Original subtitles

What year is Spider-Man?

At what point do you create Spider-Man?

Right after The Hulk, I think.

Again, Martin said, "We're doing good. Let's do another one, Stan."

So, when I was a kid,

I had read a pulp magazine called The Spider,

and I always liked it.

But that isn't what gave me the idea.

That's when I had to find a name.

But what gave me the idea was, I wanted...

You know, in superheroes, the most important thing

is to get a new power, and you run out of powers.

A guy can fly, a guy is strong, what's left?

Figured if a guy could stick to walls, you know, like an insect...

So I wrote down a list of names.

"Insect-Man" didn't have it. "Mosquito-Man" wasn't dramatic.

Finally, I hit on "Spider-Man."

"Spider-Man." Man, that sounded dramatic.

It had a ring to it. Still does.

And then I remembered I had loved that pulp magazine called The Spider.

And it was called The Spider, Master of Men.

There was nothing spiderish about him.

It was just a name he had. He was just a guy in a hat and, you know,

he hit people.

But I liked the name. So I thought, "I'll call him Spider-Man."

When I proposed the name to Martin, my publisher...

Now, he had been on board with everything,

you know, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk...

He thought I could do no wrong.

So I told him about Spider-Man. He said, "You're crazy."

Said, "Stan, people hate spiders.

"You can't do a book called Spider-Man."

And he said, "And you want him to be a teenager?

"Teenagers can only be sidekicks."

And then he said, "And you want him to have problems?"

Because I told him I wanted him to worry about money, pimples...

'Cause up until that point,

the traditional heroes, people like...

Well, The Fantastic Four, there were no money problems.

Reed Richards is the brilliant inventor,

and the problems were more on a cosmic scale.

And their real-life... They didn't have real-life identities.

I gave them later on,

but you're right, in the beginning, they didn't.

So Peter Parker and Spider-Man...

Well, the Peter Parker half of Spider-Man

is more like the first character to come along

that actually had a life outside of the suit, where the problems

were almost as epic as what he was facing while in costume.

That's why "problems" were small,

the problems that everybody deals with.

That's just what I tried for.

Basically, if we had a formula at all,

the formula was, we know we're doing fantasy.

We have guys who can fly, burst into flame, all that.

But write them as realistically as possible.

If those people really existed,

what would their lives be like?

And that's what I was trying to do.

So, when I told Martin about it, he said,

"Absolutely not. It's the dumbest idea I ever heard, Stan.

"You've lost it, Stan."

Well, I then did, I guess, The X-Men and a few others.

Daredevil and Iron Man,

and I can't remember chronologically whether it was before or after,

but it was during that period.

But I always felt, "I want to do Spider-Man." I thought it would be good.

We had a magazine called Amazing Fantasy, which I did with Steve Ditko.

He's really one of the greats.

For some reason, I loved the book,

but they weren't superheroes.

What it was, there was little five...

KEVIN SMITH: Originally, it was Amazing Adult Fantasy.

That's right. That's right.

And I wanted stories for older readers,

so I tried to write science-fiction stories, very short ones,

with O. Henry endings, with surprise endings,

and each book might have had four or five of those stories.

I thought they were great, but they didn't feature men in tights.

So the public, that wasn't what they wanted at that time.

So we were gonna drop the book.

Now, when you're putting out the last issue of a book, nobody really cares,

you can do...

So I figured, "Aha! I'm gonna put Spider-Man in there."

I call Jack Kirby, who's so good at this sort of thing,

and I said, "Jack, I want you to do a character of mine called Spider-Man."

I told him what it should be.

But I said, "Don't make him look like Captain America.

"I want just an average guy."

I was gonna say "like me," but, of course, I didn't think I was average.

I thought of myself as Captain America.

So he did the first few pages,

and I came over to his board and I looked at it,

and I said, "No, that's not what I want, Jack."

I said, "Look, forget it. I'll give it to somebody else."

It was too bold, too heroic, too bulky.

Yeah, the guy looked like you. He looked really heroic.

Yeah, and I'm not Spider-Man.

So, Jack said, "Fine." You know, it was nothing.

We didn't think Spider-Man meant anything.

And Jack had a million other things to do.

I said, "I'll get somebody else." He said, "Sure."

I thought, "Steve Ditko would be perfect for it."

He drew people that looked like the kind of people

you'd meet in the street, you know?

So, I gave it to Steve, and, oh, man, was I ever right in picking Steve.

He did a beautiful job. And we published it.

We put it on the cover of the last issue of Amazing whatever.

Amazing Fantasy.

And, um, sent it out and forgot about it.

Months later, after the sales figures kicked in...

It takes months, or it took months...

'Cause back in the day, it'd take almost nine months, I read,

A long time.

The figures came out, and Martin came in to me one day,

and he said, "Stan,

"do you remember that Spider-Man character of yours that we both liked so much?"

(CHUCKLES)

And he said, "How about doing a series of him?"

And you know...

And there we were.

What do you think about Spider-Man caught on?

Do you think it was really just the "I can relate to this guy" aspect of it?

I think there were a lot of reasons.

I think perhaps the main reason was the "I can relate to him."

'Cause he was shy. He wasn't that successful with girls.

He had to worry about his family.

I think most teenagers reading it

thought to themselves, "Hey, that could be me!"

You know, so there certainly was that identification.

But beyond that, I think, I must say, truthfully,

You know, Doc Ock,I came up with some great stories

the Green Goblin,

the Sandman, and...

Everything worked.

And visually,

Very striking character, too.

'Cause the way Steve would have him crawling on walls

and swinging on webs, it just...

Everything came together perfectly.

And it's very...

One of the very few comic book characters, even back then,

that was covered from head to toe.

Like, even Captain America, you still have this much of his face.

Spider-Man's completely enveloped in his costume.

You know the good thing about that?

You could be any kid.

You could be black. You could be Asian.

You could be Indian. You could be anything,

and imagine you were in that costume.

So I think that made it relevant to everybody everywhere.

And that was accidental.

I don't think we planned it that way, but it was very fortuitous.

You get credited with...

And I know you're not even comfortable with it,

with creator of this, creator of this.

And you're always the first person in the room

to point out that it wasn't just you.

As you said before, it was a very collaborative medium.

And I know there are people that...

In the case of Jack Kirby,

"Oh, there must be a point of contention between Stan and Jack," blah, blah, blah.

And that's not the case. Let's talk about that.

Well, what happened was, Steve is really the guy who brought this to a point.

Obviously, Spider-Man was my idea.

Even gave it to Jack first, didn't want it, then gave it to Steve.

Steve feels since he drew it,

and gave it life, so to speak,

that he created it as much as I did.

Now, in my heart of hearts,

I feel the guy who comes up with the concept

is the guy who created it.

But Steve feels, and I hope he doesn't...

When he sees this, doesn't feel I'm quoting him wrong.

He feels that the person who physically gives it life is the co-creator,

otherwise, all I had was an idea which was nothing solid.

Now, while I don't really agree with that,

I have enough respect for Steve, and for the other artists,

that I am very happy and very comfortable

to call myself the co-creator of all of these things.

And you coined the phrase,

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Which everyone that knows Spider-Man knows that line.

You know, it's funny. I never thought it would catch on that way,

but sometimes people'll meet me, "Hey, didn't you do Spider-Man?"

I'll say "Yeah." They'll say, "With great power..."

It's incredible! I love it.

So at what point do you hand over the reins of Spider-Man, and to whom?

And was that tough?

Well, artistically, Steve eventually left after,

I don't know, 20, 30, 40, some amount of books,

and John Romita took over as the artist.

And I said to him, "You know, John..."

John doesn't draw like Steve. His style is different.

But I said, "We don't want to disturb the readers

"by suddenly seeing a totally different style.

"Do you think you could make it look like Steve for a while?"

Bless him. He did such a great job.

Those first few issues looked like Steve had done them.

But then, little by little, he began to draw it in his own style,

and it became his strip.

And years later, other artists took over,

and no matter how it was drawn, no matter who drew it,

the strip was always, I'm happy to say, powerful and successful.

Now, who wrote after you?

Oh, after me? Well, let's see. I think...

The first guy. I mean, there have been a zillion Spider-Man writers, but...

I think it was probably Roy Thomas, because...

What happened was, I think around 1970, I became the publisher,

and I didn't have the time to write all the stories, or hardly any stories,

so I had to look around for somebody who could do the editing and the writing

and handle the art direction.

And Roy Thomas I considered my best writer at the time.

Very bright guy, and a sincere, dedicated guy.

So I made him the editor, and he wrote Spider-Man and a number of other books.

In order to talk about Spider-Man and the Spider-Man family

and everything that you accomplished

in the 11, 12 pages of Amazing Fantasy that still holds up today,

all one has to do is look at something like Superman or Batman.

Superman's origin has changed many times throughout the years,

as well as the character itself.

His origins changed? I didn't know that.

His origins changed a bunch.

Sometimes Krypton is a very sterile world.

Sometimes it's a world where you got to know the family.

They're bringing that back a little more in the comics now.

But the Superman family has kind of gone through some varied incarnations.

John Byrne did the revamp, you know, in the '80s and whatnot.

But Superman, when Siegel and Shuster first came up with the character,

you have a character that can leap very tall but didn't fly.

Leaped over tall buildings.

Tall buildings in a single bound.

Batman has gone through various incarnations as well.

