Stan Lee's Mutants, Monsters & Marvels (2002) - full transcript

What year is Spider-Man?

At what point do you create

Spider-Man?

Right after The Hulk, I think.

Again, Martin said, "We're doing

good. Let's do another one, Stan."

So, when I was a kid,

I had read a pulp magazine

called The Spider,

and I always liked it.

But that isn't what

gave me the idea.

That's when I had to find a name.

But what gave me the idea was,

I wanted...

You know, in superheroes,

the most important thing

is to get a new power,

and you run out of powers.

A guy can fly, a guy is strong,

what's left?

Figured if a guy could stick to

walls, you know, like an insect...

So I wrote down a list of names.

"Insect-Man" didn't have it.

"Mosquito-Man" wasn't dramatic.

Finally, I hit on "Spider-Man."

"Spider-Man."

Man, that sounded dramatic.

It had a ring to it.

Still does.

And then I remembered I had loved

that Pulp Magazine called The Spider.

And it was called The Spider,

Master of Men.

There was nothing

spiderish about him.

It was just a name he had. He was

just a guy in a hat and, you know,

he hit people.

But I liked the name. So I thought,

"I'll call him Spider-Man."

When I proposed the name

to Martin, my publisher...

Now, he had been on

board with everything,

you know, The Fantastic Four,

The Hulk...

He thought I could do no wrong.

So I told him about Spider-Man.

He said, "You're crazy."

Said, "Stan, people hate spiders.

"You can't do a book called

Spider-Man."

And he said, "And you want

him to be a teenager?

"Teenagers can only be sidekicks."

And then he said, "And you

want him to have problems?"

Because I told him I wanted him

to worry about money, pimples...

'Cause up until that point,

the traditional heroes,

people like...

Well, The Fantastic Four,

there were no money problems.

Reed Richards is the

brilliant inventor,

and the problems were more on

a cosmic scale.

And their real-life... They

didn't have real-life identities.

I gave them later on,

but you're right,

in the beginning, they didn't.

So Peter Parker and Spider-Man...

Well, the Peter Parker half

of Spider-Man

is more like the first

character to come along

that actually had a life outside

of the suit, where the problems

were almost as epic as what

he was facing while in costume.

That's why "Problems" were small,

the problems that

everybody deals with.

That's just what I tried for.

Basically, if we had

a formula at all,

the formula was,

we know we're doing fantasy.

We have guys who can fly,

burst into flame, all that.

But write them as

realistically as possible.

If those people really existed,

what would their lives be like?

And that's what I was trying

to do.

So, when I told Martin

about it, he said,

"Absolutely not. It's the

dumbest idea I ever heard, Stan.

"You've lost it, Stan."

Well, I then did, I guess,

The X-Men and a few others.

Daredevil and Iron Man,

and I can't remember chronologically

whether it was before or after,

but it was during that period.

But I always felt, "I want to do

Spider-Man." I thought it would be good.

We had a magazine called Amazing

Fantasy, which I did with Steve Ditko.

He's really one of the greats.

For some reason, I loved the book,

but they weren't superheroes.

What it was, there was little five...

Originally, it was

Amazing Adult Fantasy.

That's right.

That's right.

And I wanted stories

for older readers,

so I tried to write science-fiction

stories, very short ones,

with O. Henry endings,

with surprise endings,

and each book might have had

four or five of those stories.

I thought they were great, but

they didn't feature men in tights.

So the public, that wasn't

what they wanted at that time.

So we were gonna drop the book.

Now, when you're putting out the last

issue of a book, nobody really cares,

you can do...

So I figured, "Aha! I'm gonna

put Spider-Man in there."

I call Jack Kirby, who's so

good at this sort of thing,

and I said, "Jack, I want you to do

a character of mine called Spider-Man."

I told him what it should be.

But I said, "Don't make him

look like Captain America.

"I want just an average guy."

I was gonna say "like me," but, of

course, I didn't think I was average.

I thought of myself

as Captain America.

So he did the first few pages,

and I came over to his

board and I looked at it,

and I said, "No, that's not

what I want, Jack."

I said, "Look, forget it.

I'll give it to somebody else."

It was too bold, too heroic,

too bulky.

Yeah, the guy looked like you.

He looked really heroic.

Yeah, and I'm not Spider-Man.

So, Jack said, "Fine."

You know, it was nothing.

We didn't think Spider-Man

meant anything.

And Jack had a million

other things to do.

I said, "I'll get somebody else."

He said, "Sure."

I thought, "Steve Ditko

would be perfect for it."

He drew people that looked

like the kind of people

you'd meet in the street, you know?

So, I gave it to Steve, and, oh, man,

was I ever right in picking Steve.

He did a beautiful job.

And we published it.

We put it on the cover of the

last issue of Amazing whatever.

Amazing Fantasy.

And, um, sent it out

and forgot about it.

Months later, after the sales

figures kicked in...

It takes months, or it took months...

'Cause back in the day, it'd

take almost nine months, I read,

A long time.

The figures came out, and

Martin came in to me one day,

and he said, "Stan,

"do you remember that Spider-Man character

of yours that we both liked so much?"

And he said, "How about doing

a series of him?"

And you know...

And there we were.

What do you think about

Spider-Man caught on?

Do you think it was really just the

"I can relate to this guy" aspect of it?

I think there were a lot of reasons.

I think perhaps the main reason

was the "I can relate to him."

'Cause he was shy. He wasn't

that successful with girls.

He had to worry about his family.

I think most teenagers

reading it

thought to themselves,

"Hey, that could be me!"

You know, so there certainly

was that identification.

But beyond that, I think,

I must say, truthfully,

You know, Doc Ock,I came up

with some great stories

the Green Goblin,

the Sandman, and...

Everything worked.

And visually,

Very striking character, too.

'Cause the way Steve would

have him crawling on walls

and swinging on webs, it just...

Everything came together perfectly.

And it's very...

One of the very few comic book

characters, even back then,

that was covered from head to toe.

Like, even Captain America, you

still have this much of his face.

Spider-Man's completely

enveloped in his costume.

You know the good thing about that?

You could be any kid.

You could be black.

You could be Asian.

You could be Indian.

You could be anything,

and imagine you were in that costume.

So I think that made it relevant

to everybody everywhere.

And that was accidental.

I don't think we planned it that

way, but it was very fortuitous.

You get credited with...

And I know you're not even

comfortable with it,

with creator of this,

creator of this.

And you're always the first

person in the room

to point out that it wasn't

just you.

As you said before,

it was a very collaborative medium.

And I know there are people that...

In the case of Jack Kirby,

"Oh, there must be a point of contention

between Stan and Jack," blah, blah, blah.

And that's not the case.

Let's talk about that.

Well, what happened was, Steve is really

the guy who brought this to a point.

Obviously, Spider-Man was my idea.

Even gave it to Jack first, didn't

want it, then gave it to Steve.

Steve feels since he drew it,

and gave it life, so to speak,

that he created it as much as

I did.

Now, in my heart of hearts,

I feel the guy who comes up

with the concept

is the guy who created it.

But Steve feels,

and I hope he doesn't...

When he sees this, doesn't

feel I'm quoting him wrong.

He feels that the person who physically

gives it life is the co-creator,

otherwise, all I had was an

idea which was nothing solid.

Now, while I don't

really agree with that,

I have enough respect for Steve,

and for the other artists,

that I am very happy

and very comfortable

to call myself the co-creator

of all of these things.

And you coined the phrase,

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Which everyone that knows

Spider-Man knows that line.

You know, it's funny. I never

thought it would catch on that way,

but sometimes people'll meet me,

"Hey, didn't you do Spider-Man?"

I'll say "Yeah."

They'll say, "With great power..."

It's incredible!

I love it.

So at what point do you hand over

the reins of Spider-Man, and to whom?

And was that tough?

Well, artistically,

Steve eventually left after,

I don't know, 20, 30, 40,

some amount of books,

and John Romita took over as

the artist.

And I said to him, "You know, John..."

John doesn't draw like Steve.

His style is different.

But I said, "We don't want

to disturb the readers

"by suddenly seeing

a totally different style.

"Do you think you could make it

look like Steve for a while?"

Bless him.

He did such a great job.

Those first few issues looked

like Steve had done them.

But then, little by little, he

began to draw it in his own style,

and it became his strip.

And years later,

other artists took over,

and no matter how it was drawn,

no matter who drew it,

the strip was always, I'm happy

to say, powerful and successful.

Now, who wrote after you?

Oh, after me? Well, let's see.

I think...

The first guy. I mean, there have been

a zillion Spider-Man writers, but...

I think it was probably

Roy Thomas, because...

What happened was, I think around

1970, I became the publisher,

and I didn't have the time to write

all the stories, or hardly any stories,

so I had to look around for somebody

who could do the editing and the writing

and handle the art direction.

And Roy Thomas I considered my

best writer at the time.

Very bright guy, and a sincere,

dedicated guy.

So I made him the editor, and he wrote

Spider-Man and a number of other books.

In order to talk about Spider-Man

and the Spider-Man family

and everything that you accomplished

in the 11, 12 pages of Amazing

Fantasy that still holds up today,

all one has to do is look at

something like Superman or Batman.

Superman's origin has changed

many times throughout the years,

as well as the character itself.

His origins changed?

I didn't know that.

His origins changed a bunch.

Sometimes Krypton is a very

sterile world.

Sometimes it's a world where

you got to know the family.

They're bringing that back a

little more in the comics now.

But the Superman family has kind of

gone through some varied incarnations.

John Byrne did the revamp, you

know, in the '80s and whatnot.

But Superman, when Siegel and Shuster

first came up with the character,

you have a character that can

leap very tall but didn't fly.

Leaped over tall buildings.

Tall buildings in a single bound.

