Stan Lee
| Comic Book | |
| Speaker | |
| Pow Entertainment | |
| IMDB.com | Stan's Website |
Not already an expert on Stan "The Man" Lee, all you
knowledge-needing newbies of Marveldom? Well, fear no more - what
follows should help you out at least a bit.
Rhapsodic writer and erudite editor Stan Lee was born (as Stanley
Lieber) in New York, New York in 1922. (Yep, that answers the
question of how his brother was always published as Larry Lieber.)
Armed with his more show biz name, Lee started stirring things up in
the sleepy comic book world of the 1940s, an era in which the DC
(Daunting Competitors) publishing company under Jack Liebowitz had
been ruling the roost with one guy wearing a red cape and another
wearing a dark blue one.
Although a mere stripling of 16, Lee's mind was already thinking
much older thoughts. He had begun in the late 1930s as a writer and
then assistant editor for the Timely Comics group, a printing
concern run by his uncle, meticulous Martin Goodman. In 1941, the
Captain America comic was born, and the following year Lee was
officially promoted to the post of editor. World War II interrupted
Lee's comfortable unreality but just like Captain America, he
patriotically joined the Army. There he served diligently in the
Signal Corps, and for three years he also wrote scripts for training
films and manuals for all branches of the service.
After winning the war single-handedly (okay, he also had some help),
Lee returned to Timely Comics, which was later renamed Atlas when it
began entering a tough financial period in the '50s. Traditional
super-hero comic sales were slowing down due to popular TV soap
operas and monster movies promoting interest in romance and horror
comics instead. Atlas also took a fling at romance comics, but
ironically their heart wasn't in it. Likewise, the "monster of the
month" formula grew quite predictable after awhile. Besides, Marvel
had too many new and improved super-hero ideas waiting to bust out
into action!
By 1961, after Atlas had changed its name to Marvel, the public had
reached the saturation point with romance comics, so the super-hero
adventure story was able to begin clicking again. This was
admittedly also due in large part to the recent "silver age" wave of
revamped super-heroes started in the late '50s over at DC by their
editor Julius Schwartz, but Marvel lost no time in capitalizing on
it themselves, of course.
Lee quickly got into the groove, starting with a team takeoff on the
'50s foursome that made up the Challengers of the Unknown
which Jack "King" Kirby had drawn for DC. Lee was originally going
to call it the Fabulous Four, but Goodman (his uncle,
remember?) insisted that Fantastic Four sounded better. (The
FF also included a revamp of an old '40s character, the Torch, by
Charles Biro.)
But by now Kirby himself was working for mighty Marvel, so the
comics world was in for a huge jolt. Soon came other stars, like
Sub-Mariner (also a '40s Marvel revamp, formerly done by Bill
Everett) The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor and
Iron Man, all drawn by Kirby.
Add to that the brilliant Spiderman and Doctor Strange,
both drawn by "Sturdy" Steve Ditko, and Daredevil (another
'40s revamp, formerly drawn by Jack Cole) now with artwork by EC
horror master Wally Wood, and you had one awesome lineup, to say the
least. And, incredibly, all of them (and more) were written and
edited by Stan "The Man" Lee!
In fact, during his first 25 years at Marvel's helm, variously as
head writer, editor and art director, Lee scripted no fewer than two
and as many as five complete comic books a week.
This mind-boggling output easily equals the largest body of
published work by any single writer. Additionally, Lee wrote
newspaper features, radio and television scripts and screenplays
(just to kill some of his downtime from comics).