OUI Magazine, 1977
The mastermind of Marvel Comics talks about his life with The Hulk and Spider-Man, the transformation of dime-store superheroes into post-atomic myths and how VD. made him what he is today!
In his cozy, comfortable executive office high above the murky miasma of Madison Avenue, behind the hurly burly and hubbub and the heedless hurrying hordes, sits Stan Lee, pondering the peerless plethora of incredible, inimitable inventions that his ever burgeoning brain has bounteously brought forth throughout the endless eons of the Age of Marvel to everlastingly enthrall the mavens of Marveldom and munching on a tuna sandwich from the downstairs deli. I you have never read a comic book, then you may not know or care who Stan Lee is. But if, like most of us, you grew up wishing that you could make sticky stub come out of your hands and feet so you could climb up the side of a building like Spider-villain, or shout "Flame-on!" and flash through the air like the amazing Human Torch, or hurl your invincible Uru hammer with the mystical might of Thor the Thunder-god, or rip evildoers into shreds with your bare hands like The Incredible Hulk, then you have Stan Lee to Than for it.
Whether encouraging these fantasies was strengthening or debilitating to our emerging psyches is a point for psychologists and sociologists to debate—and they have, endlessly. The fact is that Lee, as editor, art director and finally publisher of what is now called the Marvel Comics Group, is responsible for the creation of The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Dr. Strange, The X-Men, The Avengers, Daredevil, Nick Fury and The Silver Surfer. Lee came to the world of comics as a gorier at the age of 17 and has stayed for 35 years. To many people, Stan Lee is Marvel Comics. Lee used to write many of the books himself, sometimes turning out a story a day, Ile is an acknowledged haste- of the purple prose that characterizes comic-book narration— alliteration being his specialty. He is also the star of the letters pages that appear in many Marvel comics, on which he keeps up a flow of chitchat with his readers and makes household-name stars of all the artists and writers in "Stan's bullpen."
Lee started life in New 'or k City as Stanley Martin Lieber. The reason for the name change? "So young and witless was I at the time I started writing comics that I felt I couldn't sully so proud a name on books for little kiddies." His original name is still being held in reserve for the title page of the great American novel that his wife Joan says he must write someday. In the meantime, Simon Schuster has published three books under the Stan. Lee byline, "Origins of Marvel Comics" (1974), "Son of Origins of Marvel Comic? (1975) and "Bring on the Bad Guys" (1976), with several other sequels in the offing, The first thing one notices on meeting Lee is how great he looks. Ile is tall and skinny and craggy faced leading-man handsome sort of a Jewish Gary Cooper. In the Sixties he had shoulder-length hair; now it's cropped short. He wears cowboy boots. Ile seems really relaxed and casual, except when he is talking about something that interests him—and then great waves of energy go zinging forth. At 54, he is head of a very prosperous corporation and pining for fresh worlds to conquer. Asked what he thinks of the fact that comics are finally being recognized as a serious art form, Lee says, "It's like recognizing a mountain: It was always there."
Interviewer Anne Beaus comments, "When I was growing up in the Fifties, comics were supposed to rot your brains. I wasn't allowed to buy them. So my sister and I would. smuggle our favorites into the house, take them upstairs and hide them under the bed to read them. Stan Lee has brought comics out from under the bed and into art galleries and college classrooms and I am really grateful to him for that, But I still prefer to read them under the bed."
OUI: Comics seem to be more respectable
these days. Do you have a favorite theory as to why this is so?
LEE: When comic books were read only by prepubescent
kids and cretinous adults, nobody accepted them as an art form. The acceptance
came only when older readers turned to comics. Also, many parent& felt
comics would prevent kids from being good readers, because they were just
looking at pictures. Ironically, today comics are the only tool we have to teach
kids to read, because television has weaned them away from other reading
material. As far as comics being a viable art form-let's suppose Michelangelo
and Shakespeare were alive today and Shakespeare said, "Hey, let's team up
and do a comic You draw; I’ll write." If that happened, nobody would say
that comics weren't a worthwhile form of art. My point is, there's nothing
innately wrong with the comic-book medium.
OUI: It's as good as the people who do it?