The original Bob Kane story has gone through a campier version

to kind of bring it back to its origins a little bit more.

Spider-Man, though, on the other hand,

has always remained constant.

The back story has never really altered.

Some people have tried to tweak it,

but it's always what you and Ditko did

in that original 11, 12-page Amazing Fantasy story.

And that's, I think, a true testimony

to what you guys were able to accomplish

in a very short amount of time,

very short amount of pages.

You set up the world that still exists today for that character,

then when you went on to write the Spider-Man book

outside of Amazing Fantasy, you set up characters

that are still involved in the Spider-Man mythos today.

Uncle Ben and Aunt May,

not a traditional take on the familial upbringing.

Like, Peter Parker's parents weren't around.

He was being raised by Aunt and Uncle. Why?

Well, I wanted to give him a reason

to be a superhero.

In other words, even if you get a superpower,

why are you gonna spend your life risking your life fighting crooks?

And you did the sensible thing in the story,

which most people would, I think, take upon themselves

if they were bitten by a radioactive spider

and they were given the abilities,

they wouldn't necessarily think, "I'll fight crime."

They're like, "I'm gonna make some money off of this."

(CHUCKLING) That's sure what I would do!

The first thing I would do is... Well, he's not around anymore.

I was gonna say I'd get on The Ed Sullivan Show,

but I'd certainly wanna get on Jay Leno or Letterman,

and I'd wanna be exploited and get paid for it.

So I figured if I made him a guy

who has to have a reason, a motive,

if he could think that he's responsible in a way for the death of his uncle.

I mean, what a motive that would be.

That's when I wrote that line,

"With great power, comes great responsibility."

And, um, I liked the idea of his aunt as surviving

and making her always ill, so that...

Because to keep a story interesting,

one of the best things you can do with a character

is put him in a position where he has to make a life choice.

For example, if he goes north,

he can fight the villain who is about to blow up the world.

But if he heads south, he can reach a drugstore

which has the life-saving medicine that his aunt needs within the next hour.

Now, he can't do both.

Is he gonna let the world get blown up,

or is he gonna let his aunt die? What does he do?

When you can get situations like that,

you know you're gonna hold the reader's interest.

So, by him having an ailing aunt,

I always had an excuse for him not to be able to just get out there

and fight the crooks without a care in the world,

but he always had that worry: "Is Aunt May okay?"

Another thing that you always think about is,

"Why doesn't a superhero tell the world he's a superhero

"and bask in the adulation?"

Well, I had to give him a reason.

His aunt, who had a weak heart,

he's the only relative she has left, her nephew.

She loves him. He's her world. She worries about him.

She makes him put on galoshes if it looks like it's gonna snow,

and so forth.

How could he tell her he's Spider-Man, who's out there risking his life?

So again, he has a problem.

He must never let his aunt know.

I think that worked out best in one story that we did

where one of his main villains, Doc Ock, Doctor Octopus,

develops a relationship with Aunt May.

Aunt May kind of gets a crush on him.

Peter Parker knows that Doc Ock is a villain,

but Doc Ock doesn't know Peter Parker is Spider-Man.

Aunt may invites him to her house.

There is Peter sitting with his most deadly villain,

but he can't say anything.

And he doesn't even want to hurt Doc Ock,

'cause it would break Aunt May's heart.

I mean, my God, that's something that the old Russian novelists would have loved.

Right, right. Deep pathos. Talking about Doc Ock,

where does a character like Doc Ock come from?

Is it first the name, and you're like,

"Well, we'll find a guy to live into the name"?

Or is it the idea of the dude with the arms,

and then, "Ooh, I know. 'Doc Ock.'"

Exactly. Once you have your superhero, you're set.

But the big problem is, every month coming up with a new villain.

It occurred to me a guy with tentacles that are like arms

would be great.

So, the obvious name, it didn't take very long,

was to call him Doc... Oh, and they're always scientists.

They have to be scientists, or else how the hell did they invent this thing?

So he was a doctor, or it could have been a professor.

But in fact, I might have thought professor first,

but then I thought, "Doctor Octopus."

And then I thought, "'Doc Ock.' What a perfect nickname."

It couldn't have been "Prof. Ock." It wouldn't have sat.

So that's why he was a doctor and not a professor.

So, I came up with the name Doctor Octopus, as we just mentioned.

I love nicknames. For instance, Spider-Man, I called him "Spidey."

Nobody ever called Batman "Batty,"

they never called Superman "Supie,"

they called him "Supes," which I never felt was a great nickname.

I love calling Iron Man "Shellhead,"

Thor, "Goldilocks."

Captain America was Winghead...

Daredevil was Hornhead.

Oh, yeah, Daredevil was called Hornhead, and, um...

I always felt the readers would understand.

It's not that they would think you didn't take your characters seriously,

but, you were being realistic. You knew them well enough to give them a nickname.

Last year, or two years ago,

Marvel kind of broke their bad streak of movie properties.

For a while, DC, and through Warner Brothers,

had Batman. Well, before Batman, Superman,

and I always felt that they didn't even have properties

that lent themselves to cinema as much as Marvel did.

Marvel's set being very science-fiction oriented,

perfect movies on the page, you know, no-brainers.

And for a while, Marvel couldn't make that happen.

Then Bryan Singer's X-Men kind of punched through in a big, big way,

and for years, Spider-Man was held up in legal limbo.

James Cameron was gonna do a movie at one point with Leonardo DiCaprio,

and finally, this year we're gonna see the Spider-Man movie,

which, some would say, is about 20 years in the making.

People have been waiting for the Spider-Man movie.

That's gotta jazz you.

Oh, it more than jazzes me. It's almost unbelievable.

I don't think there's ever been a time

when the product of one company is gonna be represented

so much in movies. I mean...

You know, starting with Blade,

that was really the first one that did well.

That's true, that's true.

Obviously, X-Men was a huge hit.

Well, they're working on the sequel to X-Men now,

and on the third issue, on the third movie.

Spider-Man will open up. They're already planning the sequel to that.

Daredevil, I think, will be...

No, The Hulk will be next. Then comes Daredevil.

Daredevil first, then Hulk.

Is that how it is? Daredevil then Hulk? Okay.

Then there's, I think, Ghost Rider is in the works.

Iron Man is in the works, and it goes on and on.

It's a great time to be a Marvel fan if you're into movies as well.

Oh, man, yeah. And the beautiful thing is,

today there is nothing that you can imagine

that can't be put on the screen.

So these can all be big-budget, powerful movies.

And I think that Blade,

and certainly X-Men done by Bryan Singer,

have proven it's possible to not only get the young fans,

but get adults, people who just go to see a good movie,

Absolutely.

So, I'm hoping, and I'm sure they will,

that the movies done of the Marvel characters

will be done in a good, adult way, you know?

So, besides all the colorful stuff,

which we know people will go to see,

there'll be solid stories, with solid characters and solid characterization,

'cause I think that's what Marvel has always been about.

Now, the fact that they stay very close to the comic as well,

in terms of origins, characters,

they don't take a character and keep the name

and get rid of everything else and kind of revamp or redo,

or present something that readers wouldn't be familiar with in the movie,

that has to do something for you as well.

You've seen the Spider-Man movie,

and you're watching your creation played out

pretty much as you wrote it way back when you did Amazing Fantasy.

It's really an indescribable feeling that you get.

I mean, you look at that and you say,

"Hey! That's mine!" It's nice.

Especially, when you see it so well done.

So if there's anything that's gonna keep

Spider-Man, the movie, the new movie,

from making 200, 300, 400 million bucks,

it's the fact that your cameo has been cut out.

Yeah, they had this big chance for immortality,

and I ended up on the cutting room floor.

The story of your life.

I was selling sunglasses in the street in this scene, in Times Square.

You know, these peddlers, they have a little flat suitcase,

they open it up with four legs and they're in business.

There was a little girl standing next to me,

I'm trying the glasses on her, and Peter Parker walks by.

So, I take the glasses and I go, "Hey, would you like a pair of these?

"They're the kind they wore in the X-Men."

I think that would've gotten the greatest laugh in the world.

Maybe they ended up not wanting that laugh, I don't know.

At any rate, after that,

the Green Goblin comes in and drops a bomb

and everybody runs like crazy, including me.

After the scene was shot, I said to Sam...

The director, Sam Raimi. I said, "Sam, you know,

"I don't like the way that makes me look.

"I mean, I'm leaving that little girl, running for my life.

"I should carry her with me, you know?

"Like I'm a hero or something."

So, Sam said, "Okay, we'll do it again."

So, we take a second take, the bomb drops, I grab the girl,

I start to lift her, I start to lift her,

I try to lift her,

I cannot lift her.

(LAUGHING) She's too heavy!

She's only about 12-years-old, I couldn't lift her!

All of a sudden Sam yells, "Cut!"

And I thought he said one of the funniest lines.

He said, "Stan, if we do it your way,

"this is gonna be a mini-series."

(BOTH LAUGHING)

So, we ended up shooting it again,

where I just take her by the hand and run out.

Anyway, I thought that line about,

"Would you like to buy these? They're like the kind they wore in the X-Men,"

that would make the movie!

Like the Superman movie, where he walked into the phone booth

and he couldn't change, and everybody remembered that.

Now, Spider-Man's gone through

a bunch of different incarnations outside of comics.

Most people, of course, remember the early '60s cartoon with the theme song,

¶ Spider-Man Spider-Man ¶

And all that artwork is based heavily on the comic book artwork.

