Adam Graham pays tribute to the late, great Stan Lee (1922-2018)
Transcript:
On a special edition of the Classy Comics Podcast we pay tribute to comic book legend Stan Lee in The Mighty Marvel Manor, straight ahead…
Well, it's a different sort of episode of the Classy Comics Podcast as we pay tribute to Stan Lee who passed away at the age of ninety-five, and there's so much that could be said about Stan Lee's legacy. He forgot more about comics than most people knew, and I mean that quite literally. He actually wrote of Captain America being revived in the 1950s and forgot about that return when he wrote Cap's Return in the 1960s, leaving that as an issue to be addressed by other comic writers. And I think there are a couple of areas to look at Stan Lee's legacy.
The first one as a writer, and Stan Lee's writing credits go back to the Golden Age of comics. He wrote some very interesting characters – he wrote The Destroyer who is one of my all-time favorite Golden Age character, and probably the first one that Stan Lee created; and he wrote so many different comics over the years from the 1940s through the 70s and into the modern era. But really he's best remembered for his work during the Silver Age, and I think that if you want to look at where Stan Lee's greatest writing contributions you're going to be looking at The Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. His work on Fantastic Four for…as writer for its first 117 Issues, and on The Amazing Spider-Man for almost…I think around 100 Issues. He let Roy Thomas take over for four Issues and then came back and he stayed on to about – I think Issue 113. So, he created so much mythology around those characters.
So many things that happened have been retold dozens of times, and also he helped create so many of the great villains of the Marvel Universe – Magneto and Dr. Octopus and Dr. Doom; and not only did he script Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, he also worked on Daredevil where, I think, the Stan Lee run, writing Daredevil is way underrated. Iron Man, Thor, Agents of Shield, Ant Man, X-Men, The Avengers, Incredible Hulk, Dr. Strange, Captain America, and the Silver Surfer – and most of these he was writing continuously. He was writing so many of these titles and strips and stories every month.
Now he co-created these characters with artists, particularly Steve Dicko and Jack Kirby, and they certainly deserve their share of credit. And they were definitely part of the creative process with them using the Marvel Method by which Stan Lee would essentially say, "OK, here is a general idea of how this story will go", and then they will go ahead and they will draw the story that Stan Lee told, and they'll often make a lot of their own changes, and then it will be up to…then it was up to Stan Lee to write all of the dialogue. And there had been some controversy about the degree to which Stan Lee was responsible for all of these stories, and clearly these other creative gentlemen played a role. In fact, Stan Lee acknowledged this. One of my favorite Stan Lee-related panels in comics is from Amazing Spider-Man Annual Number One, and it shows Stan Lee at a typewriter, like overwhelmed with all of these characters. He's got Dr. Strange behind him and Captain America at his ear, and he's got Incredible Hulk under him, and there's the Fantastic Four and Iron Man's on his hand. It just kind of showing all the things he was doing, but the accompanying story just…which Lee wrote, pokes fun at him, explains all the work – that he comes up with an idea in the middle of night, goes to Steve Dicko and tells his story, and then Steve Dicko has to draw and create this entire Spider-Man story under these really intense deadlines.
And so he poked fun and acknowledged the contributions of these other creator...