Alter Ego #161 by TwoMorrows Publishing

‘Tis Roy Thomas’ Stan-Fan Comics Fanzine!

Verily, In all the universe, there was only one such as Stan Lee!

$9.95

In the USA

No. 161 November 2019

A full-issue tribute to

STAN LEE. ’Nuff Said.

Galactus TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Thus, Shall I 1

82658 00374

Ponder the significance of such a unique being as he!

Vol. 3, No. 161 / November 2019 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck J.T. Go (Assoc. Editor)

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich

Proofreaders

Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Cover Artist

Jack Kirby (penciler) & Vince Colletta (inker)

Cover Colorist

Writer/Editorial: The Last Gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Guest editorial by John Cimino, about Roy T. & himself visiting Stan on Nov. 10, 2018.

An Interview With Stan Lee – Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 In 1975, junketing to plug a book, Stan had a great time with one talk-radio lady.

Tributes To A Titan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Marvel minions Thomas, Wolfman, Shooter, Isabella, Kraft, & Englehart on Stan Lee.

Stan Lee & Moebius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Jean-Marc Lofficier on bringing two legends together to produce Silver Surfer: Parable.

Glenn Whitmore

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Ger Apeldoorn Richard Arndt Josh Baker J. Ballmann Al Bigley Bill Black Jon Bolerjack Chris Boyko Bernie Bubnis Nick Caputo John Cimino Shaun Clancy Jon Cornell Chet Cox Brian Cremins Brian Cronin Jim Engel Steve Englehart Shane Foley Ron Frantz Janet Gilbert Grand Comics Database (website) Walt Grogan Roberto Guedes Dan Hagen Carole Hemingway Robert Higgerson Michael Hill Roger Hill Rand Hoppe Tony Isabella Eric Jansen Brian Kane Jim Kealy Rob Kirby

Contents

David Anthony Kraft Tom Kraft Robert Landau Paul Levitz Mark Lewis Alan Light Jean-Marc Lofficier Art Lortie Robert Menzies Will Meugniot Mike Mikulovsky Will Murray Joe Musich Barry Pearl John Pierce Bud Plant Paul Power Marshall Ramsey Gordon Robson Bob Rozakis Rich Rubenfeld Randy Sargent Jim Shooter Bryan Stroud Benedikt Taschen Dann Thomas Stephen Tice Mike Tiefenbacher Michael Uslan James Van Hise Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Marco Tulio Vilela Mark Voger Ray Wergan Nyla White Jay Willson Marv Wolfman

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Stan Lee, Ken Bald, Ed Silverman, & Ellen Vartanoff

Stan Lee, Al Landau, & The Transworld Connection . . . . . . 48 Rob Kirby spotlights the man who succeeded Stan as president of Marvel Comics.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Charles Biro—The Other Stan Lee! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Michael T. Gilbert showcases the comics creator Stan admired—and maybe even imitated!

Comic Fandom Archive: My (Admittedly Minor) Encounters With Stan Lee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Bill Schelly showcases his few (but meaningful) contacts with The Man.

re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 72 Tributes To Ken Bald, Ed Silverman, & Ellen Vartanoff . . . . 81 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #220 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 P.C. Hamerlinck presents a multitude of Fawcett collectors—remembering Stan Lee!

On Our Cover: Publisher John Morrow sent us a mock-up of this artwork and text pretty much as it appears here—and, from Ye Editor’s perspective, it was an easy sell. After A/E #150’s hero-panorama by John Buscema, a Jack Kirby cover was certainly in the cards—and this huge, page-filling Galactus head from Thor #160 (p. 13) more than filled the bill. Inks by Vince Colletta. The original scan was provided by Tom Kraft at the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center (www.kirbymuseum.org). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: Since it was Benjamin J. Grimm who made Ye Ed fall in love with The Fantastic Four and Stan Lee’s writing (I already was a Jack Kirby art fan since the age of five or so) in that Nov. 1961-cover-dated #1, Roy T. figured there was no better illustration to top this page than the world’s first full frontal look at the guy Stan would soon dub “the ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing.” Inks by George Klein, if Dr. Michael J. Vassallo’s researches are correct—and they probably are! Reproduced from Roy’s bound volume. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter Ego TM is published 6 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Six-issue subscriptions: $67 US, $101 Elsewhere, $30 Digital Only. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in China. ISSN: 1932-6890. FIRST PRINTING.

writer/editorial

The Last Gathering by John “THE MEGO STRETCH HULK” Cimino

A/E EDITOR’S INTRO: Yes, you read it right, above. This issue, because I wanted to place my own brief reminiscences of Stan Lee—in this edition primarily devoted to celebrating The Man—alongside those of other Marvel Age staffers, I decided to utilize a piece written by my friend and manager, John Cimino, as a guest writer/editorial. John’s comments lead into my own, anyway, since both deal largely with the last time I saw Stan in person, just a couple of days before his passing. And since it was John who, at least from our side, set the whole thing up, it seemed to make sense that his account be read first…

sk me something about math or world history and I probably couldn’t give you the right answer. But if you asked me something about super-heroes and comicbook history, well, then I could make even a genius like Albert Einstein proud. Even as a child, I always wished that “Comics 101” was a real school subject, because I was always intrigued how these comics—or, as I like to say, these “colorful love letters from Heaven”—came to be. Sure, the characters and stories always fueled my imagination, but they had to come from somewhere! Who created them? Who came up with the ideas? What was their story? I, of course, in later years, read a ton of books on comics history and never missed an issue of Alter Ego (was that a shameless plug?). That magazine in particular, because it was one of the definitive sources chronicling

the back stories behind the comics creators and events that gave us this modern mythology without any fluff. And, being an obsessed fan, it always fascinated me to read about the legends and lore of what went on “behind the scenes” in the comic industry. The creators were a fraternity that no one else was privy to, and they were living a life that I could only dream of being part of. So, sitting here at my laptop to write this article, because I’m actually now a small part of that history—well, that’s something I couldn’t have ever imagined. But somehow it’s true. Somehow the fates allowed me to befriend Roy Thomas (or as he likes to say, I just kind of showed up and never left) and orchestrate a plan to get him and Stan together for one last time and bookend Stan’s illustrious career forever in the pages of time. So before I continue, I would like to thank Roy and Dann Thomas for letting me into their lives and giving this little dreamer from Massachusetts the thrill of a lifetime. Here’s my moment in comicbook history: Hopping on a plane with my daughter Bryn to the annual Roy and Dann Thomas Halloween party in South Carolina in late October is always a treat (especially since it often takes place on the weekend of the anniversary of when I got into this business). The food and festivities are a-plenty and the costumed ghouls and ghosts that swarm about are good people who bring warm smiles. My daughter was in charge of taking photos in 2018, because the year before, that task was left up to Roy and things didn’t go so well (something about a big blurry finger on the camera lens, but I digress). Bryn dressed up as one of Roy’s co-creations, Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel), while snapping pics and enjoying the animals on the Thomas spread. She did her job well and got paid very well. Things finally slowed down in the wee hours of the

COMING IN DECEMBER

162

“A Prophecy In FOUR COLORS?” The Possible Pulse-Pounding PREDECESSORS Of Some Of Comics’ Greatest Heroes!

• Color-splashed cover by SHANE FOLEY, after PEDDY, SACHS, PETER, & KANE! • WILL MURRAY on the “1932 Batman” by FRANK FOSTER & on Star-Spangled Kid artist HAL SHERMAN’s memories of his pre-William Moulton Marston “Wonder Woman”! PLUS: Air Wave illustrator LEE HARRIS’ Tarantula re-examined—a prototype version of Timely’s wartime Patriot—and DAN HAGEN on the Japanese super-hero The Golden Bat— of 1931! Does comicbook history need a rewrite? • Who’da thunk it? ROY THOMAS Day in his Missouri hometown, February 2019! • ALSO: FCA—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on CHARLES BIRO, “The Other Stan Lee,” Part 2— BILL SCHELLY—JOHN BROOME—& MORE!!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

Subscribe! Six 100-page issues: $67 Economy US, $79 Expedited US, $101 International, $30 Digital Only

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: twomorrows.com

The Last Gathering

morning, and after my daughter fell asleep on the couch, Roy eagerly removed his Flipper the dolphin costume and met me in their upstairs entertaining area (and library) to talk business and our plans for the following year.

and Stan got together. This was a big moment for those guys, where they could just chill out without any pressure and talk about Roy’s new upcoming book from Taschen called The Stan Lee Story and whatever else they wanted. In recent years, the two legends mostly had e-mail correspondence with each other, and Roy hadn’t been to Stan’s house since the ’80s when he was there for only a few minutes, so this was long overdue.

After an intense conversation about achieving world domination, I said to Roy that we should call a fellow comics dealer/friend of mine named Chandler Rice to see if he could open up some avenues to get him and Stan Lee together When the time came and one more time. You see, since we were being driven to Stan’s 2016, I’d been trying to get Roy home, Roy confided in me that Smiles All Around! and Stan together, but there had he was a little nervous. I said to (Left to right:) Stan Lee, John Cimino, and Roy Thomas in the last of the three been some major roadblocks him, “You don’t have anything photos snapped during the visit to Stan’s Hollywood Hills home on November (the less I say about those, the to worry about. Stan doesn’t 10, 2018. Photo taken by Jon Bolerjack, with John C.’s phone/camera. better). So now, with certain have the power to fire you people out of Stan’s life, this anymore.” He got a good laugh would be the perfect opportunity to ask, because even though Stan out of that. Soon enough, Roy and I were dropped off at Stan’s had retired from doing appearances at comic conventions, Chandler doorstep and let in by Jon. For me personally, the experience was still did private signings with “the Man” at his Hollywood Hills surreal. Stan Lee and Roy Thomas were two of my heroes growing house. I told Roy that I was going to call him and see if I could set up. Their stories entertained me for literally decades and gave me something up. the ability to achieve much in my own life. Now to actually be in Stan’s house and setting up this “supa-dupa” reunion, I was able Without hesitation I call Chandler, totally forgetting (or not to give them something special back. Sitting on Stan’s couch in his caring) about time zone differences. “Hello, John—do you know living room and watching the two legends talk shop was nuts. I was what time it is?” Chandler says as he groggily answers the phone. just taking it all in and thinking, “Jeez, those are the two guys that “Who cares?” I retorted with a smile. “I’m with someone.” Chandler thought up Spider-Man and Wolverine.” then says “Who?” There’s a long pause as I pass the phone to Roy, who says, “Hello, Chandler, this is Roy Thomas.” With a gulp and When I eventually walked into the room where they were I’m sure some shock, Chandler says, “Hello, Roy.” Now all of the talking, the first thing Stan said to me was, “Hello, John.” I’m, like, sudden he perks up and is chock-full of energy. I eventually take he knows my name? I knelt in front of him and began to tell him my over the conversation and tell Chandler that I want to get Roy and feelings for Roy and that I’ll always have his back no matter what. Stan together as soon as possible. He informs me that Stan has a Stan held my hand and said, “God bless you. Take care of my boy new handler named Jon Bolerjack, who happens to be a really good Roy.” Then I literally sat at Stan and Roy’s feet as they continued guy, so he’ll talk to him for me. I was ecstatic because it had been so talking. It was magical, like I was a mere mortal at the top of Mount difficult getting to Stan in the past. After our conversation ended, Olympus. I have no idea how long it lasted, but it ended with me I sat back, crossed my arms, and looked at Roy with a triumphant taking two pictures of Stan and Roy and then joining in on the last yet sinister smile that would make even the late Martin Goodman one. Stan said “God bless” as Roy and I were leaving. Honestly, I proud. I knew the die was cast, my plan was in motion, and even couldn’t tell if anything that just happened was real. Roy’s pessimism wasn’t going to stop it. But reality set in soon enough, sadly, as Stan passed away less A week or so later, after getting a number from Chandler, I left than 48 hours later. a message with Jon. He soon called me back, saying that Stan hadn’t As I said at the beginning, when I look back and think about all been feeling well for a long time and hadn’t wanted to see anybody this, it’s astonishing to fathom that I really am part of a “timeless” in weeks. But when Jon mentioned to him that Roy wanted to drop moment in comicbook history. The last gathering of the two greats by for a visit, Stan happily made the exception. Jon and I decided will forever be mentioned when fans gather together and celebrate to get the two icons together as quickly as possible, because Stan’s the lives of Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and comicbooks in general. And health was failing. The timing couldn’t have been better, as Roy’s after enduring a lot of stress and chaos in the later years of his life, birthday was coming up on Thanksgiving and Christmas was right Stan was able to just sit back and talk with his protégé one last time around the corner, so I figured I could save a few bucks and give without any pressure or concern and enjoy the moment. Yeah, I him this as a special all-in-one “bundle” present. When I told Roy helped make that happen. Not a bad accomplishment for a dreamer. the news, he was ecstatic and couldn’t believe I’d delivered on yet another “impossible” promise. Exactly a week later, on Saturday, Excelsior indeed… November 10th, Roy and I were in Beverly Hills, California. BOOM!!! A/E EDITOR’S FOOTNOTE: Comics writer John Broome’s serialized Jon told me we could see Stan at 3:00 p.m., so Roy, Chandler, memoir will return next issue. his sidekick Jason Howell, and I met up a few hours before to do a private signing at a diner called Mel’s Drive-In. It was a perfect location, because we were just a few minutes from Stan’s house. I told Jon privately that I didn’t want anyone else around when Roy

Commemorating & Collecting

CARL BURGOS’ HUMAN TORCH! One of the Hottest Hero-Features of the Golden Age of Comics!

Timely’s Greatest: The Golden Age Human Torch by Carl Burgos More than 1000 Pages—from 1939 to 1954! plus: The Thunderer! 7500-word introduction by Roy Thomas ISBN #978-1-302-91933-7 Price: $150 U.S. – $190 Canadian Release Date: Nov. 27, 2019

EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS’ GREATEST HEROES— NOW IN FABULOUS ONLINE COMIC STRIPS!

NEW SEQUENCES CONSTANTLY BEING ADDED! Official Website: http://edgarriceburroughs.com/comics/ Website now also features weekly comic strips of John Carter of Mars, Carson of Venus, Pellucidar, Land That Time Forgot, and many others— only $1.99 per month!

ALSO:

ALL-NEW FULL-COLOR ADVENTURES —NOW PLAYING ON AN INTERNET NEAR YOU!

by ROY THOMAS & BENITO GALLEGO

A 1975 Radio Interview With STAN LEE

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway, KABC-Talk Radio, October 1975 Transcribed by Steven Tice – with Additions by Rand Hoppe

A/E

CAROLE HEMINGWAY: Hi, everybody. The time is 9:05 at KABC-Talk Radio… this is ridiculous! Why did I invite you here? [chuckles; Lee laughs] Who can talk about comicbooks? Nobody can talk about comicbooks for an entire hour. They’re boring and violent… bloodshed!

EDITOR’S INTRO: In October 1975, Stan Lee, then still living on the East Coast and serving as Marvel Comics’ publisher, made one of his periodic trips to Los Angeles—in this case, to help promote the new Simon & Schuster/Fireside hardcover Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, the sequel to 1974’s Origins of Marvel Comics. Both books were composed of stories he had scripted in the 1960s for the early days of Marvel, with Lee also providing new prose introductions to each tale. One of his most memorable appearances was on talk-radio station KABC in L.A., where the nighttime hostess was Carole Hemingway. Hemingway had begun on the station a year earlier, and had quickly become a very popular presence on the nighttime air waves, remaining there until 1982, and later having another such radio gig (though in the afternoon) from 1986-93. She also later owned a media consulting firm operating out of Beverly Hills, California, and for some time wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column of social commentary.

STAN LEE: Just ask me some questions. Just introduce the thing. There is violence, there is bloodshed, but these are Marvel Comics, which are a model of decorum. HEMINGWAY: No, no, no… I’ve been reading this… LEE: You lucky devil… HEMINGWAY: No, no, no… you’re the devil. LEE: The introductions that I wrote, did you know… HEMINGWAY: No, they are pretty bad, actually. LEE: Well, it’s been nice seeing you! I’m glad the settings are not turned on or anything. [chuckles]

Carole Hemingway & Stan Lee bookend the cover of the brand new 1975 Simon & Schuster/Fireside hardcover book that Lee had come west to ballyhoo: Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, with its dramatic painted cover by John Romita. [Cover art TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

When I first read a transcription of some of the latter part of this hour-long interview with Stan Lee, I thought—as, apparently, did a few other readers as opposed to listeners— that Carole and Stan had gotten off on the wrong foot and were hostile to each other. However, after the entire talk was transcribed, it was apparent that it was nothing but a good-natured verbal “love & insult fest,” perhaps a welcome aperitif to all the radio shows on which Stan did little but plug product. He and Hemingway made a good match—and when I discovered that none other than the legendary Jack Kirby had called in near the end of the show to toss in his 2¢ worth (at a time when he had only recently returned to Marvel for what would become, alas, merely a three-year stay), I decided that it had to be spotlighted in this celebration of Stan the Man….

HEMINGWAY: This is Stan Lee, by the way. He originated Marvel Comics and all those people with some sort of extra-fantastic power. We have Marvel Girl, Cyclops, Iceman, Iron Man, Magneto, Wasp, Silver Surfer, Ant-Man…

LEE: I love The Silver Surfer. HEMINGWAY: He’s mean and cruel. LEE: No, he’s sweet and adorable—almost Christ-like in his aspect and demeanor, and the college kids are really into The Silver Surfer. HEMINGWAY: They’re into The Silver Surfer… LEE: There’s a lot of philosophy… Your problem is…

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

LEE: It is “Stan space Lee.” I hate everybody saying, “Stanley what?” I thought of changing of my name to “Stan Lee What,” so when people say, “Stanley what?” I can say, “You’re right. HEMINGWAY: We have Stan Lee What on the program. If you can possibly think of anything to talk about comicbooks, please call in. LEE: You’re too good-looking for radio. HEMINGWAY: Oh, really? LEE: I’d like you to have a TV show. HEMINGWAY: I like Stan Lee a little better. Go ahead… LEE: I’m mad about you. I’ve been interviewed by so many people and they’re just people. Then, I come in here, and here’s this doll who is speaking rotten to me over the microphone! [Hemingway chuckles] I’ve got fifty minutes left to make her a comic fan… to win her heart and her affections. And I have a cold in the nose to boot! [chuckles] There’s no way! HEMINGWAY: Let’s see. Can he, or can he not do it? LEE: This is the way we do our comic strips, see? Stay with us and see what happens. HEMINGWAY: Stay with us and I’ll give you some phone numbers: 870-7263 is our number in Los Angeles, in the Valley, 981-7900, in the South Bay area, 644-0790. LEE: You said that dramatically! HEMINGWAY: Wasn’t that beautiful? [Ad comes on about cutting taxes for 1975: Glendale Federal Savings]

“Sentinel Of The Spaceways!” The splash page of The Silver Surfer #1 (Aug. 1968). Script by Stan Lee… pencils by John Buscema… inks by Joe Sinnott. He was called the “Sentinel of the Spaceways” on the cover—even though, ever since Fantastic Four #50, he had been exiled to Earth by edict of his former master, Galactus. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HEMINGWAY: Oh, yes, tell me about my problem…

HEMINGWAY: KABC-Talk Radio time is now 9:10. Now there are “Goodyear Tires”… “Goodyear makes the goin’ great!,” etc., etc. I have to ask you, Stan Lee: What kind of tires are on that fantastic limousine you drove up to the studio in? LEE: The only thing that would tear me away from you is if I had Hugh Hefner’s three-block long Mercedes limousine waiting outside.

LEE: Obviously, you’re not a comicbook buff, but we have about fifty-five minutes left, so I will proselytize you, if you’ll forgive me. I think we should do something with you and turn you into a real human being. HEMINGWAY: [belly laughter] LEE: You’re a nice person… a lousy human being, but a nice person. HEMINGWAY: This is Stan Lee from Marvel Comics... LEE: You go out for coffee and I’ll handle the show… HEMINGWAY: Daredevil and Marvel Girl and all these people… LEE: The X-Men… HEMINGWAY: What’s the matter with your voice? LEE: I’ve got this terrible cold. See, when I live in New York where it’s foggy and gloomy and smoggy and dirty and dingy and terrible, I’m as healthy as hell. I come out here to beautiful Los Angeles and I get sick. I’m going to sue the city of Los Angeles. HEMINGWAY: Please don’t. We have enough problems. [Lee chuckles] This is Stan Lee…

Forget The Fantastic Four! This Is The Fantastic Flivver! Stan Lee some years after this interview, with his 1987 Mercedes 420 SEL. Though he joked about his car that night being borrowed from Hugh Hefner (whom, by coincidence, he would wind up virtually playing in a 21st-century film cameo), Stan did have some posh cars over the years.

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

HEMINGWAY: Will you marry me? LEE: Eagerly. Let me describe Carole to you [listeners]. Do the people know what you look like? HEMINGWAY: No! LEE: She’s got that short, fluffy, auburn hair and great lips! Sensational eyes. Tall, thin, and lean and very passionate-looking. [Hemingway chuckles] I’ve got to give you a lift in that Mercedes. This may be a great night of all time for Los Angeles romance. HEMINGWAY: Oh! How did you get in that Mercedes? Is it really Hugh Hefner’s? LEE: I got in trembling. Yeah, yeah. See, Simon & Schuster, which publishes the Son of Origins of Marvel Comics, which you’re going to talk about in great lengths very shortly… HEMINGWAY: Which we’re going to push for you so you’re going to sell a lot…

Cover Story (Left:) Marie Severin’s earlier sketch intended as the layout for the cover of the 1974 Simon & Schuster/Fireside book Origins of Marvel Comics, spotlighting Spider-Man, Captain America, et al. However, a different art approach was used for that one. (Right:) Instead, John Romita used Marie’s sketch as the starting point for the cover he drew and colored (as seen here) and later painted as the cover of Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. Both reproduced from the Al Bigley Archives. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LEE: … so I can someday buy a Mercedes like that. They arranged for me to have a car to take me here, because obviously, this place is nowhere. [Hemingway laughs] Instead of the usual Cadillac limousine, I got a call: “Hello, Mr. Lee, this is Roger, your chauffeur.” “Well, okay, Rog. Look, I got a beige sweater, a mustache, and I’m kind of confused-looking. You’ll spot me when I come downstairs.” He said, “Well, I’ve got the only black Mercedes limousine in the courtyard; you can’t miss it.” I said, “You’re kidding!” I raced downstairs and he wasn’t kidding! It’s got one of these back seats where two seats face the other seats. It’s the biggest thing you ever saw! Everybody was staring! I almost said, “Forget the radio show; just keep driving!”

CALLER: Yeah. LEE: Ed, you’re almost as wonderful as Carole! CALLER: Along with Confucius and other people like that. This is one of the movers and shakers of our time. HEMINGWAY: This is your brother, no doubt. LEE: No, no! I wish he were! CALLER: He is incredible. Among other things, he has shaped the whole lives of people…

HEMINGWAY: Ah! I’ve gotta see it! We never would have met!

HEMINGWAY: Who is this calling?

LEE: I’m so glad we made it. I’m so glad we did!

LEE: Be careful, Carole. I’ll snap my fingers and you’ll vanish.

HEMINGWAY: I can see how you originated. I spent the whole day reading comicbooks.

HEMINGWAY: Ed, who is this calling, saying all these things?

LEE: That’s probably why you’re so articulate and interesting! Were you here before I came on? HEMINGWAY: Not with the same vibrancy and intellectual timbre that you have brought to the show… [talks into phone] Carole Hemingway, you’re on Talk Radio. Welcome to the show.

LEE: I don’t know, but he’s a great guy. CALLER: I’m just somebody who’s been profoundly influenced by Marvel Comics. HEMINGWAY: Okay. Tell me why.

CALLER: Hello, Carole. This is Ed.

CALLER: Let me tell you why. Here’s Spider-Man spending half of the comicbook trying to get enough plane fare to get to fight the villain. There’s a beautiful element of klutz that no other comic has ever thought to have done.

HEMINGWAY: Yes, Ed.

HEMINGWAY: What did you say?

CALLER: I just gotta say, it’s an honor and a privilege to have this man in town.

LEE: “Klutz.” Our characters are the Woody Allens of the super-hero world.

HEMINGWAY: [incredulously] Stan Lee?

HEMINGWAY: In other words, for people who don’t know: they are super-heroes that are flawed.

LEE: Mention my name, too…

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

CALLER: Yes, you get it. You identify.

LEE: God bless ’em!

LEE: They’re like me. They may look perfect…

HEMINGWAY: Thank heavens for Ed. Ed, since Marvel Comics shaped your life, I want to know what kind of guy you are. What is a Marvel Comics guy really like?

HEMINGWAY: Yeah, you may… CALLER: I heard a rumor that he’s going to go into Captain Sticky, who was one of the great klutzes of all time. LEE: Ohhh… How did you hear about that? Do you know who Captain Sticky is? Captain Sticky is an old friend of mine. HEMINGWAY: Captain Sticky is going to save the world. LEE: Yes. With the help of Marvel Comics. HEMINGWAY: Captain Sticky weighs about 300 pounds and he is out to save the world with his peanut butter and jelly gun. CALLER: Right. HEMINGWAY: He’s going to shoot it at anyone who gets in his way. LEE: Now, do you ever know Captain Sticky well? Let me tell you. This will be a KABC first: a Carole Hemingway exclusive. I’d like everybody connected with other stations to turn your set off, please. Captain Sticky at Marvel Comics, through the good offices of Stan Lee, are negotiating to do, a nationwide, internationally distributed, Captain Sticky comicbook, which I know [talking over each other; unintelligible] HEMINGWAY: This has the same ring to it as saying Sonny and Cher are going to get back together again on CBS. LEE: Obviously, you’re unaware of these cultural endeavors sweeping the nation. If you were… HEMINGWAY: No, it’s amazing. People are really into comicbooks!

CALLER: I’m about five foot ten, 57 years old, and I’ve been deeply and profoundly moved about what Stan Lee has done over the years. Listen, Stan, remember, during World War II, the comicbook was taken as an instructional manual for people who had to learn real high skills real fast? LEE: I hate to say this in front of Carole, because she’ll think I’m over twenty… but, I was writing those things at the time. [unintelligible] and I and Will Eisner and others. CALLER: It’s not superficial; it’s really, really important. HEMINGWAY: Ed, I’m so glad you called. LEE: I’m even gladder. HEMINGWAY: I’m glad that you’re five feet ten and 57 years old! It was nice to talk with you. CALLER: Listen, it’s a very, very important art form. By the way, Carole, you’re kind of nice yourself. LEE: Is she ever! Thanks, Ed. HEMINGWAY: Somebody’s going to think you’re my father, brother, sister…? Sister? [laughter] This is Stan Lee What… LEE: “Stan Lee What”! Thanks a lot. HEMINGWAY: The book is Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. LEE: Ask me why it has this silly name. HEMINGWAY: Sigh. Why does it have this silly name? LEE: Because last year, I wrote a book, Origins of Marvel Comics, and it became a best-seller. This year, this is the sequel. What do you call the sequel? HEMINGWAY: The Daughter of the Origins…? LEE: [mutual laughter] No, because I’m a male chauvinist, I called it the “Son of the Origins”… Now, next year, we’ll do a third one, which may well be called the Brother-in-Law… HEMINGWAY: So you’ve got the whole family! You’ll have a million of them going out. It talks about how the characters were created… LEE: No, it doesn’t “talk” about. Those are stories that are published. We don’t say a book “talks” about a subject! HEMINGWAY: We don’t say a book “talks”? LEE: You’re talking to a comicbook person. HEMINGWAY: We talk about talking books. [to audience] It should be you asking questions; you can see I’m getting nowhere.

Stan & Captain Sticky pose for fan (and Comics Buyer’s Guide founder) Alan Light’s camera at the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con. The Captain’s real name was Richard Pesta, and he was a fixture at those early Southern California events… and apparently did some good simply by showing up at suspect places like abusive nursing homes. He claimed to get his powers (and his name) from his love for peanut butter. For various reasons, however, the promised Marvel Captain Sticky comicbook never did quite materialize. (Hint: They seem to have had to do with money.) Thanks to Ger Apeldoorn for the pic. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[Lee begins singing nonsensically] HEMINGWAY: You can sing in the background… You want to know about The Silver Surfer? 870-7263 is our number in Los Angeles, in the Valley, 981-7900, in the South Bay area, 644-0790. Give me a call. LEE: You should see her profile! HEMINGWAY: [chuckles] Hello! Who is this? CALLER: This is Gary, Carole.

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

CALLER: This is Bob. HEMINGWAY: Hiya, Bob. LEE: Hi, Bob. CALLER: I’ve read comics for about six years and unfortunately have been away from them for about a year. I’m wondering whatever happened to The X-Men? They were my favorite. LEE: Oh, am I glad you asked. We’ve been discussing Son of Origins of Marvel Comics and who do you think is the first strip that is mentioned and written about in glowing details in Son of Origins? None other than The X-Men. That’s where you can find out. It’s on sale now at better bookstores! No, no, it’s a funny thing, Bob. Things become glamorous these days, Bob, when they go out of circulation for a while. When we started The X-Men, they were a terribly popular strip. Carole is looking at it right now to see what I’m talking about. HEMINGWAY: I told you I was reading comicbooks today! LEE: That’s why you were all misty-eyed and dramatic with me. After a while, the sales started to slip a little and we had other fish to fry, so we decided to drop the book and go to other strips. HEMINGWAY: In other words, Stan, The X-Men didn’t do so well. LEE: The X-Men didn’t quite hack it after the first year, okay, but wait until I get to the point of this terribly earth-shattering tale… HEMINGWAY: Okay.

Father Of Son Of Origins John Romita’s painted cover for Simon & Schuster/Fireside’s 1974 tome Origins of Marvel Comics. Stan Lee was officially the author of all S&S’s Marvel-related books, since he wrote intros—and had scripted virtually all the stories in them. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HEMINGWAY: This is Gary Carole? [to Stan] His last name is Carole. LEE: Oh, shut up.

LEE: We dropped the book for a while. After about six months, the fan mail started to come in: “Hey, what happened to The X-Men? When are you going to bring back those great X-Men?” After another few months: “Do you remember The X-Men from the great Golden Age of Comics? Whatever happened to them?” There seemed to be such a feeling of nostalgia in the air, but we didn’t want to do new stories—we didn’t have the time to draw them, so I said, “Just for fun, why don’t we reprint the old stories and publish them again.” Bob, would you believe that we sold the reprinted stories again and would you believe, the reprint version sold better than the original ones did? All of a sudden, we had a big hit on our hands. So, now we’re doing all-new original stories and it’s one of our best-selling books. All because we took it out of circulation for

CALLER: I’m doing a project right now for school, and I’m making costumes that are replicas of Marvel Comics characters. My question is, am I infringing on any copyrights? If so, who should I call? LEE: Let me put it this way: I’m the guy you’d come to for permission because I rule the whole world. But, if you’re doing this one project and you’re not going to make money by mass-producing them, you don’t have to worry about it. HEMINGWAY: Do you give him permission to do that, O “Ruler of the World”? LEE: Oh, shut up. You only need permission copyright-wise (as we say on Madison Avenue)—you only need permission if you’re going to make a business of it and sell them as a Marvel Comics character. You obviously can’t use our characters to go into a business. CALLER: Uh-huh. Okay. HEMINGWAY: Okay! Thank you for calling! LEE: The caller was a lot more polite to me than Carole. [chuckles] HEMINGWAY: [to next caller] You’re on Talk Radio. Okay, caller, you’re on the air.

Spider-Man Vs. Batman: The Photo Op Stan was not averse to fans (or professional actors) in costume—not even when it included both Marvel and DC heroes, as in this shot probably connected to one of the two companies’ crossovers of a decade or two ago. Thanks to Robert Higgerson.

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

“X” Spots The Mark! This magnificent X-Men illustration by penciler Brent Anderson and inker Terry Austin (as colored by Patrick Oliff) was done as the wraparound cover of George Olshevsky’s X-Men edition of his Marvel Index series in the 1980s. From left to right, the original mutants of 1963 blend with those who came of age with the 1975-debuting reboot. Although Stan refers to the ’60s X-Men comic as “terribly popular,” they were really pretty much at the bottom of the Marvel totem pole, even under Stan and Jack, until the mid-’70s revamp/revival under writers Len Wein and especially Chris Claremont, with artists Dave Cockrum and then John Byrne. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

a while, and fandom today is so strange. Anything they haven’t seen for a while, they begin to glamorize and think it’s that great Golden Age product and project and if they could only see it again…. Somebody could do a great term paper about all this. CALLER: You’re not going to do that with Spidey, are you? LEE: No, no, never with Spidey! Spidey we never stop! [laughter] HEMINGWAY: Thank you for your call. Hey, a guy I liked after reading… LEE: You have the biggest eyes you ever saw, and the lashes I couldn’t begin to describe… HEMINGWAY: I’m a mutant! You know who I liked? I like the guy—is it the Daredevil? The blind guy? LEE: Nobody forgets Daredevil. HEMINGWAY: I’m sorry. LEE: Our super-heroes have strange failings. Daredevil is sightless. When we created Daredevil, we were drunk with power; we

thought we could do anything. I remember years ago, there was a detective character in novels—I think he was called Nero Wolfe, by Rex Stout. If I’m wrong, somebody will phone in and correct me. The stories always grabbed me, and this was way before the show with Tony Franciosa [sic], who played a blind detective. I always said, “Golly, if you can have a blind detective, why can’t you have a blind super-hero?” We came up with Daredevil; he became tremendously successful. In answer to your question… now you’re making some gestures… ? HEMINGWAY: No, I’m just scratching my hand! LEE: You’re scratching your hand? I thought you were making some radio gesture! HEMINGWAY: It is, actually. Barry Barber, my engineer, knows exactly what I’m doing… LEE: “Get rid of him!” HEMINGWAY: “Do anything! Get him off my show!” [both are howling with laughter] LEE: “He’s ruining the show!” Moving right along… HEMINGWAY: Moving right along to Daredevil. LEE: Where were we? HEMINGWAY: Well, he avenged his father’s death. I thought that was kind of nice. LEE: That’s right, that’s right. You’ve gotta avenge your father’s death at all times if you’re going to be a hero. And he has radar sense and sonar senses and he’s a lawyer and involved in politics. I don’t know what he’s been doing lately, because I’ve been travelling

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

LEE: Yes. HEMINGWAY: [into phone] KABC, you’re on Talk Radio. CALLER: Hey! HEMINGWAY: Who’s this? CALLER: Paul. HEMINGWAY: Hi, Paul. LEE: What took you so long?

“In The Country Of The Blind…” (Left:) The Jack Kirby/Bill Everett splash page of Marvel’s Daredevil #1 (April 1964) heralded a story scripted by Stan Lee and illustrated primarily by Everett. He was the first truly blind super-hero, although the late-’30s pulp hero The Black Bat (and DC’s Dr. Mid-Nite who imitated him) could not see in daylight and needed special lenses to see in both dark and light. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

around so much, I don’t have time to read the stories, but he’s one of the modern mythological masterpieces created by Marvel Comics.

(Above:) In 1971 TV premiered Longstreet, a series featuring a blind detective and his German shepherd Pax. The star, however, was Jim Franciscus, not Tony Franciosa, as Stan misremembered. Before that, the 1956 film thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street had starred Van Johnson as a blind man who determines to solve a murder. But earlier magazine detective Nero Wolfe wasn’t blind, as Stan seems to think... just overweight and basically lazy. Thanks to Barry Pearl & Nick Caputo. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

HEMINGWAY: “Modern mythological masterpieces”… He also talks in alliteration! Stan Lee What. Give us a call.

CALLER: I want to ask you a couple of questions about Howard the Duck, one of your new characters. LEE: Oh, yeahhhh… HEMINGWAY: Howard the Duck? LEE: You should see the expression on this child’s face when you said, “Howard the Duck.” You can just imagine… HEMINGWAY: Howard the Duck? LEE: She thinks that you and I conspired for this call…

LEE: …But she’s prettier.

HEMINGWAY: Who is Howard the Duck? He’s a duck and his name is Howard, I take it. What does he do?

[Hemingway reads a radio ad about TWA]

CALLER: He’s a duck.

HEMINGWAY: Talk Radio time is 9:26…

HEMINGWAY: What does Howard the Duck do?

[radio wine ad] HEMINGWAY: I can’t concentrate… you are screaming in my ear, Stan Lee. Your microphone wasn’t even on. There was a review of your book in Calendar [section of the Los Angeles Times]. LEE: I hope they were gentle and kind. HEMINGWAY: You didn’t see it?? LEE: No. HEMINGWAY: Of course, it was written by Ray Bradbury. This was your first one, Origins. LEE: This was Origins from Marvel. HEMINGWAY: He makes comicbooks sound like the new Greek mythology! LEE: Well, he’s very perceptive and deep. It’ll take you a while before you can get into those things. But Ray is one of the true people in the world. HEMINGWAY: One of the true humans.

CALLER: He’s a talking duck and he goes on adventures. LEE: Shall I explain to people not really into Howard the Duck? CALLER: Yes. HEMINGWAY: Yes, please. LEE: There are people out there who are not freaks yet for Howard the Duck. We haven’t reached everybody yet. [laughter] We have a magazine—and you will be thrilled to learn that we have a magazine—called Man-Thing. [speaks slowly and deliberately] I’m speaking clearly and deliberately because I have a cold. It’s called Man-Thing. Now, the idiot who writes it, a good friend named Steve Gerber— one day, when I wasn’t looking, I see he’s got a new character in the series.