Yeah.

They were almost cutouts, and they'd move the mouths only,

but it looked very much like...

That was very high-tech in those days.

Very high-tech.

But anyone who grew up in the late '70s, early '80s, like myself,

and watched Saturday morning cartoons

can close their eyes and recognize you as the voice

that narrated Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends.

That unmistakable, legendary voice.

Now, that's the funniest thing, 'cause...

My voice must sound different

to other people than it sounds to me.

To me, it's a voice, a guy from New York.

It's a sexy voice.

Oh, I like that.

But, just the other day, I was in an elevator,

going in an office building and guy next to...

I was talking to the fellow next to me.

Another man standing there said, "Aren't you Stan Lee?"

I said, "How do you know?"

He said, "I recognized your voice."

I said, "From where?"

He said, "From the cartoons."

Now, that absolutely floored me,

and it's happened to me a few times.

I mean, I guess my...

Why doesn't my wife react that way?

She never thought it was the sexiest voice in the world.

How long have you been married?

Fifty-four years.

She must like something about the voice.

Give me a little more time.

How did you get into Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends?

Did they approach you and say, "We want you to be the narrator"?

I imagine so. It was so long ago,

but, as you know, I'm not shy about the...

I might very well...

You're no press whore, you. I mean...

I might just very well have said, "Hey, guys,

"you're gonna need a narrator! How about me?"

Right.

So, in the movie, aside, of course,

from Spider-Man and the Green Goblin characters you created,

Mary Jane you created as well?

Right.

Watching that character go from the page to the screen...

Let's take her back to the page.

Where did the notion of Mary Jane come from?

Why Mary Jane? Why...

Were you responsible for the issue

of "Face it, tiger. You hit the jackpot"?

I think that was one of the best last panels that I had ever done.

In that story, until you actually see her face,

she's always hidden by a flowerpot or a hand.

See, what happened again, in trying to keep it realistic,

most kids, most boys,

don't particularly want to meet a girl

whom their mother or aunt recommends.

Was gonna set them up with, right.

And especially, if they... "Oh, she's a very nice girl."

Guys usually run a mile.

Well, I kept this going for a long time.

In the series, Aunt May wanted Peter to meet

her neighbor's daughter, Mrs. Watson's daughter.

"Oh, she's a very nice girl, Peter. I know you'll like her."

And Peter did everything he could to avoid her.

In the story where they finally meet,

in the last panel of that story,

I have the bell ring or something, I don't remember,

and he opens the door, and the last panel,

John Romita drew the most beautiful girl you could imagine.

And I have her looking at Peter and saying,

"Face it, tiger. You just hit the jackpot."

I mean, I was so proud of myself.

"You just hit the jackpot."

A funny thing about Mary Jane,

originally there was a girl named Gwen Stacy

before Mary.

I had wanted Gwen to be the one

that Peter would get serious with,

and she was as beautiful as...

John can't not... He can't draw girls who aren't beautiful.

She was a dream.

Blonde, tall, gorgeous figure and so forth.

Mary Jane was a redhead.

And the only thing is,

after we had Gwen for a while in the series,

I said, "We ought to get another girl to play against Gwen

"to get some reason for jealousy, a little friction."

A little Betty and Veronica kind of stuff.

Yeah. Gotta have friction.

So, I said, "Let's get Mary Jane in to make her..."

I don't know, where the name...

Oh, a funny thing about Mary Jane!

I was told later, "How did you get away with using that name?

"It's the name for marijuana."

I never knew that! I had no idea!

And her nickname, 'cause I told you I like nicknames,

I called her "M.J."

They said, "That's how they refer to marijuana!" I was embarrassed.

And Spider-Man was real into M.J.

(LAUGHS) Oh, yeah! Right!

Anyway, so what happened was I said, "Let's make Mary Jane different from Gwen.

"Gwen is sweet and lovable and nice.

"Let's make Mary Jane hip, and cool, and with it,

"and a party girl, a fun girl..." You know, a swinger.

And we did.

And somehow, I found I enjoyed writing Mary Jane's dialogue

a million times better.

Sure, there's some edge to it.

Gwen was just a nice girl.

Mary Jane had a personality.

So, at one point...

Gwen's father was a police captain,

and, again, I'm always trying to throw surprises in.

I decided, "Let's kill him.

"And really, we'll kill a character,

"and do it in a dramatic way."

I had... I think it was the Green Goblin, I'm not sure,

was fighting with the police captain and killed him.

Spider-Man was trying to save the captain, so he was on the scene.

When the captain died, the Goblin, if it was the Goblin, had left,

and everybody saw Spider-Man with Captain Stacy

and thought Spider-Man had killed Stacy,

'cause I felt, "That's gonna cause such a beautifully dramatic problem."

Peter Parker was about to propose to Gwen.

How could he propose to a girl who would find out he's Spider-Man

when she thought Spider-Man had killed her father?

So, I loved that situation.

And there's that really beautiful moment, too,

where Captain Stacy kind of knows that Spider-Man is Peter Parker,

Right.

That's right. But, of course, she never heard that.

Powerful stuff, but she doesn't hear that.

But that's powerful stuff,

and that's not stuff necessarily written for a kid.

Well, I never wrote for kids. I wrote for me.

Right. Right, right.

Later, when Gerry Conway took over the series, he...

I don't remember this, but he says he asked me

if it would be okay to kill Gwen also, and he said I said yes.

He's probably right, 'cause I have a lousy memory.

But I shouldn't have said yes,

'cause I was away on a trip.

When I came back, I read Spider-Man,

I see that Gwen Stacy had been killed.

And I said, "It's gonna look like we had something

"against the Stacy family. What are you doing?"

But, anyway, it was done and that was it, so...

And she's one of the only comic characters to stay dead.

You know, most comic characters die, and then, sooner or later,

come back in one incarnation or another.

She stayed dead.

There was one story where she came back

and she was a clone, but it wasn't Gwen.

She stayed dead, which is pretty good for comics.

When you kill somebody, you got to keep them dead.

(LAUGHS) Right.

Another immortal character in the Spider-Man mythos is J. Jonah Jameson.

Oh, I loved him.

Where does J. Jonah come from?

You know who J. Jonah Jameson was?

He was me.

He was irascible, he was bad-tempered, he was dumb,

he thought he was better than he was...

He was the version that so many people had of me, anyway.

Right, right.

And I always wanted to play him in the movie.

I was so sorry that, by the time the movie was made,

I'm too old to play the role.

Well, I don't really think I'm too old, but obviously they did.

Right.

And the guy who's playing it in the movie is wonderful.

He did it better than I could have done.

And that's very high praise from me.

That's saying a lot from you, yeah.

Anyway, I wanted Peter to have a freelance job,

not a staff job anywhere, not a steady job,

'cause I wanted him free to do his spideying.

So, I figured a freelance newspaper photographer.

And then, it occurred to me. "I'm gonna make the guy he works for..."

In Superman, there was Perry White or somebody...

Perry White. He was the editor.

Who was probably a nice enough guy.

I didn't want this guy to be a nice guy.

I wanted him to hate Spider-Man,

'cause I liked the irony of the fact

that he has Spider-Man working for him,

and he hates Spider-Man, yet, he always wants to get pictures of Spider-Man,

'cause he sells papers.

Also, in those days, that was when there were hippies and so forth,

I wanted him to hate teenagers.

'Cause to Jameson, every teenager

was a long-haired commie "prevert" hippie. You know?

So, I got a lot of fun out of that.

He hated Peter Parker, he hated Spider-Man, Peter had to work for him.

Jameson wasn't a villain. He wasn't bad.

He was just a bigot,

he was ill-tempered, he was... We all know guys like him.

And, as counterpoint to Jameson,

I wanted to get... I got a guy,

Robbie Robertson, who was a black editor,

and I wanted him to be the voice of reason on the newspaper.

He really carried the paper.

He pacified Jameson.

And I also wanted the reader to suspect

that Robbie suspected that Peter was Spider-Man,

but would never say anything.

to ever make that connection himself.

Again, and you'd understand this as well as anybody,

by having a family in a strip, people you know,

you know their personality, you know their character, you know...

Then you know how they would talk, you know what they would do.

And to use that old cliche, which isn't true,

the stories almost write themselves.

Exactly.

I got a letter once from the Office of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington.

And they said, "Mr. Lee,

"recognizing the influence of your comics," blah, blah, blah,

"and drugs are a big problem,

"if you could do an anti-drug story, we'd appreciate it."

Well, who am I not to obey the edict of HEW?

So, I did a three-issue series, and it wasn't preachy,

but it had to do with a friend of Spidey's,

I forget who it was, had taken too much of something.

I don't know anything about drugs,

so I just said he overdosed on something.

And he was on the edge of the roof and thought he could fly.

And Spider-Man rescues him and says,

"You're a jerk for doing that." That type of thing.

And it was part of a bigger story, with a villain and so forth.

So, it didn't look like we were preaching.

It was just an incident in a story.

We then had the Comic Code Administration,

where they were censoring all the comics.

They sent the book back and said,

"You can't publish this book."

They said, "We won't put our seal of approval on it."

I said, "Why not?"

They said, "Well, you're mentioning drugs."

I said, "We're not telling kids to take drugs!"

And I said, "I was asked to do this by a branch of the Federal Government."

"Sorry, you can't do it."

