CHAPTER 11
Although it might have been difficult to put downbeat words in the mouth of the company’s most important promoter, the 1970s were troubling times for Lee and the company. Everyone at Marvel—including Lee, the creative teams responsible for putting out the books, the accountants struggling to make sense of internal spending, and corporate managers determined to rein in the comics division—seemed at war with one another, desperate to address the sagging sales.
Like so much of the national scene, the comic book industry faced years of uncertainty, slippery footing, and ultimately a struggle to survive. Marvel’s per-comic sales dropped, so the company attempted to offset the decrease by publishing more titles. For example, there were ten comics with “Marvel” in the title (ranging from Mighty Marvel Western and Marvel Triple Action to Special Marvel Edition).1
By January 1973, Lee oversaw the annual production of some sixty-nine titles, including twenty-eight superhero books, sixteen mystery/monsters, and ten westerns. Total sales rose, but the fact that Marvel published so many comics actually concealed weaknesses internally and revealed stagnation across the industry.2 Flooding the marketplace had been a Martin Goodman trick from the early days. The practice boosted the overall financial picture but also increased pressure on the creative teams who put pen and ink to paper.
Yet, in front of a microphone or with a reporter nearby, Lee remained positive, trumpeting the company’s successes. Reading the Stan’s Soapbox essays, no one would have guessed at the troubles that dogged Marvel, particularly after it achieved its primary goal, which was to knock DC off as the industry leader. When that happened, Marvel had to change. It was no longer the scrappy underdog and perennial also-ran. For some organizations, that drive to the top defines its culture. Once Marvel became the top comic book producer, the company had to find a new path.
Amid the chaotic climate of the early 1970s and Marvel’s struggles to find its footing, Lee’s transition from writer, art director, and editorial lead to publisher proved jarring. In the office, he shifted from creative force to company man, serving as a kind of conduit between the intransigent figures running the corporation at the top of the executive food chain and the chaos of the creative bullpen filled with artists and writers who—like the 1970s as a decade—wanted to buck the system.
Lee struggled to find his place in this unfamiliar corporate system, never fully understanding his fellow “suits,” but also constantly worried about the status of the artists and writers, who thumbed their noses at conformity and economic realities. He had to be the boss, for example, creating an approval process for cover art and copy for all domestic comics, plus the British titles, while balancing storylines and juggling the workloads of the creative teams.3 The operation grew too large for one person to control everything, but the publisher role demanded his attention across the business and creative functions.
Unlike his friends and protégés in the bullpen (many of the them younger writers or artists who grew up inspired by his work), Lee knew the intricacies of the financial situation and recognized just how precarious the future looked. In an interview, he discussed his role, explaining, “What I do mainly is worry about the product we are turning out. . . . I’m really like an over-all executive editor.”4 He worked with Cadence leaders to get approvals for new magazines and comics, each decision having significant consequences, since the profit margins in the comic book division were so thin.
Lee and many other industry insiders expected the superhero craze to eventually fizzle. If Marvel faltered, the best-case scenario for Lee would send him back to his editor’s desk, writing multiple books for whatever the next fad might be, again relying on freelance artists to keep the company afloat. He shuddered at this thought, having no desire to return to his former role as a one-man comic book operation. Such fear drove him to keep up a relentless pace—at any given moment, Lee could be found overseeing strategic editorial decisions, managing the expectations and meddling of his corporate bosses, launching new magazines, or flying from college campus to campus to fulfill his marketing and lecturing role.