Ray Bradbury in 1975. The best-known science-fiction writer, ever… author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, etc. He was an inveterate enthusiast for comic art generally, though how many Marvel Comics he actually ever read is not known. Not too many, Ye Editor would guess.

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

enough. We’re going to try to crazy me up. Help me! You’ve got a good point there. If an idea is crazy enough, people have got to love it! Its sense of humor. It’s almost as though—what? You’re writing me a note? [reading it to herself] Oh, you love me! Isn’t this wonderful? This is like grammar school. Don’t pull my pigtails. No, really. If you come up with an idea that’s nutty enough, and you’ve got the guts to follow it through, people are going to glom onto it. They love crazy people. That’s why they love you, Stan Lee. LEE: We’re doing a motion picture. I figure this is the place to mention it—Los Angeles. HEMINGWAY: Hol-LEE-Wood.

Steve Gerber tossed a fowl-looking E.T. called Howard the Duck into the book-length “Man-Thing” story in Fear #19 (Dec. 1973)—and by cover-date Jan. 1976 he had his own title. The former artwork is by Gil Kane (pencils) and Ernie Chan (inks), and of course doesn’t show the alien avian… while the latter cover is by Frank Brunner. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

It’s a little duck—not too unlike Donald Duck—and I say, “Hey, Steve, baby. What are you doing with a little animated duck in a serious, dramatic story called Man-Thing?” He’s kind of cute, you know? This duck, he’s not really a duck, he’s from a planet where everybody happens to look like a duck.

LEE: Swingin’ Hollywood. It’s Spider-Man. It will be a full-length, live-action movie of Spider-Man, but we’re going to do it crazy. Not like Batman, not campy, we’re going to make a rock musical out of it. CALLER: Animated? LEE: No! Golly, no! Not animated. How else am I supposed to…

HEMINGWAY: I see. LEE: And he comes down to Earth somehow. He speaks and smokes cigars. After a while, I said, “This is the cutest and cleverest comedy bit that has come along in comics. We’ve gotta do a whole book of him.” Well, everybody says I was crazy… HEMINGWAY: …but you’re not. LEE: You can tell that; you’ve known me long enough. We put out this book—and when I say, “we,” I mean the Marvel Comics Group, producers and purveyors of possibly the world’s greatest literature! HEMINGWAY: [laughter] Possibly. LEE: [laughs] You’re wonderful, Carole! Anyway, we put out this book and it has become such a hit. I cannot tell you. I realized Stan Lee has formulated a new law: If anything is crazy enough and different enough, it has to become an incredible hit! See, that’s the problem with you— you’re too lovely and ethereal. We’ve gotta crazy you up a little bit! We still have another half hour to go. HEMINGWAY: I’m not crazy

Rock Solid! (Above left & top right:) Turns out that, although Stan promised it to a caller over Carole Hemingway’s talk-radio show and a 1975 house ad in Marvel Comics plugged it, Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero never made it beyond being a record album. (Directly above, right:) It took until 2011 before a Broadway musical starring the wall-crawler—Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark—opened on the Great White Way. It ran through 2014. Here, Reeve Carney as Spider-Man battles an airborne Green Goblin to save Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane Watson, while singing “Boy Falls from the Sky,” one of the musical numbers by Bono and The Edge. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

HEMINGWAY: A rock musical of Spider-Man? [talking over each other; unintelligible] LEE: Yeah. HEMINGWAY: Will somebody send me a comicbook of Howard the Duck? LEE: I will, I will! Give me your address! HEMINGWAY: Thanks for your call, Paul. Call me. 870-7263 is our number in Los Angeles, in the Valley, 981-7900. I don’t think anybody in Orange County would call in, but 638-6151. LEE: How does this show make it? HEMINGWAY: It’s a fantastic show! This is Stan the Man Lee… LEE: You do other things with your other guests. HEMINGWAY: Yeah, I do other things, as a matter of fact... Hello, you’re on Talk Radio; who is this?

Strip Maul Howard the Duck would later become a newspaper comic strip, as well, though it would run only a little over a year during 1977-78. This Sunday by writer Steve Gerber and artist Gene Colan appeared on October 16, 1977. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

CALLER: This is Russell. LEE: Hi, Russ. Another competitor… CALLER: Yeah. I just want to say that Howard the Duck is the most profound and provocative character in the Marvel Age of Comics.

it! And Carole is looking at me with those big blue eyes because she has no idea what we’re talking about! But the “Bullpen Bulletin” is written by whoever happens to be in the bullpen at the moment— usually the editor—usually Marv Wolfman. HEMINGWAY: What? CALLER: Yeah. Tell Carole what a “Bullpen Bull…” I can’t even say it.

LEE: I agree.

HEMINGWAY: Please do.

HEMINGWAY: Why? Tell me why!

LEE: I’ll tell Carole what a “Bullpen Bulletin” is. Before Marvel changed the entire course of literary history, your average comicbook was just a group of cold, impersonal stories. All of a sudden, Marvel Comics came on the scene, and we decided—and I’m using the editorial “we decided,” of course…

CALLER: There’s just no other character like him. LEE: There’s a lot of profundity, so unless you’ve read it, that’s like saying, “What’s so great about Elton John and his music?” HEMINGWAY: No, no, no. You can tell me what’s so great and profound about Howard the Duck. LEE: Well, we’ve got a literate guest on the show; let him. CALLER: It’s written by Steve Gerber, the best writer since Stan Lee. LEE: You’re a great man, Russell. CALLER: He’s the most original character that’s come out of comics. He’s dumb and he smokes a cigar. HEMINGWAY: He’s dumb. CALLER: And he smokes a cigar. HEMINGWAY: That is original. CALLER: There’s no character in the world that’s dumb and smokes a cigar.

HEMINGWAY: You decided... We know. LEE: We decided, “Let’s really get to know our readers and the public and let them know us and let’s sort of have a lot of fun with what we’re doing.” So, we initiated a page called the “Bullpen Bulletins,” in which I mentioned what’s going on in the Bullpen, which is our office, the staff of writers and artists: what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do, and how we feel, and who bought a new car, who has the mumps, and what’s going on—who had an allergy attack. HEMINGWAY: You’ll be in the latest “Bullpen Bulletin” then, because of your allergy attack. LEE: Well, I’m always in the Bulletin because I write some of them. You will admit, Russ, that I do a pretty good job of mentioning myself. CALLER: Oh, yes.

HEMINGWAY: He’s a duck who smokes a cigar. There are a lot of people in the world who are dumb and smoke a cigar, but not ducks.

LEE: Once in a while, the name “Stan” will crop up in a “Bullpen Bulletin” page. [laughter]

CALLER: Anyway, I just want to ask Mr. Lee…

CALLER: Every line…

HEMINGWAY: You can call him Stan.

LEE: [laughter] That gives Carole a rough idea. She’s doodling…

CALLER: Thanks! Stan, who writes the “Bullpen Bulletins”?

HEMINGWAY: This is too much for me. Oh! Howard the Duck! Russell, thank you for calling.

LEE: Well, I write the “Soapbox” column that has my name on it and I’m very jealous of my name and I won’t let anybody else touch

LEE: Thank you, Russ.

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

HEMINGWAY: Yeah, but how do you think of things like mutants? How do you think of The X-Men? They’re human, but super-human… LEE: I’ll talk to you seriously because I think you’re desperately seeking the truth. HEMINGWAY: I want the truth. LEE: In this difficult workaday world, you’re looking for a path. The way to create original concepts and great science-fiction is you extrapolate; you project. You say to yourself, “Given a certain set of circumstances, what would happen ‘if’?” Then, you’re off and running. You grab that typewriter and say, “What would happen if certain mutants banded together and said, ‘We’re better than humans because we have mutant powers. We’re Homo Superior, which is different from Homo Sapiens, and we should rule the world.’ They become the evil mutants who want to rule the world. Then we give ourselves another mutant group of good guys: “We want to stop these evil guys.” So we have a comicbook. HEMINGWAY: Do you know Erma Bombeck? She’s really a funny lady. LEE: She’s good, too!

Marvel Bullpen Bulletins Although there had been a few so-called “Bullpen Pages” before that had plugged Marvel products, the first true “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins” page, which featured a mix of news items, plugs, a checklist of on-sale titles, and the names of 25 members of the new Merry Marvel Marching Society, appeared in issues dated December 1965. This version from Strange Tales #139 sported images of Dr. Strange, while the otherwise identical Bullpen Bulletins page that month from Tales of Suspense featured Iron Man instead, and so on and so forth. Repro’d from Ye Editor’s bound volumes. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HEMINGWAY: I don’t know what I would have done with Origins, but Son of Origins… You can buy this for $6.95 if you so choose. LEE: I’ll describe all about it after the show. HEMINGWAY: On that note, we’ll take a break! [musical ad for Lucky’s Supermarket] HEMINGWAY: The time at KBAC-Talk Radio… I don’t know what happened to me. He originated comic characters. Did you ever think, in your lifetime, that you would come across anyone who originated comic characters? Now, I’m going to ask you a question. Are you ready for this, Stan Lee What? How do you make up a comicbook character? LEE: With great difficulty. Actually, no, it’s very simple. It’s easy as hell. Carole, do I say to you, “How do you talk into that microphone?” You’re so glib and articulate and masterful at it. You do it well and that’s why you have this job. I happen to create characters for a living. You’re in the business you’re in because you do things well.

Marvel Rules! Maybe Stan wasn’t kidding when he said that “Homo Superior” (a.k.a. mutants) “should rule the world”! Here’s the cover of a 1979 Brazilian publication, Almanaque Marvel #4, which spotlights The X-Men, though they share space with Daredevil and Spider-Woman. Thanks to Roberto Guedes. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

HEMINGWAY: Well, not as good as Stan Lee! She does the same sort of thing in a different way, okay? She takes a normal, everyday situation: “Mom, where are my boots?” From there, I remember one thing… I had her on the show in Phoenix… LEE: “I had a show in Phoenix” sounds like a book. HEMINGWAY: It would never make it. LEE: Never make it…

HEMINGWAY: Hey, man. CALLER: Will there be a third edition to Origins? LEE: Yes, it goes on sale early next year. The problem is, we don’t know what to call it. We have the Son of Origins. Do we call it the Brother-in-Law? I was thinking about naming it after the villains— something like Bring On the Villains. Would you like that title?

CALLER: Oh, yeah! What characters will it contain? HEMINGWAY: Anyway, she said one time she told her son, “You should wear boots.” He said, “Mom! LEE: Doctor Doom, the Red Skull… Nobody wears boots!,” as only a teenage son Erma Bombeck HEMINGWAY: Mag-net-oh… or it is Mag-neet-oh? would say to his mother. Then, he extrapolated— On the other hand, the above lady—a top nobody wearing boots meant businesses going out humor author of the day—was perhaps LEE: Carole, if you want to call it “Mag-net-oh,” of business, children going barefoot—what you do, Carole Hemingway’s candidate for “world versus “Mag-nee-toh,” from now until time is take a situation and make it totally insane! ruler.” She wrote such comedic best-sellers immemorial, that man’s name is “Mag-neet-oh.” LEE: She does that and Russell Baker does that and Art Buchwald. It’s really the basis of good humor—Woody Allen does that, if you think about it. Good humor is based on saying, “What is really happening and what would happen if you carried it a step further?”

as If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits?; I Lost Everything in the Postnatal Depression; and When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home—all words to live by! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

[Hemingway laughs; Lee speaks to caller] Characters like that…

HEMINGWAY: People love villains. They do! LEE: I like the villains. Did I ever tell you about Doctor Doom?

HEMINGWAY: Fantastic. LEE: But, I hope nobody else is listening… HEMINGWAY: Oh, no… nobody listens to this show. [into phone] KABC, you’re on Talk Radio; hi! CALLER: This is Joe in Torrance. I was wondering about the Superman/ Spider-Man book [Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man] out now and wondering how it came to be. LEE: You should see the expressions on Carole’s face when all these questions are thrown—the blank looks on her face. Now she’s thinking, “Superman/Spider-Man? What are they talking about?” I’m gonna tell ya. It goes on sale in January. It came to be because somebody came to us with the idea and said, “I know you’ll never do it.” We said, “Of course we’ll do it. If Superman will do it; we’ll do it.” Carole, I want to increase your comicbook knowledge, but you’re really not that bad. It’s the least I can do. [chuckles] Our top competitor is the Superman company, and we are launching a joint publishing effort in which our great character, Spider-Man, is going to be co-featured with their character Superman and it’s called Superman vs. Spider-Man and it’s going to be a milestone in the annals of history! How nice of you to have asked that. HEMINGWAY: You must have a lot of relatives in town! LEE: No! HEMINGWAY: This is Stan Lee What and we shall return. [ad about recycling] HEMINGWAY: The time at Talk Radio is 9:42 [inserts ad for See’s Candies] I’m sitting here talking with this nut, Stan Lee, who originated Iron Man, and I don’t know… We’ll be right back! [ad about Christmas wishes and Master Charge] HEMINGWAY: Carole on KABC. Go ahead, Robert. Robert, hi. What’s going on? CALLER: Nothing.

Mano-a-Mano Even the cover of the 1976 two-company tabloid comicbook Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man was a multi-talent collaboration, with DC editorial director Carmine Infantino providing the rough sketch for penciler Ross Andru, with Neal Adams making a few changes to Superman. The inking was by Dick Giordano, assisted by Terry Austin. Though most of these guys (including writer Gerry Conway) were working at the time for DC Comics, Marvel shared total approval of the finished product. [Superman TM & © DC Comics; Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

CALLER: Hi. HEMINGWAY: Who’s this? CALLER: This is Michael…, who’s this? LEE: Hi, Michael. This is Stan Lee What, which is “Whatever Her Name Is” calls me. HEMINGWAY: This is “What’s Her Name,” Michael. Go ahead. CALLER: Yeah, right. I really feel terrible, because I’ve been pronouncing it “Mag-net-oh” wrong for years! LEE: What do I know? It probably is. HEMINGWAY: If I’ve been pronouncing it “Mag-net-oh,” it’s “Mag-net-oh.” That’s it. I don’t care what the originator says!

Bring On The Bad Guys! That, not “Bring On the Villains,” as Stan was toying with on the 1975 talk-radio show, would be the final title of the third Simon & Schuster/ Fireside collection of Marvel stories, when it was released in late ’76. Well, it did have a subtitle: Origins of the Marvel Comics Villains. Both the sketch and the painted cover itself are by John Romita. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

CALLER: Well, I’ve also been pronouncing it “Sub-maREEN-er” for years! LEE: “Sub-MAR-iner”! Don’t

HEMINGWAY: I have a feeling you’re going to.

Doom & Gloom

LEE: What’s the guy’s name on the phone?

A 1979 pencil drawing of Dr. Victor von Doom, as rendered by his co-creator, Jack Kirby. This illo appeared in the magazine The Jack Kirby Quarterly [#11] some years back. [Dr. Doom TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HEMINGWAY: Robert. LEE: Robert, can I tell her about Doctor Doom for a minute? CALLER: Yeah.

LEE: Doctor Doom is the King of Latveria. When he comes here to take over the world, we can’t arrest him, because he has diplomatic immunity, right? CALLER: Yep. LEE: Also, if you want to take over the world, that’s not against the law. If you’re a litterbug, or you jaywalk, you can be arrested. But, you can walk up to any cop in the world and say, “Hey, Charlie, I wanna take over the world,” there’s nothing he can do to you! So, Doctor Doom goes blindly on his way, taking over the world, and there’s nothing anyone can do. He can’t be thrown in jail. HEMINGWAY: Oh, I like Doctor Doom! LEE: He wears a mask because he’s ugly and nobody knows what he looks like. And Jack Kirby, who used to draw him, once drew a picture of him taking off his mask, and guess whose face was inside? HEMINGWAY: Stan Lee. LEE: Stan Lee What. HEMINGWAY: Thank you for your call, Robert. LEE: Thanks, Robert! HEMINGWAY: KABC-Talk Radio; you’re on the air.

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

ever say “Sub-ma-REEN-er”! Michael , you’re a terrible person! CALLER: I’m so sorry! That’s okay. You’re going back to New York and we’ll have the entire continent between us. It won’t affect you too much. LEE: [laughter] I’m never leaving, now that I’ve met Carole. HEMINGWAY: We’re going to live in the Mercedes. LEE: And we’re going to do a talk show together called “The Stan Lee and What’s Her Name Show.” CALLER: I think it must be interesting to think how much effect you’ve had on so many people’s lives. There have been so many people you’ve influenced, like Sharon the Mortician’s daughter in My Life. I read a lot of comics as a kid, and I think reading comics enabled me to grow up to be the very sane, stable person I am today. HEMINGWAY: Yes, Michael. You are a very stane and… oops, “stane and sable” person! LEE: The trouble with her is she’s not a believer, and with all you intelligent, articulate, wonderful people… HEMINGWAY: You can tell that Michael is not sane and stable.

A Prince Of A Fellow A fabulous color drawing done by Sub-Mariner creator/writer/artist Bill Everett for his son Rob, nearly half a century ago. (Bill passed away in 1973.) Michael T. Gilbert found it for sale in the online files of Heritage Comics. Stan and “Wild Bill” teamed up on a number of Prince Namor adventures in the latter 1960s. A/E’s editor blushingly admits that, until he was in his early 20s, he always pronounced the hero’s name as “Sub-MaREEN-er.” [Sub-Mariner TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © Estate of Bill Everett.]

LEE: If you only sounded like Michael. I’m sure you’re prettier than Michael… CALLER: I resemble that remark. LEE: I’m sure you are pretty, Michael. HEMINGWAY: Listen, Michael… CALLER: You get your words mixed up and I’m not sane and stable? HEMINGWAY: [laughter] Wait a second, Michael. Michael! LEE: Consider yourself no-prized.

X-Men: The Unlikely Saga Of Xavier, Magneto, And Stan In 2006 Stan scripted a new story in which he encountered the leaders of the “good” and “evil” mutants, for an otherwise reprint-laden digest-size book with the above unlikely title. By that date, it had been over forty years since Lee and Kirby had introduced both Prof. X’s little crew and Magneto in 1963’s The X-Men #1. Cover painting by Brandon Peterson. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

CALLER: Oh, my God! HEMINGWAY: I’m glad that Marvel Comics has made you a sane, sober, and stable member of the US of A, Michael. LEE: He’s also a member of the U.S. Senate, but he’s not telling you that.

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

CALLER: No, pay attention! LEE: Steve started it, didn’t he? CALLER: He did? LEE: Yeah, you may have seen one of the subsequent ones, but I believe Steve started it. I may be wrong. Anyway, I thought it was kind of good. HEMINGWAY: But it wasn’t Marvel Comics… LEE: I really shouldn’t interrupt you when you’re saying nice things about me, Carole. It was done by who?

Sew What’s New? Many of the “problems” Stan would sometimes reel off to interviewers as belonging to Peter Parker even though he was secretly Spider-Man were never really evidenced in the comics (e.g., acne)… but Peter’s having to personally repair his costume with needle and thread did occur, in Amazing Spider-Man #4 (Sept. 1963)… after his face-mask had gotten badly torn in his first tussle with The Sandman. Script by Stan Lee; art by Steve Ditko. Seems to us that one of the great, never-related tales of the wall-crawler would be the one wherein he first designed and sewed his costume, at the same time taking a few spare minutes to invent his spectacular web-shooters! Thanks to Barry Pearl & Nick Caputo. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

CALLER: The reason it’s done that is because they were the first company to try for a humanistic character in comicbooks. It was an admirable thing; they were taking a chance. HEMINGWAY: You’re talking about that characters had to deal with everyday events, like paying rent? CALLER: Exactly. One of the things that I used to love was whenever Spider-Man would fight a super-villain, he’d have to go home and sew up his costume. LEE: It always got torn. HEMINGWAY: He’d have to sew them himself? LEE: Yeah, and he didn’t do a very good job, so you can imagine what it would look like in the next story. I have to tell you, seeing Carole put down these books, I wish you could see what she is doodling while we’re talking. I wanna tell you. HEMINGWAY: I’ve got “Howard the Duck,” “Doctor Doom,” “five foot ten,” and “57 years” written down here. LEE: You like Howard the Duck, Michael? CALLER: Very much. LEE: How do you feel about The Silver Surfer? CALLER: The Silver Surfer, when he had his own magazine, was one of my favorite characters. Not realistic and a little more heavy-duty, moralistic… LEE: You’re right. CALLER: I’d like to ask you about one of your competition’s characters. HEMINGWAY: Yeah, yeah, let’s talk about the competition… CALLER: There was one comic put out by Charlton Comics called E-Man. LEE: Oh, by Steve Ditko; I’m a big fan of Steve Ditko. CALLER: It wasn’t by Ditko. LEE: Yes, it was!

CALLER: It was done by Nicola Cuti and Joe Staton. They had some really nice bits of humor. LEE: We never claim that Marvel does the only good stories, just most of them. HEMINGWAY: Michael, thank you for calling. I’ll let you go. LEE: Thanks, Mike. HEMINGWAY: I told you nobody in Orange County reads comics. Nobody’s called on that line out there because they’re all stane and sable out there. Hello, caller. You’re on the air. CALLER: Hello. This is Kevin. LEE: Hi, Kev. CALLER: I’d like to ask Stan a few questions. What did you think about [unintelligible] LEE: It thought it was pretty good. CALLER: I liked it myself. It was one of my favorite Marvel Comics. HEMINGWAY: What else, Kevin? CALLER: Anyway, I draw cartoons myself. How do you get your work presented to a company? LEE: The best thing, Kev, is to take one of the company’s characters. I assume it would be a Marvel character. HEMINGWAY: That’s the goal of every stane and sable person… LEE: Take one like Iron Man, Daredevil, The X-Men, Conan the Barbarian… You do a couple of sample pages in pencil. Make up your own situation, your own drawings, and don’t bother putting in dialogue. Do a few panels, and shoot them in, address

Hey, Man, It’s E-Man! Frankly, Ye Editor admits to being startled at learning that Stan Lee had ever even heard of E-Man, the clever super-hero comicbook created by writer Nick Cuti and artist Joe Staton—let alone that he believed it was the concoction of Steve Ditko! But Stan was right about the ingenious nature of that series over the years, first at Charlton (as per this first-issue cover from Oct. 1973), later at other companies. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

A 1975 Radio Interview With Stan Lee

them to John Romita, our editor. If he thinks you’ve got the stuff, you’ll hear from him. HEMINGWAY: Really? LEE: Yeah, even if thinks you don’t have the stuff, you’ll hear from him. HEMINGWAY: You really do that? Have you ever used some of these people? LEE: Yeah, it happens. We’ve picked up a few rather good artists. Barry Smith just sent some stuff over the transom and we found him. You don’t know Barry Smith, but the Congressman guy knows him.

heavy and preachy and moralistic all the time. HEMINGWAY: Bor-ring! Bor-ring! LEE: Yeah. You can tell, after two minutes, forget it! It’s over. CALLER: What’s with the truss on Silver Surfer? LEE: Oh, the truss! After a while we looked at him and realized, “Son of a gun, this guy’s naked!” Then, we drew the truss and said, “Oh, my gosh, this looks like an idiot again!” So we drew him naked again. CALLER: Thanks! Bye! HEMINGWAY: [into phone] Hello, caller. Who is this?

HEMINGWAY: Wow. So that’s the way you do it. When you get rich and famous, you have to still call the show. Thanks for calling! [into phone] KABC, you’re on the air.

JACK KIRBY: Hello, this is Jack from Thousand Oaks. I was just wondering how I could send some samples in from this area...

CALLER: Hi, Carole. Hi, Stan. My favorite superhero is The Silver Surfer.

LEE: Hey, wait a minute... [to Hemingway] You know who “Jack from Thousand Oaks” is? [over phone] Incidentally Jack, I phoned you earlier tonight, you were out...

LEE: I was telling Carole that.

KIRBY: I know, I know!

CALLER: Whatever happened to him?

LEE: Why weren’t you at the drawing board? [to Hemingway] This guy on the phone right now is one of the greatest artists in the whole world! This is Jack Kirby, who does most of our top strips, and who started most of the characters with me. Of course, we’re

LEE: What happened: After a while, I wasn’t able to write him anymore because I was involved in saving the world and the UN, and all that. I loved the character so much, I couldn’t bear having someone else write The Silver Surfer, so we put him in limbo. Whenever I get a chance, I’m going to do him in book form and get someone like Simon & Schuster to publish it and sell it for more money than anyone can afford and it’ll be a coffeetable book.

HEMINGWAY: Michael said he got tired of The Silver Surfer because it became kind of heavy, and I guess he meant kind of preachy and moralistic, I think he said. Is that because it reflected your own life at that time? LEE: Yeah, I was

Barry Smith (now Barry Windsor-Smith)—next to some of his very earliest work for Marvel, an action page from The X-Men #53 (Feb. 1969) inked by Mike Esposito, and his final splash page for Conan the Barbarian (#24, March ’73), only four years later, as autographed by the young Brit and Roy. Not bad progress for a guy whose work, as Stan relates, basically came in “over the transom,” huh? Scripters were, respectively, Arnold Drake and Roy Thomas. Thanks to Brian Kane for the CTB scan. [X-Men page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Conan page TM & © Conan Properties International LLC.]

Conducted On-Air By Carole Hemingway

Stan Lee & Jack Kirby (left to right) in a photo taken at the MiamiCon in December 1975, at a time when Kirby had returned to Marvel and all seemed well with the world. That, of course, is also the period during which the Carole Hemingway interview took place. Thanks to James Van Hise and John Cimino. At right is a page from the heights of the days of Lee-Kirby collaboration: Fantastic Four #56 (Nov. 1966), as inked by Joltin’ Joe Sinnott. On it, the besieged F.F. prepare to fight back against Klaw, Master of Sound, who has invaded the Baxter Building. ’Way too much dialogue, of course—and yet, by means of all those word balloons, Stan turned Jack’s splendid several-panel sequence of Reed Richards arming the Thing in a hastily concocted CounterSonic Harness into a real triumph. When he first proofread it at his desk in ’66, youngster Roy T. laughed out loud at the combined art and dialogue in panel 4. For Ye Ed, it never got any better than this—not even in the Galactus Trilogy. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

talking about you to the wrong one... I could [tell Carole] you’re Michelangelo, and she’d say, “Mike who?”... I mean, culture she’s not dripping with. But anyway, it’s good to hear from ya! What are you doing listening to this nothing show? KIRBY: I’ve been drawing comics at a bar mitzvah here.

HEMINGWAY: Thank you for your call. Bye-bye.

LEE: I’ll be darned. Listen, I’m gonna be in San Francisco tomorrow. I’ll call you. Tomorrow night. It’ll be cheaper to call you from there.

LEE: Talk to ya later, Jack.

KIRBY: That would be fine. HEMINGWAY: Do you guys have anything else you’d like to say? While everybody’s listening... KIRBY: This has been a wonderful show really. I’ve been listening and... HEMINGWAY: Jack, you’ve got to be kidding. This has been probably one of my worst shows. KIRBY: Oh no, it’s just been great, because, well, because being in comics myself... LEE: “...being in comics”? He’s practically the whole comics business! KIRBY: Stanley’s covered a lot of details, and they’ve been extremely interesting, really.

KIRBY: So long! HEMINGWAY: That’s Jack from Thousand Oaks. LEE: You know, seriously... your listeners are gonna say, “My God, was that Jack Kirby? “You don’t know who you were talking to!? I’ve gotta spend hours with you later and tell you all about it. HEMINGWAY: In the Mercedes… I cannot believe… LEE: Hugh Hefner’s. Wait until Jack finds out. Hugh Hefner is probably listening and is going to call in and say, “Get that guy away from it!” HEMINGWAY: Jack, did you hear this? This is Stan Lee. The book is a paperback, a rather flimsy thing. LEE: Thanks a lot. HEMINGWAY: It’s called Son of Origins…

HEMINGWAY: Jack, you sound like a rather “stane and sable person.”

LEE: We’re giving it away later.

KIRBY: Well, I’ll buy that testimonial.

HEMINGWAY: Oh, my God, I would keep you on, but I can’t take anymore.

LEE: Jack, next time, call sooner and save me, will ya? KIRBY: Yeah, gee, I tried to get through and we all, you know… LEE: It was tough borrowing a dime way up there in Thousand Oaks!

LEE: I’ll tell you the whole history of the comicbook magazine. HEMINGWAY: You can tell me while we’re driving. [End of transcription; basically end of show]

Tributes To A Titan

A Few Of Those Who Worked For & With Him Remember STAN LEE Assembled by Roy Thomas

A/E

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Because another issue of Alter Ego (#150, to be exact) was dedicated to Stan Lee in conjunction with his 95th birthday, just under two years ago, I felt freer than I otherwise might have in setting up the precise contents for this one, which will be on sale nearly one year after his passing on November 12, 2018. I invited a handful of key people who worked editorially for Marvel Comics in New York City when Stan was on the scene as editor and/or publisher to share their thoughts about working with him. I realize I could have approached any number more, and perhaps I should have. Maybe some of those folks will share their thoughts with us for a future issue.

The first tribute-payers below are three of the surviving gents who served under publisher Stan as his editor-in-chief, presented in the order in which they served: myself, Marv Wolfman, and Jim Shooter. Two others, Len Wein and Archie Goodwin, sadly, have left us—and Gerry Conway, who served for a few weeks in early 1976, sent his apologies but did not at present feel up to putting his thoughts on paper. Others accepting our invitation were Tony Isabella, who came on staff in the early 1970s; David Anthony Kraft, who signed on a year or so later; and Steve Englehart, only briefly a staffer but another of Marvel’s top writers of the 1970s. Here are their thoughts, in roughly the order in which they were piped aboard, beginning with myself, because I came to work for Stan in July of 1965 and served as the company-wide editor (Stan and I agreed on the hyphenated title “editor-in-chief”) from 1972 to 1974… a period of a few months over two years….

A Trio Of Tributes by Roy Thomas Because I’ve written at length about Stan in many places, including in Alter Ego #150 and in the sizable Taschen book The Stan Lee Story (not to mention in 2014’s 75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen), I’ve decided to mostly limit my thoughts to those related to my final face-to-face meeting with him—on November 10, 2018—as it would turn out, less than two days before he passed away. First, though, I thought I’d reprint the few paragraphs I wrote in 2017 as an “Afterword” for the first, 1200-copy edition (counting 200 “artist’s proofs”) of The Stan Lee Story, which by sheer coincidence would go on sale at bookstores around the time of Stan’s death. That page would be replaced in the general edition of the book (published in July 2019) by a truncated account of our final encounter. Here is my original “Afterword,” by courtesy of copyright-holder Taschen: Stan Lee is a whirlwind I first encountered in the pages of Marvel Comics in 1961… then in person four years later. Ever since the latter day, he has been a dominant presence in my life, whether I was employed by Marvel at the time or not. For the next several years after 1965, he was for me a one-man course of instruction on the way to write—and to edit—thrilling yet humanized comicbook heroes.

Beyond “Bullpen Bulletins” The cover of the New York Daily News for Nov. 13, 2018, the day after Stan Lee’s passing. With thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Until I met him, I’d had other comics writers and editors after whom I might have patterned myself; but standing on his right hand, morning after weekday morning for years, mostly swept those other influences away, much like those rivers that Hercules channeled through the Augean stables. For here, I quickly realized, was a man who was very clearly in command of what he was doing as both writer and editor… and who knew how to get the best, the very best, out of writers and artists (and other editors) alike. This book, as was surely apparent long before you reached this page, is not and never was intended to be a biography. It is, rather, the story of one man’s—of Stan the Man’s—journey through the vine-encrusted jungles of 20th- and 21st-century popular culture, both reacting to what had come before and greatly influencing what has come after. In harness with some of the finest action and humor artists ever to wander into the mad, mad world of comicbooks, and working from his own personal and commercial instincts, only rarely with a preconceived road map, he charted a course that has been a pathway for all who have come since, whether they know it or not. (And mostly they do.) Working with and for him, in one capacity or another, for much of the past 50-plus years has been a privilege and good fortune of which a boy in the trans-Mississippi Midwest could scarcely have dreamed when first reading the four-color exploits of Captain America, the Human Torch, and the Sub-Mariner in the latter 1940s. Once, when it had abruptly occurred to him that there was an 18-year age gap between the two of us, Stan squinted at me and said, “You know, I could have been your father!” In many ways, Stan… you damn near were. My manager/pal John Cimino gave his POV of the events of November 10, 2018, in this issue’s guest editorial on pp. 2 & 3 of this issue. Here is my own, an expansion of the necessarily brief remarks that appear in the “Afterword” of the general edition of The Stan Lee Story. Both versions are based on notes I wrote on November 12th of last year— the day after I’d flown back from L.A. to South Carolina and the very morning I learned of Stan’s passing:

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

Man & Boy (Above:) Stan (The Man) Lee and Roy (The Boy) Thomas smile for John Cimino’s camera/phone on the afternoon of November 10, 2018, at Stan’s Hollywood Hills home. (Right:) One of a handful of times Stan and Roy appeared together in the pages of Marvel comics was the humorous 3-page backup done for the 1968 Amazing Spider-Man Annual, at the end of which Roy arrives (clad in his vintage Nehru jacket) carrying his fat, finished synopsis for the latest issue of The Avengers—barely two seconds after Stan and artists John Romita and Larry Lieber (the latter in glasses) have come up with the identical plot for an issue of Spidey! A caption on the splash panel says there were “No credits for this one ’cause nobody will take the blame”—but it seems fairly certain Stan wrote the script, while Larry penciled (working closely with John) and Mike Esposito inked. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I was fortunate enough to be able to talk briefly to Stan by phone a few times in his last year or so. One time was arranged with Keya Morgan, his then-“handler,” whom I’d dealt with for the past couple of years on other matters and with whom Dann and I had once had lunch. That phone call occurred soon after Stan returned from his trip to China in December 2017. I recall Stan mentioning how impressed he was with Hong Kong, in particular. He gushed, “I’ve always loved New York with all its skyscrapers, but you could put all of New York in one tiny corner of Hong Kong.” I told him I’d seen the online photo of him at the Great Wall of China, and he got a kick out of the idea of people seeing that picture. Around that same time, Keya and I were discussing my flying out to see Stan, which Keya said he thought would be good for Stan. I told him I was willing to fly cross-country, even though I knew the meeting would necessarily be brief so as not to tire Stan, and even though I knew that there was a fair chance that I’d arrive and Stan wouldn’t feel up to seeing me at all. However, soon afterward, the situation changed suddenly and Keya was out, and I kind of gave up on the idea that I’d get to see Stan again.

Not too long afterward, Michael Kelly, Stan’s conscientious and hard-working assistant, who by now served as the de facto editor of the Spider-Man strip I was ghosting, arranged for Stan and me to talk by phone another time. I believe that’s the occasion on which he and I discussed what a phenomenon the Black Panther film had become. Stan asked why I thought the character had suddenly become so big, when we’d never been able to make him that big a deal at Marvel. I told him what he probably already knew: that the time just hadn’t been right

Tributes To A Titan

No Rest For The Wicked (Above:) The 1968 Avengers Annual featured a humorous backup scripted by Roy, penciled by John Buscema, and inked by Frank Giacoia whose ending basically turned the tables on Roy-theBoy Wonder, who at the time sported an ill-considered goatee. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) A very fuzzy screen capture (and title card) from the episode of Stan’s 1976 cable-TV show Stan Lee’s Soapbox on which Roy guested, not long before he split for L.A. The show, alas, had such a poor range that Roy had to leave his apartment on East 86th Street in Manhattan and go ten or twenty blocks south to his girlfriend’s place in order to see it! Thanks to Jon Cornell, in whose studio it had been filmed. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

before. Still, he was happy that T’Challa was making waves after all these years. Back on pages 2 & 3, John Cimino outlined how, through the good offices of Desert Wind dealer Chandler Rice, and those of Stan’s then-current companion Jon Bolerjack in Los Angeles, he and I finally made it all the way across the country (from Boston and South Carolina, respectively) just for the chance to see him, even just for a few minutes. Dann had encouraged me to go, and had made the airline arrangements, something I’m terrible at. On the way to Stan’s in the car with Chandler Rice and his associate Jason, I told John I was a bit nervous about precisely what to say to Stan. John quipped, “Don’t worry, Roy. He doesn’t have the power to fire you anymore.” We laughed at that—but actually, he still did have that ability, since I was ghost-writing the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip for him, as I’d been doing since 2000.

At around 3:00 p.m., John and I were greeted at Stan’s gate by Jon B. and a fit-looking young man who I assumed was there to help with any heavy lifting that was needed. With John hanging back, Jon B. escorted me in to see Stan, who was sitting dressed casually (but nattily) in a big stuffed chair, his trademark sunglasses firmly in place. He sat facing a gigantic picture window, with a swimming pool and patio directly outside. After a slightly weaker than usual but still jaunty “Hiya Roy,” he went on: “You know, this trying to live to be 100 isn’t turning out to be nearly as much fun as I’d hoped it would be.” I figured he might’ve greeted one or two others with that joke, but I appreciated it just the same.

