KINDRED SPIRITS

Gaiman recalls Stan Lee

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth,” Neil Gaiman told more than 1,500 captivated fans in Edmonton, also noting, “Books are the way that the dead communicate with us.”

It was a generous, captivating session of connection at Shaw Conference Centre on Tuesday night. The 58-year-old author of novels, comic books and graphic novels, among other things, was supposed to speak for 90 minutes but he held court for more than two hours.

Dressed in black and standing alone onstage, Gaiman read entire chapters of Norse Mythology, his short story collection Trigger Warning, and (aloud in public for the first time since 1991) Good Omens, spending the other half of the evening answering audience questions that were written beforehand on flash cards.

This was both clever and useful because it removed the awkwardness of Q&A lineups and got to the heart of the matter. Everyone wins.

The question we’ll concentrate on here — thank you, random stranger — was about Stan Lee, the grinning face of Marvel Comics who once told me during an interview that if Spider-Man had aged appropriately since he was bit by that radioactive bug in 1962, he’d probably now be an old man sitting around in his living room, complaining about young people making too much noise.

Lee died Monday at age 95, and so much of the world was struck into silence and disbelief before singing the showman’s accolades from the rooftops.

Gaiman, whose first work visible from space was in comics, was asked about his favourite Stan Lee story? He didn’t miss a beat.

“Probably Fantastic Four No. 4,” he said. “That was where I started.

“But my favourite Stan Lee interaction was my very first,” he said.

“I was at San Diego Comic-Con somewhere in the mid-’90s, and was invited by Stan and some elderly cartoonists to talk about a Museum of Comic Book Art, which at the time was in Florida. I went to this meeting, and Stan started by talking. And then just carried on talking. And continued to talk.

“And every now and then people like (cartoonist and writer) Will Eisner and these other wonderful, venerable comic books people would say, ‘Now, Stan …’

“Stan carried on talking. And I just sat and marvelled — because he was alliterating naturally.

“And I always thought that it must have taken work, you know: Smilin’ Stan Lee. Everything in comics is gloriously alliterated,” said Gaiman, summoning thoughts of Peter Parker, Lois Lane, Wonder Woman, Daredevil. “And suddenly, he’s explaining that ‘the marvellous, madcap Marvel might even fund the museum.’

“And I’m going, ‘He just does that!’ I got to know him very well after that, but that was my first time with Stan Lee.”

And while books — and comic books — indeed allow the dead to reach out to us, it was wonderful to feel Lee in the room, out loud — thanks to Gaiman, who also shared great writer’s advice about finishing projects, and moving on to the next one.

And like a cartoonist filling in word balloons, he revealed he writes his first drafts by hand.

“I like the slightly fetishistic quality of filling a pen. I like the touch of the nib on the paper.

“But most of all, I like the method. It always forces me to go forward.”

Thanks again to the Edmonton Public Library for bringing Gaiman here for the first time. Excelsior! As he said of our river city after the show, “I feel like Christopher Columbus having discovered a place that’s always existed, but didn’t know about it yet.”

Time to change the signs at the edge of town ...

He’s explaining that ‘the marvellous, madcap Marvel might even fund the museum!’ And I’m going, ‘He just does that!’