Face front, True Believers! It’s your old pals at Hard Drive at it again with another thrilling list of numbered nerd nonsense that’s sure to … all right, I can’t keep this impression up.
Fans have long debated over who would win in any given fight between two comic book characters you can think of, but one pressing question has never been asked or answered before today: if every single Stan Lee cameo in a Marvel movie fought each other, who would win? Fortunately, I’ve analyzed every single cameo’s feats in order to canonically determine who would come out victorious.
41. The Incredible Hulk (2008)
At the bottom of the list are what I call “Victim Lees,” any Stan Lee cameo in which he somehow gets hurt or suffers. If they were more powerful, they wouldn’t be Victim Lees. This particular Stan Lee has it the worst, drinking a soda filled with Hulk blood and undergoing “possible gamma sickness.” It’s a little vague what happened to him afterwards, but this is the only movie where the Stan Lee cameo maybe dies, and is thus the weakest by default.
40. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
This Stan Lee tries to attend the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm, only to be turned away by a bouncer who doesn’t believe he’s Stan Lee, as if he could be anybody else. This cameo is a fun reference to how Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were kept out of the same wedding in the pages of Fantastic Four Annual #3, and the complete absence of Kirby in this version is a fun reference to reality.
This Stan Lee is pretty firmly a Victim Lee. In fact, while The Incredible Hulk’s Stan has him beat in physical suffering, I think this one has it the worst in mental anguish. His feeble protests of “No, no! Really! I’m Stan Lee!” are truly the height of this movie’s pathos.
39. Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Got his shoe taken away.
38. Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018)
After his car is shrunk by The Wasp, this Stan Lee quips “Well, the 60s were fun, but now I’m paying for it.” This is obviously a nod to how the real Stan Lee spent the 60s writing a bunch of comic books and pretending to write even more, but it doesn’t explain what this particular guy was up to. Think for a second, what kind of activity was commonplace in the 1960s that a person of low character might think is fun, but that they’d have to pay for later? Violence! This guy must have killed a whole bunch of people back in the day. In fact, until Disney proves me wrong, I’m saying it’s MCU canon that this Stan Lee was the real Zodiac Killer, and he killed JFK.
But in the present day his car got shrunk, so he’s still a Victim Lee.
37. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
This one was a security guard at the Smithsonian when Captain America’s suit was stolen, prompting a quip of “I am so fired!” I think his impending job loss qualifies him as a Victim Lee, but he was trusted by the federal government to guard a building full of treasure, and that’s pretty cool. I’m going to rate him as the strongest of the Victim Lees.
36. Daredevil (2003)
Saved from getting hit by a bus by a young Matt Murdock. Not a Victim Lee, but he almost was.
35. X-Men (2000)
It’s funny to think that Stan Lee’s cameos once had a degree of subtlety, compared to how in your face they would be by the time the MCU rolled around. This Stan Lee is just another extra in a crowd watching as the newly-mutated Senator Kelly appears on the beach. His shock at the sight suggests he’s unfamiliar with mutants, and certainly isn’t one himself. But besides that, any Stan Lee who can’t even command control of the camera just isn’t that powerful.
34. The Avengers (2012)
In the aftermath of the film’s climax, Stan Lee is interviewed on television to say the whole thing was a hoax: “Superheroes in New York? Give me a break!” This is an odd thing to say immediately after a giant superhero fight that caused untold amounts of death and property damage, and I would love to know how this particular Stan Lee spent 9/11.
But forget this movie’s ending for a second. He can’t believe there’d be superheroes in New York, even though by this point the Hulk had already fought the Abomination in Harlem and a giant building with Tony Stark’s name on it was in construction for who knows how long. More importantly, New York City is a huge place and it’s not really strange to find anything there, with the exception of affordable housing. Where the hell else should superheroes be instead, smart guy? I’m placing him low just for being an inattentive piece of shit.
33. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
In this film’s opening flashback, Stan Lee is powerless to stop a young Jean Grey from telekinetically lifting his garden hose. The rest of the movie is a sorta-kinda adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga that frankly could have been averted if he told the neighbor kid next door to leave his stuff alone. The blood in this movie is on your hands, Stan Lee!
32. Iron Man (2008)
In his MCU debut, Tony Stark refers to Stan Lee as “Hef.” In a deleted scene, he corrects his mistake, but with that part of the cameo on the cutting room floor, the final product leaves it ambiguous if he’s supposed to be the actual Hugh Hefner or not.
This is the only Stan Lee cameo with canonical evidence for being a rapist.
31. Iron Man 3 (2013)
Looking back at all these cameos, in a lot of them the whole joke is that Stan Lee likes a woman a quarter of his age. I’m not going to blame the real man for it, he didn’t write these scenes, but in hindsight it’s still kind of weird.