With This Ring I Thee Web! One of the 6500-plus Spider-Man comic strips that Roy T. wrote for (and often with) Stan, this one for March 13, 2015… it’s basically a gag in between adventures. Pencils by Larry Lieber, inks by Alex Saviuk. It was great when many newspapers began carrying daily strips in color. By this time, the strip was basically the only place in our dimension in which Peter and MJ were still married. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I told him he was looking fine—and, given what I knew of the fragile state of his health recently, that wasn’t too far off the mark. I gave him greetings from Dann. He asked how she was, and how our “farm” and all the animals on it were. I told him everything was going fine. I mentioned how amusing I found it that I’d be sitting in a tiny audience in Columbia, South Carolina, watching a Marvel movie (I usually go to matinees to avoid crowds) when suddenly that film’s “Stan Lee cameo” would come on, and there would almost always be someone even in that tiny audience who would laugh and/or start applauding. He said he wouldn’t mind doing more of them, if they could find a way for him to do them without his having to sit in a chair for hours having makeup applied.

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

Benedikt Taschen had come to see him a week earlier with a slightly smaller mockup of the book and had pointed out that very spread, saying it was from a time “when our two countries were fighting each other.” Stan says he’d immediately responded, “Yeah, and we beat your asses, too!” But it had been a good-natured exchange. That war was almost a lifetime away for Stan, and Benedikt Taschen had been born some years after it ended.

“Merry Marty Goodman”? This oft-reproduced photo of original Timely/ Marvel publisher Martin Goodman was taken in 1941, as he was scanning a proof of the cover of Captain America Comics #11, the first issue produced after Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had jumped ship for DC. By the later years of both men’s lives, Goodman and Lee had no kind words for each other, though they were related—twice over—by marriage.

After a minute or two, somehow the subject of Martin Goodman came up. Stan got a bit agitated, talking about how his publisher/uncle hadn’t liked the idea of Spider-Man, saying that people didn’t like spiders… how Goodman had thought that only adults, not teenagers, could be heroes… and how opposed Goodman had been to the idea of super-heroes having personal problems, which he didn’t think would interest people. I expressed the thought that perhaps the last big creative decision Martin Goodman ever made was commissioning Stan to make up a new super-hero group in 1961, and then getting out of the way. Stan kind of liked that. He abruptly spoke of how he couldn’t understand why the hell the original Spider-Man movie people hadn’t ever had Mary Jane say the phrase “Face it, tiger… you just hit the jackpot!” He was quite forceful about his feelings on that one. I concurred, because I’d had the same thoughts when watching the first film—although we agreed it was pretty good otherwise.

or wholly real.

I told him I appreciated the fact that the only change he asked for in the book’s text was for us to treat “comicbook” as one word—something I’d always been inclined to do, too. He repeated his preference for seeing it spelled that way. When Stan was told that the price for that 1000-for-sale copies of this special edition would be $1500 per, I could almost see his eyes widen behind those dark glasses. “Who the hell’s gonna buy it?” he asked with a shock that might have been partly feigned,

At about this point, I realized he was beginning to get tired. Jon B. ushered Bob Sabouni off first, so Stan and I could say a few more words. Then Jon brought in John Cimino, whom I introduced as my manager and friend. Stan grasped John’s hand earnestly and said, with all seriousness, “Take care of my boy Roy.” John and I both choked up at that, having no idea of what to say in response. With Stan’s and Jon’s permission, John took a couple of photos of Stan and me—then Jon B. snapped one of the three of us. After which John and I said our goodbyes and departed. Stan’s final words to us were, “God bless.”

He asked me how the Spider-Man strip was coming along, and I said fine. I mentioned that recently I had had Aunt May and The Mole Man almost get married, but that didn’t seem to particularly register with him. So I didn’t explain further; it didn’t matter. At this point, apparently by a prearrangement I knew nothing about, POW! Entertainment exec Bob Sabouni (from Stan’s company) dropped by, carrying what was the first true hot-off-the-presses copy of Taschen’s The Stan Lee Story, which I had written after Stan himself had recommended me for the job (back in 2013!). Because the huge book weighed fifteen pounds or more, Jon B. put a pillow on Stan’s lap so its edges wouldn’t bite into his legs, and Bob gave us a brief guided tour of it… even though we both knew that Stan’s macular degeneration didn’t allow him to see much of it that clearly. The book fell open to a double-page spread from the World War II years of Stan’s character The Destroyer battling a bunch of German soldiers. Stan related to us that Taschen publisher

Presenting—The Stan Lee Story! (Left:) Bob Sabouni, a major exec at Stan Lee & Gill Champion’s company POW! Entertainment. (Above:) German publisher Benedikt Taschen shows Stan a smaller, mockup version of The Stan Lee Story ten days before the latter’s death.

Tributes To A Titan

Always Leave ’Em Laughing! Roy and Stan share a laugh just prior to RT’s departure on November 10, 2018. Seen in the background is Jon Bolerjack, Stan’s attentive caregiver and “handler” during the last few months of his life. Photo taken by John Cimino.

As we were about to get into Chandler’s car outside, Stan’s daughter J.C. drove up. We hadn’t seen each other in some years, and never really knew one another well, but we exchanged effusive greetings and I reminded her how around 1970 Stan had given my first wife and me the adorable little poodle, Samantha, that a younger J.C. had formerly carried around in her big handbag, even bringing her into the Marvel offices on occasion. Then it was time to go. A few hours later, I was on a big jet headed back to the Carolinas. And, sadly, less than 48 hours after our brief visit, Stan passed away. I was both surprised… and not surprised. I had half expected him to go ever since his wife Joan had passed away the previous year… but I could also have easily visualized his summoning up the strength (had he wanted to) to go on for several years more. I’m eternally grateful to John Cimino and Chandler Rice for their help in setting up that flying trip… and to Jon Bolerjack for being open to, even enthusiastic about it. It meant even more to me than you can imagine. A couple of months later, on January 30, 2019, Stan’s company POW! Entertainment joined forces with movie director (and Stan chum) Kevin Smith and others to host a memorial event titled “Excelsior!”at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, where so many of Marvel’s recent string of hit films had played… and where, a few years earlier, Stan had had his handprints immortalized in cement. I couldn’t attend, but at their invitation (and arranged in part by Michael Uslan), Dann filmed me saying the few words I would have spoken, had I been there:

Stan Lee Memorial Remarks Hi, Stan. This is my chance to thank you for all that you’ve meant to my life these past fifty-plus years. First, as a reader back in 1961, you changed my view of what a comicbook could be, when you and Jack Kirby assaulted my senses with the very first issue of The Fantastic Four. Then, four years later, you hired me to be your assistant, your protégé, your… whatever. I was happy to go along for the ride, and I’ve never regretted making that decision. I’ve never forgotten that morning after the big power blackout on the East Coast in November of ’65. Denny O’Neil and I stumbled into the Marvel office after an evening of just sitting around in a restaurant… in the dark. You came in with most of an issue of Daredevil written. You and Joan had set up what you called a “candle brigade” at your house, and you had two-finger-typed out page after page of top-notch dialogue… and then you apologized to production manager Sol Brodsky because you hadn’t been able to write even more. That’s when I knew I was working for the right guy. You never let anything stop you. So thanks, Stan, for that bright July day when, maybe 15 minutes after we met, you stared out the window, down at the models strolling by on Madison Avenue, and you asked the question that changed my life forever: “So… what do we have to do to hire you away from National?” [Tributes continue on p. 30, after intervening photo & art pages.]

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

Making Book On It! (Above:) Stan and Roy pose on December 5, 2014, with a copy of their previous joint project, the equally massive tome 75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen, in a room in Taschen’s Beverly Hills bookstore. Photo by Josh Baker. (Left:) In 1967 Jack Kirby penciled and scripted a short humorous feature for that year’s Fantastic Four Annual whose splash page spotlights himself, Stan, and “Rascally Roy Thomas, Muscle of the Midwest.” Inks by Frank Giacoia. It was Roy’s favorite of his various “cameos” in the pages of Marvel Comics—and yes, it ranks above “Houseroy” at DC as well. Thanks to Jim Kealy for the scan (below) of Houseroy and Funky Flashman from Mister Miracle #6 (Jan.-Feb. 1972); art & script by Jack Kirby; inks by Mike Royer. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. & DC Comics, respectively.]

Tributes To A Titan

Spontaneous Tributes Robert Menzies of the UK sent us these tributes to Stan that sprang up soon after his passing. (From top to bottom:) Hard to see them here, but there are hundreds of messages to Stan on this page put together at a Tokyo comics convention… a Stan Lee mural at The Man’s old high school, DeWitt Clinton High, painted by Delania Alma, and sent by Nyla White, a junior there… a wall in the Gorbals, an area of Glasgow, Scotland (Robert says: “I love my city! My grandparents were married in the Gorbals.”).

Stan & Robert Menzies at the London Film and Comic Con 2014— Stan’s last European con.

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

Cartoons For A Comicbook Man (Clockwise from top left:) a cartoon by Brazil’s Marco Tulio Vilela—an editorial cartoon done Nov. 12, 2018, by Marshall Ramsey—and an Israeli tribute magazine. Thanks respectively to Art Lortie, Dan Hagen, and Robert Menzies. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Spelling Stan A 1978 memo from Stan re the spelling he’d like for “comicbook” and “superhero” in the pages of Marvel Comics. This was posted by Herb Trimpe’s daughter Sara. Thanks also to John Cimino.

[Art TM ^& © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Tributes To A Titan

Barry Pearl No stranger to these pages, Barry composed this montage of scenes of grief from the pages of Marvel Comics to represent his feelings at the passing of Stan Lee. We thank Barry for sharing this piece with us. Barry would also like to share one Stan anecdote that he’s held off telling for years: “I was at the New York Comic Con in 2008. I attended a panel on Timely and Marvel that featured Stan Lee, Joe Simon, Dick Ayers, Gene Colan, and a few others. At the end I went up to Dick Ayers, with whom I was friends. I wanted to get an autograph from Stan on his 1947 book Secrets behind the Comics. Little did I know that Dick had brought an edition of the very same book and was also trying to get an autograph from Stan! “Joe Simon had been sitting next to Dick. As I approached, Stan grabbed Joe Simon and gave him a big hug and whispered in his ear, ‘I never had the chance to thank you. You taught me so much, and I have used what you taught me throughout my entire career.’ “I wrote that down immediately because I didn’t want to forget it. I knew Stan intended it to be a whisper, but with both men near ninety years of age and their hearing diminishing, whispering can get quite loud! Stan was then mobbed and then whisked away by his handlers, so Dick and I never got the autographs!” But you got something far more valuable, Barry—a tale of two giants of the comics field, together for a passing moment—legends who had probably not had a chance to speak to each other in many years.

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

[Continued from p. 25]

Marv Wolfman was the first person after myself to hold the title of editor-in-chief of both Marvel’s color and black-&-white comics, which he did for much of 1975 through early 1976. In 1974, after I stepped down from that position, Stan decided to name Marv “executive editor” of Marvel’s black-&-white comic magazines, of which he had already been officially the associate editor and unofficially the functioning editor… and his colleague/friend Len Wein the “executive editor” of Marvel’s color comics line. Len, sadly, passed away in 2017. At the time he wrote the comments below, Marv was basically sidelined by an injury to his head due to a fall at his L.A. home, but he very much wanted (and deserved) to be a part of this issue: I was a Stan Lee fan long before I met him, let alone worked as an editor, then editor-in-chief under him. Indeed, it is very likely that once I became a teenager, without him, I, as well as thousands of other fans, would have stopped reading comics altogether. Back then the books were written and drawn for eight-totwelve-year-olds and were no longer relevant to teens about to enter high school. The common wisdom was kids would read comics for about five years, then grow out of them, only to be replaced by a new crop of pre-teens. But Stan’s comics, created in partnership with so many brilliant artists, were written and drawn for older, high school and even college students. But I don’t want to talk about Stan the writer. Everyone reading this has his or her own opinions of the early Marvel comics, and my fannish opinion holds no more weight than anyone else’s. I want to briefly talk about working directly with Stan, something only a handful of us experienced. Story one: Roy Thomas had hired me as an associate editor and I showed my thanks by almost getting fired less than a week later. I was writing for Marvel as well as acting as an associate editor when I was asked to proofread one of the comics I had actually written. A different assistant editor proofread my script while I went over the art. And I wasn’t happy with what I saw. Whoever inked the pages didn’t bother to ink most of the backgrounds the penciler had carefully and beautifully drawn. I went full-tilt Tasmanian Devil and complained to anyone who would listen and to even more who wouldn’t. That evening, at home, I got a call saying Stan wanted to see me first thing in the morning. Gulp! Nervous, I went into Stan’s office. The inker was there, too. He had heard I was bad-mouthing him and wanted me gone. I told Stan about the missing backgrounds. Stan asked the artist if it was true. He said no. Please note that this inker had worked at Marvel for years and was a personal friend of Stan’s. I was an easily replaceable kid Stan had never talked to before. But I had brought Xerox copies of the pencils and showed them to Stan, with backgrounds included. He looked them over, called in the head of production, and told him to have someone add back the backgrounds. He turned to me and said next time show them to production and they would

Marv Wolfman at the San Diego Comic-Con, 1982—and the splash page of Marvel’s GiantSize Chillers Featuring Curse of Dracula #1 (June 1974), with art by Marv’s longtime Tomb of Dracula collaborators par excellence, penciler Gene Colan & inker Tom Palmer. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

take care of it. In a few calm words he explained how things worked and sent me back to my desk to continue my job. For causing trouble like that, especially to a friend of the boss, anyone else would probably have fired me. But Stan was not interested in pointing blame at me or the inker or anyone else. He was only interested in making sure that the books were the best they could be. Deal with the problem, he indicated by example, but there was never any reason to make it personal. Valuable life lesson in all situations. Story two: (Please note I was not personally involved with this.) One evening, a bunch of writer, artists, and editors were goofing off, as they usually did at the end of a day, by pretendwrestling in the Marvel editorial offices. One of the participants tumbled ass-over-teakettle out of the office and into the hallway just as Stan was coming. Stan saw the “wrestler” skid into the wall and lie there. Stan calmly stepped over him and said, “Keep it up, men.” And continued walking down the hall, as if turning the Marvel offices into a Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment fighting ring was an everyday event. Because of Stan, the offices were fun to hang out at and why everyone loved working at Marvel. No serious corporate environment here. Unlike most execs, Stan always kept his office door open. If you needed to speak to him, you could tell if he was in or out. And

Tributes To A Titan

The Man Called Nova The first three words of the above heading weren’t officially part of the title of the new comic Marv originated with a Sept. 1976 cover date—but Stan’s contribution meant a lot to his young editor-in-chief! Pencils by Rich Buckler; inks by Joe Sinnott. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

That Kid Inside by Jim Shooter Not Crazy About It, But… Ye Ed (that’s Roy—Marv’s an editor, too, after all!) recalls that publisher Stan felt that the Wolfman-scripted back cover of Crazy Magazine #2 (Feb. 1974) was a bit strong for his tastes, as he would’ve preferred to think that McDonalds’ top execs would chuckle when they spotted a Mad-style parody of their hamburger chain, rather than blanch—but Marv was the editor, and what he wrote stood, except his “Over 15 Billion Dead” got changed to “Over 15 Billion Hungry.” He and Stan basically got along just fine! Thanks to Barry Pearl. [Text TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; photo TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Stan was easy to talk to, because he had one of those personalities that made him very approachable. I’d usually go in seeking help when I couldn’t figure out the answer on my own. I had created a character named Nova, and it had been green-lit to be a new monthly Marvel comic. There was only one problem. More than a few people told me they thought the name Nova sounded more like a woman’s name than a man’s. I loved the name but was worried they were right. Days passed, and I couldn’t figure out what to do or come up with a better name. Finally, I went into Stan’s office and asked what he thought. Without hesitating, he said, “Call it The Man Called Nova.” Problem solved. The man knew what he was talking about. I could disagree with him, as I often did while I was editor of Crazy Magazine, but I’d never met anyone who so thoroughly understood the comic medium half as well as he. He loved comics and, through his editorials and the comics themselves, he filled us with that same love of the medium. As a writer he excited us with great, fun stories. As an editor he managed to get everyone to do their best work. As a boss, he encouraged us not to copy his style but to find our own. That and more was Stan. I doubt we’ll see his like again.

At the turn of 1978, after the tenures of Wein, Wolfman, Conway, and (for nearly two years) Archie Goodwin, Jim Shooter succeeded the latter as Marvel’s editor-in-chief… the last of the breed to work closely and personally with Stan while The Man still lived in New York City, before (around 1980) he and his wife moved to Los Angeles, after which they only returned to the East Coast for brief stays. Knowing that Jim and I have not always had the best relationship (although I think we’ve always held a respect for each other’s talent and work ethic), Stan told me on more than one occasion that Jim and I reminded him of each other, in that each of us was willing to do whatever it took to get the job done. Nobody in the comics field could wish for higher praise than that from the master. I invited Jim to write about Stan for this memorial issue…. I’ve been asked a number of times to write a tribute to Stan. Every word I write is a tribute to Stan. That’s not ’nuff said, though. Here’s some more words. Stan Lee was the guest of honor at the Chicago Comicon in 1995. To celebrate his appearance, they held a Stan Lee Roast. Peter David was the Master of Ceremonies. The other roasters chosen by the con organizers were Sal Buscema, Roy Thomas, John Romita, Chris Claremont, Julie Schwartz, and me. John, of course, worked closely with Stan for a long time. Roy probably knew him better than anyone. I think I knew Stan pretty well. But there were several inexplicable choices in that group. Sal lived 300 miles away from New York. During my 12 years at Marvel, he came to the office exactly once, and that was after Stan had moved to L.A. As far as I know, Sal never had much contact with Stan. Julie Schwartz knew Stan only as the head guy at the company that was eating DC’s lunch. Chris Claremont occasionally saw Stan in the hallways or the elevator but never worked with him directly. For that matter, neither did Peter David. I was a last-minute recruit. Apparently, somebody canceled.

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

secret identity. Batman was still fighting The Penguin atop giant typewriters and toothpaste tubes. “So, I read the raggedy Marvels. “Drumroll…. “They were revolutionary.

Jim Shooter and Stan Lee in 1986—and Ron Zalme’s cover of the two of them for Marvel Age #8 (circa 1984). Thanks to Jim for both scans. [Cover TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Probably Charlton’s letterer, “A. Machine.” Sal made the usual, generic roast jokes. No real relevance to Stan. Julie reminisced about the rivalry between Marvel and DC (which, in realty, consisted of Stan and company clobbering DC; trust me, I worked at DC for much of that time). Chris recalled various hallway encounters and chats with Stan. Roy gave historical perspective and let his vorpal blade snicker-snack a few times in a reverently irreverent way. John, who is the most gentlemanly of men, told a few mild, funny stories. More than once he joked about Stan taking credit for everything. If you’re old enough to remember, you know that in ancient Bullpen Bulletins and letter columns, Stan himself occasionally kidded about taking all the credit—always as a punchline at the end of a heartfelt rave about a great artist like John.

“These days, lots of people forget, or they’re too young to remember, how amazingly different those comics were. A lot of the things that were revolutionary then are taken for granted now. However, 34 years ago Marvel comics were startlingly different. “Almost all the Marvels were written by this Stan Lee guy. “Boy, I wanted to do that. I wanted to be like Stan. “So, I studied—no, really, studied!—those Marvel comics. I learned to do a pale imitation of Stan. “That was good enough to get me a job writing comics for DC at age 13. “Marvel was taking off back then, in the mid-’60s. The people I worked with at DC—editors, writers, and execs—couldn’t understand why Marvel was succeeding and their sales were falling.

I think John didn’t realize that some people were promulgating the notion that Stan had actually, nefariously claimed creative credit that rightly belonged to Kirby, Ditko, and others. I’m very sure John wasn’t keeping up with the buzz in the fanzines. Well, he sort of inadvertently teed things up for me. Peter David’s introduction of me was: “Jim Shooter is to the creative community what Phillip Morris is to asthma sufferers.” Yes, I remember that word for word. Thanks, P.D. Here’s what I had to say, reconstructed from my notes. Forgive me for removing stutters and tongue tangles: “When I was 12, I spent a week in the hospital. No big deal. I lived. In any children’s ward in those days there were piles and piles of comicbooks. I’d stopped reading comics when I was eight, but I had time to kill. Some of the comics were familiar, like Batman and Superman. There were also this new kind I’d never heard of—Marvel Comics. “The DC comicbooks were in good shape, as if they’d hardly been opened. The Marvels were ratty and dog-eared. I took the road less traveled. The DC comics were the same as I’d gotten bored with years before. Lois Lane was still trying to discover Superman’s

Roasted! A group shot from the Stan Lee Roast held at the 1995 Chicago Comic-Con. (L. to r.:) Peter David, Chris Claremont, Roy Thomas, Jim Shooter, Stan Lee, Sal Buscema, John Romita, Julius Schwartz. Jim seems uncertain about Sal’s relationship with Stan, and it’s true they rarely worked together—but John B.’s little brother gave a hilarious account of his first meeting with Stan, in which he was terrified by his leaping on and off the furniture—while Julie and Stan had recently appeared at several conventions as what fans called “The Stan and Julie Show,” featuring the two most important Silver Age editors. Ye Ed’s real question is why he (Roy) looks as if he’s sticking his tongue out! The entire festivities were transcribed for Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1, in 1999.

Tributes To A Titan

“They just didn’t get it. “I remember being in the office and attending a meeting where the DC brain trust discussed the situation. Some writer held up an issue of Spider-Man and said, ‘Look! Two pages of Peter Parker talking to his aunt! The readers must be bored to tears.’ (No, we weren’t.) Another genius showed a page of The X-Men and said, ‘A whole page of the Angel blathering about the joy of flying…? Superman flies all the time!’ (Right. And, if it’s no big deal to him, why should we care about it?) “Aside: I could have told them why we, the readers, loved Marvel and were bored by DC, but being the newbie in the room I wisely kept my mouth shut. Second aside: Some DC people referred to me as their ‘Marvel writer,’ and they meant it as a dig. Bob Haney coined the insult, I believe. “Third aside: While DC sales were falling across the line, my regular book,

Fear Of Flying? Undoubtedly, the Angel flying sequence Jim referred to at that Roast is the one from The X-Men #17 (Feb. 1966), with script by Stan Lee, layouts by Jack Kirby, finished pencils by Werner Roth (as “Jay Gavin”), and inks by Dick Ayers. If A/E’s editor’s memory isn’t faulty, that full-page shot of Warren Worthington III winging it was added largely because Stan decided not to use a page Kirby had laid out earlier in the story—but it worked out gloriously, of course. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Adventure Comics, ‘featuring Superboy and The Legion of Super-Heroes,’ stayed at half a million copies sold a month during my four-plus years on the book. The ‘Marvel writer,’ though no Stan Lee by a long shot, held his own, a clue lost upon the DC intelligentsia. “Marvel heroes did things like launder their costumes. Get sick. Have fun. Screw up. Etc. “Stan’s sound-bite description of the Marvel style back then was ‘heroes with problems.’ But it was so much more than that. It was heroes with lives. “Revolutionary. “I finally got to work with Stan years later. I was hired as editor at Marvel and, two years after that, was promoted to editor-in-chief. During the 12 years I was there, I finally got to know the man who’d been my mentor by remote control, the man I’d tried to emulate.

My Name Is Legion One of Jim Shooter’s last Superboy [& Legion of Super-Heroes] issues before he left DC for Marvel was issue #212 (Oct.1975), with art by Mike Grell. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“Most of you who don’t know him personally probably think of him as the ultimate pitchman—all hype, always exaggerating, sort of the Crazy Eddie of comics. Let me tell you how he really is. This is the truth, no joke. People think

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

it’s a bluish green. “I practically had to twist George’s arm to get a green background once. I made the logo work. I showed the cover to Stan. He said, ‘Great!’ “George said, ‘See? Stan’s always changing his mind.’ “That’s another thing you’ll hear about Stan—that he changes his mind a lot. It’s not true. “One time, Stan was going over an Iron Man book with the then-current EIC. Stan said, ‘Doesn’t he have a nose?’

Jim Shooter Highlight Reel (Above:) Stan’s late-1977 memo announcing Jim Shooter replacing Archie Goodwn as Marvel’s editor-in-chief. Thanks to JS. (Above right:) While Jim Shooter had memorable runs on The Avengers and several other Marvel (and DC) titles, he’s most noted for writing (as well as editing, of course) the 12-issue limited series Marvel Super-Heroes Secret Wars, which set sales records. Cover pencils of #1 (May 1984) by Mike Zeck; inks by John Beatty. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

that his incredible enthusiasm must be a put-on, but no, let me assure you he’s always like that. It’s sincere. He’s an enthusiastic guy. He’s like the Energizer Bunny on speed. It’s not just when he’s talking Marvel. It’s his whole life. He walks like his pants are on fire. He used to run up the stairs, ten floors, because he hated waiting for the elevator. He had to have an office with a bathroom, because when he wanted to go, he wanted to go! “Stan does tend to speak in hyperbole. It’s natural to him. It gets him in trouble sometimes. You have to learn to interpret Stan a little if you work with him. ‘Never do that’ means ‘In this particular instance this idea doesn’t quite seem to work.’ “One time, Stan told George Roussos, the best cover colorist in the world, ‘Never make the background green.’ Well, I know what he meant. Most logos don’t show up well against mediumvalue colors like green, so usually it’s a bad choice. However, if you solve the logo problem, it’s fine. Yellow usually works, especially if

“Those Were The Days, My Friend…” Jim says of the above pic: “Stan gave me this photo. I don’t know when it was taken. Check out the rotary phone and that typewriter.” Jim says that he once sent Stan a birthday telegram which featured a “deliberately awful poem”: Remember how it used to be When you were only 63? We’ll be expecting much, much more Now that you are 64. And take it from a thirty-fiver Don’t drink tequila It’s bad for your liver. Stan sent his own double-telegram in response, which is depicted at right.

“What he meant was that George Tuska was drawing the mask a little flat and it didn’t look like there was room for Tony Stark’s nose under it. But what happened was that they started drawing Iron Man with this Tin Woodman nose. It looked like a bottleopener. Bad guys could open their beer with it.

Tributes To A Titan

“A while later, Stan saw Iron man’s new beak and was not pleased. And everyone said, ‘See? He always changes his mind.’ “Nah. “Stan is sort of living proof of how easy it is to be misunderstood. “I was lucky. I got to spend a great deal of time with Stan, not only working on the comics, but also assisting him for a while on the Spider-Man newspaper strip, which was drawn by some Italian artist—Michelangelo, I think. “I also worked with him on a few non-comics but comics-related projects. “I think I got to know him and understand him pretty well. I found him to be sincere, honest, rational, thoughtful, considerate, and consistent. “And brilliant. “I guess the point at which I really felt I knew Stan was in ’86. I was at his house. We were standing on his terrace, looking out over L.A. I said to him, words to the effect, you know, ‘Somewhere inside me, there’s still that twelve-year-old kid who can’t believe that I’m editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics and I’m standing here with Stan Lee.’ He said he knew what I meant, that somewhere inside him was the little kid he used to be, who was awestruck by all that had happened to him. He couldn’t believe that big stars and Hollywood moguls called him on the phone, and that some of them were his neighbors. “It may not seem like much, but that little moment of rapport is

Anniversary Schmaltz The Barry WindsorSmith cover of Fantastic Four #296 (Nov. 1986), the 25th-anniversary issue—and the sincerely grateful note that Stan sent Jim Shooter concerning the plot the latter had done for it so Stan could script that landmark event. [Cover TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

on the highlight reel of my life. It crystallized to me how important it was to keep that kid inside alive. “That’s where the joy is. And love lives. “Well, it wasn’t too long after that Marvel went through a period of corporate takeovers, being bought and sold. I ended up outta there. “I haven’t seen much of Stan since then. However, I’ve managed to use what he taught me to make a living one place or the next. I wish he’d taught me how to keep a job.

Personna Not Grata Ad company’s photo/plan for Stan’s Personna razor-blade commercial, done in 1976. Thanks to Jim Shooter.

“Now, eight years have passed. Looking back…well, it’s interesting. I set out to emulate Stan. As it turns out, we’ve had many more similar experiences than I realized. We both started writing comics professionally in our teens. Stan was around 40 when he did the work that made everyone marvel. I was around 40 when I did the

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

seem possible. I learned so much from him. So many of us in the business did; even those who never got to work with Stan owe a debt to his genius and inspiration. Long ago, speaking about comicbook writers, Steve Englehart wrote: “Stan is the father of us all.” Nice one, Steve.

Jim Shooter & Stan Lee at a big Denver convention, 2016. Also seen is a 1986 memo from Stan, in gratitude for a “Bullpen Bulletins” piece by JS about The Man. Courtesy of Jim S.

work that got me the most… Acclaim. Ahem. “Both of us suffered through being stabbed in the back by people we thought were close friends. People we trusted. “Both of us have been lied about, misquoted, slandered, libeled, and misjudged by people ignorant of the facts. Both of us have been falsely accused of taking credit for other people’s work. Both of us have seen credit for work we did, things we created, taken away. “Stan has borne it all with courage, grace, poise, and dignity. He’s remained a gentleman again and again, even when it was difficult. “I wasn’t there when the Marvel Universe and its characters were created. But I’ve spoken extensively with those who were, including Sol, Flo, Morrie, and others. I’ve worked with several of the key participants in that incredible creative collaboration, including Jack, Steve, Don Heck, Vinnie, and Michelangelo, to name a few. Although their contributions were huge, even indispensable, it’s clear to me that Stan was the guiding force, the linchpin, and the most important creator of the Marvel Universe. I worked with him closely. I saw him in action. He was and is The Man. “One thing I learned from Stan—actually, I guess I really learned this from Spider-Man—sometimes you just have to be content that you know the truth. “Stan, I want you to know that I’m still learning from you. By remote control again, unfortunately. You’re a hero to me and I’m still trying to emulate you. “Thanks to you, I’ll never lose that kid inside.” That was 1995. Now, here we are. Stan is gone. It just doesn’t

So, tell you what, fellow children, to honor him let’s give a good account of ourselves. So, if he’s watching, he’ll be proud. All you True Believers, too. He taught us all to face front.

Kid Stan – Outlaw by Tony Isabella Below, Tony Isabella remembers being hired as an assistant on the new Mighty World of Marvel magazine, which reprinted Marvel material for sale in the United Kingdom. My own memory is of Stan telling me he needed someone who could write press releases, Bullpen Bulletins-style pieces, and the like more or less in his style, and my feeling that Tony, whom I knew as a comics fan-journalist of some talent, could handle that assignment. Maybe Tony got bounced from one job to the other even before he walked in the door. What matters is that he became a writer and editor for Marvel for the next number of years, and he was good at it. Nowadays, he’s become best-known as the creator of Black Lightning, the DC super-hero who has his own WB TV series—but before he was the darling of the DC air waves, he was a Marvel man through and through…. I had two fathers. To put it more accurately, my career as a comics writer has two fathers. Louis Isabella encouraged my writing when I was young, building an “office” in the basement of our Cleveland home so I could write in relative peace. Stan Lee inspired my writing with his comics. I wanted to be part of the universe he created with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others. It was one of the most satisfying moments of my life when I introduced Lou to Stan when the former visited me in New York. Stan was one of my first bosses in comics, along with Roy Thomas and Sol Brodsky. Roy had hired me to assist Stan and Sol on The Mighty World of Marvel, the British comics weekly reprinting the earliest adventures of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the Hulk, and some other projects. I could not have had three better teachers. I wish I had been a much better student. Still, some of

Tributes To A Titan

Tony Isabella today—flanked by a key page from Marvel’s Black Goliath #1 (Feb. 1976), with art by George Tuska & Vince Colletta, and the cover of the first issue of his most noted creation, Black Lightning (April 1977), with art by Rich Buckler & Frank Springer. [TM & © DC Comics.]

work. I figured it was my role to share Stan at his most playful. This is my all-time favorite Stan Lee story: I kept in touch with Stan through e-mail and the occasional visit to Los Angeles. The last time I spent any real time with him was in 2014 at his POW! Entertainment offices.

what I learned in my nigh-daily interactions with them did stick. Back in Ohio. For decades, when “civilians” learned I was a comicbook writer, the question they almost always asked me was: Does that mean you draw the pictures? Then, over a decade ago, they started asking a different question: Do you know Stan Lee? Their faces lit up when I answered. Stan was one of the best-known comicbook creators in comics history. Maybe even the best-known. People who only knew him through his countless cameos in Marvel’s movies loved him. So did I. Stan’s passing was not unexpected, but it still hit hard. I learned of his death when I came home from a convention and to hundreds of messages about the sad news. One was from a Cleveland TV station, which had interviewed me about Black Lightning, asking if I could drive down to the station to talk about Stan on their early evening news program. I threw on the cleanest suit I had and, on arrival, walked right onto the set a couple minutes before I was scheduled to go on. No time for makeup. Cleveland viewers got to see me as my hideous natural self. But I tried to do justice to Stan’s memory. He was and remains an inspiration to me. Tributes to Stan Lee have become commonplace at comics conventions and other related events. I’ve done some of them. So many talented creators sharing their thoughts about Stan and his

There was a framed enlargement of the photo cover of Black Rider #8 [March 1950]. No mistaking the eyes of the masked “Mystery Man of the Western Range.” Stan had posed for that cover. After answering Stan’s questions about my own life, I mentioned the cover and said he should have been a movie star. Stan chuckled and told me a story of his outlaw youth. Stan was an experienced rider. He used to walk through Central Park while playing “hooky” from his job at Marvel. He often passed the stables where people could rent horses to ride through the park, albeit on the approved riding trails. On one such day, Stan rented a big beautiful horse by the name of Redman. Stan yearned to let this gorgeous animal go full-tilt in violation of the law and the stable

How The Mighty Are Risen! Tony’s first assignment for Stan and company was to assist-edit on the first black-&-white Marvel-UK weekly reprint title The Mighty World of Marvel, as per this cover for the Dec. 12, 1972, issue, as penciled by Jim Starlin and inked by Joe Sinnott. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

rules. He gave in to the temptation and they were off. The duo were spotted by a mounted police officer, who immediately gave chase, shouting obscenities at the unmasked mystery man of the Manhattan Plains. Now, Stan could have slowed down, but he was having too good a time. He and Redman kept going full-speed. Consummate actor that he was, Stan pretended he didn’t have control of his steed.

Stan Lee—Rider/Editor

The officer’s tone changed immediately. He followed the racing Stan and Redman all the way back to the stables, constantly shouting out encouragement to Stan that he wouldn’t let him get hurt. Stan Lee, in a rented outfit, posed for the cover of Timely’s Black Rider #8 (March 1950), which was actually the series’ first issue. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

When they miraculously got back to the stables okay, the officer quickly dismounted and ran over to Stan. He asked if Stan was okay, if he needed medical attention. His concern moved Stan.

As much as I admire all that Stan Lee brought to comicbooks and to my own life, I think I will always cherish his impish side as much. Stan made comics great, but he also made them fun. Happy trails to you, my fearless leader. I’ll see you down the road when it’s my time for that last ride.

STAN LEE—As I Knew Him by David Anthony Kraft Dave Kraft was one of the last people I hired at Marvel before leaving the editor-in-chief job, and he stuck around to do a lot of writing and editing, including handling Marvel’s very own fan magazine, F.O.O.M. [Friends of Old Marvel]. He also conducted one of the better Stan Lee interviews, for that magazine. Stan was never anything but above board and honest in his dealings all the years I’ve known him, and was always willing to go above and beyond—even to providing a foreword to my Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender graphic novel co-written with Onrie Kompan, with no interest in the property other than that he liked what he saw, at no charge of any kind, of course. That’s the Stan I knew and loved. His door truly was “always open,” and he gave freely of his time and advice—on stuff unrelated to comics, even. It’s a funny thing (as he’d say), but we had many long conversations—and never about comics! He stayed positive in the face of calumnies and accusations, was quick to admit error and to forgive and forget (I know firsthand!) when he was wrong (albeit couched in humor, of course). Stan had a terrific sense of humor and was bad to interrupt you in mid-sentence to correct mispronounced words (though not

Stan put his hand on the officer’s shoulder and said: “Officer, I was really scared out there. But, once I knew you were with me, I knew I’d be okay.”

“Stan The Man & Dave The Dude” That was the copyline beneath the photo of publisher Stan Lee and editor David Anthony Kraft in F.O.O.M. #17 (March 1977), Marvel’s own fan-club magazine. That issue also contained Dave’s excellent interview with Stan, which has been reprinted since. As seen at right, Stan wrote a foreword to Yi Soon Shin: Warrior and Defender, a graphic novel co-written by David Anthony Kraft and artist Onrie Kompan. Cover art by the latter. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Tributes To A Titan

Creatures Features (Left:) The splash page of one of the earliest stories DAK wrote for Marvel: the “Man-Wolf” lead story from Creatures on the Loose #33 (Jan. 1975). Pencils by George Pérez, inks by Klaus Jason. (Right:) Dave had a fairly long run on Marvel’s The Defenders, as sampled by this splash from issue #46 (April 1977), which he co-scripted with his friend Roger Slifer. Art by Keith Giffen & Klaus Janson. Thanks to Barry Pearl for both scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

appreciative of the favor being returned, LOL). As I’m sure he’d have been first to say, his major flaw was impatience. He’d rather walk up six flights of stairs than wait for an elevator, as he often did at 575 Madison, and didn’t always allow time enough before losing patience. But that was also his strength, the reason he got so much done. I once said something to the effect that it must be nice having a secretary to straighten up and clear his desktop of work (Stan always had a spotless office), to which he retorted that he couldn’t stand having work waiting on him, so he did everything as soon as he could, immediately if possible. Then Stan shrugged and said it might not always be his best work, but by God, it was done and that’s why there weren’t piles sitting around everywhere. Roy Thomas and Sol Brodsky both attested to that unswerving dedication to getting things done, in awe that even during the 1965 NY blackout, Stan still completed his script for a story due the next day—by candlelight. Stan took a lot of credit but really doesn’t get nearly enough. He not only revolutionized comics, he’s really been the template for revolutionizing mainstream movies with crossovers and flippant but well-defined heroic characters that he established first with comics. If not for the influence of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby on me and countless others in our formative years, we’d all be the poorer for it today.