Well, it's one time when I was very proud of my publisher.

I said, "Martin, you know, I want to put these books out anyway."

And he said, "Well, go ahead and do it, Stan."

And we put them out without the seal,

they sold beautifully, we got letters from church groups,

parent-teacher's... Everybody loved it.

And a funny thing happened there, too.

The New York Times gave it a good write-up.

Now, as you probably know, when The New York Times has a feature story,

other papers around the country usually pick up on it.

Well, I would get clippings from the other papers.

But what they would do, so often they would headline their story,

something like, um, "Marvel Comics Drug Issue Causes Controversy."

And in looking at the headline,

you would think that we were pushing drugs.

So, I learned that there's no good you can do

that doesn't turn into something you're embarrassed by later.

This is just stuff. I don't know, it's...

We didn't have any place to put these things.

Those various collectibles are based on characters you've created?

Yeah.

Is that supposed to be a Stan Lee action figure?

(LAUGHS) Yeah! How about that?

And somebody did a bust over there.

It's awful when you're easy to caricature.

You know, that kind of worries you a little bit,

but what are you gonna do?

It's really Joan's world, and you just live in it.

That was me at the Hulk set.

With the Thor episode.

That's right, it was the Thor episode. Yeah.

Now this, the painting over here,

the kind of Warholian treatment of an image,

where did that image first appear?

It's very famous, you staring at Spider-Man.

It first appeared in that painting.

And then, what I did,

I took a lot of black-and-white photos of that,

just 8-by-10 or so,

and I use those if anybody ever wants an autographed photo.

But I love that.

Done by a fellow named Steve Kaufman,

who used to work for Andy Warhol,

and he silk-screens these things.

It looks like I'm really being tough with Spider-Man.

(LAUGHING) Right.

Which I wouldn't dare to be.

SMITH: Over here on the wall is a framed Christmas card from Bob Kane.

Bob Kane and I were very close friends.

And, you know, he was a funny guy.

He's the exact opposite of me in one respect.

If I'm out in public and somebody recognizes me,

it embarrasses me a little.

Bob and I would go out to dinner

and when the waiter brought the menu over, the first thing he'd say,

"Do you know who I am? I created Batman."

But he was so nice about it.

He'd always say to the waiter, "Come here, I want to draw a sketch."

And on a napkin he'd do a Batman

and autograph it and give it to everybody he met, you know?

So, now, years later, you got to do your rendition of his character

with the DC Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating series.

Not really. Just my rendition of the name that he used,

'cause it was a totally different...

I wouldn't ever try to improve on anything he had done.

I just... Just did a totally different one.

And the idea, the genesis of the project was what? Who came...

Did you go to them or they come to you?

No, no, no. I would never have dared to suggest anything like that.

A fellow I know named Mike Uslan,

who's very intimately connected...

In fact, he's one of the producers...

One of the producers of the Batman series.

And he and I have known each other for a long time.

And he said, "Stan, how would you like to do your version

"of DC's top characters?"

(LAUGHS) And I said, "Yeah, fat chance."

He said, "But if you had a chance, would you do it?"

Nobody could turn down a thing like that.

Came back a few weeks later,

and he said that Jeanette Kahn and Paul Levitz,

who were running the company,

they thought it would be a great idea and wanted me to do it.

And first thing I thought is, "What am I getting myself into?"

So, it became a 12-issue set.

I've already done 10. I have two more to go.

And the thing I worried about, mostly,

was fans of the characters.

You know, wouldn't they resent me having the temerity to say,

"Oh, I'm gonna do my own version of it."

But they're buying it, and they seem to like it, and it's fun.

It was definitely a project that garnered a lot of attention, too,

when they announced it, because, you know, the big to-do

of the man who created Marvel, essentially,

coming over to DC to do them justice as well.

And the funny thing is, I think a lot of the versions that we did

I think would make good movies.

Now, they're gonna have a big problem.

"Well, how can we make a movie out of this version

"when we have the other version?"

But I don't have to make that decision.

Right. It's out of your hands.

You know, I always loved advertising.

I always wanted to be in the advertising business.

And I thought calling us "The House of Ideas" was a good phrase.

Calling The Fantastic Four "The world's greatest comics magazine"

was a good phrase.

And "Make mine Marvel" wasn't too shabby.

All those things. I love slogans.

Of the many things you're remembered for,

of creating a modern mythology that still exists today

and will exist forever, for as far as we know,

of bringing Marvel to where it is today,

of giving the world Spider-Man, The Hulk,

the X-Men, Daredevil, Iron Man, the list goes on and on.

Um, one of your unsung attributes,

what I think is wonderful about your personality

or the thing that kind of defines you, are the Stan-isms.

The "'Nuff said."

You know, the "true believer."

Um, but probably best well-known is your sign-off, "Excelsior."

Where does that come from?

(LAUGHS) Well, the ones you quoted,

"'Nuff said," and then I had "Face front"...

These are ways I used to sign my editorials.

I'd say, "Face front," "Stand,"

or "'Nuff said," or, "Hang loose."

And I had others that I've since forgotten.

But I found that some of the competitive magazines

were starting to use my expressions.

Especially "'Nuff said."

And that annoyed me.

So, I said, "I've got to come up with an expression

"that A: they won't know what it means,

"and B: they won't know how to spell it."

And I thought of "Excelsior," because it's a...

It's the slogan for New York State,

the official seal of New York State.

But, also, I had read that in books of legends.

It's an old English expression

that means, "Upward and onward to greater glory."

Well, what could be better than that?

Unfortunately, in the dictionary,

it has a meaning that they print first.

Excelsior is what they use to stuff packages with.

You know, those shavings so a thing won't rattle and get broken?

So, very often, I get letters saying,

"How come you sign everything with 'package stuffing'?"

And I'd have to write back, "Read the second definition in the thing."

But I love the word, and in fact,

it might even be a great way to close this little interview.

Give it to them. You know what they want.

All right, here we go. Are you ready?

Excelsior!

(LAUGHING)

So, 60 years, plus, of comics work.

Where does it all begin?

I guess it all began when I first walked into the offices of what was then

Timely Comics.

Of course, had I known then what I know now, I might never have gone in.

Right, right.

I should have gone into the offices of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Or Warner Brothers. But who knew?

No, no. And they needed you in comics more than they needed you in movies.

But let's go back even before that.

Where were you born originally? Where were you from?

Oh, like everybody else. New York City.

New York City.

It was the West Side, I still remember,

East 98th Street and West End Avenue.

You joined the service at a certain point as well?

Yeah, I enlisted in, um...

I think '42 or '43 or something. I was in for three years.

And I wanted to be a hero. You know, I had written about heroes.

And I saw myself winning the war single-handedly.

They put me in the Signal Corps, and I was supposed to do wire repair.

I would have been the guy who went overseas and repaired...

Who climbed up the telephone poles or whatever,

and kept the wires going for communication.

But before I could do that, they found out I had written comics.

And the next thing I knew,

I was in the Training Film Writing Division.

And I was the token non-entity there,

'cause I was with people like William Saroyan and Frank Capra.

Jeez.

But they needed somebody that was just a regular person, I guess.

So, it was great. A great experience.

I wrote a lot of training films,

I wrote instructional manuals for the troops and so forth,

and I drew cartoons and posters.

When did you first start writing, then?

'Cause it seems... I mean, that is your whole life, writing.

I was writing when I was a kid. I wrote compositions, and...

I used to win little contests.

They had something called "The Biggest News of the Week Hunt"

at a newspaper, The Herald Tribune.

It was for high school students, and I entered it three weeks in a row,

and I won it three weeks in a row.

They asked me to stop entering it.

The editor said, "What do you want to be when you become a person?"

And I said, "I want to be an actor."

He said, "Don't be a schmuck, you know, become a writer."

So, at what point did you work on Captain America? Prewar or postwar?

I worked on Captain America prewar and I did them postwar.

You know, I feel silly doing what we're doing.

I mean, I should be asking you questions.

No. I got nothing to say.

I mean, I can't wait till you run out of stuff so I can start asking you.

Then we'll go to me. But in the meantime, let's stick to you.

So, before the war, you're working on Captain America,

and Captain America was a character you didn't create

but you helped define later on.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, as they listed themselves,

they had created Captain America.

And it was just becoming really popular when I joined the company,

and after a while, when I had to have some stories to write,

they started feeding me Captain Americas.

I wrote quite a few of them.

When I came back after the war,

I guess I wrote some more...

I don't have the world's greatest memory, but at some point,

Captain America was not as popular anymore

and they dropped the character for a while.

And this is postwar?

Yeah, this was after the war.

'cause you'd imagine after the war there'd be all this patriotism

and Captain America...

I think once Hitler wasn't around for Captain America to fight,

they ran out of stories. I don't know.

But in the '60s, when we started the Marvel characters,

I had always loved Captain America, so I brought him back then.

Let's go back to... When you first enter comics,

superheroes aren't in vogue.

It's more romance and Westerns, if I'm correct.

Well, actually, when I entered comics, there were superheroes,

but they weren't as popular.

There was Captain America, there was The Human Torch, The Sub-Mariner,

so there were superheroes.

As a matter of fact, when I got into it,

Timely was mostly superheroes.

It was later on...

See, what it was, comics books always followed trends.

For a couple of years, it would be superheroes.

Then it would be romance, or Westerns, or animated characters.

