Stan Lee

by Bob Batchelor

  As 2016 came to a close, Lee prepared to celebrate his ninety-fourth birthday just a couple days after Christmas. Rarely at rest, he unveiled two new projects that essentially symbolize the roles he plays in contemporary pop culture. The first project drew from the awful state of race relations in the United States. Lee hoped to find an alternative path with Hands of Respect—a campaign he created with his artist daughter J.C. to alleviate divisiveness between blacks and whites. With her advice and help, Lee created a lapel pin depicting black and white hands interlocked in a handshake, with the word “respect” above them. Lee told a reporter: “As a believer in the inert goodness of man, I’m hoping that the pin will serve to remind people that America is made of different races. . . . We’re all co-travelers on the spaceship Earth and must respect and help each other.”8 The sentiment Lee used in describing Hands of Respect is certainly reminiscent of the values exemplified in his heroic African American and female characters in Marvel comics, as well as his promotion of diversity issues in X-Men and other franchises. His words about humankind’s “goodness” reflect his most foundational beliefs.

  As the year ended, POW! Entertainment announced a deal with Box Blvd to produce “The Stan Lee Box,” a subscription delivery every eight weeks of collectibles “personally curated” by Lee, featuring exclusive comic book variants from Marvel, DC, and other publishers, as well as other character- and art-driven items. For just under $50 per delivery, Lee promised that fans would receive products exceeding $125 in retail value in each box. The subscription offer came after another product, “The Limited Edition Stan Lee Block” from a partnership with Nerd Block. The $49.99 block contained “hand-curated exclusives,” including an “officially licensed” Lee T-shirt and other collectibles (valued over $150). When Lee posted a brief announcement about the box full of goodies, more than twenty-seven thousand people viewed the clip in its first hour after being posted.

  Cavorting in the near corner of the massive convention floor are five Deadpools, mimicking the outlandish swordplay and violence that the character engages in. Over in line, two young girls are wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Captain America shields and delicately clutching comic books in their tiny hands. A sea of attendees with backpacks, water bottles, and selfie-snapping cell phones wait patiently to ride up and down escalators or to buy a soda at the concession stand. Behind tables, anxious young men wear logo-inscribed shirts and peddle action figures, posters, yellowing comic books, and an endless array of other products. Everywhere, people mill about, some in long lines to meet the guy who played Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) or the artist who drew their favorite superhero. Three days, tens of thousands of one’s closest friends—welcome to the comic convention world.

  Throughout 2016, at age ninety-three and arguably never more popular, Lee embarked on a long series of “final appearance” tour stops, similar to the way generations of professional athletes would play their last games at stadiums or arenas across the nation. A number of cities, including Los Angeles and Kansas City, paid tribute to Lee, proclaiming it “Stan Lee Day” and showering him with attention that drove more and more fans to the convention centers. The tremendous success of Marvel films, a broader acceptance of geek culture, and Lee’s status as the industry’s eminent statesman fueled not only the tour, but tens of thousands of fans willing to do just about anything—and pay any amount of money—to see Lee and get his autograph. “There is an excitement about these comic conventions that nothing can match,” Lee explained. “These people are so in love with the pop culture of comic books.”9

  Late in the year, Lee stormed into relatively small comic book conventions, such as the Cincinnati Comic Expo, but then later followed with an appearance at the enormous New York Comic Con in early October, which drew more than one hundred eighty thousand from around the globe. In New York, his birthplace and longtime home base, Lee explained to a New York Daily News interviewer:

  It’s the most incredible thing in the world, because wherever I go, people want my autograph and people say ‘thank you for the enjoyment that you brought me.’ . . . I must be one of the luckiest guys in the world. . . . It’s just great to know that you’re wanted and that people actually appreciate the work that you’ve done.10

  In October 2016, Lee paused his cross-country tour to attend his own convention, the renamed “Stan Lee’s Los Angeles Comic Con,” which he had run as “Stan Lee’s Comikaze” since 2012.11 The three-day celebration of geek culture kicked off with Friday being designated “Stan Lee Day” in L.A. The event drew ninety-one thousand fans, a new attendance record. At the end of the year, Lee took the tour overseas, visiting the Tokyo Comic Con, where fans flashed buttons announcing “Stan Lee for President” beneath his smiling, animated likeness. He also announced a visit in May 2017 to ConQue, a Mexican Comic Con in Queretaro City.

