Stan Lee

by Bob Batchelor

  Lee’s 1998 contract granted him exclusive rights to his likeness and certain catchphrases, like “Excelsior” and “Stan Lee Presents.” POW! used the latter in a series of new superhero animated films released in 2007. Mosaic debuted on January 9 and the Cartoon Network later aired it on television in March. Mosaic starred Anna Paquin (who played Rogue in the X-Men film franchise) as Maggie Nelson, an aspiring actress who gains an array of superhero powers, but primarily shape shifting, superhuman strength, and invisibility. Returning to the formula he basically mastered during Marvel’s 1960s heyday, Lee created the story lines, but would then turn them over to an industry veteran for scripting. The Condor, starring actor Wilmer Valderrama, debuted on Cartoon Network on March 24, 2007, after its direct-to-DVD release several days earlier.

  After SLM failed, many thought Lee’s career looked to be on the ropes. If that was ever really the case, he did not stay there long. Essentially a free agent, Lee attempted to build a new infrastructure that would give him the creative freedom to build superhero franchises that he owned.

  With some taint regarding SLM lingering and its hype still hanging in the air, the natural question regarding POW! Entertainment projects focused simply on what was real and what was marketing fluff. That fine line is one that Lee and his people seemed to disregard. Perhaps Lee enjoyed the thrill of chasing new deals more than he liked executing the projects afterward. Another lingering question was exactly what might the pop culture world expect from a man in his eighties—even one as energetic as Lee. Without an extensive lineup of writers, artists, designers, and Web-savvy colleagues, could POW! fulfill the dizzying array of contracts being signed, consulting jobs negotiated, and a litter of half-completed projects on the drawing board.

  As could be expected, some fans were disappointed in Lee’s POW! work, given that the company had not produced any memorable characters, much less another blockbuster like Spider-Man or X-Men. In other words, Lee had not originated an important creation that might again redefine his career in the early years of the new century. Condemning Lee in this fashion seems disingenuous, though, when contemplating his long career. In comparison, few successful writers, actors, or artists generate much of anything of significance when they are in their eighties. Of those who live that long, most have retired or given up.

  At eighty-five years old at the end of 2007, Lee could have stopped working and lived out his remaining years as a creative icon, an easy path that few would have faulted him for after the dot.com meltdown. Lee, though, worked earnestly on new projects for POW!, while also fulfilling his Marvel agreements, which included visiting comic book conventions, appearing in film and television cameos, and fulfilling numerous writing projects. Lee’s longevity is part of his legend. His tenacity in the early and mid-2000s revealed the depth of his character.

  CHAPTER 16

  LARGER THAN LIFE

  Adebonair celebrity walks the red carpet, blowing off an attractive onlooker. He approaches a dapper older man being surrounded and hugged by three young blond beauties. Patting him on the shoulder, he says: “Looking great Hef!” The man spins around, not revealing Playboy founder and consummate cad Hugh Hefner, but a pipe-wielding Stan Lee doing his best Hef impression. Yet another Lee cameo—this time in Iron Man (2008), starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man. The film would eventually gross about $585 million worldwide.

  Lee’s momentary appearances in Marvel films brought him a new level of fame and recognition. The cameos, which moviegoers expect and anticipate, serve as a kind of nod to Marvel’s past and Lee’s role in the creation of the Marvel Universe. Suddenly moviegoers who knew little or nothing about Lee—and who had no idea what he looked like—had an image and face to put with the famous name (and in some of the highest-grossing films of all time). The appearances are musts for Marvel fans, many of whom await each one with nearly as much interest as they do the movies themselves.

  The film cameos upped Lee’s cool factor geometrically among fans, but also among other celebrities, which demonstrated just how popular he had become. For example, most of the cast of Iron Man showed up at a 2007 panel at the San Diego Comic-Con to publicize the film and launch the word-of-mouth buzz. When director Jon Favreau announced a special guest, Downey Jr. glanced to his left and then raised his arm in a victory salute, a monumental grin spreading across his devilish face. The surprise visitor was Lee, who immediately drew hugs from the main star, as well as costar Gwyneth Paltrow and the other cast members and crew in attendance. The audience applause thundered through the hall. Several of the hottest celebrities in the world reacted with equal amounts of passion.

