A Crowded Life in Comics – Stan Lee

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“I always thought I’d quit in a couple of years.
 But it never seemed to happen…” – Stan Lee

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‘Nuff Said: Memories of Stan Lee

by Rick Marschall

Stan Lee died this week. As if he were invulnerable like many of his superheroes – or the usual superheroes, not the Marvel Universe head-cases – many fans likely thought he would simply live on and on.

He did, in a way that few others in the comic-book field did. Even Steve Ditko, so closely linked to Stan and who also died this year, began his career when Stan was well established. Heck, Stan was a veteran in comics when I was born. Eventual retrospectives will assess his career as spanning the Adolescent Age (of the comic-book format, not only readers’ ages) to extravagant SFX Hollywood exploitation.

There have been a plethora of tributes and appraisals of Stan this week, starting within hours of his death. Media canned obits; fans’ fond memories; critics jumping on his grave before he could even occupy it – carping, criticism, iconoclasm, deconstruction, revisionism.

I think Stan’s contributions were enormous, and I can avoid hagiography to say so. His personality was enormous, and so were his talents and instincts and ego and modesty. With great power comes great contradictions.

Instead, I will offer some aspects and anecdotes that might not be found elsewhere. And they can be added, perhaps, to the assessments other will make in the future. They are personal, but not mine alone.

I met Stan when I was Comics Editor of Publishers Newspaper Syndicate in the mid-1970s. It was in Chicago, in the Sun-Times Building, across the river from the virtual cathedral known as Tribune Tower. Stan was in town I think as a guest of Chicago Con, but also to speak with my syndicate’s president Dick Sherry. Not about a Spiderman strip; another syndicate, another time, would do that. No, Stan and Dick had been discussing a European-style magazine, along the lines of Linus, Eureka, or the original Charlie – new contents, international material, articles, interviews, news, reviews, all about comics.

I don’t remember whose idea it was, originally, but Marvel (or Stan himself?) and Publishers Syndicate would co-produce. A major investor would have been Johnny Hart (BC and Wizard of Id), who did not join us for lunch or back at the office. My familiarity with European comics and cartoonists was a major reason Sherry hired me, and I would have been the editor. The working title (appropriately random and only vaguely germane) was to be GROG! after the strange beast in BC. He would have been the magazine’s “mascot.”

We made dummy copies and got to second base, but never to third or home, for various and sundry reasons.

But Stan and I kept in touch. A couple years later, with Chicago (and the third of the syndicates where I edited comics) in the rear-view mirror, I wrote to Stan about working for Marvel. I had never been a particular fan of superheroes, which I did not, um, stress in our correspondence. It seems that it would not have made a difference, however, because I was indeed hired, but initially to handle the magazine line – black and white comics, one-shots, “Super Specials,” movie adaptations, and such. The Hulk was a hit on network TV then, and the process-color magazine stories I hatched or edited were supposed to be “more like the TV Hulk.”

Eventually I was given the privilege of conceiving (with many Stan conferences), designing, naming, and charting the course of what became EPIC magazine.

This brief column will correct some of the conceptions and misconceptions about this Marvel period, and Stan. The Editor in Chief at the time was Jim Shooter, and he has written some memoir about my hiring, and the birth (and birth-pangs) of EPIC. I would like to say that I have read and enjoyed these. I would like to say that, but I cannot, because they are mostly tripe. He wrote that I was hired “cold” by him, yet I had known and (almost) worked with Stan previously, as I have related.

The same with EPIC: it was to be more like Heavy Metal than GROG!, of course; and I took the position that, like HM and the European magazines, we would have to grant creators’ rights and sign royalty agreements.

This argument was resisted in higher echelons at Marvel, of course. Shooter came on board but was not father to the idea, despite his revisionist history. And it did happen: in the Marvel Universe, EPIC was the entry-way to royalty deals. Stan eventually sent me to Europe, to the Lucca Festival principally, to scout for artists. (Shooter was steamed, just as he complained about my invitation to lunches and meetings when European publishers came to New York. But. I had previous relations with many of them; and as one executive said, “We don’t want to scare them off.”)

Back to Stan, and some more pertinent things to share. He was, in the office, just what people saw in conventions and TV commercials. Dashing about in warp-speed. Gregarious. Yes, nicknames. There were many meetings, and chats, in his office; but he often came into the office of me and Ralph Macchio, my assistant. Sometimes business, of course, but – this was cool – sometimes to talk about nothing. Not quite like Seinfeld, but… old comics, newspaper strips, “what ever happened to this-or-that old cartoonist” who I might have known. Once when Burne Hogarth came up to visit me, I took him down to meet Stan, who acted (and surely was) blown away to meet the Tarzan artist.