  Since leaving New York for California in the 1970s, Stan Lee has worked tirelessly to promote Marvel and the beloved superheroes and villains he created or cocreated. The outcome of that effort has culminated with the Marvel superheroes dominating film and television. More significantly, the superhero narratives dominate storytelling, thus fundamentally changing entertainment in the contemporary world. Lee stands at the center of this transformation.

  The challenge for icons as they age is the questions they face about living up to their own past accomplishments. This is a tall order, whether for Bob Dylan, Robert De Niro, or the Rolling Stones. In recent years, it has been easy for Lee to become the “king of the cameo,” a fan-favorite scene-stealer in Marvel films, but his other work in the entertainment business necessitates cooperation and coordination with others, unlike the more personal acts of producing music or writing books.

  The film, television, Web, and video game industries are unique and present immense challenges in moving from idea to completed project. Lee explained, “It goes on forever. I’m used to doing comic books, where every month there’s a new comic book! I find that the movie business is not quite the same. It doesn’t move quite as fast.”12 As a matter of fact, there are thousands of projects in development at any given moment in the entertainment business, but scant few make it to a screen, theater, or other distribution channel. Lee’s work with POW! seems to have nearly slowed to a trickle, but that is only within the context of how the entertainment industry operates and in comparison to the halcyon days at Marvel in the 1960s when he controlled a much smaller operation, albeit with lasting significance for contemporary culture.

  As a result, detractors might point to Lee’s post-Marvel work and conclude that he has coasted on past successes (or the work of Kirby and Ditko) for far too long. Closer examination, however, reveals a more accurate portrait of an artist still producing well past ninety years of age, as well as an icon still among his fans, cementing his legacy as one of the most important creative figures in American history.

  In late 2016 at the Cincinnati Comic Expo, several hundred people stood in line and many hundreds more waited outside the hall for the chance to see Lee and get his autograph. They slowly shuffled ahead through a series of roped-off areas, trying to contain their excitement, and chatting at length with the fans around them in a communal lovefest. When their big moment with Lee finally took place—almost to a person—the fans were too dumbstruck to say anything to their hero. Some managed to get out a whispered “thanks.”

  On paper, the moment might read as anticlimactic. However, being in Lee’s presence seemed enough for the fans. After getting their Spider-Man poster or Doctor Strange comic book signed, they turned away from Lee with huge grins, as if they had just scored a major victory. Finally out of the lines and with the moment starting to settle in, fans immediately searched out family members or friends who had accompanied them. They shared in the glory and wanted to acknowledge the event. Some people viewed getting their cherished comic book signed by Lee as the culmination of a lifetime of experiences with Marvel and its superheroes.

  One might mistake Lee’s POW!
Entertainment office in Santa Monica for a kind of stand-in Stan Lee museum. The bright space is bursting with shelves of Lee trinkets, including various dolls and action figures of the comic book icon and his many creations. An old-school Captain America sits at the front of the desk, daring visitors to lean closer. A stuffed Hulk guards the computer monitor. Walls are lined with photos of Lee—from a group shot with the cast of The Big Bang Theory to a drawing of Lee as Clark Kent pulling his shirt open to reveal a red Superman “S” emblazoned across his chest. Another photo shows Lee and Joanie on the red carpet at a Hollywood premiere, another is of Lee shaking hands with President Reagan. A large Silver Surfer awash in deep blue and riding a teal-striped surfboard adorns the wall behind the desk, as if emerging directly out of the wall.