LEE: With certain exceptions, until Marvel came along
nobody had been doing it very well at all. Most of the people in the field
didn't respect comic books themselves. They figured they were just writing for
young kids, so why bother to make it good. The companies were owned by people
who were not really very literary, who for the most part just stumbled into the
comics business from other areas of publishing or from
some other industry. For them, comics were a way to make a buck. They hired
somebody and said, "Turn out some comics for me." It wasn't like other
forms of art. It wasn't like the theater or ballet or opera or even movies or
television, where the people are dedicated and study the business.
OUI: What caused that change?
LEE: I'd like to think that I had some part in it. At
Marvel, we have tried to upgrade the medium by upgrading the vocabulary in our
books. We use college-level language now and concentrate on incorporating
relevant psychology, sociology, philosophy, satire—things that nobody paid much
attention to before. Before the Marvel style came along, you'd see a superhero
walking down the street wearing his costume—a mask, a cape, red underwear—and
nobody would notice him. Then he would turn a corner and meet a bug-eyed
monster 15 feet tall with scaly skin and eight arms; the hero would say,
"Oh, a creature from another planet! I'd better capture him before he
destroys the world." That was the level of writing in those days. A Marvel
hero today would say, "I wonder what that nut is advertising." We
take a whole different slant. Our Spider-Man character, for instance, is a guy
who climbs walls, sticks to the ceiling and has the strength of 20 men. Obviously
that's a fairy tale. But what would happen if such a person really existed?
OUI: You put the fantasy in the context of day-to-day
reality?
LEE: And it immediately becomes more interesting. And
this is why the older, more intelligent reader can accept and enjoy our books.
OUI: How did this change begin at Marvel?
LEE: With the Fantastic Four in 1961. Here was a team
of four people, and I asked myself, why do they have to like one another? Why
do they always have to get along? Let them argue occasionally. Let the teenager
in the group say, "I want to cut out. I'm not getting enough money."
Their headquarters was a skyscraper on Madison Avenue. In one episode, they got
evicted because they didn't pay the rent The leader of the group had invested
their reward money in .bad stocks and they were wiped out The other members
wanted to kill him: "Some leader you are. You lost all our dough. You blew
the whole bit." This was a new attitude for comics to take.
OUI: Was it simply a case of making the language more true
to life?
LEE: Right. With The Fantastic Four again, I tried to get
the kid to talk like a kid, and the leader to talk like a stuffy, pompous
intellectual. We had a character called The Thing and I tried to give him movie
dialog-sort of a cross between Jimmy Durante and James Cagney. When I work on
my new characters, I take them very seriously. I ask myself, now if I were Dr.
Strange and I had to deliver oaths and incantations, what would I say that
would sound genuine? And when Thor was up in Asgard visiting Odin the king, the
supreme god, I had to give Odin authentic supreme-god expressions. Odin couldn't
say, "Hey, Thor, knock it off, would you." He had to say things like "Cease
and desist, thou base varlet." The words had to sound right. The reader
had to accept them. A character can't say do, when it ought to be dost or doth.
OUI: Did you research the language?
LEE: I read the Bible. I'm not a religious guy, but I love
the rhythm of the Bible. I love the writing. I'm a big Shakespeare buff, too. If
you combine the styles of the Bible and Shakespeare, you get a colorful,
flavorful type of language, and I tried to throw that into Thor whenever I could.
OUI: How did you know you were on the right track with this
new approach?
LEE: I wasn't even looking for a track. The whole thing started
out of sheer boredom. The readers were dying of boredom; I was dying of boredom.
Every day I would tell my wife that I wanted to quit, and she kept saying, "Instead
of writing the same old slop, write something
better." But I knew we were onto something when the fan mail started
coming in. We had never gotten fan mail. I couldn't believe it. I answered every
letter. Even now, if I get a letter written in pencil from some five year- old,
I can't go to sleep unless that kid has received an answer. It's a compulsion. And
in those days, we were getting hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters a
day. More than the Beatles, I think. I read every one. I almost went blind
reading all those letters until four in the morning. I had to stop after a few
years.
OUI: Weren't you the first to publish letters from readers?
