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00:00:00The 2008 National Medal of Arts to Stan Lee for his groundbreaking work as one of America's
00:00:23most prolific storytellers, recreating the American comic book.
00:00:27His complex plots and humane superheroes celebrate courage, honesty, and the importance
00:00:32of helping the less fortunate, reflecting America's inherent goodness.
00:00:49Stan Lee is a giant, and a giant like Walt Disney is a giant.
00:00:53He created Spider-Man, and Hulk, and Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Iron Man.
00:00:58These characters are larger than life.
00:01:00Stan Lee is a pioneer in the truest sense.
00:01:04Without him, there are no comic book stories, no Marvel stories really being told.
00:01:08He really put himself into the comics.
00:01:11He hooks into old, tried and true themes, but he's done it in a way that I don't think
00:01:17anyone else has.
00:01:19Stan was really the first comic book writer to make the human being behind the mask more
00:01:24important than the mask itself.
00:01:28The most famous name in American comic book history.
00:01:31Stan Lee.
00:01:32Stan Lee.
00:01:33Stan Lee.
00:01:34Stan Lee.
00:01:35Stan is very hot.
00:01:36He's 86.
00:01:37I look older than he does.
00:01:38The man who kind of changed the face of comics.
00:01:41That's Stan Lee.
00:01:42That's, you know, I'm like, oh my God.
00:01:45It influenced the lives of like millions and millions.
00:01:49He's really become a major icon himself.
00:01:52When I met him on the set, I saw everybody crowding around him.
00:01:55You know, it was like Mick Jagger was there.
00:02:02I've been here for three days waiting for Stan Lee.
00:02:09I just relate to so much of what Stan Lee writes in his characters.
00:02:14Peter Parker reminds me of myself.
00:02:19Learned to read because of Spider-Man comics.
00:02:21Stan Lee.
00:02:23We love you, Stan!
00:02:31Thank you, Mr. Lee.
00:02:33Thank you very much.
00:02:47Stan Lee.
00:02:49Uh oh.
00:02:51I'm her greatest fan ever.
00:03:13Stan Lee!
00:03:31Creating comics was never part of my childhood dream.
00:03:34I never thought of that at all.
00:03:36Believe it or not, I wanted to be an actor.
00:03:38I'd go to the movies and I'd think, gee, I wish I were up there on the screen.
00:03:43That must be the most fun you could have.
00:03:45I remember my really first hero was Errol Flynn.
00:03:55Did I upset your plans?
00:03:57Well, my upbringing was in the Depression days.
00:04:03We lived in the Bronx on University Avenue.
00:04:07That old apartment that we lived in, wow, I hated that.
00:04:11My mother and father slept in a couch in the living room that opened up into a double bed.
00:04:15And I slept in a little bedroom in a bed.
00:04:17I still remember how important it was to have enough money for a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk.
00:04:23One biggest worry my mother and father had that I used to hear them repeating all the time is,
00:04:29what'll we do if we can't scrape enough money together for the rent this month?
00:04:34And that went on and on.
00:04:36My father was too worried about just getting a job.
00:04:39The poor guy was out of work most of the time, which is why I was working even when I was in school.
00:04:45I always had part-time jobs.
00:04:47When I was 16, I worked at the world's second largest trouser manufacturing company.
00:04:53Then I got a job as an usher in New York at the Rivoli Theater in Times Square.
00:04:58I got into comics by accident when I heard there was a job open at magazine management.
00:05:04They wanted me to work in the comic department.
00:05:07It wasn't one department, it was two people, Joe and Jack.
00:05:10And they were the two who were really running Timely Comics when I came there to work.
00:05:15Jack was the artist and he did some of the writing also.
00:05:19Joe was the writer mainly, but he was also the editor.
00:05:23So he was the one I had most to do with.
00:05:26He'd send me down for sandwiches or ask me to fill an inkwell.
00:05:30I mean, I did a lot of real journalistic things with him.
00:05:33I remember the first day he came here, he came to the office.
00:05:36He had a little flute and he'd sit in the corner and play his flute and drive Jack Kirby crazy.
00:05:46I never thought when he came to the office he would make it.
00:05:49There was a time when they needed a two-page filler.
00:05:53Each comic book had to have two pages of prose to be accepted for second-class mailing privileges.
00:06:01It was our contention that nobody ever read that stuff.
00:06:04So I started Stan on writing these two pages.
00:06:09I thought, wow, my first assignment.
00:06:12So I wrote one called, I think, Captain America, The Traitor's Revenge.
00:06:17Stan treated the thing with great respect.
00:06:20He was now a professional writer.
00:06:23My name at the time was Stanley Martin Lieber.
00:06:27I took my first name Stanley and cut it in half.
00:06:31I didn't want to use the name Stanley Martin Lieber
00:06:35because I was saving that for the great American novel, which I never wrote.
00:06:47After about ten issues of Captain America, less than a year,
00:06:50Joe Simon and Jack Kirby suddenly left the entire company
00:06:53and all of a sudden we didn't have an editor.
00:06:55Captain America was left in the lurch without its main writer and artist.
00:06:59I looked around to see who'd replaced them and I realized there was nobody.
00:07:04I was the only guy there.
00:07:06So the publisher, Martin Goodman, he said,
00:07:09do you think you can hold down the job of editor and art director and head writer
00:07:14until I get, you know, a real person?
00:07:17I was about, I don't know, 18 when I said, sure, I can do it.
00:07:21It's more that he was there, he was writing, he was even a relative.
00:07:26The main thing was he also would have recognized that Stan was a bright kid,
00:07:29he's working cheap, you know, so why not put him in charge?
00:07:32I wrote a lot of the Captain America stories,
00:07:35but then eventually a lot of other writers did
00:07:38because there wasn't time for me to write everything.
00:07:41America went to war, and the superheroes went to war along with them.
00:07:45What could be more of an ultimate supervillain than the Nazis?
00:07:49Simon and Kirby were the first two to really play Hitler up
00:07:54as the world's worst villain.
00:07:59I was the only guy there.
00:08:02I was the only guy there.
00:08:05I was the only guy there.
00:08:08The world's worst villain.
00:08:11If you'd look at almost any issue of a Marvel comic,
00:08:14which was then a timely comic, I guess,
00:08:17you'd see Sub-Mariner or The Human Torch or Captain America
00:08:22battling some really ugly, gruesome, fiendish-looking Nazi or Japanese villain.
00:08:31Comic books were selling.
00:08:33We were living our mythology, we were living our folklore,
00:08:36and we were winning the war through our superheroes
00:08:40and our real heroes overseas.
00:08:49And I guess I myself got so caught up in all of that
00:08:54that the next thing I knew, I had enlisted in the Army.
00:08:59I felt our nation was really in danger,
00:09:03and I couldn't have lived with myself if I were a civilian
00:09:07while other people were over there fighting.
00:09:11In the Army, I was classified as a playwright.
00:09:14They sent me to different camps where I wrote training films.
00:09:18He even drew a pamphlet about how not to get venereal disease,
00:09:22which he's very good at.
00:09:24There were only nine men in the Army who were classified as playwrights,
00:09:28and I was in great company.
00:09:30There was William Soroyan, Carl Emily Jr., Frank Capra,
00:09:34and a guy named Theodore Geisel, whom you may know as Dr. Seuss.
00:09:38He was evidently so good, he could always finish his work so fast,
00:09:42that he'd be able to sit around in Goldbrick for a while, I guess.
00:09:46I was in the Army for a while,
00:09:48and then I was in the Army for a while,
00:09:51and then I was in the Army for a while,
00:09:54and then I was in the Army for a while,
00:09:57and then I was in the Army for a while.
00:10:01After the war ended, we could all get back to normal.
00:10:04Everybody thought that was the last war we'd ever have,
00:10:07now there'd be peace in the world.
00:10:21Hi, Mr. Lee. Come on in.
00:10:26Hello, how are you?
00:10:28Glad to see you.
00:10:30Did you have a good day?
00:10:31Yeah, how are you?
00:10:32You look great.
00:10:33You always look great.
00:10:34What would you like?
00:10:35I'd like to put my bag down for a minute.
00:10:37I'll be right back.
00:10:38I don't know how we ever got married.
00:10:39That's the difference between you and me.
00:10:41How many years?
00:10:42Do you know how many years?
00:10:44Sixty.
00:10:45Sixty years.
00:10:46Sixty years this year.
00:10:48On the fifth of this month.
00:10:50And I still don't think I've got it right.
00:10:53Well, I may as well tell you the whole truth, really.
00:10:55Nothing but the truth.
00:10:57I crossed over in the old Mauritania from England
00:11:00during the last of the lovely wars.
00:11:04And I came over as a war bride.
00:11:06And I became a hat model.
00:11:09And Stan said to one of the salesmen there,
00:11:14that's the girl I'm going to marry.
