Stan Lee

by Bob Batchelor

  Instead of his swan song, however, Lee found himself inundated with fan mail, which had never happened before. Usually, the only gauge for a comic book’s success was sales figures, which wouldn’t be reported for many months after a comic book launch. As Lee examined the letters, he realized that readers in the twelve-to-fifteen-year-old age group had stumbled on the title and dug the angst they found inside. They begged for more, which bolstered Lee’s flagging spirits. After producing titles in bunches without much interaction from fans, the outpouring of support gave Lee what he needed at exactly the right moment.

  Ever the curmudgeon and cautious, Kirby reacted with less enthusiasm, not willing to jump on the emotional roller coaster he had been on with so many other “hit” comics in his career. He continued to write and draw; always churning out pages at an astonishing clip. Lee viewed the letters and cards he received as vindication of his idea that if he just created a comic book that he would enjoy as a reader, others would enjoy it too.

  The Fantastic Four did more than set the stage for Lee and Kirby to conceive more superheroes—it rejuvenated the entire comic book industry. After a career built on creating knockoff titles as fast as possible, Lee realized that he could assume a different role: trendsetter, rather than follower. He trusted in his instincts, his ability to tell stories that readers enjoyed, and Kirby’s phenomenal artistry.

  CHAPTER 7

  SPIDEY SAVES THE DAY!

  Bursting from the page and seemingly swinging right into the reader’s lap, a new superhero is all lean muscles and tautness. He is masked, only alien-like curved eyes reveal human features, no mouth or nose is visible. His power is alarming—casually holding a ghoulish-looking criminal in one hand, while simultaneously swinging from a hair-thin cord high above the city streets. In the background, tiny figures stand on rooftops, looking on and pointing in what can only be considered outright astonishment.

  The superhero is off-center, frozen in a moment, as if a panicked photographer snapped a series of frames. The image captures the speed, almost like flight, with the wind at his back. The hero’s deltoid ripples and leg muscles flex. Some mysterious webbing extends from his elbow to waist. Is this a man or creature from another world?

  The answer is actually neither. Looking at the bright yellow dialogue boxes running down the left side of the page, the reader learns the shocking truth. This isn’t a grown man, older and hardened, like Batman or Superman, one an existential nightmare and the other a do-gooder alien. No, this hero is just a self-professed “timid teenager” named Peter Parker. The world, he exclaims, mocks the teen under the mask, but will “marvel” at his newfound “awesome might.”

  Spider-Man is born.

  The 1962 debut of Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 happened because Lee took a calculated risk. He trusted his instincts, honed over decades of working in the chaotic comic book industry, which often seemed to run on trial and error more than logic. On the long path from the publisher to the newsstands, sales determined what each publisher offered. Fickle comic book fans frequently switched interests, leaving editors like Lee scratching their heads and trying to predict the next fad.

  Rolling the dice on a new character also meant potentially wasting precious hours writing, penciling, and inking a title that might not sell when that same time could be used on more profitable books. In an industry driven by talent and always against the clock, there were never enough good artists and writers to spare time for a series that did not sell. The business side of the industry constantly clashed with the creative aspects, forcing fast scripting and artwork to go hand in hand. The creative teams always raced against stringent monthly deadlines.

  In more than two decades toiling away as a comic book writer and editor, Lee watched genres spring to life, and then almost as quickly, readers would turn their attention to something else. War stories might give way to romance titles, which would then ride a wave until monster comics became popular, and then be superseded by aliens. In an era when a small group of publishers controlled the entire industry, they kept close watch over each other’s products in hopes of mimicking sales of hot titles.

