CHAPTER 9
“FACE FRONT!”
Not subtle or paternal, Stan Lee’s demand that readers snap to attention kicked off the “Marvel Bullpen Bulletins” a feature page that ran in the back of all the December 1965 issues. It replaced the “Merry Marvel Bullpen Page,” which had debuted earlier in August. Filled with “news” and “gossip,” along with a checklist of current issues for sale with synopses, the yellow shadowboxes quickly became a familiar mainstay for Marvel readers.
No matter where comic book readers lived or whether they could even envision what the Marvel headquarters might look like, the bulletins made them feel like a part of the family. Some readers might gravitate to the insider perspective to see who inked a particular magazine or to find out the latest scoop on an artist’s personal life. Others yearned for the merchandise offers, like the Spider-Man or Dr. Strange T-shirt that a kid could get by mail for just $1.50. Certainly more than a few young readers viewed the missives as personal letters from Lee, the coolest guy in the country.
Regardless of why comic book buyers loved the Bullpen Bulletins, the page showed off Lee in all his glory. On one hand, the notes gave him a place to really craft his voice as the main Marvelite. At the same time, the columns demonstrated his savvy strategic sense—Lee knew that deepening audience engagement would result in greater dedication to Marvel’s books. From reading thousands of letters, the editor knew that his interaction, which seemed personal, increased sales.
The voice that emerged became a hallmark of Marvel Comics in the 1960s. “It was a little thing,” Lee said, “but it was trying to give a feeling of warmth, a feeling of friendliness. . . . It seemed to work.”1 For teens and college-aged fans, the wink-wink, tongue-in-cheek tone spoke to their antiestablishment notions and seemed discernibly different from the voice they were used to hearing from adults. “It was all spontaneous,” Lee remembered. “When I was writing a story, I’d think of something. So I’d throw it in.”2 His success with superheroes and their angst-ridden personas proved that if he trusted his instincts, good things would happen.
The chance to buy Marvel merchandise drew other readers to the Soapbox page. The cost was pretty meager at a buck or so, which seemed just within (or maybe outside) their reach. Just how many days of lunch money did a kid need to secret away in order to afford that Dr. Strange shirt? Others gravitated to the list of new members of the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club to see kids from all over the country who shared their same interest.
Most important, Lee’s Bullpen Bulletin gave him a forum to speak directly to all Marvel readers. The insider perspective turned Lee into the comic book nation’s favorite uncle. He described the thriving relationship with Marvel readers as “part of an ‘in’ thing” or that they were “sharing a big joke together and having a lot of fun with this crazy Marvel Universe.”3
With this singsong, chatty style, Lee turned up the wattage on his own celebrity status. The “Stan the Man” voice and personality came through in the dialogue of the comics and in the editorial content: “If I got a kick out of it, maybe a reader would, too,” he reasoned. “Even in writing the credits, I’d try to make them humorous, because I enjoyed doing that.”4 Lee also awarded select fans who wrote intriguing letters or otherwise caught his fancy a “Marvel No-Prize,” literally no prize for their effort. He sent them an empty envelope, even mockingly stamping “Handle with Care” on the outside. The sillier he acted, the more fans gobbled up the shtick. More importantly, sales continued to climb.
Over time, however, Lee also introduced the bullpen members on a first-name basis and gave them personalities, which translated into a familial feeling for fans. Lee is always “Smilin’ Stan Lee” in the updates, a slightly whacky, permanently overworked editor, who is keeping the whole place running by the seat of his pants. He explained the goal:
Give our fans personal stuff, make them feel they were part of Marvel, make them feel as though they were on a first-name basis with the whole screwy staff. In a way, I wanted it to be as though they were getting a personal letter from a friend who was away at camp.5
More importantly, the page provided readers with a mental image of themselves sitting down next to the famed comic book chief as he regaled them with stories of Jack (King) Kirby or (Jolly) Joe Sinnott. Marvel filled readers’ dreams with visions of the Hulk and Iron Man, and the news from the bullpen made readers and creative staff seem like long-lost friends. That tone gave kids in small towns across the nation the feeling that Lee was their comrade and that Marvel’s superheroes—despite a reader’s better judgment—might just be real.