I mean, one of my proudest boasts is I created Silly Seal and Ziggy Pig

with Al Jaffee, who's one of Mad's top guys.

We were not very creative in titles,

because our war magazines, for example,

they had names like Combat, Combat Kelly, Combat Casey,

Battle, Battlefield, Battleground, Battle something else...

I'm sensing a theme.

And in the Romance books, we had My Love,

Our Love, Your Love, Their Love, My Romance, Your Romance. It was...

We were in such a rut, and we were real followers.

Whatever the trend was, we would put out a lot of books in that trend.

And that's how my publisher, Martin Goodman,

who is a smart guy, that's how he made his money.

He waited to see what was selling,

and then he would flood the market with those kind of books,

And then I wanted to doim. political and celebrities.,

So, I did a book called You Don't Say!

and I had pictures of movie actors and politicians...

And a tragic thing happened there, too.

That book would've been...

I would've given up the comics and stayed with that. It was incredibly successful.

Now, these are books made of pictures, real photos,

and then you would place captions on them.

Right. And these were magazine size. They weren't comic book size.

I think they sold for a quarter or half a dollar then,

and in those days that was like $3, $4 today.

And the third issue of You Don't Say!

which was selling fantastically,

I put Jack Kennedy on the cover.

I still remember the gag. He's making a speech,

and he's standing in front of a railing,

and there was the big seal of the President of the United States

right in front of him on the railing,

and behind him was another seal

of the President of the United States.

And he's standing there, and he's like this,

and I put a dialogue balloon over his head,

"Allow me to introduce myself."

And it really... It was great.

While the book was on the presses,

he was assassinated.

Well, we couldn't put the book out.

We killed it, Martin lost a fortune, and again,

I just lost the spirit to do that sort of thing.

So, we gave that book up.

So, now, at what point do superheroes

kind of take hold and become the norm,

as opposed to just a trend?

I don't think that happened until...

Really, until Marvel comics.

What happened was, some time in the early '60s,

Martin Goodman was playing golf with the publisher of DC Comics.

I think they were called, National Comics at the time.

They later changed the name to DC.

And Marvel was still Timely at this point.

And the publisher said to Martin,

"You know, we've got this new book, the Justice League,

"and it's really selling well. It's a bunch of superheroes."

Well, that's all Martin had to hear.

He came back, running back to me and said,

"Stan, we gotta put out a bunch of heroes.

"You know, there's a market for it."

It just happened that at that time, I wanted to quit.

After all these years, I had made up my mind. I'm not getting anywhere.

It's a stupid business for a grownup to be in,

and I finally told my wife, "Honey, I just want to quit and do something else."

And how old were you about at this point?

About 40.

I had been in it too long, you know?

Oh, and the reason I wanted to quit,

I felt we're writing nonsense.

I was told... Martin always felt that the books were read

only by young kids, or adults who weren't that intelligent.

So, he didn't like me to use words

of more than two syllables in the dialogue.

He didn't want continued stories,

'cause the readers wouldn't have brains enough

to remember from month... And things like that.

Right.

I felt I was writing trash.

Right, right, right.

Joanie said to me, "If you're going to quit anyway,

"why don't you do a book the way you'd like to do it,

"and get it out of your system?

"The worst that'll happen, he'll fire you, and you want to quit."

So, I figured, okay. And I did that one book, the Fantastic Four.

A bunch of superheroes, but I tried to make them different than the others.

For one thing, they didn't have double identities.

Your very first superhero comic creation

that you created yourself, not just a character that you worked on,

but you came up with them.

Well, I had done others in the past,

but they're totally unmemorable.

I mean, I don't even... Names like the Destroyer, Father Time...

I must have done a hundred of them.

But they were nothing.

Yeah, the FF was one of the Marvel ones.

What makes you put those 4 particular archetypes together,

and call them the Fantastic Four?

I like to have characters to work with,

as though it's a movie or a soap opera

where the characters' own personal lives

would help write the dialogue, and come up with situations.

So, I thought I'll get one of them... You have to have a scientist.

He's the world's greatest scientist,

but he's also a little bit like me. He talks too much.

He tends to be dull, pedantic and boring.

And this gives the other guys a chance to rib him, you see?

So, I liked that.

I wanted to have a girl, and I felt,

"Well, I don't want her to be the usual girl.

"I want her to be in love with the guy."

Also, she gets a superpower, and that would be fun. She's part of the team.

So she won't just be a gal yelling help,

and the hero has to save her.

I wanted to get a teenager,

but I didn't want to get the typical comic book teenager.

I wanted to get a guy with his own superpower, The Human Torch,

and I stole that from Carl Burgos' original Human Torch.

When I first went to work for Marvel,

they had that character, and I loved him.

And that was from Marvel Comics,

back when they were Timely, but the comic was actually called Marvel Comics.

And he hadn't been used for 20, 30, 40 years, I don't know.

So, I didn't use the same torch.

I used the name and the power, but I made him...

The original one was an android

who was an adult and a totally different guy.

I made this a teenager, 16-years-old,

who was Susan Storm's brother.

And he didn't really want to be a superhero.

He wanted to be like you or I would be.

He wanted to be out with the girls,

and driving a sports car and, you know, living it up.

So, I thought that was a nice touch.

Then the best one...

"The ever-loving blue-eyed Thing."

Oh, yeah! How I love the Thing.

I wanted somebody for humor, and a little bit of pathos.

So, when they're clobbered by cosmic rays, they all get superpower,

but they can get back to normal.

This guy turned into the Thing ,and he couldn't change back to Ben Grimm,

the normal pilot he had been.

Kind of conceited for a guy who's a monster.

He still thought a lot of himself.

And he was always fighting with the teenager.

The teenager would give him a hotfoot,

he'd throw things at the teenager,

and it was almost like Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy.

I was able to get, I think,

so much exciting comedy in with the two of them,

and it balanced out the seriousness of

having to save the world from Doctor Doom all the time.

Now, Doctor Doom is yours as well?

Oh, yeah, Doctor Doom is my favorite all-time villain.

Why so?

Well, first of all, by making him king of his own country.

I didn't know of any villain who had ever been king of his own country.

And, you know, it's funny, I gave the country the name Latveria.

I think it's the best name I ever came up with,

'cause I've had people look it up on a map.

I mean, it sounds like a real country.

Yeah, like it exists.

Nothing sounds more like a country than Latveria.

By being a king, when he comes to America, you can't arrest him.

He's got diplomatic immunity.

I love that. Oh, and another thing

that I always got a big kick out of.

You or I could cross the street against the light,

and a cop might stop us and say, "You're jaywalking,"

and he might give us a citation.

But you or I could do what Doctor Doom does.

We could walk up to a cop and say,

"Officer, we want to conquer the world."

There's no crime. You cannot be arrested for wanting to conquer the world.

And that's all that Doctor Doom wants.

So, he's the world's biggest villain, powerful, dangerous,

but all he wants is to conquer the world. That's not a crime.

There's no law on the books for that one.

And even if it were, you couldn't arrest him.

Jack Kirby used to kid around with it.

Every so often, he would draw a little sketch

of Doctor Doom with his mask off,

and of course, he always had my face.

Right, it was Stan underneath.

Yeah, Doom was great. And then I figured, "Okay, that's it.

"I'm gonna get fired, goodbye, I got it out of my system."

The book sold great!

Martin asked me to do another, and I figured, "Well, I'm on a roll."

So I figured, now I'm gonna make a hero out of a monster.

And that was the Hulk.

I sort of was influenced by Frankenstein.

You know, the Boris Karloff movie?

Because in that movie, I always thought the monster, Karloff, was the good guy.

He didn't wanna hurt anybody.

Those idiots with torches were chasing him up and down hills.

Right. Misunderstood.

So I thought, "Let's make him a lovable monster."

And then I always liked Jekyll and Hyde.

So to keep to keep it in line with the superhero formula,

I felt, "Let's give him a double identity."

He's a monster, and he's also a guy like Kevin Smith.

So we did that, and that worked.

So then Martin said, "Let's do another one."

And then the rest is history.

SMITH: And how did Hulk take off when it first came out?

Very well.

People instantly kind of got into it?

It's funny. It's almost like there was something in the air at that time.

It was like we could do nothing wrong.

All of them became popular, and all of them seem to have lasted.

Characters like the Fantastic Four and the Hulk,

characters that are born in the atomic age,

following the first atom bomb, years after the first atom bomb,

but in an age of science and wonder,

where it... Look, we've split an atom, and look what it can do.

So, I've always felt the Marvel characters

are characters that are born in science.

Conversely, the DC characters are characters that are...

You know, Superman comes from another planet,

and Wonder Woman is a Greek goddess,

and Batman was born in tragedy,

but the Marvel characters have always been very scientifically bent,

very science-fiction oriented.

Where did that come from?

Well, I gotta tell you, it's an anomaly.

I love science fiction,

but nobody knows less about science than I do.

And all I did, 'cause I'm lazy, I took the easy way out.

I figured, "Well, the guy has to become the Hulk in some way.

"Let him be hit by a gamma bomb."

Now, I wouldn't know a gamma ray from an eggplant,

but it sounded good, "a gamma bomb."

And I don't know much about radiation,

but with Spider-Man, I figured he'd been bit by a radioactive spider,

and now I can get on with the story.

Certainly with the Fantastic Four,

I figured out they'll be hit by cosmic rays.

I don't know what a cosmic ray is.