  Lee calls publisher Martin Goodman, “One of the great imitators of all time.” Goodman dictated what Lee wrote after ferreting out tips and leads from golf matches and long lunches with other publishers. If he heard that westerns were selling for a competitor, Goodman would visit Lee, bellowing, “Stan, come up with some Westerns.”1 Every new fad meant immediately switching to those kinds of titles. The versatility necessary in this environment had been Lee’s primary strength, based on swift writing and plotting many different titles almost simultaneously. Lee had been working under these conditions for so long that he had mastered the techniques for easily creating multiple storylines and plots, using gimmicks and wordplay to remember names and titles, like recycling the gunslinger Rawhide Kid in 1960 and making him into an outlaw or using alliteration, as in Millie the Model.

  When certain comic genres sold well, publisher Martin Goodman gave Lee breathing room, but when sales dipped, he exerted pressure. A conservative executive, Goodman rarely wanted change, which irked Lee. The writer bristled at his boss’s belittling beliefs, explaining, “He felt comics were really only read by very, very young children or stupid adults,” which meant “he didn’t want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it. . . . Don’t play up characterization, don’t have too much dialogue, just have a lot of action.” Given the precarious state of individual publishing companies, which frequently went belly-up, and his long history with Goodman, Lee admitted, “It was a job; I had to do what he told me.”2

  Despite being distant relatives and longtime coworkers, the publisher and editor maintained a cool relationship. From Lee’s perspective, “Martin was good at what he did and made a lot of money, but he wasn’t ambitious. He wanted things to stay the way they were.” The publishing industry remained highly competitive, but most American business executives were not cutthroat captains of industry. Goodman pushed Lee, but the writer recalled: “He hired a good friend of his to be his business manager, and they would spend two or three hours a day in Martin’s office playing Scrabble.”3

  Riding the wave of critical success and extraordinary sales of The Fantastic Four, Goodman gave Lee a simple directive in line with his general management style: “Come up with some other superheroes.”4 For the publisher, the order made sense: superheroes seemed to be the next big genre to catch on, so that would be Timely’s new direction. Yet, The Fantastic Four subtly shifted the relationship between editor and publisher. With sales doubling because of the new superhero team, Goodman looked away a bit, which enabled Lee to wield greater influence and authority. From the publisher’s perspective, the popularity of superhero books meant simply jumping on the bandwagon until it died out. Lee, though, used some of the profit to pay freelance writers and editors more money, which then offloaded some of the pressure he felt in writing, plotting, editing, and approving the company’s limited number of monthly titles. In launching Spider-Man, however, Lee did more than divert the talents and energy of his staff. He actually defied Goodman.

  For months, Lee grappled with the idea of a new kind of superhero in the same vein as the Fantastic Four, with realistic challenges that someone with superpowers would experience living in the modern world. The new character, however, would be “a teenager, with all the problems, hang-ups, and angst of any teenager.” Lee came up with the colorful “Spider-Man” name and envisioned a “hard-luck kid” both blessed and cursed by acquiring superhuman strength and the ability to cling to walls, sides of buildings, and even ceilings, just like a real-life spider.5 He knew Spider-Man would be an important character for the company and its efforts in the superhero genre.

  Lee recalled going to see Goodman, “I did what I always did in those days, I took the idea to my boss, my friend, my publisher, my cohort,” even embellishing the story of Spider-Man’s origin by claiming that he got the idea from “watching
a fly on the wall while I had been typing.”6 He laid the character out in full: teen, orphan, angst, poor, intelligent, and other traits the young man would possess. Lee thought Spider-Man was a no-brainer, but to his surprise, Goodman hated it and forbade him from offering it as a stand-alone comic book.7

  The longtime publisher had three major complaints: “people hate spiders, so you can’t call a hero ‘Spider-Man’”; no teenager could be a hero “but only be a side-kick”; and a hero had to be heroic, not a pimply kid who isn’t popular or strong.8 To Goodman, a hero who isn’t a hero or even particularly likeable sounded like a “comedy character.” Irritated, he asked Lee, “Didn’t [he] realize that people hate spiders?”9 Given the litany of criticisms, Lee recalled, “Martin just wouldn’t let me do the book.”10

  Goodman thought featuring a teenager would also make his company a laughingstock among comic book publishers, a concern that the executive worried about incessantly. No matter what the company’s success, Goodman felt the ups-and-downs of the industry too keenly, so he pushed back on ideas that he thought would fizzle and kept looking to pick up on the successes of other publishers. Goodman hated everything about Spider-Man. He usually took a hands-on approach only during downturns, but when Lee brought him the new character, the writer opened himself up to Goodman’s insecurities and fears regarding status in the marketplace and among competitors.