Lee’s mad dash over the previous four years resulted in a superhero frenzy and total repositioning of Marvel in the comic book industry. The company—as well as its editor—stood at the epicenter of cool. Superheroes were the hottest thing in American popular culture and increasingly for audiences around the globe. Other publishers jumped onboard the superhero wave, from Charlton Comics (who hired Steve Ditko after he left Marvel and granted him almost complete editorial control over his conservative Ayn Randian creations) and Tower Comics (which doled out work to high-profile artists, such as Wally Wood and Gil Kane) to the venerable Archie Comics (which launched its own group, called the Mighty Crusaders). The new entries into the marketplace attempted to capitalize on Marvel’s popularity, often producing derivative content and cover art. They might try to emulate Lee and Kirby, but without the real thing, many of the publishers seemed simply eager to make a fast buck.
In 1965, Lee and his creative gang began a series of changes and slight modifications to the hero genre, which enabled them to build a more cohesive, unified cosmos, while simultaneously solidifying their growing fan base. For the next several years, the goal would not be to expand the universe by leaps and bounds, but to increase depth, nuance, and context. Lee believed that intensifying the relationships between characters and intertwining the superhero worlds would enable future growth, and, more importantly, create stronger bonds between the characters and readers.
Marvel’s existential heart continued to center on the authentic, daily challenges presented as ordinary people gained larger-than-life powers. It did not take Lee long to utilize the most human of human problems—the trials and tribulations of romantic relationships—and such an approach was relatively organic to the creative staff, at least at the upper level. Both Lee and Kirby had long histories in teen romance comics. Kirby and partner Joe Simon basically invented the genre in 1947, creating Young Romance, a title DC was still publishing in the 1960s. Lee also had deep experience, serving as the primary writer for Millie the Model, as well as its many offshoots that were aimed to attract female readers. Indeed, Millie quite possibly stood as the most successful nonsuperhero title Marvel ever produced.
The romantic interlude that drew the most interest was the marriage of Reed Richards and Susan Storm in Fantastic Four Annual #3. Kirby dazzled readers with the oversized issue, which also contained reprints of two popular past issues. The cover featured a free-for-all: Almost every hero from the Marvel cosmos attended the star-studded event, which also drew countless villains who hoped to crash the festivities. While the two sides battled, a glum Sub-Mariner watches over the proceedings, his heart clearly broken. Inside, Lee called the issue: “The most sensational super-spectacle ever witnessed by human eyes!!”
The Baxter Building is surrounded by adoring fans (including teen beauty Patsy Walker, another longtime Marvel character), but also under constant attack. The Thing tries to ward off the bad guys, but needs the help of Nick Fury, the X-Men, Dr. Strange, and a host of others. After Richards saves the day, the episode ends with the wedding kiss. (“No mere words of ours can truly describe the tenderness of this moment . . . so we won’t even try,” Lee wrote.) Then, two interlopers in top hats and stylish overcoats attempt to crash the reception, but are stopped by Fury and his men. The trespassers are Lee and Kirby, only seen from the back. Not even the Fantastic Four creators could get into such a lavish celebration.
Also that year, Mary Jane Watson first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #25, but Ditko strategically hid her face, only allowing other characters to exclaim: “She’s a friend of Peter’s? She looks like a screen star!” Readers wouldn’t actually see her for years. At the end of 1965, blonde beauty Gwen Stacy debuted. As with M.J., it would take the hapless Peter Parker years to begin dating her. When they initially met, Parker was so wrapped up with Aunt May and keeping his Spider-Man persona secret that he basically ignored Gwen.
The Marvel team used tactics that resembled the ones used by soap operas and other storytelling methods to create stronger ties between the characters and fans. Since Lee’s superheroes were purposely more realistic and like regular people, the notion that they were entangled in difficult relationships and other real-world challenges deepened the connection.
In addition to guiding Marvel’s art, writing, and production with a small team of full-time staffers and a growing cadre of freelancers, Lee also had to spend more time working to expand the company’s brand. There were simply too many competing things to grab people’s attention, ranging from the overtly commercial, like the national sensation caused by the arrival of the Beatles, to the wholly political, like Market Luther King’s 1965 civil rights march in Alabama and the growing presence of American troops in Vietnam. Comic books might have a difficult time competing with these enormous issues, but the flipside was that they could be marketed as a pleasant diversion from the real-life hardships.