Steve Englehart Stan must be one of the youngest members of whatever afterlife he chose for himself. Sure, he was 95 when he died, but in his head, I imagine he was always 17. A lot of people do that—see themselves at a certain age even as their outer years go by, and 17 is popular. (I never talked to him about it, but maybe one or two of the others did.) In any event, Stan was in his 40s when he wrote about Peter Parker, and Peter Parker is a very accurate high school kid. Stan wrote everybody else, of course, but Peter has a real consciousness that rings true—truer, maybe, than his in-his-40s Reed Richards. Stan was 17 when he started filling inkwells at his uncle’s comic business, 18 when he got his first story published, and not yet 19 when he became editor. So somewhere in between there Stan said, “This is who I am,” and a teenager became a hero. When I came to work in the Bullpen, Stan was still in his office at the right rear (he was 49). He was cheerful and open to me—he was Stan—but we didn’t go out for beers. He was the editor-inchief, and I was a six-week fill-in editorial assistant. However, I ended up staying on, and a few months later, he called me into his office and asked if I had any Fantastic Four ideas. I didn’t, but the next day I had a complete plot for him. It was a follow-up to FF #39-40, when Daredevil guest-starred. Stan read it and said, “We’re in a different place now.” Then he created Gabriel, the new herald of Galactus. A few months later he gave up his writing and turned

Marvel Staffers Remember Stan Lee

of us by then. Around the year 2000, he was running Stan Lee Media, which was going to produce webisodes of super-hero stories. In time, the Internet would prove too slow for decent animation, and his partner would run off to Brazil, but before that, he had a studio going with dedicated people—Steve Gerber, Russ Heath, among others. He hired me to write a series about a hero with vampire powers but not a vampire; it was, and is, a good idea. One day, we were talking about whether our guy was immortal, too, and he (age 78) told me about a thing he thought had helped his longevity: he liked to write standing up. I had heard of writers like that but had never seen one in the wild. If I were going to meet one, though, it didn’t surprise me that it’d be him. The last time Stan and I talked was at the Doctor Strange movie premiere. He was then 93. We were both enthusiastic about the film, and if the delivery of his thoughts was of a man who’d seen it all, the thoughts themselves were the thoughts of a teenager who loved comics. He really liked the floating cloak. It seems to me there are two types of comics fans: some are childlike and some are childish. Stan could be childish sometimes, as can we all, but mostly he was childlike. Maybe teenager-like, but young at heart for sure, for all of his nearly 96 years. That’s what I would credit for his longevity—how can you die of old age when you’re young? Well, nobody’s immortal physically, but some people are immortal historically, and Stan Lee was one of them. There are plenty of people who knew him better than I did, but I’m damn glad I got to know him in whatever way.

Steve Englehart

Stan Lee Remembered by Richard J. Arndt

back in the day, and the splash page of Marvel Premiere #14 (March 1974), with art by Frank Brunner. This was the issue whose makeshift defense led Steve to—well, we’ll let him tell the story, in his rhapsodic reminiscence. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the art scan. [MP page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

his attention to Hollywood. So I had only a few months in the same bioregion with him, and that’s what they consisted of—but I am damn glad I got to know Stan Lee in whatever way. I posited Stan in an afterlife before. There’s a good chance he didn’t believe in one, but he had the editor’s eye for religion and politics. The story’s been told many times, but when Frank Brunner and I did a story about God in Doctor Strange, we heard from New York that Stan might want to soften it. It was right at Christmastime and I was about to fly to Indianapolis by way of Dallas, so I wrote a letter to Mr. Lee complimenting him on his wonderful story. I signed it Rev. So-and-So, gave an address in Dallas, mailed it in Dallas—leaving no trace for Stan’s crack team of investigators to track me down. It worked; Stan relaxed. The problem came later, when the occasional boasting at parties about this coup drifted far enough to get back to Stan. Fortunately, he’d had several years in California before I ran into him again at San Diego, and fortunately he did know me, so it was just a funny anecdote for both

Richard is an exception to our criteria for inclusion in this section. As Alter Ego’s chief interviewer for the past few years, he has talked to many people who worked with, for, or (competition-wise) “against” Stan Lee over the years—and we wanted to include his words here….

Have A Cloak! It’s The Real Thing! Stephen Strange’s cloak of levitation basically “comes alive” in the 2016 film with Benedict Cumberbatch—just as it had often seemed to be since it had been introduced in the old Lee-Ditko “Doctor Strange” feature in 1960s Strange Tales. Steve reports that Stan liked that facet of the flick! [TM & © Disney.] Steve is pictured in spring of 2016 at a con in Portsmouth, England, where he and Ye Editor last ran into each other.

Tributes To A Titan

Stan Lee was a hero to young readers in the 1960s and 1970s. In later years, to some, he became something of a more controversial figure. But during the course of his life, he developed Marvel Comics into a powerhouse. Was he solely responsible for that? Of course not. But he, with considerable help from his artists and editorial staff, was at the forefront of a sea change in how comics were perceived and the respect that they deserved. Along the way he co-wrote the first explicit civil rights story (in Sgt. Fury) in comics since EC Comics’ color line was canceled eight years earlier. He co-created with Jack Kirby comics’ first black Richard Arndt super-hero. Their Fantastic Four and the final panels of Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), in which the Black Panther comic was the first indication unmasks for the first time. Script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby, inks by Joe that a super-hero team could Sinnott. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [F.F. page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] also be a family, with all its dysfunctional aches and pains, weren’t quite as true as the reality... well, so be it. The only possible and not just a collection of way that myth can become reality is if people believe it and work random heroes. It was Stan Lee towards making the myth a genuine reality. The Stan Lee the public who wrote “With great power saw was likely part-myth and part-reality. Stan Lee wasn’t perfect, there must come great responsibility.” It is a declaration that holds but what he gave us for so many years still has the potential to as true today as then and is a much more far-reaching and bold be as perfect as possible. He gave us so much. And that’s worth statement about life in general, than simply a comics cliché. remembering, which is what I plan on doing. His work, along with, first and foremost, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, while not neglecting the contributions of Larry Lieber, Don Thanks to Marv, Jim, Tony, Dave, Steve, and Richard Heck, Dick Ayers, Sol Brodsky, Flo Steinberg, Stan Goldberg and for being a part of this memorial issue to Stan. others, created Marvel Comics. Not just the mythic universe of the books themselves but the mythic Bullpen as well. And if the myths

Art by John Romita. Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

STAN LEE & MOEBIUS When Titans Clashed—Together! by Jean-Marc Lofficier

only worked with Stan once—on the Silver Surfer graphic novel he did with Jean “Moebius” Giraud in 1987-88.

Jean and I, who were then business partners, first met Stan in a one-on-one at the American Booksellers’ Association convention in May 1987 in Anaheim, California, then again at the San Diego Comic-Con a couple of months later. Stan was very eager to find a way to work with Jean, and the feeling was reciprocated. The problem was that Jean was unfamiliar with most of the Marvel characters. He had first discovered them in their French editions in 1969 in the magazines Fantask, then Strange, published by Editions Lug, the current successor of which is Hexagon Comics, of which I am today editor-in-chief. The one series that had most impressed him was Stan and John Buscema’s glorious Silver Surfer of 1968-70, which had garnered much praise from French writers and artists, and had even been wonderfully parodied by top cartoonist Marcel Gotlib

Jean Giraud (aka “Moebius”) & Jean-Marc Lofficier That’s “Moebius” on the left, around the time of his and Stan Lee’s Silver Surfer: Parable graphic novel—while Jean-Marc is seen (on right) walking his dogs in the countryside earlier this year. Jean Giraud, of course, drew and colored the cover of the Marvel/Epic graphic novel. The two separate issues won the 1989 Eisner Award for “Best Finite/Limited Series.” Thanks to Jean-Marc for the photo of himself; the pic of Moebius was found on the Internet. We figure you know what Stan looks like by now—and alas, we have no photos of him and Moebius together. [Parable cover TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

in his humor magazine Fluide Glacial (which also published Carmen Cru, which my wife Randy and I translated for the US market under the title French Ice). So, when we had lunch at Comic-Con, I suggested the Surfer as the best “candidate” for a collaboration. This was greeted enthusiastically by Stan, since it was his favorite character. I also suggested to Stan that he should write a stand-alone story, with just the Surfer, without a plethora of other Marvel guest-stars, like the other stand-alone he had done with Jack Kirby to try to sell a Surfer movie, which had ended up being published by Simon & Schuster in 1978. This was, he said, something that fit his vision perfectly, and he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing otherwise. Jean was very intent on having his name on a “real” American comicbook, one printed on newsprint, colored with the Ben Day process. Archie Goodwin, who was then Epic’s editor, came up with the concept of publishing the story as two comics first, reusing the original Surfer logo from the ’60s, then collecting it in a jacketed hardcover with some additional features six months later. Stan went home to write the plot, almost suffering from stage fright, which I thought was both surprising and endearing. After all, if Moebius was Moebius, he was Stan “The Man” Lee. And Jean was not an intimidating figure; he and Stan had visibly clicked during the lunch and had found much in common in their philosophies of life. I genuinely don’t recall how long it took Stan to write the plot

Stan Lee & Moebius

“The Coming Of Gallic-tus?” (Above:) French cartoonist Marcel Gotlib’s parody of the Stan Lee/John Buscema Silver Surfer comic first appeared in L’Echo des Savanes #7 in 1974. Thanks to JeanMarc Lofficier. [TM & © Marcel Gotlib.] (Top right:) The last real comics collaboration between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was their 1978 Simon & Schuster graphic novel The Silver Surfer—which resembled a replay of 1966’s Fantastic Four #48-50, only with the F.F. replaced by a gal named Ardina. Inks by Joe Sinnott. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

of what became Parable. I’d say a couple of weeks, perhaps a month, but I’m not sure. Eventually, I did get the typewritten plot in the post (remember the post?) and took it to Jean who, at the time, lived in a lovely house in the hills near Topanga in the L.A. area. I liked it, but my opinion in the matter was irrelevant; however, I thought Jean would like it, too, and I was proven right. He was delighted with it. I remember that Stan called me a few days later and, sounding rather insecure, asked if Jean had liked his story; and he was over the moon when I reported that he had, indeed, very much loved it. Jean then broke down the plot in rough pencil breakdowns (some of which were reproduced in that first hardcover edition), ending up with 43 pages (the story was supposed to have 44), which provoked his admiration about Stan’s plotting ability. He often had to add or cut bits when working with his other writers. Truth to tell, I “plotted” the third

War And Pieces Penciler John Buscema rendered his own version of Edward Hicks’ famous 1826 painting “The Peaceable Kingdom”—for Stan Lee to script, and his brother Sal B. to ink—in The Silver Surfer #4 (Feb. 1969). Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

When Titans Clashed—Together

15—which took a few extra days to be drawn, as Jean was still figuring out how to make the Surfer “his” and not a pale copy of Big John Buscema’s. (One of his earlier attempts was later used as a cover for Marvel Age and was later issued as a poster, but Jean was never satisfied with it.) The Surfer eventually entered the story stage left, and the rest followed satisfactorily until the conclusion. Jean delivered fully inked, finished pages, and Stan wrote his script and did the balloon placements on photocopies. Jean insisted on doing the lettering himself, feeling that the line work of the letters had to match that of the inked art. The lettering was done on tracing paper, or ordinary paper, and superimposed over the art by the Marvel offices in New York. Despite his best efforts, English not being his mother tongue, Jean made a number of typos, which I fixed myself with liquid paper. If you ever purchase an original page of art with its lettering overlay, I’ll be happy to sign the latter! Jean laid out the coloring by writing the Ben Day numbers on another set of photocopies. It was very hot that summer, and the quality of the print run on #1 was affected by the high temperatures; but #2 came out just fine. Jean was thrilled to finally hold a “real American comic” with his name on it in his hands. I don’t think Stan ever saw the appeal in that, but he was happy to humor Jean; and he certainly was thrilled when he saw the beautiful hardcover that Archie, Margaret Clark, and Robbin Brosterman put together a few months later.

Surf’s Up! (Left:) The original art of one of Moebius’ earlier studies of The Silver Surfer, with which the artist, says Jean-Marc, “was never satisfied.” (Right:) The cover of the June 1, 2000, issue of Marvel Age, the company’s own “newszine,” which utilized that art. At some stage, the art was also turned into a full-color poster. Thanks to Jean-Marc Lofficier. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

page of the second comic to make up the page count. I initially intended it to be a flashback to #1, but when I showed it to Stan, after apologizing for the initiative, he was thrilled with it, said it was a great idea, but he’d script it as part of the ongoing narrative— and it worked. The funny thing is that Jean ended up mistakenly drawing two page 7s; the second one was cut from the comic and appeared only in the hardcover, with a bit of additional last-minute scripting by Stan. Jean also insisted on redrawing an entirely new splash page for #2, the original of which was printed in black-&-white in the hardcover. If Stan had experienced some stage fright before writing the plot, it was now Jean’s turn to feel the same at the prospect of having to draw the mythical Silver Surfer. Strangely, drawing Galactus was no problem, but he definitely had cold feet at drawing the famous “sky-rider of the spaceways.” Stan’s plot did not unmask Norrin Radd in his full silver brilliance until page

It was Jean’s idea to present Stan, as a gift, the beautiful painted cover he had drawn especially for the hardcover edition. Later, I saw it hanging in his office; I believe the New York people once needed to borrow the original, and Stan put them through the wringer to make absolutely certain he would get it back. There isn’t much more to add. We would discuss with Stan during our occasional lunches the possibility of another story, but I don’t think either his or Jean’s hearts were really into it. The two giants had met, like Cyrano and D’Artagnan, worked together to great effect, and any encore would have been entirely superfluous. And now for something completely different… This story happened long before I met Stan, but in a “six degrees of separation” fashion, it involved a number of people with whom Randy and I later worked and became friends: Len & Ann Mogel, Michael Gross, and Roy Thomas. During a trip to Paris in the mid-’70s, the ground-breaking French comics magazine Métal Hurlant, which was launched in 1975 by Moebius, Philippe Druillet, and others, caught the eye of Ann Mogel, the wife of then-National Lampoon publisher, Len Mogel. Len decided to license the rights to publish an American edition, Heavy Metal, which came out in 1977 and first introduced

Stan Lee & Moebius

However, such threats were treated at the Lampoon with the scorn they deserved, and, being a merry band of pranksters (especially co-editor and co-founder Doug Kenney), knowing as we all do that dynamite is harmless when inert, the editors thought it funny to play with the sticks, throwing them around the office in mock panic, doing Yosemite Sam impersonations, and other hi-jinks. After all the fun had been had, someone decided to call the New York Fire Department to find out how to dispose of the dynamite. Clearly, the sticks couldn’t just be discarded in a wastepaper basket. The fireman at the other end of the line asked a number of routine questions, one of which was, “In what condition are the sticks?” When told by one of the editors that they were “a little damp,” there was a silence on the line. The kind of silence that precedes public executions. “It’s called sweating,” explained the fireman in a very slow, articulate and patient voice. “It means the sticks are old, the nitroglycerine is no longer stable, and it is coming out. They could go off at any time. You are going to leave them exactly where they are, not play with them, not touch them at all, evacuate the building, and we’re going to send a hazmat team to remove them.” And so it went: the entire building was evacuated; a crew of firemen with prongs and heavy steel boxes filled with sand came, and the threat was averted. I heard the other half of the story, much later and quite by accident, from Roy Thomas. For, you see, Marvel was, at that time, located in the same building as the Lampoon, just a couple of floors away, and Roy remembered well the day of the “bomb scare.” And that part of the story is his.

A Parable Beauty Is Born! A climactic page from the 1988 Lee/Moebius Silver Surfer: Parable graphic novel. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Moebius’ work to American readers. One of the early art directors of National Lampoon was Michael Gross, who left the company before Heavy Metal started. Michael was one of the creators responsible for the infamous January 1973 cover, “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” After leaving the Lampoon in 1974, he became associate producer on the Heavy Metal animated feature, which involved adapting a couple of Moebius stories, and Ghostbusters, for which he designed the famous logo. During our time as film journalists, Randy covered Heavy Metal for L’Ecran Fantastique and Ghostbusters for American Cinematographer.

It would appear that the building manager and a fire marshal went to talk to the Chief Officer of all the tenants in the building in order to tell them why they had to evacuate for a few hours, the time necessary for the NYFD to remove the dynamite. Roy’s office was close to Stan’s, and his door was wide open. The first clue he had that something unusual was going on was when he saw Stan zooming past his door in the direction of the exit like a rocket. Or as Roy later put it, “I never saw Stan walk that fast, with such long strides.”

Michael passed away in 2015, and the first half of this story is his. Back to National Lampoon in the early 1970s… When you publish a satirical magazine as sharp as the Lampoon was, one thing you’re going to get is hate mail—a lot of hate mail. Plus a few parcels from the hard-core haters, usually containing dog sh*t or bullets. But that day, what the Lampoon received in the mail was… sticks of dynamite! Mind you, there were no wires, no fuses, no timer mechanism, but the substance of the message was clear.

Buy This Magazine Or We’ll Shoot These Editors! National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney (left) and art director Michael Gross (right) flank the infamous cover of the Jan. 1973 issue—and Gross’ original sketch therefor. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

When Titans Clashed—Together

Somehow, in his haste to evacuate Marvel’s most precious asset, Stan appeared to have temporarily forgotten about the rest of the staff. Fortunately, the fire marshal took over, and the entire Bullpen was soon standing on the sidewalk outside, where they stayed for several hours, gossiping about what had happened. Stan had left and never returned that day. Roy himself eventually got bored standing around and wandered off to get a haircut. But—“the entire Bullpen”? Not quite. Colorist George Roussos, securely entrenched in a corner behind a wall of self-erected filing cabinets for his own privacy, ignored the threat, saw no reason to waste precious hours, and remained working throughout the emergency. And, being somewhat hidden, no one thought of forcibly removing him, until much later! I have always wondered if that scene wasn’t present in Jack Kirby’s mind (although he wasn’t there that day, he must have been told) when, at the end of the classic Mister Miracle #6, when Colonel Mockingbird’s house is about to explode, attacked by the Female Furies, the somewhat mean-spirited Stan Lee caricature that is Funky Flashman throws his manservant Houseroy to the Furies and runs away while his inherited home bursts into flames behind him. Sometimes life imitates art; or is it the other way around? Jean-Marc Lofficier is the editor-in-chief of Hexagon Comics in France, where he now resides once more with his wife Randy. In the 1980s they contributed to both DC and Marvel Comics, often in collaboration with Roy Thomas. At that time they were also Jean Giraud/Moebius’ partners in arranging for Marvel to publish much of the artist/writer’s output, both his “Moebius” work and his Western strip, Lt. Blueberry. NOTE: The rest of this page and the following one feature Jean “Moebius” Giraud’s pencil sketches for various scenes from Parable, courtesy of Jean-Marc Lofficier and, of course, Marvel Comics.

Stan Lee Was Dynamite! (Left to right:) Steve Englehart, Jean-Marc Lofficier, Roy Thomas, and the moderator (whose name, alas, we don’t seem to have) hold a slightly chilly outdoor “Stan Lee Tribute” panel at a con in Portsmouth, England, on May 4, 2019. This was the occasion on which first Jean-Marc, then Roy, told their POV tales of the dynamite sent to the National Lampoon offices in the early 1970s. Photo by John Cimino.

Stan Lee & Moebius

Battleship Galactus Two more or less fully penciled sketches by Moebius of Galactus, from the artist’s 198788 sketchbook. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

THE WORLD OF TWOMORROWS 25 ANNIVERSARY BOOK TH

In 1994, amidst the boom-&-bust of comic book speculators, THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #1 was published for true fans of the medium. That modest labor of love spawned TwoMorrows Publishing, today’s premier purveyor of publications about comics and pop culture. Celebrate our 25th anniversary with this special retrospective look at the company that changed fandom forever! Co-edited by and featuring publisher JOHN MORROW and COMIC BOOK ARTIST/ COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine’s JON B. COOKE, it gives the inside story and behind-thescenes details of a quarter-century of looking at the past in a whole new way. Also included are BACK ISSUE magazine’s MICHAEL EURY, ALTER EGO’s ROY THOMAS, GEORGE KHOURY (author of KIMOTA!, EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE, and other books), MIKE MANLEY (DRAW! magazine), ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON (MODERN MASTERS), and a host of other comics luminaries who’ve contributed to TwoMorrows’ output over the years. From their first Eisner Award-winning book STREETWISE, through their BRICKJOURNAL LEGO® magazine, up to today’s RETROFAN magazine, every major TwoMorrows publication and contributor is covered with the same detail and affection the company gives to its books and magazines. With an Introduction by MARK EVANIER, Foreword by ALEX ROSS, Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ, and a new cover by TOM McWEENEY! SHIPS NOVEMBER 2019! (224-page FULL-COLOR Trade Paperback) $34.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-092-2 (240-page ULTRA-LIMITED HARDCOVER) $75 • RESERVE YOURS NOW! Only 125 copies available for sale, with a 16-page bonus Memory Album! HARDCOVER NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH DIAMOND—DIRECT FROM TWOMORROWS ONLY!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

STAN LEE, AL LANDAU, & The Transworld Connection by Rob Kirby

Stan Lee and web-headed friend in a photo taken in 1974, during the period when Lee and Landau were publisher and president of Marvel Comics, respectively. Thanks to Ger Apeldoorn.

Al Landau in a photo taken sometime in the 1980s. Courtesy of his grandson, Robert Landau. Albert Einstein Landau was the godson of Albert Einstein... named after the renowned physicist in honor, Rob Kirby discovered, of his having helped to raise funds to keep The Jewish Telegraphic Agency going between the world wars.

hile greater knowledge and insight into comics’ history has been accumulating in print during recent decades, both in book form and in magazines such as this one, there are possibly have become aware of the Mighty World Of Marvel #2 (Oct. 14, 1972) undoubtedly many other tantalizing Transworld name. The same holds We showed you the cover for MWOM #1 (Oct. 7, 1972) in secrets still waiting to be uncovered equally true for those aficionados conjunction with Robert Menzies’ article on Marvel UK in Alter and deciphered. One such mystery has of the many and varied reprint Ego #150—so here’s the Jim Starlin/Joe Sinnott cover for issue #2, long surrounded a company known as which spotlighted the ever-Incredible Hulk. Thanks to the Grand comics published in Australia, Transworld Feature Syndicate, Inc., and Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] New Zealand, and on mainland how exactly it became involved with Europe—likewise the products Marvel’s global expansion. Through my of a variety of local publishers—where the Transworld name researches into the origin and development of Marvel’s own line would again often be displayed somewhere within their copyright of British comics, it’s now clear that, despite Transworld Feature information. Beyond that, there was little to go on. Syndicate being involved with the comic giant’s overseas activities Who, and what, exactly, was Transworld? The puzzle seemed until the 1980s, it was never owned by Marvel, or indeed by any unsolvable. of the companies that later bought Marvel. This discovery is somewhat at variance with what, for example, Roy Thomas seems The origins of the Transworld family were equally a mystery to have assumed when writing 75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden to me when I first began research for a history of Marvel UK after a Age to the Silver Screen (p. 494), but as you’ll discover in these pages, decade-long search to index every single story published by Marvel Transworld initially operated in quite a different area altogether. in Britain since 1972—not an easy task, pre-Internet. There was next to nothing to be found about who Transworld were; and. after the Read All About It! birth of the web… actually, there still wasn’t that much extra to go on. I would eventually find out more, but only after widening my If you’ve ever read any of Marvel’s own British reprint comics purview to take into account all those licensed comics referred to from the first half-decade or so of their existence—or indeed above that preceded Marvel’s creation of The Mighty World of Marvel any of the earlier licensed comics pre-1971, which used material in 1972, a lineage that went as far back as 1951. from the Marvel/Atlas vaults, hailing from companies such as Thorpe and Porter, Alan Class, Odhams, and IPC—you might In looking back right to the beginning, there were hints that

Stan Lee, Al Landau, & The Transworld Connection

Transworld could well have played a vital role in the genesis of the entire British project, although final confirmation of that came only after tracking down one elusive key player in the story. As I started to piece things together, it also became clear that I needed to track the development of Marvel from its origins as Timely Comics, to help explain how it seemed to me that parts of Stan Lee’s career, in hindsight, led almost inexorably towards their later British invasion on their own terms. Although I touched upon Transworld in my previous article on Marvel UK’s early years in TwoMorrows’ Back Issue #63, with Stan’s recent passing it seems an ideal time to look further at the company, and how his connections to Transworld helped set in motion the events leading up to Marvel’s adventures in the United Kingdom.

What’s In A Name? To begin with, I should make it clear that we’re not talking here about the similarly named “Transworld Publishers.” That entity was founded by Bantam Books, Inc., back in 1951 (and later purchased by the Bertlesmann group), and published paperback lines such as Corgi. The Transworld Feature Syndicate, Inc., in the frame here had been formed a year earlier by Ida Landau. A graduate of New York University, she had not long begun work as a lawyer before meeting and marrying Jacob Landau in 1921. The Viennese-born Jacob ran The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), which had other offices situated all around the world, from Warsaw to Jerusalem. In a far-sighted move, during the inter-World War years, the JTA had originally been set-up as a way of propagating the experiences of Jewish people right across the globe, and they are still active online today. Ida would eventually switch careers and join the JTA as its business manager until 1942, after which she went on to manage the Overseas News Agency (ONA) for Jacob until 1951, reporting on the plight of refugees towards the end of World War II. After setting up Transworld, and following the death of her husband the previous year, she began travelling around the world during 1953. In October of that year, she sustained head injuries in a car crash, which eventually led to health concerns that forced her to take a backseat in the new company. Based in midtown New York at 23 W. 47th Street during the

early 1960s, as its name suggests, Transworld Feature Syndicate, Inc., provided a photo-and-features service for the international press. It employed illustrators to create magazine artwork and syndicated work by many photographers, such as the awardwinning Peter Skingley (who netted the UPI’s Overseas Press Club Special Award in 1968 for his news reportage). Transworld joined a long line of specialist agencies such as Rex Features, Magnum, and Getty Images, in providing such services to the news trade. It had taken the company a while to build up to this level of diversity, though, having started out as a syndication agency re-selling material in Central and South America, along with illustrative material destined for women’s glossy magazines.

Syndicated Adventures It wasn’t long before Transworld had branched out into comics as well, after coming into contact with Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, who also produced a whole host of magazines through the rest of his company Magazine Management. Transworld soon began handling the worldwide syndication of Goodman’s comicbook features, which grew into a much bigger concern as the new super-heroes forged in the Marvel explosion came to prominence. Any comics company wishing to use material from the Timely/Atlas/Marvel archives, or indeed any of the other American publishers that they would eventually represent (including Tower, Charlton, and the American Comics Group), would simply contact Transworld, requesting to purchase the rights to incorporate the strips they required for their own comics. Whatever they purchased appears usually to have been supplied in the form of prints, although Alan Class has previously mentioned that he received negatives, too. As foreign publishers began to latch on to the sales possibilities inherent in this new wave of super-heroes, it made sense for comics companies to have such outside agencies handling the time-consuming demands of licensing specific material to interested publishers around the world, and specialist companies such as Transworld Feature Syndicate, Inc., became vital. In time, this elusive organization would also help provide the key to unlocking the full potential of the UK marketplace for them. In the meantime, Ida’s health was now worsening and she naturally turned to her son, in the hope that he’d take over the business, keeping the company firmly within the family. This happened gradually, though, as Albert Landau was still studying for a law degree at Columbia University at that time.

All Around The World

Ida Landau

Jacob Landau

(1899-1986). Photo of Al Landau’s mother, founder of Transworld Feature Syndicate, Inc., located on Internet.

Al’s father died in 1952. Decades earlier, he had founded The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which connected people of Jewish heritage all around the world. This photo appeared in The New York Times, and is from its online archive. [© the respective copyright holders.]

As the 1960s swung by, Albert Landau would assume complete control over the business. Expanding now on what I wrote in Back Issue #63, that “there were actually two separate businesses sharing the Transworld name, along with a network of subsidiary offices spread across the world”—these were located in various key cities including Milan, Paris, Helsinki, Mexico City, Stockholm, Munich, and Buenos Aires, amongst others. Landau then became permanently based in London as he built up the business there, punctuated by visits home to New York to oversee the head office. Understandably, he became increasingly keen to return home for good, and the means to do so came during his return visits to New York, after meeting up with the recently resident Ray Wergan. A former British sports reporter of note, Wergan [see photo on p. 53] had begun his career as a trainee reporter on The Manchester Evening Chronicle in 1957, before moving over to Thomson Newspapers in 1960. A year later, he took up the post of syndication manager at the Express newspaper group, and after their New York

The Man Who Succeeded Stan Lee As President of Marvel

return to New York, but more immediately it would allow Wergan to bring his family back home to Britain. “We’d casually discussed this for a year,” Ray discloses, “but it was suddenly on. It was a huge commitment for both of us, based on a very significant trust between us.” Thus, suitably inspired by the possibilities, Ray left The Express Group and returned to London in June 1964, helping to “set-up syndication of Life based in Transworld’s London office,” which was then located up at High Holborn.

Magazine Mayhem By the mid-1960s, Ray records that Al had turned Transworld in London into “the major supplier of material to the woman’s magazine market through publishers such as Odhams, Newnes, and Fleetway.” This comprised anything from cookery features, knitting patterns, material for home improvement magazines, to huge double-page art illustrations for romantic fiction magazines. Yet, despite this, they had far less reach into Fleet Street. With newspapers such as The Daily Express selling four million copies and The Daily Mirror in the region of three million, this was too large a sector to miss out on. “My job at Transworld was to do in Fleet Street what Landau had done with the women’s magazines,” Ray declares. Obviously, he was already well-connected with people in the news trade, but, he says, “after the first announcement of what I was handling every week, everyone wanted to know me. It was frantic.” This freed up Landau’s time to expand the US operation further, as he built up their photographic sales to take in “Australia and South Africa, and then Germany and Holland.”

Britain’s Class System This comic (Uncanny Tales #108, sometime in the 1960s) was published by Alan Class & Co., Ltd., of London, sold for 10 pence... and contained 48 black-&-white pages of mystery comics that had originally appeared in the comics of the U.S. American Comics Group. Chances are that the pages were provided by Transworld. The Ogden Whitney cover art is from ACG’s Forbidden Worlds #91 (Oct. 1960). [TM & © the respective copyright holders.]

syndication manager had resigned to join Fleetway, he brought his young family across the Atlantic and took over from him. Seeking to build up firm contacts in the States for the Express—whose New York office was “massive,” Wergan declares—he soon established himself as a leading agent for the syndication of British content among the most popular US magazines of the day. After he and Landau met, they soon became firm friends, and “whenever he was over from London,” Wergan now explains, Landau would tell him how he “wanted to change the direction of both Transworld in London and his European business, and also wanted to return home to New York.” This longing for home also coincided with Wergan’s own feelings, finding himself torn between enjoying the buzz of New York and wanting to bring his wife and two very young children (then aged just one and two) back home to enjoy a “full English education” instead. One of his new clients would provide the solution. Life magazine was seeking to make major changes to its London operation, and wanted Wergan to be “their independent agent in London, provided that I could find the backing of an established agency which was not already in the news field.” When he confided with Landau about Life’s offer, the solution seemed obvious. Ray should come and work for him in London. They’d both benefit from dealing with Life, and the tie-up would also provide a means whereby Landau could eventually arrange a

Seeing all those who came to visit Landau allowed Wergan the opportunity to regularly exchange pleasantries with visitors from the comics world, too. “I knew Chip Goodman casually, and would say ‘Hello’ to Stan Lee, but I had so much on my plate,” he admits. Thus, he remained unaware of any of the details of Al’s meetings during this time. With everything going so well, Landau was then finally free to make the break he’d been seeking for years, and by 1968 he’d moved back to New York, leaving Wergan in sole charge of the High Holborn office. Nevertheless, Ray would still see Al from time to time. “He came back to London many times during 1970-72,” Wergan continues, “and Chip Goodman came as often as Al did. Chip and Stan kept on about Stan’s international dream.” As I previously wrote, that would eventually come about almost by accident. A failed collaboration with Leonard Matthews’ company Martspress—which packaged comics for various publishers, such as IPC’s recently canceled second volume of TV21—left Marvel with a substantial investment that needed recouping after an electrician’s union strike had forced them to abort the launch of their planned new UK comic.

Far Too Tempting To Resist Unlike Marvel’s former owner Martin Goodman, both Stan Lee and Sol Brodsky had always been keen on doing more with the magazine format. When Lee was promoted to President/Publisher in 1972 and freed of his subservience to Chip Goodman (who remained for a time, however, in charge of the rest of Magazine Management’s line), this presented the perfect opportunity, not only to save the British project, but also to recommence the publication of magazines in the US. Envisioning a new “Special Projects” division as the way to encompass both ventures, Stan knew exactly who he wanted to helm it: Sol Brodsky. Since the mid-1960s Brodsky had excelled as Marvel’s production manager, and had more recently helped to shepherd into print both editions of The Spectacular Spider-Man magazine before Goodman had

Stan Lee, Al Landau, & The Transworld Connection

Pow! And Wham! (Above:) The Ditko & Kirby cover of the first “merger” issue, #59 (dated 2nd of March, 1968)—i.e., when the previously separate weekly comics Pow! and Wham! were combined henceforth into a single every-seven-days publication. Roy Thomas remembers Stan explaining to him in the early 1970s that this was the way such mags tended to go in Britain—they started out with higher circulations, generally wound down slowly, and then combining two magazines into one would raise the circulation again... for a time. Roy recalls thinking that things seemed to work backward in England from the way they did in the States! It seemed that way to Stan, too, but he was determined Marvel would live and thrive under the system—and it did, for some years. Courtesy of Rob Kirby. (Top right:) The first page in Pow! and Wham! #59 was a black-&-white rearrangement of two pages from Fantastic Four #29 (Aug. 1964), with script by Stan Lee, art by Jack Kirby & Chic Stone. But where are the credits? [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ingloriously squashed the project. There was only one problem— Brodsky no longer worked for Marvel.

capable of replacing him as editor. Contrary to what has previously been written elsewhere, Skywald continued after Brodsky’s departure until 1975, closing only after losing a circulation battle that they felt was squeezing them off newsstands. It’s undoubtedly a mark of Stan’s respect for Sol’s abilities that he was the first person to be approached as part of this new drive to expand beyond the boundaries of traditional color comicbooks (honoring Lee’s personal spelling here). By late spring, a meeting was held in Ray Wergan’s office in London, and it was here that Landau, Lee, and Chip Goodman, representing Magazine Management,

Keen to expand his own interests in magazine production further, Sol had left Marvel in 1970 to form a company called Skywald in partnership with publisher Israel Waldman, leaving John Verpoorten to take over his former position at Marvel. Stan was undaunted, though, and succeeded in dangling Happy Families this enticing new project in front of Sol and winning him Al Landau with his back at a time when Brodsky had become disillusioned wife and children in with the new company he co-owned. Informing Waldman a photo taken c. 1967. that he had decided to return to Marvel, Brodsky’s parting Courtesy of grandson recommendation was that Al Hewetson (coincidentally, Robert Landau. another former Marvel employee) would be more than

The Man Who Succeeded Stan Lee As President of Marvel

Charles (“Chip”) Goodman in a candid photo snapped by comics artist Alan Kupperberg in 1975, when Chip and his father Martin were putting out the Atlas/Seaboard line of comics to compete with Marvel.

all agreed on a rescue plan. They would dissolve the partnership with Martspress and go it alone… oh, and they needed to launch the comic that same autumn, too. Ray Wergan had been asked to sit in on their discussion “as a courtesy,” he notes, “seeing as it was my office.” Because of this, when it came to deciding who should supervise the London end of the operation, it seemed obvious that Ray should oversee things until a permanent manager was appointed. That never happened, and Wergan would become integral to its success.

With an editor, and former Odhams employee, named Pippa Melling already on the payroll as part of the abandoned Martspress project, Wergan immediately began setting up print and distribution contracts, while attending to all the other tasks needed to run a magazine. Meanwhile, over in New York, the returned Brodsky would quickly hire a dedicated “British Bullpen” (made up of Americans, of course) to assemble all the material needed for every issue, including the production of new covers and posters. This would be run out of a small area of the main New York Bullpen. Following some early help from various hands, including the recently arrived Jim Salicrup, their first comic hit newsagents across Britain on the final day of September 1972. The Mighty World of Marvel was an immediate success, shifting around 500,000 copies a week to begin with, and by Halloween the New York office had added a new member of the team, as Tony Isabella became the first associate editor on the British comics to receive an in-print credit. My earlier article in Back Issue picks up the story from here.

