CHAPTER 10
What Stan Lee understood better than anyone else associated with Marvel—from his boss Martin Goodman and the Cadence executives overseeing the company to the newest assistant editor or freelance letterer—was that if the company had a spokesperson with stories as large-as-life as the Marvel superheroes, then that person could be almost as significant as the creations. Regardless of the artist, Lee had already put words into Spider-Man, Thor, and the others for years. His voice was the sound of Marvel Comics.
When journalists began sniffing around the company in an attempt to experience the hubbub firsthand, Lee seized a crucial opening. Reporters may have scratched their heads, expecting to come across someone younger, but they recognized that the enthusiastic, witty, quote-a-minute Lee had tapped into youth culture. For decades he had survived Goodman’s downsizing and financial whims, repeatedly serving as a de facto one-man publishing company. So, when the press looked for a spokesman to contextualize the company’s rampant success, Lee jumped at the chance. The new role not only played to his ego, but also allowed him to try out some of the acting chops that he not-so-secretly harbored, dating all the way back to his teen stage aspirations with the WPA.
Lee also grasped the monetary and branding value of serving as the company face. From one perspective, he grew up in the midst of the Great Depression and remembered listening to his parents shout at one another, usually about having no money. How would they manage to pay the rent without groveling to her relatives, who were better off than the Liebers? The challenge for Lee’s father was joblessness, which the son could not abide. If he stepped into a role that made him essentially indispensible, then that position equaled job security. He carried a deep aversion for unemployment or even the hint of being underutilized. With his father’s humiliation a painful memory, the idea shook Lee to the core.
In addition, the spokesperson role from a branding viewpoint ensured that Marvel remained in the public eye as new opportunities developed. Lee did not have to be a supergenius like Reed Richards to realize that the superhero craze would lead to an increased number of entertainment options that would build on Marvel’s reputation—and Lee’s. The public reaction to the superhero characters he helped create stacked up on his desk in the form of three hundred to four hundred fan letters each day. In some sense, Lee realized, he could become a real-life “Mr. Fantastic” just by capitalizing on his natural strengths and gregarious personality.1
The public role made Lee virtually indispensible. Ironically, as Lee’s position expanded, he subsequently became further entrenched as a company man. He realized that his fate—as always—remained deeply entwined with Marvel comics. Although many comic book insiders would accuse Lee of self-aggrandizement for assuming this self-created mantle, he smartly moved in a direction that played on his natural talents. He was never going to be an inspirational chief executive—he never fully engaged with the business side of the organization—but he could rally crowds and fans. In addition to engaging with enthusiastic college students, he could just as effectively talk up comic books to worried parents or curious journalists.
After spending decades toiling in virtual obscurity and chagrined when people learned of his occupation, the tables turned when Marvel found itself at the center of the cultural zeitgeist. Lee leaped at the prospect of establishing himself as a brand both within and outside the company.
Goodman remained the prototypical business leader, keen on revenue and profit. He lacked the sense of pure creativity needed to appreciate the work being done by Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and the Marvel bullpen, but he created a financial infrastructure that enabled the artists and writers to flourish. And he continued to serve as a foil to Lee, even as the latter’s power increased and Goodman’s power lessened. Lee may have bristled at the financial maneuverings necessary for running a company, but he understood that Goodman and the Cadence management team played a critical role in the company’s success.
Keeping the comic book division running, Lee had developed broad insight and experience with finances, but it never moved him the way the creative pieces did. He understood the need to build on the momentum of the new breed of superheroes Marvel created, but he remained somewhat removed from the corporate business decision making and the obsession with numbers that fueled middle management. Plus, he had no real time to get too intricately involved with finances. The expansion of titles per month meant that Lee had to corral a growing team of staffers and free-lancers. Titles had to hit publication deadlines. Missing the mark cost the company money in penalty fees and potential sales. The ironic aspect of Lee’s concentration on marketing Marvel was that it took place after so many years. “I had to write just about everything,” he recalled. “I was the editor. I was the art director. I was the head writer. So because of that, for better or worse, I had my personality stamped on those comics.” It is important to remember, though, that the front-end creation—from writing to artwork and production—was the glitzy outcome that required a great deal of behind-the-scenes effort. “I was designing covers, writing cover blurbs, writing ads, the soapbox column, the Bullpen page,” Lee explained.2 The culmination of Lee’s many creative roles over decades prepared him for the spotlight, which he had been yearning for from his earliest days in comic books and certainly at least dating back to his 1947 Writer’s Digest article about making money writing comic books.
