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  • What the release of Khashoggi intelligence report says about Saudi Arabia’s ‘bungling sadist’ – and Washington

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  • Myanmar police launch most extensive crackdown; hundreds arrested

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  • Stan Lee Was a Comics Saint Who Thought He Was God

    Michael Buckner/GettyIn 1983, Stan Lee, then Marvel Comics publisher, gave insight into his editorial feedback: “Hey, that shot is too weak. If you want a guy punching something, look at the way Jack Kirby does it. Let’s try and get that kind of force. This shot is too dull. Even if it’s a man walking in the street, look at the way Gene Colan does it. It looks interesting even if there’s no action.”During Lee’s editorship of Marvel Comics, a 20-page issue had about 100 panels for epic battles and human foibles. Lee’s direction maintained visual momentum, and tied together narratives of many characters. That overwatch created Marvel’s universe; his marketing instincts invited readers to join a re-imagination of a child’s medium.Abraham Riesman’s clear-eyed, anti-nostalgic biography True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, shows Lee’s discontent with those skills, how he took more credit than he deserved. He was brilliant, ever-optimistic, and believed in himself too much.“That was a core tragedy of Stan’s legacy,” Riesman wrote. “He was never able to put his most inarguable achievements front and center and instead opted for the ones that were most debatable.‘Picked Apart by Vultures’: The Last Days of Stan Lee“It’s possible that [Lee’s] greatest talent was editing; the only other skill that competed with it was his flair for promotion. He never sold himself as comics’ greatest editor or comics’ greatest salesman,” which he may have been, “but rather as its greatest ideas man,” a title True Believer argues he didn’t deserve.Marvel’s Fantastic Four debuted in 1961 with a deep weirdness compared to Superman’s corporate polish, or the adult-themed horror of the 1950s EC Comics. Marvel’s heroes targeted the new concept of teenagers with characters fantastical and strange, presented with Steve Ditko’s crazy angles, Jack Kirby’s inhuman designs, Stan Lee’s snarky dialogue.Does it matter who created the characters? Simplistic, childish concepts like The Thing? Iron Man? Dr. Strange? A web-shooting teenager is ridiculous—until Lee examined each panel to ensure a gripping narrative. Lee didn’t write the stories, as much as provided dialogue to fine-tune the artist’s premise. Kirby and Ditko might plot narratives, panel the comics, conceive the story’s direction, and conceptualize ideas.“What’s another word for plotting?” Riesman told The Daily Beast. “Writing.”Lee eventually claimed to have created most of the characters, that he was the brilliant wellspring, not just a grown-up guiding hand and energetic marketer. From interviews and well-documented research, Riesman shows Lee’s early willingness to give fair credit becoming an aggressive campaign of self-promotion. In one 1966 newspaper article, Lee was compared to actor Rex Harrison and credited with dreaming up the entire slate of Marvel comics. Jack Kirby, a 30-year veteran of the industry, was called an “assistant foreman in a girdle factory.” Many relationships have ruptured for less.Because the idea of “Stan Lee Presents” was too tempting. That phrase became an iconic signifier of an era, deserved and sometimes not.“It was true across Stan’s entire life, that if he came up with an idea, other people may have built up the idea, but ‘there was no idea before me’—that mattered a lot for him,” Riesman told the Beast.True Believer is not gossip. Riesman unpacks the humanity that makes popular culture bloom and fade. It is worth exploring the choices, compromises, relationships, and bitterness behind these ideas, especially when they spawn billion-dollar film franchises that drive modern entertainment.Comic book fans will react defensively toward Riesman’s account of Lee’s serial credit-taking. An argument in Lee’s favor is that any writer’s room features give-and-take. Lee and Kirby might say they conceived aspects of the Fantastic Four, and the truth is merely in the middle.“This is a dangerous line of thought for a historian,” Riesman wrote. “We should not ignore the possibility… that one of them was lying and the other telling the truth.”There was no writer’s room. Kirby wrote at home, bringing pages to Marvel after he finished the penciling. Stan’s snarky, snappy dialogue provided critical personality compared to the tin-eared scripts of DC’s Batman or Superman, but the 20 pages were often someone else’s creative vision. Getting fair credit was not easy; artists were freelancers and Lee, Marvel’s company man. The artists were also terrible salesmen for their own merits. When Kirby did speak up, his “original impetus [for characters and ideas] was always something sad and mundane,” Riesman told the Beast. “Kirby was ‘I needed to put food on the table,’ as opposed to ‘this was an evanescence of ideas from me, Stan Lee, the wonderful genius.’ It was mundane versus exciting.”Kirby died in 1994, years before Marvel’s resurgence. Ditko, creator of Spider-Man, holed up in a New York apartment, mailing out Ayn Rand-inspired screeds—an old crank difficult to take seriously before his 2018 death.Lee died at 95 in 2018—nearly 60 years to stake claims, appear in movie cameos, and pose for thousands of fans’ pictures, including with Riesman in 1998. Six decades to turn Stan Lieber, an immigrant’s son, into “Stan Lee,” an American icon. A perfect story, sold well.“Culture wants an unambiguous story about how things we love come into being,” Riesman told the Beast. “This idea that Stan’s the guy who created these characters, created Marvel, owned Marvel—none of those things are true. There’s always this vagueness or incorrectness about what he did. We should embrace that ambiguity.”Riesman uses a Lee quote to open a chapter: “If I myself possessed a superpower, I’d never keep it secret.”Riesman didn’t uncover any specific trauma in Lee’s childhood to make him that needy. Lee just wanted more, seeing comics as a springboard—Riesman chronicles test shoots of talk shows, hustling on the college speaking circuit, and book and screenplay ideas.“He didn’t want to be remembered for the past,” Riesman wrote, “he wanted to be relevant in the present.”Riesman’s research shows that Lee’s parents Iancu and Celia had left Romania at a time of growing anti-Semitism. His father’s village was the site of pogroms and violence. The past was no comfort.Lee’s career began at Timely Comics through a cousin’s husband, Martin Goodman. His first byline was “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge,” a two-page text story in May 1941’s Captain America Comics #3, accompanied by two panels of Kirby art, their first collaboration. “Stan Lee” took the byline, not Stan Lieber. Lee later explained he wanted to save his real name’s first appearance for the novel he would someday write.Lee’s father, Iancu, had Americanized his own first name to Jack; now Stan dropped his last name, and that connection with Jewish relatives and a lost homeland. Maybe there was trauma after all. Like Riesman wrote, Stan didn’t want to be remembered for the past, but relevant in the present.Each paragraph in “The Traitor’s Revenge” matches a comic panel’s on-point action: “In an instant, both Steve and Bucky peeled off their outer uniforms and seconds later they stood revealed as CAPTAIN AMERICA and BUCKY, Sentinels of our Shores! ‘Let’s go!’ cried CAPTAIN AMERICA!”Once World War II began, Lee spent his patriotic Army duty writing training manuals and projects like an anti-venereal disease campaign—“VD? Not me!”Riesman wrote, “The key thing to remember about Stan Lee’s war years is that he was a propagandist…accomplishing military goals through simple, direct messaging designed to instill emotional reactions of loyalty and excitement.”Propaganda is too sinister. Lee communicated with a military audience using that culture’s language to inspire a collective understanding. Propaganda? Or mission-focused?That approach drove Lee’s banter with readers on each comic’s letters page. In 1965’s Strange Tales #135, a 300-word letter, from Tim Miller of Pontiac Michigan, presented ideas about the origins of Dr. Strange’s incantations, e.g., “I invoke the Hosts of Hoggoth.”“Tim, you frantic fans are the greatest!” Lee (most likely) responded. “No matter what we make up, right out of our cornball heads, there’ll always be some Marvel madman who can explain the whole thing with such logic that we end up thinking we took it from a history book!”Tim Miller probably never got over himself. All it took was a back-handed compliment, Lee’s self-effacement, and a little alliteration.“By the time he became famous,” Riesman wrote, “Lee was a wizard at stirring his readers up with direct addresses, often using the martial phrase ‘face front.’ Such verbiage sought to make the masses feel as though they were members of a legion of devoted followers who would do whatever their commander asked of them.”Lee craved the adoration, Riesman said. “He didn’t care about superheroes or comics… but he loved getting people behind something.”Lee used a jaunty style for bylines like “Unpredictable Stan Lee,” “Unmatchable Jack Kirby,” “Unbeatable Johnny Severin.” Stan came first. When he stopped writing, “Stan Lee—Editor” appeared as a brand-new credit line. Lee’s collaborators didn’t appreciate this creative bigfooting, Kirby and Ditko only the most famous. Kirby’s former assistant Mark Evanier explained to Riesman that, “Unfortunately, from day one, Jack Kirby was doing part of Stan’s job,” the writing, “and Stan was not doing part of Jack’s job,” the drawing.Despite all that, True Believer is not a revisionist take-down. It’s not unkind, nasty, or unfair—Lee’s just a creative man who wanted more than he earned.Riesman digs into Lee’s later-life efforts to recapture the fragile magic—Stan Lee Media and POW! Entertainment. Lee schmoozes Pamela Anderson’s brother to get her to star as Stripperella—a pitch that actually came to fruition. Lee didn’t write any of the 13 episodes, but it’s still Stan Lee’s Stripperella on the DVD case.Riesman interviews Lee’s business associates of his final years, Peter Paul and Keya Morgan, greasy self-promoters who are happy to provide some gossip and defend themselves against various allegations. None