00:11:16And they said, not a chance, she's married already.
00:11:19And he said, no, that's the girl I'm going to marry.
00:11:21And six weeks later, I was in Reno, spending his money.
00:11:25I can't do it.
00:11:26Come on, get up.
00:11:27I'm no good.
00:11:28No, I won't do it.
00:11:29I will not.
00:11:30Stan.
00:11:31People who think I'm wonderful, I will not let them.
00:11:33No, no, please don't do this to me.
00:11:34Just go ahead.
00:11:35Just move.
00:11:36You're real good.
00:11:37Should have seen her 60 years ago.
00:11:40This is what she hates.
00:11:43I bet I could fall.
00:11:44No, you don't do that.
00:11:45No, never.
00:11:46You don't do that.
00:11:47No, no.
00:11:48You never do this.
00:11:49Just like this.
00:11:50This is how.
00:11:51Now stop.
00:11:52There you go.
00:11:59Young and gay and sweet and gay.
00:12:04Young and gay and sweet and gay.
00:12:12Everything is mutual.
00:12:14I love her, and she loves me loving her.
00:12:18And he loves her, and I love him loving him.
00:12:22And that's it.
00:12:23There we go.
00:12:25You know how lucky we are to be able to move like this
00:12:28at our age?
00:12:29Sweet Jesus.
00:12:30After World War II, I got married.
00:12:32My wife and I, we lived in Long Island.
00:12:34We lived in a wonderful, crazy apartment.
00:12:37He had 96th and Madison.
00:12:40We had this little penthouse.
00:12:42We had a lot of wonderful, crazy friends.
00:12:47And Stan was with Timely Comics then.
00:12:51And he was on Empire State Building.
00:12:54I remember how marvelous it was to go up in that elevator
00:12:58and there would be Stan with these young men
00:13:02sketching and doing and laughing and talking.
00:13:06Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to welcome you
00:13:08to the home of Marvel Comics, the Batty Bullpen.
00:13:11Stan, I always wanted to visit the bullpen.
00:13:14What is the bullpen like?
00:13:16Well, there are very few bulls.
00:13:22There was an extensive bullpen.
00:13:24Coming and going in that bullpen
00:13:26were some of the giants of the industry.
00:13:28And Stan had them at his disposal.
00:13:30We turn out about one complete comic magazine
00:13:34every working day.
00:13:38When I would describe the kind of drawings I want,
00:13:42if somebody was recoiling in horror at some scene
00:13:46and the artist would draw like that,
00:13:49I'd say, that's okay, but how about, ah!
00:13:52How about like that?
00:13:54He would jump on the couch.
00:13:56He would leap across. He would do Aunt May's voice.
00:13:59He would jump up on the desk, practically,
00:14:01to act out how he wanted the heroes to do it.
00:14:03And that was a major feat, to get up on that desk
00:14:05with all that junk on it.
00:14:07He was a believer in the silent film approach to storytelling.
00:14:11Don't do anything mildly.
00:14:13If somebody's going to pound on the desk,
00:14:15you don't go...
00:14:17No, you go...
00:14:19Smash!
00:14:21That's the way he used to do...
00:14:23He would animate everything he wanted to do.
00:14:25He'd say, have Dr. Doom do this.
00:14:27Jumping, throwing, leap, and he'd leap over the couch.
00:14:30There were stories that before I was doing sessions with Stan
00:14:35that people down the hall,
00:14:37they would see Stan doing these gyrations in his doorway.
00:14:40One time he's doing the old comic stick
00:14:42where somebody's strangling you.
00:14:44He was strangling himself and pulls himself back in
00:14:47and everybody comes running down.
00:14:49They thought somebody was attacking Stan in his office.
00:14:52And I made it.
00:14:54You know, it's a funny thing.
00:14:56Some people somewhere think that I wrote and drew.
00:14:59They think that the strips were just mine.
00:15:02But they would have been nothing
00:15:04if not for the artists that I worked with.
00:15:06I just put the words in the people's mouth
00:15:09and I may have come up with the original idea,
00:15:12but after that, it was a partnership.
00:15:14Stan allowed the artists to be themselves,
00:15:17and that, I think, was the key.
00:15:19If you take a look at credits on comic books back in the 1950s,
00:15:22good luck. There were rarely any credits.
00:15:24You didn't know who the writer was.
00:15:26You didn't know who the artist was.
00:15:28Stan made sure that everybody got a credit,
00:15:30and he started building personality around these people.
00:15:33Suddenly Jazzy John.
00:15:35Gentleman Gene Kohler.
00:15:37Joltin' Joe.
00:15:38Darling Dick Ayers.
00:15:40Rassley Roy Thomas.
00:15:41Jack Kirby became Jolly Jack Kirby.
00:15:43Now you're part of the bullpen. You are somebody now.
00:15:46I wanted our readers to feel they're part of a group,
00:15:50an inner circle,
00:15:52and we're all having a lot of fun
00:15:54that the rest of the world doesn't know about.
00:15:56So I wanted to form a club.
00:15:58I gave it a silly name, the MMMS,
00:16:01the Merry Marvel Marching Society.
00:16:04You belong, you belong, you belong, you belong
00:16:08to the Merry Marvel Marching Society.
00:16:10Okay, out there in Marvel land, face front,
00:16:12this is Stan Lee speaking.
00:16:14We never heard a record like this before
00:16:16because no one would be nutty enough to make one
00:16:18with a bunch of offbeat artists,
00:16:20so anything is liable to happen.
00:16:22Hey, who made you with this, Jocky Lee?
00:16:24Well, well, Jolly Jack Kirby, say a few words to the fans, Jackson.
00:16:27Okay, a few words.
00:16:29Look, pal, I'll take care of the humor around here.
00:16:31You, you've been using the same gags over and over for years.
00:16:34Hey, what's all that commotion out there, Sol?
00:16:37Why, it's shy Steve Ditko.
00:16:39He heard you making a record, and he's got my pride.
00:16:41Whoops, there he goes.
00:16:42Out the window again?
00:16:43You know, I'm beginning to think he is Spider-Man.
00:16:46You mean he isn't?
00:16:47Enough said.
00:16:48Now, let's all get back to work in the bullpen,
00:16:51and as for you marvelous Merry Marchers, welcome.
00:16:54Welcome!
00:17:00In the gay, halcyon early days,
00:17:02Jack Kirby developed most of the Marvel heroes with me.
00:17:06Jack drew like a movie director.
00:17:09He couldn't draw anything dull.
00:17:12In a very short span of about five or six years,
00:17:15Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created more successful characters
00:17:19than any person or two people together
00:17:22have ever created in the history of comics.
00:17:24I always marveled at the fact that Jack was able to design
00:17:28so many varied characters
00:17:31and yet make each one totally different than the other.
00:17:36Jack would just put his pencil down and start drawing.
00:17:40He drew with such certainty.
00:17:42He knew just where every line was going to go.
00:17:46There was no hesitation, and it worked out perfectly.
00:17:50It was incredible.
00:17:51I feel that story first.
00:17:55I know those people first.
00:17:57When I put them down, they've already lived.
00:18:01And I put them down as I'd like them to live on those pages.
00:18:05I had worked with Jack so much.
00:18:07We did those monster stories.
00:18:09We did westerns. We did war.
00:18:11We did everything.
00:18:15I would give them the plot.
00:18:17I told them what I wanted the story to be.
00:18:20I used to hear them plotting stories,
00:18:21but I don't remember them ever agreeing on anything.
00:18:24Jack had his own idea.
00:18:25He went home and did his version.
00:18:27Stan, when he got the pages, said,
00:18:29gee, Jack didn't remember anything we talked about.
00:18:32Jack did one version.
00:18:33Stan made it something else.
00:18:35And that's why there's a disagreement
00:18:37between Jack Kirby and Stan Lee
00:18:39as to whose story they were.
00:18:41We used to have disagreements.
00:18:43I never thought it got him angry.
00:18:45I love fighting with people.
00:18:46Maybe it bothered him when I always said you're wrong.
00:18:50A lot of reporters always thought,
00:18:52oh, Stan created everything,
00:18:53was they'd come into Stan's office,
00:18:55and Stan would sit there,
00:18:56and he's so charming and wonderful.
00:18:57You just love the guy.
00:18:58Somebody wanted to interview me
00:19:01for the Herald Tribune magazine section.
00:19:04And I said, but look, if you're going to interview me,
00:19:07I really think you should interview
00:19:09Jack Kirby at the same time,
00:19:11because he works on it with me.
00:19:13He came up to the office, and he interviewed us.
00:19:16Jack told me that he was going to stay
00:19:18up late Saturday night with his wife,
00:19:20and they were going to go to the newsstand,
00:19:22so they'd get it right away.