Right, right, right.

But it sounded... See, to me, things just have to sound good.

I guess I'm the biggest phony in the world, really, and, um...

Well, to give you an example, though,

I may be selling myself short, 'cause I may have some...

Some subtle scientific leanings that I'm not even aware of.

You know our character Thor, the God of Thunder?

Yes.

I wanted him to be able to fly through the sky,

but not like Superman, who, to me,

has no visible means of propulsion.

He just flies.

But I wanted to be purely scientific,

so I gave him this big hammer,

and I had it fastened by a leather thong to his wrist.

Now, when he wanted to fly, he'd swing that hammer around.

And just propel himself up.

Then let it go. It would fly through the air,

and, being tied to his wrist, it would drag him with it. Purely scientific...

SMITH: So, it kinda makes sense. There's a logic to it.

Sure. So I may have sold myself short

when I said I'm not scientifically inclined.

The hammer is... A lot of people can never pronounce the hammer.

Mjolnir?

But the people who can't pronounce it correctly

don't have to be concerned about it,

'cause I think my brother Larry made that up,

and it's just a made-up word, so feel free to pronounce it any way you want.

Your brother wrote for comics as well?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was quite good.

In the beginning, if I came up with the idea for some things

like I did for Thor,

I didn't have time to write the actual scripts.

I would tell Larry what I want, and he wrote the scripts.

They worked out fine.

Now, that... Some people refer to that or it's been

referred to as the Marvel method for many, many years

where somebody will come up with a story,

and basically tell the artist what's gonna happen,

an artist will go draw it,

and then the dialogue man comes in later on,

and adds the story, the text.

That's what you guys created and did for many years.

That is probably my proudest creation,

and it happened purely through need.

What happened was, in the beginning,

I was writing almost all the stories for Marvel,

and I couldn't keep up.

And the artists were freelance,

which meant they only got paid per page.

If they drew a page, they got paid. They weren't on salary.

So, let's say Jack Kirby was drawing a script,

and I was writing a script for Steve Ditko,

and then John Buscema would come in and say, "Stan, I need a script."

I couldn't stop what I was doing for Ditko,

but I had to give Buscema a script,

'cause if he didn't have one, he's not making money.

So I would say, "Look, Steve, I don't have time to write your script,

"but here's the story I want."

And I would tell him generally what I wanted.

He would go home and draw it any way he wanted,

bring the illustrations back to me,

and then I would put in the dialogue and the captions.

Now, it started as an emergency measure.

It was the only way to keep these guys busy.

But I realized you get better stories that way, because...

Very collaborative.

I was so lucky. I had the best artists you could ever imagine.

Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita,

John Buscema, Gene Colan, and on and on. Gil Kane.

These guys thought like movie directors,

and they were really visual storytellers.

They were writers in their own way.

So when I would give them a plot,

they knew how to break it down.

They knew how to begin it, how to end it,

where to put the interesting parts in.

If they didn't,

I could help in my writing in this way.

If I found that there was a page

or some panels that looked a little dull,

I'd add a lot of dialogue and sound effects,

and whatever I could to jazz up the page.

If the artwork was incredibly absorbing and exciting,

I put as little dialogue as possible.

So, in a way, I tried to make the dialogue balloons

part of the artwork, you know, to give it the look I wanted.

I loved making up sound effects.

One of my favorites was "kbooom" or something.

K-b-o-o-o-m.

And I had a little asterisk at the end of it with a caption that said,

"Obviously, the third 'o' is silent."

I used to love putting in little,

important scholarly notes like that.

Our company isn't what it used to be. We now have fans.

It's a whole new thing, and I felt we ought to change the name,

and change it to Marvel because the first book that Martin ever published

when I came to work there was called Marvel Comics.

So, just out of sentiment, I called it Marvel.

Now, did you become Editor in Chief while Martin was still around, still alive?

Oh, I had always been. When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left,

when I was about 17-years-old,

Martin needed somebody to replace them.

It was a small company. It was really Joe and Jack.

So, he said to me, "Can you handle being the Editor

"while I look for a real person?"

And when you're 17, what do you know? I said, "Sure! I can do it."

He must've forgotten all about it,

'cause I stayed there ever since.

So, I functioned as Editor, Art Director, and Head Writer.

Now, when you become Publisher

and kind of turn over the writing reigns,

how involved do you stay at that point?

Are you still looking over scripts

or looking over the artwork still?

I have a theory.

When you work with artists and writers,

any kind of creative people,

you get their best work

if you let them do it the way they want to do it.

Now, they have to be talented.

If they're not talented, forget it.

But you get a guy with talent, you can't tell him too much.

You can't say, "You don't do it this way. Do it that way."

You gotta let him do it his way.

Now, maybe that was an excuse for me being lazy,

but I pretty much tried to keep hands-off

'cause, again, as I say, I was lucky.

I had built up the greatest staff

of artists and writers you could find anywhere.

And that was traditionally referred to as the Silver Age,

but really was a golden age of comics.

It was for me.

And this was the period before TV kind of takes over

as much as it eventually does,

and long before the video game, long before the internet.

So, kids are still reading comics like mad,

and you are the ambassador of comics at that point

even to this day, of course, but at that point,

I'm a kid in the '70s,

you know Stan Lee.

Because if you go to a comic book show

or if you read the Marvel Bullpen, Stan's Soapbox,

you were everywhere. You're the face of comics.

It's fair to say that you're the most well-known person

in comics to people in the comics audience

and people well outside the comics audience.

Well, you know, it's funny, at one point,

I guess they didn't know what else to do with me.

But I was made the President of Marvel.

And I thought, "Oh, wow, President!

"Now I'll really be able to do things the way I want to do them."

Didn't work out that way. I found that all that I was doing

was going to financial meetings,

and I had to come up with what they call "3 year plans,"

5 year plans for the business.

I'm a guy who doesn't know what I'm gonna have for lunch the same day,

and I had to have a 3 year plan.

And I suddenly realized I am doing something

that millions of people can do better than I can do, which is financial stuff,

and the thing I enjoyed doing,

the creative stuff, I'm not doing anymore.

So, as you can well imagine, I didn't stay President very long.

I gave that up pretty fast, yeah.

One other thing that I think Marvel did,

and did very well,

I tried to make the readers feel they're more than just casual readers,

but we're all part of a family,

we're all part of an inner group,

we're having fun, and the outside world isn't aware of it.

And I tried doing that with the Soapbox column I wrote,

with the Bullpen page.

Very much so. You kind of lifted the curtain

between audience and the creators

and said, "This is what it's like here. Check it out."

It invites the audience in, and it does kind of create a familial feeling about it.

And they'll follow you to the ends of the earth.

I did that very consciously.

You know, before Marvel, as far as I know,

no other comic company played up who wrote the story,

who drew it, who lettered it, who edited it.

Maybe this is why I'm so impressed with you.

I mean, there are a lot of reasons. I love movies.

You are such a fantastic movie-maker.

Thank you.

I wanted to make the comics seem

to be like movies as much as possible.

And I thought why not have screen credits?

So, I started listing "Written by Stan Lee, drawn by Jack Kirby."

Then I thought why not make it even warmer and more friendly?

So it was suddenly written by "Smilin' Stan,"

by "Jolly Jack," by "Sturdy Steve Ditko."

I think he probably always hated that.

(SMITH LAUGHING)

John Romita, I called him "Jazzy Johnny Romita,"

and then sometimes "Johnny Ring-a-Ding Romita."

I'm sure he hated it, but, well, I was the Editor, I did it.

So, by giving everybody nicknames and putting their names there,

and by writing the Soapbox and the Bullpen Bulletins

and even with the mail, we were the first, I believe, to have letters pages.

The other companies did it, too.

But when, for example, DC would get a fan letter,

the letter would be printed, and it would say something like, "Dear Editor,

"I didn't like this story,"

or, "I did like this story," Blah, blah, blah. "Signed, Charles Brown."

And the answer would be, "Dear Charles, thank you for your letter.

"Sincerely, the Editor." Something like that.

If I got the same letter,

I would cross out the word editor

and I'd print it, it would say "Dear Stan,"

and for the signature if it was Charlie Brown,

I'd cross out Charles Brown, I'd write Charlie,

and in my answer, I'd make some sort of a gag, you know?

"Hey, glad you wrote. We thought we didn't have any readers.

"Now we know we have one." Anything that was a gag.

So, it was a little thing,

but it was trying to give a feeling of warmth, a feeling of friendliness.

Don't call me Editor. Call me Stan.

And I don't want to call you Joe.

I want to call you Joey. You know, whatever it is.

And it seemed to work. Then we had a club.

I decided we had so many fans,

'cause we were now getting a lot of fan mail.

Let's form a club.

So, again, I didn't want to do it an ordinary way,

so I started it out as a contest.

I wrote that we're having a club,

and that the name, the initials of the club's name

would be M.M.M.S.

And I would keep this up in the Bullpen Bulletin page,

and I said we'll give a prize for whoever guesses the name.

And I ran this thing for months giving clues,

finally we announced it was the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

We didn't know where we were marching to, but we were on the way.

And it's fresh on my mind 'cause a fan sent me

a CD yesterday that I listened to, of a record that we did.

Those who joined the club...

In those days, for a penny or less than a penny each,

you could make a little plastic record.

I marched the whole bullpen to a recording studio,

and we tried to be funny for a few minutes.