This Stan Lee is a very lenient beauty pageant judge. That’s not a particularly impressive feat, but admittedly we don’t know how he got this judge position. Maybe he earned it by … winning a lot of fights? Yeah, I’ve got nothing. This is a pretty forgettable cameo. Which explains why it’s in Iron Man 3.
30. Ant-Man (2015)
It’s a great tragedy that we’ll never get the Ant-Man movie Edgar Wright intended to make, but at least there are bits of it in the final product, and nowhere does that shine through better than Luis’s rambling stories.
This Stan Lee’s a bartender who thinks the girl Ignacio’s with is crazy stupid fine. Just from the look of him you can tell this guy will mix the best drinks you’ll ever have on the worst night of your life, but that’s about all he has going for him.
29. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004)
Wait, why was Stan Lee in this movie? I don’t mind, but … why?
Anyway, this Stan Lee has enough diplomatic pull to get invited to the Genovian royal wedding and was able to learn English entirely by watching the Three Stooges. I don’t think either of these things would be much use in a fight (unless he also absorbed the Three Stooges’s eye-poking skills), but it’s something.
28. Spider-Man 3 (2007)
“You know, I guess one person can make a difference. ‘Nuff said!”
This Stan Lee may lack the physical heroism of his counterparts in the earlier Spider-Man movies, but he makes up for it with emotional support. It’s easy to be so distracted by Tobey Maguire’s incredible dancing that you forget, but this movie is supposed to be a dark chapter in Peter Parker’s life. His best friend is trying to kill him, his relationship with Mary Jane is going south, Uncle Ben’s real killer is still at large, and the Venom symbiote is slowly corrupting his personality and making him a great dancer. But in the middle of all this sadness, Stan Lee shows up, tells Peter he matters, drops a catchphrase for all the nerds to clap about how he said the thing, and leaves. He’s not at the top of this list, but if I was ranking the Stan Lees by how much I would like to be their friend, this guy’s number one.
27. Mallrats (1995)
I am mostly ignoring Stan Lee’s many cameos in non-Marvel movies because this list is extremely long and stupid as is, but I would be remiss not to include the movie where the trend of Stan Lee cameos arguably began. Like in Spider-Man 3, this Stan Lee has unparalleled moral support skills, convincing Brodie not to give up on love. He also seems to possess an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel comics, as evidenced by him memorizing the classic Vulture soliloquy from “Luck Be A Vulture Tonight,” but then again what fan hasn’t? But what really earns him this spot is that this is the oldest movie on the list, and thus the youngest (non-CGI) Stan Lee on the list. Look at the youth and vigor in him here! He’s like a baby! A 73-year-old baby.
26. Iron Man 2 (2010)
With Elon Musk already filling this movie’s quota for poorly-aged cameos, professional celebrity impersonator Stan Lee swaps out Hugh Hefner to be Larry King.
Obviously by himself Larry King isn’t a specimen of power, but he’s interviewed a lot of people. Presumably in a fight he could use his connections to call, I don’t know, Mike Tyson or somebody. Or maybe he could call everyone he’s ever interviewed and command a giant army of famous people like they’re Pikmin. And hey, he knows Iron Man! That’s a plus for sure.
25. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
He seems pretty calm at the sight of America’s entire arsenal of nuclear weapons flying up into the air, particularly compared to his real-life wife Joan. Maybe his nonchalance is because he knows that he could tank them all? That’s not an “I’m going to die” face, it’s a “Work is going to suck today” face, and with Stan Lee being such a talented actor I can only assume that’s intentional.
24. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
It’s fitting that Stan Lee’s final cameo appeared in what should’ve been the MCU’s last movie. It’s also fitting that it saw Stan (and Joan!) Lee digitally de-aged back to the 70s. If this is the last we’re to ever see of him, let him, like his characters, be eternally young.
At a spry 48 years old, this Stan Lee has an advantage of youth not seen anywhere else on this list. But I don’t want to place him too high because, to be frank, this Stan wouldn’t want me to say he was a good fighter. As he said in his final message before he drove away from us all forever, “Make love, not war!”
23. Fantastic Four (2005)
In a rare instance of playing an actual character, Stan Lee appears as Willie Lumpkin, the Fantastic Four’s mailman. Because if the Fantastic Four live in the Baxter Building, that means they have a postal address and can receive mail, and you’d damn well better establish the mailman’s name because the fans will want to know. That’s quality world-building right there.
Reed Richards seems like someone who’d order all kinds of dangerous gadgets in the mail, giving Willie Lumpkin theoretical access to a high-tech arsenal. But to use any of it he’d have to open Reed’s mail, and I think he’s just too much of a professional for that.
22. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
When Spider-Man sets off a car alarm outside his apartment, he yells a defiant “Don’t make me come down there, you punk!” He does not defeat Spider-Man, but he sounds pretty damn confident that he could.
21. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
In the aftermath of Peter Parker’s death, this store owner Stan Lee claims to have been friends with him. Not sure if he’s telling the truth, but if so being a close ally of a superhero is definitely a valuable asset. But because knowing one Spidey isn’t enough, this Stan provides Miles Morales with his first suit, assures him that “it always fits, eventually,” then asserts dominance by making it clear he won’t accept refunds. This Stan can go from kindly mentor to unstoppable adversary in the blink of an eye, and is clearly a force to be reckoned with.
20. Captain America: Civil War (2016)
Like in Fantastic Four, Stan Lee is once again playing the mailman to a scientific super-genius. But what places this guy above Willie Lumpkin is he doesn’t just handle Iron Man’s mail. He defeated Iron Man with the devastating embarrassment of calling him “Tony Stank.” It’s framed as an innocent misreading, but Tony Stark is one of the most famous dudes on the planet and there’s no chance in Hell that Stan didn’t recognize him. This was a calculated insult, payback for the decades of suffering this so-called superhero has brought to the world.
19. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
Works at the school library, blissfully unaware that Spider-Man and the Lizard are fighting behind him. This Stan Lee may not be as active as his Sam Raimi counterparts, but his ability to walk away from this battle unscathed is proof that he’s a survivor.
18. Doctor Strange (2016)
Like in The Amazing Spider-Man, Stan Lee is too busy laughing at Aldous Huxley’s hilarious drug trip to notice Doctor Strange crashing into his bus window slightly to his right. I’m placing this above that cameo for two reasons. The first is that this Stan doesn’t need headphones to ignore superheroes. He must have heard the Sorcerer Supreme thud right next to him, but he simply doesn’t care enough to turn his head. And if I’m being honest, the ability to shut out the outside world and read a damn book for a change is a superpower I wish I had.
17. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)
I can’t believe I have to talk about this stupid movie twice in one month. When told that he’s appearing in a DC movie, Stan Lee says he’s got to get out of here and runs away. His fear suggests that DC Comics is some kind of debilitating weakness for him, like Kryptonite to Superman yellow to Green Lantern loud noise to Venom.
This embarrassing display should earn him a low spot, but I’m bumping him up because he reappears later in the movie, having apparently overcome his fear, and the Teen Titans respond by throwing this nonagenarian off a moving car. This should make him a Victim Lee, but through the magic of cartoons he’s not even upset about it, much less hurt. Points for durability.
16. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
Points and says “I think I know that guy!” as Peter Parker runs in for his high school graduation, a sight nobody else seems to see. This is a powerful cinematic parallel. In the first Amazing Spider-Man, Stan Lee played a guy unusually bad at noticing Spider-Man. In the sequel, he played a guy unusually good at noticing Spider-Man. Presumably if there was a third movie his Spider-Man noticing would’ve just been average. Placing him above the first one for his incredible alertness.
15. Captain Marvel (2019)
Hardened Kree warrior Carol Danvers is on a bus in search of a runaway Skrull. But as soon as she sees Stan Lee, she smiles and looks elsewhere. The Skrulls are shapeshifters, and realistically Stan Lee should be just as much of a suspect as everyone else, yet he isn’t. As I see it, there are three possibilities here. Either Stan’s a master manipulator who convinced Captain Marvel to leave him alone, he’s so impossibly powerful she knew she’d stand no chance against him leaving her no choice but to smile awkwardly and walk away, or he’s so incredibly weak she instantly deemed him beneath suspicion. Hard to say if he should be high or low, but I’m going with the former because he’s reading the script to Mallrats, inflicting damage on the audience by reminding them they could be watching a better movie.
14. Venom (2018)
The first installment in Sony’s brilliant idea for a cinematic universe of Spider-Man villains but no Spider-Man was also the final Stan Lee cameo released while he was alive. I’m not saying being on the same plane of existence as Morbius and Madame Web killed Stan Lee, but if you have a better theory for how a 95-year-old man could die, I’d love to hear it.
As Eddie Brock walks away from his ex-girlfriend or something, I’ve actively suppressed seeing this movie, Stan Lee says “Don’t give up on her, either of you,” suggesting he somehow knows about the Venom symbiote. Venom also comments that Stan Lee’s dog looks delicious, but does not even attempt to eat the dog, possibly out of fear of repercussions from his owner. There’s definitely more to this Stan Lee lets on. Perhaps he’s even the most powerful being in the universe. Hey, dumber things have happened in these movies. Much dumber.
13. Black Panther (2018)
Defeated Black Panther by taking his casino winnings.