  Realizing that he could not completely circumvent his boss, Lee made the executive decision to at least give Spider-Man a try in as low-risk a manner as possible. The best case for the experiment would be to place the character on the cover of a series that had bombed up to that point—Amazing Fantasy. The comic-buying public simply had little interest in the AF run, which usually featured thriller/fantasy stories by Lee and surreal art by Steve Ditko, Marvel’s go-to artist for styling the macabre, surreal, or Dali-esque. At one point, Lee even put the word “Adult” directly into the title, hoping that “Amazing Adult Fantasy” would get readers interested. Facing Goodman’s disdain and the woeful AF sales figures, it seemed as if there were already two strikes against the teen wonder.

  Despite these odds and his boss’s directive, Lee remembered that he couldn’t let the nerdy superhero go, saying, “I couldn’t get Spider-Man out of my mind.”11 He worked up a Spider-Man plot and handed it over to Jack Kirby. Lee figured that no one would care (or maybe even notice) a new character in the last issue of a series that would soon be discontinued.

  In this fast-paced environment, where Lee served essentially as Marvel’s managing editor, writer, copy editor, and overall creative director, he turned to artists that he trusted because they needed little direction and worked quickly. Often, Lee would dictate a storyline and then the artist would take that plot and begin to draw the issue. Later, the writer would add the dialogue and extra information, allowing time to edit or add in what the artist might have overlooked.

  With Spider-Man, however, Kirby missed the mark. His early sketches turned the teen bookworm into a mini-Superman with all-American good looks, like a budding astronaut or football star. With little time to pause and think about what was essentially a throwaway character, Kirby turned to other projects and Lee put Ditko on the title. He did the art for Amazing Fantasy anyway, and his style was more suited for drawing an offbeat hero.

  Ditko nailed Spider-Man, but not the cover art, forcing Lee to commission Kirby for the task, with Ditko inking. Despite Kirby’s last-minute effort on the cover, Lee could not have been happier with Ditko’s version of the teen. He explained: “Steve did a totally brilliant job of bringing my new little arachnid hero to life.”12 They finished the two-part story and ran it as the lead in AS #15. Revealing both the busy, all-hands state of the company and their low expectations, Lee recalled, “Then, we more or less forgot about him.”13 As happy as Lee and Ditko were with the collaboration and outcome, there is no way they could have imagined that they were about to spin the comic book world onto a different axis.

  Lee’s new writing style established a voice for Spider-Man comic books and the company as a whole. Breaking down the invisible barrier between writer and reader (commonly referred to as “the fourth wall”) on the first page of the initial Spider-Man AF debut reveals how Lee established a friendly, homespun voice that also gently guided the reader on the hero’s journey. This second-person method stood in stark contrast to the more formal, distant language of other superheroes, primarily the competitors at DC—Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

  From the start, Lee lets us in on a secret, explaining that “confidentially,” people in the comic business call superheroes “long underwear characters” and that they are “a dime a dozen.” Yet, the reader is also informed that this new character is “just a bit . . . different!” At about a hundred words into the story, then, Lee has already formed a relationship with the reader and created the context for Spider-Man as something new versus other superheroes. The tongue-in-cheek tone emphasizes how “different” this hero will be in a deliberately easygoing style.