All Hail The (New) Chief! At some point during 1973, Stan would step down as President, but instead of Chip being asked to take over the now vacant role of President, as he and his father still hoped, Sheldon Feinberg, the head of Marvel’s new owner, chose Al Landau instead. While I’ve yet to come across any documentation relating to this sudden change, given both Martin Goodman’s

Ol’ Greenskin Goes Global! This free gift showing a full-color Kirby Hulk was a transfer that you could put onto a notebook or locker or whatever—and was given away with the very first edition of Marvel UK’s The Mighty World of Marvel #1 in 1972. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

previous, and Lee’s then-current, close working relationship with Landau, it seems reasonable to suggest that Stan may well have been asked to nominate his replacement. Any shock at Al’s appointment would have been understandable, but he was evidently happy to accept the position in addition to his continued management of Transworld’s many activities. Again, Sol Brodsky contrary to what has (on right) with Stan Lee and The Green previously been thought, it Goblin, at a 1970s Easter Egg event at transpires that Chip would the White House. What can we say? remain with Marvel until at Guess you had to be there—and Stan least late 1973; his presence and Sol were! Thanks to Ger Apeldoorn. is recorded in the summary of a meeting with a London advertising agency, where Marvel’s future plans for their British division were discussed. With scant knowledge within the busy Bullpen at the time with regards to the role Transworld was actually playing in expanding the Marvel brand, this has led to subsequent speculation that a conflict of interest may have been created by the overlap between Landau’s two jobs. The implication being that publishing decisions were now being made in ways that would also be favorable to Transworld. Having worked closely with Al for many years, Ray Wergan is uniquely placed to reveal the truth of the matter—“it’s just not something he would have ever done,” he replies in (the now, long since deceased) Landau’s defense. If anything, Marvel’s success simply meant more material that Transworld could supply to other countries—hence Al’s 1974 suggestion that Marvel create an international band of heroes, which led to the regeneration of the X-Men comic—so everyone benefited. Thanks to their close connections to the press and broadcast media, the Transworld organization was also perfectly placed to provide a suitably nurturing environment for its UK division to prosper. This made it easy for its London office to link up with other companies for competitions, procure manufacturers to produce exclusive merchandise, and to arrange comprehensive media coverage for new title launches. Stan Lee would

Stan Lee, Al Landau, & The Transworld Connection

Ray Wergan is the gent more or less in the center of this 1976 photo, talking to Stan Lee (on right) on one of the latter’s numerous trips to Britain in conjunction with Marvel UK. Also seen, at left, is Ted Polhemus. As was pointed out when this photo ran in Back Issue #63, Wergan—who contributed it—is wearing a “Make Mine Marvel” button from 1966! The pic was taken at London’s Roundhouse Theatre. Above left is a note from Wergan. Rob Kirby says: “The message from Ray to Stan and Ivan Snyder, etc., is a good example of his vigilance with regards to keeping costs down, a trait which I gather Brodsky shared.” Indeed! Above right is what Rob calls a “small, jokey memo from Stan to Ray (Wergan), refer[ring] to the recently launched Whoopee comic from rival IPC, which was begun at the start of March 1974. All these notes are courtesy of the Stan Lee Archive at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center.

then fly over and scoot around the country, talking to newspapers, doing radio interviews, and appearing on both local and national TV stations, all of which he naturally took in his stride. By now, London also had a small Bullpen of its own, overseen by art editor Alan Murray from 1973 to 1978, and staffed by a number of young production artists fresh out of college. During his time as editor, Neil Tennant threw himself into promotional activities and was closely involved with Stan’s visits to promote The Titans at the Roundhouse in 1975, and the following autumn when Lee toured the country for the launch of Captain Britain. With paper shortages a growing problem in Britain then, another advantage of Transworld’s global network was that Wergan could rely on the skills of his print buyer, John Howe from Alsace, to secure better deals overseas. For a time, its comics would be printed in Barcelona, and then in Finland. Eventually, a more

favorable deal was reached on the UK mainland, with a company based in Alloa, Scotland. Yet, as Wergan was keen to point out, despite using a Swedish-based plant, which meant that extra time had to be factored in for the sea crossing, “the New York Bullpen coped brilliantly. Despite the distances involved, we never had a serious problem with the Finnish operation.”

What Happened Next Al Landau would continue as Publisher at Marvel until 1975, and, after Jim Galton took over, he gradually eased away from the now successful UK comics line. His mother would live to see his success, dying in 1986 at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 86, having survived her husband by over three decades. By 1976, British Marvel were issuing seven regular comics a week, before easing back as markets on both sides of the Atlantic began to contract. Ray Wergan’s association with Marvel would end in 1978, after Stan Lee commissioned Dez Skinn to write a report suggesting ways they could turn sales around, and then persuaded Skinn to put the ideas into action himself. Wergan would continue

The Man Who Succeeded Stan Lee As President of Marvel

Don’t STEAL our Digital Editions! C’mon citizen, DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom & Pop publisher like us needs every sale just to survive! DON’T DOWNLOAD OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! Buy affordable, legal downloads only at

www.twomorrows.com or through our Apple and Google Apps!

& DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one!

to run Transworld (UK) Ltd. until his retirement in 1986, selling the picture library to another agency called Scope. As for Stan Lee, the siren song of Hollywood was calling, and two years after helping Skinn promote Hulk Comic in the spring of 1979, he would help set up Marvel Productions in Los Angeles. It was left to incoming editor-in-chief Jim Shooter to assume overall responsibility for Marvel’s British division. Shooter and his successor Tom DeFalco would visit the London offices on occasion, but were much more hands-off than had previously been the case, mainly because production of the comics had been completely transferred to Britain after Skinn had taken over back in 1978. While Marvel would ultimately be forced to sell off its pioneering British division to Panini in late 1999, after miraculously escaping from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the variety of formats, content, and publication frequencies now employed by Panini would have seemed an impossible dream back in the mid-1970s. In seeking to spread the Marvel wor(l)d right across the world, Lee’s British legacy can perhaps best be observed in the flourishing careers of all those artists and writers who’d once read the British comics before coming to prominence in the field in the 1980s and beyond. If Stan hadn’t lived his British dream, then I would have undoubtedly spent the last three decades in a very different way, too, if only because I wouldn’t have ended up researching what they published, and the history behind it all. It’s impossible to say if it would have been a more enjoyable time, but I doubt it. I’m just sorry that an opportunity never arose for me to personally convey to Stan just how much those early weekly comics meant to so many of us over here. I have a sneaking feeling he knew that already, though!

Letters From The President to the Publisher, on Transworld stationery, on business matters relating to the sale of Marvel’s pages abroad. Note Stan’s handwritten notice to Sol Brodsky. Thanks to Rob Kirby, who found these, as well, in Stan’s archives at the U. of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center.

Stan Lee, Al Landau, & The Transworld Connection

The Yank Is Coming! A half-page teaser ad in Mighty World of Marvel #157 (1975) heralded another of Stan’s trips to Merry Olde—along with ads related to stories featuring Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Morbius the Living Vampire. The event at London’s Roundhouse in October of that year was held to launch Marvel UK’s newest publication, The Titans, which would have a brand new, more horizontal format. For examples, see Robert Menzies’ article in Back Issue #63, which shares space with one by Rob Kirby to lay out the history of Marvel UK. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

When not working for a local college, Rob Kirby is feverishly laboring to conclude the final writing for the history that now forms the bulk of From Cents to Pence! – The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s British Comics (1951-2018). He also keeps threatening to finally release another edition of re: VOX, the specialist music magazine devoted to Ultravox and all their related solo artists and bands. The first Marvel UK comic Rob bought was #142 of Spider-Man Comics Weekly (1st November 1975), with a memorably atypical cover, and he became a regular reader about forty issues after that, although by then the comic had transmuted into a weird, but wonderful, landscape format as Super Spider-Man with the Superheroes. This was just in time to catch The Invaders’ debut in Britain.

Benito Gallego’s ORIGINAL ART for SALE directly from the Artist Contact benitogallego@gmail.com

The Man Who Succeeded Stan Lee As President of Marvel

Sidebar

Al, Myself, & Others by Roy Thomas

seem to be one of the relatively few early-1970s Marvel people besides Stan Lee who ever reflected on his own relationship with Al Landau—but perhaps that’s not too surprising, since my two-years-plus stint as editor-in-chief overlapped roughly the first half of his tenure, and few other Marvel editorial staff besides Stan, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman ever had many dealings with him. At the start of this intriguing and much-needed study, Rob Kirby seems to refer obliquely to my “assuming” in the 2014 Taschen tome 75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen that Transworld was owned by Cadence Industries (which of course did own Marvel at that time), because I wrote of it as being “another company within the Cadence umbrella.” I’m not sure I ever actually believed Cadence owned Transworld, as opposed to the two of them having a relationship; but my imprecise writing at that point does make it seem as if I did. Fact is, I don’t believe I ever thought much about the matter, one way or the other. The few other commenters and their statements about Al Landau, mostly known from Sean Howe’s basically fine 2012 book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, include:

though it didn’t make me think the better of him, since I felt his motivation mean-spirited. Marvel wound up acquiring most of the artists we wanted anyway, without my having to go globe-trotting at a time when I was trying to keep my first marriage together. I don’t specifically recall the occasion Howe recounts on which I broached to Landau the suggestion of “selling comics directly to comic stores at a discount” and Al supposedly looked at me “as if I were an idiot... [and told] me that that would just make the wholesalers and retailers mad.” But it does sound like me... and like Laudau. You tell me which of us was right. I also suspected Landau of being behind—or at least favorably disposed toward—the notion foisted on me one day by Connie LaRocca, the woman who sold ad space in our comics, that we sell advertisers every right-hand page in the interior of Marvel’s comics. I managed to scotch that idea, to her considerable annoyance. Again, you tell me if I was right or wrong in suspecting that such a plan would have rendered our stories all but unreadable. On one thing, though, Al was at least partly right. Stan recounted to me, not long before I stepped down, that Landau didn’t feel I was a “team player.” I objected—and by my lights, I was right. But probably so was Al, by his. We had different ideas of what loyalty to Marvel Comics meant, and in his view (and, partly due to his influence, probably that of Stan himself), I was increasingly wanting in that department. I felt myself ever more trapped between the need to promulgate the official policies of

Magazine Management president/publisher Chip Goodman’s wife Roberta is quoted as saying how upset the two of them were in 1973 at learning that Landau, rather than Chip, was being tapped by Cadence head honcho Sheldon Feinberg to take Stan’s place as Marvel’s president. Former Marvel publisher Martin Goodman and his wife Jean, Roberta Goodman said, were “very upset about this.... They thought Al was a total bulls***ter. He didn’t know anything about the business at all; it wasn’t his background. He’d used Chip as a way to get to Shelly, and snuck in between the two of them.” Additionally, according to Howe’s account (the source of which the reader must assume to also be Roberta Goodman): When Chip’s contract was about to expire and he and Landau had a disagreement, Landau pointedly asked Chip: “Do you want to be fired or do you want to quit?” Howe (see pp. 149-150 of his book) slightly misreports the details of one of the initial rifts between Landau and myself. The author/historian reports (and it’s hard to figure what other direct or indirect source besides myself he might’ve had besides myself, since only Landau, Stan, and I were involved) that, because of “the threat of an industry-wide artists’ union” in 1973 or ’74, I “wanted to fly to the Philippines to recruit artists who’d work at cheaper rates,” and that Landau nixed the trip on the grounds that it would be “too much like a vacation” for me. The latter quote from Landau—at least as Stan relayed it to me at the time—is 100% accurate; but I recall the relative inexpense of such talented artists as Tony DeZuniga and Alfredo Alcala and the others working out of the DeZunigas’ studio in Manila as being our main motivation, although it’s not impossible that attempts to form a comicbook union may have played some part in the decision. But the plan to send me halfway around the world to a nation where a Communist insurrection was going on rather noisily (at least on some of the outlying islands) was hatched pretty much by Stan on his own, and I merely acquiesced reluctantly, having no desire whatever to go to the Philippines for business or pleasure at that time. I was actually relieved when Landau vetoed what he deemed my “vacation”—

(L.) Miller Time! The cover of the L. Miller company’s Mystic #30 (1963), which contained primarily reprints from Charlton’s pre-Code This Magazine Is Haunted! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Stan Lee, Al Landau, & The Transworld Connection

management and my background as a writer (and even fan), and I found myself unable and unwilling—unlike Stan—to completely take the company’s side against staff and/or freelancers. So it was probably best that I left the editor-in-chief job, which I did, around Labor Day of ’74. Whether or not Landau was in favor of Stan’s agreeing to my insistence on having a writer/editor contract if I were to remain working for Marvel, I again have no idea. Nor did I care. One of the most interesting stories about Landau in Howe’s tome (p. 166) is one I don’t even recall hearing about at the time. Reportedly, in 1975, Len Wein, then editor of the color comics, objected to Landau’s decision to remove artist Ross Andru from his regular Amazing Spider-Man assignment so he could draw the Marvel/DC joint project Superman vs. Spider-Man—with Al snapping to Len that that decision was “none of your f***ing business.” [Asterisks added.] Len, according to Howe, “hurled himself at Landau,” and his buddy/co-editor Marv Wolfman had to separate them. This apparently was one of the final straws that led to Wein leaving the main editorial job—but you’d have to ask Marv what transpired that day. Maybe one of these days I’ll ask him. The most controversial assertion Howe makes (pp. 169-170) is that Landau, while succeeding in giving Cadence Industries the impression that he had “turned Marvel around,” was actually engaged in what one unnamed Cadence executive later is quoted as calling a sort of “Ponzi scheme” that manipulated print-run and sell-through numbers to hide the fact that “his estimates [of sales] were way overblown. He was running the company into the ground.” Once again, I’ve no personal knowledge on this matter, since I wasn’t intimately involved with those numbers when I was editorin-chief and, by 1975, I’d left that job several months and all thought thereof behind. I’ll have to let others hash out the truth of the thing.

Nor do I have any more information than Howe gives that Cadence head Feinberg, his suspicions raised about the above matter, dispatched Barry Kaplan as Marvel’s chief financial officer and named “a recently hired Curtis Circulation consultant named Jim Galton” as vice-president. Reportedly, the pair examined Marvel’s profit-and-loss statements “and didn’t like what they saw,” so that ere long Landau returned from a vacation to find Galton sitting in his presidential chair. “Didn’t Shelly [Feinberg] tell you?” Galton reputedly asked. Howe goes on: Galton and Kaplan took Landau out to the Players Club for lunch. At the table, Galton broke the news that he was personally replacing Landau as president of Marvel and Magazine Management. Landau grabbed his chest and fell to the floor as Galton and Kaplan looked on. Whatever the precise facts behind the above scenario, Al Landau’s reign as Marvel’s president came to a sad end; and, despite my animosity toward the man, I took scant pleasure in reading Howe’s account years later. I suspect that, if Al and I had met in some other time and place, and under different circumstances, we might have gotten along well enough. But Marvel Comics in 1973-74 was definitely not that time and place. All the same, I’m happy to be able to utilize this Stan Lee tribute issue of Alter Ego for Rob Kirby (and, to a lesser extent, Sean Howe and myself) to lay out the history, and the various pros and cons, of Al Landau’s work at Transworld and for Marvel/ Magazine Management. He was most definitely a part of Marvel’s long and colorful history—and history should always be as all-encompassing as possible.

X-Men Marks The Spot! It’s often been related (mostly by Roy Thomas, admittedly) that, in mid-1974, in a Marvel editorial meeting consisting of himself (as editor-in-chief), publisher Stan Lee, president Al Landau, and production manager John Verpoorten—and possibly art director John Romita—Landau ventured the opinion that it might be smart for Marvel to launch a mag featuring a team of super-heroes from various foreign lands in which Marvel wanted to sell more comics. He pointed out that, even if said title only broke even financially in the US, it would almost certainly turn a profit because of sales of that material to comics publishers in the various nations involved—which, though not discussed in detail that day, would have been places like the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, maybe New Zealand and South Africa, and even a few non-English-speaking countries such as Mexico, Brazil, France, West Germany, Spain, Japan, or whoever. All present immediately realized the notion’s worth. Sure, it would also benefit Landau’s own company Transworld—but all that really mattered was that it would probably be a good thing for Marvel. Since Stan and Roy (especially the latter) had been consciously looking for a way to revive The X-Men, who hadn’t had their own mag for nearly half a decade—and since Ye Editor had already directed writer Len Wein to develop a Canadian-origined character called The Wolverine in an issue of The Incredible Hulk—Roy at once proposed a new version of The X-Men comicbook, in which a couple of the original team would go on a worldwide hunt to gather mutants from various nations. Stan instantly approved the idea... Roy quickly assigned writer Mike Friedrich and artist Dave Cockrum to develop the concept... and the result, some months later, was Giant-Size X-Men #1 (May 1975), although by then Roy had resigned as editor-in-chief, and new color-comics head Len had decided to script the new series himself. Sure, The X-Men would almost certainly have found a regular berth again sooner or later, with or without Landau’s suggestion, since everyone from Stan on down wanted them to return... and it’s true that, somewhere along the way, the idea that the new mutants would hail from Englishspeaking or at least “Western” nations (and not, say, Kenya, let alone the Soviet Union) got lost... but the irrefutable fact remains that Al Landau’s tossed-out suggestion led to the particular time and form the revived magazine took. And, of course, the new X-Men, especially as soon helmed by writer Chris Claremont and artists Dave Cockrum and (ere long) John Byrne, went on over time to become one of the biggest sales successes in Marvel history, spawning a virtual four-color industry—and, not so incidentally, the company’s first successful big-screen super-hero franchise. Art by Gil Kane & Dave Cockrum. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Man Who Succeeded Stan Lee As President of Marvel

Postscript by Rob Kirby

Two Sides To Every Story?

n creating this extract on Albert Landau that stresses the importance of his role in helping to sell Marvel’s work overseas, as well as in helping Stan Lee set up the company’s British division, I realize that—in plucking a few paragraphs here and there from the working draft of my (admittedly) long-overdue book From Cents to Pence!—I’ve painted quite a different picture of Landau from what many Alter Ego readers may have read elsewhere… at least in the few places that anything has been written about his career. Getting the balance between differing points of view, or conflicting reports, is the major challenge in writing any history. Most of the information about Landau and his family background presented here came initially from the many conversations I’ve had with Ray Wergan, who had worked closely with him for some years, as you’ve now read; that was further fleshed out by my own research as I began looking further into various aspects of the story Ray was revealing. This is how I came to discover the full story behind Landau’s first and middle names, Albert Einstein—which I’d first learnt from Sean Howe’s engaging and forthright 2012 book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. Basically, the famed physicist Albert Einstein had struck up a friendship with his father Jacob Landau and had later provided some funding to support The Jewish Telegraphic Agency during the inter-war years. A close friendship had come out of their regular correspondence, with Einstein later being asked (and accepting) to be the godfather to their firstborn son.

the perspective of his interactions with staff at Marvel in New York after he took over from Lee as president for two-plus years. Based on a myriad of personal conversations (not with Landau himself) conducted by Howe, the overall impression formed from reading Marvel Comics: The Untold Story paints a different picture of Landau as president of Marvel—that he forcefully made snap decisions over creative placements, over the heads of editorial—in the case of the Superman/Spider-Man team-up for instance, where he and editor Len Wein nearly came to blows—and was also keen to sue Martin Goodman’s Atlas-Seaboard Comics for any overt plagiarism, at least until that rival line rapidly imploded. With the passing of time, and with no personal interviews or contemporary accounts to dig into, building a fuller picture of the man from these differing impressions is much more difficult now. As you’ve seen, I’ve suggested another possibility, based on what I’ve uncovered, as to how Landau could have been selected to become president of Marvel, given his previously unrecorded close working relationship with Goodman, and then Lee. In the end, the difficulty with writing about certain folks who crop up in comics history is that they often weren’t interviewed at all (e.g., Ray Wergan had never spoken about his deep involvement with the UK division, so tracking him down was a landmark moment, and added a whole new dimension to my work, reshaping what I’d already written into something far more complex than I could have guessed), whereas Stan Lee and others were regular fixtures in the fan press, and in Lee’s instance the national and international press as well. Landau’s departure from Marvel was certainly a sudden one. From the only published account thus far, those speaking to Sean Howe show someone trying to stabilize Marvel but getting caught up in the way business was conducted before the direct market came into existence as a potential method of solving distribution discrepancies. Returning from vacation in 1975, Landau is said to have been shocked to find Jim Galton at his desk, and collapsed in shock at a subsequent lunch with Barry Kaplan and Galton after being told that Sheldon Feinberg had decided to replace him. I’ve since discovered that Landau, by 1981, took a step back from Transworld, with Elsa Zion appointed to take over as president.

I also, briefly, came into contact with Beryl Clampton, who’d joined Transworld (UK), Ltd., two years after Ray Wergan, and who provided Who Do That Voodoo? secretarial services for Landau This undated 7th issue of the British reprint title Voodoo (from whenever he was visiting the UK. L. Miller) contained mystery stories from several different Apparently, “he always stayed at the publishers, including a Kirby-penciled story and others from Savoy,” Clampton discloses. “I would late early-’60s, plus other yarns that look to be from Charlton get a phone call at some ungodly and Ajax/Farrell. It was this type of multi-company mishmash hour to get there as soon as possible. that Marvel-booster Stan Lee started Marvel UK to avoid. [TM & He expected 110%, but he was very © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] generous financially.” One thing in Had I been working on my book particular stands out for her about some decades earlier than I did start, and discovered at that time Landau: “He was so ethical—even to the point of not handling his involvement with the UK side of Marvel, I would have loved some material that would have made him a fortune. Ray taught me to have spoken to Al Landau, and with Sol Brodsky, too. Still, at a lot, too—a very interesting and amusing person. He had a lot of least I’ve been lucky enough to talk to many, many others, on both friends on all the newspapers, and his experience with them was sides of the Atlantic, who all played their own parts in the story of invaluable.” Marvel in Britain over the decades. Recording the Apart from a few lines in passing in various interviews over thoughts, stories, and history of the medium for the years, including by the editor of this very magazine, it fell to posterity remains a vital task as the years pass, lest Howe’s book to contain the first overview of Landau, mostly from that information be lost forever.

(Clockwise:) Marvel’s Daredevil by Stan Lee and Wally Wood from Daredevil #8 (June 1965). Stan and Joan Lee, late 1940s. Drawing of Biro from Daredevil #12 (Aug. 1942). Biro’s Golden Age DD from Daredevil #12 (Aug. 1942). [© Marvel & Gleason Publications.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Charles Biro —The Other Stan Lee! (Part 1) by Michael T. Gilbert

o comicbook creator has had a greater influence on popular culture than Stan Lee. Some may argue that “Superman” creators Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, having started the super-hero ball rolling, deserve the honor. Others may say the credit belongs to one of the field’s great innovators, Spirit creator and prolific graphic novelist Will Eisner. And then there’s underground comix artist R. Crumb, as well as his mentor, Mad’s Harvey Kurtzman. More recently, Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman have each made their marks. And let’s not forget Lee’s main Marvel Universe co-creators, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. I won’t argue the point. For my money, each of those creators deserves our attention. But while comics fans are mad about Kurtzman and think Siegel and Shuster are super, most of our cartoon giants remain largely unknown to the outside world. Not so Stan Lee. When it comes to the public face of comics, Kirby’s not the king, nor Ditko, nor even Eisner. Stan’s the man! Thanks to raw talent, an indefatigable work ethic, and a genius

Once Upon A Crime…? Instead of Mr. Crime relating the grim stories in Crime Does Not Pay, here Charlie Biro regales the kids with fairy tales, as depicted on the inside front cover of Uncle Charlie’s Fables #1 (Jan. 1952). [TM & © the respective trademark and copyright holders.]

for self-promotion, the name Stan Lee means “comics”! Stan was my hero growing up, and I’m sad he’s gone. His was a friendly voice on the letters pages of every Marvel comic I read as kid, and his name was on the credits of most of the stories I loved—even those not primarily written by him. Together with Kirby and Ditko, Lee set the template for Marvel comics and the incredibly successful Marvel movies. Roy Thomas, Jim Steranko, and Jim Starlin were just a few of the influential comicbook creators who followed in Lee’s footsteps. As a result, Stan indirectly influenced subsequent generations of comic fans and creators. But when one talks about influences, one question begs an answer: Which comicbook creator most influenced Stan Lee? Charles Biro gets my vote!

Pretty As A Picture! This Biro panel from Daredevil #42 (May 1947) was likely based on a real restaurant favored by members of the National Cartoonist Society— perhaps The Palms, where newspaper and comics artists were known to decorate the walls with their art. Besides drawings by Biro and his buddy Bob Wood, we can spot sketches by fellow National Cartoonists Society members Burne Hogarth, Milton Caniff, E.C. Segar, John Giunta, Alex Raymond, Dan Barry, and Mort Meskin. Quite a lineup! [TM & © the respective trademark and copyright holders.]

Though almost forgotten today, in the 1940s Biro was one of the most successful comic creators of the Golden Age. Biro was a triple-threat talent: writer, artist, and editor. Biro drew many of the covers and quite a few stories too, in a crude but powerful style. The major books he edited, Daredevil, Boy Comics, Crime Does Not Pay, and Crime and Punishment, sold in the millions. Like Lee, Biro knew how to brand himself. His name would appear prominently on many splash pages and covers. His was the smiling face of Lev Gleason Publications, as Stan would be at Marvel years later.

Charles Biro—The Other Stan Lee! (Part 1)

In one of his later comicbook titles aimed at young kids, Biro even had himself photographed reading stories to the kiddies each issue. The title of the comic? Uncle Charlie’s Fables! Stan Lee would be proud. In this title, and most of his other books, Biro would personally introduce the story, usually with some moralistic message (even in his most lurid stories!).

Optimistic Egotists! At Marvel, Stan Lee’s greatest contribution may have been his unbridled enthusiasm and positive view of life—reflected in the comics he and Kirby produced. Biro had a similar sunny outlook. Charlie was big and brassy and full of fun. In Daredevil #12 (Aug. 1942) writer Woody Hamilton (a pseudonym for co-editor Bob Wood, according to the Bails and Ware Who’s Who of American Comics) touted Biro as having mastered baseball, tennis, football, hockey, and the manly art of boxing. In other words, Biro was Daredevil and Crimebuster rolled into one! Hype or not, it was great P.R.—the kind Stan Lee would perfect years later. Charlie really knew how to get attention, such as the time he posed for a publicity shot with his pet monkey, a dead-ringer for Squeeks, Crimebuster’s companion in Boy Comics.

Here’s Talkin’ At You, Kid! (Above:) Biro often created excitement and a sense of intimacy by talking directly to the readers. From Daredevil #7 (Feb. 1942). Art by Biro. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Left:) Stan Lee liked to poke fun at himself and his collaborators—in this case, “Sturdy” Steve Ditko, in this classic scene from the first Amazing Spider-Man Annual in 1964. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above:) But Charles Biro beat him by a couple of decades. Here, Biro (depicted at his drawing board) worries about magazine schedules with fellow Crime Does Not Pay editor Bob Wood. Art by Dick Briefer, from Crime Does Not Pay #30 (Nov. 1943). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

A “Take Charge” Guy! “He was a very big man,” recalled Cartoonist Bob Fujitani about his old boss (in an interview in Alter Ego #23, April 2003). “He was a take-charge type of guy… a blustery, boastful kind of man who thought he had the magic formula. And he did. He wanted things done his way. He treated me all right. I liked working for Biro and Wood. He paid on the spot, and there was always more work.” Lee was also a “take-charge” editor who knew what he wanted. This led to some bruised feelings at times, but also to some of the best super-hero comics ever made. Lee and Biro both made a point to connect to their respective audiences. Biro reportedly loved chatting with kids, hoping to find out what kind of stories

Too Much Monkey Business! Biro, seen here with publisher Lev Gleason, had his own pet monkey. But Crimebuster’s pet monkey, Squeeks, was the star of the show. He even got his own five-issue series. On the right is Irv Spector’s cover to Squeeks #5 (June 1954). [© the respective copyright holders.]

they’d like to read in his comics. And both Biro and Lee often engaged readers by talking directly to them at the beginning of each story. Biro also instituted a popular letters page years before Marvel, though it wasn’t as much fun as Stan’s. Biro’s seemed more concerned with printing letters bragging how reading Daredevil or Crime Does Not Pay led them away from a life of crime. It was good public relations in a time when a tide of anti-comic sentiment was rising, but it made for dull reading. Stan perfected his chatty letter pages and gave a truly intimate feel to the whole Marvel line.

Comics Aren’t Just For Kids Anymore! Stan Lee is often credited with moving comics from kindergartens to campuses. In the ’60s and beyond, his was the voice spreading the gospel of Marvel on TV shows and college lecture halls. Marvel also made tentative moves towards more mature fare under his watch with adult titles like Marvel’s underground title Comix Book and the “M-rated” Savage Tales magazine. The results were often mixed, but the intent was admirable. Decades earlier, Biro also worked to elevate comics, but in a much more daring style. Early on, Biro attempted to move his titles out of the comicbook ghetto by coining the term “Illustories.” Then, in 1949, he, Bob Wood, and publisher Lev Gleason published Tops, what they called “The Adult Magazine of Dramatic Picture Stories.”

“Remember We Did It FIRST!” Biro and Wood were not shy about putting their names on their covers! From the cover introducing the first “Crimebuster” story in Boy Comics #3 (April 1942). [© the respective copyright holders.].

It may well have been the first truly adult comicbook, published in full color and in oversized Life-magazine size for a quarter. With stories like “How You Would Live under a World Government” and “Marriage Swap Shop,” this was definitely not aimed at the kiddies! Though it only lasted two issues (July & September 1949), Tops was a bold experiment. Biro discussed his efforts at the 1968 SCARP Con, as published in A/E #73, an issue largely centered around Biro and his work. “Tops magazine… was a real hard effort at breaking through,

Charles Biro—The Other Stan Lee! (Part 1)

Tops Was Tops! Charles Biro (along with co-editor Bob Wood and publisher Leverett Gleason) attempted make comicbooks for adults. Above we see Biro plugging it on New York City’s WOR radio station in 1949. Tops only lasted two issues, but it was a bold experiment. The covers to issue #1 (right) and #2 (far right) were both by Biro, appearing with cover-dates July and September 1949. [© the respective copyright holders.]

and what I was mainly after— everyone connected with our outfit was excited about the whole idea of busting out in the adult market, getting out and into possible competition with, let’s say, Life or Look, or any one of these picture magazines. We didn’t tempt any people [not to buy] Saturday Evening Post. But we had a chance.” He discussed his vision of the future of comics in a biography page in Daredevil #12:

English girlfriend, Pamela Hawley, in issue #18. But the death that made the biggest impact on this reader personally occurred in Captain America’s revival in Avengers #4, when Stan revealed that Bucky, Cap’s kid buddy in the Golden Age, had died in battle at war’s end. That tragedy haunted Captain America for decades, lending extra gravitas to the character. At the time, these events were truly shocking. But even here, Lee was following in Biro’s footsteps.

“You might have asked me what the future holds for America. Comic books of today are a vital part of the joy of living. The comics afford their creator the greatest chance for expression of all the arts.”

The Tragedy And The Torment! Much has been made over the years about Stan’s more mature approach to comics—this in contrast to DC’s staid, kid-friendly comics of the ’50s and early ’60s. Lee stunned fandom when he actually killed off some continuing characters in his titles. Lee and Kirby’s war title, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, had one of the commandos, Junior Juniper, die in its fourth issue. This was followed by the death of (spoiler warning!) Fury’s

Sisterhood Is Powerful! “Fury Of The Femizons” by writer/editor Stan Lee and artist John Romita in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971). Marvel’s early tepid attempts at “mature” titles seemed to run towards occasional bare breasts and nods to contemporary topics like “Women’s Lib.” [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Back in April 1942, Biro introduced a new hero in Lev Gleason Publishing’s Boy Comics, a young kid named Chuck Chandler, who would soon become Crimebuster, nemesis of crooks and killers. In CB’s origin story, a Nazi spy named Iron Jaw threatens— and eventually kills— Chuck’s father, because he refuses to betray America. Chuck is inconsolable, but vows revenge on the Nazi with the metal jaw. Later in the story, his mother is returning from a trip to France. CB joins her shipboard, but Iron

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

“Murder,” He Says! (Left:) In Boy Comics #3 (April 1942), Chuck (Crimebuster) Chandler learns that Iron Jaw has murdered his father. (Center:) Meatball, one of the Little Wise Guys, from Daredevil #13 (Oct. 1942). (Right:) Gleason’s (and Biro’s) Daredevil #15 (Feb. 1943) depicts Daredevil holding Meatball’s body. Story and art by Charles Biro. Sorry the last panel above had to be reproduced from a rather poor microfiche copy. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Jaw’s Nazi buddies destroy their ship, drowning his mother in the process. Chuck himself barely survives, as the Nazis strafe him while he struggles in a vain attempt to save his mother. Biro’s story was a gut-wrenching tale, based firmly on real-world events of the time. This was followed a year later by another tragedy, this one starring another Golden Age Gleason hero. Daredevil #15 (Feb. 1943) featured DD’s pals, a scrappy gang called The Little Wise Guys. But in this story, one of the four, a sweet kid named Meatball, is murdered by a gang he was trying to infiltrate. It was a tragedy foreshadowing Junior’s death in Sgt. Fury two decades later, but far more powerful.

To Be Continued… That’s all we have room for this issue, but expect more surprises as we continue to explore…the OTHER Stan Lee. Be there! Till next time—

Tragedies, Marvel Style! (Left:) Howling Commando Junior Juniper dies in Sgt. Fury #4 (Nov. 1963). (Center:) In Sgt. Fury #18 (May 1965) Sgt. Nick Fury learns that his intended fiancée has died in a London bombing—the so-called Blitz. And finally, Steve (Captain America) Rogers sees his kid buddy blown to bits. From Avengers #4 (March 1964). This last death would be negated by others decades later, when Bucky was revived as the Winter Soldier. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

MARVEL’S 1970s

savage sword of

CONAN

IS BACK— IN A 2ND VOLUME—

AN OMNIBUS OF OVER 900 PAGES! Re-presenting SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN #13 THRU 28 plus MARVEL COMICS SUPER SPECIAL #2

by THOMAS • BUSCEMA • ADAMS GIORDANO • KANE!

Featuring a multitude of ultra-rare bonus material! Regular Edition (Simone Bianchi cover): ISBN #978-1-302-91516-2

Variant Edition (Jim Starlin cover) ISBN #978-1-302-91517-9

$125 U.S. ($158 Canadian)

Release date: Nov. 6, 2019

ROY THOMAS PRESENTS

14 VOLUMES OF CLASSIC OUTER SPACE ADVENTURES...

Long before Star Wars, there was Planet Comics, home to a veritable parade of steely-jawed interstellar adventurers and some of the most gorgeous damsels in distress you could ever wish to find...

FEATURING THE COMPLETE 73-ISSUE SERIES FROM 1940-1953

STD BOOKSHOP PRICE: $55 SLIPCASE EDITION PRICE: $70

Available for order NOW! Go to either

www.psartbooks.com or www.pspublishing.co.uk

Comic Fandom Archive

My (Admittedly Minor) Encounters With STAN LEE I

by Bill Schelly

Bill Schelly & Stan Lee\ That’s Bill on the left in a recent pic, and Stan Lee “at home in the early 1960s” on the right, not long before he and artist/co-plotter Steve Ditko produced the superb Amazing Spider-Man #7 (Dec. 1963). This was the first Marvel comicbook that Bill ever bought, drawn in by Steve’s excellent artwork and Stan’s seductive verbiage. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

f there hadn’t been Stan Lee, then someone would have had to invent him.

Wait—that’s exactly what happened: A Jewish kid from New York City named Stanley Martin Lieber invented “Stan Lee,” the character most of us grew up admiring—the fun-loving uncle who shamelessly bragged about Marvel Comics, who wrote many of them, who loved comicbooks and, yes, who loved us, his fans. I first heard of Stan Lee in the fall of 1963, when I pulled a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #7 from the dark recesses of a giant magazine rack at my local drugstore. The first cover blurb by Stan that I read was: “Here is Spider-Man as you like him… Fighting! Joking! Daring! Challenging the most dangerous foe of all, in this— the Marvel Age of Comics!” I thought: that’s different. DC comics didn’t have cover blurbs like that, except maybe putting the title of the story on the cover –certainly nothing so seemingly personal, addressing me, the potential reader (“as you like him…”). Intrigued, I opened it and read: “Never let it be said that the Marvel Comics Group doesn’t respond to the wishes of its readers!” And then, outright bragging: “A tale destined to rank among the very greatest in this… The Marvel Age of Comics!” “What’s ‘The Marvel Age of Comics’?” I asked myself. “It sounds like there’s a whole bunch of different comics being published that I’ve never heard of!” By the time I finished reading Spidey #7, I was thoroughly bowled over by the fabulous Ditko artwork and Stan’s deft, humorous script. Turning to the letter column, “The Spider’s Web,” I found letters that were fairly typical of a Green Lantern or The Flash letter column, but the answers were “straight from the shoulder” responses that seemed to take me inside the comicbook business. The “Special Announcements Section” began: “Here it is, the section we like best! A place for us to get together, relax a while, and chew the fat about comic mags.” It then went on to talk about the two newest Marvel comics, The Avengers and The X-Men, and the changes in a couple of their other titles: “Don’t delay in letting us know how you like the big changes in Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense.” Ant-Man had become Giant-Man, and Iron Man had a new suit of armor. “Hope you like it!” Stan said, adding, “That’s probably the most unnecessary phrase ever written! If you don’t like the mags we edit for you, we’ll shoot ourselves!”