Batman has gone through

various incarnations as well.

The original Bob Kane story has

gone through a campier version

to kind of bring it back to

its origins a little bit more.

Spider-Man, though,

on the other hand,

has always remained constant.

The back story has never

really altered.

Some people have tried to

tweak it,

but it's always

what you and Ditko did

in that original 11, 12-page

Amazing Fantasy story.

And that's, I think,

a true testimony

to what you guys

were able to accomplish

in a very short amount of time,

very short amount of pages.

You set up the world that still

exists today for that character,

then when you went on

to write the Spider-Man book

outside of Amazing Fantasy,

you set up characters

that are still involved in

the Spider-Man mythos today.

Uncle Ben and Aunt May,

not a traditional take

on the familial upbringing.

Like, Peter Parker's

parents weren't around.

He was being raised by Aunt

and Uncle. Why?

Well, I wanted to give him a reason

to be a superhero.

In other words, even if

you get a superpower,

why are you gonna spend your life

risking your life fighting crooks?

And you did the sensible thing

in the story,

which most people would, I think,

take upon themselves

if they were bitten

by a radioactive spider

and they were given the abilities,

they wouldn't necessarily

think, "I'll fight crime."

They're like, "I'm gonna make

some money off of this."

That's sure what I would do!

The first thing I would do is...

Well, he's not around anymore.

I was gonna say I'd get on

The Ed Sullivan Show,

but I'd certainly wanna

get on Jay Leno or Letterman,

and I'd wanna be exploited

and get paid for it.

So I figured if I made him a guy

who has to have a reason, a motive,

if he could think that he's responsible

in a way for the death of his uncle.

I mean, what a motive

that would be.

That's when I wrote that line,

"With great power,

comes great responsibility."

And, um, I liked the idea

of his aunt as surviving

and making her always ill, so that...

Because to keep a story interesting,

one of the best things

you can do with a character

is put him in a position where

he has to make a life choice.

For example, if he goes north,

he can fight the villain who

is about to blow up the world.

But if he heads south,

he can reach a drugstore

which has the life-saving medicine that

his aunt needs within the next hour.

Now, he can't do both.

Is he gonna let

the world get blown up,

or is he gonna let his aunt die?

What does he do?

When you can get situations

like that,

you know you're gonna

hold the reader's interest.

So, by him having an ailing aunt,

I always had an excuse for him not

to be able to just get out there

and fight the crooks

without a care in the world,

but he always had that worry:

"Is Aunt May okay?"

Another thing that you always

think about is,

"Why doesn't a superhero tell

the world he's a superhero

"and bask in the adulation?"

Well, I had to give him a reason.

His aunt, who had a weak heart,

he's the only relative

she has left, her nephew.

She loves him. He's her world.

She worries about him.

She makes him put on galoshes

if it looks like it's gonna snow,

and so forth.

How could he tell her he's Spider-Man,

who's out there risking his life?

So again, he has a problem.

He must never let his aunt know.

I think that worked out best

in one story that we did

where one of his main villains,

Doc Ock, Doctor Octopus,

develops a relationship

with Aunt May.

Aunt May kind of gets

a crush on him.

Peter Parker knows

that Doc Ock is a villain,

but Doc Ock doesn't know

Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

Aunt May invites him to her house.

There is Peter sitting

with his most deadly villain,

but he can't say anything.

And he doesn't even

want to hurt Doc Ock,

'cause it would break

Aunt May's heart.

I mean, my God, that's something that

the old Russian novelists would have loved.

Right, right. Deep pathos.

Talking about Doc Ock,

where does a character

like Doc Ock come from?

Is it first the name,

and you're like,

"Well, we'll find a guy

to live into the name"?

Or is it the idea of the dude

with the arms,

and then, "Ooh,

I know. 'Doc Ock.'"

Exactly. Once you have

your superhero, you're set.

But the big problem is, every

month coming up with a new villain.

It occurred to me a guy with

tentacles that are like arms

would be great.

So, the obvious name,

it didn't take very long,

was to call him Doc...

Oh, and they're always scientists.

They have to be scientists, or else how

the hell did they invent this thing?

So he was a doctor, or it

could have been a professor.

But in fact, I might have

thought professor first,

but then I thought, "Doctor Octopus."

And then I thought, "'Doc Ock.'

What a perfect nickname."

It couldn't have been "Prof. Ock."

It wouldn't have sat.

So that's why he was a doctor

and not a professor.

So, I came up with the name

Doctor Octopus, as we just mentioned.

I love nicknames. For instance,

Spider-Man, I called him "Spidey."

Nobody ever called Batman "Batty,"

they never called Superman "Supie,"

they called him "Supes," which

I never felt was a great nickname.

I love calling Iron Man "Shellhead,"

Thor, "Goldilocks."

Captain America was Winghead...

Daredevil was Hornhead.

Oh, yeah, Daredevil was

called Hornhead, and, um...

I always felt the readers

would understand.

It's not that they would think you

didn't take your characters seriously,

but, you were being realistic. You knew

them well enough to give them a nickname.

Last year, or two years ago,

Marvel kind of broke their bad

streak of movie properties.

For a while, DC, and

through Warner Brothers,

had Batman.

Well, before Batman, Superman,

and I always felt that they

didn't even have properties

that lent themselves to cinema

as much as Marvel did.

Marvel's set being very

science-fiction oriented,

perfect movies on the page,

you know, no-brainers.

And for a while,

Marvel couldn't make that happen.

Then Bryan Singer's X-Men kind of

punched through in a big, big way,

and for years, Spider-Man was

held up in legal limbo.

James Cameron was gonna do a movie

at one point with Leonardo DiCaprio,

and finally, this year we're

gonna see the Spider-Man movie,

which, some would say, is

about 20 years in the making.

People have been waiting for

the Spider-Man movie.

That's gotta jazz you.

Oh, it more than jazzes me.

It's almost unbelievable.

I don't think there's

ever been a time

when the product of one company

is gonna be represented

so much in movies.

I mean...

You know, starting with Blade,

that was really the

first one that did well.

That's true, that's true.

Obviously, X-Men was a huge hit.

Well, they're working

on the sequel to X-Men now,

and on the third issue,

on the third movie.

Spider-Man will open up. They're

already planning the sequel to that.

Daredevil, I think, will be...

No, The Hulk will be next.

Then comes Daredevil.

Daredevil first, then Hulk.

Is that how it is?

Daredevil then Hulk? Okay.

Then there's, I think,

Ghost Rider is in the works.

Iron Man is in the works,

and it goes on and on.

It's a great time to be a Marvel

fan if you're into movies as well.

Oh, man, yeah.

And the beautiful thing is,

today there is nothing

that you can imagine

that can't be put on the screen.

So these can all be big-budget,

powerful movies.

And I think that Blade,

and certainly X-Men

done by Bryan Singer,

have proven it's possible to

not only get the young fans,

but get adults, people who

just go to see a good movie,

Absolutely.

So, I'm hoping,

and I'm sure they will,

that the movies done

of the Marvel characters

will be done in a good,

adult way, you know?

So, besides all the colorful stuff,

which we know people

will go to see,

there'll be solid stories, with solid

characters and solid characterization,

'cause I think that's what

Marvel has always been about.

Now, the fact that they stay

very close to the comic as well,

in terms of origins, characters,

they don't take a character

and keep the name

and get rid of everything else

and kind of revamp or redo,

or present something that readers

wouldn't be familiar with in the movie,

that has to do something

for you as well.

You've seen the Spider-Man movie,

and you're watching

your creation played out

pretty much as you wrote it way

back when you did Amazing Fantasy.

It's really an indescribable

feeling that you get.

I mean,

you look at that and you say,

"Hey! That's mine!"

It's nice.

Especially, when you

see it so well done.

So if there's anything

that's gonna keep

Spider-Man, the movie,

the new movie,

from making 200, 300,

400 million bucks,

it's the fact that your

cameo has been cut out.

Yeah, they had this big chance

for immortality,

and I ended up on

the cutting room floor.

The story of your life.

I was selling sunglasses in the

street in this scene, in Times Square.

You know, these peddlers,

they have a little flat suitcase,

they open it up with four legs

and they're in business.

There was a little girl

standing next to me,

I'm trying the glasses on her,

and Peter Parker walks by.

So, I take the glasses and I go,

"Hey, would you like a pair of these?

"They're the kind

they wore in the X-Men."

I think that would've gotten

the greatest laugh in the world.

Maybe they ended up not wanting

that laugh, I don't know.

At any rate, after that,

the Green Goblin comes in

and drops a bomb

and everybody runs like crazy,

including me.

After the scene was shot,

I said to Sam...

The director, Sam Raimi.

I said, "Sam, you know,

"I don't like the way

that makes me look.

"I mean, I'm leaving that little

girl, running for my life.

"I should carry her with me,

you know?

"Like I'm a hero or something."

So, Sam said,

"Okay, we'll do it again."

So, we take a second take,

the bomb drops, I grab the girl,

I start to lift her,

I start to lift her,

I try to lift her,

I cannot lift her.

She's too heavy!

She's only about 12-years-old,

I couldn't lift her!

All of a sudden Sam yells, "Cut!"

And I thought he said

one of the funniest lines.

He said,

"Stan, if we do it your way,

"this is gonna be a mini-series."

So, we ended up shooting it again,

where I just take her

by the hand and run out.

Anyway, I thought that line about,

"Would you like to buy these? They're

like the kind they wore in the X-Men,"

that would make the movie!

Like the Superman movie, where

he walked into the phone booth

and he couldn't change,

and everybody remembered that.

Now, Spider-Man's gone through

a bunch of different incarnations

outside of comics.

Most people, of course, remember the

early '60s cartoon with the theme song,

♪ Spider-Man, Spider-Man ♪

And all that artwork is based

heavily on the comic book artwork.

