Durant, Oklahoma -- The Texoma Comic Con comes to the Choctaw Event Center in Durant, OK, February 21-22. To commemorate the event, North Texas e-News publishes this exclusive bio of Stan the Man, American comic book writer, editor, publisher, and producer.
People say I died in November 2018, but as long as people remember the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Black Panther, and the X-Men, I will be around. How I came to create these characters for Marvel Comics would make a good comic book in itself.
I was born in New York in 1922; the same year as Betty White, Kurt Vonnegut, Charles M. Schultz, Jack Kerouac and Judy Garland. Some people called us the Greatest Generation but we just did what we had to do.
My parents, Celia and Jack Lieber, were Jewish immigrants from Romania. Times were tough for foreigners when I was a kid, but it was about to get even tougher.
My brother and I shared a bedroom; our folks slept on a fold-out cot. Daddy worked in the fabric industry – when he could get work. And then came the Great Depression.
I would sneak out to the movies to escape. I loved the movies of Errol Flynn. I don't know how many times I watched Captain Blood. Since I didn’t have the build of a hero, I thought I could write such a story. I read everything I could by Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Pulp Fiction was in its heyday.
My first break was winning a high school essay competition sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune. Then I won it again. Then again. I goaded the Tribune to let me write for them so someone else could win. They sent me down the hall.
My dream was that one day I might write the Great American Novel. My first real writing job was doing obituaries for a news service; then press releases for a Tuberculosis center. At 16, I finished high school early and joined the WPA Federal Theater Project.
I was still a teenager when I became an assistant at the Timely Comics division of a pulp magazine. Martin Goodman's company would evolve into Marvel Comics by the 1960s, and I stayed with it the whole time. Of course, it helped that my cousin was the boss' wife.
At first my job was to make sure the inkwells were filled. Seriously! I went to the deli and got the writers' lunches. I did proofreading. I erased the pencil marks from the finished pages, emptied ashtrays; whatever they asked. Finally, they let me do some lettering for Captain America. I dropped the i-b-r from my name and invented a new character, Stan Lee! No, actually I was so embarrassed at the low status of my work (comic books were such an inferior form of publishing), that I needed a pseudonym.
And then came World War Two. Along with millions of other men in America, I enlisted after Pearl Harbor. They put me to work repairing telegraph wires for the Signal Corps – then the Army discovered my writing ability. There were nine Playwrights in the Training Film Division and I was one of them. I rubbed shoulders with director Frank Capra, cartoonist Charles Addams, and a fellow you may know as Dr. Seuss.
Timely Comics held my job open for me and I wrote a little bit of everything; romance and horror, Westerns and science fiction, humor, suspense, medieval tales. And then Timely became Marvel Comics. The Justice League of America over at DC Comics were giving us a run for our money but we were up for the task.
Artist Jack Kirby and I hooked up in 1961 and we launched the superhero team of the Fantastic Four. We got on a roll. Soon we invented the Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, Daredevil and the others. Like the ancient Roman call to rise, “Excelsior!” was our by-word. Ever upward we would rise!
Our attraction was the cliff-hanger. Just like in the old serial movies of my childhood, the stories in Marvel Comics would leave the reader in suspense; so he had to buy the next issue to find out what happened. The Fantastic Four did so well, we created the X-Men.
Another thing that differentiated us from DC was our characters had character. They had a sense of humanity, a little self-doubt; they could appreciate humor as well as dish it out. Our heroes sometimes had bad tempers, sometimes were vain. They had fits of melancholy. They wondered how they were going to pay their bills.
Bigotry and drug use were problems in the real world. Marvel characters faced the same problems. When one of our Spider-Man stories couldn’t pass the Comics Code Authority because a character had a drug problem, we published it without the Code. It sold well and Marvel won praise for its socially conscious efforts. The Comics Code was changed as a result.
As editor, I gave credit to the writer and the artist of each story. Hell, I identified the penciller, the inker, and the letterer. Job titles began to blur. Artists became co-plotters.
And I made True Believers out of my fans by including them with backstage stories about the staff members and upcoming storylines. The Bullpen Bulletin, I called it. The Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club became a radio program. Things were moving Ever Upward! You old guys may remember my column, Stan’s Soapbox. It was the Marvel Method of gaining new readership.
By 1972, I moved to the West Coast to push the various film ventures. They called me Chairman Emeritus, Ambassador, and Editor-In-Chief. My characters were fighting crime as I was fighting nay-sayers and lawsuits. But I went Ever Upward!
I started the intellectual-property company POW! Entertainment in 2001 and published my autobiography in 2002. But let me tell you a little story about George W. Bush in 2008.
I was to receive some little award that he gives out every year. He gives it to a few people for whatever they've done for the arts. So, I was waiting to get my National Medal of the Arts award and in front of me was Olivia de Havilland. She's the one who was usually the costar with Errol Flynn in all of his movies. She was always THE girl. So, he gave her this little medal that he put around her neck. And then he kissed her on the cheek.
Now it was my turn so he gave me the thing and now I’m supposed to say something. All I could think of saying was, “I hope you're not going to kiss me on the cheek.” Well, George started laughing and I started laughing and everybody on stage was laughing, even the photographer!
The photographer stopped laughing long enough to take a picture of President Bush and me laughing like crazy. So now whenever I show that picture to anybody, it's ‘oh yeah, we're bosom buddies. We always kid around and laugh.’
Anyway, in 2010 I tried my hand at television. The History Channel show about Super-Humans looked at people with remarkable skills and abilities. In 2012, I co-wrote Romeo & Juliet, a graphic novel which made it to the New York Times' best-seller list.
My wife Joan died in 2017. We were together nearly 70 years. I think that’s what gave me an irregular heartbeat and shortness of breath in 2018. Ah, but it was a good life, you know. I enjoyed my cameo roles in the super-hero movies. And meeting my fans at conventions across the country.
I’ve got to go now. My lovely wife Joan tells me it’s time to dye --- my hair. I’m the Ghost of Stan Lee and I’ll see you at the next event!