12. Thor (2011)
Tries and fails to lift Mjolnir using his truck. The Hulk also can’t lift Mjolnir, so I’m putting this guy down for “exactly as strong as the Hulk.” That’s just math.
11. Hulk (2003)
In his first speaking cameo in a Marvel movie, Stan Lee is a security guard talking to Lou Ferrigno, getting both of this movie’s cameos out of the way early so they can make time for … wait, what was this movie about?
He’s apparently trusted with a security position by a dangerous gamma radiation laboratory that considers him the physical peer of Lou Ferrigno, so that’s pretty impressive. He also seems to have a friendly relationship with Bruce Banner, which would be useful after he becomes the Hulk.
10. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
As Thanos’s army begins their invasion of Earth, not only is Stan Lee completely unphased by this attack that will eventually kill half of all life in the universe, he outright mocks the students on the bus for daring to be shocked at the sight of an alien spaceship. There are eight powerful stones in this movie.
9. Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Much like in the first Spider-Man movie, Stan Lee saves a civilian during a supervillain attack. In this case, he pulls a woman away from falling concrete as Doctor Octopus fights Spidey. It’s still cool and heroic, but I’ve got to put it below the first movie, partially because now it’s derivative, but also he seems a little farther away from the action compared to the first time.
8. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Flirting with a considerably younger woman. Rocket Raccoon deems him a “Class A pervert” for this, and to be honest, he’s not wrong.
Still, this Stan Lee is an alien living on Xandar, giving him access to all kinds of science fiction tech largely unavailable to the Stan Lees of Earth. Maybe he could even use his charms on Glenn Close and get the full power of the Nova Corps at his command. There’s potential here, is all I’m saying.
7. Deadpool (2016)
If I could pick any of these Stan Lees to get their own solo movie, it would be this one, no question. What series of life decisions led to this man working as a strip club DJ in his 90s? Is he working there because he needs to, or because he wants to? What’s a typical day like for him? I am almost positive this Stan Lee has either stabbed somebody or been stabbed before. Maybe both.
6. Spider-Man (2002)
Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films are the greatest superhero movies ever made and I wouldn’t change a thing about them, even the undeniably dumb parts. When the Green Goblin attacks for the first time, this Stan Lee is one of the onlookers in the crowd, on-screen for just enough time to commit an act of heroism of his own and save a little girl from the destruction. This Stan Lee is a verifiable hero who not only survived a supervillain’s assault, but made sure someone else did too. Definitely going near the top.
5. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Like the real Stan Lee, this guy was a World War II veteran. But while the real Stan Lee was a U.S. Army playwright, a title that apparently exists, this Stan claims to have stormed Omaha Beach, so that’s pretty cool. But what really gets him this high up is him drinking an Asgardian liquor that Thor describes as “not meant for mortal men.” With how plastered he gets afterwards I guess he’s technically a Victim Lee, but from the sound of it he should be dead. If cosmic Norse god poison left him still capable of speech afterwards, there’s a good chance he’s immortal.
4. Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
A four-star general decked with medals in the middle of World War II (if you’re keeping track, this means there were at least three Stan Lees in World War II, including the real one). Don’t let his funny quip about thinking he’d be taller fool you, this Stan Lee has definitely killed people, and he’ll kill again. Given his age, I think it’s a safe bet that this Stan Lee was in World War I as well. He has seen things that no human being ever should.
3. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Not only does this Stan Lee defeat Thor by cutting his hair, he made the God of Thunder scream in fear as he did it. Frankly, when Thanos showed up at the very end, Thor should’ve immediately turned back to Sakaar and asked Stan Lee to succeed where he failed. The only reason he didn’t is because Thor has more hate and fear for Stan Lee than the Mad Titan could ever dream of.
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
In his most significant cameo of them all, Stan Lee is telling a group of Watchers about the escapades he’s observed, revealing that every single Stan Lee cameo is actually the same cosmic immortal being, a detail I am otherwise ignoring for the sake of comedy.
Obviously this one has to go near the top. Granted, the significance of the events this informant chooses to observe is sometimes questionable. I don’t think the Watchers needed to document that Stan Lee once saw a girl in a bar who was crazy stupid fine. And him being stranded in space in the post-credits scene probably makes him a Victim Lee. But he’s still an immortal alien, can’t really ignore that.
1. Big Hero 6 (2014)
Just in case you forgot this animated Disney movie was based on a Marvel comic, they bring in a post-credits scene and a Stan Lee cameo in one fell swoop. But this Stan Lee is no random bystander. He’s an honest to God superhero. Sure, his superpowers come at the terrible cost of having T.J. Miller for a son, but it’s still enough to place him at the top of this list. Excelsior!