00:19:24The first five columns were all about me
00:19:27and how wonderful I was.
00:19:29In the sixth column, he started talking about Jack
00:19:33in a very unflattering way.
00:19:35I got a call from Roz, Jack's wife.
00:19:38I hadn't seen the article.
00:19:39I thought she was calling me to say how great it was,
00:19:42how excited they were, and she was in tears.
00:19:46She said, how could this have happened?
00:19:48It was the most horrible thing, really.
00:19:51Jack quit, and I really suspect
00:19:53it might have been as simple as the fact
00:19:55that he got tired of having the credits read
00:19:58by Stanley and Jack Kirby all the time,
00:20:00and he may have wanted to strike out on his own.
00:20:04As far as I'm concerned, there's no controversy.
00:20:06I mean, he was the greatest partner a guy could have.
00:20:10Eventually, Jack contacted me,
00:20:12and he wanted to come back again, which made me happy.
00:20:19Do you think that there is any danger
00:20:21in taking young people and showing them figures
00:20:26and fantastic apparitions like some of your superheroes,
00:20:30Captain America, Hulk, and so forth?
00:20:33No, no more danger than reading fairy tales
00:20:36or poetry or the Bible.
00:20:38It is my opinion, without any reasonable doubt
00:20:44and without any reservation,
00:20:47that comic books are an important contributing factor
00:20:53in many cases of juvenile delinquency.
00:20:56Dr. Wertham was the leading opponent of comics
00:20:59and the most vocal one.
00:21:01At the time when he was having his big harangue against comics,
00:21:05people were very concerned about violence and about sex
00:21:09and about, I guess, anything that Dr. Wertham wanted to mention.
00:21:13He interviewed 100 juvenile delinquents.
00:21:15They all said that at one time or another they read comic books.
00:21:18Therefore, Dr. Wertham concluded,
00:21:20comic books cause juvenile delinquency.
00:21:23When I was a boy and played with the gang, we did a lot of things.
00:21:26We roasted potatoes, went on expeditions,
00:21:28we tipped over garbage cans now and then,
00:21:30we wrote nasty remarks about the teacher on the sidewalk.
00:21:33But we never spent an afternoon sitting around like this, reading.
00:21:37They're reading stories devoted to adultery, to sexual perversion,
00:21:41to horror, to the most despicable of crimes.
00:21:45Senators were merciless.
00:21:48They would say, you're in it for the money?
00:21:50Of course you're in it for the money.
00:21:53Is it worth the money if you're going to distort youngsters' aspect of life?
00:22:01One of my favorite accusations that Dr. Wertham made
00:22:04was that comic books cause asthma
00:22:06because children were staying indoors to read them
00:22:08instead of playing in the fresh air.
00:22:10The fact that he was a psychiatrist, this impressed parents
00:22:13and they began to think, what's going on in these comics?
00:22:16Dr. Wertham suddenly gave parents an easy answer.
00:22:19Don't think you're a bad parent,
00:22:20it's those damn comic books that are ruining your children.
00:22:23And people seized on it and jumped on it.
00:22:28See, Americans were embarrassed about comics.
00:22:31Stan and I never used to say we worked on comics.
00:22:33I said I was an illustrator, Stan said he was a writer,
00:22:36never mentioned comics.
00:22:37Occasionally some people who we weren't too familiar with
00:22:40would come over to me and say, what do you do?
00:22:43Oh man, I didn't want to admit what I did,
00:22:45so I'd say something like, oh, I'm a writer,
00:22:47and I'd start to walk away, but he'd follow me.
00:22:50What do you write?
00:22:51I'd say, um, stories for children.
00:22:54I'd walk away again, he'd follow me.
00:22:56What kind of stories?
00:22:58At some point I had to say comic books.
00:23:00At that point he would turn around and walk away.
00:23:06The publishers got together and hired a psychiatrist or somebody,
00:23:10I think her name was Truelock, Mrs. Truelock,
00:23:13to head up an organization called
00:23:15the Comic Magazine Association of America,
00:23:18and they would be a self-censorship group.
00:23:21And they would make sure there was nothing objectionable for kids,
00:23:26not too sexy, not too violent, etc.
00:23:29You couldn't sell a book unless it had their seal on it,
00:23:32approved by the Comics Code.
00:23:37The imposition of the Comics Code created a blandness.
00:23:40It stifled creativity.
00:23:42And the extremes that were built into the code,
00:23:46if you look at them today, are almost laughable.
00:23:53No comic shall explicitly present
00:23:56the unique details and methods of a crime.
00:24:00Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited.
00:24:04Suggestive and salacious illustration is unacceptable.
00:24:13It was an incredibly frustrating time also.
00:24:17I would meet somebody somewhere,
00:24:19hey, you're the guy who writes Millie the Model.
00:24:21Gee, I read that, that's great.
00:24:23Never heard that.
00:24:26The sales got very bad,
00:24:28and our publisher, Martin Goodman,
00:24:30had to drop a lot of comic books.
00:24:34It took about two years when we got to the point
00:24:37where that's when we went belly up.
00:24:39And Martin said, Stan, I'm going to Miami,
00:24:41I'd like you to tell the staff that we have to let him go.
00:24:45That was always the thing I had to do.
00:24:48And that was like one of the worst moments of my life.
00:24:51Because these weren't just artists and writers
00:24:53who worked for me,
00:24:54these were people who were like my closest friends.
00:24:57I mean, I knew their wives, I knew their kids,
00:25:00I knew all about them.
00:25:01And I'm sorry we won't have any work for you
00:25:03for, oh, I don't know, maybe a year or two.
00:25:06Oh, God, it was the worst.
00:25:08I didn't get any work.
00:25:09There was no place I could get any work.
00:25:11So I got a job as a security guard at General Foods.
00:25:14I thought for sure in 54
00:25:16that I would never be working in comics again.
00:25:18We moved up to 260 Park Avenue.
00:25:21Stan, he had one little room,
00:25:24and he was all by himself.
00:25:26He had no secretary and no bullpen,
00:25:31no one to do any corrections.
00:25:33Stan was virtually the only employee in the comics, you know.
00:25:36Doing comics was like you were on the bottom rung
00:25:39of the creative totem pole, so to speak.
00:25:42Here I am, a grown man, I was in my 30s,
00:25:46and I'm doing juvenile things.
00:25:50Most of my neighbors, they were stockbrokers,
00:25:53they were bankers, they were businessmen,
00:25:55they were doctors, they were lawyers.
00:25:57They didn't take me seriously.
00:26:01What kind of reference was the fact
00:26:03that you had been writing comics?
00:26:05So I kept staying there,
00:26:07because I had a wife and a baby, a child.
00:26:10I didn't know where else to go.
00:26:12But finally, I was ready to quit by about 1960 or 61.
00:26:19I had been doing it for 20 years,
00:26:22and I said to my wife,
00:26:24look, I'm sure there's something I can do.
00:26:26I'll try to write a novel or something.
00:26:29And she said, Stan, if you want to quit,
00:26:32why don't you first do one comic book
00:26:35the way you'd like to do it for a slightly older audience?
00:26:39Write it the way you feel like writing it.
00:26:41Get it out of your system.
00:26:43The worst that can happen is you'll be fired,
00:26:46but you want to quit anyway.
00:26:48When Joan finally said,
00:26:50why don't you do one book the way you'd like to do it,
00:26:53it was like a light bulb exploded over my head.
00:26:57I felt, well, at last, at least I'll get it out of my system,
00:27:01and then I'll quit or be fired.
00:27:05Martin said to me,
00:27:07why don't you do a book with a bunch of heroes?
00:27:10So I figured, okay, I'll get a group of heroes,
00:27:13but this time I wanted to do them my way,
00:27:16and I wanted to write things to appeal to older people too.
00:27:22If I had a superpower,
00:27:25there's no way I would wear a mask
00:27:28and not want people to know who I was.
00:27:31I'd want everybody to know,
00:27:33look at me, I can do things you can't do.
00:27:36I'm better than you are, and here's my name,
00:27:38if you don't believe it.
00:27:42It was right there in that moment,
00:27:44with Fantastic Four number one,
00:27:46that the Marvel Age of Comics started,
00:27:49and that what Stan Lee has become started.
00:27:521961.
00:27:54There is a notable year.
00:27:56John F. Kennedy became president.
00:27:58Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
00:28:01The bikini became fashionable.
00:28:03And Marvel Comics made its debut.
00:28:06I just saw these comics that were unlike anything
00:28:09that I'd seen before.
00:28:11The pages rippled with energy.
00:28:18Comic book superheroes, up until 1961,
00:28:22were cardboard characters.
00:28:24They didn't really have a sense of humor.
00:28:26There was no texture to it.
00:28:28There were no subplots.
00:28:30We try to write stories we would enjoy,
00:28:32and apparently there are enough people in the world
00:28:35who have the same tastes.