of it’s surprising. Of course Lee was an easy mark, and made bad choices with bad business partners. Of course he rants and raves with difficult family members. He was an old man too ashamed to admit he was put out to pasture.The important part of this story isn’t that it ended badly, it’s that it happened.Riesman interviewed Lee for a 2016 Vulture article, a half-dozen emailed questions sent through a publicist—a somewhat taunting experience, Riesman said, with closer access dangled, but ever out of reach. In those emails, Riesman asked Lee about growing up in New York and its Jewish culture. “It was a fascinating answer; he answered the question about New York, completely ignored the part about Jewishness,” he said. Stan’s brother Larry Lieber told Riesman that their father, Iancu-Jack, felt Stan had turned his back on Jewish faith, ignoring the struggles of Israel, and baptizing his daughter, among other criticisms.That bitterness makes sense. Iancu left Romania in large part because of violent anti-Semitism; now his son wrote comic books about silly monsters (Bruttu? Sserpo? Zzutak?) in a world full of real monsters. It’s like an Iraq veteran baffled why their child wastes time on TikTok—maybe not grasping that followers can be monetized.“The only topic I would have liked to talk about in a more substantive way was his childhood,” Riesman said. “He wasn’t a prince, so historians aren’t chronicling his youth; there’s just his brother.”Larry Lieber, that younger brother, is the tell-tale heartbeat of Stan’s story. Larry had worked in comics since the early 1950s, and had retired from penciling the daily Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip in 2018 after 32 years. He’s not the last surviving artist or writer from the old days, but his work was among the last pieces of cultural DNA connecting back to the old days. The brothers’ relationship had been acrimonious—at least from Larry’s side. They worked together now and then, and Stan didn’t completely cast him aside, but there was a constant distance.At one point, Larry had left Marvel to work for the old boss Martin Goodman at a different comic company. Stan didn’t offer a raise to stop the move, just appealed to family loyalty that had been, at best, one way. “The guy’s got millions!” Larry recounted to Riesman. “I can’t pay my rent! And he’s telling me not to write for them!”Stan had returned to New York for a comic convention and didn’t tell Larry he would be there; Stan badgered Larry into giving a deposition against Jack Kirby’s estate; Stan’s wife Joan belittled Larry with fake friendliness.In the 1970s, “when Larry was struggling to get Stan to throw some work his way. Stan kept passing the buck. Larry… eventually turned to one of the editors for help. “Well, Larry,” he recalls the editor saying, “it’s the consensus of opinion here that the only people Stan thinks about are himself and his family, and that doesn’t include you.”Larry is not nostalgic.“I mean, everyone I know is going. Gone. And I thought, did I lose him?” Larry told Riesman. “Can you lose somebody you never had?”It’s a tragedy to leave a story there—an angry brother alone at the end. So let’s not leave it there.June 1962 was just the Fantastic Four and the Hulk, with Spider-Man debuting in August. Some buzz, some promising sales. Stan, Jack, Larry, Steve also cranked out comics of suspense and monsters, but new ideas were coming.Martin Scorsese’s 1970s movies were something new; that group did the same for 1960’s comics. They even beat Scorsese to the punch—in June 1962’s “Bully Boy,” a sci-fi melodrama in Tales to Astonish #32, an under-estimated teenager makes an over-the-shoulder threat, “Are you talking to me?” before wiping the floor with four goons. That dialogue beat Robert DeNiro’s Travis Bickle by 14 years. The penciling is Kirby’s, nobody’s credited for the dialogue but it was probably Stan, and maybe Larry helped with the script. Ditko hung around, prepping Spider-Man. Look around, the revolution’s happening in New York and there were minds at work—Stan, Larry, Jack, Steve, many more.True Believer’s origin story begins in 2015. Riesman misunderstood editor David Wallace-Wells' request for a review of Stan’s new graphic memoir, Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir. Riesman thought Wallace-Wells wanted a long-form profile, so he compiled research and interviews—until Wallace-Wells “informed me that he’d meant I should write a short book review. Oops,” Riesman wrote. But, intrigued, Wallace-Wells greenlit Riesman’s subsequent 10,000-word Vulture article on Lee. After Lee’s death, Will Wolfslau, editor at Crown Publishing, visualized a book’s scope in that article about Lee’s life of triumph and hubris. He reached out to Riesman’s agent with that idea.Had Wolfslau shared Stan Lee’s credit-taking worldview and punched-up writing style, the book’s title could have been Wonderful Will Wolfslau presents True Believer, scripted by Able Abe Riesman.Wolfslau did see that potential in Riesman’s article, but follow-through is the author’s domain. In 2021, editors stay in the back pages, thanked in the acknowledgments.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Kashmir villagers hopeful but wary after India and Pakistan agree to ceasefire

