By March 1948, Lee was fully aboard the cowboy wave, launching Two-Gun Kid #1, a singing hero, just like Rogers and Autry. Five months later, Kid Colt, Hero of The West #1 hit newsstands, giving the popular character its stand-alone book. The comic featured a fast-draw sharpshooter who kills the bad guy who murdered his father and then hunts for redemption by becoming Kid Colt, despite his fugitive status. The hero that is neither fully good nor fully bad was an early precursor to the superheroes Lee and his team would create a little more than a decade later.
Lee’s favorite cowboy character was Black Rider, a doctor by day who donned a secret identity to battle criminals. The comic allowed Lee a rare opportunity apart from his writing and editing duties. Goodman did not get involved with the dayto-day intricacies of running his magazines and comics, especially when titles made money, but he did have a lifelong fascination with covers. He preferred featuring photographs on the covers of his comic books, as he did with early Miss America comics and many of his pulp slicks. For one of the Black Rider issues, Lee donned the black outfit and mask, appearing on the cover holding two six-shooters and looking ominous.
The shifting interests of comic book readers made publishers nervous. In the frenzy to keep sales figures soaring, it seemed as if the publishers started pushing too hard and began toying with standards of decency, similar to the wave of semi-pornographic slick mags many publishers produced in the 1920s and 1930s. One of the most influential categories that took flight at the end of the decade also brought with it a bout of negativity that would later nearly topple the entire comic book industry—true crime and crime-based books.
In 1948, the crime comics market took off and every publisher launched new titles, some relatively tame, others filled with lurid tales and overt violence. For example, the cover of Murder Incorporated (January 1948) from Fox showed a buxom, angry female firing a bullet into a man who had cheated at cards and his reaction as if the bullet had just entered his chest. Although the cover blurb announced “For Adults Only,” certainly the creators aimed the stories at a younger audience.
Overall, the popularity of crime comics raised the number of titles published that year by 20 percent over the previous year and up 50 percent over two years. The downside of the crime book mania was that adults saw the violence and lurid images as threats to the morals of younger readers. In 1948, Time published an article that implied some juveniles committed copycat crimes after being influenced by reading comic books. The panic grew into a nationwide crisis. Stories about delinquency and crime sold newspapers and magazines, so the media picked up on the story and created further controversy. Frederic Wertham, an influential author and psychiatrist, also fueled the anti-comics propaganda. He organized a symposium that concluded comic books glorified crime, violence, and sexuality. Suddenly, the comic book industry had a real crisis on its hands.
Throughout the postwar years, Lee managed the comic book division, always staying extremely busy. He had boundless energy and an engaging imagination, but did not seem to possess the entrepreneurial spirit to launch his own gig, the savvy that pushed other artists and writers like Joe Simon and William Gaines to resist the indentured servitude attitude held by the publishers. For Lee, the steady paycheck meant something, and he genuinely enjoyed working with the other writers, editors, and artists that teamed to bring out comics, even if he found much of their work derivative. He summed up a typical interaction with Goodman, explaining, “Every few months a new trend and we’d be right there, faithfully following each one. . . . I felt that we were a company of copycats.”5
Although his career prior to World War II revolved around comic books, Lee grew restless after his return from military service. Perhaps he realized that his words had meaning and power outside of zany animal stories or monster books directed primarily at children.
When Lee did venture away from Goodman’s clutches, he focused on safe projects that played to his strengths. The success of the Writer’s Digest cover story led him to think about the budding industry and how writers and artists might get a foot in the door. In 1947, he self-published the magazine Secrets Behind the Comics, which he priced for one dollar, a high price for readers at a time when comic books sold for ten cents. Using comic book–like fonts and illustrations of the writing and drawing process, the book featured “by Stan Lee” in prominent script on the cover and contained his typical zest and enthusiasm. The book’s dedication is to Lee’s little brother, Larry, and Goodman’s children, Iden and Chip.