Yeah.

They were almost cutouts, and

they'd move the mouths only,

but it looked very much like...

That was very high-tech

in those days.

Very high-tech.

But anyone who grew up in the late

'70s, early '80s, like myself,

and watched Saturday morning cartoons

can close their eyes and

recognize you as the voice

that narrated Spider-Man

and his Amazing Friends.

That unmistakable, legendary voice.

Now, that's the funniest

thing, 'cause...

My voice must sound different

to other people than it

sounds to me.

To me, it's a voice,

a guy from New York.

It's a sexy voice.

Oh, I like that.

But, just the other day,

I was in an elevator,

going in an office building

and guy next to...

I was talking to

the fellow next to me.

Another man standing there

said, "Aren't you Stan Lee?"

I said, "How do you know?"

He said,

"I recognized your voice."

I said, "From where?"

He said, "From the cartoons."

Now, that absolutely floored me,

and it's happened to me a few times.

I mean, I guess my...

Why doesn't my wife react

that way?

She never thought it was the

sexiest voice in the world.

How long have you been married?

Fifty-four years.

She must like something

about the voice.

Give me a little more time.

How did you get into Spider-Man

and his Amazing Friends?

Did they approach you and say,

"We want you to be the narrator"?

I imagine so.

It was so long ago,

but, as you know,

I'm not shy about the...

I might very well...

You're no press whore, you.

I mean...

I might just very well

have said, "Hey, guys,

"you're gonna need a narrator!

How about me?"

Right.

So, in the movie, aside, of course,

from Spider-Man and the

Green Goblin characters you created,

Mary Jane you created as well?

Right.

Watching that character go

from the page to the screen...

Let's take her back to the page.

Where did the notion

of Mary Jane come from?

Why Mary Jane? Why...

Were you responsible for the issue

of "Face it, Tiger.

You hit the jackpot"?

I think that was one of the best

last panels that I had ever done.

In that story, until you

actually see her face,

she's always hidden

by a flowerpot or a hand.

See, what happened again,

in trying to keep it realistic,

most kids, most boys,

don't particularly

want to meet a girl

whom their mother or aunt recommends.

Was gonna set them up with, right.

And especially, if they...

"Oh, she's a very nice girl."

Guys usually run a mile.

Well, I kept this going

for a long time.

In the series, Aunt May

wanted Peter to meet

her neighbor's daughter,

Mrs. Watson's daughter.

"Oh, she's a very nice girl, Peter.

I know you'll like her."

And Peter did everything

he could to avoid her.

In the story where they

finally meet,

in the last panel of that story,

I have the bell ring or something,

I don't remember,

and he opens the door,

and the last panel,

John Romita drew the most

beautiful girl you could imagine.

And I have her looking

at Peter and saying,

"Face it, Tiger.

You just hit the jackpot."

I mean, I was so proud of myself.

"You just hit the jackpot."

A funny thing about Mary Jane,

originally there was a girl

named Gwen Stacy

before Mary.

I had wanted Gwen to be the one

that Peter would get serious with,

and she was as beautiful as...

John can't not... He can't

draw girls who aren't beautiful.

She was a dream.

Blonde, tall,

gorgeous figure and so forth.

Mary Jane was a redhead.

And the only thing is,

after we had Gwen for a while

in the series,

I said, "We ought to get another

girl to play against Gwen

"to get some reason for jealousy,

a little friction."

A little Betty and Veronica

kind of stuff.

Yeah. Gotta have friction.

So, I said, "Let's get

Mary Jane in to make her..."

I don't know, where the name...

Oh, a funny thing about Mary Jane!

I was told later, "How did you

get away with using that name?

"It's the name for marijuana."

I never knew that!

I had no idea!

And her nickname, 'cause

I told you I like nicknames,

I called her "M.J."

They said, "That's how they refer

to marijuana!" I was embarrassed.

And Spider-Man was real into M.J.

Oh, yeah! Right!

Anyway, so what happened was I said,

"Let's make Mary Jane different from Gwen.

"Gwen is sweet and lovable

and nice.

"Let's make Mary Jane hip,

and cool, and with it,

"and a party girl, a fun girl..."

You know, a swinger.

And we did.

And somehow, I found I enjoyed

writing Mary Jane's dialogue

a million times better.

Sure, there's some edge to it.

Gwen was just a nice girl.

Mary Jane had a personality.

So, at one point...

Gwen's father was a police captain,

and, again, I'm always trying

to throw surprises in.

I decided, "Let's kill him.

"And really, we'll kill a character,

"and do it in a dramatic way."

I had... I think it was the

Green Goblin, I'm not sure,

was fighting with the police

captain and killed him.

Spider-Man was trying to save the

captain, so he was on the scene.

When the captain died, the Goblin,

if it was the Goblin, had left,

and everybody saw Spider-Man

with Captain Stacy

and thought Spider-Man

had killed Stacy,

'cause I felt, "That's gonna

cause such a beautifully

dramatic problem."

Peter Parker was about

to propose to Gwen.

How could he propose to a girl

who would find out he's Spider-Man

when she thought Spider-Man

had killed her father?

So, I loved that situation.

And there's that really

beautiful moment, too,

where Captain Stacy kind of knows

that Spider-Man is Peter Parker,

Right.

That's right. But, of course,

she never heard that.

Powerful stuff, but

she doesn't hear that.

But that's powerful stuff,

and that's not stuff

necessarily written for a kid.

Well, I never wrote for kids.

I wrote for me.

Right.

Right, right.

Later, when Gerry Conway

took over the series, he...

I don't remember this,

but he says he asked me

if it would be okay to kill

Gwen also, and he said I said yes.

He's probably right,

'cause I have a lousy memory.

But I shouldn't have said yes,

'cause I was away on a trip.

When I came back, I read Spider-Man,

I see that Gwen Stacy had

been killed.

And I said, "It's gonna

look like we had something

"against the Stacy family.

What are you doing?"

But, anyway, it was done

and that was it, so...

And she's one of the only

comic characters to stay dead.

You know, most comic characters

die, and then, sooner or later,

come back in one incarnation

or another.

She stayed dead.

There was one story

where she came back

and she was a clone,

but it wasn't Gwen.

She stayed dead,

which is pretty good for comics.

When you kill somebody,

you got to keep them dead.

Right.

Another immortal character in the

Spider-Man mythos is J. Jonah Jameson.

Oh, I loved him.

Where does J. Jonah come from?

You know who J. Jonah Jameson was?

He was me.

He was irascible, he was bad

tempered, he was dumb,

he thought he was

better than he was...

He was the version that so

many people had of me, anyway.

Right, right.

And I always wanted

to play him in the movie.

I was so sorry that, by the

time the movie was made,

I'm too old to play the role.

Well, I don't really think I'm

too old, but obviously they did.

Right.

And the guy who's playing it

in the movie is wonderful.

He did it better than I could

have done.

And that's very high

praise from me.

That's saying a lot from you, yeah.

Anyway, I wanted Peter

to have a freelance job,

not a staff job anywhere,

not a steady job,

'cause I wanted him free

to do his spideying.

So, I figured a freelance

newspaper photographer.

And then, it occurred to me. "I'm

gonna make the guy he works for..."

In Superman, there was

Perry White or somebody...

Perry White.

He was the editor.

Who was probably a nice

enough guy.

I didn't want this guy

to be a nice guy.

I wanted him to hate Spider-Man,

'cause I liked the irony of

the fact

that he has Spider-Man

working for him,

and he hates Spider-Man, yet, he always

wants to get pictures of Spider-Man,

'cause he sells papers.

Also, in those days, that was when

there were hippies and so forth,

I wanted him to hate teenagers.

'Cause to Jameson, every teenager

was a long-haired commie

"Prevert" hippie. You know?

So, I got a lot of fun out of that.

He hated Peter Parker, he hated

Spider-Man, Peter had to work for him.

Jameson wasn't a villain.

He wasn't bad.

He was just a bigot,

he was ill-tempered, he was...

We all know guys like him.

And, as counterpoint to Jameson,

I wanted to get...

I got a guy,

Robbie Robertson,

who was a black editor,

and I wanted him to be the voice

of reason on the newspaper.

He really carried the paper.

He pacified Jameson.

And I also wanted

the reader to suspect

that Robbie suspected

that Peter was Spider-Man,

but would never say anything.

to ever make that connection himself.

Again, and you'd understand

this as well as anybody,

by having a family in a strip,

people you know,

you know their personality, you

know their character, you know...

Then you know how they would talk,

you know what they would do.

And to use that old cliche,

which isn't true,

the stories almost write themselves.

Exactly.

I got a letter once from the Office of

Health, Education and Welfare in Washington.

And they said, "Mr. Lee,

"recognizing the influence of

your comics," blah, blah, blah,

"and drugs are a big problem,

"if you could do an anti-drug

story, we'd appreciate it."

Well, who am I not to obey the

edict of HEW?

So, I did a three-issue series,

and it wasn't preachy,

but it had to do

with a friend of Spidey's,

I forget who it was, had taken

too much of something.

I don't know anything about drugs,

so I just said he

overdosed on something.

And he was on the edge of the

roof and thought he could fly.

And Spider-Man rescues him

and says,

"You're a jerk for doing that."

That type of thing.

And it was part of a bigger story,

with a villain and so forth.

So, it didn't look

like we were preaching.

It was just an incident in a story.

We then had the Comic Code Administration,

where they were censoring all

the comics.

They sent the book back and said,

"You can't publish this book."

They said, "We won't put

our seal of approval on it."

I said, "Why not?"

They said, "Well,

you're mentioning drugs."

I said, "We're not telling

kids to take drugs!"

And I said, "I was asked to do this

by a branch of the Federal Government."

