Spider-Man creator Stan Lee has successfully capitalized on the movies made about his characters by teaming up with Marvel Entertainment, and making sure he gets a piece of the pie from hits like Spider-Man, X-Men and Iron Man. But apparently when he started branching out from comic books, in the late 1990s, he wasn't so lucky; Stan Lee Media filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and was later involved in arrests of employees accused of manipulating stock prices.

And now the troubles for Stan Lee Media are continuing, even after Lee himself sued the company for copyright infringement. Shareholders in the company are suing Lee and Marvel Entertainment, saying they're entitled to $750 million of the profits from Marvel's movies based on Lee's characters. Variety has an article explaining the whole mess, in which Lee's team says the charges are ridiculous and the representative for the plaintiffs, Martin Garbus, claims this is different from other lawsuits that have come up against Lee before.

We like to think of Lee as the benevolent genius who created some of the best-loved characters in comics, but apparently going into business with him is less fun than reading a given issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. I can't promise we'll ever be able to untangle all the legal nonsense, but we'll keep you posted on the latest of Lee's lawsuits.