Stan Lee Was Tricked Into Allowing a Controversial Story by Fake Fan Mail
In the 1970s a pair Marvelcomiccreators pulled off a larger-than-life scheme to trick Stan Lee and preserve their artistic vision. From the 1950s onwards, comics were often targeted for censorship in order to comply with the Comics Code Authority. However, comics writers also had to be careful to not just comply with the Authority’s standards but also not to print something that might turn off a portion of their readers. Stan Lee thought that one reality warping Dr. Strange storyline had the potential to do just that.
Marvel Premiere #14 was the end of a Dr. Strange story arc written by Steve Englehart and pencilled Frank Brunner. It features the antagonist Sise-Neg traveling backwards in time to try and obtain godlike powers. Dr. Strange and his nemesis Baron Mordo accompany him on his journey, with Strange trying to convince him of the worth of humanity and Mordo trying to convince him of the opposite and become Sise-Neg’s disciple. Over the course of their journey, Sise-Neg inadvertently causes many iconic moments from the Bible, including the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the establishment of the Garden of Eden. At the end of their journey, Sise-Neg ascends to godhood and takes the name Genesis. Upon ascension, Genesis realizes that the world is exactly as it should be and thus recreates the universe exactly as it was. All this leads Dr. Strange to speculate that Genesis’s recreation of the universe was in fact paradoxically the original creation of the universe as well.
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The implications of Dr. Strange’s hypothesis worried Stan Lee, who thought that the ending of the story might offend religious readers. According to CBR, Frank
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