"Sorry, you can't do it."

Well, it's one time when I was

very proud of my publisher.

I said, "Martin, you know, I want

to put these books out anyway."

And he said, "Well, go ahead

and do it, Stan."

And we put them out without

the seal,

they sold beautifully,

we got letters from church groups,

parent-teacher's...

Everybody loved it.

And a funny thing

happened there, too.

The New York Times

gave it a good write-up.

Now, as you probably know, when

The New York Times has a feature story,

other papers around the country

usually pick up on it.

Well, I would get clippings

from the other papers.

But what they would do, so often

they would headline their story,

something like, um, "Marvel Comics

Drug Issue Causes Controversy."

And in looking at the headline,

you would think that

we were pushing drugs.

So, I learned that there's

no good you can do

that doesn't turn into something

you're embarrassed by later.

This is just stuff.

I don't know, it's...

We didn't have any place

to put these things.

Those various collectibles are

based on characters you've created?

Yeah.

Is that supposed to be a

Stan Lee action figure?

Yeah!

How about that?

And somebody did a bust over there.

It's awful when you're

easy to caricature.

You know, that kind

of worries you a little bit,

but what are you gonna do?

It's really Joan's world,

and you just live in it.

That was me at the Hulk set.

With the Thor episode.

That's right, it was the Thor

episode. Yeah.

Now this, the painting over here,

the kind of Warholian

treatment of an image,

where did that image first appear?

It's very famous,

you staring at Spider-Man.

It first appeared in that painting.

And then, what I did,

I took a lot of black-and-white

photos of that,

just 8-by-10 or so,

and I use those if anybody ever

wants an autographed photo.

But I love that.

Done by a fellow named Steve Kaufman,

who used to work for Andy Warhol,

and he silk-screens these things.

It looks like I'm really being

tough with Spider-Man.

Right.

Which I wouldn't dare to be.

Over here on the wall is a framed

Christmas card from Bob Kane.

Bob Kane and I were

very close friends.

And, you know, he was a funny guy.

He's the exact opposite

of me in one respect.

If I'm out in public and

somebody recognizes me,

it embarrasses me a little.

Bob and I would go out to dinner

and when the waiter brought the

menu over, the first thing he'd say,

"Do you know who I am?

I created Batman."

But he was so nice about it.

He'd always say to the waiter,

"Come here, I want to draw a sketch."

And on a napkin he'd do a Batman

and autograph it and give it

to everybody he met, you know?

So, now, years later, you got to

do your rendition of his character

with the DC Just Imagine

Stan Lee Creating series.

Not really. Just my rendition

of the name that he used,

'cause it was a totally different...

I wouldn't ever try to improve

on anything he had done.

I just...

Just did a totally different one.

And the idea, the genesis of

the project was what? Who came...

Did you go to them

or they come to you?

No, no, no. I would never have

dared to suggest anything like that.

A fellow I know named Mike Uslan,

who's very intimately connected...

In fact, he's one of the producers...

One of the producers

of the Batman series.

And he and I have known each

other for a long time.

And he said, "Stan, how would

you like to do your version

"of DC's top characters?"

And I said, "Yeah, fat chance."

He said, "But if you had a

chance, would you do it?"

Nobody could turn down

a thing like that.

Came back a few weeks later,

and he said that Jeanette Kahn

and Paul Levitz,

who were running the company,

they thought it would be a great

idea and wanted me to do it.

And first thing I thought is,

"What am I getting myself into?"

So, it became a 12-issue set.

I've already done 10.

I have two more to go.

And the thing I worried about, mostly,

was fans of the characters.

You know, wouldn't they resent

me having the temerity to say,

"Oh, I'm gonna do

my own version of it."

But they're buying it, and they

seem to like it, and it's fun.

It was definitely a project that

garnered a lot of attention, too,

when they announced it, because,

you know, the big to-do

of the man who created

Marvel, essentially,

coming over to DC

to do them justice as well.

And the funny thing is, I think a

lot of the versions that we did

I think would make good movies.

Now, they're gonna

have a big problem.

"Well, how can we make a movie

out of this version

"when we have the other version?"

But I don't have to make that decision.

Right. It's out of your hands.

You know, I always loved advertising.

I always wanted to be

in the advertising business.

And I thought calling us "The

House of Ideas" was a good phrase.

Calling The Fantastic Four "The

world's greatest comics magazine"

was a good phrase.

And "Make mine Marvel"

wasn't too shabby.

All those things.

I love slogans.

Of the many things

you're remembered for,

of creating a modern mythology

that still exists today

and will exist forever,

for as far as we know,

of bringing Marvel

to where it is today,

of giving the world Spider-Man,

The Hulk,

the X-Men, Daredevil, Iron Man,

the list goes on and on.

Um, one of your unsung attributes,

what I think is wonderful

about your personality

or the thing that kind of

defines you, are the Stan-isms.

The "'Nuff said."

You know, the "true believer."

Um, but probably best well-known

is your sign-off, "Excelsior."

Where does that come from?

Well, the ones you quoted,

"'Nuff said," and then

I had "Face front"...

These are ways

I used to sign my editorials.

I'd say, "Face front," "Stand,"

or "'Nuff said," or, "Hang loose."

And I had others that I've

since forgotten.

But I found that some

of the competitive magazines

were starting to use my expressions.

Especially "'Nuff said."

And that annoyed me.

So, I said, "I've got

to come up with an expression

"that A: they won't

know what it means,

"and B: they won't

know how to spell it."

And I thought of "Excelsior,"

because it's a...

It's the slogan for New York State,

the official seal of New York State.

But, also, I had read that

in books of legends.

It's an old English expression

that means, "Upward and onward

to greater glory."

Well, what could be better

than that?

Unfortunately, in the dictionary,

it has a meaning

that they print first.

Excelsior is what they use

to stuff packages with.

You know, those shavings so a

thing won't rattle and get broken?

So, very often, I get letters saying,

"How come you sign everything

with 'package stuffing'?"

And I'd have to write back, "Read

the second definition in the thing."

But I love the word, and in fact,

it might even be a great way

to close this little interview.

Give it to them.

You know what they want.

All right, here we go.

Are you ready?

Excelsior!

So, 60 years, plus, of comics work.

Where does it all begin?

I guess it all began when I first walked

into the offices of what was then

Timely Comics.

Of course, had I known then what I know

now, I might never have gone in.

Right, right.

I should have gone into the

offices of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Or Warner Brothers.

But who knew?

No, no. And they needed you in comics

more than they needed you in movies.

But let's go back even before that.

Where were you born originally?

Where were you from?

Oh, like everybody else.

New York City.

New York City.

It was the West Side,

I still remember,

East 98th Street and West End Avenue.

You joined the service

at a certain point as well?

Yeah, I enlisted in, um...

I think '42 or '43 or something.

I was in for three years.

And I wanted to be a hero. You

know, I had written about heroes.

And I saw myself winning

the war single-handedly.

They put me in the Signal Corps,

and I was supposed to do wire repair.

I would have been the guy

who went overseas and repaired...

Who climbed up the telephone

poles or whatever,

and kept the wires going for communication.

But before I could do that, they

found out I had written comics.

And the next thing I knew,

I was in the Training Film

Writing Division.

And I was the token

non-entity there,

'cause I was with people like

William Saroyan and Frank Capra.

Jeez.

But they needed somebody that was

just a regular person, I guess.

So, it was great.

A great experience.

I wrote a lot of training films,

I wrote instructional manuals

for the troops and so forth,

and I drew cartoons and posters.

When did you first

start writing, then?

'Cause it seems... I mean, that

is your whole life, writing.

I was writing when I was a kid.

I wrote compositions, and...

I used to win little contests.

They had something called "The

Biggest News of the Week Hunt"

at a newspaper, The Herald Tribune.

It was for high school students, and

I entered it three weeks in a row,

and I won it three weeks in a row.

They asked me to stop entering it.

The editor said, "What do you want

to be when you become a person?"

And I said, "I want to be an actor."

He said, "Don't be a schmuck,

you know, become a writer."

So, at what point did you work on

Captain America? Prewar or postwar?

I worked on Captain America

prewar and I did them postwar.

You know, I feel silly

doing what we're doing.

I mean,

I should be asking you questions.

No. I got nothing to say.

I mean, I can't wait till you run out

of stuff so I can start asking you.

Then we'll go to me. But in

the meantime, let's stick to you.

So, before the war, you're

working on Captain America,

and Captain America was a

character you didn't create

but you helped define later on.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby,

as they listed themselves,

they had created Captain America.

And it was just becoming really

popular when I joined the company,

and after a while, when I had

to have some stories to write,

they started feeding

me Captain Americas.

I wrote quite a few of them.

When I came back after the war,

I guess I wrote some more...

I don't have the world's greatest

memory, but at some point,

Captain America was not

as popular anymore

and they dropped the character

for a while.

And this is postwar?

Yeah, this was after the war.

'cause you'd imagine after the

war there'd be all this patriotism

and Captain America...

I think once Hitler wasn't around

for Captain America to fight,

they ran out of stories.

I don't know.

But in the '60s, when we started

the Marvel characters,

I had always loved Captain America,

so I brought him back then.

Let's go back to...

When you first enter comics,

superheroes aren't in vogue.

It's more romance and Westerns,

if I'm correct.

Well, actually, when I entered

comics, there were superheroes,

but they weren't as popular.

There was Captain America, there was

The Human Torch, The Sub-Mariner,

so there were superheroes.

As a matter of fact,

when I got into it,

Timely was mostly superheroes.

It was later on...

See, what it was, comics books

always followed trends.

For a couple of years,

it would be superheroes.

Then it would be romance, or

Westerns, or animated characters.

