A sensational new podcast exploring the life of late Marvel legend Stan Lee will show how the 95-year-old ‘died of a broken heart’ after losing his wife of 70 years.
Joan Lee passed away aged 95 on July 6, 2017 leaving her husband and soul-mate a complete ‘wreck’ and in a ‘black place’, according to those closest to the comic book icon.
And according to the podcast called ‘Scandal: Stan Lee’s World: His Real Life Battle with Heroes and Villains,’ Lee was then sucked into situation which saw him surrounded by a ‘revolving door’ of ‘vultures and snakes’ before he died alone.
The podcast, compiled by veteran CNN entertainment reporter Alan Duke, who was a close friend with Lee and witnessed much of the turmoil inside his life first hand, features a series of revealing audio clips of Lee himself and interviews with his inner-circle.
The podcast also takes aim at the comic book legend’s daughter J.C. Lee who Lee says in one clip, ‘needs medical help.’
According to the podcast called ‘Scandal: Stan Lee’s World: His Real Life Battle with Heroes and Villains,’ Lee was sucked into situation which saw him surrounded by a ‘revolving door’ of ‘vultures and snakes’ before he died alone
In the clip Lee can be heard saying his daughter has ‘no talent’, adding: ‘JC, she has really reached the point where she needs medical help.’
Duke told DailyMailTV he had originally been working on a podcast called, ‘Saving Stan Lee: A Time for Heroes’, before the legend died.
Since the Marvel creator’s tragic passing he was forced to change things up.
He told DailyMailTV: ‘The worst thing that ever happened in Stan Lee’s world is when Joanie died, when he lost his wife of more than seven decades.
‘She was his protector, his closest advisor, she was his love and he really didn’t want to go on after that.
‘But to compound his difficulties there was a revolving door of advisors and caretakers that didn’t help his situation and in the last several months there’s a lot of concern among people who have been close to him for years about how well he was being taken care of.’
Duke says he hasn’t produced the podcast to be ‘voyeuristic’.
I’ want people to learn how to deal with what happened to Stan,’ he said.
‘What was going on in Stan Lee’s world over the past several years rivals any story line in the Game of Thrones, with the characters and with the stakes.
‘And while we didn’t have blood shed we really did have some pretty epic battles going on inside.’
Joan Lee passed away aged 95 on July 6, 2017 leaving her husband and soul-mate a complete ‘wreck’ and in a ‘black place’, according to those closest to the comic book icon
He added: ‘Stan’s life changed after the death of his wife Joan, all of the chaos around the last year, that’s very sad to me.’
Duke says he has tons of ‘material’, video and audio in Stan’s own words, photos and stories told by witnesses which will help fans understand what was going on in Lee’s world.
‘I speak to people from his world in the last year who react to his death and those people close to him talk about Stan and how he was literally dying to be back with his wife.’
Max Anderson, Lee’s former longtime road manager, told Duke: ‘I knew it was going to happen one day…this one knocked me off my ass.
The podcast, compiled by veteran CNN entertainment reporter Alan Duke (above), a close friend of Lee, witnessed much of the turmoil inside his life
‘The last few years I spent with him as much as possible, and especially when his wife passed away I was there almost every day with him from early morning until late evening, to see a man to lose his partner for almost 70 years I could never imagine that.
‘To see it first hand it was hurtful, very hurtful, and I tried to do my best to keep him up and sometimes it worked and sometimes he needed to cry.
‘He lost his will to live, everything he was everything he is was with Joanie.
‘Stan would talk to her every moment of the day, when we would go on our trips he would call her, “honey I’m on the plane.”‘
Anderson said Lee was a ‘wreck’ and when she died and desperately wanted to be with her.
‘He just didn’t have no other meaning he didn’t want to do anything else, it was all about her,’ he said.
Anderson said Joanie was proud of Stan for the work he did, ‘she was his muse,’ says Anderson.
‘They fed off each other so much, but when Joanie died it just ended for him. The first two months after her passing for was really hard for him until I finally got him to get out, to step outside the house and he would start taking baby steps.’
Little by little Lee eventually got back into a routine.
‘The thing that kept him going, the fans really made a difference in him, they fed him the energy that he needed, the lack of love he didn’t have from Joanie he got it from the fans, and the fans they poured it on to him…I truly believe that’s what kept him alive all this time.’
Anderson says that when all the drama in Lee’s life happened, his ‘life-support stopped’.
‘He wasn’t getting it (love) from the fans anymore, he wasn’t getting it at home anymore and I knew it was only going to be a matter of time,’ he said.
Podcast producer Alan Duke told DailyMailTV he had originally been working on a podcast called, ‘Saving Stan Lee: A Time for Heroes’, before the legend died. Since the Marvel creator’s tragic passing he was forced to change things up
Anderson last saw Lee in February this year after a dispute between Lee’s handlers ended with him and Lee’s attorney Tom Lallas being escorted off his property.
After that, he said, Lee was ‘around strangers.’
Anderson claims the new handlers wiped Lee’s phone to cut him off from the world.
‘He didn’t know how to call people, he didn’t know how to drive,’ he said.
He added: ‘From the day Joanie died everything got black in Stan’s life, everything closed off.’
Anderson described Lee as ‘incredible’ for his 95-years.
‘Before the incident that happened in February we just came back from two weeks in Australia, we went to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai. This man had life in him, he was enjoying it, he was breathing again.’
Anderson added: ‘It’s a sad day for the world I’m just happy that he’s with his wife.’
Joan Lee was hospitalized after suffering a stroke before she passed away in July last year.
The British former hat model and Lee were married on December 5, 1947, and were hopelessly devoted to each other. They had two children: J.C., who was born in 1950, and Jan, who died three days after her birth in 1953.
Another close friend and advisor of Lee’s, businessman Keya Morgan, a former memorabilia dealer from New York, tells Duke that Lee was desperate to join Joan in heaven.
Morgan recalls: ‘I just know that he constantly reiterated how badly he wanted to see his lovely wife Joanie and how she was waiting for him, in fact he said maybe by now she has a boyfriend up there so he better hurry up and catch up, he was always joking like that.’
Morgan says that even though Lee had a ‘very difficult’ life at the end because of all the ‘vultures’ and ‘snakes’ in his life, he never lost his sense of humor.
‘I feel very grateful to have known him and I just hope that he’s up in heaven with Joanie and they’re having a tea and laughing and dancing and I’ll miss him for eternity.’
Duke also spoke with Lee’s former business and asset manager Brad Herman and Peter Paul, one of Lee’s former business managers in the 1990s.
Paul said: ‘Without question there was a connection between the two of them (Lee and his wife) that was pretty unique and his reliance on her was profound, the influence on him was profound. Her support emotional and intellectually to take the risk of doing what he wanted to do in terms of writing characters and stories that meant something, it made a difference.’
Tune in and subscribe for free to Scandal: Stan Lee’s World: His Real Life Battle with Heroes and Villains at www.stanleesworld.com