The distribution restriction forced Lee to come up with creative methods of getting characters space, especially when fans demanded more of them, which was the case with the Hulk. In October 1964, Lee brought the green goliath back in Tales to Astonish #60, one book featuring two separate superheroes: a renewed Hulk and Giant-Man. Since early comics were anthologies containing several different stories, like the ones Lee worked on early in his career with Simon and Kirby, he kept that idea going with the team books. From the reader’s perspective, it almost seemed as if these comics were delivering more action than a solo title.
Hulk would star in the Tales to Astonish series and play a role in other titles, including Spider-Man and The Avengers. When the draconian distribution deal ended and Marvel’s popularity surged to the point that the company could launch books at Lee’s whim, he had the new Incredible Hulk #102 take over the Tales numbering in March 1968. It had taken years, but one of Marvel’s premiere superheroes would now carry on the existential mantle and grow more popular as he appeared across varying media, such as animated television, and on lunchboxes, T-shirts, and other licensed materials.
Realistic superheroes were Marvel’s strength, but dating back to the late 1930s and Superman’s tremendous impact, the industry revolved on near-invincible characters that possessed almost unimaginable powers. Lee understood that he needed a superhero “bigger, better, stronger” than his creations to date. After dozens of failed attempts, from outlandish concepts like “Super-God,” to mountains of discarded doodles and sketches in his left-handed scrawl, Lee figured, “since we were the legend makers of today, we’d simply take what had gone before, build on it, embellish it, and come up with our own version.” Instead of “God,” Lee focused on Norse mythology to create a “god” with a small “g” that would unfold the “continuing saga of good versus evil—god-wise,” just the kinds of stories that human beings had been telling for centuries.4
The Norse god that Lee and Kirby birthed would be named Thor and powered by the magical Uru hammer. The hero debuted in Journey into Mystery #83 (August 1962), which would replace The Fantastic Four in its former slot as a bimonthly book when the superhero team moved up to monthly status. The awful distribution deal that Goodman had to sign with his rival years earlier to get books on the newsstands still hampered the company. As a result, Thor and other new creations debuted in existing anthology books, rather than burst onto the scene as solo efforts. The unfavorable distribution system did, however, give Lee the opportunity to bring a new superhero along slowly and gauge fan interest prior to committing full-time resources to it.
Given the publication schedule and somewhat limited title range, Lee had to switch back and forth between the teen and western and superhero titles. In response, he searched for other writers to fill in the gaps. For Thor, he gave the scriptwriting duties to his younger brother Larry Lieber (who kept the family name). “Stan would give me a plot, usually typed,” he says. “Then he’d say, ‘Now, go home and write me a script.’” Initially, Lieber worried about his ability to write, because he “thought like an artist,” yet Stan, he claims, “did teach me” to write, providing him with insight about how to make stories positive and exciting using strong language. “Everything he said was much better than what I wrote,” Lieber explains. “I worked and I learned a lot from him.”5
Teaming his younger brother with Kirby as penciler worked well. Lee created the plots and the artist added and expanded them, because he was particularly proficient in the kind of mythic tales Thor necessitated. Soon, though, Lee took over the writing completely, in part because he liked the character and wanted Lieber to take on more western titles, which remained extremely popular, even in the super-hero age.
Writing Thor enabled Lee to draw from his study of Shakespeare, which he had read out loud as a kid. Other sources, like Edgar Allan Poe and the swashbuckling works of Alexandre Dumas, allowed him to try different dramatic voices to give the Norse god added depth. From a lifetime of watching and analyzing film, he recognized the significance of rhythm and pacing and applied it to his budding superhero writing style. He also looked to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, deciding that he epitomized the ultimate superhero, because “a superhero should be believable. There was never a more believable character than Sherlock.”6 Many of Lee’s creations were implausible, but their torment and anxiety appealed to the growing number of high school and college readers.
When Lee told Goodman about his desire to create a superhero who was also a handsome tycoon and weapons manufacturer modeled after Howard Hughes, Goodman said flatly, “You’re crazy.”7 Insane or crazy like a fox, Lee figured that Goodman hadn’t said “no” and created Tony Stark/Iron Man with artist Don Heck.