The column ended with: “Okay, time to close shop for now. So let’s put away our little webs till next ish, when we’ll bring you another book-length epic which all you armchair critics can tear apart to your heart’s content! Till then, keep well, keep happy, and keep away from radioactive spiders!” Suddenly I realized I had a grin on my face. I really

My (Admittedly Minor) Encounters With Stan Lee

One of those copies was sent to Stan Lee, c/o Marvel Comics Group. Why had I sent Stan a copy? To my (by this time) 13-year-old mind, it was no more complicated than “I love Marvel comics” so if I send one to Marvel, maybe Stan—or more likely Flo Steinberg, whose letters had appeared in Yancy Street Journal— might respond. I somehow had the temerity to include a request for an interview with Stan for the next issue of my fanzine. Flo responded, and said Stan would answer a few written questions if I would send them along. When Stan’s answers to my questions arrived, I was disappointed that he had merely scribbled very brief answers to my questions. But, they were still from “Smilin’ Stan,” so I dutifully included them in Super Heroes Anonymous #2 (May 1965). As essentially worthless as the “interview” is today, it’s still among the earliest ones Stan did for a fanzine. But not as early as the one in Crusader #1, which was conducted in late 1964. (See pg. 39 of Stuf’ Said! from TwoMorrows for a portion of it.) I seem to recall that there were one or two other “questionnaire” interviews that appeared in fanzines around this time, much like mine. And Stan was famously interviewed by Ted White for Castle of Frankenstein magazine in 1965 (not published until 1968). (That talk was

That’s Really “Special”! The “Special Announcements Section” was unlike anything at DC comics. Lee managed to make the plugs for upcoming Marvel publications into what felt like a personal interchange with the reader. The illo nicely reminds the reader who The Sandman was—although it was all news to Bill! The last paragraph “sealed the deal” as far as he was concerned! [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

liked this guy, whoever Stan Lee was. But, er … “Next ish”—What’s an “ish”….? I contend that any comicbook fan who read Amazing Spider-Man #7 as his first Marvel title would be instantly, irrevocably hooked—all in one fell swoop (of The Vulture)! Because not only was the story astoundingly good and incredibly well-drawn, but the hero was a teenager, and the people who wrote the book seemed to respect my intelligence. Seduction, thy name is Stan Lee! I was just 12 years old when I discovered this comicbook, and the world of Marvel Comics. I would have been shocked if I’d known that I would have a few encounters with Stan in the ensuing years. No, I don’t claim to have been a friend or fan who knew Stan quite well… but, in remembering what Stan means to me, I do recall these minor encounters quite clearly. That being the case, as a tribute to Stan and what he meant to me in my life, I’m going to share them now.

Encounter #1 It’s February 1965, about the time Fantastic Four #39 (“A Blind Man Shall Lead Them!”) hit the stands, when the first encounter took place. I had discovered the wonderful phenomenon of comics fandom several months earlier, had received my first fanzines (Batmania, Yancy Street Journal, RBCC), and had published my own. Thirty-five copies of Super-Heroes Anonymous #1 were shoved into a neighborhood mailbox, and—voila! I was a publisher!

And Stan The Man Shall Lead Them! Time jump: By the time Bill was publishing fanzines in early 1965, Fantastic Four #39 was on the stands. (And a great issue it was!) Pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone and (on Daredevil figure) Wally Wood. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Comic Fandom Archive

Sounds Like The Editor Wishes He’d Been Anonymous! Super Heroes Anonymous #2 featured a cover based on a sketch Jack Kirby sent to me, which Bill feels “I traced and essentially ruined it. Inside, I did a little better on the Dr. Strange illo that Steve Ditko had sent me, running it opposite the pulse-pounding interview with Stan the Man.” [Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“SHA”-Zam! Bill says: “This is it, fellow fans— my earth-shattering interview with Stan Lee (under the column title ‘Tidbits’) in SHA #2 (May 1965). It was sure nice of Stan to respond to my questions, even if briefly.”

My (Admittedly Minor) Encounters With Stan Lee

reprinted in its entirety in The Stan Lee Universe from TwoMorrows, edited by Danny Fingeroth and Roy Thomas.)

turned and continued wherever he was going.

In any case, the silly little interview in 1965 was, for the time being, the last contact I had with Stan for years. The next communiqué I received from Marvel was written by our own Rascally Roy, several months after he was hired as a staff writer by Stan. But that’s a story for another time (and is recounted in my interview with Roy in Bill Schelly Talks with the Founders of Comic Fandom, Vol. 2, from Pulp Hero Press).

Dumfounded, I wondered where or how Stan had seen a copy of the book. I don’t think I would have sent him a copy. More likely, someone showed it to him, and he remembered what the cover looked like. (The cover of the first edition was by Nils Osmar.)

Encounter #2 Jump into your time machines, and meet me in 1995. Hey, that was easy, wasn’t it? Thirty years had passed. Marvel Comics changed my life, as had the experience of being part of comic fandom in the 1960s and early 1970s. My second contact with Stan Lee had two parts. In 1995, I was sitting at a table at the San Diego Comic-Con, selling copies of my new, self-published book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom. Who should come wandering along sans entourage but Stan Lee, who noticed me sitting there. He walked up, pointed to my publication, and said, “That’s a wonderful book!” Then, with a brief wave, he

The Fandom Menace In 1999, when Bill published his second edition of The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, he put Stan’s remark about the book in giant letters on the back cover—without asking his permission. But Stan didn’t mind, as his subsequent postcard (reprinted at top right) revealed. [The Eye, The Eclipse, Human Cat TM & © Bill Schelly. Doctor Weird TM and © Gary Carlson & Edward DeGeorge; other art © Michael T. Gilbert.]

Part 2 of this encounter was through the mail. When the book went back to press in 1999, with a new cover by Michael T. Gilbert, I was assembling some blurbs for the back cover, and remembered Stan’s remark. I thought, “Oh, what the hell, I’m sure Stan won’t mind,” and emblazoned (in large letters) “‘A wonderful book!’—Stan Lee” on the book’s back cover. I intended to write Stan for permission, but I think I just figured, “Well, he said it—and I have a witness!” (The aforementioned Mr.

Comic Fandom Archive

All In Color For A Crime! Bill writes: “Unrelated to anything else in this article, I was honored in 1999 to be asked by Roy Thomas to draw up his idea of a ‘Stan Lee Roast’ cover, homaging Jack Kirby’s for Fantastic Four #1. (Text by Roy, obviously.) It appeared in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1 (1999)— but, for its appearance here, it has been specially colored by Randy Sargent.” See photo of the Roast octet on p. 32. [Art © Bill Schelly.]

hundreds of them out there, with this or that scribbled answer). On it, he wrote, “Hi Bill, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom is every bit as good as I said it was. Many thanks for sending me a copy. Wishing you much luck and success— Excelsior! Stan.” Thirty-three words that made my day! – week! …year! …decade! And, of course…. Stan’s personalized autograph.

Encounter #3 A few years later, I was writing a biography of Harvey Kurtzman. Since Harvey had worked for Timely from 1945 to 1948 or so, I asked Stan for a quote about him and received this on February 10, 2013: Hi, Bill, K---?

Osmar, founder of the miniscule Marvel Fan Club a Go-Go, had seen the whole thing.) I did have enough class to send a copy of the printed book to Stan, hoping he wouldn’t object to the quote. I think I even enclosed a note about it. A few days later, I received one of those Spider-Man notecards that Stan was using at the time (there are probably

How’s this for Harvey

Harvey Kurtzman was one of the most talented, creative people in comics— or anywhere else. He was both an incredibly gifted humorist and a superb story-teller. His artwork and layouts were totally unique and his writing ability was awesome. His was a huge and inspiring talent and I’m grateful to have known him. – Stan Lee

My (Admittedly Minor) Encounters With Stan Lee

Encounter #4 This isn’t actually a single encounter; it’s an amalgam of several e-mails I traded with Stan in 2013 and 2014 when I needed permission to use certain photos of him in my upcoming books, including The American Comic Book Chronicles: The 1950s. Stan always said “yes,” for which I was grateful. One time, he asked for a copy of a photo, because he hadn’t seen it before (or had forgotten seeing it). Hence, my last interaction with Stan Lee was sending him a print of the photograph of himself for his own purposes. I can’t express how good it felt, giving something—even if just a small photograph— to a man who had given so much to me –not personally (since these encounters are small), but the “me” who was one of the legions of fans of Marvel Comics in its greatest era. NOTE: Please check out the series of new books that I’ve done through Pulp Hero Press: Bill Schelly Talks with the Founders of Comic Fandom, Vol. 1 & 2 (collected interviews, including new ones with the late Grass Green and the very present Roy Thomas). Also, don’t miss The Bill Schelly Reader, a trade paperback that collects my best prose pieces on the history of fandom and comics. If you’ve enjoyed my writing about Joe Kubert, Otto Binder, Jim Warren and Harvey Kurtzman, and the history of fandom, you’ll want this collection of my short pieces which come from such disparate magazines as The Comics Journal, Alter Ego, ACE magazine, Comic Buyer’s Guide, Big Bang Comics, and Paperback Parade (and maybe a couple of others). You can order these Pulp Hero Press books from Amazon.com, either in print form or as Kindle books. There’s info on them on my web site: www. billschelly.net, where you can find my e-mail address if you want to write to me. —Bill.

Advertise With Us! RetroFan & BrickJournal Ad Rates: Back cover or inside cover: $1000 ($900 for two or more) Full-page interior: $800 ($700 for two or more) Half-page interior: $500 ($425 for two or more) Quarter-page interior: $300 ($250 for two or more)

Alter Ego • Back Issue • Comic Book Creator • Draw • Jack Kirby Collector: Back cover or inside cover: $800 ($700 for two or more) Full-page interior: $600 ($500 for two or more) Half-page interior: $300 ($250 for two or more) Quarter-page interior: $150 ($125 for two or more)

comics . cinEma . sEries . cosplay

AD SIZES: COVERS & FULL-PAGE: 8.375” wide x 10.875” tall trim size, add 1/8” bleed. (7.625” x 10.125” live area.) HALF-PAGE: 7.625” x 4.875” live area (no bleeds). QUARTER-PAGE: 3.6875” x 4.875” live area (no bleeds).

Call or e-mail for frequency discounts! Send ad copy and payment (US funds) to: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 919-449-0344 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

We accept check, money order, and all major credit cards; include card number and expiration date.

These rates are for digital ads supplied (PDF, JPEG, TIF, EPS, InDesign, or Quark Xpress files acceptable). No agency discounts apply.

Roy Thomas

Avengers, X-Men, Conan

Rick Remender

Deadly Class, Avengers, Captain Marvel

comic-con-paris.com

thoughts re Stan Lee that we’d feel obliged to slip into this “re:” section— but wouldn’t you know, the co-host of the very first comics convention ever (in 1964) proved us wrong… again. Hi Roy, It’s no secret than Stan was very helpful to a couple of teenagers in 1964. His decision to send two employees to attend our little convention is a big part of why we were able to make people believe that it actually was a convention. Now… the rest of the story, that was never put into J. Ballmann’s book on the 1964 comics convention: Ron Fradkin was given the responsibility to invite Stan. God Bless Big Phone Books. Stan lived in Hewlett, Long Island, and was also listed in the phone book, and Ron remembers the call: “I remember reading somewhere that Stan worked from home a lot. As I recall, I called him in the daytime. In those days, he was a celebrity to comic fans but not yet the world-wide celebrity that he is now.” Ron called him at least a week prior to the convention. Now here is where you have to insert the applause for Stan Lee. He was sure he could not make an appearance, but would be sure to send someone over. That someone was Dave Twedt, an intern who had a lot of knowledge about Marvel. Stan’s secretary, Flo Steinberg, also stopped by. So Stan had to trust this kid on the phone who chose to call him at home and then jot down a location and date and remember to actually follow through. Holy Cow, no wonder he became a Solid Gold Icon! “Mr. Monster” was, as ever: always stylish, always interesting, always on target. Ted White had a great career, as fan and pro. And I’ve always loved Bill Black’s stuff. I always thought he was very talented, but now he says it was just “strange luck” (but honestly, I still believe it was just talent).

s I mentioned in last issue’s letters section, which dealt with material appearing in Alter Ego #151, I wanted to hold off dealing with #150—the edition that celebrated Stan Lee’s 95th (and, as it happened, final) birthday—until this time, so that A/E #161 would be a real Stan Lee blowout. Thus, our resident “maskot” maven, Shane Foley, came up with an illo this time that echoes a drawing by Stan’s longtime Amazing Spider-Man collaborator John Romita… and Randy Sargent rendered it in glorious color. Thanks guys! [Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly – created by Biljo White; other art © 2019 Shane Foley.] Now, on to missives related to A/E #150, beginning with a welcome congratulatory note from one of the best comics writers of the 1970s (and maybe another decade or two besides), Steve Englehart: Hi Roy, First, congrats on Alter Ego hitting the big one-five-oh. But second, looking at that cover, I was pretty forcefully hit with the knowledge that this is real Marvel, and the movies spring from it. As cool as they are, the movies don’t have the raw, living energy of those comics. Steve Englehart Thanks for the kudos, Steve—and naturally, despite our unbridled enthusiasm for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s the comicbooks of the 1960s and beyond that formed (and still form) the underpinning of the MCU that really get my adrenalin going.

Next: Since Bernie Bubnis had penned a reminiscence of Steve Ditko for our previous issue, we figured he wasn’t likely to have any

Little Bernie Bubnis (still 15 years old, most days) Aren’t we all, Bernie? And boy, do we wish that Dave Twedt, that summer 1964 Marvel “intern,” would turn up to talk not just about your convention but also about working at Marvel during those heady days. I myself (Roy) didn’t poke my head in the door till a year later. While Alter Ego #150 was a popular issue, easily the feature that garnered the most attention mail-wise (e- and snail) was Ger Apeldoorn’s “Get Me Out of Here!,” dealing with what the subtitle called “Stan Lee’s Thankfully Fruitless Attempts to Escape Comicbooks (1956-1962).” Here’s a bit more information about one obscure Stan Lee publication referred to therein, by J. Ballmann: Hi Roy, Bill, et al., Congrats on #150! It is a fantastic issue, especially impressive in how much fresh info on Stan Lee was presented. I specifically enjoyed Ger Apeldoorn’s glimpse into Stan’s non-Atlas activities during the 1950s and ’60s. That Mr. Apeldoorn spent days—if not weeks—traveling to locations to do research is truly reflective of his passion for the topic and is more than apparent in his article. Regarding Stan’s 1962 My Own Executive ABC Doodle Book, I may be able to offer a glimmer of light into this impossibly rare book. When I published the second edition of The Full-Color Guide to Marvel Silver Age Collectibles in 2014, I was not even aware of it—even after a lifetime of collecting Marvel-related items—though I did present write-ups and pictures of both Blushing Blurbs and Golfers Anonymous, of which I have seen fewer than five of either book for sale in my entire lifetime. I bring up those two books as both were created under his self-published Madison Publishing Company imprint.

re:

Following the discovery of the Doodle Book, one collector told me he had once owned it and could describe it in accurate detail. There are two copies than I know of in collections, and three if we count the one in the archives [at the University of Wyoming].

Classier Than Comicbooks?

compliments about the article in A/E #150, I was also told by Nick Caputo that he remembered the time that [his buddy] Doc Vassallo asked [Marvel artist/ colorist] Stan Goldberg if he ever inked Jack Kirby. Goldberg answered, “No, but Kirby inked me.” In Golfers Anonymous. Doc only remembered that Kirby had worked on it. I had a look in Doc’s copy (so tightly bound that we couldn’t make copies) to see if we could recognize Kirby’s art, but none of the (tiny) illustrations looked anything like his work. Still, I believe Stan Goldberg when he said Kirby inked him on it.

Another page or two from Stan Lee’s (published? unpublished?) My Own Executive ABC Doodle Book can be seen in the recently released tome The Stan Lee Story by yours truly. Meanwhile, here are a couple of pages Stan wrote for Martin Goodman’s “legitimate” magazines in the 1940s or ’50s. Note that they include a golf gag, no less! Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [© the respective copyright holders.]

About the book itself: The picture identified as the cover of the book in Mr. Apeldoorn’s article appears on the first page of my copy. My book has a cover that is completely different. My copy is used, as if it has been well-read; it has dings and a bend and what looks like a pull-off mark on the top left cover of the front cover that is the size of a price sticker, so I believe this was released. Perhaps other readers who own a copy could let us know if there are more. Oh, and one final note: In the 1962 Doodle Book, Stan jokes about how bad his secretaries are. He changed his tune once Flo arrived, though. Not a bad word about secretaries from 1963 on. J. Ballmann Yeah, I never heard Stan utter an unfavorable word about Flo, either while she worked there, or after she left. And maybe someone will pop up one of these days to share with us more of Stan’s Doodle Book—though I’ll confess I’d be even more interested in memorabilia having to do with the comics themselves. After all, that’s what made Stan Lee the icon he became. Actually, Ger Apeldoorn himself has a bit to add to what he wrote in issue #150: Roy, I have additional news. Apart from quite a few online

Ger Apeldoorn If Stan G. said it, Ger, you can probably take it to the bank! Dann and I enjoyed having dinner with you and your charming wife (and a few other folks, including comics writer Jean-Marc Lofficier and movie special-effects man Roger Dicken and his wife Wendy—oh yeah, and the aforementioned Steve Englehart) that night after the con in Portsmouth, England, this past spring. Maybe we’ll all get together again when Dann and I attend a con in Paris the last weekend in October. More on Ger’s article—and on the captions I put together for it— follow, from Chris Boyko: Hi Roy, I was very impressed with the exceptionally detailed history of Stan’s comic strips by Ger Apeldoorn. I knew about a couple of these strips, but the rest of Stan’s attempts to attain the “respectability” of the comic strip market were news to me. I did find a couple of errors in the captions in that article, however. The Toni Mendez illo and blurb on p. 22 are actually from

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

an edition of The National Cartoonists Society Album from 1968 (Toni’s bio also appears in the 1972 and 1980 editions, but with a different illustration). Additionally, Neal Adams’ choice of Ben Casey for The Cartoonist Cookbook, as noted on p. 44, was not so strange at all, because that book was published in 1966, not in 1996 as the caption has it. Minor quibbles, to be sure, but the anal-retentive researcher in me always likes to set the record straight!

Of course, it works when someone else was responsible for the error, too—like whenever I lay my eyes on the cover of the issue of Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan that lists the title of the story within as “Friends of the Flame Knife”—instead of “Fiends.” In his own e-mail re A/E #150 and a few comments he read online about it, blogger Dan Hagen made this succinct statement: Hi Roy,

Chris Boyko Sorry if the info we received about the source of the Toni Mendez bio and caricature was inaccurate… but typing “1996” instead of “1966” re the Neal Adams cartoon was all my fault. But that’s why we try so hard to work as many corrections as we can into the letters section that deal with each and every issue—even though we sure wish we could catch up so that there wasn’t more than a year between an issue of A/E and the printing of mail concerning it! Here’s another corrective missive, from yet another worthy who contributed to that Stan Lee birthday issue… Michael T. Gilbert, creator and editor of “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!”: Hi Roy! Just found a “What-was-I-thinking?” mistake in Alter Ego #150’s “Crypt” section. Figured I’d be the first to complain about my error, just to beat out my readers. I wrote there about PAM [artist Pete Morisi] wanting to revive MLJ’s Steel Sterling, and how Pete said he “was going to approach MLJ a year or so ago with the idea of letting me revive The Thing for them.” But Pete (who writes only in caps) clearly was saying “letting me revive the thing for them,” referring to Steel Sterling, not the horror host. And then I compounded it by explaining about Charlton’s The Thing title. Sigh! Guess I was so used to Pete working almost exclusively for Charlton in the 1960s that my brain short-circuited. Naturally, I missed the error the zillion times I read the piece before sending it, then caught it immediately once it was in print and too late to do anything about it. Oh, well, tomorrow’s another day. Michael T. Gilbert That’s always the way with mistakes in our work, isn’t it, Michael?

Someone really should form the Legion of Anti-Stan Lee ***holes. Qualifications for membership would be (1) professing, with withering scorn, to know everything that had ever happened in the Marvel Comics bullpen, and (2) never having been there. Dan Hagen Next up: Most readers of A/E #150 enjoyed the issue in the spirit in which it was meant—as a celebration of what were almost certainly the last days (or at least years) of a comic book icon. However, one correspondent, Michael Hill, decided to take myself, and veteran comics interviewer Will Murray, and indirectly Stan himself, to task over the origins of the far-famed Timely/Marvel monster epic “Fin Fang Foom”—and that turned out to be just for openers. We’ll let Michael speak for himself at this point: Hi Roy— I’m writing to take exception to the caption on page 10 of Alter Ego #150: Stan suspects he may have written the entirety of the infamous giant-monster yarn “Fin Fang Foom” in Strange Tales #89 (Oct. 1961), on sale around the same time as Fantastic Four #1 (actually, the month before it). There are no credits for writer or artists on the splash for the 13-pager, so maybe Larry Lieber or someone else provided the actual script from Stan’s plot. Pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Dick Ayers. I don’t hold out much hope that you’ll publish this, but I’m cc-ing Jon [B. Cooke] and John [Morrow] in the unlikely event that they’ll print a rebuttal. The compulsion to inveigle Stan Lee into admitting that he had something to do with “Fin Fang Foom” needs to be addressed. In the interview (conducted in 1988) that accompanies the caption, Will Murray prompted Lee with hearsay: “WM: Most people think you wrote the lead fantasy stories like ‘Fin Fang Foom,’ even though you didn’t sign them. “LEE: I did that one. If my name was on them, I did. I never put my name on anything that I didn’t write.”

Just One Of Those Things! Since A/E’s previous issue dealt with the life and work of artist Steve Ditko, we thought we’d illustrate Michael T. Gilbert’s point about his Thing-related goof in issue #150 with the cover of Charlton’s The Thing! #14 (June 1954), illustrated by Sturdy Steve. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Ten years later, you chose a similar tack in Comic Book Artist #2 (1998): “RT: By Fantastic Four #1, you had developed what later came to be called ‘the Marvel style.’ But you were doing this all along for some monster stories, some time before that. How far back does that go? “LEE: You mean just doing synopses for the artists? Was I doing them before Marvel? “RT: “I know that you did it for Fantastic Four. So I figured, with Jack as the artist—and maybe Ditko, too—in these minor stories that you mostly wrote, along with Larry Lieber, you must have been doing it since the monster days. “LEE: You know something, Roy? Now that you say it, it’s probably true; but I had never thought of that. I thought that I started it with the Fantastic Four, but you’re probably right. “RT: You probably didn’t write full scripts for Jack for ‘Fin Fang Foom.’” Lee said he didn’t remember specifically what he did on “Fin Fang Foom,” but you helpfully supplied the memory for him. You yourself didn’t arrive on the scene until 1965, and conveniently,

re:

World War II and said he never got a script from Lee, that Lee was using the synopsis method. Next, we can dispense with the idea that “Fin Fang Foom” was written “Marvel-style”: Kirby’s penciled lettering is visible in the balloons and captions: [EDITOR’S NOTE: At this point, Michael Hill provides links to pages from Strange Tales #89—and, for good measure, from ST #99 nearly a year later—to demonstrate that Kirby had penciled in the balloon and caption lettering on those stories.] In Episode 1 of Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics (2017), you trotted out your old stand-by: “For years, Jack Kirby didn’t care that he wasn’t being listed as a writer. Later on, when something becomes successful, then everybody starts crying, ‘This percentage of it’s mine! That percentage of it’s mine!’” Roy, you need to be called out on this: it’s patent nonsense. Kirby and others were very clear at the time that writing credit was an issue. Wood quit over it in 1965. Ditko quit the same year because Lee wasn’t speaking to him; Lee wasn’t speaking to Ditko because he’d demanded and received plotting credit. In 1968 Kirby told Excelsior that what kept him from writing the dialogue on the books he wrote was Lee’s editorial policy. Finally, in 1970, Kirby quit Stan Lee over the issue of writing credit and pay for the writing he always did. In another caption in the interview, you make sure to refer to “penciler Jack Kirby” (where you actually credit Stan Lee with writing a story featuring Easter Island, like Thor a repeating Kirby theme). Aside from appropriating the writing page rate, the worst lie Lee ever told about Kirby was (by design) always insisting he was just an artist. Kirby was a creator/writer/artist, and deserves to be recognized as such in your little off-hand editorials.

Monster Masterworks That was the title of the 1990 Marvel-published trade paperback that reprinted 18 or so mostly-Kirby-penciled giant-monster epics from the late 1950s and early ’60s—behind a new Kirbyesque cover by Walt Simonson. Naturally, Fin Fang Foom made the cut (he’s the big orange guy at top left, in case you didn’t recognize him)—as did Groot, on the back cover. And whoever would have imagined, nearly thirty years ago, that one day the latter would be virtually a household name, while Fin Fang Foom would still be largely an in-joke amongst aging fanboys? Incidentally, Jack Kirby scribed a one-page introduction to the book, but alas, shed no light on any part beyond penciling that he might have played in the generation of any of those Godzilloids. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Lee is treated as the victor and history is molded to his narrative: he’s given every opportunity to say he doesn’t remember an event and therefore it didn’t happen. The best way to uncover the true story of Lee’s working relationship with Kirby is to take

your only source of information regarding Lee’s working relationship with Kirby was Lee. As Murray indicated, Lee did not sign “Fin Fang Foom.” Michael Vassallo has observed that Lee did not sign a single Kirby “monster” story (monster, science-fiction, or fantasy), an indication that he didn’t write any of them. As to whether Lee would forget to sign something, he has even signed one-page paper doll features in Millie the Model (and each one, if they were printed two to a page). As for Lee’s claim of never signing anything he didn’t write, see Mike Breen’s Jack Kirby Collector #61 article for one of many possible instances of a Lee signature (one on every splash, in fact) that wasn’t necessarily backed up by any writing involvement. Lee “probably didn’t write full scripts” for Kirby on “Fin Fang Foom” or any other story—it remains to be proven whether he ever wrote a script, period. Although Lee was known to purchase scripts (most famously, from Magazine Management writers) and assign them, Steve Ditko has written that he never got a full script from Lee. Vince Fago worked on humor comics with Lee prior to

Titans Of Talent One of the relatively few photos of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby together—or at least in close proximity—was snapped at the 1975 San Diego Comic-Con, depicting a number of winners of the Will Eisner Hall of Fame Award. Talk about Murderers’ Row! (Left to right in second row:) Gil Kane, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Jerry Siegel. Front row: Joe Shuster (face not seen), Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko. Mike Mikulovsky found this one on the Internet.

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

one of Kirby’s many interviews (so far dating back to 1968) and ask the question, what if I took Kirby at his word instead of Lee? A good place to start is one with which you’re obviously familiar, the interview in The Comics Journal #134. It was by no means his first word on the subject (as you characterize it), yet it provides a precious raw piece of unmanufactured history. Ask yourself, what events would explain Kirby’s recollection of Lee crying in the office? Mike Vassallo did precisely that and figured out that, according to the job numbers, Kirby’s very first trip to the office in 1958 was the first working day after Joe Maneely died. That should cause you to wonder if plummeting sales on the monster books had Goodman considering closing up shop (in fact, moving out the furniture) in 1961, before giving Kirby’s super-hero advice a shot.

you have a quote from Steve specifically stating that? Because Steve had other, and, he felt, better reasons for leaving, I’m sure… and in any event, he went on working for Marvel for a year or so after the two men stopped speaking. Nor do I necessarily accept that Jack quit Marvel in 1970 specifically “over the issue of writing credit and pay for the writing he always did.” I’m not saying it may not have been a factor. Still, during the preceding decade, he’d received several pay raises—and while they were officially for his work as “artist,” that doesn’t mean that Stan, who was pushing the publisher to get him those raises, didn’t personally count Jack’s plotting/ storytelling input as partial justification for them, even if Jack didn’t see it that way. But Stan felt that he himself needed to provide the actual finished dialogue for the stories. When Jack dialogued a “S.H.I.E.L.D.” episode

In your response to Jon Cooke for his Comic Book Creator #1 article, you accused Kirby of delusions of grandeur for supposedly greedily wanting credit after the fact and not remembering the “little people” like Lee who enabled his rise. No, Roy, the grandeur is genuine; you just have the roles reversed. Michael Hill Yeesh—where can I start? Maybe it’d be better not to… but what the hell… Lessee… first off, both Will Murray and I were simply trying to see what (if anything) we could prod Stan into remembering about “Fin Fang Foom,” a monster story notorious mostly for its title. Neither of us was successful, but we had no nefarious motives as you suggest. In days since, by the way, Stan has convincingly staked his claim to that yarn, thank you very much. He revealed at a 2005 recording session in Hollywood (for a book we were both working on), with no prompting whatever from Yours Truly, who was there, or from the two non-comics people present, that he’d named “Fin Fang Foom” after the rhythm of the title of a [1934 British] movie called Chu Chin Chow. No, that doesn’t prove he plotted “Foom,” but it’s well known that, circa 1961, he wrote synopses for most if not all of Timely/Marvel’s “monster epics,” which his brother Larry Lieber (and perhaps occasionally others) then turned into full scripts to be drawn by Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al. Now, if Jack himself said at some point that he wrote that story, dialogue and all, that would definitely be worth considering. But traces of his penciled balloons and captions on original “Foom” art merely indicate he pencil-lettered it when he drew it, not that he’d written the original script. It may well be true, as you say, that Jack would’ve preferred to write the actual scripts to some (if not all) of the stories he and Stan did. If so, it doesn’t seem he often (if ever) broached that subject to Stan, or I’d have probably heard about it in 1965 or after. But I won’t deny that, as the editor, responsible to publisher Martin Goodman for the contents of the comics, Stan really never felt that Jack’s dialogue would deliver what he wanted in a Marvel comic. Rightly or wrongly (and I submit he was basically correct), Stan believed his own way of scripting Marvel’s comics was every bit as important as the art during that first Marvel decade… and he wanted to keep that winning combination going. Not in order to rob Jack of credit, but because the system was working—had worked, indeed, from the first issue of Fantastic Four—and he didn’t want to mess it up. Sure, he let Wally Wood dialogue a single Daredevil issue; but he was unhappy with the results (as I learned when I came to work there, soon after Wood quit). I can appreciate Wood’s being unhappy to be acknowledged only as the “artist” in the credits, so that he moved on—but Stan was so obviously enamored of Wood’s talent that, if Wood had really pushed the point, Stan might well have made the same type of arrangement with him that he’d done first with Ditko, then with Kirby. As for your statement that “Ditko quit… because Stan wasn’t speaking to him”… well, maybe that’s the reason, and maybe it wasn’t. Do

The Right To Re-Write The “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” splash page, with layouts by Jack Kirby & finished art by Don Heck, from Strange Tales #148 (Sept. 1966). Although the credits say Stan Lee merely edited this story (and “in absentia,” yet, since he’d gone on a brief vacation and had Jack script as well as roughpencil and of course do much of the plotting), Roy T. recalls The Man as actually doing extensive rewrites upon his return; in the end, he just didn’t want to take credit or blame for his part in a story whose writing he didn’t much care for. Surprisingly, it’s unusually difficult to detect the rewritten balloons and captions, which suggests that production manager Sol Brodsky may have called credited letterer Sam Rosen into the Marvel offices to handle Stan’s re-do. Or maybe Sol talked Stan out of doing quite as much rewriting as Roy knows he wanted. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

re:

while Stan was out of town, Stan, upon returning, was vocally unhappy with the dialogue (if then-production manager Sol Brodsky was still alive, he’d back me up on this) and hurriedly rewrote as much of it as he had time to do… and far more than poor, long-suffering, deadline-hounded, budget-conscious Sol wanted him to. In 1970 Stan let Jack dialogue the “Ka-Zar” and “Inhumans” 10-pagers, because he didn’t have time to write the script himself and he knew Jack didn’t want to work with any other Marvel scribes; in his own mind, Stan was mostly just trying to keep Jack happy—though it was clearly too late for that. In the mid-1960s, Stan was desperately looking for writers. If not, he’d never have hired, in short order in 1965, first Steve Skeates, then myself, then Denny O’Neil. If he’d felt Kirby or Wood could’ve delivered the kind of scripting he wanted, I’m dead certain he’d have found a way to utilize them in that capacity. (Admittedly, in Jack’s case, I’m sure he’d have been torn, because he wanted Jack to pencil as much as possible—and writing scripts, like inking, would’ve made him less productive in the area wherein Stan primarily valued him. But the fact remains: rightly or wrongly, he just didn’t care for Jack’s actual dialogue-writing, only his plotting and storytelling.) Should Stan perhaps have made some additional accommodation with Jack? The point can be argued—in retrospect, I wish he had—but remember, Stan had reason to believe the matter had been settled to Jack’s satisfaction when the two of them agreed that future stories would be credited as “a Stan Lee & Jack Kirby production,” the phrasing Jack reportedly chose himself. I don’t recall ever hearing that Jack broached a further complaint in that area—at least not to his face, which is basically all that counts; if Jack didn’t bring it up, Stan can’t be faulted for not reading his mind. Stan thought things were back on an even keel—right up to the day he received that fateful phone call from Jack telling him that he was quitting and indeed had already begun working on new projects for DC. Yes, there was definitely a failure to communicate—and it’s a real pity that there was—but it was a two-way street. One further point: While Jack’s experience briefly drawing The Double Life of Private Strong and The Fly for Archie might indicate to some that Jack was always pushing Stan to do super-heroes, don’t forget that it was more likely Joe Simon as editor who initiated the idea of doing such characters to the Archie people. Contrary to what you write, Stan didn’t think of Jack as “just an artist.” There are numerous references in the 1960s Bullpen Bulletins and elsewhere to Kirby’s contributions to story, including at least once or twice the bald statement that Jack would draw entire issues after just the briefest of story conferences. The “crying time” episode Jack recounted in the late ’80s may indeed have come about very much as Doc Vassallo postulates—i.e., less because sales were down (whatever the state of the office furniture) than because Stan’s artist friend Joe Maneely had died only a couple of days before. Small wonder Stan didn’t recall the episode as Jack did: his motivation for any tears, whether gushing or stifled, might well have been largely different from what Jack assumed. Nor is it likely that it was Jack’s supposed predilection for superheroes that led to Timely reviving them (more than two years after the crying/furniture event Jack refers to). Not only Stan’s own various accounts, but also the 1960 success of DC’s new Justice League of America and related comics, gives credence to the greater likelihood that the 1961 Timely super-hero title was developed at the behest of the publisher. There’s no proof—and not really much probability—that Stan ever even mentioned to Martin Goodman that Jack Kirby thought the company ought to try putting out super-heroes again. If Jack felt it should, he was clearly correct, but that doesn’t mean his wishes had any more effect on Goodman than my own fannish musings, from nearly a thousand miles away. That wasn’t the way Goodman (or Stan Lee) operated, and I submit that it’s willfully naïve to believe it was.

“I’ll Be In Scotland Before Ye!” Scottish resident Gordon Robson sent this note re one aspect of Stan Lee’s visits to Britain between the 1970s and the 1990s: “The segment in Robert Menzies’ article recounting the Forbidden Planet store owner’s reminiscences about Stan’s 1991 Glasgow visit to promote Les Daniels’ book contained a couple of details that jar with my own recollection of events. I was there and audio-recorded part of Stan’s session, and photographed proceedings. “Firstly, all of Stan’s visits to the UK FP stores took place in November, not October; and his Glasgow visit was on Friday the 15th. Secondly, I was watching out for Stan from the back of the store and beheld him entering, hands in pockets, with the fellow who was playing Spider-Man (out of costume—he dressed downstairs), plus a young lady, presumably from the publisher. The way I remember things, it wasn’t until I announced Stan’s arrival that the owner went out into the front shop to meet him, but from that point on I’ve no cause to doubt Menzies’ recollections. After over a quarter of a century, I’m sure he (or maybe even I) can be forgiven for slightly misremembering some of the details. I took several photos of Stan, he autographed several of my books, and he was Mr. Personality himself—just exuded sheer charisma. It was certainly a big event in my life, and I’m sure, in that of everyone who met him on that November day. (I’ve attached a photo of Stan and me, taken on my camera by a staff member.)” Seen above, as submitted by Robert Menzies, is one of Stan’s “personal message” pages from a Marvel UK publication, this out from Marvel Super-Heroes #38 (Nov. 22, 1975). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As for your final insult, aimed at Stan and/or myself—well, I left it in, because I wanted to remind readers (and myself) that being a fan of a particular comics talent can be carried so far as to become almost a vice. As for myself—well, I’ve been a fan of Jack Kirby since probably you were less than a gleam in your father’s (if not your grandfather’s) eye, so I hardly need certification in your eyes as what I indeed am: a great and

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

lifetime admirer of both men. I’ve written more than once that I find it impossible to imagine Marvel Comics as it ultimately evolved without the two of them being on the scene at the time, with each doing basically what he did. If you feel differently… well, I know a good eye specialist I could recommend. If anybody else wants to pick a fight—or send a bouquet—please address messages to: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

Ye Editor’s manager/pal John Cimino presides over what he’s christened The Roy Thomas Appreciation Boards on Facebook. It deals with upcoming convention appearances, comicbook and/or book projects, or whatever RT is up to. And it’s interactive as hell! Also, our e-mail discussion list, Alter-Ego-Fans, is still active at http:/groups.yahoo.com/group/alter-ego-fans. Moderator Chet Cox tells us that Yahoo no longer has an “Add Member” tool, so if you experience a problem getting in, please contact him at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll walk you (at double-time) through the process!