LEE: And answers to them. I kept it w warm and friendly. I
got sick of seeing letters beginning Dear Editor and signed Charles Smith. So
I'd answer the letter, “Dear Charlie”
and I'd sign it Stan. And little by little, the kids caught on and started
writing, "Dear Stan and Jack," "Hey, you nuts in the bull
pen"—that type of thing. Which is the feeling I like. Comics should be
fun. I can't tell you how many letters began, "Dear Stan, I've got a
problem. We've never met, but it's something I can't ask my parents, and I know
this will sound crazy, but I'm closer to you than to any other adult I
know." There's one letter I'll never forget. A woman wrote to me saying
that her son was graduating as class valedictorian and that she and her husband
thought I should know, because the three of us did a great job of bringing him
up. It was such a nice letter.
OUI: Do you have adult readers today who have grown up with Marvel?
LEE: Yes, and that had never happened in comic-book
history. Before Marvel, kids would start reading comics at age five, and by the
time they were 13, it would have been goodbye forever. Marvel, on the other
hand, has readers who have remained loyal beyond college age. I’d be lecturing
at a college or doing some radio or TV interview and some guy 30 years old will
say, "Hey, you're Stan Lee. Jesus Christ, I've been reading your stuff
since I was" And he'll get me in a corner and ask how come The Hawk did
such and such last issue.
OUI: And you still attract young readers, despite
television?
LEE: We've kept the kids because of the superhero
scripts. If we were doing just Westerns we wouldn't be as successful, since
television can do Westerns better. Same with romance or crime books. But no
medium can do a science-fiction fantasy story as well as a comic book. Animation
is too expensive for television or movies, and the animation people can't turn
stories out as often or as fast as comics can. We can present a whole galaxy in
one little illustration.
OUI: But science fiction has a limited readership. You must
be doing something more than that.
LEE: Our books are fairy tales for older readers. Every
kid in the world loves fairy tales, but when he gets to be 12 years old, a kid
feels that he's outgrown fairy tales. Then, suddenly, he discovers Marvel
Comics. Now he reads about giants, people who fly through the air, people with
super powers, villains who are bigger than life. Our stories are not pure science
fiction, which can get dull, pedantic and too technical. And they're not just
adventure tales. Marvel stories are the closest thing to fairy tales for older
readers.
OUI : Do you also find that more talented adults want to write
comics these days?
LEE: There were always people who wanted to get into comics,
but there are . many more now. Whereas years ago kids wanted to write for television
or movies, today there are lots of young people for whom the be-all and end-all
of life is to work for Marvel Comics. Roy Thomas, for instance, who became the
editor here after I became publisher, was a big comic-book fan when it wasn't
quite so fashionable. He is probably deeper into comics than I am or was or ever
could be.
OUI: How did you get into comics?
LEE: Nothing was more natural. In the beginning, back around
the time of Noah's ark, I wanted to be an actor. I was with the WP A Federal
Theaterme and Orson Welles. I'd like to feel he's doing an interview right now,
saying "Yes, there I was with Stan." Anyway, you couldn't make any -money
in the theater in those days. Acting was just something to keep people off the
streets. I had a whole family to support-my mother and my father.
OUI : Has the acting experience helped with the comic-book
writing?
LEE: Yes. I now get to play God. I kill. whomever I want and
destroy planets, galaxies. I create new universes. We're the only people in the
world who can resurrect people. Ever since Christ died, it hasn't happened too
often.
OUI: When did the acting stop and the writing begin?
LEE: I had always been fairly good at writing. The New
York Herald Tribune used to run an essay contest for high school kids and I
won it three weeks in a row. So the editor called me down and -told me to stop
entering the contest and give someone else a chance. He asked what I wanted to be
when I became a human being. I said an actor. He said forget it, become a writer.
So I got real stupid jobs. One was writing obituaries for people who were still
alive. But writing in the past tense about living people soon got to he very depressing.
Then I heard about a job opening at Marvel Comics, which was then called Timely
Comics. It seemed an easy way to make money. How could anything be easier than
writing comics? My first jobs there were to sweep the place, proofread and
write stories. Within a few weeks, though, I became the editor, because the guy
I worked for left and I was the only other guy there. I was 17 years old. The
publisher asked me if I thought I could hold down the job until he hired a real
editor. I said I'd try. I've been here for about 38 years.