With the Cuban Missile Crisis still fresh on people’s minds, as well as former president Dwight Eisenhower’s harsh words about the growth of the military-industrial complex in his farewell address, Lee thought Stark should be the antithesis of other superheroes: wealthy, suave, and handsome, a weapons dealer seemingly without a care in the world. Lee pulled from real-world topics, which contextualized the stories, especially when creating a new character. As a result, the Hulk embodied the nation’s conflicted ideas about science and the potential negative consequences of innovation. For Iron Man, Lee would again draw on technology, but also place the hero’s origin story in a little-known nation on the other side of the world called Vietnam, long before anyone really knew anything about the Asian nation. Iron Man, the metallic alter ego of industrial titan Stark, first appeared in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963).
Iron Man peers out from the cover in gunmetal gray and looks stiff, more robotic than human, with no distinguishable facial features except slits for eyes and a mouth slot. Littered with Lee’s typical excitable tone, the reader is asked to speculate about “the newest, most breath-taking, most sensational super hero of all,” but also told that the character comes from the same “talented bull-pen” where the other famous Marvel superheroes “were born.” In early 1963, trust is already a defining matter for Marvel readers. Lee asks them to have faith in the new hero (and essentially Lee’s role as leader of this flock).
Stark, like many Lee characters, is a scientist but also a “glamorous playboy, constantly in the company of beautiful, adoring women.” Much of the plot (created by Lee, but written out by Lieber) is told in flashback, tracing Stark’s transition from Hughes-like industrial leader to armored superhero. A booby trap in the jungle fells Stark and his military protectors, which allows him to be captured by the enemy. Later, at the “guerrilla chief’s headquarters,” the reader learns that Stark is alive, but expected to die, because a piece of shrapnel is lodged near his heart. Wong-Chu determines that he will trick the American inventor into creating bombs until the moment he dies from the steel moving closer to his heart.
Realizing that his time is limited, Stark declares: “This I promise you . . . I shall build the most fantastic weapon of all time!” Then he begins crafting a suit designed to keep him alive and defeat Wong-Chu’s forces. With the help of Professor Yinsen, a renowned physics professor imprisoned for not helping build weaponry, Stark creates the Iron Man suit using his powerful transistor design. Yinsen fits the suit on the American just in time, and Stark stirs back to life just as the guerrilla’s forces kill Yinsen. Iron Man declares that he will avenge the professor and flies into the building’s shadows to hide until he can concoct a plan.
Confronting Wong-Chu, the superhero tosses him aside and then uses a transistor to reverse the trajectory of the soldiers’ bullets, which causes the soldiers to run. After using his “electrical power” to extricate himself from under a heavy cabinet that Wong Chu has pushed on top of him, Iron Man shoots a stream of oil at an ammo dump that the leader is trying to reach. He then lights the stream with a torch, and Wong Chu is blown up. Iron Man frees the other prisoners and walks away, covering himself in a long brown jacket and fedora. The superhero ponders his new fate as Iron Man, asking
, “Who knows what destiny awaits him? Time alone will provide the answer! Time alone . . .”
The partnership between Heck and Lee in bringing Iron Man to life centered on Heck learning and adapting to Lee’s new storytelling mode, which seemed foreign for many artists who had worked at other publishers. As a matter of fact, when Heck first got a story synopsis from Lee, he balked at the process. Later, though, he grew to enjoy the creative freedom and trust that developed. “Stan would call me up and he’d give me the first couple of pages over the phone, and the last page,” Heck remembers. “I’d say, ‘What about the stuff in between?’ and he’d say, ‘Fill it in.’”8 While some artists found it difficult to adjust, Heck and many others flourished. The Marvel Method is similar to the way many television and Hollywood scriptwriters work: many smart minds tackle a script after the central idea has been established, which adds depth and nuance, even if it is birthed by one person on the team.