The persona Lee fashioned, with part sarcasm and large dollops of self-deprecation, created a voice that permeated Marvel. The popularity of Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, and the others went beyond mere fandom to a kind of cult status that established Marvel as a major cultural influence. Yet, even though it became the hip comic book company, Marvel still trailed DC Comics in total sales. In 1968, for example, DC Comics published forty-seven titles with sales of approximately seventy-five million, while Marvel had twenty-two titles and fifty million (although in an August 1968 interview, Lee claimed sixty million). Even though Marvel published fewer than half the titles DC did, its sales were at least two-thirds as much, making the company in some ways more successful.
In countless speaking engagements and interviews, Lee continued to hone his public persona. Simultaneously, though, he never missed a chance to recognize Marvel fans and his creative team (then numbering around thirty-five staff and free-lancers). “Marvel readers must be among the most fanatical in the land,” he claimed. “They ask questions, find mistakes, [and] make suggestions.”3 The thousands of letters Lee received and the interaction with fans at comic industry gatherings gave him direct insight into his target demographic, from the obsessed diehards who chided Lee for every Spider-Man frame that left out some minor detail to the casual observers attempting to understand how comic books got so popular.4
Lee never shied from telling the world how innovative or creative Marvel’s new work (and by extension, his writing) stood in comparison to past characters and comic book publishers, particularly DC, which he constantly chided as a monument to an outdated era.
Lee sincerely believed in the educational and cultural value of comic books, so his basic earnestness led to an authenticity that people accepted, particularly when delivered in the corny, self-deprecating style that he perfected as the speaking engagements piled up. Lee understood that fans wanted Marvel books to engage with real-life socioeconomic and political topics. Staying flexible and listening to fans, Lee responded, explaining, “they want a whole ethos, a philosophy, within the framework of the comic character. They seem desperate for someone to believe in. . . . I don’t want to let them down.”5 In the late 1960s much of the editorializing expressed via Spider-Man, Thor, and others addressing pertinent issues helped legitimize comic books for a wider audience.
Although Lee could be criticized for not taking a more progressive tone, given that he had the youth market at his feet, he often dropped his self-deprecating mask and spoke to readers about serious topics. In late 1968, for example, he used a “Stan’s Soapbox” column to speak out against bigotry and racism, which he labeled the “deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.” Lee said it was “totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion.” Instead, he urged Marvelites to be tolerant.6
Similar thinking about societal concerns prevalent in the chaotic era led Marvel to create several African American characters, including Robbie Robertson, a city editor at the Daily Bugle in Spider-Man books and, more centrally, the Black Panther, the superhero guise of T’Challa, the prince of a mythical African country. Around the same time, Marvel introduced the Falcon, another black superhero, but this time an American. After debating what to do with the Black Panther, Lee confessed to hoping that the fan mail would provide him with insight about how to carry on. In 1970, Lee claimed that he wanted to offer black heroes earlier, but “the powers-that-be” were “very cautious” and would not let him.7 Whether this finger wagging was aimed directly at Goodman or the Cadence bosses, Lee did not feel that he had to hold back.
In March 1970, Lee again turned to the Soapbox to lay out Marvel’s policy on “moralizing.” Some readers simply wanted escapist reading, but Lee countered: “I can’t see it that way.” He compared a story without a message to a person without a soul. Giving the reader insight into his world, Lee explained that his visits to college campuses led to “as much discussion of war and peace, civil rights, and the so-called youth rebellion as . . . of our Marvel mags.” All these ideas, Lee said, shape our lives. No one should run from them or think that reading comic books might insulate someone from important societal topics.8
Despite all the attention he received and the outpouring of fan affection bordering on cult-like devotion, Lee couldn’t shake feelings of inadequacy. He continued to receive off-putting reactions from other adults who worked in more mainstream jobs. As a result, Lee searched for legitimacy. No accolades seemed enough to erase those initial negative perceptions of being “just a comic book writer.”