Given the growing sophistication of marketing, advertising, and public relations in the mid-1960s, Marvel pushed to increase profitability. A 1965 flyer aimed at comic book distributors used Lee’s amped-up patter in a direct appeal to prospective dealers, exclaiming: “When fans EYE them, they BUY them!” While probably few newsstand owners bought the exaggerated language, none of them could have missed the dramatic sales growth. In 1960, Marvel sold about 16.1 million copies, but that number grew to 27.7 million in 1964, and the company expected to top 35 million the next year.6
The marketing brochure underscored pretty much what company insiders knew about Marvel’s successes: the superhero “secret formula” that Lee and his team created vastly expanded the Marvel audience, thus reaching a greater number of older readers, including college students and adults. One of the critical aspects of Marvel’s reach, according to the flyer, centered on superheroes “bringing in a brand new breed of reader. . . . Marvel Fan Clubs are springing up at every COLLEGE and UNIVERSITY from coast-to-coast.” Although Marvel’s marketers assumed that newsstand operators would be duly impressed with that information, the company boasted of already having 50,000 members within the handful of months since its launch.7
With sales booming and the end of restrictions on how many titles Marvel could publish each month, Lee sat atop a company with dozens of titles coming out on a monthly or bimonthly schedule. When the lineup expanded, editorial director Lee had to commit to writing a new series or find someone to take it over when there really wasn’t a university pipeline of young talent. Consequently, Lee tapped into alternative sources—writers from fan magazines, talented journalists, and some people who were Marvel readers and just persisted in pushing until they got the editor’s attention.
All along, however, Lee continued to refine and hone the unique scripting style that had become a Marvel trademark, because he had so much to write himself and he was responsible for controlling the editorial and artistic direction from his editor’s perch. The relentless pace and increased number of titles forced the development of new processes to cope with the pressure.
Writer Denny O’Neil discussed how the combination of the company style and tight deadlines came together in July 1966, when Marvel upped production to take advantage of the surge in superhero popularity based on the Batman television series. He explained: “I did Daredevil #18 because Stan got into a deadline bind. Romita had done the art and put notes in the margins, but Stan didn’t have time to do the script.”8 According to O’Neil, Lee worked harder than the writers he hired, putting in countless hours writing to bring the Marvel universe to its eager fans.
Lee’s work effort and persistence became company lore and inspired the writers he hired to put in similar grueling hours. For example, even a citywide blackout could not stop Lee from completing his allotted pages. During the first significant power outage in New York City in 1965, O’Neil and assistant editor Roy Thomas gave themselves the night off, but Lee was at home writing by candlelight. “The pages had candle wax dripped on them,” O’Neil says, though it’s difficult to know whether we should take him at his word or if this is yet another Stan legend.9
For Lee, plotting took little time. He charted the different magazines out—perhaps ten to twelve a month—then gave them to the artists to draw. When the artist delivered the work, Lee sat down and put the words down. However, Lee’s various roles necessitated that he also keep an eye on the art and covers. “While I was putting the copy in,” he explained, “I’d be making notes on changes that the artist should make in the artwork.” Sometimes, Lee said, he had to deviate from the original plot, because the artist took the story in a different direction. Kirby, for example, would change the plot to suit his needs and Lee would piece together the dialogue, which he likened to completing a “crossword puzzle.”10
The popularity of Marvel’s offbeat superheroes turned it into the hip 1960s comic book house, but DC still controlled the industry if sales figures were the principal measure. The ongoing competition between the publishers loomed large and focused each on outdoing the other. DC counted on the long-standing heroes in its stable—Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, while Lee and Marvel countered with the hip Spider-Man, Thor, and the Fantastic Four. The popular current seemed to tip toward Marvel, but then the ABC television series Batman debuted in January 1966. In a unique programming move, the show aired two nights a week—Wednesday and Thursday—in half-hour segments.
The instant success of the series made an immediate impact on the comic book industry and enabled DC to regain some of its swagger. With actor Adam West as the Caped Crusader and Burt Ward as the youthful sidekick, Robin, the series perfectly mixed camp and action in a way that appealed to contemporary audiences. It served up a steady stream of one-liners and plenty of “POW,” “BAM,” and “ZONK” to delight audiences across age groups. The music alone propelled the show, a mix of 1960s pop-infused soundtrack mixed with Batman-specific tunes that were catchy and stuck in listeners’ heads like an earworm. Batman also took advantage of the color television craze, using bright color schemes to bring the comic book characters to life.