  While fans might never get within a million miles of Downey Jr. or Paltrow, part of Lee’s popularity centers on his availability. They can see his larger-than-life image up on the screen but also meet him at a local comic book convention or appearance. Lee’s accessibility sets him apart from other iconic artists (a Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen), who have countless fans but are essentially walled off.

  Lee presses the flesh and constantly meets new generations of crazed fans who just want a moment with the master, even if they are too overcome with nerves to pose a question or squeak out a “thank you.” Not many iconic figures of Lee’s age, or even those decades younger, would attract similar crowds. How many people well past ninety years old have 2.42 million Twitter followers?

  Lee’s role as the elder statesman of the Marvel Universe and quasi-formal role as chairman emeritus, as well as his desire to keep producing new characters and stories, have given him a unique place in the early decades of the twenty-first century. He is the walking, talking, joking, clowning, self-deprecating heritage of the comic book world.

  On November 17, 2008, President George W. Bush honored Lee by bestowing on him the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal in a ceremony at the White House. The honor stands as the highest and most prestigious granted by the United States government in the humanities disciplines. Ever the joker, Lee waited for his turn, directly after famed Academy Award–winning actress Olivia de Havilland. In placing the medal over her head, the president bent down and kissed the Gone with the Wind actress on the cheek. Next, Lee stepped forward and reached out his hand, Bush took it in both hands. As he smiled at the president, Lee blurted out, “You’re not gonna kiss me, are you?” Bush burst out laughing. The next day, media sites around the globe revealed Lee and the president sharing a good belly laugh, the photographs catching the precise moment in time.1

  While career retrospectives like these have become more frequent, at the same time, Lee is focused on new projects and only slowing down to the degree that his body forces him to. When it comes to his work with POW! Entertainment, Lee is outside the Marvel system, yet his most visible presence is on the big screen in cameo Marvel film roles and at comic book conventions where everyone wants to rehash the past.

  Lee keeps a big smile on his face, but it must be challenging for him to never shake those wonder years in the early to mid-1960s when he and his artist partners created the characters the world loves so deeply. For example, at the press conference for the 2009 joint venture with Disney, a journalist asked Lee if he might attempt to get Superman for the Marvel universe when the copyright reverted back to the families of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel. Lee replied that he liked the idea, but explained, “I’m with Marvel, but I’m not really part of the Marvel decision-making team. . . . I think my title is Chairman Emeritus, but it doesn’t really mean much. . . . To prove they haven’t forgotten me, I get these cameos in the movies, which is kind of nice.”2

  During the last decade, Lee has been the subject of lifetime tribute efforts while he still works to remain productive. In late 2007 and 2008, two comic book industry trade publications focused entire issues on Lee’s career. Edited by Lee’s former protégé Roy Thomas, Alter Ego no. 74 came out in December 2007, while Danny Fingeroth’s WriteNow! no. 18 was published in summer 2008. These publications drew from interviews with
Lee and discussions of his place in comic book history with historians, aficionados, and artists and writers who worked with and for him. In each case, the magazines attempted to provide detailed context about Lee’s preeminent role for a new generation of readers, as well as sort through contentious issues that more hardcore people might question.

  In 2008 Lee brought out Election Daze. Under the “Stan Lee Presents” banner, the volume poked fun at political leaders, harkening back to the 1940s and 1950s when he self-published books of humorous photos of celebrities and others with funny captions and took a tongue-in-cheek look at golf and its odd habits. The cover, for example, satirized George W. Bush’s mispronunciation of the word “nuclear” and Hillary Clinton’s allusion to potential intern challenges. The tongue-in-cheek nature of the publication clearly attempted to capitalize on Lee’s satire, but the effort lacked bite in an era when political commentators essentially wage rhetorical warfare on one another twenty-four hours a day.