Often, when Lee faced challenges, he turned to Spider-Man. From a literary standpoint, Spider-Man tapped into the era’s existentialism—an average person who fell victim to an accident that changed his life in every way imaginable. The radioactive spider that injected its venom directly into Peter Parker’s bloodstream enabled the boy to transform into a superhero, but the venom did not cast aside Peter’s insecurities, anxieties, or basic humanity. As a matter of fact, a moment of indecision and hubris led to the death of his beloved Uncle Ben and left the boy reeling and reflective. The dichotomy between hubris and humility made the character compelling to legions of Marvel fans.
As a symbol of the 1960s and its collective unrest, which resulted in a kind of split personality between protest and conservatism, Spider-Man was another iteration of the figures populating books, film, and celebrity tabloids during the era. Peter Parker occupies the same city that drove young Holden Caulfield to the brink in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Similarly to Caulfield, Parker questions his place in the world. While Lee knew the character resonated with younger audiences, he also believed that more mature readers and adults would connect with the character as well, which he had seen in his lectures on college campuses. He just needed to get the superhero in front of this expanded audience. The growing college-aged population gobbled up Catcher, just as it devoured Marvel comics.
In July 1968, in hopes of thwarting some of the criticisms he faced about being in an inferior industry, Lee launched The Spectacular Spider-Man, which was not only magazine-sized, but its interior art was in black and white, a trend mirrored in underground comics. The fifty-plus-page magazine debuted for thirty-five cents, nearly triple the newsstand price of regular comic books at twelve cents.
The first issue featured a rewritten and redrawn origin story and a Lee original, “Lo, This Monster.” The covers were distinctive as well. Harry Rosenbaum, an artist who did cover art for men’s adventure magazines, painted an image of the hero in acrylic, which gave it a deeply textured and mature look. The second issue presented a striking cover by artist John Romita that showed the Green Goblin zapping Spidey with a colorful yellow burst. The energy of the Romita cover exploded from the page and quickly became a fan favorite.
Lee revealed his hopes for the magazine in a general Soapbox update, calling the magazine “a real, glitzy, status-drenched, slick-paper publication” that readers could find “amongst the so-called ‘better’ magazines at your newsstand.” In his “Stan’s Soapbox” call-out, Lee declared the magazine, “possibly Marvel’s finest achievement to date” and a “Marvel milestone” that would go down in comic book history. The editor-in-chief saw the magazine as an opportunity to create a bridge to adult readers, featuring more mature themes and topics. He also felt it would provide him some gravitas among adults and win them over to his viewpoint regarding comics.
What Lee didn’t anticipate was that the new adult-oriented comic seemed to occupy a no-man’s land between kids and older readers. No amount of bluster or hype on Lee’s part could save the title from bombing. For average fans, The Spectacular Spider-Man cost too much. The foray into black and white did not help either. The second issue went back to interior color, but it was already too late. That second issue with the beautiful cover would be the last, though Marvel rehashed the Lee story later in 1973 in The Amazing Spider-Man #116–118, with revisions by writer Gerry Conway. Another story from the second issue, featuring the Green Goblin, would later be repurposed (as Marvel so frequently did) in The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #9 (1973).
Although the failure of the adult version delivered a blow to Lee’s notions of crossing into a more traditional form of mainstream success, the magazine didn’t diminish Spider-Man’s overall popularity among comic book fans. Nonetheless, Lee still reeled with career frustration. Since the late 1940s, he had attempted to gain a sense of legitimacy by self-publishing material for older readers or moonlighting for Goodman’s adult-oriented magazines. On the outside, Lee seemed upbeat and passionate about comic books and his superhero creations. Throughout his long career in comics, though, he had internalized the negativity, hiding deep fears about working in an industry that others deemed unacceptable.
In early 1970, Lee faced another challenge. Kirby’s contract had expired around the time Goodman sold the company to Perfect Film. The corporate leaders who ran the business had little interest in re-signing Kirby for the big money the artist expected, and Goodman didn’t back him, either. Kirby correctly gauged that it was his turn to get paid for all that he had done to build Marvel into the industry leader, but according to Mark Evanier, no one would talk to him or his lawyer about a new contract.9 Eventually, he turned to Lee for help, incorrectly assuming that the editor had the power to help. Though Kirby thought Lee sandbagged him, there is no evidence that he could have swayed Goodman or the corporate management team to give Kirby what he wanted.