When Lee finally had comic books that readers were eager to buy, he created tactics for additional superhero stories to get into their impatient hands. Rather than just load up each issue with filler and old monster tales, he decided to add more superheroes to the mix in the handful of stories necessary to complete the book. For example, the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch became the primary star of short pieces that ran in the anthology Strange Tales, a leftover title from Marvel’s monster era. Lee’s intuition paid off and sales shot through the roof.
The character Steve Ditko and Lee created as a companion piece to the Human Torch grew out of Stan’s childhood listening to a radio program called Chandu, the Magician. Lee’s version became Dr. Strange, which benefited from Ditko’s psychedelic imagery and magical portrayal of the enchanted world. The story centered on Stephen Strange, an arrogant surgeon who suffers a debilitating injury to his hands, rendering him unable to operate. After hitting skid row, he journeys to visit the “Ancient One,” a mystical healer and wise man. After studying with the wizard, he becomes a supreme sorcerer and returns to set up shop on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village. Unknown to the world at large, which sees him as a fraud, Dr. Strange battles the dark arts that people cannot see all around them.
Since Dr. Strange was essentially a magician, Lee had him speak in an elevated tone, rather than in the corny stage magic “hocus pocus” banter of pulling a rabbit from a hat. Lee reveled in the character and the new words Dr. Strange used. “I can lose myself completely while putting them together, trying to string them on a delicate strand of rhythm so they have a melody all their own,” he explained. “When it came to Dr. Strange I was in seventh heaven, . . . I had the chance to make up a whole language of incantations.”9 Reading the comic, one could immediately hear Lee’s cadence and voice in Strange’s interesting speech traits and in catchphrases like his frequent “by the hoary hosts of Hoggoth,” always alliterative and beguiling.
It did not take long for older teens and college students to catch on to Lee’s words and Ditko’s groovy artwork. Many tried to dissect Dr. Strange’s odd cadence and assess the literary origins. Lee barely had the heart to tell them that he made most of it up. If it was derived from anything, it was the phrases and symbols that came from Lee’s reading science fiction greats when he was growing up. When Ditko abruptly left Marvel, Lee continued writing the series, working with artists Bill Everett and Marie Severin. The mystical sorcerer attained an important place in the Marvel Universe. Dr. Strange took on villains that embodied evil itself, such as the dreaded Dormammu and the Living Tribunal. In occupying this dark realm, a case could be made that Stephen Strange was Marvel’s most powerful superhero.
The Fantastic Four surprised everyone when it became a hit, so Goodman never let go of his idea that Lee should come up with another superhero team. If one group of heroes sold well, then the natural inclination would be to add more to the roster. Plus, Goodman had reworked the deal with Marvel’s distributor, allowing them to publish more titles per month.
This deal was purely a financial decision on the part of Independent News. Independent wanted to capitalize on Marvel’s popularity, even though rival DC owned the distributor. No one thought that Goodman and Lee would actually catch up to the market leader, so the thinking was that merely allowing a few extra titles a month would just make everyone more money. Some of the men who ran Independent probably thought that they were pulling the ultimate irony over on their golf buddy Goodman: the better his comics sold, the more money it made for his bitter rival. DC execs would never have envisioned that they were essentially letting the fox into the henhouse.
Just as the fan letters had given Lee insight into the popularity of the Fantastic Four, he gathered information from mail that poured in asking him to create teams of Marvel’s heroes. Again, with DC’s Justice League of America team in mind, Lee determined that the Marvel group would consist of its most powerful characters. Since Kirby drew so many of the heroes in their other comics, Lee tapped him for The Avengers, comprised of Thor, Ant Man, Hulk, Wasp, and Iron Man. Finally, Lee had the roster of superheroes that could form a potent counterpoint to DC’s group.