  Max Anderson, Lee’s longtime personal assistant and cofounder of Stan Lee Collectibles, tells a story about a day that Stan and Joanie invited him to their home. They asked him to haul away mountains of mementos and memorabilia that had accumulated since the Lees moved to Los Angeles decades before. Stan just wanted to toss it all. Anderson realized the significance of pieces of Lee’s past and instead carted it away for safekeeping. Later the items from that surprising housecleaning would serve as the foundation for a pop-up Stan Lee Museum on display at Lee’s Comikaze comic book convention. Later, Anderson stored the items for possible use in a permanent museum dedicated to Lee and his legacy.13

  As someone steeped in comic book and pop culture history, and the creator of a new storytelling sensibility, Lee has a keen sense of his past. However, he has little use for nostalgia. Most journalists and fans ask Lee inane, simplistic questions about who his favorite superhero is or what was running through his mind decades ago when he created the characters. Always polite to journalists and media people, Lee dutifully tells the superhero origin stories over and over again. New waves of journalists, interviewers, and fans continue to want to hear them. His own outlook, though, is constantly looking ahead, off toward the next creation or idea, and he still scribbles down these thoughts on the tiny notepads that he carries in his front shirt pocket, as he has for his entire career.

  Meeting Lee, one senses that his public persona grew out of a teenage desire to be an actor and later morphed into a kind of celebrity identity that enabled him to play up the brash, New York City attitude that he saw all around him in his youth. The caricature, however, falls by the wayside in one-on-one conversation. In these moments, Lee is thoughtful and reflective, answering questions as if after all these years he still can’t believe his good fortune or why the fans line up to see him by the hundreds and thousands. Lee’s youthful, appreciative outlook offsets the exaggerated public displays of braggadocio. In his mid-nineties, he no longer hears well, and a 2012 operation installed a pacemaker to regulate his heartbeat, yet he continues to make appearances, relishing his role as the Marvel Universe’s spiritual leader.

  Asked in 2016 how it felt to inspire generations of fans and artists with his flawed hero narrative, Lee paused for a moment. “It’s an incredibly great feeling, when I think about it. I don’t have that much time to think about it, but when I do . . .”14 His voice trails off. The thing about creative icons is that they never really stop creating. Lee’s worldview isn’t based on what he did in the 1960s. He believes in the next spark, the new work, always charting a course toward the future.

  CONCLUSION

  AMERICAN ICON

  At the conclusion of Captain America: Civil War (2016), a FedEx delivery driver appears at the Stark Enterprises headquarters of the Avengers. Knocking on the glass, he asks, “Are you Tony Stank?”

  James “Rhodey” Rhodes, Tony Stark’s best friend, points to his buddy and exclaims, “Yes, this is Tony Stank. . . . You’re in the right place. Thank you for that!”

  The FedEx employee is played by Stan Lee, his twenty-ninth cameo in super-hero films. The scene ends the movie on a humorous note and, more importantly, demonstrates Lee’s place in the Marvel Universe. The package contains a letter from Captain America to Iron Man, turning over leadership of the Avengers to him, but also letting Stark know that he will still show up if the Earth faces peril. Lee’s cameo may seem a throwaway, but the moment is central to the plot, and points to how the Marvel Universe unfolds in the future. As Rhodes explains, Lee’s character is definitely “in the right place”—at the center of the action.

  The cheerful conversation between Stark and Rhodes counterbalances the previous scene in which Rhodey—veteran military hero and War Machine combatant—struggles to walk again after breaking his back in the earlier superhero melee. Despite the dramatic edge, the tone and voice sounds as if Lee wrote the exchange in the early 1960s. Rhodes and Stark trade smirks and jokes, with Rhodes laughing, “Please, table for one for Mr. Stank, preferably by the bathroom.” The dialogue is a Lee line, set during a Lee cameo, in Lee’s Marvel Universe—his personality imprinted on a grand scale. Lee certainly fulfilled Martin Goodman’s early directive—create a bunch of superheroes. No one realized that the order would transform storytelling and American popular culture.