The corniest thing you ever heard,

and I'm talking to Jack Kirby and Artie Simek

and Sol Brodsky and all the guys.

We were all trying to upstage each other.

It was ridiculous, but the fans loved it.

They were listening to the voices

of the people whose stuff they had been reading.

It's like a forerunner of the DVD commentaries

and behind-the-scenes stuff, yeah.

And then, this fellow on the record,

he sent me something I forgot. We had a song.

¶ March along March along

¶ March along March along

¶ With The Merry Marvel Marching Society

¶ You'll belong You'll belong ¶

On and on.

¶ And stand A little straighter

¶ Walk a little prouder

¶ Be a something, Be an innovator

¶ Talk a little louder

¶ And where will you be then?

¶ You'll belong You'll belong ¶

It went on and on.

You missed your calling.

I mean, clearly.

Another thing that set Marvel apart from,

you know, our distinguished competition if you will,

was continuity.

That's something that you guys firmly established before DC did.

Some stories in comics, iprior to your tenure at Marvee

and the next story wouldn't necessarily have anything

to do with the story that happened before,

a story that happened the year before.

You guys got densely into continuity.

Well, most of our characters, if not all of them,

most of our stories took place in New York.

SMITH: Right, and that was an important aspect of it.

Whereas DC had Metropolis and Gotham,

you guys were firmly rooted in the real world, in Manhattan.

That was part of what I mentioned,

trying to make fantasy realistic.

So, instead of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch,

driving a whiz-bang V8, he drove a Chevy Corvette.

Right.

And instead of them going to the Bijou Theater,

they went to the Radio City Music Hall and so forth.

Even their address, I had them living...

The Fantastic Four had their headquarters

on the east side of Manhattan.

Spider-Man lived in Forest Hills

just across the river, and so forth.

Now, the reason I did that,

because I was from New York, and I knew New York.

So, it made it easier to write the stories.

I knew the landmarks and the settings.

And then it occurred to me after a while,

if they're all in the same city, why don't they meet?

You know, comics often had guest stars, but for no reason.

One character would be with another character.

In our books, when they guested in a story,

it was 'cause for some reason they met

during the course of the story.

We used to have things, if for example,

Reed Richards, the Fantastic Four,

if he needed a lawyer, I'd have him go to...

SMITH: Matt Murdock.

Thank you for helping me with that.

To Matt Murdock, who was Daredevil.

And again, in trying to think, "What can I do that's different?"

We never had a blind hero,

and I thought it would be such fun

to let him be able to do anything

that a sighted person could do, but do it better.

And you could explain it by the fact that his other senses were super-heightened.

So, he could read by running his finger over any page,

he'd feel the ink on the page.

As incrementally as it's raised on the page.

Exactly. He could tell if you were lying

'cause he had a built-in lie detector.

He could hear your pulse, your heartbeat speeding up.

And all sorts of things like that.

The reason I mention Daredevil, I was very concerned.

I said to myself, "What if blind people are offended by this?"

Suddenly, we're taking a blind man and showing that he can do anything.

Some poor person who is blind is thinking,

"What's he doing, joking about this?"

Or, you know.

What happened was we got more mail

from places like the Lighthouse for the Blind in New York,

from blind people, all of them saying how great they thought it was

that we were featuring a blind person as a hero.

And that's one of the reasons that he's one of my favorite characters.

I felt so good when I heard that.

And that connects with people for some reason, um, Daredevil.

It's 'cause he's the unsung of the Marvel creations.

He's a character that does connect with people

because he's the blind superhero.

Howard Stern, whenever Howard Stern

talks about superheroes or comic books...

He's a huge Marvel fanboy.

On the radio, he always comes back to Daredevil,

and is always happy to point out how much he knows about him.

Particularly, he's like, "Oh, he's the blind lawyer. He's the blind lawyer."

You know, it's a big bragging point.

And I liked him being a lawyer, too.

It made him easy to get into stories.

One of the only times that a lawyer has ever been painted heroic.

(LAUGHING) That's right.

Even the name Matt Murdock, I...

You can tell I have the worst memory in the world.

Yeah, right.

And I had trouble remembering the names of the characters.

So, that's the reason that they usually had the first name

had the same letter as the last letter.

Very alliterative names, yeah.

Matt Murdock, Reed Richards, Peter Parker, on and on.

Because if I could remember one name,

I had a clue how the other name began.

And that was the only reason I did that.

In terms of the comic stories,

when I was working at Marvel,

when I did the Daredevil run that I did,

Joe Quesada, who was the Editor

of the Marvel Knights line then,

and is now the Editor over all of Marvel right now.

Yeah, and doing a great job.

Doing a very great job.

He took a huge page out of your book,

and instructed me in writing each issue

to somehow recap what went on in the last issue,

and recap overall who the character is.

And I said, "Well, that's a little redundant, isn't it?

"Because the people reading these comics, they know."

And he said, "But it's like Stan said for years.

"Every comic book is somebody's first comic book."

And it's true. It's a really important lesson

that they still kind of stick to today.

It's so important because you can't grow a line

unless you get new readers.

And you wanna get the transient reader

who hasn't read the book before.

And one of the complaints that have been made about comics over the past few years,

unless you've been following the stories for years,

you don't know what you're looking at.

So, it's a great idea, and you can do it subtly.

It doesn't have to be done in a dull, long, pedantic way.

You can just in the course of the beginning of the story

have the characters make a few comments

that brings the reader up to date. That's important.

It's a cliffhanger medium.

It's a serial, so every month...

Incidentally, I got to mention what a great job you did

on those Daredevil stories.

And I'm glad you're still doing it.

We're not here to polish my helmet. We're here to polish yours.

No, no, but I gotta tell you,

I mentioned before, this is so frustrating to me,

'cause I am such a fan of yours,

and I'm doing all the talking,

and you gotta promise that we can do another one where I interview you.

If I'm ever worthy of it, we'll do it.

Your relationship with Jack is the stuff of legend in this field.

Do you want to talk about him a little bit?

Well, Jack was the greatest guy to work with.

He never did less than his best.

You would never get a job from Jack

where you'd say, "Oh, gee, this isn't that good."

Everything about him was great.

Towards the end, the last few years,

something happened. I'm not sure what it was.

One of the things was they had a policy

to give original artwork back to the artists.

Now, I was out of it by now. I was the publisher, and I was traveling.

But for some reason, Jack felt he didn't get his artwork back,

and he got mad at the company.

People in the company told me the reason...

Again, this is all hearsay. Told me the reason

he didn't get the artwork back was they just wanted him to sign a form

saying he would never use it to republish it

and compete with Marvel, or something of this sort.

And they told me Jack wouldn't sign the form,

and for that reason, they were at loggerheads.

Eventually, I think, they worked it out after a long time.

But during that period, the fans learned about what was happening,

and the fans got mad at Marvel,

thinking we're not treating Jack well.

And I think somehow it rubbed off on me.

I think Jack may have felt in some way I was responsible.

Or had something to do with it.

Hell, as far as I was concerned,

he could have had everything back. It didn't matter to me.

I had asked Jack to come on staff and stop being a freelancer,

and I had said, "You know, Jack,

"I would be happy to let you be the Art Director."

"I'll just be the Editor. What a team we would make.

"The two of us, we'll run the whole thing."

He didn't want to do it.

Why do you think?

SMITH: He just didn't want to commit the time, just liked being freelance?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Maybe he just enjoyed doing his own strips.

But there isn't a bad thing that I can say about that man.

He was a joy to work with. He was a genius.

He should've been a movie director,

because this man knew how to tell a story.

SMITH: Very visual, yes.

In fact, most of the guys did.

Steve did, Romita did, Buscema did, Colan did.

I mean, I can't believe how lucky I was

to work with people like that, because it's very possible

that these great ideas that I had

might not have been as successful if they weren't drawn as well.

Right.

So, I'm grateful to all of them.

While you were doing what you were doing at Marvel,

DC is doing what they're doing across the street.

And for years, I think,

the fan base enjoyed the fact that there was a friendly rivalry

which you guys juiced up

for entertainment value as much as possible.

But there was no true rivalry at all.

I mean, in fact, as you pointed out earlier,

DC whatever they were doing over at National at the time,

Martin would say, "Let's do that over here."

I mean, it's a very symbiotic relationship.

Actually, we were all friends.

I was friends with most of the writers and artists at DC.

At that time, there was an editor,

I think he was the Publisher or the President, named Carmine Infantino.

Carmine and I would meet about once a week.

There was a little bar and grill

on Third Avenue called Friar Tuck.

We'd meet there about once a week and just kid around and talk.

A lot of the artists from both companies would join us.

Again, because I'm always trying to think what'll appeal to the fans,

I thought it fun to build up a rivalry between the 2 companies.

The first thing I did was I started referring to them

instead of brand X, I called them "Brand Echh."

It was either echh or eh, I don't know, brand echh.

And echh meaning yech.

And the fans liked that. That went over pretty big.

One funny thing I must say,

when we started outselling them,

I had heard that they,

'cause I knew people at the company,

that they used to have meetings and wonder why is Marvel outselling us?

And some genius would get up and say,

"I think it's 'cause Stan uses a lot of dialogue balloons on the covers."

So, the minute I would hear that,

for the next few months, I'd take all the dialogue balloons off the covers.

Or they'd say, 'cause we use a lot of red on our covers.

So for the next few months, no red on the covers.