I mean, one of my proudest boasts is

I created Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig

with Al Jaffee,

who's one of Mad's top guys.

We were not very creative in titles,

because our war magazines,

for example,

they had names like Combat,

Combat Kelly, Combat Casey,

Battle, Battlefield, Battleground,

Battle something else...

I'm sensing a theme.

And in the Romance books,

we had My Love,

Our Love, Your Love, Their Love,

My Romance, Your Romance. It was...

We were in such a rut,

and we were real followers.

Whatever the trend was, we would put

out a lot of books in that trend.

And that's how my publisher,

Martin Goodman,

who is a smart guy,

that's how he made his money.

He waited to see what was selling,

and then he would flood the

market with those kind of books,

And then I wanted to doim.

political and celebrities.,

So, I did a book

called You Don't Say!

and I had pictures of movie

actors and politicians...

And a tragic thing

happened there, too.

That book would've been...

I would've given up the comics and stayed

with that. It was incredibly successful.

Now, these are books made of

pictures, real photos,

and then you would place

captions on them.

Right. And these were magazine size.

They weren't comic book size.

I think they sold for a quarter

or half a dollar then,

and in those days

that was like $3, $4 today.

And the third issue

of You Don't Say!

which was selling fantastically,

I put Jack Kennedy on the cover.

I still remember the gag.

He's making a speech,

and he's standing

in front of a railing,

and there was the big seal of the

President of the United States

right in front of him on the railing,

and behind him was another seal

of the President of the

United States.

And he's standing there,

and he's like this,

and I put a dialogue

balloon over his head,

"Allow me to introduce myself."

And it really...

It was great.

While the book was on the presses,

he was assassinated.

Well, we couldn't put the

book out.

We killed it, Martin lost a

fortune, and again,

I just lost the spirit

to do that sort of thing.

So, we gave that book up.

So, now, at what point do superheroes

kind of take hold

and become the norm,

as opposed to just a trend?

I don't think that happened until...

Really, until Marvel comics.

What happened was,

some time in the early '60s,

Martin Goodman was playing golf

with the publisher of DC Comics.

I think they were called,

National Comics at the time.

They later changed the name

to DC.

And Marvel was still

Timely at this point.

And the publisher said to Martin,

"You know, we've got this new

book, the Justice League,

"and it's really selling well.

It's a bunch of superheroes."

Well, that's all Martin had

to hear.

He came back,

running back to me and said,

"Stan, we gotta put

out a bunch of heroes.

"You know,

there's a market for it."

It just happened that at that

time, I wanted to quit.

After all these years, I had made

up my mind. I'm not getting anywhere.

It's a stupid business

for a grownup to be in,

and I finally told my wife, "Honey, I just

want to quit and do something else."

And how old were

you about at this point?

About 40.

I had been in it too long,

you know?

Oh, and the reason

I wanted to quit,

I felt we're writing nonsense.

I was told... Martin always

felt that the books were read

only by young kids, or adults

who weren't that intelligent.

So, he didn't like

me to use words

of more than two syllables

in the dialogue.

He didn't want continued stories,

'cause the readers

wouldn't have brains enough

to remember from month...

And things like that.

Right.

I felt I was writing trash.

Right, right, right.

Joanie said to me,

"If you're going to quit anyway,

"why don't you do a book

the way you'd like to do it,

"and get it out of your system?

"The worst that'll happen, he'll

fire you, and you want to quit."

So, I figured, okay. And I did

that one book, the Fantastic Four.

A bunch of superheroes, but I tried

to make them different than the others.

For one thing, they didn't

have double identities.

Your very first superhero

comic creation

that you created yourself, not just

a character that you worked on,

but you came up with them.

Well, I had done others in

the past,

but they're totally unmemorable.

I mean, I don't even... Names

like the Destroyer, Father Time...

I must have done a hundred of them.

But they were nothing.

Yeah, the FF was one of the

Marvel ones.

What makes you put those 4

particular archetypes together,

and call them the Fantastic Four?

I like to have characters

to work with,

as though it's a movie

or a soap opera

where the characters'

own personal lives

would help write the dialogue,

and come up with situations.

So, I thought I'll get one of them...

You have to have a scientist.

He's the world's greatest scientist,

but he's also a little bit

like me. He talks too much.

He tends to be dull,

pedantic and boring.

And this gives the other guys

a chance to rib him, you see?

So, I liked that.

I wanted to have a girl,

and I felt,

"Well, I don't want her

to be the usual girl.

"I want her to be

in love with the guy."

Also, she gets a superpower, and that

would be fun. She's part of the team.

So she won't just be

a gal yelling help,

and the hero has to save her.

I wanted to get a teenager,

but I didn't want to get the

typical comic book teenager.

I wanted to get a guy with his

own superpower, The Human Torch,

and I stole that from Carl

Burgos' original Human Torch.

When I first went to work for Marvel,

they had that character,

and I loved him.

And that was from Marvel Comics,

back when they were Timely, but the

comic was actually called Marvel Comics.

And he hadn't been used for

20, 30, 40 years, I don't know.

So, I didn't use the same torch.

I used the name and the power,

but I made him...

The original one was an android

who was an adult and a

totally different guy.

I made this a teenager,

16-years-old,

who was Susan Storm's brother.

And he didn't really

want to be a superhero.

He wanted to be like you or

I would be.

He wanted to be out with the girls,

and driving a sports car and,

you know, living it up.

So, I thought that was a nice touch.

Then the best one...

"The ever-loving blue-eyed Thing."

Oh, yeah!

How I love the Thing.

I wanted somebody for humor,

and a little bit of pathos.

So, when they're clobbered by

cosmic rays, they all get superpower,

but they can get back to normal.

This guy turned into the Thing, and

he couldn't change back to Ben Grimm,

the normal pilot he had been.

Kind of conceited for a guy

who's a monster.

He still thought a lot of himself.

And he was always fighting

with the teenager.

The teenager would give him

a hotfoot,

he'd throw things at the teenager,

and it was almost like Abbott

and Costello or Laurel and Hardy.

I was able to get, I think,

so much exciting comedy

in with the two of them,

and it balanced out

the seriousness of

having to save the world

from Doctor Doom all the time.

Now, Doctor Doom is yours as well?

Oh, yeah, Doctor Doom is my

favorite all-time villain.

Why so?

Well, first of all, by making

him king of his own country.

I didn't know of any villain who had

ever been king of his own country.

And, you know, it's funny, I gave

the country the name Latveria.

I think it's the best name

I ever came up with,

'cause I've had people

look it up on a map.

I mean, it sounds like a real country.

Yeah, like it exists.

Nothing sounds more like

a country than Latveria.

By being a king, when he comes

to America, you can't arrest him.

He's got diplomatic immunity.

I love that.

Oh, and another thing

that I always got a big kick

out of.

You or I could cross the

street against the light,

and a cop might stop us

and say, "You're jaywalking,"

and he might give us a citation.

But you or I could do

what Doctor Doom does.

We could walk up to a cop and say,

"Officer, we want to conquer

the world."

There's no crime. You cannot be arrested

for wanting to conquer the world.

And that's all that

Doctor Doom wants.

So, he's the world's biggest

villain, powerful, dangerous,

but all he wants is to conquer

the world. That's not a crime.

There's no law on

the books for that one.

And even if it were,

you couldn't arrest him.

Jack Kirby used to

kid around with it.

Every so often, he would

draw a little sketch

of Doctor Doom with his mask off,

and of course,

he always had my face.

Right, it was Stan underneath.

Yeah, Doom was great. And then

I figured, "Okay, that's it.

"I'm gonna get fired, goodbye,

I got it out of my system."

The book sold great!

Martin asked me to do another, and

I figured, "Well, I'm on a roll."

So I figured, now I'm gonna

make a hero out of a monster.

And that was the Hulk.

I sort of was influenced by Frankenstein.

You know, the Boris Karloff movie?

Because in that movie, I always thought

the monster, Karloff, was the good guy.

He didn't wanna hurt anybody.

Those idiots with torches were

chasing him up and down hills.

Right.

Misunderstood.

So I thought, "Let's make

him a lovable monster."

And then I always liked

Jekyll and Hyde.

So to keep to keep it in line

with the superhero formula,

I felt, "Let's give him

a double identity."

He's a monster, and he's

also a guy like Kevin Smith.

So we did that, and that worked.

So then Martin said,

"Let's do another one."

And then the rest is history.

And how did Hulk take off when

it first came out?

Very well.

People instantly

kind of got into it?

It's funny. It's almost like there

was something in the air at that time.

It was like we could

do nothing wrong.

All of them became popular, and

all of them seem to have lasted.

Characters like the

Fantastic Four and the Hulk,

characters that are born

in the atomic age,

following the first atom bomb,

years after the first atom bomb,

but in an age of science and wonder,

where it... Look, we've split

an atom, and look what it can do.

So, I've always felt

the Marvel characters

are characters that

are born in science.

Conversely, the DC characters

are characters that are...

You know, Superman

comes from another planet,

and Wonder Woman is a Greek goddess,

and Batman was born in tragedy,

but the Marvel characters have

always been very scientifically bent,

very science-fiction oriented.

Where did that come from?

Well, I gotta tell you,

it's an anomaly.

I love science fiction,

but nobody knows less

about science than I do.

And all I did, 'cause I'm lazy,

I took the easy way out.

I figured, "Well, the guy has

to become the Hulk in some way.

"Let him be hit by a gamma bomb."

Now, I wouldn't know a gamma

ray from an eggplant,

but it sounded good,

"a gamma bomb."

And I don't know much about radiation,

but with Spider-Man, I figured he'd

been bit by a radioactive spider,

and now I can get on with the story.

Certainly with the Fantastic Four,

I figured out they'll

be hit by cosmic rays.

I don't know what a

cosmic ray is.

