Stan Lee

We saw Stan Lee’s lecture last night and really enjoyed it. Highlights:

- Stan moved to LA 22 years ago to set up Marvel’s animation company, so that Marvel would have control of the production of cartoons featuring their properties. They also produced other animated properties, including Muppet Babies.

- Started writing comics in the 1940s, at age 17… I’ve always thought Stan was Dick Clark-style ageless, but he was a little more grandfatherly last night.

- I’d heard a variant of this story, I think, but in the 60s, Stan’s boss was playing golf with the boss of National (DC), who was talking up the then-new Justice League of America. Boss told Stan to do a team book, so he created the Fantastic Four.

- Stan hates teenage sidekicks and used to rib Bob Kane about it. “If I were a superhero, there’s no way I would go around with a teenager all the time. At the very least, people would talk.”

- Q: Timely, Atlas, Marvel: why the name changes? A: The publisher changed the house name every so often for tax reasons.

- According to Stan, Fantastic Four was the first comic he’d ever worked on that generated fan mail.

- Stan Lee hates costumes and only agreed to them because of reader demand.

- Stan laments his bad memory. He admits inconsistencies in his writing. The readership would write in and enforce continuity. Stan instituted the “No-Prize” to codify this.

- Stan enjoyed Thor as an outlet for what he described as Shakespearian and Biblical language flourishes.

- Stan: comics do not themselves make money. Comics are R&D: they are written to be optioned to a movie company, television company, game company, toy company.

- The Malcolm X : MLK | Magneto : Prof.X parallel was very intentional.

- How connected does Stan feel to his characters? “I long ago realized that, once I stopped writing the books, I couldn’t control them.”

- Stan Lee on Marvel’s back-to-basics Ultimate line: You can change the old story, but you can’t eradicate the old story.