00:28:37I hate to say that, I'd like to think my taste is far better,
00:28:40but apparently everybody must have pretty much the same taste,
00:28:43because the books sell pretty well.
00:28:45All of a sudden, Stan's superheroes
00:28:47were dealing with angst, self-torment, anguish.
00:28:51This was really the first time
00:28:53that an added dimension of personality
00:28:55had been brought in to the superhero.
00:28:57Stan was able to tap into something
00:29:00where you became interested in the character
00:29:03as opposed to the costume.
00:29:05Wait a minute, they're fighting with each other.
00:29:07They don't particularly like each other.
00:29:10They don't like their powers.
00:29:12They think it's like a curse, not something good that happened.
00:29:16One character, The Thing, who's one of the most popular ones,
00:29:20the first time he wore a superhero outfit in the street,
00:29:24he reacted in a way I've always felt
00:29:27a character in a book should react.
00:29:29Instead of taking it for granted, he said,
00:29:31I feel like a nut in an outfit like this.
00:29:33People are looking at me.
00:29:35And we had stories where they were evicted
00:29:37from their headquarters because they had lost
00:29:39a lot of money in the stock market
00:29:41and they couldn't pay their rent.
00:29:43Things that had never happened to superheroes before.
00:29:46See, another thing, I didn't see any reason
00:29:50for our superheroes, such as the Fantastic Four,
00:29:54to live in cities like Metropolis or Gotham City.
00:29:58I figured, hell, why can't they live in New York, you know?
00:30:01I knew New York, so I made it New York.
00:30:04I could write comfortably about New York.
00:30:07And when they went to the movies,
00:30:09why did they go to the Bijou Theater?
00:30:11Why did they go to the Radio City Music Hall?
00:30:13And when the Human Torch, who was a teenager,
00:30:16Johnny Storm, when he wanted a sports car,
00:30:19he wouldn't buy a whiz-bang V8.
00:30:22I got him a Chevy Corvette.
00:30:24So, again, I tried to make things
00:30:27as realistic as possible,
00:30:30even though these were fantasy stories.
00:30:33Things exploded at Marvel so much
00:30:37when he was doing this in the early 60s.
00:30:40By the late 1960s, the distributor that owned DC
00:30:43basically told Marvel, you're selling so good,
00:30:45we're making more money off of you
00:30:47than the publisher we own.
00:30:49Publish everything you want.
00:30:51We sell about 60 million copies,
00:30:5360 million magazines a year.
00:30:55I guess that would break down to 5 million a month.
00:30:58When we passed DC, I almost flipped.
00:31:01You know, DC was the Cadillac of the industry.
00:31:04I couldn't believe it.
00:31:06From 1961 on with the Fantastic Four,
00:31:09comics grew exponentially.
00:31:11It was absolutely a miracle.
00:31:13I would say from 60 to 70,
00:31:16that's when I enjoyed the comic book business
00:31:19more than I have ever enjoyed it.
00:31:2161 was a Fantastic Four.
00:31:2362, you had...
00:31:24The Hulk.
00:31:25Ant-Man and Thor.
00:31:27Spider-Man.
00:31:281963...
00:31:29Darth Fury.
00:31:30Iron Man.
00:31:31Giant Man.
00:31:32Doctor Strange.
00:31:33X-Men.
00:31:34The Avengers.
00:31:351965...
00:31:36Big Fury.
00:31:371966...
00:31:38The Silver Surfer.
00:31:39It was like we were on a roll
00:31:41and nothing could stop us.
00:31:52What makes Stan happiest?
00:31:54Peace and quiet.
00:31:56And his computer.
00:32:02For the past 27 years,
00:32:04since we've lived here,
00:32:06everything I've written, I've written in here.
00:32:09This is where I work.
00:32:11It's a functional room,
00:32:13which has all the things I need to work in.
00:32:16And I like it because it's comfortable.
00:32:18I mean, I got my copier there,
00:32:21my fax machine here,
00:32:23my computer there,
00:32:25and a little chair to sit on
00:32:27if I want to read a book.
00:32:29And I have my desk to write things on,
00:32:31and it's just the way I need it.
00:32:33My wife hates this room with a hatred
00:32:36that defies understanding.
00:32:38Because I wouldn't let her decorate it.
00:32:41She's not very happy about those things up there,
00:32:44my little boxes with supplies.
00:32:47She hates all the wires behind this computer.
00:32:51She hates this room.
00:32:53We have good Donnie Brooks,
00:32:55nothing that's ever violent.
00:32:57But then I'm very bossy, and he's very bossy,
00:33:00and we're always looking to top each other off the charts.
00:33:03One of the worst fights we ever had,
00:33:06I don't remember what I said or did,
00:33:09but it got you angry.
00:33:11And you remember, I had that beautiful
00:33:13Remington noiseless portable typewriter.
00:33:16My mother bought it for me.
00:33:18I had it for years.
00:33:20I wrote some of my first stories on it.
00:33:22That's the typewriter.
00:33:24I wrote The Fantastic Four on it,
00:33:26and Spider-Man, and The Hulk, and The X-Men.
00:33:28You got mad at me about something I said.
00:33:30Because you were a camera buff then.
00:33:32Probably something like,
00:33:34Joan, how can you stand there, you idiot?
00:33:36The sun's in the wrong position or something.
00:33:39Well, why would that get you angry?
00:33:41You have no idea.
00:33:43Well, anyway, whatever I said,
00:33:45she lifted that typewriter up like that.
00:33:48My heart was in my mouth, and I kept thinking,
00:33:51oh, no, she won't. She wouldn't.
00:33:53And she threw it down,
00:33:56and it shattered into a million pieces.
00:34:08The 60s was the atomic age,
00:34:11and people started building bomb shelters
00:34:14in their backyards.
00:34:16Remember, we lived in Long Island at the time,
00:34:18and there were one or two people in our neighborhood
00:34:21who actually got construction crews,
00:34:23and they built these shelters,
00:34:25cement reinforced,
00:34:28and heavy doors that would seal shut
00:34:31above the shelter,
00:34:33and they stocked them with water
00:34:35and all kinds of canned food,
00:34:37and they were gonna sit it out
00:34:39if ever any atomic bomb was, or missile was launched.
00:34:43People were really afraid.
00:34:45They'd be either killed or burned alive
00:34:48or horribly disfigured,
00:34:50and everybody was involved in science,
00:34:52nuclear fission.
00:34:53So when I created the Hulk,
00:34:55I wanted to give it a scientific basis.
00:35:12I had always loved the movie Frankenstein,
00:35:16and I really thought
00:35:19that the monster was the good guy.
00:35:22He didn't want to hurt anybody.
00:35:24He just wanted to be left alone,
00:35:26but those idiots with torches
00:35:28kept chasing him up and down the hills
00:35:30and through the countryside,
00:35:32and he always had my sympathy.
00:35:34I had also always loved Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
00:35:39and I said,
00:35:40what if my monster could be a guy like Dr. Jekyll,
00:35:44and when he becomes the monster,
00:35:46that's like Mr. Hyde?
00:35:48So I thought psychologically
00:35:50we could have fun with that story-wise.
00:35:53The two entities of this one person,
00:35:57and they both hate each other
00:35:59and would like to destroy each other.
00:36:03The Hulk is a guy that kind of a lost soul.
00:36:07He's had no connection,
00:36:08doesn't remember where he came from,
00:36:10and he's basically searching for someone to like him,
00:36:14to be nice to him.
00:36:16That he's an okay guy.
00:36:20Stan walked in,
00:36:22and in his take on superhumans,
00:36:25he paid way more attention to the human than the super.
00:36:29He made the characters real.
00:36:31He made them feel like people who you knew.
00:36:33They were your friends, they were your neighbors,
00:36:35and suddenly people got emotionally invested in this,
00:36:37and they cared about it.
00:36:38And I think what Stan did
00:36:40was make really humanistic superheroes.
00:36:43One of the things that I've learned from Stan
00:36:45is that what's really important is not Spider-Man.
00:36:48It's the guy in the Spider-Man costume.
00:36:51It has to be about Peter Parker.
00:36:53Peter Parker was supposed to be every man,
00:36:56or every young man,
00:36:58with all the conflicts and uncertainties
00:37:03and confusions that any young man has.
00:37:06Peter Parker is your normal kid from Queens
00:37:10who's a bit socially awkward,
00:37:12has girl problems, they have money problems.
00:37:14I tried to put him in the real world
00:37:16and give him the kind of things
00:37:18that regular readers could relate to.
00:37:21I mean, he'd have ingrown toenails,
00:37:24his costume would tear while he was fighting.
00:37:28It was very easy for me to identify with Peter Parker
00:37:32because all I had to do was think of a lot of things
00:37:35that happened when I was young.