Right, right, right.

But it sounded... See, to me,

things just have to sound good.

I guess I'm the biggest phony

in the world, really, and, um...

Well, to give you an example, though,

I may be selling myself short,

'cause I may have some...

Some subtle scientific leanings

that I'm not even aware of.

You know our character Thor,

the God of Thunder?

Yes.

I wanted him to be able

to fly through the sky,

but not like Superman, who,

to me,

has no visible means of propulsion.

He just flies.

But I wanted to be purely scientific,

so I gave him this big hammer,

and I had it fastened by

a leather thong to his wrist.

Now, when he wanted to fly,

he'd swing that hammer around.

And just propel himself up.

Then let it go.

It would fly through the air,

and, being tied to his wrist, it would

drag him with it. Purely scientific...

So, it kinda makes sense.

There's a logic to it.

Sure.

So I may have sold myself short

when I said I'm not

scientifically inclined.

The hammer is... A lot of people

can never pronounce the hammer.

Mjolnir?

But the people who can't

pronounce it correctly

don't have to be concerned

about it,

'cause I think my brother

Larry made that up,

and it's just a made-up word, so feel

free to pronounce it any way you want.

Your brother wrote for comics

as well?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he was quite good.

In the beginning, if I came up

with the idea for some things

like I did for Thor,

I didn't have time

to write the actual scripts.

I would tell Larry what I want,

and he wrote the scripts.

They worked out fine.

Now, that... Some people

refer to that or it's been

referred to as the Marvel

method for many, many years

where somebody will

come up with a story,

and basically tell the artist

what's gonna happen,

an artist will go draw it,

and then the dialogue

man comes in later on,

and adds the story, the text.

That's what you guys created

and did for many years.

That is probably my proudest creation,

and it happened purely

through need.

What happened was, in the beginning,

I was writing almost all

the stories for Marvel,

and I couldn't keep up.

And the artists were freelance,

which meant they only

got paid per page.

If they drew a page, they got

paid. They weren't on salary.

So, let's say Jack Kirby

was drawing a script,

and I was writing a script

for Steve Ditko,

and then John Buscema would come

in and say, "Stan, I need a script."

I couldn't stop

what I was doing for Ditko,

but I had to give Buscema a script,

'cause if he didn't have one,

he's not making money.

So I would say, "Look, Steve, I don't

have time to write your script,

"but here's the story I want."

And I would tell him

generally what I wanted.

He would go home and draw it

any way he wanted,

bring the illustrations

back to me,

and then I would put in

the dialogue and the captions.

Now, it started as an

emergency measure.

It was the only way

to keep these guys busy.

But I realized you get better

stories that way, because...

Very collaborative.

I was so lucky. I had the best

artists you could ever imagine.

Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko,

John Romita,

John Buscema, Gene Colan,

and on and on. Gil Kane.

These guys thought like movie directors,

and they were really

visual storytellers.

They were writers in their own way.

So when I would give them a plot,

they knew how to break it down.

They knew how to begin it,

how to end it,

where to put

the interesting parts in.

If they didn't,

I could help in my

writing in this way.

If I found that there was a page

or some panels that

looked a little dull,

I'd add a lot of dialogue

and sound effects,

and whatever I could

to jazz up the page.

If the artwork was incredibly

absorbing and exciting,

I put as little dialogue as possible.

So, in a way, I tried

to make the dialogue balloons

part of the artwork, you know,

to give it the look I wanted.

I loved making up sound effects.

One of my favorites

was "Kbooom" or something.

K-b-o-o-o-m.

And I had a little asterisk at the

end of it with a caption that said,

"Obviously, the third 'o' is silent."

I used to love putting in little,

important scholarly notes

like that.

Our company isn't what it used

to be. We now have fans.

It's a whole new thing, and I felt

we ought to change the name,

and change it to Marvel because the

first book that Martin ever published

when I came to work there

was called Marvel Comics.

So, just out of sentiment,

I called it Marvel.

Now, did you become Editor in Chief while

Martin was still around, still alive?

Oh, I had always been. When

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left,

when I was about 17-years-old,

Martin needed somebody

to replace them.

It was a small company.

It was really Joe and Jack.

So, he said to me,

"Can you handle being the Editor

"while I look for a real person?"

And when you're 17, what do you

know? I said, "Sure! I can do it."

He must've forgotten all

about it,

'cause I stayed there ever since.

So, I functioned as Editor,

Art Director, and Head Writer.

Now, when you become Publisher

and kind of turn over

the writing reigns,

how involved do you

stay at that point?

Are you still looking over scripts

or looking over the artwork still?

I have a theory.

When you work with artists

and writers,

any kind of creative people,

you get their best work

if you let them do it

the way they want to do it.

Now, they have to be talented.

If they're not talented,

forget it.

But you get a guy with talent,

you can't tell him too much.

You can't say, "You don't do

it this way. Do it that way."

You gotta let him do it his way.

Now, maybe that was

an excuse for me being lazy,

but I pretty much tried

to keep hands-off

'cause, again, as I say,

I was lucky.

I had built up the greatest staff

of artists and writers

you could find anywhere.

And that was traditionally

referred to as the Silver Age,

but really was a golden age

of comics.

It was for me.

And this was the period

before TV kind of takes over

as much as it eventually does,

and long before the video game,

long before the internet.

So, kids are still

reading comics like mad,

and you are the ambassador

of comics at that point

even to this day, of course,

but at that point,

I'm a kid in the '70s,

you know Stan Lee.

Because if you go

to a comic book show

or if you read the Marvel

Bullpen, Stan's Soapbox,

you were everywhere.

You're the face of comics.

It's fair to say that you're

the most well known person

in comics to people

in the comics audience

and people well outside

the comics audience.

Well, you know, it's funny,

at one point,

I guess they didn't know

what else to do with me.

But I was made the President

of Marvel.

And I thought, "Oh, wow, President!

"Now I'll really be able to do

things the way I want to do them."

Didn't work out that way.

I found that all that I was doing

was going to financial meetings,

and I had to come up with what

they call "3 year plans,"

5 year plans for the business.

I'm a guy who doesn't know what I'm

gonna have for lunch the same day,

and I had to have a 3 year plan.

And I suddenly realized

I am doing something

that millions of people can do better

than I can do, which is financial stuff,

and the thing I enjoyed doing,

the creative stuff,

I'm not doing anymore.

So, as you can well imagine,

I didn't stay President very long.

I gave that up pretty fast, yeah.

One other thing that I think

Marvel did,

and did very well,

I tried to make the readers feel

they're more than just casual readers,

but we're all part of a family,

we're all part of an inner group,

we're having fun, and the

outside world isn't aware of it.

And I tried doing that with

the Soapbox column I wrote,

with the Bullpen page.

Very much so.

You kind of lifted the curtain

between audience and the creators

and said, "This is what it's

like here. Check it out."

It invites the audience in, and it does

kind of create a familial feeling about it.

And they'll follow you

to the ends of the earth.

I did that very consciously.

You know, before Marvel,

as far as I know,

no other comic company

played up who wrote the story,

who drew it, who lettered it,

who edited it.

Maybe this is why I'm

so impressed with you.

I mean, there are a lot of reasons.

I love movies.

You are such a fantastic

movie-maker.

Thank you.

I wanted to make the comics seem

to be like movies

as much as possible.

And I thought why not

have screen credits?

So, I started listing "Written

by Stan Lee, drawn by Jack Kirby."

Then I thought why not make it

even warmer and more friendly?

So it was suddenly

written by "Smilin' Stan,"

by "Jolly Jack,"

by "Sturdy Steve Ditko."

I think he probably

always hated that.

John Romita, I called

him "Jazzy Johnny Romita,"

and then sometimes

"Johnny Ring-a-Ding Romita."

I'm sure he hated it, but, well,

I was the Editor, I did it.

So, by giving everybody nicknames

and putting their names there,

and by writing the Soapbox

and the Bullpen Bulletins

and even with the mail, we were the

first, I believe, to have letters pages.

The other companies did it, too.

But when, for example,

DC would get a fan letter,

the letter would be printed, and it

would say something like, "Dear Editor,

"I didn't like this story,"

or, "I did like this story," Blah,

blah, blah. "Signed, Charles Brown."

And the answer would be, "Dear

Charles, thank you for your letter.

"Sincerely, the Editor."

Something like that.

If I got the same letter,

I would cross out the word editor

and I'd print it,

it would say "Dear Stan,"

and for the signature

if it was Charlie Brown,

I'd cross out Charles Brown,

I'd write Charlie,

and in my answer, I'd make

some sort of a gag, you know?

"Hey, glad you wrote. We

thought we didn't have any readers.

"Now we know we have one."

Anything that was a gag.

So, it was a little thing,

but it was trying to give a feeling

of warmth, a feeling of friendliness.

Don't call me Editor.

Call me Stan.

And I don't want to call you Joe.

I want to call you Joey.

You know, whatever it is.

And it seemed to work.

Then we had a club.

I decided we had so many fans,

'cause we were now getting

a lot of fan mail.

Let's form a club.

So, again, I didn't want

to do it an ordinary way,

so I started it out as a contest.

I wrote that we're having a club,

and that the name,

the initials of the club's name

would be M.M.M.S.

And I would keep this up

in the Bullpen Bulletin page,

and I said we'll give a prize

for whoever guesses the name.

And I ran this thing

for months giving clues,

finally we announced it was the

Merry Marvel Marching Society.

We didn't know where we were

marching to, but we were on the way.

And it's fresh on my mind

'cause a fan sent me

a CD yesterday that I listened

to, of a record that we did.

Those who joined the club...

In those days, for a penny

or less than a penny each,

you could make

a little plastic record.

I marched the whole bullpen

to a recording studio,

and we tried to be funny

for a few minutes.