Marvel needed a boost. Superhero popularity skyrocketed, yet sales dropped. Demographics worked against Marvel. Readers skewed younger, buying titles such as Archie Comics, the bestselling comic of 1970 at 515,000 sold per issue versus The Amazing Spider-Man at about 373,000.5 At the end of 1971, the official Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) audit revealed that paid circulation per month had dropped over the preceding three years. Marvel sold about 96 million comic books in 1968, but the figure fell to 91.8 in 1971, despite more total books on sale.6 Over the following year and a half, the number would plummet to just over 5.8 million per month or just under 70 million annually for 1972 and 1973. In comparison, DC dipped from about 6.3 million per month in 1968 to just 4.7 million five years later.7
Hoping to reverse course, the comic book division spent the early 1970s jumping from fad to fad. Marvel rushed headlong into the fantasy and horror market, publishing The Tomb of Dracula, The Monster of Frankenstein, and Man-Thing, among others. Lee urged fans to accept the new direction in Soapbox columns, calling the new Monster Madness title, “the most frantic, far-out, fabulously frenzied monster mag you’ve ever goose-pimpled over!” In his carnival barker cadence, he implored readers to obey the first Marvel Commandment in his faux biblical exhortation: “thou shall not miss it!”8
The move into horror came after the Comics Code adapted to shifting cultural norms after Lee pushed through the Amazing Spider-Man #96 issue that tackled drug use at the behest of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1972, Code regulators officially eliminated restrictions prohibiting horror comics, particularly ones featuring werewolves and vampires.
Cadence executives did not really understand the comic book division, so they had a difficult time comprehending the wildly fluctuating sales numbers or how to stop the decline. Historically, comic books garnered a high pass-through rate, which meant that for every comic purchased, about three to five additional people read it—three to five people who had no reason to buy a copy for themselves. These discouraging numbers forced Cadence officials to tighten down on editorial, including Lee and protégé Roy Thomas, who had become a kind of mini-Lee, both writing original content and editing the other titles in the lineup.
Thomas played an instrumental role in getting Marvel focused and pointed in new directions post-Lee’s editorship. For example, he convinced a skeptical Lee to take a shot on the sword-wielding Conan the Barbarian in late 1970, and the title became a hit.
In late 1972, Lee’s role took on an official strategic component when he became publisher of Marvel Comics. “I was deciding what books we would publish and what to concentrate on,” he explained. “I worked with the editor and oversaw most of what we did.”9 With Thomas as the new editor in chief, they began charting a different path for Marvel, but at a time when the softness in the marketplace became clearer. Thomas pushed the comic book division into new areas, less reliant on traditional superheroes, including Man-Thing, Ghost Rider, and Dracula. The entire 1970s seemed a topsy-turvy mix of innovative new characters trying to survive in a faltering market, while Lee mixed his publisher duties with promoting and marketing Marvel at a time when his personal celebrity skyrocketed but decreasing sales rocked Cadence corporate leaders.
Merchandising and licensing had been a kind of afterthought back when Goodman ran the company. That changed when Cadence took over and caused schisms between the corporate leadership and the comic book creators. Some critics of the new regime argued that Cadence simply wanted to turn Marvel into a marketing machine, ignoring superheroes and comic books unless they had licensing potential. In 1973 and 1974, the marketing work resulted in deals with numerous toy companies and publishers, as well as Columbia Records, Hostess, Mattel, and others.10 The merchandising deals grew in significance as circulation declined. No one expected 1971 to be a trendsetter, but Marvel did not reach that 7.4 million copies per month threshold again until 1987.
As editor, Lee had some distance from licensing, often as bemused as the next person when he saw a Spider-Man or Hulk tchotchke. In his publisher role, though, Lee became a conduit between Marvel and potential advertisers, particularly young salesmen who had grown up reading his comics. Lee’s celebrity status made him an attraction at trade shows and other venues where Cadence hobnobbed with corporate execs. Thus, Lee’s importance actually increased as circulation plummeted and the corporate bosses exerted pressure to squeeze revenues wherever they could find them. Even somewhat meager advertising and licensing money meant something when comic books were priced at twenty cents a copy.
Despite the softness in the marketplace, the exterior Lee, the public face of Marvel, remained as joyful and exuberant as ever. Legions of fans still flocked to see their leader as Lee barnstormed the nation spreading the gospel of comic books. In mid-1975, his fame grew when a reporter at the Chicago Tribune dubbed Lee “the creator of a modern mythology” and, more blatantly, “the Homer of pop culture” (a moniker given to Lee by Princeton students in 1966).11
Giving up the day-to-day editorial duties, he increased lecture time, averaging one a week and expanded his trips to include Europe, Canada, and Latin America.12 In the first two months of 1975, for example, Lee spoke at seven colleges, from Sir George Williams College in Montreal to Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. During that stretch, he also conducted numerous radio interviews, spoke to print journalists, appeared on a Canadian television show, and served as featured speaker at Creation Con in New York City.13 As Lee’s celebrity status swelled, his schedule soon had to be booked about a year in advance.
