PLUME: One thing that strikes me when I look back at those old Marvel comics, and look at the letters pages and in-house ads, is that Marvel seemed to foster a sense of family or brotherhood – with the M.M.M.S. and FOOM and No-Prizes… Was that something that was fostered intentionally by you guys?
LEE: It was fostered by me, singular. Not guys, guy. First of all, it was very natural for me, because I’m a very informal guy. For instance, I have to make a speech this afternoon – something to do with Vice-President Gore – and I am not going to make the usual stiff speech. I’m going to kid around a lot. I like being friendly… I like being informal. I wanted the readers to feel that we’re friends… That we know each other… That we’re all sharing a pleasant, entertaining experience together. I think we were the first comic book line to start publishing letters to the editor. It’s even funny there… You know, There was a difference between us and National Comics. They started doing letter columns after we did. In our letters column, the kids would write, “Dear Stan…” or “Hey Stan…” And if the guy’s name was Charles, when I wrote my answer, I’d say, “Hi Charley! Glad to hear from you…” and so forth. But in the DC books, when they got their letters in the beginning, the letter always said, “Dear editor,” and the editor always replied, “Thank you, Charles.” It’s just a subtle thing…
PLUME: But noticeable…
LEE: Very noticeable.
PLUME: It fostered a sense of personal investment in the books…
LEE: And that’s what I wanted. I realized later – I wasn’t conscious of it at the time – that I had treated the whole thing like an advertising campaign. I mean, we had catchwords like “Make Mine Marvel,” “Marvel Marches On,” “Welcome to the Marvel Age of Comics,” and the club – the “Merry Marvel Marching Society… We don’t know where we’re marching to, but we’re on the way.” It was all done tongue-in-cheek with a little humor, and I wanted the readers to feel as though we’re all sharing an in-joke together that the outside world just isn’t even aware of. It was almost the same feeling as Mad Magazine – we obviously weren’t a group of humor books, but I think we had that same feeling.
PLUME: A sense that “we’re all in on the joke”…
LEE: That’s right. And that’s what I want to do with our website now.
PLUME: Which shows as well…
LEE: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! We’re just starting to get into it now.
PLUME: When did you start to divorce yourself from the day-to-day operations at Marvel?
LEE: I guess when I became Publisher… Probably in ’70.
PLUME: Was it difficult to remove yourself from all these storylines that you had kept going for a decade?
LEE: Not really, because I’ve been lucky, you know… I’ve always been very interested in what I’m doing, and whatever I do has always been exciting to me. All those college lectures and all those interviews – and I still would go back to the office and I would talk to the editors and artists… I didn’t lose touch, but I was so busy doing these new things that I was doing, that I didn’t have time to miss writing the stories.
PLUME: Did the readers notice right away that you were gone from month to month?
LEE: Oh yeah… Because my name wasn’t on there and, I guess, the style was a little different. But, by then, the characters were so solidly entrenched – it was like James Bond. When Sean Connery stopped being James Bond, people noticed that there was a different one, but they still went to the movies – James Bond is still James Bond.
PLUME: When did you make the move from New York out to Los Angeles?
LEE: Now that date I know… 1980. Even that’s a funny story. I had come out here, again, to lecture at a few colleges – UCLA, USC, and so forth. Each time I came out here, I’d be here just for a day, but I’d always come on a beautiful day when the weather was great, and in those days there wasn’t as much traffic and everything was so open and beautiful, and I figured, “These people live in paradise! I wonder if they’re aware of that.” I began scheming in my mind… “How can I move out to LA?” In those days, we were doing animated cartoons, and there were other studios out here who were doing them for us. So I said to the powers that be back at Marvel, “You know, we ought to do our own cartoons. Nobody can do them as well as we could. I would be willing to make the supreme sacrifice of moving out to the coast and setting up an animation studio for us. I will be willing to uproot my family and do that for the good of the company.” They were so grateful… They thought that was so noble of me. I moved out here, set up the animation studio, and have been here ever since… I love it.
PLUME: And at that point, you moved completely out of the New York offices, right?
LEE: Yeah. Totally.
PLUME: What was your official change of title?
LEE: I don’t remember… I had been President for awhile back in New York, sometime in the ’70’s, and I gave up that title. I had it for maybe a year, but I found that I had to go to financial meetings and discuss five-year plans and three-year plans… Hell, I’m a guy who doesn’t know what he’s going to eat for dinner tonight – I had to plan ahead? I realized that I was doing things that a million people could do better than I do – or as well, certainly – and I’m not doing the thing that I think I do best, which is working on the stories or dealing with the public. I guess I’m one of the few people who quit being the President and went back to being the Publisher. Even Publisher was kind of a misnomer, because I didn’t function as a real Publisher – I was never involved in the business decisions.
PLUME: So you were more of a creative publisher…
LEE: Yeah… And then, at some point a few years ago – probably in the early 80’s – I got the title “Chairman.” But again, I didn’t function like a real chairman… It was more of an honorary title. Even now, I’m Chairman Emeritus… I’m not sure what “emeritus” means… I’ve got to look it up some day.
PLUME: Whatever it means, it must be good…
LEE: It’s an honorary title of some sort.
Continued below…
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