OUI: When did Timely Comics finally become Marvel Comics?
LEE: We were Timely Comics for about 20 years. We
weren't exactly making any inroads into the cultural life of America, just
following the leaders in the field. When Western stories sold, we did Westerns;
when the trend was to horror stories, we did horrors. When all the world was
into funny little animals because of the Walt Disney comics, we brought out
Terry-Toons and a lot of funny little animals. Sometimes we outsold the others;
sometimes they outsold us. But business was going nowhere until we came up with
The Fantastic Four.
OUI: Did you write all the comics?
LEE: The majority of them. Sometimes I'd hire a writer,
and he'd say, "Oh, gee, I write Westerns but I don't write
mysteries." Or, "I write mysteries but I don't write war
stories." I never understood that. A story is a story. If it's a Western, you
call the guy hombre instead of mister; if it's a war story, you use a couple of
battlefield expressions. Out: What about love comics?
LEE: I wrote them all. Maybe I wrote them badly, but
they came easily to me.
OUI: Are the first 30 years the hardest?
LEE: I hope so. I think I feel somewhat secure now. I
once jokingly told an interviewer that the publisher was probably still looking
for an editor and the article came out saying that Stan Lee was leaving Marvel
Comics. I made up my mind right then that I would never again try to make an
interview interesting.
OUI: Never tell the truth in interviews, just make it fast and
funny.
LEE: That's the story of my life. It was nice talking
to you.
OUI: So you have always been the editor?
LEE: I was the editor and the head writer. I was always
the art director, too. You can’t be a good editor in this business unless you
have a strong visual sense. The art and the script are really a unit
OUI: Where did you get your art raining?
LEE: When I was in the Army during World War Two, I was classified
as a playwright-one of nine in the entire U.S. Army with that classification. What
this really meant was that, when the Army needed some creative job done, I got
the call. Because of this, I drew one of the most famous posters of World War Two.
It was a poster about venereal disease, which the Army was very concerned about
at the time. V.D. was a bigger problem than losing the war. After a GI had had
carnal knowledge of a girl he was supposed to go to a prophylaxis station and be
cauterized, or whatever the hell they did to him; ,so I drew this poster of a
proud, smiling soldier walking into a pro station, and the sign read V.D.? NOT
ME. The Army must have printed 12 billion of them and distributed them all over
the world! The Army had another serious problem in the war. A guy would be in a
foxhole getting his butt shot off. Comes payday, he's not getting paid, because
the finance officer isn't available, or something. So I was given the exciting task
of rewriting the training manual for finance officers. Now, I know as much about
finance as I do about brain surgery. I read the old manual and decided that the
new manual should be done as a comic book. I created a little cartoon character
called Fiscal Freddie to tell the story. That comic book cut training time by 15
percent. I'd like to think that that was the second "way I won the war singlehanded!
OUI: You don't seem like the war hero type.
LEE: I was a very skinny, pink-cheeked, curly-headed
kid. I didn't look like a buck-ass sergeant; I always felt a little embarrassed
to be a three-striper. Mine wasn't the typical Army life. So I tried to wear
the oldest fatigues and keep my face dirty. When I'd see a combat soldier
approaching, I'd spit a lot and roll up my sleeves.
OUI: After your Army poster success, didn't you want to be a
commercial artist?
LEE: No, and I'm not sure I really wanted to be a writer,
either. I wanted very much to be an actor. I like the idea of being a writer but,
God, I hate to write. I've never been the kind of writer who could even have the
radio on when he's working. I used to live on Long Island, in a house with a tiny
little swimming pool and a terrace around it. I wrote outside. I'd wear a pair
of swimming trunks and I'd put a table by the pool, with another table on top
of it so I could write standing up. I'd be standing there and I would write facing
the sun; as the sun would move, I'd keep turning around. I went blind and
ruined my skin, but I loved it. I went to the office only two days a week and
was out by the pool the other five days. After awhile, my wife forgot that I was
a writer, because I was underfoot all the time. She would have her friends over
and they'd be on the terrace talking, laughing, gossiping, and I'd be six feet
away at the table, typing. I wasn't able to participate in the conversations and
this frustrated me. So I hate to write. But there's no nicer feeling in the world
than when you're through writing and you're holding those pages in your hand
and you've finished it.
