it.”
According to Business Insider, five people close to Stan Lee at the time said they never witnessed any abuse from J.C. Lee.
After the THR investigation, Stan Lee’s business manager, Keya Morgan, was charged with one felony count of false imprisonment of an elder, three felony counts of grand theft from an elder and one misdemeanor count of elder abuse. The charges of elder abuse and false imprisonment were dismissed before Morgan’s trial in November 2022. During the trial, the theft charges against him were also dropped after the jury deadlocked.
At the time of Stan Lee’s death, his company POW! Entertainment assumed the rights to his name, likeness and intellectual property. J.C. Lee sued the company in 2019 to try and regain those rights, but it was dismissed. In 2020, Kartoon Studios entered into a joint venture with POW! to create the Stan Lee Universe, which oversees the rights to Lee’s likeness and licensing. In 2023, J.C. Lee again sued POW!, this time alleging that a series of “suspicious transactions” diluted her stake in the company and she had not received the appropriate payments under their previous intellectual property agreement.
J.C. Lee told Business Insider that she feels like leading up to his death, her father’s associates “took everything.”
“I feel these people have taken my life, and they’re eating off gold utensils and I’m eating off plastic,” she said.
Representatives for the Stan Lee Universe had no comment.