The contract impasse drove another wedge between Lee and Kirby—in hindsight, one that seemed based on misjudgment rather than malice. The irony of the relationship between Kirby and Lee is that the two are tied together forever in comic book lore, yet their complexities turned the relationship at times indifferent, or begrudgingly cordial, sour, and even hostile.
Kirby seemed to care less about the fame that came with creating successful superheroes and comic books. He loved his craft. His desire centered on earning a living and getting treated with equity—receiving a fair share of the money that corporations were making off his art, ideas, and reputation. With Kirby, the feeling emerges that no matter how financially sound he might have been, the haunting recollections of his youth in the Lower East Side slums would never be far from his mind. “All of Kirby’s work in the ’60s was for Marvel, and he was always terrified that he would stop getting assignments,” Joe Simon explained. “It was a big deal for him.”10
Both Kirby and Simon, like Lee, had lived through the hardscrabble times of the Great Depression, which fundamentally colored the way they viewed work and money. According to Simon, Kirby put a lot of pressure on himself to provide for his family, at least in part because his own parents had been so poor. “He had to bring the money home for Roz, put food on the table for the kids.”11 This kind of intimate relationship with poverty never leaves a person. Kirby’s demons regarding money hovered ominously over his worldview. His $35,000 freelance salary in 1970 (about $220,000 in current buying power) allowed him to make a decent living, but one could certainly argue that he should have been making multiples more than that, perhaps in the millions of dollars.
Despite their shared history of growing up poor, for Lee, recognition was a far greater desire than the financial compensation that Kirby sought. He also drew from important lessons bestowed on him as a child—a mother who demanded perfection and success and the toll that financial hardship had taken on his family. Adulation was the check Lee needed to cash.
Though forever linked as a creative tandem, Lee and Kirby’s complex relationship suffered from different desires, one for fame, the other for financial security. Thus, Kirby’s frustration with Goodman’s penny-pinching and reneged-on promises, as well as lingering exasperation with Lee, led him to turn down a new contract with Marvel in 1970. Instead he boarded DC, where Carmine Infantino ran the editorial ship. Kirby was given free rein to develop a new superhero universe, called “The Fourth World.” At DC, he created three new titles that enabled the artist/writer to tackle the biblical, existential, and science fiction machine-driven questions that were at the center of his mythical worldview.
Comic books were big business and had been a hit in other mediums, demonstrating how central superhero narratives were in contemporary American culture. Envious of the way Superman and Batman had moved from radio to film and television, Marvel made similar plans. Historically, the emphasis had been on creating demand for comic books by crossing platforms. During this era, publishing executives realized how television and film would drive licensing.
For Lee and the corporate honchos in New York, the ultimate dream for Marvel’s superheroes centered on a series of movies and television shows. Moving into these mediums had two primary objectives. First, increasing the overall size of the audience would establish the characters for successive generations of fans. Next, the increased exposure would lead to greater demand, thereby generating a catalog of profitable licensing deals. Despite some early successes the company had getting the figures into animated series, most attempts at adapting them for live-action floundered, often stuck somewhere in the jumble of the Hollywood process that took an idea to script, then development and casting.
The early Marvel Super Heroes animated program produced by Grantray-Lawrence proved that even a crudely done series featuring the company’s main superheroes would find an audience. The next logical step, based on the ever-growing popularity of Spider-Man, was that the web slinger would get a show. Grantray-Lawrence led production efforts in late 1967 and worked on the series into 1968. The struggling studio went into bankruptcy, however, enabling famed animator Ralph Bakshi to take over the reins. The series aired on ABC and proved a hit, running until 1970.
Animation juggernaut Hanna-Barbera Productions produced another series for ABC—the first series for The Fantastic Four—that ran from 1967 to 1970. The new program ran alongside Spider-Man, giving audiences an extended dose of superhero stories. Lee and Kirby’s original comic books were truncated to fit into the thirty-minute time slot and watered down so that children could easily follow the stories. Considered one of the first Saturday morning educational cartoons, each episode had a segment dedicated to Mister Fantastic explaining a scientific term or concept to viewers.
Producers downplayed Kirby’s ominous depiction of Doctor Doom and made Galactus less imposing, but these stylistic changes were offset to a degree by the enthusiasm of the voice actors, including film and television star Gerald Mohr voicing Reed Richards. This formula—making some characters more generic and operating within the technology boundaries (in this case, clunky animation)—seemed to hinder how production companies brought Marvel characters to the screen. Publicly, Lee supported the show, but had little to do with it otherwise. The lack of control irritated him. He believed that if Marvel created its own programming, like Disney, that its superheroes would rival Walt’s famous mouse and princesses. The urge to start a production company began to gnaw at Lee.