After half a decade of searching for the magic decoder ring that would open an inroad to Marvel readers, DC seemed to finally capture the voice that Lee brought to comics. Batman captured the nation’s growing fascination with superheroes, especially in its satirical tone, which Lee had brought to the medium. In many respects, the snarky banter of the two heroes seemed closer in alignment to Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four than anything DC had recently produced.
Television grew so pervasive during the mid-1960s that DC benefited, but its popularity really raised sales across the board. All the major publishers saw sales increase, with Harvey Comics introducing superheroes Spyman and Jigsaw, while Tower Comics brought out Dynamo and Noman. Marvel attempted to counter Batman to some degree by beginning Thor’s solo run in March 1966 and then debuting the Black Panther, the first African American superhero, in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966).
Lee and Kirby did not let the Batmania thwart their efforts to further round out the Marvel Universe. As a kind of counterbalance, they introduced a three-part trilogy in Fantastic Four #48–50 (March–May 1966) that had the original supergroup battling Galactus, an omnipotent superbeing who sustained life by devouring the energy from entire planets. The epic trilogy pitted Marvel’s most powerful villain against Earth’s powerful superhero team. A comic book arc would have trouble competing head-to-head against a popular television series, but Marvel hoped to at least increase sales and entice more readers to pick up the comic.
Lee’s aggressive antics to expand the comic book marketplace started to draw in a broader range of readers, but the change took place gradually. As late as July 1967, almost six years after The Fantastic Four debuted, New York Times reporter Leonard Sloane, who covered the advertising industry, correctly deduced that millions of people read comic books, but still most did not respect the medium. Sloane referenced the way advertisers thought of the average comic book reader, comprised mainly of “special audiences . . . children, servicemen and semi-adults (. . . those over 18 who may not always think at the same level as their chronological age).”11 Yet, Marvel letter pages and the mail stacks were filled with articulate, passionate messages from educated readers from across the nation.
The mainstream media seemed a little slow to catch on to the comic book craze, as did advertisers, which created the strange mix of products for offer in the back pages, as well as Marvel’s desire to sell its own licensed goods. In the mid- to late 1960s, comics, unlike other consumer-focused magazines, still generated most of their revenue from circulation, rather than advertising, but the latter was still significant. Sloane cited the still-number-one-ranked National Periodical, which published forty-eight titles a month that led to about seven million in monthly circulation. Advertising income, however, remained relatively small, only growing from $250,000 to $500,000 between 1962 and 1966. Comic book executives usually claimed that their selectivity kept the ad revenue down. Many companies, however, including Marvel, decided to run small-print ads for a variety of products, from novelty toys and mail-order gimmicks to hobby kits.12 Many large corporations would not run ads in comic books, so publishers attempted to make up for the lack of direct advertising revenues by licensing the characters to other companies.
In contrast to DC, Marvel’s monthly circulation hit about six million, according to Sloane, but the company initiated a campaign to run ads for products targeted at older audiences, like shaving cream. Lee equated the quality of the stories and the artwork with the class its audiences expected, explaining, “We editorialize. We try to back the soldiers and try to tell the kids not to drop out of school. We stand for the good virtues.”13 The decision to intentionally target older readers had been Lee’s primary concern for years. A little more than midway through the decade, his determination started to pay dividends.
Lee also considered merchandising opportunities for Marvel. The latter grew in importance after Batman debuted on television. Reportedly, DC licensed the character to ninety companies, which would pull in about $75 million in sales; some tagged it as high as $150 million.14 As the popularity of the books grew, Lee’s tasks multiplied, but Goodman was determined to keep a relatively small staff around his star chief editor/art director.
Although he grew up in the film and radio era, Lee clearly understood the growing significance of television and believed that superhero sagas would be a perfect fit with that medium. Martin Goodman had stumbled and bumbled with Marvel licensing in the past, so it did not really surprise anyone when he basically gave away the company’s animation rights. Figuring that the production part of the company should be run by someone young, the publisher turned over that aspect to his son Charles (Chip) Goodman to use as a proving ground for the heir’s eventual taking over of the family business.