    Villagers living on both sides of the Line of Control dividing the Himalayan region of Kashmir welcomed an agreement between long-time foes India and Pakistan to stop shelling from each side, but some were sceptical it would hold. The nuclear-armed neighbours signed a ceasefire agreement along the Line of Control (LoC) in 2003, but that has frayed in recent years and there have been mounting casualties. In a joint statement on Thursday, India and Pakistan said they would observe a ceasefire.

  • Stocks fall, bond rout sparks profit taking

    Central banks in Asia struggled to smother a selloff in global bonds on Friday (February 26), piling pressure on their bigger peers to do more.That spooked investors who sold assets to cover deepening losses.And rushed out of crowded positions in stocks.European stocks fell on Friday (February 26) as investors booked profits in high-flying technology shares.Concerns are growing over rising inflation and interest rates on the back of a jump in bond yields.The benchmark European stock index was down over 1%.And on track to record its first weekly fall this month.While London's FTSE 100 and Germany's DAX also slipped.Earlier, Asian markets had seen even bigger declines. Japan's Nikkei index shed almost 4%. Euro zone government bonds did at least stabilise.But Germany's benchmark yield was still headed for its biggest monthly jump since 2016.Assurances from European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde and other policymakers failed to stem the rise in yields.Technology stocks bore the brunt of this week's sell-off after powering the global stock market recovery last year.

  • Huawei plans to start making cars - sources

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  • Fox News Claims It’s Moving Toward the ‘Center.’ This Show Sure Isn’t.