In 1971, a New York Times reporter estimated that about 300 million comic books were printed each year.12 Considering even a conservative pass-through rate equating to four others reading each comic sold, that means around 1.2 billion comic books were read at a time when the total world population stood near 3.7 billion. Despite lingering questions about its negative effects on young readers, the medium had grown into a central component of mainstream culture. And Lee was its pivotal figure. In the eyes of many, the name “Stan Lee” was synonymous with comic books, a kind of Johnny Appleseed who toured the nation to spread the joy and significance of comic books.
In May of that year, Lee showed how comic books could be used for good with The Amazing Spider-Man #96. In that issue, Spidey saves a young black kid who mistakenly jumps off a rooftop, because, as the superhero explains, “The poor guy’s stoned right out of his mind.” After the rescue, other characters exchange words about drug use and Spider-Man thinks: “My life as Spider-Man is probably as dangerous as any—but I’d rather face a hundred super-villains than toss it away by getting hooked on hard drugs.” Peter Parker’s African American friend Randy later gets into a heated exchange with Norman Osborn, explaining that blacks hate drugs the most, because young people “got no hope,” which makes them “easier pickin’s for the pushers.”
Casual readers may have regarded the antidrug message as yet another aspect of their favorite comic book’s approach to realism. Marvel fans probably didn’t know that Lee had received a letter asking for his help from an official at the National Institute of Mental Health, a division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The executive implored Lee to use Spidey’s popularity to fight drug abuse by directly confronting the issue in comic book form. Government officials believed that the character’s esteem among high school and college students would enable the agency to get factual information to this key demographic.
Although Lee realized that mentioning drug use would be a violation of the Comics Code, he decided to fulfill the request. Understanding the broader implications, he explained, “We can’t keep our heads in the sand. . . . If this story would help one kid anywhere in the world not to try drugs or to lay off drugs one day earlier, then it’s worth it rather than waiting for the code authority to give permission.”13
Most comic book publishers and editors set internal rules about dealing with the Code of the Comics Magazine Association. Despite regulations about dealing with sex and the depiction of government officials in a bad light, the Code did not include information about drug abuse. No publisher could release a story featuring a werewolf or vampire, those tales were clearly outlawed by the Code. Drugs, though, were a hazy subject for regulators. The Amazing Spider-Man #96 did not bear the Comic Code seal of approval, which represented a bold step for Marvel and Lee. He continued the drug plot for the next two issues, revealing that Harry Osborn had a pill addiction. Parker chalks Harry’s habit up to him being “so weak.” Later, Osborn obtains pills from a dealer (resembling a blond version of Stan Lee in comic book form), who promises the pills are “just what the doctor ordered.” Back at the apartment he shares with Parker, Osborn passes out after taking a handful of pills. When Peter finds him, they are interrupted by Harry’s father, the Green Goblin, who wants to kill Spider-Man. After battling the villain above the high-rises and apartment buildings of New York, Spidey eventually convinces the Goblin to see his hospitalized son. The trauma causes the Goblin to black out, which seems to put an end to his villainous ways.
While government officials were happy to have Spider-Man and Lee on their side in the fight against drug use, not everyone agreed. John Goldwater, the publisher of Archie Comics and founding president of the Comics Magazine Association in 1954, publicly announced his disapproval, including declaring topical use of drugs or drug abuse in comic books “still taboo.”14 Yet, the far-reaching positive publicity Marvel received handcuffed Goldwater and the CMA. The organization issued no sanctions against Marvel or Lee.
In addition to bringing the Comics Code Authority into modern times, Lee’s decision to publish the special Spider-Man issues put Marvel out ahead of DC, which had been rumored to be working on its own issues based on the same topic. Carmine Infantino, the editorial director at DC, also railed against Marvel, implying that the move should be considered potentially harmful, particularly to children who might read it.15
Rejecting the code enabled Lee and Marvel to push harder on other social issues, and allowed them to take a stab at appealing to more college-aged readers. One method for proving the relevancy of comics focused on introducing nonwhite and ethnically diverse superheroes into the lineups. Marvel launched Hero for Hire in June 1972, featuring a black superhero, Luke, who fights crime in Harlem. Two years later, the Cage became Power Man and had a successful run teaming up with white martial arts legend Iron Fist.