Stan’s Soapbox Sidebar Conducted by Roy Thomas One thing that has always fascinated a certain type of Marvel fan—especially us early ones—has been the story of the “golf game.” Stan Lee told, more than once, of being informed by his publisher Martin Goodman in early 1961 that he recently been playing golf with someone from DC—Stan remembered him as naming co-publisher Jack Liebowitz—who had bragged that DC’s new super-team title Justice League of America was selling exceptionally well. Goodman allegedly made certain that, the next time he saw Stan, he directed him to put together a Timely super-team title as quickly as possible, which led, by the turn of August of that year, to the publication of The Fantastic Four #1.

Michael Uslan and the British variant of the cover of The Fantastic Four #1, which in the U.S. had a cover date of November 1961. Pencils by Jack Kirby; inks probably by George Klein. This version is pretty much identical to the American rendition except for the lack of a “Nov.” beneath the “1” and the “9d” price tag instead of “10¢.” Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. A photo of Martin Goodman appears on p. 24 of this issue. [Page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

However, Liebowitz reportedly said years later that he had never played golf with Goodman in his life. Since then, folks have speculated either that (a) Goodman made up the “golf game” story to hide his true sources of inside information at the DC-owned distribution company, Independent News, which incidentally distributed Goodman’s truncated comics line as well, or (b) Goodman had learned that news when playing golf with someone else, most likely an executive at Independent News itself. Three people (but far from the only ones) who’ve long wished to find out the truth behind that tale are longtime DC publisher Paul Levitz, one-time comics writer and long-running Batman movie co-producer Michael Uslan, and myself. Michael, back in A/E #43, reported that DC production chief (and later president) Sol Harrison had claimed it was indeed an Independent News exec with whom Goodman was golfing that day, but Michael couldn’t remember the name Harrison gave. Michael, on the rare occasions when he can spare any time from his filmmaking efforts, has done additional research on the matter, and a couple of years ago he sent me the following missive, which started us both off on the info-quest all over again… this time focusing, at the outset, on precisely when and where those nine or eighteen holes might’ve been played…. Hi Roy… I have concluded that, predicated on the on-sale date of Fantastic Four #1 and on the date of Stan’s outline for FF #1, the infamous golf game had to have taken place in New York in April (or no later than May) of 1961. I’ve since researched the weather in NYC on every Saturday and Sunday in April 1961 and found that the first warm weekends of the year took place on Saturday, April 22nd (71 degrees for the high), Sunday, April 23rd (71 degrees for the high), Saturday, April 29th (68 degrees for the high), and Sunday, April 30th (80 degrees for the high). So, circumstantial

evidence, human nature, and a schedule for the creation of the comicbook convinces me it was one of these dates. If we want to assign an intern a research job to determine where Paul Sampliner and Martin Goodman lived in the New York area, what golf or country clubs they belonged to, then track down any records the clubs might have dating back to 1961 tee times, we might be able to solve this case beyond circumstantially. I will try to find Sampliner’s club. Do you know someone who would know where Goodman’s might have been? Michael Paul Sampliner was, around that time, the president of Independent News, so he might have been a candidate for Martin Goodman’s fellow golfer. The “date of Stan’s outline” that Michael refers to was really just the date of the schedule (“July ’61”), which—assuming the first issue of F.F. adhered to that schedule—would have meant that it shipped from the distributor in July, which at least meshes with the fact that it was on sale around the country at either the very end of July or the very beginning of August. Anyway, I wasted no time in getting back to Michael:

re:

three days: “It would’ve been two, but his pencil broke.” I’ve made it my life’s mission (as, I think, has Michael Uslan) to track down the truth of this [story of a golf game]. Roy Paul, bless his heart, was not above doing a bit of additional research on the matter, and soon responded….

“Round Up The Uslan Suspects!” (Left to right:) Sol Harrison, longtime production head at DC and later the company’s president. He’s the one who told Michael Uslan (and Paul Levitz?) that Martin Goodman must’ve been playing golf not with Jack Liebowitz but with one of the other two worthies on the right... or with someone else entirely.

Hi Roy, I did a little searching and found that at least one course on Long Island stays open year round, though I can’t imagine anyone playing in winter. I imagine it would have been at a country club

Jack Liebowitz, originally Harry Donenfeld’s accountant, later co-publisher of DC Comics. Irwin Donenfeld, son of company co-founder Harry Donenfeld, and co-publisher from the late 1940s through the late ’60s. Paul Sampliner, one-time president of Independent Distribution.

Hi Michael— Funny, I didn’t remember there was a date on Stan’s outline for the first part of FF #1… I’ll have to re-check. But do you really think the book [FF] could have been rushed into production after April or May and still be on sale no later than the start of August, which is the latest I could have bought that comic off the stands? Seems to me that in those days, or at least later in the 1960s, we used to have to have an issue to the printers 2-3 months at least before it went on sale. Still, if Goodman said get it done, neither he nor Stan (and certainly not Jack) would’ve let the grass grow under their feet. Wonder if they played golf in March in NY, assuming that’s where the golf game was. And if it was a golf game and Goodman wasn’t gilding the lily. Roy Michael had suggested, back in A/E #43, that Paul Levitz would know the name of the IN exec Sol Harrison had mentioned, but Paul has long since assured me that if he ever knew that name, he no longer recalled who it was. Still, I also dropped Paul a line to see if he had any insights on where and when Goodman and said exec might have golfed, especially in the first few months of 1961…. Hi Paul— Mike brings up one problematical matter: Did they play golf in April or even early May in Long Island? I know I bought FF #1 off the stands no later than very early August, which is why Jerry [Bails] was able to publish my “review” of it in Comicollector #1 in August (though it was dated September), in time for Stan to get it and send an August response. As I recall, lead times in those days were rather long compared to today. I wonder if a comic that only went into production in late April, let alone May, could possibly have been on sale by the turn of August. Gives a little credence to Michael Feldman’s theory that the second half of FF #1 was a partly rewritten/ redrawn monster story with a Mole Man… and my joke at the 1995 Stan Lee Roast in Chicago that Jack Kirby drew FF #1 in

Paul Levitz as DC president in 1985. Photo by Bob Rozakis. Also seen is the Lee-Kirby-(Klein?) page from Fantastic Four #1 that introduced Johnny Storm, the new Human Torch—only this is the version as reprinted in 1963’s Fantastic Four Annual #1, with the original Dragoomstyle Torch penciled by Kirby in F.F. #1 &2 redrawn, reportedly by Sol Brodsky (except in panel 3), to conform more closely to the revised, Carl Burgos-influenced rendition that had been introduced in #3. Reproduced from Ye Ed’s bound volumes. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Sampliner would have belonged to a country club in the vicinity of Great Neck, Long Island. I asked [my longtime film partner] Ben Melniker for help with our research. Ben, who will be 99 in May [of 2017] and is as sharp as ever, has identified the primary golf/ country club suspect below. The second choice would be the Fresh Meadows Country Club.

(a mostly Jewish one, at that de facto segregated period), probably on the North Shore near Great Neck or Rosyln. Assuming rational behavior, maybe March? But it also could have been a game at a regional wholesaler conference, which could have been at a resort in a warmer climate, or even in mid-winter. Happy questing! Paul Levitz Interesting possibilities, though we were still fishing around. Meanwhile, Michael wrote his longtime film-producing partner Ben Melniker, who had once been a high-ranking executive at MGM, back when it was a moviemaking powerhouse….

Michael

Benjamin Melniker Michael Uslan’s longtime filmproducing partner, once a major executive at MGM Studios.

Hi Ben… I’ve been researching some early history of DC Comics and its sister company, Independent News. Two of the principals resided around the Great Neck area [of Long Island] and belonged to a country club or golf club that would have been open to Jews in the early 1960s. Do you know what clubs they might have belonged to in that area? I assume Engineers would be a candidate. Would Engineers have records going back that show if either Jacob Liebowitz or Paul Sampliner were members then?

Well, okay—so maybe we’re still no closer to knowing the truth or fiction of that “JLA/Fantastic Four golf game” than we were when we started… but we’ll keep at it, and who knows but that one of these days…? Meanwhile, we’ve printed the above exchange to show you how that story, for which Stan Lee was really the one and only original source (since Goodman never again related the anecdote, either to deny or affirm it—matter of fact, I doubt anybody ever truly got a chance to ask him!), has fascinated Merry Marvel Marchers for decades. But, who knows? Maybe some Alter Ego reader out there just happens to have a bunch of old membership lists for Long Island country clubs lying around the house…!

Michael Benjamin Melniker, alas, would pass away in early 2018, at the age of 100—but at this time, he was a hale and hearty 99, and he kindly lost no time in responding to his partner’s query…. Hi Michael: As far as Engineers is concerned, that’s easy. The private club Engineers went bankrupt in the 1930s. Until we took it over in 1952 and took it private, it was run as a public golf course. Since then, Shirley and I are 99% sure the persons named in your e-mail never belonged to Engineers. There is a country club in Great Neck that could be a likely candidate. Over the years it had a great reputation. I think most people considered it quite a bit above Engineers. I recall hearing the remark “That’s the club of the rich German Jews,” said, of course, by other Jews. We are to the east of Great Neck. To the west is a club in the Village of Lake Success, which was always considered in the same league as Engineers or, of course, Fresh Meadows. There is another club somewhat north called Deepdale, but that’s one for the upper 1%. They have no dues. At the end of the year they just divide up the costs among the members and write checks. The last phone book I have of Nassau County is 09-10, and it shows the address of Fresh Meadows Country Club as 255 Lakeville Road – Great Neck. I hope you will find the above helpful. Ben Melniker We were getting no closer, perhaps, to adding another chapter to Stan’s 1947 mini-classic Secrets behind the Comics, but I was learning a bit about East Coast Jewish golf associations of more than half a century ago…. Hi Roy… Paul Levitz told me that Jacob (Jack) Liebowitz and Paul

“Flame On!” The final page of the F.F.’s origin as reprinted in Fantastic Four Annual #1 (1963), with the Torch redrawn. Wish we were half as sure about that 1961 golf game as we are that it was Sol Brodsky who redrew the flaming Torch figures in this re-presentation. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

in memoriam

ED SILVERMAN (1924-2014)

“All OK—Bill Stern” by Shaun Clancy

t was one-time comics editor Herb Rogoff who first put me in touch with Ed Silverman, after we had been talking about his comicbook career and my interest in old-time radio. Herb mentioned that Silverman had worked on the radio show of legendary sports broadcaster Bill Stern, and that he had also written comics. I quickly called Ed and we hit it off, as can be seen by the interview with Ed printed in Alter Ego #120. Ed was in the U.S. Navy for 3½ years during World War II, stationed in Hawaii doing interviews and sports columns for its weekly publication. He also participated in the Navy football games and boxing. Later he was transferred to Washington, DC, where he met Roger Treat, sports editor of the Washington Daily News, and started writing for him.

Ed Silverman on left, with famous radio sports broadcaster Bill Stern. Also seen is a page of a filler story in Ziff-Davis’ Wild Boy of the Congo #9 (Oct. 1953), written by Silverman and drawn by Carmine Infantino. Thanks to Shaun Clancy and Jim Kealy, respectively. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

After leaving the service, Ed got a job at Sports Week, reporting on national sports under the name “Spike Greb.” He got married soon afterward, to a cousin of Fawcett comics’ executive editor Will Lieberson. Rogoff, then writing at Hillman Publications, talked Ed into trying his hand at scripting for them under editor Ed Cronin in the early 1950s. When Herb left to edit for Ziff-Davis’ comics line, Ed followed him. He also wrote for St. John Publishing. “Among the titles for which I created stories” for one company or the other, he said later, “were Bob Feller Baseball Thrills, Airboy Comics, Wild Boy, G.I. Joe, Explorer Joe, Crusader from Mars, Public Enemy Crime, Weird Thrillers, Red Grange sports, Real Clue Crime Stories, Kid Cowboy, The Hawk, and Bill Stern’s Sports Book,” generally under Rogoff. He mentioned that the going rate for scripts in those days was $7 to $9 per page. One of his best-remembered assignments from Rogoff was to write the entire semi-annual Bill Stern’s Sports Book, a 100-page 25-center. For that task, he locked himself in for ten days, researching and writing till well past midnight. “I wasn’t so much concerned about whether Herb would approve as I was concerned that Bill Stern, then the most famous sports broadcaster in the world, might not like what I had done.” A few days after he submitted the final effort, Herb called a very nervous Ed in to see him; Stern had returned the script. “When I sat across from Herb, he reached into his desk and pushed across the folded script without saying a word. There across the bottom of page one, written in a bold hand were these terse words: ‘ALL OK. Bill Stern.’” He kept that script for the rest of his life. Later, Stern invited Silverman to join him at ABC in 1953 to do a daily radio show. Silverman acted as producer, chief writer, and field reporter—and “my network broadcasting career was launched.” Silverman worked on Stern’s radio series until 1959, and later created a radio show with broadcaster Howard Cosell. His credits and awards in broadcasting, both radio and TV, were extensive, as detailed in A/E #120. And Ed Silverman felt that he owed it all to Herb Rogoff, who had first brought him to the attention of Bill Stern.

in memoriam

Ken Bald (1920-2019)

“I Had A Very Good Life” by Bryan D. Stroud

enneth Bruce Bald, a pioneering Golden Age artist whose work graced the pages of Fawcett comics, Timely/Marvel comics, and syndicated newspaper strips, passed away on March 17, 2019, at the age of 98. Bald, born in New York City on August 1, 1920, earned a 3-year scholarship to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn following graduation from high school, providing the necessary training to allow him to pursue his dream of working as a professional illustrator. Following his graduation in 1941, he secured employment with the Jack Binder Art Studio in Englewood, New Jersey, a comicbook packaging operation, where his talents were utilized on such well-known Fawcett characters as Bulletman, Captain Marvel, and Spy Smasher. Ken thoroughly enjoyed his time in the fledgling industry at the Binder Studio, where work was also done for the Street & Smith

Ken Bald with Stan Lee, probably at one of the comics conventions they attended together in later years. For Stan at Timely Comics, Ken had drawn (among many other things) the story below for Blonde Phantom #19 (Sept. 1948). [Page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

line. It was very much an assembly-line process and Ken recalled in a 2012 interview that, “while we were at Binder’s, it was great. We could take a 2-hour lunch and play 6 or 7 innings of softball right across the street. We were mostly young guys and we’d work late into the night, because it was piece work, so it was all about how much you wanted to work and how long you worked as far as how much you made. We didn’t make much per page. On the backs of those 17” boards we worked on we had a list of what you did.” Ken also remembered that “Jack Binder was great to work with. He and Olga, his wife, were wonderful people.” Bald was quickly promoted to art director at the Binder studio, but when the nation went to war, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942, seeing action in Guadalcanal and Okinawa with the 1st Marine Division and rising to the rank of captain. In 1943 he married Kaye Dowd, a Hollywood starlet. Together they raised five children and enjoyed 76 years of happiness. Upon his return from the service, Ken was hired by Stan Lee at Timely Comics and did work on “Captain America,” “Sub-Mariner,” and “The Human Torch,” followed later by “Sun Girl,” “Blonde Phantom,” and “Millie the Model.” The Balds and the Lees enjoyed a lasting friendship in the bargain, and in recent years Ken and Stan enjoyed attending conventions together, marveling at the fans clamoring to see them. Work for the American Comics Group followed Bald’s tenure at Timely/Marvel. Later, Ken went into the advertising business for Johnstone & Cushing. His successful and evolving career eventually led him to syndication with King Features with the Judd Saxon strip. He would then move on to the Dr. Kildare strip, written by Elliot Kaplan, brother of Al Capp, for a 20+ year run, followed by Dark Shadows, then circling back to commercial art for TV storyboards along with other endeavors in advertising. Ken later secured two Guinness World Records—for oldest comic artist and oldest comic artist to illustrate a published comicbook cover (for Marvel in 2015, at age 95). Reflecting back on his long and fruitful career, Bald shared that his most enjoyable assignments were the Dark Shadows syndicated strip and his work on “Bulletman” in the super-hero genre, “But of course, I was happy to do whatever assignment I had given to me by Stan or whomever I was working for. I’ve met nice people… and had a very good life.”

in memoriam

ELLEN VARTANOFF (1951-2019)

“A Skilled And Inspiring Art Educator” by Richard Rubenfeld

first met Ellen Vartanoff in New York in February 1966, at Calvin Beck’s one-day comicon. Even though they lived in Bethesda, Maryland, Ellen and her sister Irene soon became members of the New York-based fan group, TISOS [The Illegitimate Sons of Superman], to which I also belonged. Until the early 1970s, we saw each other regularly at comic and science-fiction conventions, TISOS parties, and at the Halloween parades and festivities hosted by Tom Fagan in Rutland, Vermont. By the mid 1970s the group had splintered geographically, but we always stayed in touch. In 1978 I relocated to the Washington, DC, area to conduct the research for my dissertation on the American painter Preston Dickinson, later beginning my teaching career at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. Living for eight years in proximity to Ellen, I saw her fairly often at art events and during museum visits I organized for my students. It was clear that art was one of the main passions in her life, equal to if not greater than the passion for comics that initially cemented our friendship. An excellent artist, she worked in many media, including pastel and papermaking, as well as designing and painting scenery for the Adventure Theatre at Glen Echo Park. She exhibited her works in local exhibitions, including two I attended at Montgomery College. Ellen also worked intermittently in comics during the 1970s and 1980s, coloring for DC and Marvel, and helping to ink Michael Bair’s pencils in 1986 for an issue of DC’s Infinity, Inc. She was one of the first fans to organize and curate an exhibition of original comic art, inspiring me to do the same at Eastern Michigan University, where I began teaching in 1986. One of Ellen’s goals that sadly did not reach fruition, due to her advancing illness, was creating an epic graphic novel set in the ancient world, with its protagonist, Sinuhue, visiting different civilizations of the time and meeting luminaries such as Pythagoras and Buddha. At the 2016 Baltimore Comic Con, she showed me a series of preparatory sketches for the project. Not yet tied to a particular narrative or characters, they were varied in location, broad in scope and filled with energy. Ellen was a skilled and inspiring art educator, teaching art and cartooning in a variety of venues in Washington, DC, area schools, as well as the Smithsonian Institution. In 2015, I was able to visit her on

Ellen Vartanoff at Walt Whitman High School, 1969—and the Gil Kane/Frank Giacoia cover of Captain Marvel #53 (Nov. 1977), which she is reported to have colored. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

the opening day of the Holton Arms Creative Summer Camp in Bethesda, Maryland. Students for her comics and cartooning class were delighted to see her, and it was clear that quite a few were back for another class! Not restricting the media for the first project, designing an original character, Ellen equipped her classroom with a variety of free drawing and collaging materials, as well as providing plenty of comicbooks, masks, and art materials she had collected over the years to inspire and keep everybody happy. Despite the different ages and experiences of her students, she was fully engaged with her class and helped everybody finish their projects in time to show their parents waiting to bring them home. Ellen’s love of comics, science-fiction, and fantasy was a constant in the years that I knew her. She had strong opinions about what worked and what did not and was more than willing to share them. In our last phone conversations, we still talked comics. Last summer we were reminiscing about DC’s classic Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. Ellen praised the work of artist Sid Greene and wondered why he never received the recognition that others illustrating Julie Schwartz’s SF comics, such as Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane, did. She expressed admiration for Tom Yeates and Mike Kaluta’s art for the 2011 Dark Horse adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Outlaw of Torn. We talked about those working in the American comic book industry today and about the underrepresentation of women. Ellen was hopeful that in today’s political climate women would be able to achieve some equity in the field.

“She Was Fully Engaged With Her Class” Ellen with one of her art classes, circa 1986.

Ellen passed away on March 17, 2019, after a long battle against cancer. She will be missed.

JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

In cooperation with DC COMICS, TwoMorrows compiles a tempestuous trio of never-seen 1970s Kirby projects! These are the final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence, presented here for the first time! Included are: Two unused DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales (Kirby’s final Kid Gang group, inked by MIKE ROYER and D. BRUCE BERRY, and newly colored for this book)! TRUE-LIFE DIVORCE, the abandoned newsstand magazine that was too hot for its time (reproduced from Jack’s pencil art—and as a bonus, we’ve commissioned MIKE ROYER to ink one of the stories)! And SOUL LOVE, the unseen ’70s romance book so funky, even a jive turkey will dig the unretouched inks by VINCE COLLETTA and TONY DeZUNIGA. PLUS: There’s Kirby historian JOHN MORROW’s in-depth examination of why these projects got left back, concept art and uninked pencils from DINGBATS, and a Foreword by former 1970s Kirby assistant MARK EVANIER! SHIPS OCT. 2019! (160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-091-5

rs. ctive owne their respe All characte

In the latest volume, KURT MITCHELL and ROY THOMAS document the 1940-44 “Golden Age” of comics, a period that featured the earliest adventures of BATMAN, CAPTAIN MARVEL, SUPERMAN, and WONDER WOMAN. It was a time when America’s entry into World War II was presaged Look for the 1945-49 volume by the arrival of such patriotic do-gooders as WILL EISNER’s Uncle Sam, HARRY SHORTEN and in 2020! IRV NOVICK’s The Shield, and JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY’s Captain America—and teenage culture found expression in a fumbling red-haired high school student named Archie Andrews. But most of all, it was the age of “packagers” like HARRY A CHESLER, and EISNER and JERRY IGER, who churned out material for the entire gamut of genres, from funny animal stories and crime tales, to jungle sagas and science-fiction adventures. Watch the history of comics begin! NOW SHIPPING!

rs TM & ©

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1940-44

OR -COL FULLDCOVER HAR RIES SE nting me docu ecade of ! d each s history ic m co

(288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $45.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-089-2

MAC RABOY Master of the Comics

Beginning with his WPA etchings during the 1930s, MAC RABOY struggled to survive the Great Depression and eventually found his way into the comic book sweatshops of America. In that world of four-color panels, he perfected his art style on such creations as DR. VOODOO, ZORO the MYSTERY MAN, BULLETMAN, SPY SMASHER, GREEN LAMA, and his crowning achievement, CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. Raboy went on to illustrate the FLASH GORDON Sunday newspaper strip, and left behind a legacy of meticulous perfection. Through extensive research and interviews with son DAVID RABOY, and assistants who worked with the artist during the Golden Age of Comics, author ROGER HILL brings Mac Raboy, the man and the artist, into focus for historians to savor and enjoy. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER includes never-before-seen photos, a wealth of rare and unpublished artwork, and the first definitive biography of a true Master of the Comics! Introduction by ROY THOMAS! ISBN: 978-1-60549-090-8 • NOW SHIPPING! (160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.95 Roger Hill’s 2017 biography of REED CRANDALL sold out just months after its release—don’t let this one pass you by!Pre-order now!

Silver ary ers Anniv -2019 1994 ears 25 Y

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com Don’t miss exclusive sales, limited editions, and new releases! Sign up for our mailing list: http:// groups.yahoo.com/group/twomorrows

t Ar

9 01

s an

Edited by ROY THOMAS The first and greatest “hero-zine”—ALL-NEW, focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America], MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY’S Comic Fandom Archive, and more!

EISNER AWARD Winner Best Comics-Related Periodical Go to www.twomorrows.com for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE!

ALTER EGO #152

ALTER EGO #153

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BLE

AVAILA

ALTER EGO #149

ALTER EGO #150

ALTER EGO #151

Showcases GIL KANE, with an incisive and free-wheeling interview conducted in the 1990s by DANIEL HERMAN for his 2001 book Gil Kane: The Art of the Comics—plus other surprise features centered around the artistic co-creator of the Silver Age Green Lantern and The Atom! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by GIL KANE, JOE GIELLA, and MARIE SEVERIN!

STAN LEE’s 95th birthday! Rare 1980s LEE interview by WILL MURRAY—GER APELDOORN on Stan’s non-Marvel writing in the 1950s—STAN in Britain in the 1970s—and more special features than you could shake Irving Forbush at! Also FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), BILL SCHELLY, and MICHAEL T. GILBERT! Colorful Marvel multi-hero cover by Big JOHN BUSCEMA!

Golden Age artist FRANK THOMAS (The Owl! The Eye! Dr. Hypno!) celebrated by Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt’s MICHAEL T. GILBERT! Plus the scintillating (and often offbeat) Golden & Silver Age super-heroes of Western Publishing’s DELL & GOLD KEY comics! Art by MANNING, DITKO, KANE, MARSH, GILL, SPIEGLE, SPRINGER, NORRIS, SANTOS, THORNE, et al.! Plus FCA, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95

ALTER EGO #154

ALTER EGO #155

ALTER EGO #156

Unsung artist/writer LARRY IVIE conceived (and named!) the JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, helped develop T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, brought EC art greats to the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more! SANDY PLUNKETT chronicles his career, with art by FRAZETTA, CRANDALL, WOOD, KRENKEL, DOOLIN, and others! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Remembering Fabulous FLO STEINBERG, Stan Lee’s gal Friday during the Marvel Age of Comics—with anecdotes and essays by pros and friends who knew and loved her! Rare Marvel art, Flo’s successor ROBIN GREEN interviewed by RICHARD ARNDT about her time at Marvel, and Robin’s 1971 article on Marvel for ROLLING STONE magazine! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

ALLEN BELLMAN (1940s Timely artist) interviewed by DR. MICHAEL J. VASSALLO, with art by SHORES, BURGOS, BRODSKY, SEKOWSKY, EVERETT, & JAFFEE. Plus Marvel’s ’70s heroines: LINDA FITE & PATY COCKRUM on The Cat, CAROLE SEULING on Shanna the She-Devil, & ROY THOMAS on Night Nurse—with art by SEVERIN, FRADON, ANDRU, and more! With FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Golden Age artist/writer/editor NORMAN MAURER remembered by his wife JOAN, recalling BIRO’s Crime Does Not Pay, Boy Comics, Daredevil, St. John’s 3-D & THREE STOOGES comics with KUBERT, his THREE STOOGES movies (MOE was his father-inlaw!), and work for Marvel, DC, and others! Plus LARRY IVIE’s 1959 plans for a JUSTICE SOCIETY revival, JOHN BROOME, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY and more!

All Time Classic Con continued from #148! Panels on Golden Age (CUIDERA, HASEN, SCHWARTZ [LEW & ALVIN], BOLTINOFF, LAMPERT, GILL, FLESSEL) & Silver Age Marvel, DC, & Gold Key (SEVERIN, SINNOTT, AYERS, DRAKE, ANDERSON, FRADON, SIMONSON, GREEN, BOLLE, THOMAS), plus JOHN BROOME, FCA, MR. MONSTER, & BILL SCHELLY! Unused RON WILSON/CHRIS IVY cover!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

ALTER EGO #157

ALTER EGO #158

ALTER EGO #159

ALTER EGO #160

Interview with JOYE MURCHISON, assistant to Wonder Woman co-creator DR. WILLIAM MARSTON, and WW’s female scriptwriter from 1945-1948! Rare art by H.G. PETER, 1960s DC love comics writer BARBARA FRIEDLANDER, art & anecdotes by ROMITA, COLAN, JAY SCOTT PIKE, INFANTINO, WEISINGER, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and others! Extra: FCA, JOHN BROOME, MR. MONSTER, & more!

FCA SPECIAL! Golden Age writer WILLIAM WOOLFOLK interview, and his scripting records! Art by BECK, SCHAFFENBERGER, BORING, BOB KANE, CRANDALL, KRIGSTEIN, ANDRU, JACK COLE, FINE, PETER, HEATH, PLASTINO, MOLDOFF, GRANDENETTI, and more! Plus JOHN BROOME, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and the 2017 STAR WARS PANEL with CHAYKIN, LIPPINCOTT, and THOMAS!

Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt writer/artist PETE MORISI talks about the creative process! Plus, read his correspondence with comics greats JACK KIRBY, JOE SIMON, AL WILLIAMSON, CHARLES BIRO, JOE GILL, GEORGE TUSKA, ROCKY MASTROSERIO, PAT MASULLI, SAL GENTILE, DICK GIORDANO, and others! Also: JOHN BROOME’s bio, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY!

REMEMBERING STEVE DITKO! Sturdy Steve at Marvel, DC, Warren, Charlton, and elsewhere! A rare late-1960s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL—biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO—tributes by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, PAUL LEVITZ, BERNIE BUBNIS, BARRY PEARL, ROY THOMAS, et al. Plus FCA, JOHN BROOME, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Spider-Man cover by DITKO!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com

STAN THE MAN

Fawcett Collectors Remember Marvel’s Smilin’ Leader Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

P.C. Hamerlinck

discovered Stan Lee’s work when I began reading super-hero comics in 1973 at the age of 11. I was absorbing his often-profound “Soapbox” installments (where it became clear that Stan was just as much a hero as The Mighty Thor or The Invincible Iron Man) before stumbling across Lee and company classics within the pages of indispensable reprint titles for us newcomers like Marvel Tales, Marvel’s Greatest Comics, Marvel Double Feature, and Marvel Triple Action. In addition, my parents—knowing that I had a soft spot for Captain Marvel and, under their assumption that the Big Red Cheese Cap and Marvel Comics were all one and the same—purchased for me in 1975 at B. Dalton Bookseller Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. Out of the book’s grand re-presentation of those seminal stories, I found myself the most captivated by Stan and Gene Colan’s “Brother, Take My Hand.” In his illuminating essay for this Vietnam War-era Daredevil tale, Stan wrote: “It touches on man’s inhumanity to man, one of the biggest problems which faces us today. I admit it… I was trying to really say something in this story, and to say it softly.” He sure did.

P.C. Hamerlinck found the gateway to Marvel’s past through reprint titles like Marvel Double Feature #8 (Feb. 1975); art by Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Later on, Mom and Dad Hamerlinck gifted me with some of the Marvel Pocket Books—paperbacks of vintage, full-color excitement starring Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, and the Hulk in their earliest stages, courtesy of Lee, Ditko, Kirby, and the Bullpen. I really believed at the time that it legitimized my taste in literature simply when these works finally became accessible at our local shopping mall bookstore. C.C. Beck, in a 1979 letter to me, spoke highly of Stan. The two of them had hit it off at a Miami comic convention in April that same year. Beck credited Stan for “putting some humor back in comics”… but Captain Marvel’s co-creator couldn’t grasp the rationality behind Stan’s “Marvel Method” of putting comicbook stories together.

C.C. Beck The artistic co-creator of the original “Captain Marvel” (on right) and Stan Lee (co-creator of another “Captain Marvel” in 1967), in spite of their dueling Captain Marvels, manage to enjoy each other’s company at the Miami Con in April 1979.

Fast-forward to adulthood: I had seen Stan several times over the years on convention panels discussing his many achievements. My nearest interaction with him was nine years ago when I was writing an article for Michael Eury’s Back Issue magazine about a 1975 record album tie-in oddity called Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero [see p. 12]—where Stan had recorded stage-setting narratives in between the record’s musical tracks. Through Roy, I asked Stan about the project, but he couldn’t remember a thing about it. But I remember putting that LP on the turntable back in ’75… and I can still hear Stan’s voice through the speakers joyfully hamming it up for young listeners (and fans) like me.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Jim Engel Stan Lee made the Marvel Comics of the ’60s the most exciting thing of my youth. He created THE CLUB. He made me feel like an insider in a most incredible universe of characters—and their creators. Stan, more than anyone WAS Marvel. Even IF all Stan ever did was dialogue and editorial content (and nobody disputes THAT), that was half the appeal of Marvel (at least for ME). Even if you believe he had nothing to do with the stories/plots (and I don’t believe that), he gave Marvel’s characters their voices and their personalities. I never read ANY Kirby-only book after the 1960s Marvel years that held anything LIKE the appeal of his work with Stan. Kirby ALONE at Marvel in the ’60s, dialoguing his own stuff, would NEVER have grabbed me the way the same work with the Stan dialogue, titles, and editorial persona did. Ditko alone wouldn’t have, either. Or anyone ELSE in the “Bullpen.” Without that Stan Lee “polish,” “veneer,” “personality”—whatever you want to call it—I truly do not believe there’d have been a “Marvel Age of Comics” and the huge industry-wide super-hero boost that resulted from it. His contribution cannot be overestimated.

comicbooks were quite literally “seducing the innocent.” In 1948/49, Lee wrote a series of editorials that were published in all of Timely’s titles that defended his life’s work against Wertham-esque critics who saw comicbooks as causing juvenile delinquency. It is important to note that this was a fight that Lee was bound Brian Cronin. to lose, as Timely-rebranded-as-Atlas Comics eventually co-founded the Comics Magazine Association of America (CMAA) and helped create the self-policing and restrictive Comics Code Authority in 1954 to prevent the government from policing the comicbook industry. Lee knew that his was not a necessarily popular viewpoint and yet he still fought for it. His most powerful response to Wertham occurred in “The Raving Maniac,” in the final issue of Suspense (#29, 1953), with art by Joe Maneely, as Lee wrote himself into the story as the head of a comicbook company who is dealing with the titular maniac, who wants to bring the editor’s comicbook company down. Lee, as the editor, argues against censorship and defends comicbooks as harmless escapist fiction that gives their readers comfort in the increasingly dangerous real world,

Jim Engel with Stan Lee in 1994. You can see some of his art on p. 93.

Brian Cronin When people think of Stan Lee taking an idealistic stand, they typically have in mind one of his late-1960s “Stan’s Soapbox” columns that would run every month in Marvel Comics, starting with the introduction of the company-wide “Bullpen Bulletins” beginning in 1967. Those columns, especially the ones where Lee decried the evils of bigotry, are powerful reading today and likely had an even greater impact when they were first published. However, it is worth noting that, by 1968, Lee was writing from a position of strength. Marvel Comics was riding not only high in sales, but also in cultural relevance. Despite being in his mid-40s, Lee was suddenly an icon among college students and he knew it. Therefore, while I admire Lee’s views from that period, I am even more impressed by Lee’s actions during the late 1940s/early 1950s as he became one of the most vocal critics in the comicbook industry against the attacks on comicbooks by concerned parents who were turning against comics based on the writings of Fredric Wertham and people of his ilk who were convinced that

A Marvel Maniac—1950s Style! Brian Cronin was impressed with Stan Lee’s defense of comicbooks in “The Raving Maniac” from Suspense #29 (1953); art by Joe Maneely. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Fawcett Collectors Remember Stan The Man

especially the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation. At the time, Atlas Comics was best known as a company that copied the trends started by other companies. Lee once noted that the company’s output was “usually based on how the competition was doing. When we found that EC’s horror books were doing well, for instance, we published a lot of horror books.” Here, though, Lee stood on his own, in a losing fight for the sake of an ideal. It was one of the most heroic actions that I could think of during Lee’s long career in comics.

Ron Frantz About twenty-five years ago, when the late Dr. Jerry Bails was still publishing paper editions of his Who’s Who of American Comic Books, he asked me to fill out a questionnaire listing all my writing and publishing credits for inclusion in the latest edition. Not that I have ever considered myself as any kind of a public figure worthy of such recognition. This included his request for some personal background information, such as who my major influences had been. It took only a bare minimum of thought for me to realize that my greatest influence had been none other than Stan “The Man” Lee. For me, this adulation began in 1963 at the age of nine when I first started reading dozens of super-hero stories written or edited by Stan Lee for Marvel Comics. I think Stan would probably have been flattered to know that many of the characters he co-created with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko became heroes and role models for a multitude of children. I just happened to be one of them. Two decades later, while I was publishing my ACE Comics line and attending various conventions and trade shows around the country, I always hoped that I might meet Stan Lee in person. Sadly, I never did. Somehow, as things worked out, we were never at the same place at the same time. Had I been so fortunate as to meet Stan, I would have been proud to shake his hand. I only wish that I could have told him how his comics had brought a little joy and happiness to my often miserable childhood. His comicbook stories provided me with the inspiration to explore new interests, far beyond the scope of anything ever published in a comicbook. More than almost anyone else, Stan set me on a path of learning and avocation that has lasted my entire life. For this, I can say at this much belated date: “Thank you, Mr. Lee, from the bottom of my heart. I will Ron Frantz forever be in your as drawn by longtime comics pro Pete Morisi. debt.” [© Estate of Pete Morisi.]

Shaun Clancy and The Man in Seattle, Washington… November 24, 1991.

Shaun Clancy Stan Lee was the first comicbook professional I ever met. I had decided to attend my first-ever comicbook convention in Seattle on November 24th, 1991. It featured Stan as guest of honor. I brought my copy of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way with a few comics to have signed and stood in a line of about 20 people. Directly in front of me was a lone kid of about eight holding one item. When it came time for him to get his item signed, I saw the real Stan Lee I admired. The kid asked Stan to sign a baseball card. Stan tried to explain nicely that he had nothing to do with that item, but once he saw the kid’s pained expression, Stan signed it anyways. That kid probably has the only sports card signed by Stan. When my turn came, he signed my items and, after a brief chat, realizing this was my first comicbook show, he demanded I get my photo taken with him, which I did. A few years later I mailed the photo to Stan and received it back signed by him. We later shared many e-mail exchanges over the years. Stan, I am so glad for the chance to have known you. You are the symbol of inspiration for successful people to never give up on their dreams.

