PLUME: After The Fantastic Four, there was a noticeable shift to super-hero comics. Was the publisher ready to jump on the bandwagon?
LEE: He still wanted to do super-heroes, but we didn’t see eye-to-eye, because the third book I wanted to do was Spider-Man. He didn’t want me to do it. He said I was way off base. He said, “First of all, you can’t call a hero Spider-Man, because people hate spiders.” I had also told him I wanted the hero, Peter Parker, to be a teenager, and he said, “A teenager can’t be the hero… teenagers can just be sidekicks.” Then, when I said I wanted Spider-Man to have a lot of financial problems and family worries and all kinds of hang-ups, he said, “Stan, don’t you know what a hero is? That’s no way to do a heroic book!” So he wouldn’t let me publish it.
Later, we had a book that we were going to cancel. We were going to do the last issue and then drop it. When you’re doing that last issue of a book, nobody cares what you put into it, so – just to get it off my chest – I threw Spider-Man into that book and I featured him on the cover. A couple of months later when we got our sales figures, that had been the best-selling book we’d had in months. So Martin came in to me and he said, “Do you remember that Spider-Man character of yours that we both liked? Why don’t you do a series with him.” After that, it was much easier… Whatever I came up with, he okayed. After that, came the X-Men and Daredevil and Thor and Dr. Strange…and the rest. The books did so well that I just gave up all thoughts of quitting.
PLUME: How long did Martin Goodman remain the publisher?
LEE: I think it was till the 70’s, and then he sold the company. It was taken over by a conglomerate, which later sold it to another conglomerate, and on and on.
PLUME: At the height of your involvement, what was the number of books you were writing per month?
LEE: About 12.
PLUME: How did you juggle writing 12 books per month?
LEE: Well, it wasn’t that hard. I had found this system, where I wouldn’t write a full script – like the way you would write a screenplay or a television show – but I would discuss the story with the artist. I would tell the artist the story that I was hoping for, and then I told the artist to draw it any way he wanted. When the artwork came in, I would then add the dialogue and the captions. I did that in the beginning as a method of exigency. I was keeping a lot of artists busy, and they were all freelancers – so if they had nothing to do, they weren’t making money. Let’s say I was writing a story for Jack Kirby, and then Steve Ditko came to me and said, “Stan, I’m ready for my next story.” But I hadn’t finished Kirby’s yet… I couldn’t let Ditko stand around with nothing to do, so I would say, “Look, Steve… Here’s the idea I want for the next story. You g ahead and draw it any way you want to and bring it in.” So then I was still finishing Kirby’s story – and Ditko was busy – and then Don Heck would come in, and I would tell him the same thing… And John Romita, and John Buscema. I did it just because it was the only way to get the books out and keep all our artists busy, but later on I realized that it was the best way to do it. Our artists were really good at story themselves – they were great visual story tellers – and they would lay it out the way they saw best. Nobody can do layouts better than the artists themselves, so I would get the best of their thinking – and then when the artwork came to me, all I had to do was add dialogue that went as smoothly and perfectly as possible with the drawings that they had drawn. It made it much more enjoyable for me and much more enjoyable for them, and I think it made the stories better.
PLUME: I find it interesting the way you describe the working relationship. I was doing some research, and there seems to be an opinion out there that you take more credit than people feel you deserve, especially in regards to the contributions of the Marvel artists. I don’t seem to see any of that in the description you just gave me, so I was wondering what your thoughts are on why these opinions seem so prevalent?
LEE: I have no idea. Every time that people talk about “creating the characters,” I always say I co-created them. I co-created Spider-Man with Steve Ditko. I co-created The Fantastic Four and the Hulk with Kirby. I co-created Iron Man with Don Heck. Very often, when people would write about us in the newspapers or the trades, they would say, “Stan Lee – Creator of Spider-Man,” and that would get Ditko angry – but I had nothing to do with that! I have no control over what journalists write.
PLUME: What was the easiest book for you two write? Which character’s voice was closest to yours?
LEE: I’ve got to be honest with you – they were all equally easy or equally hard. I never had a feeling like, “Aww gee, I hate having to write this one, because it’s tougher to write.” Or, “Gee, I’m glad I’m writing this one, because it’s easier.” I never could tell that there was any difference. I wrote them all in the same amount of time and I enjoyed them all equally, really.
PLUME: Was it palpable at the time – in the early ’60’s – that there was this shift going on in comics? DC started aping the Marvel style to some extent, didn’t they?
LEE: Yes. You know – when you’re living through it – you’re not as aware of it, but looking back, what happened was that super-heroes became so popular that that became the trend. Unlike all the trends that had gone on for the 20 or 30 years before, it never changed. Now – what is it – 40 years later, and the super-heroes are still the biggest-selling comics. It’s incredible that the trend has lasted all these years.
PLUME: Especially in an industry that had a fad a week at one time…
LEE: Yeah.
PLUME: When did you begin to pull back on your writing?
LEE: I think in 1970, I was made the Publisher. From then on, I hired other writers and editors to do most of the work. I spent most of my time traveling around the country – around the world, really – lecturing about Marvel, about comics. I probably lectured in more colleges than anybody, because for a period of 10 years, I never went less than once a week to some college somewhere – and I’m talking 52 weeks a year for all that time. I don’t think there’s a school in America that I haven’t been to a couple of times, at least…. And some in Canada and others in England. I was like the advance guard – always talking about Marvel wherever I could go. I did newspaper interviews and a lot of radio and TV interviews… I was sort-of the spokesman for Marvel.
PLUME: In the 70’s, touring colleges, you were basically talking to the kids who grew up on Marvel comics… What was the most-asked question at these lectures?
LEE: The ones you’d expect, like “Where do you get your ideas?”. So many of them were amusing. So many people would talk about religion – with Thor, let’s say – and they’d say, “How do you equate Thor’s philosophy with the Judeo-Christian theory of ethics?” The Silver Surfer is the one that the college kids would talk about the most, and that made me happy, because I really was fond of the Surfer, and I always tried to put as much of my own corny philosophy in the Surfer’s dialogue as I could. Another thing that gave me a kick is that they would refer to the three issues of The Fantastic Four that introduced and featured Galactus and the Silver Surfer as “The Galactus Trilogy” They would refer to them that way in every school. That sounded so impressive to me… It sounded like “The Harvard Classics”. “The Galactus Trilogy.” I loved that.
PLUME: So you really got a sense that you had made an impact on these kids?
LEE: Yeah, I began to. They kept telling me about it… I mean, one of the most embarrassing things was that Esquire did an article, and they quoted one college kid as saying, “We think of you as this generation’s Homer.” Man, I pinned that up in my room… My hat didn’t fit me after that!.
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