OUI: It's like hitting your head against the wall, it feels
good when you stop.
LEE: But I
could never stop for long, because comic books come out once a month, and at
that time, I was writing about 12 or 15 of them each month. So I would no
sooner finish one and another one was due.
OUI: When did you originate your new way of scripting
comics?
LEE: This was back in the Sixties when I first began
working with a lot of different artists. I would be writing a story for Jack
Kirby, and Steve Ditko would come in and say he needed a Spider- Man script.
And I'd say, "Steve, I can't write it for you. I haven't finished Kirby's
story yet." But I couldn't let Ditko hang around with nothing to do. So
I'd say, "Look, Steve, let me give you the plot. You go ahead and draw
anything you want and bring it back to me. I’ll put in the dialog." Don
Heck would walk in and I'd give him a plot. So I'd keep a lot of artists busy.
I got better stories that way. Because all I usually was concerned with was the
plot, not details. The artist would go home and decide which were the very best
illustrations to tell the story. In the past, the writer had to dream up the
illustration ideas as well as the dialog. If you give the artist first crack at
the drawings, he wilI very often throw things in that you would never even have
thought of.
OUI: Any favorite examples?
LEE: Well, this is how Jack Kirby and I created The
Silver Surfer, one of our most popular characters. most popular characters: I
gave Jack an idea for a Fantastic Four story about Galactus; when Jack brought
in the drawings, there was The Silver Surfer character. I said, "Who's
this?" He said, "Well, I figure somebody as powerful as Galactus
ought to have a herald." On seeing the pictures, I gave The Silver Surfer
a personality and speech patterns I thought he ought to have. But had we not
worked this way, there would have been no Silver Surfer.
OUI: And now you have institutionalized the procedure?
LEE: Today the artist and writer discuss the story, the
artist goes home and draws it and then gives it to the writer. The old way, the
writer's creating dialog for a mental image; the new way, he's looking at the
character's face and he can pinpoint the dialog. We have had artists who didn't
follow the plot carefully. Sometimes they'd bring in something that was so different; I couldn't remember
what the plot was. I really enjoyed that, because then I had to create a whole
new story based on the drawings. It was like doing a crossword puzzle.
OUI: Weren't you also responsible for making the public aware
of the people who created the comics?
LEE: I guess so. I always wondered why we were
anonymous_ So I thought that, when we started The Fantastic Four, it would be
fun to put some credits on the strip. First we wrote, "By Stan Lee and Jack
Kirby." After awhile, "By Smilin' Stan and Jolly Jack." And
"Lettered by Adorable Arty," and on and on. Even the inkers;
"Inked by Joltin' Joe Sinnott." And I put in these nicknames just to
give all of us a personality that would appeal to the kids. I treated Marvel
like one huge advertising campaign with catchwords and slogans: "Make mine
Marvel!" "Welcome to the Marvel
Age in comics!"
OUI: Do you have a favorite strip?
LEE: Even if I did, it wouldn't be right to say.
OUI: What about The Hulk? Many readers have the feeling that
The Hulk is your favorite. Or Spider-Man?
LEE: Well, I certainly love them both. I get a kick out
of The Hulk. We made a hit out of a monster. The Hulk was like Frankenstein’s
monster. I always thought the monster was the hero of Frankenstein and
everybody else came across bad, like those idiots who chased him with the
torches. Here was this poor little monster who didn't want to hurt anybody, and
everybody was hounding him. And I said, "Let's get a guy like that."
So I love The Hulk. I like Spider-Man, because he's the most successful. And
I'm crazy about The Silver Surfer. I love Thor because I love his kind of dialog.
I love the bigger-than-life situations. I like writing about gods. You like them
all. Whichever one I am writing I like best at that moment,
OUI: You once spoke of the flawed superhero who has problems
in his life. Is that the philosophy behind heroes like The Hulk or Spider-Man?