It must have driven 'em crazy.

And I never could understand why it didn't occur to them

that we were trying to talk to the readers

instead of just doing stories, you know?

And I think that was the main thing.

You involved the readers in a way that DC comics didn't particularly back then.

But things change. I mean, DC, now they're doing great stuff.

I even did some books for them.

SMITH: And you've done some stuff for DC as well.

LEE: And they're great guys. All the comics are getting so much better.

The books that you're writing,

the new Editor, Joe Quesada, he has managed to...

You know, like I mentioned, the most important thing is to have the right talent.

Joe Quesada has hired such terrific artists

and writers who had never been with Marvel before.

It's a real competition now between the companies,

and the only one who profits is the reader.

Yeah. Too true.

And there was a period in the '90s, where it was a very

art-driven medium, where artists were the stars.

And now I would imagine something that must kind of please you is

that it's come back to the writers.

Writers kind of drive the sales of comic books at this point

because people are more interested in the story than anything else.

Suddenly, for some reason.

You know, it's like anything else. It's a collaboration.

If you have great stories and weak artwork,

the stories don't seem that great and vice versa.

I sometimes think the artwork is still a little more important

because it's the artwork, I think, that makes you buy the book.

If you see the average reader,

he goes into a store, he thumbs through a lot of books,

something will catch his eye, and he'll buy that one.

Very rarely is it the story itself,

because he doesn't have time to read it.

But if the story doesn't live up to the artwork, you're nowhere.

I think it's 50-50.

Now, you came up in a time

where it was newsstand, the business was all newsstand.

So, then you saw

the evolution of the direct market. What was that like?

Watching suddenly comic book stores,

stores like this store, Hi De Ho in Santa Monica,

dedicated to selling comic books come about?

It was the greatest thing.

Well, it all started when we had fans.

All of a sudden with the Fantastic Four,

Hulk, Spider-man, Daredevil,

we started getting real fan letters.

And as I mentioned, we answered 'em,

and tried to encourage the fans, and that was a new thing.

And then everything seemed to happen at once.

Suddenly, fan conventions started.

Suddenly, stores like Hi De Ho opened up that specialized in comics.

Suddenly comics became a thing.

Like Star Trek, there were comic book conventions.

Its own medium.

And it's been growing ever since, that excitement.

Right now, Wizard in Chicago

and the San Diego Comic Convention. It's a very big thing.

The evolution of The X-Men

from what was a second-tier title

to probably Marvel's best-known property

after Spider-Man, at this point.

Now, you created the X-Men,

and then later on, people like Claremont,

Chris Claremont, defined them

and kind of turned them into like what people know today.

Len Wein came up with Wolverine, stuff like that.

Wolverine. Len Wein did that, yeah.

That to me, I would imagine, was kind of a...

A point of pride watching somebody take something that you did,

and spinning it and creating something a little more popular even.

I love the X-Men, and I love the way Kirby did them.

You know, the idea... I don't know if you remember

the first issue in the Danger Room, that was Jack's idea.

And what a great way of beginning a series,

to show them in the Danger Room.

We didn't mean for it to be a second-tier book at all.

And it did well the first few issues.

And, in fact, I don't know if I told you the story about the name, The X-Men.

I wanted to call it The Mutants.

Went to my publisher. He said you cannot call it The Mutants.

Nobody knows what a mutant is.

Okay, he was the boss.

So I realized they had extra power.

I was gonna call their leader Professor Xavier, "X."

So I figured I'll call them the X-Men.

So I said that to the publisher. He said that's fine.

And I thought to myself, "I'll never understand top-level thinking."

If nobody is gonna know what a mutant is,

how will anybody know what an X-Man is?

But I had a title, and I wasn't gonna, um...

Rock the boat at that point?

Yeah. I loved the series,

but after Jack and I did the first few,

I don't remember how many, 4, 5, 10, I don't know,

we both got busy with other things,

and I had to drop something,

and the reason I dropped the X-Men and Jack went off it,

not because we thought it was less of a strip,

but there were so many characters,

it took a little longer to write.

So I just gave it up

because it was the toughest one to do of all of them,

and then other people took it over.

In the beginning, the sales dropped when we left the book,

but then, as you said,

when Chris Claremont and John Byrne

and all the people who took it on later took it over...

Because basically it was a solid strip.

Sales started to really rise.

So, you are the father of mutants in the Marvel universe.

Yeah. And that was done out of laziness.

Again, as I mentioned, when you do superheroes,

you have to say how they get their power.

Well, I was bored with cosmic rays and gamma rays

and radioactivity, and I was running out of things,

and I figured, "What if they're just mutants?"

I don't have to explain anything.

We know there are mutants in the world.

There are mutant vegetables, mutant trees, frogs.

Okay, they're born mutants. That gets me off the hook.

I can then do whatever I want.

So, it was done... Really, it was a cop-out.

It's so funny and it gives birth to years of continuity

and legend and mythos and...

But look how easy it is.

This comes from a guy who's just, like, "I don't know.

"The guy could have red coming out of his eyes, who knows?"

That's right, but look how easy it is.

You want somebody who can walk through walls?

He was born that way. He's a mutant.

Nice.

I guess a Fantastic Four movie now in the works,

like, a big budget, huge effort.

Kinda like the X-Men as well.

It'll be a big one, and the same with the Silver Surfer.

As I understand, he's one of your favorite creations.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you can tell by talking to me.

I'm very deep and very philosophical.

Yes, yes.

But the Silver Surfer

allowed me to get a lot of my corny, philosophical points

across through his dialogue.

I always could have him saying things like...

Now you remember, he's from another planet,

and he comes along and soars over earth, looking down,

and, "What's wrong with these earthlings?

"They have a planet that should be paradise.

"It's the Garden of Eden. It has everything.

"Clean air, good food, oceans, land, whatever you could want.

"And yet they fight and have crimes.

"They hate each other, and they...

"What's wrong? Are they insane?"

All the things that I think about

and, I think, most people think about.

I was able to let him voice those things.

And there's another thing. Because he's from another planet,

I was able to write his dialogue differently.

His English wasn't... It was perfect,

but it wasn't perfect the way you or I would speak.

And I loved that about Doctor Doom.

I had him speaking in a more highfalutin kind of way.

And I love writing different kind of dialogue.

Like with Thor, I tried to combine him with the Bible

and Shakespeare when he talked.

And Dr. Strange with his incantations.

To me, dialogue is so interesting and so much fun to write.

Iron Man was a character who, later on,

in comics, had a drinking problem.

We made him a drunkard, an alcoholic.

We thought that was a good thing to do.

And, um, I didn't write those stories,

but I loved the fact that we did it, and I was all for it.

And it was done very well, too.

But you created Iron Man?

Oh, yeah.

Where's that come from?

Being a little bit of a rebel.

In those days,

young people were very much against war, against the establishment,

so I said, just for fun, I'm gonna get a character who's a multimillionaire

and who manufactures war material, you know, armaments,

and I'm gonna make him likeable somehow.

And I kind of based him on Howard Hughes, in a way.

Came up with Tony Stark.

Now, again, in order to make the character empathetic...

And they all have to have a weakness of some sort.

I gave him a weak heart. He never knows when his heart'll conk out on him,

so he's afraid to have a serious relationship

with a girl, which made it easy to write stories with different girls.

Would have made a great TV series.

There could be a different girl in every episode.

So, um, and then he had his iron armor.

Now, because he was so rich, I had...

And again, in trying to make all our characters

somehow come together, mingle,

when we had the Avengers, I had them use his mansion on fifth Avenue

as their headquarters.

I like Tony Stark.

He was one of the few characters,

his name didn't begin with the same first letter and last letter.

And I don't know how I blew it there.

I must have been careless.

But a character whose name did begin with first letter and last letter,

Bruce Banner.

Now, during the run of the very successful TV show,

during the mid-to-late '70s,

they called him David Banner on the show,

as opposed to Bruce Banner in the comics. Why?

I hate to say it. It's so stupid.

It's a great story.

It is so stupid!

And it's also perfect network thinking.

His name was Bruce Banner.

And when they start doing the show,

I see in the script they have him called David Banner.

So, I called whoever it is you call at the network,

and I said, "Hey, you guys, there's a typo there. You wrote the wrong name."

"No, no. It's intentional."

"Well, why did you change his name from Bruce to David?"

"Well, Bruce sounds too homosexual."

I mean, there you go.

The Hulk was gay, essentially.

Astounding.

So, there's no pull to just be like,

"Look, call him what he was."

Well, what we did... I had them, as a sop to my feelings,

they called him David Bruce Banner,

but they referred to him as David all the time.

But Bruce was his middle name.

And now they're going to turn that

into a big-screen franchise as well, with Ang Lee.

That'll be wonderful. With Ang Lee. Yeah.

SMITH: And now, it's also... You're talking about when they did the show,

they threw the makeup on Lou Ferrigno,

and now they can create the Hulk as he should be realized,

as a huge monster, with CG.

I mean, it's got to be great for you to sit back

and watch movies now where they can actually realize

all the things you created so long ago.

Visually realize them.

It's a funny thing, though. When I watch them,

I forget that I was involved in them.

I just watch them and enjoy them, you know?

"Wow, it's clever the way they did that!

"Wow, that's terrific!" You know?

I'm just one of the fans, really.

But, as I told you, I'm a big fan of me.

Yeah, exactly.