    Roy Rochlin/GettyAs Fox News attempts to figure out its place in a post-Trump media landscape, the network has claimed it is moving “center-right.” A laughable claim, critics say—one that is easily disproved by Fox’s far-right primetime screeds but also by the tonal shift of a key noon-hour talk show.Outnumbered, which first debuted in 2014 as a female-led panel show (with a gimmicky “one lucky guy” slotted as the sole male panelist), has always straddled Fox’s increasingly blurred line dividing its “hard news” and opinion wings. But the show has long winked at its “fair and balanced” credentials by featuring a lone liberal pundit among its rotating panel.However, in recent months, and as Fox continues to grapple with a ratings plunge—at least in part due to MAGA diehards ditching the network after its news desk made accurate election-night calls for Joe Biden—the noon talk show appears to have benched two key liberal regulars in Marie Harf and Jessica Tarlov.And instead, Outnumbered has taken a noticeably rightward shift, stacking its panels with conservative voices and giving more prominent placement to fiery provocateurs like Tomi Lahren. The resulting show is one that, like much of Fox’s programming, now seems laser-focused on hyping the conservative culture-war grievances of the day.“Ratings went down the tank and they want more right-wing voices,” one current Fox News staffer told The Daily Beast in assessing the noon show’s new tone, especially in light of the network overhauling much of its lineup to add more hours of right-wing opinion commentary.The prolonged Outnumbered absence of Harf and Tarlov—both of whom continue to appear elsewhere on the network—notably came almost immediately following an intense, early-December on-air skirmish between Harf and the show’s permanent host Harris Faulkner over the program’s coverage of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.Fox News Anchor Blows Up When Liberal Pundit Calls Out Lack of COVID Death CoverageHarf, a former Obama state department official, challenged Faulkner on Outnumbered having spent nearly a full hour talking about Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s five-year-old interactions with a suspected Chinese spy, or complaining about coronavirus-related indoor dining restrictions, all while giving a mere 20 seconds of air to the U.S. surpassing 3,000 daily COVID-19 deaths for the first time.An incensed Faulkner shouted down Harf, complaining that it was “offensive” that the liberal panelist “took a shot there.” The host further chided her colleague: “You can’t see my heart and trust me when I tell you it hurts all of us to mourn those Americans and people around the world.”Prior to Faulkner’s blow-up with Harf, the liberal Fox News contributor had appeared in 11 of the previous 24 Outnumbered broadcasts and had been in rotation to appear at least twice a week. Jessica Tarlov, another regular Outnumbered panelist, had appeared four times during that same span and had been in a once-a-week rotation with the show.Following that Dec. 10 broadcast, however, both Harf and Tarlov were yanked from any future bookings on Outnumbered, according to two sources familiar with the situation. And since then, neither woman has returned to the show.The only left-leaning panelists to appear on the noon program now are radio host Leslie Marshall, a self-described “centrist” Democrat and Johanna Maska, a former Obama spokesperson who sat on the panel last week. Fox News host Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery, a self-described libertarian, also remains a staple of the show.Otherwise, the show has seemed to increasingly lean on incendiary conservative culture warriors like MAGA youth leader Charlie Kirk, reactionary podcaster Dave Rubin, failed congressional candidate Kim Klacik, and—much to the chagrin of Fox staffers who spoke with The Daily Beast—Tomi Lahren.The career bomb-thrower—best-known for her bite-sized and breathless rants on Fox’s digital streaming service Fox Nation, her oft-hateful tweets (some of which have been publicly rebuked by her own colleagues), and for having been fired by Glenn Beck—has suddenly become a routine presence on Outnumbered.Lahren recently re-upped her contract with Fox and since December has appeared at least 18 times on Outnumbered, co-hosting at least twice per week. Considering her style of commentary and debate being more at home in Fox’s decidedly right-wing primetime hours, some Fox News staffers consider her newfound elevation to be eyebrow-raising.“It’s an absolute joke and further proof that the show shouldn’t be taken seriously,” said one current Fox employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from management. “When I was hired, I was told that [Lahren] would never be on legitimate shows like Outnumbered or The Five, that she was only Fox Nation. I’m just as confused as everyone else. Tomi has no credibility, no résumé of experience other than screaming derogatory things on the internet.”Another Fox staffer suggested Lahren is a logical choice to spice up the network’s daytime programming amid a ratings slump. “She’s good at stirring the pot… all it takes nowadays,” the employee said. “Fox likes what rates.”Can Tomi Lahren Keep Failing Up?Fox ‘Hard News’ Show Buys GOP’s ‘Fascinating’ Effort to Steal ElectionWhile the network’s actions—including programming choices that include adding two more hours of right-wing commentary in the 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. hours—indicate a definitive hard-right shift to shore up the hardcore conservative MAGA base, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch somehow insisted the opposite earlier this month.“We believe that where we are targeted, to the center-right, is where we should be targeted. We don’t need to go further right,” he said while touting the company’s ad-revenue gains. “We don’t believe America is further right, and we’re obviously not going to pivot left. All of our significant competitors are to the far left.”Following last November’s election, however, the whole calculus for Fox News’ programming changed. Disgruntled pro-Trump viewers ditched the network in droves following Fox’s early call of Arizona for President Joe Biden on Election Night, a decision that put a crimp in then-President Donald Trump’s plan to falsely declare victory.With Fox experiencing slumping post-election ratings, the network made a concerted effort to win back MAGA loyalists by focusing more squarely on conservative opinion and culture-war battles. A key part of that shift included its “hard news” broadcasts devoting ample time to discussing and amplifying the opinion monologues delivered the night before by Fox’s popular pro-Trump firebrands Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.The ratings panic became apparent after Martha MacCallum’s now-former 7 p.m. show The Story was beaten head-to-head in the ratings by Newsmax, the upstart cable outlet that appealed directly to disgruntled Fox viewers by overtly embracing Trump’s bogus “stolen” election ploy. MacCallum’s loss to Newsmax’s Greg Kelly in the key advertising demographic of viewers aged 25-54 scared the network’s bosses “to their core,” staffers told The Daily Beast at the time.And the new direction of Outnumbered ultimately seems to be yet another part of Fox’s overtly rightward shift to combat ratings issues.“It’s all a complete joke,” one Fox News insider told The Daily Beast. “They aren’t even trying anymore to attempt a fair discussion.”“The token liberal was only there for show,” this person concluded. “The liberal opinion was only as useful to them as a tee in tee ball for the rest of the gang to get guaranteed hits their audience wants to hear. Now in their desperation to retain the fleeing audience they are too afraid to have even the slightest opposing view on the show for fear more people will click over to Newsmax.”Diana Falzone was an on-camera and digital reporter for FoxNews.com from 2012 to 2018. In May 2017, she filed a gender discrimination and disability lawsuit against the network and settled, and left the company in March 2018.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.