MEET THE KING OF SUPERHEROES!
THE AMAZING STAN LEE
THE REAL STAR OF THE MARVEL COMICS UNIVERSE -93 YEARS YOUNG- CONTINUES TO SHINE
When Doctor Strange, the newest movie based on a Marvel Comics superhero, hits the big screen Nov. 4, fans will see Benedict Cumberbatch starring in the title role, playing the brilliant neurosurgeon who becomes a deft practitioner of magic and sorcery after a horrific car accident alters the course of his “normal” life.
But real fans will know the real star—the brightest star in the whole Marvel universe—is actually Stan Lee, the man whose ink and imagination built an empire.
“His genius is that he came up with characters that proved to be enduring, powerful and have survived being changed from comics into movies and television,” says Clark Gregg, who stars as agent Phil Coulson on the ABC-TV series
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which began its fourth season in September. “His name is the first name you think of when you think of Marvel.”
If you were to spy the dapper nonagenarian in an elegant sweater and open-collared shirt on his way to his Beverly Hills office, you might easily mistake him for a golfer waiting to meet his partner, or a well-off retiree on his way to breakfast. But this particular 93-year-old is off to hatch new ideas that may turn into more comic books, TV shows or video games bearing his name. His mind is still percolating and he is anything but retired.
Lucky Man
“Every day is a new adventure,” Lee says, and he’s never gone dry. “You can’t run out of ideas. You look at anything, you get an idea. I look at that telephone. If I look at it long enough I’ll think of a story.”
In recent decades, the man who was responsible, in part, for the creation of such indelible characters as Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four and countless others has become a bona fide celebrity in his own right. Fans wait in line for his autograph at comic book conventions and cheer his cameo appearances in each new Marvel movie (see “Stan the Man” on page 7).
Lee has become such a celebrity, in fact, that 20th Century Fox recently announced the purchase of the rights to make an “adventure movie” about his life.
But Lee doesn’t live in the past, and while he doesn’t mind talking about his many creations, he’s much more interested in what’s coming next.
For instance, when asked about what superpower he would most like to possess,
he says “luck,” and immediately launches into talk about the show airing on British television called Stan Lee’s Lucky
Man, which he says will be adapted for American TV sometime soon.
Lee knows more than a little about luck. He’s been married to the same woman, Joan, for more than 60 years, and he’s in remarkably good shape, with a mind that’s still razor-sharp. Officially retired from Marvel Comics, the company he helped to build and run since he started working there in 1939, he still receives an executive producer credit on each new movie release. He founded his own company, Pow! Entertainment, in 2001, and then another, Stan Lee Global
Entertainment, in 2014. Last summer, Lee unveiled
Nitron, a new comic-book character franchise targeted at feature films, TV and digital platforms, and launched Stan Lee’s Cosmic
Crusaders, an animated online series in partnership with the
Hollywood Reporter and Genius Brands International, in which a version of himself makes regular appearances.
Dinner With Doctor Strange
When asked which three of his superheroes he would like to have dinner with, he takes a moment to think the question through. “I’d probably enjoy talking to Iron Man,” he says. “I’d like to talk to Doctor Strange. I like the Silver Surfer. Iron Man is sort of a classier Donald Trump, if you can imagine that sort of thing. The Silver Surfer is always philosophical; he comments about the world and man’s position in the universe, why we don’t enjoy living on this wonderful planet and why we don’t help each other.
“But I only wrote about these characters fighting and having problems. I never really did many episodes where they were eating, so I don’t even know how their table manners are.”
Zoe Saldana, who’ll reprise her role as Gamora in the upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy
Vol. 2 (in theaters May 2017), says that Lee’s comic-book characters transcend boundaries. “Mr. Lee made them flawed and relatable on so many levels,” she says. “What a beautiful mind to be able to connect with not only generations, but to create stories that surpass gender, race and socioeconomic background.”
Oscar-winning British actress Tilda Swinton, who appears in the new Doctor Strange as the Ancient One, the doctor’s mystical mentor, agrees. “Stan Lee is the supreme Sorcerer Supreme,” she says, “the original Ancient One.”
To Lee, his characters are real, and that’s the way he wrote them, with human foibles and frailties. He learned how from his youthful passion for reading.
In his workingclass upbringing in New York City, reading offered him both escape and something to reach for. Charles Dickens was a particular favorite, as were tales of adventure and derring-do.
“I wanted to be like the Scarlet Pimpernel,” he says. “I wanted to be like Tarzan.” He remembers the personal connection he felt when he read the Jerry Todd and Poppy Ott books, precursors to the Hardy Boys series, featuring young detectives and a message from the author on each closing page.
“I loved that,” he says, and he remembered that feeling when he became a
comic-book editor years later. “I wanted the readers to feel as if we’re friends. I did the Stan’s Soap Box column, just so the readers would get to know me.”
Comic Hate to Comic Love
“In the beginning, people hated comic books,” Lee says. “Parents didn’t want
their kids to read them. But little by little, I realized these comics aren’t bad.
“One thing I did, I used college-level vocabulary. I didn’t worry that young kids were reading the story. I felt they’ll know what I’m saying by the use in the sentence, and if they have to go to a dictionary, that’s not the worst thing in the world.
“A lot of people that I meet now, older people, have said to me, ‘We love the fact that when we read the comics as a kid, they weren’t written for children only.’”
“I grew up reading every comic, and he’s a god in the
comic world,” says Theo Rossi, who plays the villainous Shades in Luke Cage, the Netflix streaming series spun off of a Marvel Comics character who became one of the Avengers. “He created characters who were so incredibly out of the box and so inventive that, as a child, you were enthralled.
Now they translate into great adult stories.”
Ming-Na Wen, who portrays agent Melinda May on
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., feels that Lee’s characters and tales resonate now more than ever. “The world is in chaos,” she says. “There’s terrorism, it’s a crazy election year, the Zika virus and all kinds of things make us fearful. Marvel offers a sense of empowerment. They have so many strong female characters—when a woman is