Audited circulation figures revealed that Marvel comic books jumped from eighteen million in 1961 to about thirty-two million in 1965. The surge in popularity attracted television executives, who attempted to figure out the company’s secret appeal to young audiences. No one could put their finger on it exactly, usually pointing to the combination of the antihero themes and Lee’s ability to correctly gauge the pulse of the youth market.
In September 1966, Marvel Super Heroes debuted, featuring a rotating set of stories based on the heroics of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, and the Hulk. Ads for the show ran in all the company’s comic book titles the next month, listing the twenty stations carrying the cartoon, including stations in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In total, close to fifty stations carried the show, including overseas channels in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela.
Produced by Grantray-Lawrence Animation, the cartoon version used color photostat reproductions of the actual comic books—rather than original animation—which created a seven-minute chapter that could then be played back-to-back or chopped up and fitted into other children’s television programming. In total, the company generated 195 segments for the initial syndication effort stretching from September to December 1966.
The crude method of using the comic book panels reduced the animation aspect of Marvel Super Heroes, but did showcase the exquisite artwork of Kirby, Ditko, and the rest of Lee’s talented team. In each shot, there is usually only one object animated. Sometimes it is Captain America’s shield looping through the air, while other times it is the character’s eyes blinking or lips moving as they speak. The Marvel Super Heroes theme song provided a brief overview of each character and then led into the next segment, with voices merrily singing, “the Marvel superheroes have arrived.”
Hanna-Barbera Productions launched a second animated television series— The Fantastic Four —which first aired on ABC in the fall of 1967. The show began with a bang: a signal arcing into the nighttime sky and then bursting into a vibrant “4” that called the superheroes to their New York City headquarters. The minute-long introduction took the viewer through a condensed version of the group’s origin story and then showed them battling a variety of bad guys. Aimed at an audience of young viewers, the series emphasized the super strength of the heroes and turned the villains into dangerous, but somewhat campy, versions of how they appeared in comic books. The writers aped some of Lee’s style, showing its early infiltration into mainstream popular culture, as well as the sustained influence of Adam West’s gonzo Batman.
The inevitable boom-and-bust mentality that seemed to plague comic books continued, however. Although the Marvel cartoons were popular, sales nosedived in 1967 when the televised Batman show sputtered and limped through a final year, more or less pulling all comic books sales down in its wake. DC remained on top, but total circulation across the industry decreased. Spider-Man was Marvel’s highest-selling comic, but only placed fourteenth on the year-end list of top sellers.15 Overall, Marvel did better than most of its competitors. Its books basically stayed even with the previous year’s sales or showed slim increases. Surprisingly, in a down year for the industry, the fact that Marvel circulation remained consistent revealed how hipness and good marketing could overcome market forces.
The late 1960s were full of changes for Lee. After he rented his teenage daughter a place in the city so that she could study acting, Lee realized that perhaps he and Joanie should move back. The house in Hewlett Harbor seemed too big for just two people. Lee convinced the production company that bought the Spider-Man animation rights to rent him an apartment in the city so that he could serve as a consultant on the series. The year-long tryout convinced the couple that they would enjoy city life. They got an apartment at Sixtieth Street, where they stayed during the week. Then, shortly thereafter, they sold the house and bought an apartment on Sixty-Third with a large terrace, which had been Joanie’s condition. After about two decades of suburban life, Lee and Joanie found their new home in the heart of the Big Apple.16
Lee’s popularity continued to grow among college students, both as a speaker and de facto leader of the one hundred or so campus chapters of the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club. The spotlight, however, caused tension with Goodman. “I began to think he almost resented the success of our comics line,” Lee remembered. “I felt it wouldn’t displease him to see sales slip and have my confidence taken down a peg.” For Lee, it seemed that Goodman viewed him as a competitor, just as much as the fledgling publishers and DC, which still dominated the field.17 The situation turned into a double-edged sword: Lee was too valuable and popular to fire, but his fame caused resentments. It didn’t really matter if Lee was toned down or thoughtful in the many newspaper and magazine articles or interviews on the radio, his sound bites fueled the public’s fascination. At the same time, Marvel benefited from Lee’s willingness to be the face of the superhero genre.