  Lee continued to search for the franchise superhero universe that would rival his Marvel work. In 2009, POW! teamed with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment to produce Time Jumper, an animated comic book series made explicitly for release on the Web and mobile phones. Adopting his role as carnival barker and famous spokesperson of the comic book age, Lee created the characters and series as well as a character for himself—“Lee Excelsior”—the leader of an anticrime operation dubbed H.U.N.T. Corporation.

  On the Time Jumper project, Lee took on a role that someone of his stature should hold, as producer, which meant that a creative team put together the script and storyboards and then Lee made comments as necessary. He told a reporter that he did not engage with the other voice actors while they recorded, but he did show up from time to time for his own parts. The show’s lead actress, Natasha Henstridge, however, joked about Lee flirting with her and talked about what fun they had on set.3

  Naturally, as Lee’s film cameos expanded, he appeared on other programs, from late-night talk shows to popular sitcoms. In March 2010, for example, Lee appeared as himself in “The Excelsior Acquisition” on The Big Bang Theory, a show that highlights the growing popularity of “geek” culture. Seen by about sixteen million viewers, the episode focused on the show’s lead characters attempting to meet Lee at a comic book store signing. Later, as the convoluted hijinks that define the show unfolded, theoretical physicist Sheldon visited Lee’s house (Stan answers the door wearing a navy Fantastic Four robe). When he barges into Lee’s home, the character gets arrested, leading to a restraining order being issued. As the show ends, the off-beat scientist gleefully proclaims that he will hang the restraining order next to the one he received from Star Trek ’s Leonard Nimoy.

  In April 2012, Lee launched a YouTube channel, dubbed Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, with the program Fan Wars. Dedicated to the “hero lifestyle and enthusiast culture,” the channel featured scripted and unscripted shows, as well as comic book convention and news coverage. Google originally funded the channel as part of its Channel Initiative, an effort to generate premium content for its wildly popular video service. Other celebrities and entertainers who received seed money included Madonna and former basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal. Lee’s POW! Entertainment company partnered with Vuguru, a multimedia production company founded by former Disney chief executive Michael Eisner, to create the show.

  One of the most popular features on Stan Lee’s World of Heroes turned out to be “Stan’s Rants,” a kind of live-action version of his Soapbox columns that used to appear in Marvel comics during his heyday. In each rant, Lee explored a topic that bothered him with a mix of his distinctive wise-guy style and a healthy dose of curmudgeonly charm thrown in for good measure. One rant, for example, had Lee railing against people who claimed that they were his “biggest fan.” In another he implored people to spell “comic book” in his preferred one-word style: “comicbook.” Lee delivered the diatribes in vintage, tongue-in-cheek Lee fashion, exclaiming about a video game version of himself: “Anybody could be Stan Lee! What if a guy isn’t worthy? And I’m pretty particular! Never again will I put myself in a position where you, who may not be deserving, can be me!”4

  From a pretty quick start and initial popularity (as of late 2016, it had about half a million subscribers and approximately 163 million views), the Lee YouTube page kind of died on the vine. YouTube thrives on endless streams of new content delivered to an audience that constantly demands fresh material. Though Lee’s page showed promise, it just could not keep pace with the relentless pressure. Similarly to other POW! Entertainment initiatives, the YouTube channel launched with a bang, then withered as Lee’s attention turned to other ideas. For Lee, this work more or less epitomized his recent efforts—full throttle when he had the time, but soon falling by the wayside. He is a one-man show, and the difficulty in turning over the reins to a successor causes many fits and starts.

  The early YouTube content gave fans a way to watch Lee, but another initiative enabled them to become their hero. In 2012, Activision turned the comic book creator into an animated superhero in The Amazing Spider-Man video game released to coincide with the movie opening. As Lee, players could swing high above the streets of New York City, shooting webs and confronting villains, just like Lee’s iconic character. Voicing the part, Lee begins his electronic adventure by announcing that he is the “king of cameos” and exclaims: “take that Hitchcock!”5

  In late 2013, Lee again appeared alongside the characters he helped create in Lego Marvel Super Heroes. The role-playing game grew from the tremendous popularity of the Lego versions of famous characters and film franchises, such as Batman and Star Wars. In the Marvel version, players can become any of 180 characters, including Lee, and operate in a Lego rendering of New York City. Lee is part of a mission called “Stan Lee in Peril,” which places him in dangerous situations that require rescue.