LEE: In the past, most of the characters had been
superhero stereotypes. The good guys never made mistakes, always won in the
end. This is ridiculous, I think of myself as a good guy, and very heroic,
but—and this will come as a great shock to you—I have made a mistake or two in
my life. And I imagine there are some bad guys who still love dogs and send
their mother a Mother's Day card every year. I've argued with the people at the
Code of the Comics Magazine Association about this subject when they objected
to a book in which the hero didn't win at the end or in which the villain
escaped. They'd say it was bad for the kids. And I disagreed. The best thing
you can do for kids is to equip them to face life. There are such things in
life as corrupt politicians and corrupt cops and corrupt parents. A kid can keep
his nose to the grindstone all his life, never tell a lie, go to church every Sunday
and still contract a horrible disease. It's ridiculous to give kids a fairy-tale
notion that if you alias do everything right, you'll marry the fairy princess
and live happily ever after. The trick is to let them know that life is unpredictable,
but that it's better to play it the right way. We live in hope that the world
will be a better place if we're all honest, if we all love one another.
OUI: Does everything you publish have to be submitted to the
Code?
LEE: Oh, yes. But there's no problem. No matter how hip
and offbeat we try to be, we're aware that there are many young kids reading
our books, so we never get too sexy or too violent or too shocking in any way.
There's really nothing that the Code requires that we wouldn't do without a
code. out: But didn't you once bring out a book without the approval of the
Code?
LEE: I might as well tell the whole story. Years ago I
got a letter from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, saying,
"Your books have such great influence, and drug addiction is such a
problem, that it would be great if one of your stories pointed up the dangers. "I
felt that was a worthwhile project, so I did a Spider-Man series, a story that
ran for three issues, The drug-addiction theme. was peripheral. I don't like to
hit a kid over the head with a lecture. Spider-Man was fighting the Green
Goblin, and one of his friends was taking an overdose. Spider-Man ended up
giving his friend a lecture on what an idiot he was to take the drugs, We sent
these books to the Code and they wouldn't give us the seal of approval. It was
forbidden in the Code to mention. drugs. Well, we didn't mention them in an
appealing way. And we had been asked to do the story by HEW. "No, we're
sorry," the Code said, "you can't do this, blah, blah, blah...."
So I figured the hell with it; we sent out the issues without the Code's seal. Right after
that the Code was Liberalized; now we're allowed to mention drugs. Not that
Marvel continually does. It's funny, because National Comics immediately felt
that if we did it, they would do it. But they went all out. They had a cover showing
a guy giving himself a needle in the arm. I don't know what the hell they were
trying to do.
OUI: Did the absence of the Code seal affect the sales?
LEE: Not a bit.
OUI: Weren't you also
involved in a venture with underground comics?
LEE: Kirby and I were once on a radio show at WBAI and
the interviewer said, "Boy, you guys are getting so successful," I
said, "Well, we're still just a little outfit trying to keep alive"
And Jack said, "Oh, come on, Stan. You know we're the biggest. We sell
more copies and we're the most successful" covered up the microphone and
said, "Jack, that isn't the image we want. The minute people think you're
the biggest, they start rooting for somebody else. It's human nature. I like
the image that we're still a little company, yapping at the heels of the big
boys—like National Comics, which has Warner Bros. behind it." Jack said,
"No, I think when you're big you should say you're big." I didn't
want the public to think of us as a nice, respectable, staid comic-book company.
So I figured it would be great if Marvel could do an underground book, even if
it didn't have the seal. got Dennis Kitchen, one of the cleverest guys in the
underground field, to edit the book and produce it for us. We were going to
call it Comix Book. But I realized that for it to really be an underground book
it had to be kind of sexy and shocking. I didn't want anything that would hurt
Marvel or alienate any parents,
OUI: In other words, you were going to give the underground
people a shot at the newsstand?
LEE: Yes. I thought it was a good idea. But it turned
out to be a rather emasculated underground book. And although I thought it was
good, it. jut wasn't sexy enough. And it didn't sell well enough. So finally I
suggested to Dennis that he take the whole book so that Marvel would have no
connection with it. And that's what he did.
OUI: But is it still
Marvel-funded?
LEE: I can tell you exactly what it is. We made a deal
that Dennis would pay us maybe five percent of profits —I don't remember—but a
very small royalty for the use of the Comix
name we had copyrighted. And maybe someday we'll buy it back and go into it.