00:37:37For example, I might have a big date
00:37:39with a girl that I really liked,
00:37:41and wouldn't you know, I'd have an allergy attack at that night.
00:37:44I'd be sneezing all over the place.
00:37:46Or there'd be another girl
00:37:48that I really wanted to make an impression on.
00:37:50I'd take her out to dinner, and then on the way home,
00:37:53I realized I didn't have enough money for a cab.
00:37:56And you could imagine the great impression
00:37:58it would make on a date
00:38:00if you have to take her home in a crowded subway.
00:38:03So it was not too hard for me
00:38:06to come up with things for Peter Parker.
00:38:08I just had to think of the things that happened to me.
00:38:11Spider-Man is Stan, I absolutely feel that.
00:38:14All the things that Stan feels, morality,
00:38:17Uncle Ben, you know, all of that
00:38:21is Stan's attitude towards mankind.
00:38:25You see, I always felt with superheroes,
00:38:28why would somebody spend his whole life
00:38:31fighting the bad guys?
00:38:33Why not just get married and have kids and lead a normal life?
00:38:37So I wanted to give Spider-Man a real motive,
00:38:41a real reason, and let the reader understand
00:38:44that he always carried this guilt feeling with him.
00:38:47And that was the reason for that.
00:38:49With great power comes great responsibility.
00:38:54It's a great morality tale.
00:38:56Peter Parker didn't come out of the gate as a good guy.
00:38:59He was selfish.
00:39:01He was like, look, I got these powers, you know what?
00:39:04I'm going to go make some money, I'm going to cash out on this.
00:39:07And he went for that, and he made a mistake.
00:39:12In a very karmic way,
00:39:14let somebody who should have been apprehended buy him.
00:39:18And that person ended up killing his Uncle Ben.
00:39:21That was a real important lesson.
00:39:26My father, he just always told me,
00:39:29Stan, the most important thing is to do the right thing.
00:39:33And I used to write, you know, if you treat other people
00:39:36the way you'd want to be treated,
00:39:38there couldn't be anything bad in the world.
00:39:40So from that came the nature of the man
00:39:42writing Spider-Man and the whole thing.
00:39:44How I came up with the idea for Spider-Man,
00:39:47I have said this so often at so many places
00:39:50that for all I know it might even be true.
00:39:53I was trying to think of a new character,
00:39:56and obviously one of the most critical decisions you make
00:40:00is what superpower does the character have?
00:40:04Well, we already had the strongest man in the world,
00:40:07someone who could fly on and on.
00:40:09What was left?
00:40:11And then I saw a fly on the wall,
00:40:14and I thought, wow, wouldn't it be something
00:40:17if I had a character who could stick to walls like an insect?
00:40:21So I liked that, and I said, I'm going to do that.
00:40:24Then I needed a name. Names are very important.
00:40:27So I thought of the first logical one, Insect-Man.
00:40:30Somehow it didn't sound glamorous or dramatic.
00:40:33I figured, well, Fly-Man? No, that didn't do it.
00:40:36Mosquito-Man? I went down the list.
00:40:39I got to Spider, Spider-Man.
00:40:42I don't know why, but it sounded dramatic, frightening.
00:40:47I would want to read something called Spider-Man.
00:40:51Who wouldn't want to be able to swing on a web
00:40:56and stick to walls?
00:40:58Are you kidding me? I'm 46. If I could do that tomorrow,
00:41:01I'd come in from the top of this roof into the building every day
00:41:05going, yeah, I'm a Spider-Man.
00:41:07I've tried to call myself the co-creator of these characters.
00:41:11On Spider-Man, I came up with the idea.
00:41:15And then I first gave the strip to Jack Kirby to draw.
00:41:19And Jack drew the first couple of pages,
00:41:22and I was looking over his shoulder, and I said, wait a minute,
00:41:25you're still making him too glamorous looking.
00:41:28So I said, forget it, Jack, I'll give it to someone else.
00:41:31So it occurred to me to give it to Steve Ditko.
00:41:33And Steve brought so much to the strip,
00:41:37and I don't think the strip would have been as successful without Steve.
00:41:43I don't know what the universal conception of creator is.
00:41:49Steve definitely felt that he was the co-creator of Spider-Man,
00:41:54and that was really, after he said it,
00:41:57and I saw it meant a lot to him, that was fine with me.
00:42:00So I said, fine, I'll tell everybody you're the co-creator.
00:42:03That didn't quite satisfy him, so I sent him a letter.
00:42:07I put it in writing.
00:42:09To whom it may concern, this is to state
00:42:14that I consider Steve Ditko to be the co-creator of Spider-Man,
00:42:19along with me, something like that.
00:42:22And I sent it to him, and I said, you can show this to anybody you want to.
00:42:26Steve actually still lives in Manhattan, New York,
00:42:29and when I was in New York a few years ago, we did meet,
00:42:33and we did discuss doing a strip again sometime.
00:42:37Who knows, maybe we'll still come up with something
00:42:40and surprise the public with it.
00:42:42I would love that.
00:42:45When is Valentine's Day?
00:42:4714th of February.
00:42:48Why does nobody ever say, what is your wife going to get you for Valentine's Day?
00:42:52Why does nobody ever say that?
00:42:54She's probably out shopping right now, figuring it out.
00:42:57Yeah, it's a big problem.
00:42:59He's the most romantic man in the world.
00:43:02Happy anniversary to beautiful Joanie.
00:43:05Wanted to give you the world, but it wasn't for sale.
00:43:10Don't know about perfume, because I'm a male.
00:43:14I don't buy jewelry.
00:43:16My picks would just be a waste.
00:43:19I'm a dunce about clothes, and you have plenty of those.
00:43:23So all I can do, and all I can give you, is my love.
00:43:33Sorry, can't go on.
00:43:37I adore you. To my wife.
00:43:41My wife is really the greatest person in the world.
00:43:45She's far more talented than I am.
00:43:47She sings, dances, had been an actress, was a model.
00:43:51I mean, it's a funny story.
00:43:53When I first married her, she had been acting and singing,
00:43:57and had a great career ahead of her.
00:43:59But in those days, guys tried to be very macho.
00:44:03And I said to her, when we got married,
00:44:06I said, no wife of mine is going to work.
00:44:10And she said, okay.
00:44:13And it was the stupidest thing I ever did.
00:44:16She could have been supporting me all these years.
00:44:20You know, Stan's story told us,
00:44:22if you want to be successful and prolific,
00:44:25put yourself in debt.
00:44:27And the way to do that is to marry a wife who's a spender.
00:44:31And Joan Lee, he says, is responsible for half of his production
00:44:35because if she didn't get into so much debt,
00:44:38he wouldn't have had all the motivation to produce his body of work.
00:44:42So Stan Lee's debt has made the world richer.
00:44:45And Joan is responsible for that.
00:44:47My daughter's not sensible and cautious,
00:44:49and I am not sensible and cautious.
00:44:51We just spend his money gleefully.
00:44:55What's it like having a father who is the king of the comic books?
00:44:59Um, well, he's, um, how do I say?
00:45:03I don't know.
00:45:05He's unbeatable.
00:45:06I mean, his imagination, his creativity, and his brilliance
00:45:10has not made it easy for other men that I've met.
00:45:13Now I'll stop twisting your arm.
00:45:16How much did that cost?
00:45:18A fortune.
00:45:19You see this new outfit?
00:45:20No, I'm his greatest fan.
00:45:21Maybe this is an actress he hired to come and do this.
00:45:23I have to say I'm his greatest fan.
00:45:25Now I'll send you back to central casting
00:45:27and I'll tell my daughter that everything went well.
00:45:31That's a great line.
00:45:34Coming from you, I appreciate it.
00:45:36That's a great line.
00:45:37Of all the characters your father's created,
00:45:39who's your favorite?
00:45:40Me.
00:45:41That's a better line.
00:45:43Son of a gun.
00:45:45I haven't heard that line for a while.
00:45:47I didn't get to scream in advance.
00:45:50Her mother took care of most of the cultural life, I think,
00:45:55and she grew up wonderfully.
00:45:57She's the most beautiful woman, talented.
00:45:59She's a jewelry designer.
00:46:02She's an artist, been an actress.
00:46:05We're very proud of her.
00:46:08We had another daughter who didn't survive,
00:46:11but we called her Jan,
00:46:14which Joan felt was the closest thing to Stan.
00:46:17Joan had her room all prepared.
00:46:21It was so beautifully decorated.
00:46:23So she lived about seven days,
00:46:27and she died.
00:46:30But we never really discussed it.
00:46:33It's interesting.
00:46:34We never really went on a great discussion about Jan.
00:46:37I saw her once.
00:46:39I just insisted that I see her.
00:46:41And she was small, smaller than Joan.
00:46:45A pretty, pretty little baby.