Ironically, Lee is “Secret No. 1,” which answers the reader’s questions about who Lee is and why he wrote the book. Accompanied by an illustrated headshot of Lee looking studious, with a pencil behind his ear and a dotted bow tie, the introduction lists the many publications Lee worked on as “Managing Editor and Art Director” at Timely.6 The Lee trademark writing style jumps out on nearly every page: “NOW, for the first time ever in the world, Stan Lee will show you exactly how comic strips are WRITTEN!!!”7 In addition to Lee’s “secrets,” the book had blank illustration areas where readers could attempt to draw the Blonde Phantom based on Lee’s script.
Every so often, Lee edited or managed a magazine for adults (or maybe better put, Goodman dangled the chance in front of his young protégé). Although comics sold enormous numbers of copies during World War II, the medium barely registered as a “real” career for adults. The pulps, however, had a bit more respectability, even the schlock that Goodman put out. When he needed extra hands, Goodman would get Lee to work on a magazine, such as the celebrity pinup Focus in 1950. Dubbed a “photo bedsheet” magazine because it measured ten inches wide and fourteen inches tall, Focus aimed squarely at American male readers (or at least those men interested in looking at pictures) with bikini-clad cover models (including future screen star Marilyn Monroe) and lurid cover headlines. The next year, though, the publisher changed the format to a small pocket-sized magazine, only four by six inches.8 Goodman notoriously fiddled with magazine cover images, titles, and the physical size of the publication, always hoping that some minor change in a magazine idea he got from one of his competitors would lead to huge sales.
Lee’s dissatisfaction continued, but he did not want to rock the boat too much or risk losing his job. Like so many people who remembered the ravages of the Great Depression, Lee carried an inborn fear of joblessness and lack of security. He did not have to go back very deep in his memory to remember his parents arguing about scrounging up the next month’s rent and what would happen if the family were evicted.
Lee’s boundless energy led to numerous additional freelance opportunities. Many of these went unsigned or were done under someone else’s name, since the writer did not want to risk getting fired by Goodman. “I ghosted them under other people’s names,” Lee explained. The work ran the gamut from television shows and radio programs to writing advertising copy. One of the few he did sign his name to was the Sunday Howdy Doody newspaper strip, which ran during the puppet’s height of popularity from 1950 to 1953.9
The busy editor spent long hours running Goodman’s comic book division. However, he also enjoyed the energy and revitalized spirit of postwar New York City nightlife. The city seemed like the best place in the world to Lee, plenty of attractive women to date, many things to do, and a vibrancy that is uniquely New York. In 1947 his life changed dramatically when he met English model and actress Joan Clayton Boocock. Lee’s cousin had planned to set him up on a blind date with a model he knew and told Lee to meet her at the modeling agency. However, when he knocked on the door, Joan answered. Lee blurted out that he loved her and had been drawing her face since he was a little boy. Rather than run in horror, she laughed at the offhanded exultation and went out with him. Soon they were an item.
Joan had a successful career as a hat model, but had come to the United States as a war bride after marrying an American officer in Great Britain. Realizing the marriage had been a mistake, she planned to go to Reno, Nevada, for a divorce, since New York state
laws made divorce nearly impossible. In the Wild West of Nevada, a woman only had to be in residence for six weeks.
Lee waited nervously while Joan served her time in Reno, but the young model drew many suitors. After Lee received a letter from her addressed, “Dear Jack,” he knew he had to take quick action. Throwing caution to the wind, he took a circuitous, twenty-eight-hour plane trip west. When he finally arrived, Lee convinced Joan of his love and they pulled a Reno special: meeting with the judge to nullify the marriage in one room, then walking into the next room over, where the same judge then married them. In a matter of minutes, Joan Boocock became Mrs. Stan Lee.10
The young couple took the train back across the nation as the Christmas holiday shopping season descended on the Big Apple. They moved into a tiny apartment in Manhattan on Ninety-Sixth Street, between Lexington Avenue and Fifth Avenue, not far from the Central Park Reservoir, and on the other side of the park from his former digs at the Alamac Hotel. For the city boy who lived almost his entire life in tiny apartments, the place seemed palatial. He and Joanie settled in and got two dogs, cocker spaniels named Hamlet and Hecuba.
