Stan Lee on Captain America Hydra twist: 'It's a hell of a clever idea'

ORLANDO, Fla., June 1 (UPI) -- Legendary Marvel comics creator and personality Stan Lee has weighed on the recent Captain America Hydra twist proclaiming, "It's a hell of a clever idea."

"I don't know that I would ever have thought of it for him to be a double agent, but it's going to make you curious, it's going to make you want to read the books, they'll probably do a movie based on it," Lee said Sunday during a panel at MegaCon, a comic book convention set in Orlando, Fla.

"So I can't fault it; it's a good idea. I think it's crazy, but it's a good idea," he continued.

Lee's comments come after the controversial twist in Issue No. 1 of Marvel's Captain America: Steve Rogers in which the iconic hero is revealed to be a secret agent of Hydra, an evil organization the super-soldier has spent his life fighting.

The big surprise comes on the last page of the comic when Steve Rogers utters Hydra's signature salute, "Hail Hydra" as he tosses a fellow hero out a plane to his death. The change is a dramatic departure from how the character has been portrayed throughout the years and recently in the Marvel cinematic universe.

The reveal has been met with a mostly negative response from fans with writer Nick Spencer receiving death threats on Twitter, "I can't respond to 9000 tweets per second, but if I could, I would say I admire your passion," Spencer wrote in response to all the feedback he has received.

In an interview with Time, Marvel editor Tom Brevoort announced that Captain America's reasoning would be explored in Issue No. 2 and that Steve Rogers being a part of Hydra will give readers a new perspective on the character and the Marvel universe.

"It means on the most fundamental level that the most trusted hero in the Marvel universe is now secretly a deep-cover Hydra operative, a fact that's really only known to the readers and to him. That makes every interaction he has with anyone take on a second layer, a second meaning," he said.