00:46:49And I'll never forget because they were so thrilled.
00:46:52They kept telling me,
00:46:53oh, she took a little water today.
00:46:54She took a little of this today.
00:46:56I was there the eight days that she was in the incubator.
00:47:00And the nurse that was there just came and said,
00:47:03baby done died.
00:47:08I had had my tubes tied off.
00:47:11They did that.
00:47:12And not only did my doctor tie them off,
00:47:14because tubes can be changed,
00:47:16but he cut them so they could not be ever undone.
00:47:22I tried to adopt, and I couldn't adopt.
00:47:25I couldn't adopt a Jewish baby because I'm not Jewish.
00:47:33I couldn't adopt from a Catholic family because I'm Episcopalian.
00:47:37But in that particular time, you couldn't do it.
00:47:41You couldn't adopt into any mixed marriage at that time.
00:47:46All anybody had to do was come and look at the way we lived,
00:47:50look at our daughter, look at my wife with our daughter,
00:47:53look at me.
00:47:54And they were investigating her and talking to her.
00:47:59She'd come home in tears.
00:48:01You don't remember how angry you were when you'd come home
00:48:04and you said, I won't put myself through this anymore
00:48:07about those interviews you had to go to.
00:48:10Yes.
00:48:11Have you forgotten?
00:48:12That's right.
00:48:13And how angry that made me.
00:48:15And how would I bring the child up?
00:48:17There seems to be some quality in human nature
00:48:20where if everybody had the same religion
00:48:23and everybody lived in the same country,
00:48:26probably the black-haired people would hate blondes
00:48:30and maybe the redheads would be shunned.
00:48:33I don't know.
00:48:34It seems that some people have to have somebody else
00:48:37to feel superior to and to dislike.
00:48:40His work was very symbolic of the era that he lived in.
00:48:44He really sort of took a lot of the stuff that was happening
00:48:47and fused it into these characters.
00:48:49For one thing, I felt there were not enough black superheroes.
00:48:53So I created the Black Panther.
00:48:56Stan was right there at the beginning.
00:48:58The Falcon, Captain America's not sidekick,
00:49:02Captain America's partner.
00:49:04It was a whole new thing.
00:49:06These are amazing, amazing themes to be dealing with in comic books.
00:49:11In X-Men, I guess my intention was to show
00:49:15that the world never fully tolerates people who are different.
00:49:19So here, nobody could have been more different
00:49:22than these 5 or 6 mutants that I had created.
00:49:26And actually, we showed that people feared them
00:49:30and then little by little began to hate them
00:49:32because they were different.
00:49:34I think the way X-Men preaches tolerance is it comments on it
00:49:37quite blatantly.
00:49:38I mean, it's all about outcasts and they talk about it
00:49:40and they stick together and they prevail.
00:49:43They are persecuted.
00:49:45They also are tolerant of their persecutors,
00:49:48of humans or bad mutants.
00:49:51And in that way, they preach tolerance even as victims.
00:49:55A lot of people, you know, feel and have grown up feeling different.
00:50:00That's really what the X-Men universe is about, is indifference.
00:50:05Growing up, I felt very much like an outcast,
00:50:07although I imagine every adolescent feels that way.
00:50:09Perhaps a personal fantasy that what if my weaknesses
00:50:11or the things that make me different could be what makes me strong.
00:50:14And that's kind of at the heart of what X-Men is.
00:50:17What makes the X-Men heroic is not so much their superpowers
00:50:21but their cause and their focus,
00:50:23which is let's all embrace each other's individuality
00:50:26and learn to live with each other.
00:50:29But it was a subtle underlying theme
00:50:32because basically the main theme was excitement
00:50:35and adventure and color.
00:50:37And if people got the theme, fine.
00:50:40And if not, we still, I thought, had a good adventurous trip.
00:50:44There is something that anyone can take from it.
00:50:47The things that these characters can do
00:50:49will obviously appeal to young people especially.
00:50:51But then there are these other themes, these more complex themes,
00:50:54which give substance to the work.
00:50:56And as the 60s started to become the 60s,
00:51:00where themes of alienation and acceptance
00:51:04and feelings against the military-industrial complex
00:51:07became more and more important to a growing youth culture,
00:51:11he really turned everything on its head once again.
00:51:14At that time, everybody was turned off
00:51:17with the military-industrial complex.
00:51:20Just for fun, I thought I'd make Iron Man
00:51:23a symbol of the military-industrial complex
00:51:26and I'd make the readers like him.
00:51:28Iron Man has dealt with a lot of different themes
00:51:31over the course of his long storied career.
00:51:34Everything from dealing with the mixed blessing
00:51:37of a new wonderful but dangerous technology.
00:51:41He's dealt with alcoholism as well.
00:51:44Stan kept addressing the issues of the day,
00:51:48the hot topics, and the personal issues and angst that teenagers have.
00:51:53So I decided to have a column every month
00:51:56where I would talk to the readers.
00:51:58I called it Stan's Soapbox.
00:52:00And I would talk about anything that occurred to me,
00:52:03about politics or about school.
00:52:05He was including the readers in everything we did.
00:52:09Over the past few years, Marvel Comics have become
00:52:12some of the most popular reading matter
00:52:14on virtually every college campus in America today.
00:52:17Ladies and gentlemen, in the upcoming segment of the broadcast,
00:52:20we're going to be talking about comic strips, I guess.
00:52:23Years ago, we realized how much influence
00:52:26Marvel Comics really do have on people.
00:52:29Our readership starts at the age of 6 and goes up,
00:52:32as I mentioned, to and beyond college.
00:52:34I would say that's my principal objective,
00:52:36to just sort of elevate comics to the point
00:52:39where they're a more respected medium of communication
00:52:43and they're not thought of as merely something for young children.
00:53:00The University of California's honor humor magazine,
00:53:03The Pelican, recently called Marvel Comics
00:53:06the greatest revolution in literature on campus
00:53:09since the fold-out nude.
00:53:12About once a year, we'd get a letter.
00:53:14Somebody would write,
00:53:16Hey, I bought one of your books and there's a staple missing.
00:53:19I want my money back.
00:53:23You know, I would run through the office waving this letter.
00:53:26We got a fan letter!
00:53:30I do a lot of lecturing on college campuses all over the country.
00:53:35In fact, tomorrow morning, I'm going to Las Vegas,
00:53:38the University of Las Vegas.
00:53:40I guess there's a certain irony to the fact
00:53:43that some of the children who had comic books
00:53:46taken away from them when they were 5 years old,
00:53:49when they were in college, when they were 20 years old or so,
00:53:53they were inviting me to come and speak at their college.
00:53:56I've got a question to ask you.
00:53:58I have an answer for you.
00:54:00How did you create your new characters?
00:54:02Where would the ideas come from?
00:54:04I just wonder how far ahead you work on these.
00:54:06Well, I guess we work, you would consider it 3 months ahead.
00:54:10Have you ever had an issue rejected by the College of College?
00:54:13Oh yeah, a few times, usually for nonsensical reasons.
00:54:18I would talk for, oh, maybe 20 minutes or as long as it was,
00:54:22but then the thing I loved the best
00:54:25was the questions and answer period.
00:54:27I didn't really do it to increase their fund of knowledge,
00:54:31but to increase my own.
00:54:34Every time I would leave,
00:54:36I would go to the library,
00:54:38I would go to the library,
00:54:40I would go to the library,
00:54:42I would go to the library,
00:54:44I would go to the library,
00:54:46I would increase my own.
00:54:48Every time I would leave one of those lectures,
00:54:51I knew more about what interested our fans
00:54:54than I did before I started the lecture.
00:54:57And I would try to take that knowledge back to the office with me
00:55:01and try to put it to use.
00:55:03Little by little I found
00:55:05I was getting more questions about the silver surfer
00:55:08than any of our other characters from the college kids.
00:55:11and they were saying,
00:55:12Stan, were you interested in getting a character
00:55:15who embodied the Judeo-Christian philosophy
00:55:18and blah, blah, blah, things I hadn't even thought of.
00:55:22He took this character and he sort of altered it
00:55:25into sort of a flying flower child, you know,
00:55:27on a surfboard who was constantly giving to thinking
00:55:30about the inhumanity of man to man
00:55:32and talking about how love would conquer all and so forth.
00:55:35And this kind of stuff spoke to a lot of the youth,
00:55:38and I think they embraced characters like the silver server.
00:55:57The Marvel Comics began to take on a personality,
00:56:00and you began to see that there was one guy behind this whole thing.
00:56:06He marketed comic books and superheroes
00:56:10first to his core audience,
00:56:13second to the college audience,
00:56:15convincing them that these were as mature and sophisticated
00:56:18as they thought they were,
00:56:20and then making sure the world at large knew about it.