Two years later, Lee’s mother passed away. Larry, his fifteen-year-old brother, needed a place to stay, so he joined the young married couple. Sensing that they needed a more suburban setting, the little family moved to a small town on Long Island, purchasing an eight-room house on West Broadway in Hewlett Harbor. They bought a green Buick convertible that had been owned by a Blue Angel pilot, and had the novelty of “a huge flying female as a radiator ornament.”11
Lee and Joan enjoyed the fruits of his successful career (like many men in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he did not want Joan pursuing a career). In 1951, the couple and their young daughter, Joan Celia (born a year earlier in 1950, then called “Little Joan,” but later known as “J.C.” as an adult), moved into a house not far away at 226 Richards Lane in Hewlett Harbor. Stan and Joan liked the charm of the slightly aged house, built about a quarter of a century before the Lees moved in. The street name in their new home most certainly influenced Lee’s decision years later to name the head of the Fantastic Four Reed Richards.12
Only a couple miles away lived Martin Goodman and his family. The Goodman children spent a lot of time at the Lee home. Goodman’s son Iden even learned to drive in the Lee’s driveway.13 Although Lee distanced himself from his boss/relative and made their relationship seem detached, there is quite a bit of evidence that shows how intertwined they actually were. The Lees needed support of family and friends when their second child, a daughter named Jan, died just three days after her birth in 1953. Unlike many couples that lose a child, Stan and Joan managed to overcome their grief and build a stable, happy family for themselves and J.C.
The Hewlett Harbor carriage house sat on a two-acre property and had a separate room for Lee to work. After moving to Long Island, Lee took the one-hour commute back into Manhattan to meet with artists and get their completed pages but gradually started working from home one or two days per week. Staying on Long Island gave Lee a method for meeting the frantic pace necessary for delivering numerous comic books on a tight schedule. Since his job included managing the staff and freelancers, as well as approving art and editorial, the handful of hours he saved each week made a difference. Goodman’s strategy centered on flooding the marketplace with comics. Lee had to create that deluge.
Lee also benefited from being at home with his family. On warm days, he would take his typewriter out to the patio and place it on a bridge table, creating a makeshift standing desk, so he could act out the stories and type while standing up. Joan bought the family a little twelve-foot, round plastic pool to use when the summer sun really heated up. Lee joked that he could “swim” the length of the pool in a stroke and a half. Later, in the Timely office, he would joke with coworkers, “Well, I did 100 laps today.”14
Committed to making money to keep the upper-middle-class dream alive, Lee hunkered down, pouring his energy into writing, editing, and art direction for Goodman’s comic book division. Although prone to visions of grandeur and some wild behavior, like jumping up on desks to act out scenes as his freelancers watched in awe, Lee developed into an energetic, encouraging, and savvy editorial director.
The more scripts he wrote, the more important he became to Goodman’s bottom line, and the more page-rate bonuses he earned, which kept the Lee family afloat. Talented and with an inhuman amount of creativity and speed, Lee wrote fast and enjoyed the benefits of being the boss, but he still couldn’t shake bouts of depression and worry about his future. Lee called this era his “limbo years.” It seemed as if he had slipped into a rut: “Go to the office—come home and write—weekends and evenings. Between stories, go out to dinner with Joanie, play with little Joanie, look at cars.”15 The money afforded the Lees a great lifestyle, but he had to work nonstop to keep it moving.
As the nation slipped from postwar euphoria to Cold War fear and the Truman years transformed into the Ike age, Lee had achieved what most Americans aspired to: gain meaningful employment, start a family, and own a home. But, just like so many others in his shoes, he felt unfulfilled professionally. While he enjoyed the one-on-one relationships with his staff and freelance team, the relentless production cycle created a pressure-filled workplace.
