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Stan Lee | page 1, 2, 3

As a pre-teen comics reader in the mid-'70s, I was familiar with Stan Lee from his byline, his column ("Stan's Soapbox") and especially the slick, smiling, sunglassed comic-book portraits of him by his artists, which gave him a superhero's confident gloss. I was lucky enough to get my hands on 1971's Incredible Hulk No. 144, featuring Doctor Doom, one of the later serials to bear Lee's name as editor. Said to have been an inspiration for Darth Vader, Doom wears a mysterious iron mask and dark green hood and shoots rays from his hands. He wanders Manhattan with diplomatic immunity, because he is the sovereign of a country called "Latveria." Doom's objective is generic -- he wants to rule the world -- but he is a living, breathing character whose methods, eloquence and need make him compelling.

Like all Marvel's stories, this Incredible Hulk story fit into a larger epic tale. But the beauty was you could just pick it up, read its encapsulated form and be equally transfixed by the script and art: In one panel we see Hulk's back, his left leg and arm dominating the foreground; Doctor Doom, temporarily fallen, looks up at him and says, "Fool! A moment's respite is all I need and then --" But Hulk interrupts: "Don't talk ... just go, before Hulk changes his mind!" Despite the exclamation mark, there is poignant resignation in Hulk's words. The superhumans would live to fight another day, a Sisyphean struggle of good against evil that never ended precisely because the boundary between them was so blurred.

Lee's stamp was there, in the rich characterization as well as the lyricism. By then, of course, it had permeated the entire industry. But in the decades since, as Marvel has struggled, comics have slipped into an insular obscurity. The art is sophisticated, but the stories seem to lack heart. Many of today's comics subscribe to a "more is more" ethos -- more muscles, more action, more color -- at the expense of character and narrative. In a 1998 interview with cartoonist Jules Feiffer in Civilization, Lee lamented this: "Unfortunately, there are some artists who concentrate more on drawing impressive illustrations than on telling a story in a clear, compelling way ... I feel today's books lack cohesion."

As Lee's direct editorial influence was waning, new characters were emerging outside the Marvel empire. Artists began generating new comics and new story lines for independent publishers like Image and Dark Horse. Many artists had formerly worked for Marvel, like Todd McFarlane, who created a breakthrough character named Spawn for Image Comics. The alternative publisher quickly gained about 15 percent of the market; most of that, it was estimated, came from Marvel's share. While Marvel published the lucrative tie-in comics for the first "Star Wars" trilogy, upstart Dark Horse took over the privilege in the '90s for a whole slew of spin-off "Star Wars" stories as well as the recent and upcoming prequels.

As reader interest in comics has declined (with the exception of a speculative boom brought on by collectors, which peaked in '92 and later crashed), Marvel has seen its market share shrink from 70 percent in the 1980s to less than 50 percent today. The cash-strapped company's decline, after a long supremacy, is akin to George Lucas going bankrupt after making the first "Star Wars" trilogy. But Marvel's hard times may say more about the uniqueness of Lee's achievement and his ability to connect with his times than it does about his role as publisher, which gradually became honorary. In 1981, Lee began overseeing Marvel's animated television and live-action movie projects on the West Coast. After infamously protracted legal entanglements, Spider-Man and the X-Men are headed to the big screen in the next year and a half. Finally entering territory successfully mined by DC's Superman and Batman movie serials, Lee just might hand Marvel one more lease on life.

Now 76, Lee is Marvel's chairman emeritus. He sees the Internet as the comic playground of the future. This fall, his new site promises stories with brand-new characters, told in an original multimedia style. And this week his new company, Stan Lee Media, began trading on the NASDAQ exchange. Lee's stake is estimated to be worth about $25 million, and he'll retain ownership of his new characters for the first time in his career.

Lee is a modern myth-maker. Unlike Tolkien, his mythology exists in an imagined present. Unlike Lucas, his characters are deep and existential. Lee's vision is at least as humanistic as it is magical: "I have always personally felt that all of us, every living being, gets one shot at life. You know, we're here once then we're gone as far as we know, and why the hell not enjoy it as much as possible," Lee once said. "Why not be nice to our fellow man? We're all in the same boat, we're all taking a journey to nowhere, and why not make it as pleasant for all of us as we possibly can?" It may be a far cry from Truth, Justice and the American Way, but so is the world outside the comic-book panels.
salon.com | August 17, 1999

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