00:56:23Our characters became popular all over the world
00:56:26and had gone to England and France and Poland and Belgium
00:56:30and Spain and Italy and Japan and China.
00:56:34And I began not to spend as much time in the office.
00:56:38I didn't see the writers as much.
00:56:40You had to have Thor and Spider-Man
00:56:44and Fantastic Four written by other people,
00:56:47and these were comics that had never, well, at least Spider-Man
00:56:50and Fantastic Four had never been written by anybody else.
00:56:53I devoted myself to just trying to bring the company
00:56:57into other fields, movies and television.
00:57:00I had come out of California on business.
00:57:03I worked for a day overnight,
00:57:05and I thought, these people don't realize it.
00:57:08They're living in paradise.
00:57:10The weather, the open feeling, so I steamed.
00:57:14How can I move out to Los Angeles
00:57:17when all of Marvel is in New York?
00:57:19So I said to the powers that be,
00:57:21you know, why don't we set up our own studio
00:57:25out in Los Angeles,
00:57:27and I will even make the supreme sacrifice.
00:57:31I will uproot my family and myself,
00:57:34and we will move out there and make sure everything goes right.
00:57:39It's the least I can do for the company.
00:57:42Well, I don't think there was a dry eye in the room.
00:57:45You would do that for us, Stan?
00:57:48So they sent me out here
00:57:50to help set up Marvel Productions,
00:57:52a little animation studio.
00:57:54Moved out with my wife and daughter.
00:57:56We sold everything in New York,
00:57:58and we've been here ever since.
00:58:01¶¶
00:58:21Welcome to Marvel Productions near Hollywood, California.
00:58:25This is where we're turning many of your favorite comic book heroes
00:58:29into animated TV shows.
00:58:31Spider-Friends, go for it!
00:58:34Very nice, very nice. We can use that.
00:58:37At the animation studio, Marvel Productions,
00:58:40I was the creative head of the studio.
00:58:43Really, I butted in on all the things they were doing,
00:58:47you know, on the scripts and the artwork and the direction.
00:58:50The company is currently churning out 250 half-hours
00:58:54of animated series, as well as 3 feature-length cartoons.
00:58:58I grew up with Stan, you know, from his...
00:59:01doing his animation, you know,
00:59:03with his voice on Spider-Man and the Amazing Friends.
00:59:06Hi, Spidey fans, this is Stan Lee
00:59:09inviting you to the annual dance at good old E.S.U.
00:59:13But take my advice, don't get too comfortable,
00:59:16because we'll be knee-deep in danger before you know it.
00:59:20I knew him from the cartoon.
00:59:22I saw the cartoon on television, which I became obsessed with.
00:59:25Thousands of people never heard of Spider-Man,
00:59:28hundreds of thousands never heard of Spider-Man
00:59:30until they saw that animated show, so they were right.
00:59:33Business-wise, it was a good move.
00:59:35Welcome back, he's ignored.
00:59:38Action is his reward to him.
00:59:41Life is a great big bang.
00:59:43Wherever there's a hang,
00:59:46you'll find a Spider-Man.
00:59:48My first stop will be the nearest TV studio.
00:59:51The experiment is sufficient as it stands.
00:59:54I'm not satisfied. I don't have to satisfy you.
01:00:00We did do a live-action television series of Spider-Man.
01:00:05There was no heart to the series.
01:00:09A villain would be doing something, and Spider-Man would,
01:00:12and he'd become Spider-Man and go chase the villain
01:00:15and catch him and climb up a building, and that was it.
01:00:18And after the first few episodes,
01:00:20I realized it was gonna go nowhere.
01:00:23And I called a meeting, and we had a meeting at the network,
01:00:27and I thought these people were sincere
01:00:30and they really wanted to hear my opinions
01:00:33of what I thought was wrong and how the series could be improved,
01:00:38and I said whatever I could.
01:00:40No changes were made, and the show went on,
01:00:43and it was canceled after a few more episodes.
01:00:46Luckily, it didn't ruin the character for other things.
01:00:50Stan put in these emotions and these flaws
01:00:54within each of these characters
01:00:56that made you want to turn the page and keep reading,
01:00:59and people have been doing that for decades and decades.
01:01:02In comic books, it hadn't been translated to film necessarily.
01:01:05There were some films in the 80s and the early 90s
01:01:08which were frankly not very good.
01:01:10Up until then, I do believe it was just that surface translation
01:01:13that had been done on most of the comic book films.
01:01:16It's hard to explain the frustrations.
01:01:19We had these great characters,
01:01:22and we knew how they should be portrayed,
01:01:25and there were people who wanted to do them,
01:01:28but nothing really gelled.
01:01:31And fans didn't have any hope
01:01:33that Marvel would ever have any good movies.
01:01:35Let's rock and roll!
01:01:37I'll give you more!
01:01:43Get down, get down!
01:01:46Hey, what's going on?
01:01:52That scare you?
01:01:54That was interesting.
01:01:56I've never done that before.
01:01:58After years of lawsuits and ownership disputes,
01:02:01Marvel Comics and Sony have settled their differences,
01:02:04finally enabling the superhero Spider-Man
01:02:06to be fully marketed as a major motion picture failure.
01:02:09Now the movie's only challenge
01:02:11is finding an actor worthy of the tight spandex costume,
01:02:14and who, as chance would have it, was also born without genitals.
01:02:19Finally, one day, a fella named Avi Arad came to our studio,
01:02:23and Avi understood our characters.
01:02:26I remember my first meeting with Stan in the Bel Air Hotel,
01:02:31and he said to me,
01:02:33yeah, everybody said they'll make movies out of this.
01:02:36But I think he kind of lost faith
01:02:39that this thing could ever go to the next level.
01:02:42There were false starts,
01:02:44moviemaking is complicated, it's expensive.
01:02:47What worked for us is there's a whole new generation of filmmakers
01:02:52who really got turned on to be in the business by comics.
01:02:56Jeez, not yet, no.
01:02:58I heard you were here, and I said I don't care what,
01:03:01I've got to say hello to that man, I love him.
01:03:04I love you, you're like a father.
01:03:07Sam Raimi and this guy, they made Spider-Man.
01:03:11It couldn't have been what it was without this guy.
01:03:17I had no doubt that those comic books
01:03:21would become the most powerful and exciting entertainment
01:03:26the world has to offer today
01:03:28when the technology got to such a level
01:03:32that it could portray that universe
01:03:35in a way that would work with audiences.
01:03:38One of the films everybody's looking forward to this summer is X-Men.
01:03:42Is that in this venue?
01:03:44X-Men is, I hope, going to be great.
01:03:47It's the first Marvel character
01:03:49that's going to be a big-budget movie.
01:03:52A meeting was set up with the folks at Marvel,
01:03:55and Stan Lee showed up at the meeting.
01:03:57He was so enthusiastic, so I thought,
01:03:59well, I'm going to go figure out
01:04:01how to honor what he created and his enthusiasm.
01:04:03Everything they were saying about the first X-Men was negative.
01:04:06You'd read in the talkback, and they'd go,
01:04:08well, it's a Marvel movie, so you know it's going to fail.
01:04:13And then it wasn't until the movie came out
01:04:16that people's opinions changed on that
01:04:18and launched sort of the Marvel era of films that we're in now.
01:04:33¶¶ ¶¶
01:04:49The trick to the movies is when they capture
01:04:52the essence of what the great comics are.
01:04:54It's ironic that it took that long necessarily
01:04:56to realize that the emotional journey
01:04:58of who these characters are and what they expect,
01:05:00it's what you start with, it's what you stay true to.
01:05:02If you told us when we were kids
01:05:04that the weird, nerdy stuff
01:05:06would one day be the biggest commercial successes,
01:05:10I would have never believed that.
01:05:12When they realized, oh, my God, this is drama,
01:05:15this is comedy, this is this, this is that,
01:05:17it became such a phenomenon that everybody was in.
01:05:21Stan Lee's decision to go Hollywood has paid off.
01:05:24Spider-Man, the action hero.
01:05:26Crawling all over 3,600 movie screens.
01:05:29The boss of the box office.
01:05:32It's bigger than life itself when you go into a theater,
01:05:35and with all the special effects and all, that's all.
01:05:39It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing characters
01:05:43that I had a hand in creating up there on the big screen,
01:05:47and especially up there and looking so good.
01:05:51Fantastic Four, Rise of the Silver Surfer, opens this week.
01:05:55The first Fantastic Four movie grossed more than $300 million.
01:06:01All the things that Stan injected into his characters
01:06:04in those films.
01:06:06Here we go.
01:06:08Swing back, Mrs. Lee, swing back a little.
01:06:10I created him! Wow!
01:06:17So I am just self-fulfilling God.
01:06:19How are you, John?
01:06:21Who's got a camera? Who's got a camera?
01:06:23My grandmother had the candy store.