More importantly, he bristled at the perception that writing for comic books wasn’t real writing. As a result, Lee questioned his future in comic books. When he had the time, he dabbled in outside writing—much of it anonymously—and took on additional opportunities that might enable him to leap out of the business.
Lee wasn’t quite sure what he should do next.
CHAPTER 5
PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE
Comic books burned!
All across America makeshift bonfires blazed in town squares, church parking lots, and on school ball fields meant for athletic events. Adults turned against comic books and whipped children and young people into a frenzy, demanding that they reject the comic books that they loved and had gladly plopped down their nickels, dimes, and pennies to buy. Setting the comics aflame and seeing the smoke lift skyward, both parents and youngsters sent a message to publishers far away in New York City, their local political leaders, and other stakeholders: we will no longer stand for this!
“Criminal or sexually abnormal ideas . . . an atmosphere of deceit, trickery and cruelty”—these are the thoughts that comic books ensconced in young readers’ minds, according to the anti–comic book crusader Frederic Wertham, a grandstanding psychiatrist and author of the polemical 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent.1 Since the late 1940s, Wertham had been stirring his troops, constantly railing against comic books and their creators in any newspaper, radio program, or forum that would listen. A national scourge, he argued, a menace that needed to be erased from American culture. In his mind, comic books were a form of evil that surpassed even the wanton cruelty, murder, and destruction propagated by Adolf Hitler.
Wertham saw a direct correlation between juvenile delinquency and the violence, gore, and lurid sexuality comic book publishers proffered. The future of America’s children, in Wertham’s mind, hinged on the rejection of comics and the inherent immorality the books embodied.
For Wertham, the nation’s moral compass stood in the balance!
As far back as 1938, religious organizations such as a Catholic group called the National Organization for Decent Literature (NODL) rallied against “indecent literature.” A group of Catholic bishops declared that comics and lewd magazines were “printed obscenity” and “an evil of such magnitude as seriously to threaten the moral, social and national life of our country.” Ultimately, the bishops claimed that such publications would “weaken morality and thereby destroy religion and subvert the social order.”2 In 1939, the group calculated that some fifteen million copies of immoral publications were being published and reaching about sixty million readers per month. Bishop John F. Noll, NODL chairman from Fort Wayne, Indiana, took the lead in cal
ling out New York City publishers who preyed on poor children and equated these efforts with Communist infiltration of American society.
The backlash against magazines and comic books abated somewhat during the war years, but in the postwar era, the pendulum eventually swung back to comics. When the media picked up on the rage, the resulting firestorm resulted in local governments trying to prevent comics from being sold and more intense public protest. The criticism of comic books was similar to that of the recent past when film, music, and the literary world all fell under scrutiny. Whether it had been reactions to James Joyce’s Ulysses or the Hays Code that forced filmmakers to adhere to strict morality standards, mass culture came under criticism. The NODL listed anywhere from forty to one hundred forty comics it found offensive each month in its Priest newsletter between 1950 and 1954. Titles on the list included some obviously lurid comics, such as Crime Detective and Love Scandals, as well as the popular satire magazine Mad.3
After World War II, economic prosperity and military power combined to propel the nation. Simultaneously, however, more free time gave people the impetus to worry about issues and ideas that might be perceived as outside the norm. In an age of conformity, anything labeled atypical actually stood way beyond what mainstream tastemakers found appropriate. In the late 1940s, numerous national news outfits ran anti–comic book pieces, including ABC radio, the New Republic, and Collier’s.
The comic book industry played into the hands of reformers by publishing an avalanche of crime books and horror comics that featured extensive explicit, violent, and sexual content. Some of the publishers realized that the gathering storm could really imperil their industry. In late 1948, several leaders banded together, hiring Henry Schultz as “comic book czar” to lead the new Association of Comics Magazine Publishers (ACMP). Schultz had served as an attorney and member of New York’s Board of Higher Education. Over time, the ACMP made inroads, but never gained full membership, so publishing houses outside its purview simply ignored the group’s work. By 1950, the organization had withered away.4
Stan Lee Page 8