A workaholic like Lee used the extra time to keep his fingers dipped in Timely ink and his pockets filled with Goodman’s money. The extra income enabled him to purchase his first automobile while stationed at Duke University—a 1936 Plymouth, a beat-up wreck he paid $20 for, but it ran, and even had a fold-up windshield that allowed the warm North Carolina wind to blow in his face.
Lee filled in where he could. Wherever the Army sent him, he received letters from Goodman’s editors on Fridays, which would outline the stories they needed. In his spare time, he would type them up and send them back on Monday so that he hit the deadlines the editors established.
In addition to working for Fago in the comic book division, Lee also helped out with the pulp side of the firm. This effort included writing cartoon captions for Read! magazine, one of Goodman’s publications aimed at adult audiences. An example of Lee’s short ditties from January 1943: “A buzz-saw can cut you in two / A machine-gun can drill you right thru / But these things are tame, compared— / To what a woman can do!” The accompanying drawing shows a plump woman feeding her bald husband, who is chained to a doghouse.15 The ribald humor fit in during that era and certainly within the men’s magazines that Goodman put out, which were filled with sexist overtones, racy photographs, and plenty of violence.
Lee also continued to write the kind of mystery-with-a-twist-ending short stories that he had earlier written for Joe Simon in the Captain America comics. In “Only the Blind Can See,” which appeared in Goodman’s Joker magazine (1943– 1944), the joke is on the reader. What he eventually finds out is that a supposedly blind panhandler, whom people assumed was a phony, actually was blind. Written in the second person so Lee can speak directly to the reader, whom he addresses as “Buddy,” one learns that the down-on-his-luck beggar had too much pride to confront those who thought he faked it. He had to get run over in the street by a speeding car before people would realize the truth.16 These kinds of short stories were the training ground for the science fiction and monster comic books that Lee would later write in the postwar period.
While Lee’s after-hours work for Timely went largely unnoticed by his superiors and fellow soldiers, the freelance effort once got him arrested in typical Lee madcap fashion. He routinely picked up his assignments in Friday’s mail, which gave him time to write over the weekend when he had more free time. One Friday a bored mail clerk overlooked his letter, explaining that nothing arrived in Lee’s mailbox. The next day, however, Lee swung by the now-closed mailroom and spied a letter in his cubby with the Timely return address on display.
Not willing to miss a deadline, Lee asked the officer in charge to open the mail-room. The officer turned him down, telling Lee to drop it and worry about the mail on Monday. Angry, Lee got a screwdriver and gently unscrewed the mailbox hinges, enabling him to get at the assignment. The mailroom officer saw what he did and turned him in to a base captain who did not like Lee. The young man faced mail tampering charges and a potential trip to Leavenworth prison if convicted. Luckily, the colonel in charge of the Finance Department intervened before the dispute went too far and saved Lee’s bacon. In this instance, Fiscal Freddy really did save the day!17
This single run-in with the authorities stood as the one blip on Lee’s otherwise spotless military record. He served out the rest of his wartime tenure strapped to a desk, churning out training materials and posters.
Sergeant Lee signed his name and rolled his ink-stained thumb across the single-page army discharge paper. Practically before the ink dried, the young civilian, then just twenty-three years old, jumped into his new car, a large black Buick convertible with hot red leather seats and flashy whitewall tires with shiny hubcaps. The Buick was a noticeable upgrade from the battered Plymouth he had bought in North Carolina.
Lee received a $200 bonus (called “muster-out pay”), which the army gave out so that soldiers could jump-start their return to civilian life, but he skipped the mandatory class that went along with the funds. He deposited half in a savings account prior to leaving. It was late September 1945 and the army had allotted him $42.12 to get back to New York City from the discharge center at Camp Atterbury in central Indiana, about fifty miles south of where he had been stationed at Fort Harrison.