Following these pioneering efforts and after the company introduced Black Panther, using the character in a series of titles, Marvel published Red Wolf (1972–1973), a Native American superhero. Shortly after, when the television show Kung Fu, starring David Carradine, hit the air in 1972, Marvel picked up on the martial arts wave (which included the work of Bruce Lee and others using karate as the driving force on film). The company developed Master of Kung Fu, featuring Asian superhero Shang-Chi, who first appeared in Special Marvel Edition #15 (December 1973). By April 1974, the title changed to The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu and began a long, popular run, eventually appearing in crossovers with Marvel’s top superheroes.
Lee always harbored ambitions to be more than “just” a comic book writer and editor. When he was a boy, his mother showered him with praise and joked almost daily that Hollywood talent scouts would soon take him from her. He acted out scripts for artists and other writers and enjoyed the constant bustle of hustling from campus to campus as a one-man Marvel marketing machine. Most of these efforts paid dividends in terms of growing fan loyalty or spreading the comic book gospel. Sometimes, however, Lee’s willingness to take chances backfired.
In early December 1971, a distinctive ad ran in the hip NYC paper the Village Voice announcing “Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall!” in January. For $3.50 in advance or $4.50 at the door, fans could attend the show, which promised “All Live! Music! Magic! and Myth!” The advertisement didn’t feature many details, but Thor, Spider-Man, and Hulk were crammed into the image, with Spidey (in characteristic Lee style) promising: “An erudite evening of cataclysmic culture with your friendly neighborhood bullpen gang.”16 Later, the official name of the event changed to “A Marvelous Evening with Stan Lee.”
Whether the evening was “marvelous” or not most likely depended on the viewer’s feelings about Marvel and its band of superheroes. Most adults, particularly those reviewing the shindig for metropolitan newspapers, found the evening anything but amazing, likening it to an “employer at his own Christmas party” and “a company revue.”17 Lee served as host and ringleader, which is an apt description, since the night devolved into a chaotic mess. There were second-rate music acts, some vague discussions of comic book art with Romita and Buscema, and an appearance by new journalism star Tom Wolfe, who completed his white suit ensemble with an Uncle Sam top hat. Other oddities included the world’s tallest man, nine-foot-eight Eddie Carmel, reading a poem about the Hulk, and Geoff Crozier, an Australian illusionist, performing a strange magic act.18 The highlight for Lee was reading parts of the poem “God Woke” from the stage with his wife Joanie and daughter J.C. Fans really didn’t know what to make of the show and made paper airplanes to lob at the stage in mockery and frustration.
Continually trying to establish Marvel as different, Lee started calling the company the “House of Ideas,” which stuck with journalists and became part of the company’s cachet. If a downside existed in the surge of Marvel comics into the public consciousness it is that Lee and his bullpen teammates had to balance between entertainment, taking a stance on social issues, and maintaining profitability. He placed value in the joy people derived from reading comics, but he wanted them to be useful as well, explaining, “hopefully I can make them enjoyable and also beneficial. . . . This is a difficult trick, but I try within the limits of my own talent.”19 Lee wanted to have it both ways—for people to read the books as entertainment, but also to be taken seriously.
At the same time, Marvel had to sell comics, which meant that little kids and young teenagers drove a sizeable chunk of the market. In 1970, Lee estimated that 60 percent of Marvel’s readers were under sixteen. The remaining adult readership was enormous, in historical numbers, but kept Lee focused on the larger demographic. “We’re still a business,” he told an interviewer. “It doesn’t do us any good to put out stuff we like if the books don’t sell. . . . I would gain nothing by not doing things to reach the kids, because I would lose my job and we’d go out of business.”20
As Lee’s position as the voice and face of Marvel Comics solidified, it rankled Goodman and created a rift between the publisher and his star employee. On one hand, the industry moved so quickly that Lee and his creative teams constantly fought to get issues out on time. The number of titles Marvel put out meant that everyone had to be constantly producing. So, when Lee was in the office or working from home, he committed to getting content out. Roy Thomas recalls, “Stan and I were editing everything, and the writers were editing what they did, and we had a few assistant editors that didn’t really have any authority . . . that was about it.”21 However, that chaotic atmosphere made it easy for animosities to form or fester. Lee needed content out the door and Goodman tried to maintain control over cover artwork and other details that inevitably slowed down the process.