The corniest thing you ever heard,

and I'm talking to

Jack Kirby and Artie Simek

and Sol Brodsky and all the guys.

We were all trying

to upstage each other.

It was ridiculous,

but the fans loved it.

They were listening to the voices

of the people whose stuff

they had been reading.

It's like a forerunner

of the DVD commentaries

and behind-the-scenes stuff, yeah.

And then, this fellow on the record,

he sent me something I forgot.

We had a song.

♪ March along, march along

♪ March along, march along

♪ With The Merry Marvel

Marching Society

♪ You'll belong, you'll belong ¶

On and on.

♪ And stand a little straighter

♪ Walk a little prouder

♪ Be a something, be an innovator

♪ Talk a little louder

♪ And where will you be then?

♪ You'll belong, you'll belong ♪

It went on and on.

You missed your calling.

I mean, clearly.

Another thing that set

Marvel apart from,

you know, our distinguished

competition if you will,

was continuity.

That's something that you guys

firmly established before DC did.

Some stories in comics, iprior

to your tenure at Marvee

and the next story wouldn't

necessarily have anything

to do with the story

that happened before,

a story that happened

the year before.

You guys got densely into continuity.

Well, most of our characters,

if not all of them,

most of our stories

took place in New York.

Right, and that was

an important aspect of it.

Whereas DC had Metropolis and Gotham,

you guys were firmly rooted in

the real world, in Manhattan.

That was part of what I mentioned,

trying to make fantasy realistic.

So, instead of Johnny Storm,

the Human Torch,

driving a whiz-bang V8,

he drove a Chevy Corvette.

Right.

And instead of them going

to the Bijou Theater,

they went to the Radio City

Music Hall and so forth.

Even their address,

I had them living...

The Fantastic Four had their headquarters

on the east side of Manhattan.

Spider-Man lived in Forest Hills

just across the river, and so forth.

Now, the reason I did that,

because I was from New York,

and I knew New York.

So, it made it easier

to write the stories.

I knew the landmarks and the settings.

And then it occurred

to me after a while,

if they're all in the same city,

why don't they meet?

You know, comics often had

guest stars, but for no reason.

One character would be

with another character.

In our books,

when they guested in a story,

it was 'cause

for some reason they met

during the course of the story.

We used to have things,

if for example,

Reed Richards, the Fantastic Four,

if he needed a lawyer,

I'd have him go to...

Matt Murdock.

Thank you for helping me with that.

To Matt Murdock, who was Daredevil.

And again, in trying to think,

"What can I do that's different?"

We never had a blind hero,

and I thought it would be

such fun

to let him be able to do anything

that a sighted person could do,

but do it better.

And you could explain it by the fact that

his other senses were super-heightened.

So, he could read by running

his finger over any page,

he'd feel the ink on the page.

As incrementally as it's

raised on the page.

Exactly.

He could tell if you were lying

'cause he had a built-in lie detector.

He could hear your pulse,

your heartbeat speeding up.

And all sorts of things like that.

The reason I mention Daredevil,

I was very concerned.

I said to myself, "What if

blind people are offended by this?"

Suddenly, we're taking a blind man

and showing that he can do anything.

Some poor person who is blind

is thinking,

"What's he doing,

joking about this?"

Or, you know.

What happened was we got more mail

from places like the Lighthouse

for the Blind in New York,

from blind people, all of them saying

how great they thought it was

that we were featuring

a blind person as a hero.

And that's one of the reasons that

he's one of my favorite characters.

I felt so good when I heard that.

And that connects with people

for some reason, um, Daredevil.

It's 'cause he's the unsung

of the Marvel creations.

He's a character that does

connect with people

because he's the blind superhero.

Howard Stern, whenever Howard Stern

talks about superheroes

or comic books...

He's a huge Marvel fanboy.

On the radio,

he always comes back to Daredevil,

and is always happy to point

out how much he knows about him.

Particularly, he's like, "Oh, he's the

blind lawyer. He's the blind lawyer."

You know, it's a big bragging point.

And I liked him being a

lawyer, too.

It made him easy to get into stories.

One of the only times that a

lawyer has ever been painted heroic.

That's right.

Even the name Matt Murdock, I...

You can tell I have the worst

memory in the world.

Yeah, right.

And I had trouble remembering

the names of the characters.

So, that's the reason that they

usually had the first name

had the same letter

as the last letter.

Very alliterative names, yeah.

Matt Murdock, Reed Richards,

Peter Parker, on and on.

Because if I could remember

one name,

I had a clue how the other

name began.

And that was the only

reason I did that.

In terms of the comic stories,

when I was working at Marvel,

when I did the Daredevil

run that I did,

Joe Quesada, who was the Editor

of the Marvel Knights line then,

and is now the Editor over all

of Marvel right now.

Yeah, and doing a great job.

Doing a very great job.

He took a huge page

out of your book,

and instructed me

in writing each issue

to somehow recap what went on

in the last issue,

and recap overall

who the character is.

And I said, "Well, that's a

little redundant, isn't it?

"Because the people reading

these comics, they know."

And he said, "But it's like

Stan said for years.

"Every comic book is somebody's

first comic book."

And it's true.

It's a really important lesson

that they still kind of stick

to today.

It's so important because you

can't grow a line

unless you get new readers.

And you wanna get the

transient reader

who hasn't read the book before.

And one of the complaints that have been

made about comics over the past few years,

unless you've been following

the stories for years,

you don't know what you're

looking at.

So, it's a great idea,

and you can do it subtly.

It doesn't have to be done

in a dull, long, pedantic way.

You can just in the course

of the beginning of the story

have the characters make a

few comments

that brings the reader up to date.

That's important.

It's a cliffhanger medium.

It's a serial, so every month...

Incidentally, I got to mention

what a great job you did

on those Daredevil stories.

And I'm glad you're still

doing it.

We're not here to polish my helmet.

We're here to polish yours.

No, no, but I gotta tell you,

I mentioned before,

this is so frustrating to me,

'cause I am such a fan of yours,

and I'm doing all the talking,

and you gotta promise that we can

do another one where I interview you.

If I'm ever worthy of it,

we'll do it.

Your relationship with Jack is

the stuff of legend in this field.

Do you want to talk

about him a little bit?

Well, Jack was the greatest

guy to work with.

He never did less than his best.

You would never get

a job from Jack

where you'd say, "Oh, gee,

this isn't that good."

Everything about him was great.

Towards the end, the last few years,

something happened.

I'm not sure what it was.

One of the things was

they had a policy

to give original artwork

back to the artists.

Now, I was out of it by now. I was

the publisher, and I was traveling.

But for some reason, Jack felt

he didn't get his artwork back,

and he got mad at the company.

People in the company

told me the reason...

Again, this is all hearsay.

Told me the reason

he didn't get the artwork back was

they just wanted him to sign a form

saying he would never

use it to republish it

and compete with Marvel,

or something of this sort.

And they told me

Jack wouldn't sign the form,

and for that reason,

they were at loggerheads.

Eventually, I think, they worked

it out after a long time.

But during that period, the fans

learned about what was happening,

and the fans got mad at Marvel,

thinking we're not treating

Jack well.

And I think somehow

it rubbed off on me.

I think Jack may have felt in

some way I was responsible.

Or had something to do with it.

Hell, as far as I was concerned,

he could have had everything back.

It didn't matter to me.

I had asked Jack to come on staff

and stop being a freelancer,

and I had said, "You know, Jack,

"I would be happy to let you

be the Art Director."

"I'll just be the Editor.

What a team we would make.

"The two of us,

we'll run the whole thing."

He didn't want to do it.

Why do you think?

He just didn't want to commit the

time, just liked being freelance?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Maybe he just enjoyed

doing his own strips.

But there isn't a bad thing

that I can say about that man.

He was a joy to work with.

He was a genius.

He should've been a movie director,

because this man knew

how to tell a story.

Very visual, yes.

In fact, most of the guys did.

Steve did, Romita did,

Buscema did, Colan did.

I mean, I can't believe

how lucky I was

to work with people like that,

because it's very possible

that these great ideas that I had

might not have been as successful

if they weren't drawn as well.

Right.

So, I'm grateful to all of them.

While you were doing

what you were doing at Marvel,

DC is doing what they're doing

across the street.

And for years, I think,

the fan base enjoyed the fact

that there was a friendly rivalry

which you guys juiced up

for entertainment value as

much as possible.

But there was no true rivalry

at all.

I mean, in fact,

as you pointed out earlier,

DC whatever they were doing

over at National at the time,

Martin would say,

"Let's do that over here."

I mean, it's a very

symbiotic relationship.

Actually, we were all friends.

I was friends with most of

the writers and artists at DC.

At that time, there was an editor,

I think he was the Publisher or the

President, named Carmine Infantino.

Carmine and I would meet

about once a week.

There was a little bar and grill

on Third Avenue called Friar Tuck.

We'd meet there about once a week

and just kid around and talk.

A lot of the artists from both

companies would join us.

Again, because I'm always trying

to think what'll appeal to the fans,

I thought it fun to build up a

rivalry between the 2 companies.

The first thing I did was

I started referring to them

instead of brand X,

I called them "Brand Echh."

It was either echh or eh,

I don't know, brand echh.

And echh meaning yech.

And the fans liked that.

That went over pretty big.

One funny thing I must say,

when we started out selling them,

I had heard that they,

'cause I knew people at the company,

that they used to have meetings and

wonder why is Marvel out selling us?

And some genius would get up

and say,

"I think it's 'cause Stan uses a lot

of dialogue balloons on the covers."

So, the minute I would hear that,

for the next few months, I'd take all

the dialogue balloons off the covers.

Or they'd say, 'cause we use

a lot of red on our covers.