  On page two, Lee shows how adults generally like Parker, including his surrogate parents Aunt May and Uncle Ben and his teachers, who are “fond” of the “clean-cut, hard-working honor student!” Yet, as quickly as the reader realizes that Parker is a good guy, Lee shows us how his classmates alienate him, particularly in contrast to school stud Flash Thompson. Parker asks a girl out and she refuses, turning instead to “dreamboat” Thompson. As the popular gang speeds off in a red convertible, they laugh at him for suggesting that they go to a science exhibit. “You stick to science, son. We’ll take the chicks,” one of his classmates sneers. In the next frame, Parker is crying as he enters the science lab, declaring, “Someday they’ll be sorry!—Sorry that they laughed at me!”

  The elegance in juxtaposing Parker as a regular guy versus the “in crowd” makes the teen sympathetic. Most readers can instantly relate to Parker because every school has a Flash Thompson who basks in the attention and seems especially gleeful in pushing the smaller, frail Parker aside. Again, Lee addresses the reader directly, saying: “Yes, for some, being a teenager has many heart-breaking moments.” The writer establishes that Parker has feelings and that being an outcast hurts.

  Rather than simply hinging the story on Parker as an outsider, Lee exposes the young man’s full range of emotions, while the story grows darker and more foreboding. Once the atomic-powered spider bites the teen, he stumbles into his newfound power blindly, eventually entering into a professional wrestling contest to test his strength and get some quick money. Parker’s lack of confidence causes him to put on a mask to avert the possibility of being a “laughingstock,” but he challenges the muscled bruiser Crusher Hogan anyway, who calls the boy “a little masked marvel.” Lee’s wordplay, using “marvel” here and on the cover, subconsciously creates an association between the character and the future company name, which the writer/ editor had been contemplating.

  In one of several ominous scenes, almost immediately adults search for a way to exploit the teen’s powers. A “TV producer” promises the masked Parker a “fortune” and an appearance on the era’s immensely popular Ed Sullivan Show. Under the tutelage of the TV man/agent, Spider-Man becomes a sensation, inhaling what is described as the “first sweet scent of fame and success.” The celebrity goes to the youth’s head, though, and when he has the chance to stop a thief that a policeman is chasing, he does nothing, despite his massive powers. Parker, as Lee demonstrates, has strength, but not yet the wisdom to transform into a real hero.

  Later, when the now-familiar story of Uncle Ben’s death unfolds, Parker loses his cool, becomes Spider-Man and hunts down the fugitive. In the only frame in the entire comic that shows his pupils through the mask, Spider-Man realizes that the thief is the same one he could have stopped earlier. The boy does not kill the criminal, instead dangling him from a web and lowering him to the police below. However, Lee depicts the anguish the teen suffers, accepting the burden of his actions. In the final fra
me, Lee wrote the famous line that sums up Spider-Man: “Aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility!”

  Finally able to apply his innovative ideas about voice and style directly to the new superheroes, Lee captured the reader’s attention by formulating a hero that had genuinely human traits. Peter Parker, a wallflower kid picked on by his peers for being different, actually grew out of Lee’s own feelings of being bullied as a kid. “Because I was the youngest and the thinnest, I was never the captain or leader, and I was always the one getting pushed around.” So, when searching for Parker’s voice, Lee explained, “I figured, kids would relate to a concept like that. After all, most kids have had similar experiences. Turns out I was right.”14 Lee put the AF issue to bed and scurried off onto the next title that demanded his attention.

  The hectic pace of the comic book business did not allow anyone to slow down, let alone stop to contemplate how the public might react to a particular title—which may account for why “Spider-Man” is listed in AF #15 both correctly and as “Spider-man” and “the Spiderman.” Lee and his small crew of artists were already off onto new titles, working against the relentless deadlines.

  But, although the sales figures would be unavailable for several months, Lee realized that Spider-Man had found an audience when letters from readers poured into the office by the satchel, just as they had a year earlier when the Fantastic Four debuted. Lee recalls getting about a hundred fan letters a day and sometimes more, which he dutifully read and answered.