Bill Black It was a day that changed my life. Way back in 1957, Atlas Comics (Marvel) imploded and lost distribution here in Central Florida. In 1962 I moved to North Florida to attend FSU and was alone fending for myself for the first time. After settling in, I headed for a shopping center to find comics. I hit pay dirt, a comiclovers dream come true! Here was an array of super-characters I had never seen before. The Mighty Thor! The Astonishing Ant-Man! The Incredible Hulk! The frosting on the cake was FANTASTIC FOUR (#9) that had two old favorites on the cover… SUB-MARINER and THE HUMAN TORCH! Atlas was alive, and to my astonishment every book was drawn by my favorite artist, Jack Kirby! Reading these books, I discovered that I was no longer alone.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

favorite artist, and the fastest artist who ever worked for me. I loved the guy!” I’ll always remember that Stan Lee took the time to talk to me, someone he didn’t know at all, about an artist who had worked for him many years before. Stan shared something else with me I had not thought about. He said, “If Joe had lived, he probably would have drawn the first issue of The Fantastic Four, or even The Amazing Spider-Man, and history as we now know it might have changed dramatically.” I suspect he was right.

Bill Black in 1963—the year after he had discovered Thor, Ant-Man, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. (Right:) Bill Black will never forget his brand new wife reading his entire stack of Fantastic Four comicbooks in 1968, beginning with issue #9. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

All were written by Stan Lee and his characters were different. Sure, they were incredible, but they (as well as the villains) all had personal problems that made them so relatable to the reader. The FF had been evicted! That would happen to me in years to come! It was obvious that Stan was writing to an older audience… the college crowd… to me. I had found new friends… Richards, Pym, Banner… and they would stay with me, lending support, throughout my years at Florida State. Jumping ahead to June 1968, and, freshly married, I knew it was vital that my young bride understand my love of comics. I asked her to read my entire stack of Fantastic Four from that first No. 9 to the present. She graciously did and nervously I awaited the results… acceptance or rejection. It took a while… but when she finished the current issue she looked up and asked, “Where’s the next one?” How’s that for a testimonial for what Stan Lee created in the 1960s?... “Where’s the next one?” Rebekah’s understanding and support for the driving creative force within me led to a lifetime career in comics and now, more than 50 years later, we are still going strong. STAN LEE! EXCELSIOR!

Roger Hill In 1987 I started doing research on one of my favorite artists, Joe Maneely, who tragically died in 1958. I had already located and called Maneely’s mother, who still lived in Philadelphia; a very sweet lady with whom I corresponded for a while and who always referred to her son as “Joey.” I followed up with Stan Lee by calling his office in Los Angeles. His Roger Hill. secretary told me he was very busy, but when she told him I was calling about Joe Maneely, he picked up right away and exclaimed, “He was my

Bud Plant I have no doubt that I owe my career in comics retailing to Stan. It was those amazing Marvel comics, which I discovered at the beginning of 1964, that turned me from an occasional comics fan into a passionate collector. I combed three different newsstands watching for new releases. I subscribed to many of the titles. I began haunting used bookstores Bud Plant. and riding my bike to the giant San Jose Flea Market every weekend, looking for back issues. This led directly to meeting other collectors with the same passion and discovering fandom, and The Rocket’s Blast, and back-issue dealers like Buddy Saunders. My buddies and I opened comicbook stores beginning in 1968, when I was in high school and too young to drive. But within a year we were driving to comic-cons—first in Houston, then Oklahoma City, then New York in 1970. We published fanzines, and many of us became life-long friends that I still am close to more than 50 years later. If it wasn’t for those amazing stories in The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, The Avengers, The X-Men, The Mighty Thor, Tales of Suspense, and Tales to Astonish, I hesitate to think what I’d be doing today. 50+ years later, I still love Stan’s work, from those screwy Atlas monster and sci-fi stories to so many fondly remembered issues of those hallowed titles that I read and read again through the ’60s and early ’70s. Stan, thank you with all sincerity, for how much you brought to the world of comics and to all of us readers. The closest parallel might be Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad, and how he influenced a generation of fans and creators, including R. Crumb. For kids my age—eleven or twelve when I fell in love with Marvel—Stan and the Gang became a world of our own, where we shared in adventures and knew all the players. We even had the Merry Marvel Marching Society, got our names printed in the comics, and perhaps even a letter every so often. Comics became my career, from collector to dealer, to distributor and publisher. I owe it to the talent at Marvel, and Stan was the central spark in that whirlwind of talent that pulled it all together. The magic they gave us, for just twelve cents an issue!

Fawcett Collectors Remember Stan The Man

Mark Voger

Mark Voger His first exposure to the world of Marvel Comics and Stan Lee was Amazing Spider-Man #42 (Nov. 1966); art by John Romita. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Joe Musich Somewhere between 1956 and 1961—between when I was 10 and 13—I started to “collect” comicbooks. Didn’t everybody? There are three comics-related influential points in my life: Captain Marvel teaching me to read at almost 4 years of age … eventually discovering that there was a entire world of comics before I existed, particularly with the Superman Annual #3 in the summer of ’61 … and Fantastic Four #1 later that same year. Thanks to Stan Lee’s eloquence in “speaking to me” through his sidebars and carnival promotion in the books, along with Mr. Kirby’s out-of-bounds art, I became a full-blown, no-room-in-the-house hoarder. Stan’s inculcation still survives in my very soul. I never met “The Man” or churned in a line for a signature. Did I need to do either? It might’ve been a story to tell. But the myth-maker still survives in this 13-year-old boy’s heart. And isn’t that what’s important? Thanks, Stan!

Joe Musich. In 1961, Fantastic Four #1 became one of the top comics-related influential points in Alter Ego reader Joe Musich’s life. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan was the Man. More than any other writer or editor, he made you feel like part of a community. I’ll never forget reading my first Marvel story. It was The Amazing Spider-Man #42 (1966). I was 8. I didn’t understand why, in the opening splash, people were yelling “Stop, thief!” at Spider-Man, who appeared to be absconding with a bag of money. (Actually, it was a bomb.) Weaned on DC Comics, my thought was, “Why do they think the hero is a villain?” Welcome to the Marvel Universe! This issue also had the first appearance of Mary Jane Watson, in gorgeous art by “Jazzy” John Romita. The sad part of Stan’s legacy is the acrimony between himself and some artists, chiefly Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Wally Wood. The happy, glorious part is what these gifted men achieved together. To this day, those 1960s Marvel books have no equal. They are entertainment for the ages. Thank you, Smiley.

Will Murray Over the decades, Stan Lee was very generous to me when I interviewed him or needed an e-mail question answered quickly. I loved his writing as a kid. I consider him to be a seminal influence on my own writing. Without taking anything away from his artistic collaborators, with whom he shaped and molded some of the greatest characters of the last sixty years, I think one of Stan’s most important and unsung traits was that he never gave up on a character.

Will Murray. This longtime comics historian’s contributions to the next issue of Alter Ego will be its cover features— heralded on p. 2 of this issue.

We live in a century in which the Marvel Universe is the dominant milieu of global popular culture. Yet most of these million-dollar properties nearly failed after launch. The Incredible Hulk was canceled. Lee kept him alive as a guest-star. Publisher Martin Goodman killed “Spider-Man” after only one appearance. Lee knew in his gut he could be a hit. When Goodman wanted to revive the Golden Age Daredevil, Lee correctly reinvented the character. Daredevil, Ant-Man, and even The Avengers had to be revamped to keep them going. To his eternal credit, he never gave up on a Marvel hero. Even with a capricious publisher who wielded a very sharp axe, Stan did everything possible to keep his characters going. This vision dates back to the late 1940s, when he reinvented Sub-Mariner, Captain America, and others in order to keep them relevant. Even when Lee was forced to give up on properties like The X-Men and others, the value of those properties was redeemed in subsequent years. Most comics publishers simply killed a disappointing title and never looked back. Stan was forever striving to improve his. He once told me he was never satisfied with Iron Man’s armor, and so over the years, he instructed his artists to improve and update it. Now look where we are. One of the reasons I know I’m dwelling in the future is that two successful Ant-Man movies exist. “Ant-Man” was a flop. He is a flop no longer. This was unimaginable in the 20th century. Thank you, Stan Lee, for believing in your co-creations. History has vindicated your faith in the Marvel Universe.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Jay Wilson Stanley Martin Leiber. Stan Lee. A name known worldwide today, a fact that would have floored my young mind when I first determined who this man was in the credits of an issue of Fantastic Four. During the ’60s and early ’70s, Lee formed Marvel Comics plot lines from his illuminated and reactionary mind, bringing the voice of the times into his stories. Jay Willson. He also had an uncanny ability to write editorials that made readers feel as though they were reading comics written by one of their best friends. In what may have been his greatest accomplishment, however, Lee funneled all Marvel storylines to Marvel writers through his supervision, creating a world of synchronized comicbook heroes that all co-existed within New York City. This was a fantastic accomplishment and unparalleled in the history of comicbooks. It also proved to be too much for one person over time, which led to the Marvel line of comics expanding and the gradual reduction of Stan’s involvement with that cohesive world of characters. Comics companies have attempted to world build for

Will Meugniot Over the years, I knew Stan Lee in many capacities. First as a reader and a fan, then as an artist working with him on the ’80s Marvel cartoons, a few years later as the supervising producer director of X-Men: The Animated Series, and finally as the creative director of the ill-fated Stan Lee Media. We shared a good many adventures, all of which I am certain had greater meaning to me than to the guy who was my childhood idol. But it’s my very first meeting of Stan in person that feels like the story to share. That cosmic (for me) moment transpired at the 1976 San Diego Comic-Con. I’d penciled my first pro work for Marvel, two issues of Tigra’s solo strip, and my future with the company was dim, still undetermined. Being painfully shy, I didn’t know what to say to the Marvel guys I ran into at the con and kept my head low for fear of a negative engagement with them. My wife Jo, still a few years away from becoming a pro colorist, and I stepped into a near-empty

Will & Jo Meugniot in the fall of 1991, shortly before the start of production on X-Men: The Animated Series. Also seen is his “Tigra the Were-Woman” in Marvel Chillers #3 (Feb. 1976), as inked by Frank Chiaramonte & Sam Grainger and scripted by Tony Isabella. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

their characters in the same universal manner since that time, but only Lee truly succeeded. By the same token, the attention that Stan received for these wonderful comics also moved him more into the role of company mouthpiece—a role that he was suited for externally, but poorly chosen for internally. As Stan moved more into the limelight as the voice of Marvel Comics, he knew less and less about what the company was actually publishing. I can still remember asking him a question about the alcoholism of Tony Stark (Iron Man) at a convention in 1979, only to have him look at me like I was crazy. He had no knowledge that such a change had occurred, making it obvious that he was no longer a part of the daily comics development at Marvel. Following those amazing days of formulating Marvel Comics into one of the two comics powerhouses in the industry, Stan moved on to Hollywood and focused most of his efforts there. His skills as an editor rallying creative staff uniformly was not as effective in Hollywood, and years of awkward business deals followed. He even left Marvel Comics at one point. Nonetheless, Marvel was smart enough to settle old debts and to return Stan to his hallowed role of figurehead of Marvel Comics, introducing a whole new audience to his unifying personality through Marvel film appearances. Godspeed and Excelsior, Stan. You will be remembered. elevator, and lo and behold, our fellow traveler was none other than Stan Lee, whose eyes had fallen on Jo in her very ’70s halter top. Well, we had his attention, so I scrounged up my courage and blurted out, “Hello, Mr. Lee! I’m Will Meugniot and I just started penciling ‘Tigra’ for Marvel!” Stan shifted his gaze to me: “Tigra? Is that one of ours?” The elevator stopped and he exited before my answer. About 15 years later, we were having creative issues on X-Men: The Animated Series, so Stan and I were in a private meeting, having a hard time sorting our problems out. During a break, I told him the story of our first meeting, and we had a good laugh. We knew then that, when we were done with the hard and sometimes hurtful decisions we were making that day, there would be a time when we laughed about them as well. And from that point we were smiling again, even when we butted heads.

Fawcett Collectors Remember Stan The Man

Joe Piscopo This artist’s tribute to Stan Lee is his illustration of The Destroyer—one of Stan’s earliest creations, who first appeared in Mystic Comics #6 in 1941, co-created with artist Jack Binder. [The Destroyer TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Walt Grogan I first met Stan Lee at the Chicago Comic-Con, way back in 1977, at the Pick Congress Hotel in Chicago. One of the things I remember so vividly is how accessible he was, along with DC publisher Jenette Kahn. I still have the program book that he autographed for me, right next to a wonderful caricature of him by the talented Jim Engel. I couldn’t believe that I was meeting the Walt Grogan co-creator of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, and other Marvel heroes. When Walt met Stan in person for the first time at Those were the heady days of comicbook the 1977 Chicago Comic-Con, conventions, prior to the Internet, where all The Man autographed the the pros just walked around and you could caricature below, drawn talk to them… and they would talk to you! by then fan-artist Jim Engel Stan was a pioneer in that arena… building a (see p. 88) for the con’s persona for himself and Marvel that changed program book. [Art © Jim the face of comics and made you feel part of Engel.] an exclusive club. Stan turned comics into something they had rarely been… an art form to aspire to and not be ashamed of. It took a long time for the rest of the world to catch up and, for that, I’ll be forever grateful to “The Man”!

Mark Lewis As a kid, I was definitely much more of a “DC Kid” than a “Marvel Kid.” And I didn’t get Stan’s tongue-in-cheek jibes at “Brand Echh,” a.k.a. “The Distinguished Competition.” It put me off because, “Hey, I like some of those comics!” But by the time I entered high school, I started getting Mark Lewis. attracted to more of the Marvel material. More so that, in recent years, one friend was actually surprised to hear I was a DC kid when I was young. Here’s the thing: I have the utmost respect for Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Without them, and their creative contributions lighting the way, you don’t have a Marvel Comics. But there is no getting around the fact that, without Stan, you also don’t have a Marvel Comics! Stan had a gift for dialogue, a tone that hadn’t been seen before on a comicbook page. We’ve seen people parody it in the years since, but it can’t be forgotten how revolutionary it was for readers at the time. Kirby and Ditko would put their best into their part of the job, and Stan would rise to the occasion. Stan also had this instinctual way of promoting Marvel that made the company just seem tremendously fun and down-toearth—like it was some kind of clubhouse that you wanted to be part of. Stan, thanks for your part in shaping and co-creating so many wonderful characters and stories that have stayed with us, and will stay with us for years to come! Few people can claim such a legacy.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

that book, and to Stan himself, I find myself writing this brief tribute, a small thank-you to one of the writers and editors who got me interested in that “world of make-believe” and in all of the arcane, footnoted mysteries that it contains.

John Pierce

Brian Cremins In his tribute piece to Stan Lee, Brian notes the impact that 1975’s Son of Origins of Marvel Comics had on him—so what the hell, we’re showing you its Romta cover again! [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Brian Cremins Across from Hamilton Park, not far from the corner of East Main Street and Meriden Road, Jim’s Comic Book Shop once stood a few miles from the site of the Eastern Color Printing Plant in Waterbury, Connecticut. At Jim’s, where my father and I made regular stops in the early 1980s, I discovered Matt Wagner’s Mage, Don Simpson’s Megaton Man, Terrance Dicks’ Doctor Who novels, and names like Trina Robbins, cat yronwode, Hugo Pratt, and Reggie Byers. I also came across a creased and yellowed copy of Stan Lee’s Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. Although I recognized his name from the splash pages of my favorites Marvel titles, I was a little startled to see it on the cover of a book. A long one, too— almost 250 pages filled with the debut stories of characters like The X-Men, Daredevil, Iron Man, and The Silver Surfer. What also distinguished this book from the others in my collection was that Stan had included an introduction to each one of these adventures, a short essay in which he revealed how he’d gone about crafting these stories with artists like Jack Kirby and John Buscema. I found myself as fascinated by these essays as I was with these classic super-hero stories. My love of historical footnotes and digressions has its source, I think, not only in Peter Haining’s The Art of Mystery & Detective Stories or David A. Kyle’s A Pictorial History of Science Fiction, but also in Roy Thomas’ All-Star Squadron and in Stan’s other books for Simon & Schuster. Not long after reading Son of Origins, I was studying carefully the pages of Don and Maggie Thompson’s Comics Buyer’s Guide, especially issues featuring Will Murray’s articles on pulp heroes like The Shadow. Thanks to Stan, I enjoyed myself as I wrote book reports for my middle school teachers. I already loved reading, but he’d introduced me to something else—a love of research. In the exuberant prose of his essays, I sensed a calling: I wanted to know how these pieces of fiction worked, who’d created them, and why. Stan made this process of discovery seem just as exciting and as colorful as the comics themselves. In the book’s Epilogue, there is also a note of optimism. Stan encouraged his readers to forget about nostalgia; there are other stories yet to be told. Published in 1975, Son of Origins, less than a decade old when I first read it, closed with a hopeful view of the future: “Our world is the world of make-believe—and so long as men can think,” Stan wrote, “so long as men can extrapolate, so long as men can fantasize, the rich and rewarding lode of Marvel legends will never die.” Thanks to Jim’s Comic Book Shop, to

I have to admit that I’ve never been one of Stan Lee’s legion of admirers. To me, his stories mainly seemed to be loosely-plotted soap operas interrupted by long fights (or maybe it was the other way around). My own preference was for the tighter plotting and less melodramatic tales of DC. Another problem for me was that Marvel’s heroes usually won by outmuscling or outlasting their foes, whereas DC characters won by outthinking theirs—and again I preferred the DC style. However, there were some areas in which Stan shone brightly. One was his sparkling and somewhat more realistic dialogue, as contrasted to the often stilted speech of DC and other extant writers. Heroes (especially Spider-Man) and villains often engaged in witty banter while fighting. So, if the fights were often too long, and the winner determined mainly by stamina and muscle power, at least there was some entertainment value in the word balloons! Stan was quite skilled in capturing the zeitgeist of the eras in which he wrote, and yet without ever pandering or condescending. Contrast that with attempts of DC editors and writers when they tried to get in touch with the teen and college John Pierce. markets. In different ways, both the “Teen Titans” stories, with their embarrassing “hip” dialogue, as well as the later “relevant” tales of “Green Lantern/Green Arrow” with their pedantry and preachiness, demonstrated that Stan knew what he was doing, while others did not. Finally, I don’t want to overlook the fact that Stan created a whole host of inventive new characters as well as brought a few classic heroes (most notably Sub-Mariner and Captain America) back from the Golden Age. Most of those characters live on, not only in the printed page, but also on the big screen, the latter in particular adding to the lustre of Lee!

Mike Tiefenbacher Back in 1980, I was editing one of fandom’s oldest fanzines, The Comic Reader, for publisher Jerry Sinkovec, and giving over several pages each month to comic strips done by my friends Chuck Fiala and Jim Engel. One of Jim’s strips was a photo-comic called Fandom

Fawcett Collectors Remember Stan The Man

Less than a week later, we received Stan’s reaction: Now you’ve gone and done it! Now I’ve gotta sue—for millions! Not ’cause I’m offended. Not ’cause I didn’t like it. No—because I just got fired! Marvel said they’ll be damned if they’ll hire a cadaver as publisher! One way you can save yourself the lawsuit—got a job for me?

Mike Tiefenbacher recounts in his essay what Stan Lee’s reaction was to the April Fool’s Day cover of The Comic Reader #179 in 1980. [Heroes TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Since it sounded just like one of his Bullpen Bulletins, I had no doubt of its authenticity. We ran it in the next issue. My momentary misgivings regarding the wisdom of running the cover vanished with the arrival of his short note. It cleared me of, anticipating the worst, instigating an actual heart attack and death (which turned out to be, amazingly and happily, nearly forty years premature). It was my only personal interaction with the man I’d admired since the summer of 1964 when I bought my first Marvel comic. So thank you, Jim Engel—and thank you, Stan, for having the sense of humor I hoped you’d have.

Paul Power

Confidential, a flat-out hilarious fumetti comic strip which poked fun at virtually every aspect of the comics industry and its fans. I expected some blowback from his blunt sense of humor from professionals, but the usual reaction was the opposite (well, almost; Bill Gaines didn’t like the Graham Ingels episode). It seems like everyone was a Jim fan. So when Jim submitted a cover idea which, as he put it, was born of him wanting “to prank fandom through something shocking,” I didn’t object (because it was funny), and I didn’t turn it down; but in mid-March I was looking at the cover in paste-up while Jerry was doing the color seps from Jim’s color guide. (See above for what the finished version looked like.) Jim tells me that he got Stan’s picture from an issue of FOOM. Uncertain of his own ability to do the Marvel hero vignettes justice on each side of the cover, Jim enlisted the aid of his friend (and future Marvel inking workhorse) Hilary Barta (who himself questioned his ability at the time of handling super-heroes). It was one of our best covers, but looking at it nearly finished, my imagination was working overtime. I was having second thoughts. Even though it was meant as an April Fool’s joke, it wouldn’t be so obvious to everyone. In fact, until I dug out the issue, thanks to my geriatric memory, I’d completely forgotten it was the April issue! All I remembered was thinking how risky using the cover would be. Someone who just glimpsed it on the comic shop’s newsstand might not figure it out—and in fact, that’s exactly what happened! Jim tells me, “When I walked into Frank Kraft’s Clark Street store [in Chicago] the afternoon of the day he got the issue in, he yelled at me: “ENGEL!!! You #%!?*!!—do you know how many times today I’ve had to explain to someone it was a JOKE?!?” That was probably going on all across the country, and with our voluminous freebee list of professionals, it might have even affected Stan himself. I thought that perhaps it might behoove me to give him advance warning of our intentions—both because it was kind of important for us not to endanger our connection to one of two of the major companies who were providing us advance news of their coming releases, and because it was the right thing to do.

I was lucky to have worked with Stan Lee on one piece of production art for Marvel Animation at their Sherman Oaks studio back in 1982. I interviewed with Stan and Jerry Eisenberg, a cartoonist whose dad (Harvey Eisenberg) used to draw Ruff’n’ Reddy comics for Dell. Jerry drew like his dad. Stan Lee could not have been a nicer person. A real gentleman. I inked and colored a nice-looking “Captain America” pencil job by Rick Hoberg. I enjoyed the job, and I recall Rick telling me that he liked my inking of his work. I was offered more work by Stan Lee but got very sick and had to refuse. Every time I would meet Stan Lee, he was always enthused about life and Marvel. I noticed Stan at Jack Kirby’s funeral. You could see the sadness on his face. I recall Roz Kirby telling me how nice it was for Stan to come and pay his respects to her “Jackie.” Stan was the engine that drove Marvel to success. He sparked Jack Kirby’s imagination and was smart enough to not get in the way of Kirby’s original ideas and storylines but to add more fun to the many four-color adventures. He made us fans feel like we were a part of the International Merry Marvel Marching Society! See this page for a photo of actor/director Michael Town, Stan “The MAN!” Lee, and myself at a CAPS banquet some 10 years ago. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were the ones who sparked my desire

Paul Power at right, with Stan Lee and Michael Town.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

to become a working artist, and that adventure continues. Thank you, Stan and Jack. You will not be soon forgotten.

Michael Uslan I knew the name and signature “Stan Lee” before I ever knew the name “Marvel.” Growing up in the 1950s, so many stories in so many comicbooks I read, even those I picked up in flea markets going back decades, had that name scrolled somewhere in the opening panels or splash pages. I came to know that I would like any comicbook story by Stan Lee, even when I naively thought these comicbooks were published by a company called “MC,” which was stamped in a little rectangular box on each cover, or by a company called Magazine Management, a name I spied at the bottom of each inside cover or first page. It wasn’t until the publication of Marvel Tales Annual #1 that I actually saw your picture and finally had the following answer to my long-burning question, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Stan Lee!” A casual reader of the Marvel monster, Western, war, spy, and humor comics of the 1950s and early ’60s, I became a Marvelite with Fantastic Four and Hulk #1s. By the themes you incorporated in your super-hero works, I grew up confident not only that good ultimately triumphs over evil, that teamwork leads to success, that gumption sees us through hard times, that belief in myself will be the path to achieve my goals, that brains can always defeat brawn, but also (and most importantly), that if I lived by the ethics and morals modeled for me by your super-heroes, I could be as good and upright a person as Spider-Man or Thor or the others. For that, Stan, and speaking for entire generations of readers, I owe you a big thanks in a way that nearly matches my thanks to my parents, teachers, and religious leaders who tried to convey the same precepts to me, only they could never do so in the entertaining and effective way you were able to do through the magic of your comicbook stories. You didn’t desert me when I grew older and went to high school and on to college. In the tumultuous ’60s and ’70s, my philosopher king was not Plato or Aristotle, but The Silver Surfer. Through your pen, his observations and clarity as he reflected on man and life on Earth influenced my own thinking and personal philosophy. They increased my sensitivity toward the planet and the people on it. The only other philosophic look at life and human behavior that impacted, influenced, and inspired me to this degree was “Stan’s Soapbox.” Through that medium, you did far more than plug the next Marvel comicbook. You very often made me think, and in the process made me feel like you were talking to me personally on those pages. Everyone I know who was a Marvel reader in that era feels the same way to this very day. What about what you did for me personally in life? I was 7 years old when I read my first Marvel/Atlas comicbook and saw that “Stan Lee” signature scrawled sidewards in a panel on the first page. That was the moment you became my idol. I was 13 when I read in a fanzine that if a fan mailed you a stamped, self-addressed envelope along with a typed interview with space for you to answer after each question, you would

Michael Uslan and Stan Lee—juxtaposed with Jerry Ordway’s cover for Just Imagine… Stan Lee with Jerry Ordway Creating JLA, showing Smiley’s versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and The Flash. Kind of ironic that Stan ended up writing such a comic—since it was the Justice League of America that indirectly led Stan Lee to co-create Marvel Comics! Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for the scan. [TM & © DC Comics.]

respond. I still have that interview with all your handwritten answers. That was the moment you became my mentor, introducing me to the history of Marvel and the comicbook industry. I was 16 when I met you for the first time after hearing your talk at Phil Seuling’s Comic Art Convention in New York City. That was the moment you became my inspiration. I was 20 when you called me at Indiana University to congratulate me for teaching the world’s first college-accredited course on comicbooks, offering to help me in any way. That was the moment you became my friend. I was 36 when you and Margaret Loesch signed me to create the fourth segment of the syndicated animated Marvel Universe TV series, Commander Video. That was the moment you became my creative boss. I was 49 when I approached you to join me at DC Comics to create your Just Imagine comicbook series. That was the moment you became my creative partner. You have always remained my idol, mentor, inspiration, friend, and role model. You have changed the world, entertained so many generations, impacted the American and world cultures, and inspired legions of youth while positively influencing their own forming moral and ethical codes. You have elevated the American comicbook and all graphic storytelling from its years of denigration to a respected art form that has taken its rightful place in the world’s great art museums, galleries, and universities. You have created a new, modern-day mythology that will live on in the traditions of Homer, Aesop, Grimm, and Walt Disney. And you have accomplished all this with integrity, honor, and humanity toward your fans. I cannot begin to imagine what this world would have been like without the magic of Stan Lee. [Courtesy of Smithsonianmag.com; reprinted by permission of the author.]

ER EISN RD AWAINEE! NOM

ER EISN RD ! AWA NER IN W

BACK ISSUE #116

BACK ISSUE #117

BACK ISSUE #118

BACK ISSUE #119

SUPERHEROES VS. MONSTERS! Monsters in Metropolis, Batman and the Horror Genre, DOUG MOENCH and KELLEY JONES’ Batman: Vampire, Marvel Scream-Up, Dracula and Godzilla vs. Marvel, DC/Dark Horse Hero/Monster crossovers, and a Baron Blood villain history. With CLAREMONT, CONWAY, DIXON, GIBBONS, GRELL, GULACY, JURGENS, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and a cover by MICHAEL GOLDEN.

SUPERHERO STAND-INS! John Stewart as Green Lantern, James Rhodes as Iron Man, Beta Ray Bill as Thor, Captain America substitute U.S. Agent, new Batman Azrael, and Superman’s Hollywood proxy Gregory Reed! Featuring NEAL ADAMS, CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, RON MARZ, DAVID MICHELINIE, DENNIS O’NEIL, WALTER SIMONSON, ROY THOMAS, and more, under a cover by SIMONSON.

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD! ALEX ROSS’ unrealized Fantastic Four reboot, DC: The Lost 1970s, FRANK THORNE’s unpublished Red Sonja, Fury Force, VON EEDEN’s Batman, GRELL’s Batman/Jon Sable, CLAREMONT and SIM’s X-Men/Cerebus, SWAN and HANNIGAN’s Skull and Bones, AUGUSTYN and PAROBECK’s Target, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Impact reboot, abandoned Swamp Thing storylines, & more! ROSS cover.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ISSUE! A galaxy of comics stars discuss Marvel’s whitehot space team in the Guardians Interviews, including TOM DeFALCO, KEITH GIFFEN, ROB LIEFELD, AL MILGROM, MARY SKRENES, ROGER STERN, JIM VALENTINO, and more. Plus: Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon before the Guardians, with CHRIS CLAREMONT and MIKE MIGNOLA. Cover by JIM VALENTINO with inks by CHRIS IVY.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Nov. 2019

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Jan. 2020

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships March 2020

MIKE GRELL

LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT AN ERASER

Career-spanning tribute covering Legion of Super-Heroes, Warlord, & Green Arrow at DC Comics, and Grell’s own properties Jon Sable, Starslayer, and Shaman’s Tears. Told in Grell’s own words, with PAUL LEVITZ, DAN JURGENS, DENNY O’NEIL, MARK RYAN, & MIKE GOLD. Heavily illustrated! (160-page FULL-COLOR TPB) $27.95 (176-page LTD. ED. HARDCOVER) $37.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 • Now shipping!

ER EISN RD AWAINEE! M O N

BRICKJOURNAL #59

ALTER EGO #162

ALTER EGO #163

STAR WARSTM THEMED BUILDERS! Travel to a galaxy far, far away with JACOB NEIL CARPENTER’S DEATH STAR, the work of MIRI DUDAS, and the LEGO® photography of JAMES PHILIPPART! Plus “AFOLs” by GREG HYLAND, “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art with TOMMY WILLIAMSON, Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS, and more!

WILL MURRAY presents an amazing array of possible prototypes of Batman (by artist FRANK FOSTER—in 1932!)—Wonder Woman (by Star-Spangled Kid artist HAL SHERMAN)—Tarantula (by Air Wave artist LEE HARRIS), and others! Plus a rare Hal Sherman interview—MICHAEL T. GILBERT with more on artist PETE MORISI—FCA— BILL SCHELLY—JOHN BROOME—and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY!

The early days of DAVE COCKRUM— Legion of Super-Heroes artist and co-developer of the revived mid-1970s X-Men—as revealed in art-filled letters to PAUL ALLEN and rare, previously unseen illustrations provided by wife PATY COCKRUM (including 1960s-70s drawings of Edgar Rice Burroughs heroes)! Plus FCA—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on PETE MORISI—JOHN BROOME—BILL SCHELLY, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Dec. 2019

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Feb. 2020

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK COMIC BOOK IMPLOSION ORAL HISTORY OF DC COMICS CHRONICLES: The 1990s AN CIRCA 1978! Marking the 40th anniver-

Year-by-year account of the decade when X-MEN #1 sold 8.1 million copies, IMAGE COMICS was formed, Superman died, Batman had his back broken, and Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN led to the VERTIGO line of adult comic books. Go behind-thescenes in that era of gimmicky covers, skimpy costumes, and mega-crossovers. By KEITH DALLAS and JASON SACKS.

sary of the “DC Implosion”, one of the most notorious events in comics (which left stacks of completed comic book stories unpublished and spawned Cancelled Comics Cavalcade). Featuring JENETTE KAHN, PAUL LEVITZ, LEN WEIN, MIKE GOLD, and others, plus detailed analysis of how it changed the landscape of comics!

(288-pg. FULL-COLOR Hardcover) $44.95 (Digital Edition) $15.95 • Now shipping!

(136-page paperback w/ COLOR) $21.95 (Digital Edition) $10.95 • Now shipping!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #20 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #21

KIRBY COLLECTOR #77

NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOES! Interview with JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER (CRY FOR DAWN, VAMPIRELLA), a chat with JOE SINNOTT about his Marvel years inking Jack Kirby and work at TREASURE CHEST, JOE JUSKO discusses the Marvel Age of Comics and his fabulous “Corner Box Collection,” plus the artists behind the Topps bubble gum BAZOOKA JOE comic strips, CRAIG YOE, and more!

ERIC POWELL celebrates 20 years of THE GOON! with a career-spanning interview and a gallery of rare artwork. Plus CBC editor and author JON B. COOKE on his new retrospective THE BOOK OF WEIRDO, a new interview with R. CRUMB about his work on that legendary humor comics anthology, a look at DAVE COCKRUM’s design work for Aurora Models, JOHN ROMITA SR. on his admiration for the work of MILTON CANIFF, and more!

MONSTERS & BUGS! Jack’s monster-movie influences in The Demon, Forever People, Black Magic, Fantastic Four, Jimmy Olsen, and Atlas monster stories; Kirby’s work with “B” horror film producer CHARLES BAND; interview with “The Goon” creator ERIC POWELL; Kirby’s use of insect characters (especially as villains); MARK EVANIER and our other regular columnists, Golden Age Kirby story, and a Kirby pencil art gallery!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Now shipping!

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Fall 2019

(100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Now shipping!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #78

SILVER ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! How Kirby kickstarted the Silver Age and revamped Golden Age characters for the 1960s, the Silver Surfer’s influence, pivotal decisions (good and bad) Jack made throughout his comics career, Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, a classic 1950s story, KIRBY/STEVE RUDE cover (and deluxe silver sleeve) and more! (100-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (DELUXE EDITION w/ silver sleeve) $12.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • Ships Dec. 2019

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com

Relive The Pop Culture You Grew Up With In RetroFan! If you love Pop Culture of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, editor MICHAEL EURY’s latest magazine is just for you!

RETROFAN #7

Featuring a JACLYN SMITH interview, as we reopen the Charlie’s Angels Casebook, and visit the Guinness World Records’ largest Charlie’s Angels collection. Plus: an exclusive interview with funnyman LARRY STORCH, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Captain Action—the original super-hero action figure, a vintage interview with Jonny Quest creator DOUG WILDEY, a visit to the Land of Oz, the ultra-rare Marvel World superhero playset, & more! (84-page FULLCOLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 Ships Dec. 2019

Please add $1 per issue for shipping in the US.

RETROFAN #1

RETROFAN #2

RETROFAN #3

RETROFAN #6

RETROFAN #8

Interviews with MeTV’s crazy creepster SVENGOOLIE and Eddie Munster himself, BUTCH PATRICK! Call on the original Saturday Morning GHOST BUSTERS, with BOB BURNS! Uncover the nutty NAUGAS! Plus: “My Life in the Twilight Zone,” “I Was a Teenage James Bond,” “My Letters to Famous People,” the ARCHIE-DOBIE GILLIS connection, Pinball Hall of Fame, Alien action figures, Rubik’s Cube & more!

NOW BI-MONTHLY! Interviews with the ’60s grooviest family band THE COWSILLS, and TV’s coolest mom JUNE LOCKHART! Mars Attacks!, MAD Magazine in the ’70s, Flintstones turn 60, Electra Woman & Dyna Girl, Honey West, Max Headroom, Popeye Picnic, the Smiley Face fad, & more! With MICHAEL EURY, ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, and SCOTT SHAW!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships March 2020

RETROFAN #4

RETROFAN #5

THE CRAZY, COOL CULTURE WE GREW UP WITH! LOU FERRIGNO interview, The Phantom in Hollywood, Filmation’s Star Trek cartoon, “How I Met Lon Chaney, Jr.”, goofy comic Zody the Mod Rob, Mego’s rare Elastic Hulk toy, RetroTravel to Mount Airy, NC (the real-life Mayberry), interview with BETTY LYNN (“Thelma Lou” of The Andy Griffith Show), TOM STEWART’s eclectic House of Collectibles, and Mr. Microphone!

HALLOWEEN! Horror-hosts ZACHERLEY, VAMPIRA, SEYMOUR, MARVIN, and an interview with our cover-featured ELVIRA! THE GROOVIE GOOLIES, BEWITCHED, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE MUNSTERS! The long-buried Dinosaur Land amusement park! History of BEN COOPER HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, character lunchboxes, superhero VIEW-MASTERS, SINDY (the British Barbie), and more!

40th Anniversary interview with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE director RICHARD DONNER, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of Aquaman, horror and sci-fi zines of the Sixties and Seventies, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL (home of the Superman Celebration), SEA-MONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages, Superman and Batman memorabilia, & more!

Interviews with the SHAZAM! TV show’s JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) Gray, the GREEN HORNET in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the way-out Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British sci-fi TV classic THUNDERBIRDS, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the KING TUT fad, and more!

Interviews with MARK HAMILL & Greatest American Hero’s WILLIAM KATT! Blast off with JASON OF STAR COMMAND! Stop by the MUSEUM OF POPULAR CULTURE! Plus: “The First Time I Met Tarzan,” MAJOR MATT MASON, MOON LANDING MANIA, SNUFFY SMITH AT 100 with cartoonist JOHN ROSE, TV Dinners, Celebrity Crushes, and more fun, fab features!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

SUBSCRIBE NOW! Four issues: $41 Economy, $65 International, $16 Digital Only

TwoMorrows. The Future of Pop History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

DON’T RISK A SOLD OUT ISSUE AT BARNES & NOBLE!

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com