If memory serves, when Tom Batiuk visited New York once (I had edited Funky Winkerbean at Publishers) he was awed to be in the Marvel offices, and met Stan. My Connecticut friend Chad Grothkopf (who was my first landlord after I married Nancy) requested that I arrange an audience with Stan. They had worked together decades earlier, and were friends whose wives shared the same first name.

Ralph thought these visits to my desk were out of the ordinary, by Marvel standards; usually editors were called to his large office if at all. But these were social calls. One thing he shared I never forgot. Out of the blue, one day he talked about his early, and surviving, dreams for Marvel: he always held up Disneyland, the theme parks; and what they represented. Not so much the characters except “the way Disneyland, the whole Disney thing, is tattooed on everyone’s brain... There are other cartoons, but Disney is first. There are other funny animals, but the Disney ones are what people think of. Mickey Mouse is the most famous character in the world! Disneyland! A whole city!” I wondered, years later, after Marvel was swallowed by Disney, how ironic that was to him – maybe bitter, since Stan was long-gone by then.

More than that, is something I can share, and it seldom is mentioned about Stan. His instincts. He loved comics as an art form, but never got artsy about it (believe me, friends here and in Europe can and do) (so do I). By the end of my time at Marvel, Stan knew little about the Marvel titles or new characters. Enough – no; actually, not enough – to answer fans’ questions at conventions. That was the real reason he gave talks with no questions, or arranged signings alone, with no presentations.

But he never lost his technical-editing (if I can use that term) chops. As I said, I had been a cartoonist, had edited comics, churned ‘em out at Marvel after all; and studied strips. The “Language and Structure,” as my course would be called as a teacher at SVA. Stan, however, held “classes” every day.

– How to construct a page? He would explain how to lead the reader’s eye through a page.

– Balloon placement? He was brilliant, seeing designs like parts of jigsaw puzzle, making the reader look here and notice that, via balloons, sound effects, visual elements, “camera” angles. 

Covers and colors? This was what Stan held onto longest – approving every single cover. The drawing, usually roughs AND finishes, and especially the colors. Contrasts and values, logos and figures. He would never merely reject out of hand; he would correct and show and discuss. By my time, the assembly-line of cover roughs had Marie Severin execute the final versions for Stan, and her own talent as well as years-with-Stan, virtually assured their OKs. But there was almost always one little tweak, at least, and spot-on irrefutable.

Every chat was like going to school.

Whatever is said, or speculated, about Stan Lee’s collaborations, what is seldom said and less often acknowledged is the undeniable effect that such “lessons” – his instincts, not just about what would make young readers flip – but how to do it, in a million subtle ways… could not have been lost on Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others. Even Drawing the Marvel Way does not give a full impression of the passionate love affair Stan had with the comic-book page. And his visceral analyses. I would ask John Buscema if he realized the same things about Stan. “Oh, sure,” he would wave his hand. He acknowledged picking up countless tips from Stan.

Memorable characters? Stan created or wet-nursed them; all with his DNA. Strips? He loved comics, so launched several newspaper strips. Other genres? He loved humor, as well as teenage, girls, parody, fumetti, and romance themes. Merchandising, movies, theme parks… we know them all. Astounding, really.

In one dynamic man, he was what other publishers needed staffs for. He always seemed a bit uncomfortable in person, however affable, as if fighting eternally blocked nasal passages; and – during my time – I used to wonder how painful those hair plugs were. Yet nothing slowed him down. I even remember hearing that when he moved to Los Angeles, his place was so big that he skated around on roller skates, even answering the door with them on. True? Even if not, it fit the man perfectly. Legends imitate life.

In that regard, finally, one time he bounded into my office, and related an idea he had for a Silver Surfer story in the planned EPIC. He was full of life, gesticulating, doing action poses, loudly building to a crescendo ending. After he left, Ralph Macchio and I looked at each other, rolling our eyes and stifling laughs. We had the common impression – the story hung on the sort of speculation that we both had as kids, young kids, and therefore many readers probably would too; and therefore the pitch seemed mundane, not special.

Eventually I realized that the story idea, I won’t recount here, was pure Stan. If it was juvenile… it touched on ordinary fantasies. A good thing. If it was simple… it meant it was universal. If it was child-like…

… well, that was Stan Lee. A brilliant child – maybe several brilliant kids rolled into one – who never lost the joy of childhood. Everything could be fun, if you dreamed it right, planned it right, told it right, drew it right, and sold, or shared it, right. At the root of it all, whatever the genre or project, Stan Lee asked “What if…?”

And I ask: What if there had been no Stan Lee?

Topper: Jack Kirby, Fantastic Four, Marvel Treasury Edition, 1976
Bottom: Stan Lee, 1969

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