Like all great superheroes, Earth’s Mightiest Comic Book
Creator has spent his career fighting a nefarious arch nemesis.
“My only problem really was time,” said Stan Lee,
the legendary writer and creative force behind much of the Marvel
Comics pantheon. “I had so much to write and there were only
so many hours in the day. I don’t have much problem with the
stories. I was lucky. They came pretty easily and I was always
working with the best artists around.”
Lee, who will be speaking at Ackerman Grand Ballroom at noon on
Nov. 15 courtesy of Campus Events Commission, has yet to slow down
since beginning his writing career in the early 1940s At one point
or another during the 1960s, known as the Silver Age of comics, Lee
was responsible for originating and writing “The Amazing
Spider-Man,” “Fantastic Four,”
“X-Men,” “The Incredible Hulk” and
“Daredevil,” among countless others, all of which have
since been made into big-budget movies.
Lee created or co-created dozens of characters who are slated to
appear in upcoming films, from the mystical Dr. Strange to the
war-hero-turned-super-spy Nick Fury. According to the humble
writer, his characters have become movie stars thanks to the
efforts of the film industry.
“(It’s because of) the fine work that was done by
the directors ““ Sam Raimi, Brian Singer ““ the
scriptwriters and the actors,” Lee said. “They were
great movies. And of course, they were based on characters that I
had a little something to do with creating. I think that might have
helped, too.”
The record-breaking success of films such as “Spider-Man
2″ has helped fuel a renewed interest in the source material:
the still-vibrant comic book industry.
“Comics themselves are achieving more respectability, you
might say, because of the fact that so many of the top
screenwriters are trying to write comics and so many of the top
directors are working on comic-based movies,” Lee said.
“So comics are becoming very mainstream to the
public.”
The screenwriters Lee described include Joss Whedon, creator of
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and director Kevin Smith.
Smith, who has written issues of “Daredevil,”
interviewed Lee on the 2002 “Stan Lee’s Mutants,
Monsters & Marvels” DVD. Unveiling another side of Lee,
the DVD includes an audio track of the writer reading his
previously unreleased poem, “God Woke.” The poem is
another example of Lee’s wide-ranging depth; since getting
his start in comic books, he has worked in comic strips, film,
television, animation and webcomics, and even found time to write
his autobiography with the help of author George Mair.
In every field, Lee has worked with top-notch contemporaries,
but it was the company of artist Jack Kirby that allowed him to
fully develop the epic stories of heroes such as the Fantastic
Four.
“Jack was really the ultimate superhero artist. He had a
way of doing these scripts that was just magnificent,” Lee
said. “I mean, at first glance you would look at his artwork
and it would seem rather simplistic. It didn’t look like the
type of illustrations, the graphic paintings that an Alex Ross
would do, for example.
“But the way he told these stories in pictures, and the
way he brought excitement and characterization into the story and
pacing, there was nobody who did it as well.”
No longer affiliated with Marvel outside of writing the
occasional graphic novel introduction, Lee is now president of
multimedia company Purveyors of Wonder! (POW! for short). One of
POW!’s projects is what Lee described as an “inner city
heroine for Vibe Magazine,” the latest in a long run of Stan
Lee superheroes.
“I find when I go to a movie studio with an idea for a
movie, they seem to be a little disappointed if it’s not a
superhero idea,” Lee said.
“It’s like the ultimate wish fulfillment,” he
added. “Everybody wishes he or she could be better than they
really are, and the idea that people might think that you’re
ordinary … but they don’t know that you’re really a
guy who can carry a garbage truck on your shoulders if you wanted
to, goes back to fairy tales. When we were kids, we all loved to
read fairy tales, and if you think about it, superhero comics are
like fairy tales for grown-ups.”
The superhero film genre, which has grown to include non-Marvel
properties such as “Sin City” and rival DC
Comics’ “Batman Begins,” has revitalized the
flagging print industry. Comic book sales have always come in
cycles, with the collectors’ boom of the early ’90s and
the superhero blitz of the Silver Age marking two of the major
commercial peaks. Although the medium faces stiffer competition
than ever from the technical innovations of iPods and video games,
Lee isn’t too worried about its future.
“Comics will always be around because people enjoy
them,” Lee said. “They’re still comparatively
inexpensive and they’re fun. You can save them, collect them;
you can trade them, you can carry them with you, fold them up, put
them in your pocket when you go somewhere, read them on a train or
on a bus … I don’t think we’ll ever see the time when
they sell a million copies again, the way they did years ago, but
they’ll always be with us.”
For all of his past creations and current projects, Lee still
manages to find time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Each Marvel
film thus far has included him briefly, such as when he saved a
passerby from the Green Goblin’s falling rubble in
“Spider-Man.”
“I’m trying to break Alfred Hitchcock’s record
for cameos,” Lee said. “I’m lobbying now to get
the film academy to have a special award for the best cameo of the
year, but so far I haven’t been too successful.”