So for the next few months,

no red on the covers.

It must have driven 'em crazy.

And I never could understand

why it didn't occur to them

that we were trying

to talk to the readers

instead of just doing stories,

you know?

And I think that was

the main thing.

You involved the readers in a way that

DC comics didn't particularly back then.

But things change. I mean, DC,

now they're doing great stuff.

I even did some books for them.

And you've done some stuff

for DC as well.

And they're great guys. All the

comics are getting so much better.

The books that you're writing,

the new Editor, Joe Quesada,

he has managed to...

You know, like I mentioned, the most

important thing is to have the right talent.

Joe Quesada has hired

such terrific artists

and writers who had never

been with Marvel before.

It's a real competition now

between the companies,

and the only one

who profits is the reader.

Yeah. Too true.

And there was a period in the

'90s, where it was a very

art-driven medium,

where artists were the stars.

And now I would imagine something

that must kind of please you is

that it's come back to the writers.

Writers kind of drive the sales

of comic books at this point

because people are more interested

in the story than anything else.

Suddenly, for some reason.

You know, it's like anything else.

It's a collaboration.

If you have great stories

and weak artwork,

the stories don't seem that

great and vice versa.

I sometimes think the artwork is

still a little more important

because it's the artwork, I think,

that makes you buy the book.

If you see the average reader,

he goes into a store, he

thumbs through a lot of books,

something will catch his eye,

and he'll buy that one.

Very rarely is it the story itself,

because he doesn't

have time to read it.

But if the story doesn't live

up to the artwork, you're nowhere.

I think it's 50-50.

Now, you came up in a time

where it was newsstand, the

business was all newsstand.

So, then you saw

the evolution of the direct market.

What was that like?

Watching suddenly comic book stores,

stores like this store,

Hi De Ho in Santa Monica,

dedicated to selling

comic books come about?

It was the greatest thing.

Well, it all started

when we had fans.

All of a sudden with the

Fantastic Four,

Hulk, Spider-man, Daredevil,

we started getting real fan letters.

And as I mentioned,

we answered 'em,

and tried to encourage the fans,

and that was a new thing.

And then everything seemed

to happen at once.

Suddenly, fan conventions started.

Suddenly, stores like Hi De Ho

opened up that specialized in comics.

Suddenly comics became a thing.

Like Star Trek, there were

comic book conventions.

Its own medium.

And it's been growing ever

since, that excitement.

Right now, Wizard in Chicago

and the San Diego Comic Convention.

It's a very big thing.

The evolution of The X-Men

from what was a second-tier title

to probably Marvel's

best-known property

after Spider-Man, at this point.

Now, you created the X-Men,

and then later on,

people like Claremont,

Chris Claremont, defined them

and kind of turned them into

like what people know today.

Len Wein came up with Wolverine,

stuff like that.

Wolverine.

Len Wein did that, yeah.

That to me, I would imagine,

was kind of a...

A point of pride watching somebody

take something that you did,

and spinning it and creating

something a little more popular even.

I love the X-Men, and I love

the way Kirby did them.

You know, the idea...

I don't know if you remember

the first issue in the Danger

Room, that was Jack's idea.

And what a great way

of beginning a series,

to show them in the Danger Room.

We didn't mean for it to be a

second-tier book at all.

And it did well the first few issues.

And, in fact, I don't know if I told

you the story about the name, The X-Men.

I wanted to call it The Mutants.

Went to my publisher. He said

you cannot call it The Mutants.

Nobody knows what a mutant is.

Okay, he was the boss.

So I realized they had extra power.

I was gonna call their leader

Professor Xavier, "X."

So I figured I'll

call them the X-Men.

So I said that to the publisher.

He said that's fine.

And I thought to myself, "I'll never

understand top-level thinking."

If nobody is gonna

know what a mutant is,

how will anybody know

what an X-Man is?

But I had a title,

and I wasn't gonna, um...

Rock the boat at that point?

Yeah. I loved the series,

but after Jack and I did the

first few,

I don't remember how many,

4, 5, 10, I don't know,

we both got busy with other things,

and I had to drop something,

and the reason I dropped the

X-Men and Jack went off it,

not because we thought

it was less of a strip,

but there were so many characters,

it took a little longer to write.

So I just gave it up

because it was the toughest

one to do of all of them,

and then other people took it over.

In the beginning, the sales

dropped when we left the book,

but then, as you said,

when Chris Claremont and John Byrne

and all the people who took

it on later took it over...

Because basically

it was a solid strip.

Sales started to really rise.

So, you are the father of

mutants in the Marvel universe.

Yeah.

And that was done out of laziness.

Again, as I mentioned,

when you do superheroes,

you have to say how

they get their power.

Well, I was bored with cosmic

rays and gamma rays

and radioactivity, and I was

running out of things,

and I figured, "What if

they're just mutants?"

I don't have to explain anything.

We know there are

mutants in the world.

There are mutant vegetables,

mutant trees, frogs.

Okay, they're born mutants.

That gets me off the hook.

I can then do whatever I want.

So, it was done...

Really, it was a cop-out.

It's so funny and it gives

birth to years of continuity

and legend and mythos and...

But look how easy it is.

This comes from a guy who's just,

like, "I don't know.

"The guy could have red coming

out of his eyes, who knows?"

That's right,

but look how easy it is.

You want somebody who

can walk through walls?

He was born that way.

He's a mutant.

Nice.

I guess a Fantastic Four movie

now in the works,

like, a big budget, huge effort.

Kinda like the X-Men as well.

It'll be a big one, and the

same with the Silver Surfer.

As I understand, he's one of

your favorite creations.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you can tell

by talking to me.

I'm very deep and very philosophical.

Yes, yes.

But the Silver Surfer

allowed me to get a lot of my

corny, philosophical points

across through his dialogue.

I always could have him

saying things like...

Now you remember,

he's from another planet,

and he comes along and soars

over earth, looking down,

and, "What's wrong

with these earthlings?

"They have a planet

that should be paradise.

"It's the Garden of Eden.

It has everything.

"Clean air, good food, oceans,

land, whatever you could want.

"And yet they fight

and have crimes.

"They hate each other, and they...

"What's wrong?

Are they insane?"

All the things that I think about

and, I think,

most people think about.

I was able to let him

voice those things.

And there's another thing.

Because he's from another planet,

I was able to write

his dialogue differently.

His English wasn't...

It was perfect,

but it wasn't perfect

the way you or I would speak.

And I loved that about Doctor Doom.

I had him speaking in a more

highfalutin kind of way.

And I love writing

different kind of dialogue.

Like with Thor, I tried to

combine him with the Bible

and Shakespeare when he talked.

And Dr. Strange with his incantations.

To me, dialogue is so interesting

and so much fun to write.

Iron Man was a character who,

later on,

in comics, had a drinking problem.

We made him a drunkard, an alcoholic.

We thought that was

a good thing to do.

And, um, I didn't write

those stories,

but I loved the fact that we

did it, and I was all for it.

And it was done very well, too.

But you created Iron Man?

Oh, yeah.

Where's that come from?

Being a little bit of a rebel.

In those days,

young people were very much against

war, against the establishment,

so I said, just for fun, I'm gonna

get a character who's a multimillionaire

and who manufactures war material,

you know, armaments,

and I'm gonna make him

likeable somehow.

And I kind of based him

on Howard Hughes, in a way.

Came up with Tony Stark.

Now, again, in order to make

the character empathetic...

And they all have to have

a weakness of some sort.

I gave him a weak heart. He never knows

when his heart'll conk out on him,

so he's afraid to have

a serious relationship

with a girl, which made it easy to

write stories with different girls.

Would have made a great TV series.

There could be a different

girl in every episode.

So, um, and then he

had his iron armor.

Now, because he was so rich,

I had...

And again, in trying

to make all our characters

somehow come together, mingle,

when we had the Avengers, I had

them use his mansion on fifth Avenue

as their headquarters.

I like Tony Stark.

He was one of the few characters,

his name didn't begin with the

same first letter and last letter.

And I don't know

how I blew it there.

I must have been careless.

But a character whose name did begin

with first letter and last letter,

Bruce Banner.

Now, during the run of the very

successful TV show,

during the mid-to-late '70s,

they called him David Banner

on the show,

as opposed to Bruce Banner

in the comics. Why?

I hate to say it.

It's so stupid.

It's a great story.

It is so stupid!

And it's also perfect

network thinking.

His name was Bruce Banner.

And when they start doing the show,

I see in the script they have

him called David Banner.

So, I called whoever it is

you call at the network,

and I said, "Hey, you guys, there's

a typo there. You wrote the wrong name."

"No, no. It's intentional."

"Well, why did you change his

name from Bruce to David?"

"Well, Bruce sounds too homosexual."

I mean, there you go.

The Hulk was gay, essentially.

Astounding.

So, there's no pull

to just be like,

"Look, call him what he was."

Well, what we did... I had them,

as a sop to my feelings,

they called him David Bruce Banner,

but they referred to him

as David all the time.

But Bruce was his middle name.

And now they're going to turn that

into a big-screen franchise

as well, with Ang Lee.

That'll be wonderful.

With Ang Lee. Yeah.

And now, it's also... You're talking

about when they did the show,

they threw the makeup

on Lou Ferrigno,

and now they can create the

Hulk as he should be realized,

as a huge monster, with CG.

I mean, it's got to be great

for you to sit back

and watch movies now where

they can actually realize

all the things you

created so long ago.

Visually realize them.

It's a funny thing, though.

When I watch them,

I forget that I was

involved in them.

I just watch them and enjoy

them, you know?

"Wow, it's clever

the way they did that!

"Wow, that's terrific!"

You know?

I'm just one of the fans, really.

But, as I told you,

I'm a big fan of me.

Yeah, exactly.