A car junkie, especially admiring long, sleek convertibles, Lee hit the open road. So excited was he to go back to his native city, Lee joked that he “burned my uniform, hopped into my car, and made it non-stop back to New York in possibly the same speed as the Concorde!”18 He wanted to get back to his helm at Timely, which Goodman had consolidated with his magazine operations in a new headquarters on the fourteenth floor of the Empire State Building. Lee zoomed off on the more than seven-hundred-mile trip back east to the Big Apple.
CHAPTER 4
RETURN TO MARVEL
All arms and legs, almost like an animated character careening across the screen, Stan Lee proved a frenetic blur weaving in, out, around, and by agitated pedestrians window-shopping along Broadway. He dashed the two-and-a-half-mile route south from his new two-room abode at the Alamac Hotel to the Timely Comics office in the majestic Empire State Building. Passing the riding stables in Central Park, he sometimes jumped on a horse and spent some time galloping around the hard-beaten paths before getting on with his daily grind at the office. His feet scratching across the sidewalk created a wild beat matched only by the thoughts bursting in his head and the scripts these ideas represented.
The postwar years brimmed with opportunity for go-getters like Lee. Comic book sales had soared during World War II. People wanted a diversion, especially the men on the front or those working on various bases at home and abroad to support the effort. Comic books filled a need for easy, quick reading that was fun filled, exciting, and a diversion from the brutality of the constant media attention regarding death tolls, fierce battles, and innumerable injuries. After the war, industry insiders estimated that 90 percent of children and teens from ages eight to fifteen read comic books on a regular basis.
Because Lee had stayed active in the comic book game during his army stint, he knew that although genres might change periodically, comic book readers were hooked. The nation seemed electric after the war ended. Popular culture in all its variations burst forth in vivid new colors, sounds, and images after the war years defined by rationing and sacrifice. It was a good time to be in publishing.
Lee returned to New York City and Goodman’s Timely Comics headquarters after his army hijinks in the great American Midwest. The Alamac Hotel on Broadway and Seventy-First Street was a stately nineteen-story, dark brown brick edifice that had been completed in 1925. The hotel became a home for many jazz groups in the mid- to late 1920s, as well as an away trip locale for major league baseball teams. The Alamac had some six hundred guestrooms, as well as a handful of shops and a restaurant on the ground level. Later, in the early 1950s, the CIA would use the Alamac as a safe house for German scientists and technicians working for American national defense operations during the Cold War.
After being shuttled around to different army bases and training facilities in the middle of nowhere during the war, Lee thrilled at returning to his home city. The Alamac provided a steady flow of new friends and acquaintances. More importantly, it gave him a forty-block walk to the Timely office. Although more than an hour by foot, Lee walked back and forth, his frantic energy keeping his loopy legs loose. He walked almost everywhere in the city, regardless of the distance, because he wanted to stay in shape and work off his excess energy. Lee fully embraced the sights and sounds of the city on his daily commute, from the thrills of Times Square to the towering skyscrapers and mass of humanity coursing through the streets. Sometimes he would rent a boat and row out on the lake in Central Park.
Lee thoroughly enjoyed his job. He felt like he had a new lease on life with a nice place to live, a steady (and growing) income, and plenty of young women to date. Yet there were aggravations, too. “One thing that both irritated and frustrated me,” he explained, �
��was the fact that nobody, outside of our own little circle, had a good word to say about comic books.”1 With most people finding them nothing more than a waste of time, Lee felt as if he were spinning his wheels.
All the outside negativity led to bouts of self-consciousness about working in comics, despite his general happiness in the business. For someone so intent on success and with feelings running through his head almost from birth that he would achieve greatness, exasperation set in. During the war, he had served with some of the great creative minds in the nation; now he was back to being just a comic book writer. Only in his mid-twenties, Lee felt that he still had his whole life in front of him, but what kind of life would it be in an industry that most people thought simply catered to young children, simple teens, and underachieving young adults?
Although Lee bristled at the reaction he received from people who asked him what he did for a living, he really loved the focus on writing and creating at Timely. Working among his colleagues in the Signal Corps Training Film Division, the young man witnessed firsthand the true value of animation, films, and entertainment as a means to educate and enlighten audiences. If anything, the war demonstrated just how widespread the entertainment and creative industries would become.