“Stan and Goodman were increasingly on different wavelengths as the time came near the end of their relationship,” explained Thomas, who had a front row seat watching the acrimony build. “Goodman and his son, Chip, were still making those decisions at that time. Chip, in that last year or less before Stan took over, was the official publisher as Martin withdrew from the business more. I don’t know if Goodman was even in the office then, because I never saw him very much anyway. His office was way at the other end of the hall.”22
In 1972, Goodman finally made good on his wish to retire, four long years after Cadence took over the company. He expected Cadence executives to make his son Chip the new publisher. Instead, shortly after Goodman left, the new owners showed his son the door—so much for handshake agreements and family ties. Instead, Cadence CEO Sheldon Feinberg named Lee Marvel’s publisher and president.
The new post meant that Lee would have to step down as editorial director. After some internal wrangling and indecision regarding who would replace him, Lee handed over the duties to Roy Thomas, his handpicked successor.
“Now I’ll be able to do things the way I want them,” Lee thought, but he was wrong. Instead, he attended a dizzying succession of meetings and strategy sessions to discuss the financial status of all the company’s publications, including the men’s magazines. “I suddenly realized that I am doing something that millions of people can do better than I can do. The thing I enjoy doing—the creative stuff—I’m not doing anymore.” This realization led Lee to soon give up the president position to concentrate on the publisher’s duties.23
In the meantime, Goodman didn’t stay retired for long. Angered by his son’s termination, Goodman retaliated by founding Atlas Comics. He put Chip in charge and began an aggressive poaching program, even hiring away Lee’s younger brother Larry to serve as editor. Many other Marvel freelancers and artists also left because Goodman paid more. The desertions grew so prevalent that Lee had to issue a memo reminding staffers and freelancers of Marvel’s commitment to them. Although a negative blip for Lee, the industry had changed, and Goodman’s maneuverings were outdated. Atlas soon folded.
There were additional growing pains for Lee as publisher and Thomas as editor. Lee had a looser vibe with people, but also was a legendary figure. “He sent them off feeling very enthused about doing something new,” says writer Mark Evanier, who worked with both Lee and Kirby. “They didn’t operate for him out of fear, as they did for some editors.”24 Thomas inherited a staff loyal to Lee, but they still had to churn out some forty titles a month. The production schedule remained king. “I knew I didn’t have the power Stan had had as editor-in-chief, because he was right there, and I wasn’t looking for that,” Thomas recalled. “I wasn’t threatened by anybody, and who’s going to have a better rapport with Stan than I did? It was very good, most of the time, so I didn’t feel that insecure.”25
Thomas’s ascension and Lee’s pull toward management did shift the editorial direction, if for no other reason than that Stan wouldn’t be writing full-time any longer. “It was time to kind of branch out a little bit,” Thomas explained. “We wanted to keep some of that Marvel magic, and at the same time, there had to be room for other art styles and other writing styles.”26 The most overt change came when Lee turned in the copy for The Amazing Spider-Man # 110. The late 1971 issue was the last Lee wrote for the character. Writer Gerry Conway succeeded Lee and the next books in the series would be cocreated by Conway and star artist John Romita.
While many adults looked down on Lee for writing comic books, especially early in his career, he developed a masterful style that rivals or mirrors those of contemporary novelists. Lee explained:
Every character I write is really me, in some way or other. Even the villains. Now I’m not implying that I’m in any way a villainous person. Oh, perish forbid! But how can anyone write a believable villain without thinking, “How would I act if he (or she) were me? What would I do if I were trying to conquer the world, or jaywalk across the street? . . . What would I say if I were the one threatening Spider-Man? See what I mean? No other way to do it.”27
Lee’s distinctive voice captured the essence of his chosen medium.
Lee also understood that the meaning of success in contemporary pop culture necessitated that he embrace the burgeoning celebrity culture. If a generation of teen and college-aged readers hoped to shape him into their leader, Lee would gladly accept the mantle and be their gonzo king. Fashioning this image in a lecture circuit that took him around the nation, as well as within the pages of Marvel’s books, Lee created a persona larger than his publisher or employer. As a result, he transformed the comic book industry.