Lee and Kirby combined to give the Avengers an aura of superiority, as if this supergroup were the best-of-the-best in the Marvel Universe, but also added the touches of realism that had pushed sales skyward for the other comics. Similarly to the Fantastic Four, the members of the Avengers wouldn’t always get along or agree. They too resided in New York City, in a building donated by Tony Stark. Lee called these points the “fashioning of a world for the characters to live in” and a “mood of realism to be created so that the reader feels he knows the characters, understands their problems, and cares about them.”10
When Avengers #1 (September 1963) appeared on newsstands, the action jumped off the cover—Thor’s swinging hammer, Ant-man and Wasp swooping in, and Hulk and Iron Man prepping for a fight. The reader only sees Loki, the “god of evil,” in a glimpse from behind, as if a camera has taken a snapshot over his right shoulder. The perspective makes it seem that you are there viewing the confrontation firsthand. Although Kirby’s Thor and Hulk, because of the way he drew all faces, look like cousins, the cover’s layout provides a brilliant introduction to the new superhero team.
Inside, Loki unleashes a sinister plan to draw out his brother Thor using the Hulk as bait. All the heroes respond to a distress call from Rick Jones’s Teen-Brigade after the guest-starring Fantastic Four can’t help because they are busy on a different mission. Eventually, the heroes find Hulk, who has disguised himself as Mechano, a super-strong robot performing in a traveling circus (the monster is in an odd brown jumpsuit and orange shoes and has white makeup around his mouth). Thinking that Hulk derailed a passenger train, they try to stop him. Meanwhile, Thor returns to Asgard to confront Loki. After fighting Loki and thwarting a series of traps, Thor returns Loki to Earth, revealing the plot to the other superheroes. When the god of evil turns radioactive, it seems he will fight Thor again, but Ant-Man and Wasp trap him in a lead-lined container designed for trucks to “carry radioactive wastes from atomic tests [and] dump their loads for eventual disposal in the ocean.” After stopping Thor’s evil brother, the group decides to band together, convincing the Hulk to join. Lee’s final panel announces “one of the greatest super-hero teams of all time! Powerful! Unpredictable! . . . a new dimension is added to the Marvel galaxy of stars!”
The second issue of The Avengers begins with Thor criticizing the Hulk, who threatens him in return. Here Lee is placing the supergroup directly within the realistic confines of his other characters. Thor and Hulk itch to fight one another, placing Iron Man in the mediator role. Wasp pines for Thor, whom she calls “adorable” and “handsome.” Their foe, the Space Phantom, can take the identity of others, so he replaces the Hulk and starts a fight with the others inside Stark’s mansion. Hulk gets away and is later confronted by his teen sidekick, Rick Jones, who mistakenly tells him that he can turn back to “Doctor Don Blake when you want to!” (a Lee slip-up that demonstrate
s the fast pace of comic book production, since Blake is Thor’s secret identity). Summoning the Norse god, the Avengers defeat the Space Phantom, but in the melee with Hulk, they reveal their suspicion of the green goliath. As a result, he quits the Avengers and leaps off into the future.
While only the second issue, Lee has already changed the team (also adding Giant-Man) significantly and presented Hulk as a nearly indestructible force. Over the next several issues, the group will battle Hulk when he teams up with Sub-Mariner. Later, the Avengers find Captain America and bring him into the fold. In a call-out box, Lee trumpeted the return of the red, white, and blue super soldier, telling the reader that Kirby had drawn the original and that his first story was a Cap tale: “Thus, the chronicle of comicdom turns full circle, reaching a new pinnacle of greatness!” Lee also urged fans to “save this issue,” more or less pushing the notion that comic books could be collector’s items, explaining, “We feel you will treasure it in time to come!”
The Lee/Kirby creative team set 1963 ablaze with quirky superheroes who seemed quite a bit like real people who happened to stumble into their tremendous powers and had to deal with the ramifications. Fearing that readers might get tired of these accidental heroes, Lee broke the mold and thought up a team of individuals who were born with “unique abilities.” This team, he recalled, would be “mutants . . . an aberration of nature.” Together, Lee and Kirby created two groups—one good and one evil—which Lee thought had “an air of freshness and surprise.”11 He stumbled on the word “extra,” as in the extra powers the characters possess, after Goodman shot down his original title: “The Mutants” for being above the heads of young readers. The publisher agreed to “X-Men” (as if that made more sense), so Kirby and Lee sat down to brainstorm, plot, and plan.
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