Consumers turned to these cultural forms at exactly the moment when they had more money to spend on them and additional free time because of the technological advances made during the war and the booming postwar economy. The United States reached true superpower status and the benefits propelled the creation of thriving middle- and upper-middle classes. Yet, Lee also had to reconcile his daily joy with the sideways glances he got when people found out what he did for a living.
Naysayers didn’t know Lee’s past and the emphasis that it drove deep into his thinking about having a steady job and paycheck. Like so many of the Eastern European and Jewish artists and writers who populated the comic book industry, Lee’s experience with poverty and his father’s chronic unemployment weighed on him. Timely provided a job and the editor’s position paid well, plus he liked the work. Finding a way to wipe the smirk off people’s faces when they found out he wrote and edited funny animal and teen romance comics would have to wait.
In his absence, Goodman had created a small staff to run Timely—most notably turning over the editorial reins to his friend Vince Fago—but that crew had turned out millions upon millions of comic books during the war. Goodman’s wallet got fatter and fatter, which made Lee’s return to civilian life and the top of the masthead at the comic book company painless. Fago wanted to get back to full-time drawing, so Lee’s homecoming went smoothly as the comic book division reverted to the young editor’s control.
Timely’s focus had changed while Lee served in the military. Fago’s expertise in non-superhero comics pushed the emphasis in that direction, while readers grew interested in other topics outside superheroes. Goodman’s publishing house was serving an almost entirely different audience when Lee returned. The whole industry had reacted to the growing popularity of Archie and his teenage gang of friends in Archie Comics, which had first published in late 1942. Like a good company man, Lee quickly turned his efforts to comics featuring young female heroines and teen humor, which the public craved.
Ruth Atkinson, a renowned artist and writer, created the smash hit Millie the Model, which began its long run in late 1945, just as Lee was settling back into the editor’s chair. As one of the first females in comic books, Atkinson paved the way for other women to join the industry. She also came up with Patsy Walker, a spin-off from the old Miss America Magazine series. In typical Timely manner, Lee jumped on any and all bandwagons, creating Nellie the Nurse, another nod to the new teen humor/romance category.
As 1945 came to an end, paper restrictions set in place during the war were lifted and the comic book industry took flight. Across 1946, some forty million copies sold monthly at newsstands. While the stalwarts continued to sell pretty well, including Fawcett’s Captain Marvel and DC’s Superman and Batman, readers moved away from superhero titles and on to crime stories, teen romps, and science fiction.
Late in 1946, Lee tried to mix the popularity of the female heroine stories with the superhero genre by cocreating Blonde Phantom.2 As secretary to private eye Mark Mason, Louise Grant kept her Blonde Phantom identity a secret. But at night she wore a bright red evening gown and mask, fighting criminals with a mix of martial arts skills and a trusty .45-caliber pistol. Blonde Phantom was in the vein of DC’s Wonder Woman and the Timely’s own Miss America. Her character was launched as a solo comic, beginning with Blonde Phantom Comics #12, which lasted about two years. During that time, she appeared in anthologies in several other Timely collections.
In a kind of last-ditch effort to revive the superhero stories, Lee combined a number of Timely’s heroes into a super team, much like DC’s Justice Society of America, which had debuted in All Star Comics #3 (Winter 1940–1941). All Winners Comics #19 (Fall 1946) featured Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Whizzer, Miss America, and their various teen sidekicks. Lee’s typical cover blurb jumped out at the reader, promising: “a complete SIZZLING, ACTION THRILLER!” The editor hired famed Batman cocreator Bill Finger to script the new superhero team. Finger centered the initial story on a villain’s attempt to steal a nuclear weapon. In a sweeping indictment of the decline of superheroes among comic book readers, the All Winners team proved a shipwreck of All Losers. The title appeared once more before Goodman canceled it. This decision came on the heels of another team ending, Young Allies Comics #20, which had been going strong since its launch in Summer 1941 by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. For Lee, the evolving marketplace meant throwing every possible genre at the wall to see what would stick.