Actually, I should be doing more underground stuff. I have a million new ideas
that I haven't had time to follow up on—that I can't do while I'm at Marvel. I
don't want people to start to say, "Ah, Lee is old and tired and doing the
same thing day after day."
OUI: Do you feel that you've been in a rut?
LEE: Not really. I was always involved with outside
writing projects. 1 used to ghostwrite radio shows and TV stuff. I even did
newspaper comic strips that were eminently forgettable. I worked for a while on
the Howdy Doody strip. I did a strip called Mrs. Lyons' Cubs about cub scouts.
I did a strip called Willie Lumpkin, which was a funny experience. The one
thing I'm not good at writing is bucolic stuff; it just isn't my style. So one
day I came up with an idea for a comic strip about a cop in New York City; it
was going to be a hip, humorous strip about the people on the cop's beat. I
called it Barney's Beat. So I took the idea to the syndicate and the head of
the syndicate liked it. I figured I was off and running, that this was going to
be the biggest thing since Peanuts. Then he said, "I just want you to make
one little change: instead of a cop on a beat, make the character a mailman—a
lovable mailman in a small town; let's call him something like Willie
Lumpkin+" So all of a sudden I was doing a bucolic strip—the one thing
that I shouldn't write.
OUI: What about movies? Is it true that Fellini is one of your
fans?
LEE: That was a funny thing. I'm sitting minding my own
business and the receptionist tells me that someone is here to see me, someone
named Fellini. I said, "Fellini who?" I figured she is going to say
Irving Fellini. "Federico," she said. 1 didn't know what the gag was,
but I went along with it. I said, "OK, show him in." A minute later
this guy walks in, black coat
over his shoulders —no Italian director would be caught dead putting his arms
in the sleeves—a big hat with a big brim, and a big cigarette holder. He had an
entourage, a half dozen guys who followed him single file in descending order
of height.
OUI: They looked as if you could put them inside one another?
LEE:! Exactly. I couldn't imagine why Fellini wanted to
see me. When I realized that it really was FeIlini, I wanted to talk about him.
All he wanted to do, though, was talk about me and Marvel Comics. After a while
I was sure he was going to say, "All right, I want you to come to Italy
and write all my movies." But no, just talk; then he left
OUI: He used to be in comics, didn't he?
LEE: He had once been a cartoonist and is very
interested in the whole field.
OUI: Was that meeting the end of your relationship?
LEE: We've exchanged quite a few letters. Nothing more.
Then, a few years later, the same receptionist tells me, "Stan, Alain
Resnais is here to see you," I said, "Oh sure, send him in, What took
him so long?" Alain came in with a camera, and he kept snapping pictures
of me while we were talking. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world:
the internationally famous director who did Last Year at Marienbad and
Hiroshima, Mon Amour taking pictures of me. Alain said he practically learned
to speak English by reading my comics. Now be and I work together on
screenplays. We're best friends. We did a screenplay called The Monster Maker. As far as I know, the thing is still on
the shelf. So we have a new one now that has to do with the whole universe. I
figure if you're going to write a movie, write big.
OUI: The whole universe? Can you give us a 25-word synopsis?
LEE: It explains what's going on in the universe—what
ifs all about; why we're here. I figure it's about time I let people in on
that. It's called The Inmates. I think it's sensational.
OUI: Do you have any TV projects?
LEE: I'm negotiating, now to do a Spider-Man series,
like Six Million Dollar Man, on prime-time television. Spider-Man is also going
to be a newspaper comic strip with the Register and Tribune syndicate. And I
sold another strip called The Virtue of Vera Valiant, a soap opera along the
line of Mary Hartman. I have an idea for two rock operas using our Fantastic
Four characters. One I wrote the treatment for. The other I haven't put down on
paper et. I'd like us to be involved in 'every form, shape and type of media.
I'd love for us to do movies, television, stage shows—everything. We ought to
have a Marvel Land, like Disneyland. And then I've still got to write a novel
pretty soon, since my wife will never think of me as a writer until I write a
story between two hard covers and have it made into a movie starring Robert
Redford.
OUI: What's your greatest ambition?
LEE: To have a week's vacation.
THANKS AGAIN TO CARL THIEL!
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