  When Stanley Lieber became Stan Lee, he was hiding his real identity behind a pseudonym that he thought protected him from the disdainful scorn of those who looked down on the meaningless work he did in a trivial industry. Lee explained, “Early in my career, before The Fantastic Four, I struggled. I felt I was never going to get anywhere. Even afterward, I was embarrassed to say I wrote comic books for a living. I had a lot of shame about that.”1 He carried that concept—the notion that what he did each day didn’t really matter—for decades.

  Then, rising from his own anguish (and with goading from wife Joanie), Lee took ownership of who he was and what he might create if he changed his outlook and wrote what he wanted. Then, he turned the ideas over to some of the greatest artists to ever work in comics to create them visually. The Fantastic Four came to life, he birthed the Hulk, and soon Thor dropped down from the heavens. Countless additional characters endowed with otherworldly powers and unfathomable evil joined the early superheroes. Most significantly, Lee created the least likely hero around: a geeky teenager with a boatload of personal problems whose life changes when a supercharged spider bites him. The Amazing Spider-Man was born.

  The Marvel Universe did not begin with Spider-Man, but he was the one fans gravitated to the most—as did Lee. For his creator,

  Spider-Man is more than a comic-strip hero. He’s a state of mind. He symbolizes the secret dreams, fears, and frustrations that haunt us all. We all have our hidden daydreams, daydreams in which we’re stronger, swifter, and braver than we really are—than we can ever hope to be. But, to Spider-Man, such dreams are reality.2

  Spider-Man sparked a revolution in comic books and storytelling by giving readers a fresh way of viewing superheroes. Finally, they seemed real, with feet of clay, just like people everywhere. Marvel’s characters possessed emotional weaknesses. They had to deal with their human emotions, not simply vulnerabilities like Superman’s, which came from unearthly rocks that bad guys stumbled upon. In the final frame of his debut in Amazing Fantasy #15, Lee wrote the famous line that Spider-Man had become “aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility!” The way Spider-Man has since been popularized and immortalized across American culture, this line alone might have forever cemented Lee as an iconic writer.

  In short order, Lee created an interlocked network of superheroes and supporting characters that reflected the way people with extraordinary powers might actually live in the real world. Long before people could look back and realize Lee’s influence on the broader culture, they had to read the comic books. The genius he brought to the business, which launched the Marvel Age, centered on the way the characters spoke, their feelings, and the convincing issues they faced. The equation seemed almost too simple: If superheroes can be like you, then you can be like a superhero. Readers responded to Lee’s ideas, and his authorial imprint developed into a central f
acet of popular culture.

  Cocreating the characters and writing the stories with Marvel’s gifted artists, inkers, letterers, and colorists, however, did not end the process or Lee’s influence. He served other critical functions at Marvel that expanded his role far beyond the creative staff he worked with, including editing the comics, approving the artwork, and keeping the full-time staff and freelancers on task to meet the deadlines the publishing industry demanded. Then, realizing that his duties did not end there, he stumbled into serving as a mouthpiece for Marvel, first in the press, and then barnstorming the nation’s (and later the world’s) college campuses and public stages. The superhero stories went global and Lee told them again and again to whoever would listen.

  On many occasions, Lee wondered when the superhero craze would wear off and he’d be onto another genre, fully expecting the boom-and-bust cycle to continue. From this perspective, the creative aspects of the job were tightly wound to the financial. “If Spider-Man hadn’t sold, we’d have forgotten about it,” Lee said. “To us they were just scripts. We were making them up, and we’d hope they’d sell, and some sold better than others, so those we kept.”3

  There is no shortage of controversy or crisis in the entertainment industry. Often it seems as if these forces—not talent or success—fuel popular culture. Lee has faced various levels of condemnation for decades. To his critics, many of Lee’s actions have seemed inauthentic, centered on his own fame at the expense of others who should have been included in the spotlight’s glow. Even now, some antagonists have found his recent work focused mainly on making him money, not creating anything of lasting value. And, as well, the battle lines are tightly drawn between Lee and the pro-Kirby and pro-Ditko camps regarding who actually created the Marvel Universe.