One of Lee’s highest-profile appearances took place on the popular Dick Cavett Show. Realizing that many nonreaders were tuned in—and facing a doubting Cavett, who seemed less than enthusiastic about the idea that comic books were important—the Marvel writer contextualized comics as a significant part of “the age of the offbeat.” In this era, Marvel superheroes specifically represented the decade (perhaps despite their powers and seeming invincibility), because they had human feelings and problems even as they were saving the world from all-powerful aliens, supervillains, and other crises. Lee explained to Cavett—at the time one of the nation’s great promoters of both high- and lowbrow culture—that in Marvel fandom, “our most popular heroes are the most wackiest.” He singled out Hulk (“a green-skinned monster”) and Spider-Man as representative of the quirky era.18
While Cavett and Pat McCormick, his erstwhile comedian sidekick poked fun at Lee and comics in general, the Marvel chief kept his cool, explaining that Spider-Man’s popularity rested on his status as an “anti-hero hero” who “gets sinus attacks, he gets acne, and allergy attacks while he’s fighting.” Prior to a commercial break, McCormick fired the kind of zinger that Lee had been fighting against his entire career. The jokester snickered, “One thing I like about those comic books is that they’re easy to turn while you’re sucking your thumb with the other hand.”19
A comedian like McCormick might have been able to play the dumbed-down nature of comic books for gags on television, but Lee stood at the center of a new comic book universe—one that he mainly created. When Jenette Kahn, later the head of rival DC, was asked what she considered the “most significant event” in the post-1950 comic book world, she pointed to Lee, explaining:
Comic book characters pick up the unconscious trends of the time and become the spokesmen for those trends. That’s why people can identify so fully that the characters can become part of the mythology. Stan Lee’s characters did that in the sixties. He picked up on anti-Establishment feelings, on alienation and self-deprecation. . . . Stan came in with characters with bad breath and acne, punkier, younger, when young people needed symbols to replace many of the things they were rejecting.20
Not a bad tribute from Marvel’s primary competitor and rival or considering the lowbrow roots the industry fought to overcome. In a flurry of creativity over a few short years, Lee upended American popular culture and forever changed the way people looked at heroes.
While Lee fixated on art, word balloons, continuing storylines, and the countless other responsibilities he faced, Goodman searched for an exit strategy. By the late 1960s large corporations started to gobble each other up in a series of mergers and acquisitions. And for Goodman, who had built Marvel from scratch, the wholesale corporate merger-mania provided a long-awaited opportunity to cash out. Martin could finally turn over the business to his son Chip, who had been apprenticing under his father’s tutelage, which would allow the elder Goodman to walk away from the constant upheaval in magazine and comic book publishing,
At the midpoint of 1968, a budding corporate mogul and lawyer named Martin Ackerman approached Goodman about selling his whole company—both the men’s magazines and the comic book division. Ackerman ran a handful of photo stores, pharmacies, and other concerns under the banner Perfect Film & Chemical Corporation. He fancied himself a major business figure, chomping away on cigars and pushing around staff and underlings, despite his diminutive stature. In a recent deal, Ackerman had extended a $5 million loan to Curtis Publishing, under the stipulation that he serve as president. What Ackerman really wanted out of the transaction was to control the distribution firm Curtis Circulation. Buying Goodman’s Magazine Management collection of periodicals and comic books ensured Ackerman that he would have the content necessary to distribute, a kind of double-dipping that gave him more revenue and control within the publishing industry.
Goodman, though wracked with internal strife over the thought of selling, ultimately demanded a cash deal and sold the entire business to Ackerman for about $15 million. When Goodman made the sale, however, he pulled Lee aside and promised his longtime writer/editor “warrants,” which he said were like stock options. Not only would Goodman get rich, but he explained that Lee would, too. “My pot of gold had arrived,” Lee thought, “and I didn’t even have to ask!”21 As the deal got closer to fruition, however, Goodman not only didn’t give Lee options, but never mentioned them again. Goodman signed a deal to remain publisher of Magazine Management, while Chip became editorial director, with the assumption he would eventually replace his father.
Ackerman and his underlings, according to Lee, “told Martin they wouldn’t buy the company unless I signed a contract to stay on.”22 Ackerman saw Lee as the essential element in the purchase, but Stan didn’t press Goodman for a big raise or other long-term financial gains, because he trusted his boss to take care of him. The three-year deal he eventually inked bumped Lee’s salary up, but he started having lingering doubts about Goodman’s backslapping and assurances.