01:06:25I used to wait for the comics to come in every week,
01:06:28open them up with her, and then we'd put them on the shelves,
01:06:31and I would read them all.
01:06:33And they were yours.
01:06:35You keep seeing all your characters coming to life like this.
01:06:38Are you just like a kid inside, just jumping up and down?
01:06:40You're doing it on the outside.
01:06:42No, I'm like an old guy wondering how successful it's going to be
01:06:45and how many more of these things I can come to
01:06:47and talk to guys like you.
01:06:49This is the fun of it, you know?
01:06:51This is the payoff.
01:06:53I'm sorry, I'm too big for you now.
01:06:55You're damn right you are!
01:06:58Eat your heart out!
01:07:03You know, it's funny, it's a funny situation.
01:07:05You do all the work, and I get so much credit for this,
01:07:08but I wouldn't have it any other way.
01:07:10We wouldn't be here without you.
01:07:12I know, I keep writing you all the time to tell you that.
01:07:15I'm not upstaging you too much, am I?
01:07:17No, no.
01:07:19You know, I hear you have a bigger role than I do.
01:07:22All I say is wow.
01:07:24I've always wanted to be an actor
01:07:26and to be able to have a little part in a movie,
01:07:29in any movie, but especially a good movie,
01:07:32it's really a thrill.
01:07:36Welcome back to the Baxter, Dr. Richards.
01:07:41Security ought to be beefed up a lot more.
01:07:43In a flight imitation, sir.
01:07:45I should be on that list.
01:07:47Great.
01:07:51You know, I guess one person can make a difference.
01:07:56Enough said.
01:07:58A million years ago, when I was writing these comic books,
01:08:01I never suspected that one day
01:08:04I'd be walking down a green carpet and being interviewed,
01:08:07and people would say, how do you feel?
01:08:10Nobody cared how I felt about anything in those days.
01:08:13Marvel is gearing up to do so many more.
01:08:16We'll have Captain America, we'll have Thor,
01:08:19we'll have S.H.I.E.L.D., we'll have, it goes on and on.
01:08:22Ant-Man, can you believe Ant-Man?
01:08:24You created so many characters with Jack Kirby.
01:08:26What would he think of all of this?
01:08:28Oh, he'd be thrilled. He would be thrilled.
01:08:31I'm so sorry that he isn't here to see it all.
01:08:34Jack was one of the nicest, most talented people I've ever known.
01:08:38When Jack Kirby died,
01:08:41it was almost unbelievable,
01:08:44because there had always been a Jack Kirby,
01:08:48and he was always the king of the comics
01:08:51as far as everybody was concerned,
01:08:54and I couldn't imagine not having him around,
01:08:57not having him drawing.
01:09:00He was certainly one of the best artists in the business,
01:09:04if not the best.
01:09:07Mr. Kirby, he created or co-created
01:09:10such classic comic book characters as the Hulk,
01:09:13Captain America, Thor, and many, many others.
01:09:16There was nothing that Jack didn't do, couldn't do,
01:09:20and he never did less than his best.
01:09:23He was also one of the nicest, most cooperative,
01:09:28most helpful, most decent human beings around.
01:09:32It was a great loss when Jack went.
01:09:35It was hard because he meant so much to me,
01:09:39and I knew what we had lost.
01:09:51Marvel went bankrupt.
01:09:54It's hard to believe because they're so great now,
01:09:57but a lot of things happened.
01:09:59Marvel was financially bankrupt,
01:10:02but the characters, the intellectual properties were not bankrupt.
01:10:06At one point in the bankruptcy,
01:10:08one of the current heads of the company said to a group of bankers,
01:10:11Spider-Man alone is worth a billion dollars.
01:10:14And my contract was invalid, as all of them were,
01:10:18and I didn't want to stop working.
01:10:21So we got a company together.
01:10:23They wanted to call it Stan Lee Media,
01:10:25which I found very flattering.
01:10:27Stan Lee Media was formed during the Internet bubble,
01:10:30which was the craze, right around 1999.
01:10:33I started in comics when they were in their infancy.
01:10:37Now I have an opportunity to get into the Internet
01:10:40when it is in its infancy,
01:10:43and it's a far bigger, more powerful field
01:10:46than comics ever were.
01:10:48These are the early days of what we're doing
01:10:51and what everybody is doing on the Web.
01:10:53We're going to make these things more and more interactive,
01:10:56and that's the one thing they can't do in television.
01:10:59And we're only starting, so I think we're taking over the world.
01:11:03Stan is an idea guy, Stan is a creative dynamo.
01:11:07We were a fully functioning company.
01:11:09We had stock options, the company went public.
01:11:12Before I knew it, we had a staff of more than 200 people,
01:11:17and we were going great guns.
01:11:19I never had so much fun.
01:11:22We were a fully functioning company.
01:11:24We had stock options, the company went public.
01:11:27Before I knew it, we had a staff of more than 200 people,
01:11:31and we were going great guns.
01:11:33I never had so much fun.
01:11:52Stan is the consummate creator.
01:11:54He has nothing to do with business or financial side.
01:11:57It's possible to get taken advantage of.
01:11:59It was a terrible blow to me,
01:12:01especially people had invested in it, had my name on it.
01:12:05It was heartbreaking.
01:12:07People started to get laid off, and that's where it was really hard.
01:12:10Everyone was sad, you know, we didn't want to go, you know,
01:12:13we didn't want to go to the movies, we didn't want to go to the movies.
01:12:18Hi, Anthony, this is Stan.
01:12:20I just wanted to tell you how bad I feel about the way things happened.
01:12:24I didn't expect that would happen so soon or the way it did.
01:12:28Oh, man, I feel terrible about it.
01:12:30And I wanted to tell you, it was just a pleasure working with you.
01:12:33You were great.
01:12:35Stanley Media was unfortunate, but that was just a blip on the radar screen.
01:12:38Even at age 84, he's still coming up with ideas for superhero movies.
01:12:43For the first time now, I am able to do anything I want.
01:12:47If we want to do movies, television shows, DVDs,
01:12:52we can do them, and we are doing them.
01:12:54The new characters that Stan's creating for POW!
01:12:57still have a lot of the original emphases and problems
01:13:01and sincerities and, you know, the, you know,
01:13:05the, you know, the, you know, the, you know,
01:13:09the emphases and problems and sincerities
01:13:12that he had when he created some of his earlier creations.
01:13:16But today's world, they're maybe a little bit edgier,
01:13:19the culture is a little different,
01:13:21and the difference between heroes and villains isn't quite as clear.
01:13:26We have three movies in development at Disney.
01:13:32I still am concerned with just writing the stuff
01:13:36and making sure it's, that somebody's going to care about it.
01:13:40Stan, you've been doing this for so long, you've been so successful.
01:13:43Some people wonder, why don't you retire
01:13:46and live permanently on exotic vacations?
01:13:48Why do you keep doing it?
01:13:50The word retire is a dirty word.
01:13:52You know, most people, when they retire, they say,
01:13:54at last I'll have a chance to do what I've always wanted to do,
01:13:59but I'm doing what I've always wanted to do.
01:14:02I'm working with artists, with writers, with directors.
01:14:05I'm working on creative things. I'm having fun.
01:14:09I mean, don't punish me by making me retire.
01:14:15Now that the comics are so successful and the movies are so big,
01:14:19they think of it as overnight success.
01:14:22I want to tell you, it's the longest overnight
01:14:25that anybody ever could have.
01:14:27Despite all his successes and recognition,
01:14:30Stan is really a regular guy.
01:14:32He truly is the guy that you recognize
01:14:36behind the mask of all his characters.
01:14:43I've done everything I want to do.
01:14:45I've wanted to write, and I've written.
01:14:48I want to do more movies, I want to do more television,
01:14:51more DVDs, more bulbisodes.
01:14:53I want to do more lecturing.
01:14:55I want to do more of everything I'm doing.
01:14:58The only problem is time.
01:15:00I just wish there were more time.
01:15:18All these wonderful things I have, I could never have them.
01:15:23Will you just bear that in mind, that they come from me?
01:15:26Because you are not extravagant.
01:15:28I couldn't afford to be extravagant with you.
01:15:31Now don't look at the camera.
01:15:33Wait, excuse me, dear. I was not looking at the camera.
01:15:36I was looking this way. Don't ever direct the master.
01:15:39Now start again if you wish.
01:15:41Now here it goes. Now let's get this straight.
01:15:45You've got to realize...
01:15:47In no way at all do you think that you are the master.
01:15:51Hold it.
01:15:53Boss, my word.
01:15:56All right, come around here.
01:15:58I want to show you something else I bought today.
01:16:00I spent 60 years spoiling this woman.
01:16:02Trying to impress me.
01:16:04And I never succeeded.
01:19:50THE END
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