The comic book industry grew overall, despite the dark clouds over the super-hero set. Lee received a major dose of positive publicity in November 1947 when Writer’s Digest magazine asked him to pen its cover story. Still not yet twenty-five years old when the magazine appeared on newsstands, the boyish Lee chomped on a pipe in the cover image, struggling to look older and wiser than his actual years. Although he still doubted that his long-term future resided in the comic book business, he took on the persona of a seasoned pro in discussing the industry. The field’s growing popularity made it a good feature for Writer’s Digest and gave Lee his first national exposure.
The story: “There’s Money in Comics!” offered would-be writers advice for breaking into comic books, including the emphasis on realistic dialogue and its relation to character development. The article is an early and significant indication of Lee’s thinking about writing. He would use these same foundational ideas when he later created the tenets of the Marvel style during the company’s 1960s heyday. Like many young writers who are working their way through a unique voice, Lee demonstrated that he had a mature vision of what it took to be successful in the field.
While Lee’s personal brand started generating interest, Goodman dropped the “Timely” name, fiddling with variations on “Marvel,” but ultimately axing those, too. Sales continued to grow across the comic book industry, but publishers scrambled to find the magic elixir that the reading public desired. They jumped from topic to topic, ultimately dipping into different ideas, including the new teen romance field, which Simon and Kirby launched with Young Romance (September 1947) for Crestwood/Prize. The longtime creative duo struck gold. As a first-person narrative of “true” stories, Young Romance sold in the millions. The success enabled Simon and Kirby to launch and then oversee a mini-empire built on the comic book’s tremendous sales. Always on the lookout for talented freelancers, the industry veterans hired a handful of the best to produce the comic book under their attentive, scrutinizing eyes. Some estimates assert that the Young Romance books and the various offshoots derived from the title sold about five million copies a month for the rest of the 1940s.3 The series ran through June 1963, when Crestwood sold the series to DC, which then published it until 1975.
In the postwar era and as
the Cold War gripped the nation, the comic book industry endured successive waves of genres that seemed to change annually. Readers bounced from one to the other. Superheroes gave way to teen comedy, which then morphed into romance titles, and next mutated into cowboy comics and true crime books. Of course, Goodman’s now anonymous comic book line continued to appear on the newsstands and stay in the upper echelon of publishers, but never with the creative spark that enabled it to gain much ground on the larger firms. As always, he ordered Lee to follow the lead set by competitors. As a result, in late 1947, Sub-Mariner Comics suddenly became Official True Crime Cases Comics #24, with the latter taking over the sequential order of the superhero title.4
As people’s entertainment preferences settled on film and television, each medium exerted influence on comics. The popularity of cowboy movie stars—first Gene Autry, then Roy Rogers—sparked interest in western comics. Rogers, along with his trusty horse Trigger and wife Dale Evans, appeared in popular films like King of the Cowboys (1943) and Home in Oklahoma (1947). From the early 1940s through the late 1950s, Rogers stood as the nation’s most popular and successful cowboy actor. His groundbreaking licensing agreement put his image and likeness on countless products, second only to those of Walt Disney. Rogers had released hit records and starred in a long-running radio show that he later moved to television after it became a staple in American homes.
Western-crazed readers turned to Fawcett’s Hopalong Cassidy, which sold four million copies in 1947 and eight million the following year. DC brought out Dale Evans Comics in late 1948 to capitalize on the actress’s popularity and connection to Rogers. Goodman published series like Wild Western (1948–1957) under the Western Fiction Publishing Company imprint, one of the publisher’s ploys for keeping costs spread across the organization. Wild Western was a vehicle for the character Kid Colt, but also introduced a rotating group of other heroes, ranging from Apache Kid to Arizona Annie. Lee served as general editor of Wild Western and wrote some of the stories himself. A rotating cast of freelancers and staff artists drew the issues.
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