Lee joined the many Marvel employees who believed that they should also have profited in the sale. “I’ll see to it that you and Joanie will never have to want for anything as long as you live,” Goodman told Lee over at the publisher’s house for dinner the night after the sale.23 Joanie Lee and Stan’s cousin Jean were close friends. The sale called for a party. Ackerman celebrated too—he bought a $1.5 million private jet and a snazzy Park Avenue apartment to conduct business. Lee continued to worry about what might have been if Goodman had fulfilled his promises. Yet, he didn’t press or threaten to leave Marvel, potentially at a time when he could have demanded a hefty fortune to not go running to DC.
Although Ackerman’s Curtis Circulation took over Marvel’s distribution, erasing the disastrous deal Goodman had been forced to sign ten years earlier, the entire industry reset somewhat as sales flattened. In response, Goodman took a heavy-handed approach with Marvel, threatening layoffs and canceling titles outright, including Lee’s beloved Doctor Strange. The publisher even demanded that comics drop a page (from 20 to 19) in an effort to save money. All the interference boiled Lee’s blood and again got him thinking about quitting the business. Chip Goodman also took the insane step of shutting down the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club, which Lee felt energized the company’s most loyal readers.24
Once again, Lee felt trapped. He had done everything in his power to build Marvel into the biggest comic book publisher in the industry, yet the sales slump put him right back in a vulnerable position. Goodman had not come through on his promises and, as a matter of fact, began hinting at another round of mass layoffs, which Lee would have to orchestrate. The writer yearned for a way out but couldn’t figure which way to turn. “It’s time I started thinking of other things,” he said, considering a range of options, from writing a play or film treatment to just creating poems.25 Film seemed the most logical avenue. He even dreamed of taking Kirby and artist John Buscema to Hollywood with him where they could work on set designs or story boards while he crafted scripts.
While Lee considered his options, the company’s new owner felt its first trembles. Perfect’s board of directors ousted Ackerman. The combination of pressure from running Curtis and his flamboyant, decadent spending habits was too much for the company to bear. They replaced Ackerman with Sheldon Feinberg, another aggressive young executive with a law background. Feinberg led the charge to start fresh, changing the company name to Cadence Industries. He instituted a tight-fisted campaign to reduce the company’s enormous debt. No longer the captain of the ship, Goodman fell in line. He ordered Lee to publish reprints of certain comic lines so that he didn’t have to pay freelancers for creating new pages while Marvel attempted to weather the bleak sales outlook. Inching ever closer to the end of the decade, Feinberg and his young, bellicose team had quite a task ahead. Lee tried to keep the Marvel bullpen in high spirits, but the business side of the corporation controlled decision making.
The early 1960s hinged on creating new characters and establishing the Marvel Universe as readers took notice of the revolution occurring in the industry at the hands of the perennial second-tier company. In the latter part of the decade, Lee and his crew shifted their emphasis to solidifying Marvel’s standing, as well as deepening and broadening the storylines. Lee also gave some heroes their own solo titles, including Captain America, Hulk, and Iron Man.
While many publishers watched sales drop, Marvel’s stayed consistent during the downturn. When it upped monthly production, the additional revenue staved off mass layoffs, thus keeping Lee from having to eliminate coworkers and staff members that he considered almost as close as family members. At least the good cheer and hipness factor remained with Marvel. DC went through tougher times, being sold to Kinney National, yet another corporate conglomerate, and still unable to figure out how to compete with its smaller competitor.
As 1968 unfolded, Lee and Marvel would get increasingly caught up in world events. No one could ignore Vietnam, campus unrest, civil rights protests, or the growing women’s rights campaigns. On the Dick Cavett Show, Lee discussed an earlier Thor issue that had the Norse god criticizing college students who drop out, rather than “plunge in.” At the time of the interview, however, the significance of the protests had changed, as had the world in general. Lee could no longer use a superhero story to write “a good little sermon” in response. “Youth today,” he told Cavett, “seem to be so much more activist, which I think is a very healthy thing.”26
In 1968, the comic book business stood almost unrecognizable compared to the start of the decade, when The Fantastic Four launched a series of new villains, heroes, and monsters in 1961. All the new solo titles necessitated an increased universe of intricately woven plots and new characters to fill the superhero books. Lee feared that Cadence executives could close down Marvel at any moment, yet he soldiered on, hoping that the superhero universe he created would endure the bumps and blips of the chaotic era.