  Lee is also a playable character with a variety of superpowers in the Marvel game, including being able to shoot rays like Human Torch and Cyclops and becoming a Lee version of the Hulk. The game also features other celebrities in their Marvel film guises, such as Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.

  In January 2014, Lee returned to Springfield, the fictional home of The Simpsons, in the episode “Married to the Blob” from the show’s twenty-fifth season. Once again, as in the 2002 appearance, Lee is teamed with Comic Book Guy. Early in the episode, he urges the shop owner to ask Kumiko, a Japanese manga writer touring America’s most tragic cities, out on a date. At the end, he marries the couple in the fabled comic book shop.

  Early in 2016, Lego capitalized on the success of the Avengers franchise, releasing Lego Marvel’s Avengers. Lee again returns to the video game as a character and voices himself. In this version, Lee can be played as “Iron Stan” (in Iron Man–like armor), but in a humorous nod, the facemask has a built-in moustache.

  While these kinds of appearances might have seemed like nothing more than gimmicks, young video game–playing fans might get their first interaction with Lee this way, in turn leading them to know more about him and the characters. Just like a new legion of fans turned on to classic rockers Aerosmith based on the popularity of Guitar Hero, young video gamers would learn about Lee through the Spider-Man action pack. They could bound through the skyscrapers of New York City as Lee, fighting villains and leaping from the rooftops. YouTube videos posted of people playing the Spider-Man video game as Lee have eclipsed three million views.

  While fans can become Lee in video games, they can also own a variety of versions of him, ranging from a five-inch minibust statuette to a lifelike action figure that came out in 2015 retailing at $250. Only one thousand of these dolls were sold, with interesting, interchangeable parts, like different versions of Lee’s glasses, and even a couple heads that allowed users to make Lee look like the 1970s version of himself.

  In January 2016, Stan Lee’s Lucky Man debuted on British television’s Sky 1, a drama ab
out a troubled police officer working in homicide who can control luck (for decades Lee told interviewers that this was the superpower he wished to have). Drawing about 1.9 million viewers per episode, the series became Sky 1’s most successful original drama and moved toward a second season in 2017.

  In July 2016, Lee unveiled Nitron, a new comic book franchise centered on a super-intelligent species called “Nitronians” that secretly live among us in modern times. To transform the comic book series into feature films, television, and digital content, Lee is partnering with Keya Morgan and Michael Benaroya, whose Benaroya Pictures is anchoring the $50 million funding and production development. The three plan to write the comics and then serve as producers for subsequent film projects. Benaroya Publishing will also release the comic books. “Stan is the greatest story teller of all time,” Morgan exclaimed, “the billions of dollars his stories have generated at the box office is a testament to his genius.”6

  In mid-2016, the Hollywood Reporter presented Stan Lee’s Cosmic Crusaders, its first show to debut under its brand. Fabian Nicieza, who cocreated the super-hero Deadpool, wrote the animated online series, while the magazine and Genius Brands International coproduced it, along with Lee’s POW! Entertainment. Lee conceived the series, then edited the script and voiced himself, since he played a starring role.

  On Cosmic Crusaders, Lee leads a group of seven aliens who have crashed on Earth. They lose their superpowers on this planet, but under Lee’s tutelage they figure out how to employ the powers available to them on Earth. The partnership with THR coincided with the magazine’s “Stan Lee: 75 Years in the Business” special Comic-Con issue. For Lee, the series provided another opportunity to expand his brand outside of Marvel. The involvement with Comic-Con included the first episode being presented in virtual reality, with smartphone viewers handed out at the convention. THR also marketed the series across its platforms, including its website, YouTube channel, Facebook, and Twitter, a combined social media audience of about fifteen million people monthly.7