Demographics weren’t the only obstacle for Marvel. Attempting to fill Lee’s shoes as editor-in-chief turned into a nightmare position. Trying to learn on the job and in Lee’s shadow created too much pressure. Adding to the challenge, sales bottomed out and the Cadence management team increasingly meddled in the division. The friction proved too much for a series of editors that began with Thomas (who left Marvel in 1974, contending that he would rather write comics than worry about climbing corporate ladders and managing staffers) and ended with the promotion of Jim Shooter in 1978.
The revolving door of post-Lee editors shook up the creative staff and spooked freelancers. For example, when Archie Goodwin took over in 1976, he came to the role with a great deal of authority, since many people considered him one of the best writers in the business. Yet, Goodwin only lasted until late 1977; the strain of Cadence president Jim Galton’s cutbacks and penny-pinching simply took the joy out of the work for him.
While both Thomas and Goodwin bristled at the business and strategy aspects of Lee’s former role, both were instrumental in pulling the company out of the plummeting sales cycle. Before Thomas left, he met with a little-known filmmaker named George Lucas who had a science fiction movie coming out called Star Wars. Thomas first heard about the film and urged Lee to OK a comic book version. Lee was lukewarm about the film and turned down the request. Thomas, however, continued to pester his editor, telling him that Alec Guinness was one of the film’s stars. When Lee heard about the esteemed actor’s role, he relented.14
Once Thomas got Lee’s approval, they worked out a deal with Lucas that would be mutually beneficial. The director cut a sweetheart deal with Marvel because he wanted to use the illustrated comic book as a lead-in to the film.15
When Star Wars eventually took the world by storm, Marvel basked in the demand for anything related to the surprise blockbuster. Its six-issue adaptation, written by Thomas (even though Goodwin was then editor), sold more than a million copies per issue, the first comics to reach that peak since the 1940s, even taking into account the Batmania that swept the nation in the mid-1960s. When Star Wars became a monthly title, Goodwin took over the writing duties, gladly vacating the editor’s chair that he held so briefly.16 Some company insiders, particularly Jim Shooter, feel that the Star Wars adaptation saved Marvel from certain bankruptcy and maybe even folding.
Although Lee had relinquished his primary writing duties at Marvel, he never really stopped producing. He couldn’t help coming up with new ideas and getting them down on paper. He even carried tiny spiral notepads that fit in his front pocket to jot down thoughts and placed a tape recorder by his bed, in case inspiration struck in the middle of the night.
The publisher title meant that Lee had more control over the non–comic book publications, essentially the stragglers left over from Goodman’s pulp and girlie magazine empire. Whether it was his own feelings of inadequacy or the fear that the superhero craze would end, Lee poured a lot of effort into the magazine work. He always felt like people working on magazines were a step or two above comic book writers and gave them outsized appreciation.
Looking at the magazine landscape, it seems as if Lee had a particularly difficult time with the success and influence of Mad magazine. Perhaps he envied the ability of Mad ’s publisher, William Gaines, to get out of comics after the Wertham mess, or maybe it was that he knew and worked with so many of the writers and artists that gave Mad its unique voice, such as Al Jaffee, Wally Wood, and others. Lee attempted to duplicate the zany humor and satirical wit using basically the same staff that produced Marvel comics, creating his own version, Crazy, which debuted in October 1973. Although it seemed new, Crazy had been one of Goodman’s attempts to mimic Mad in the early 1950s—a venture that failed.
Like Marvel comics, Crazy featured the “Stan Lee presents” banner. Marv Wolf-man, who wrote The Tomb of Dracula comic and later created African American vampire hunter Blade, edited the magazine. Thomas served as executive editor. Crazy featured a mix of black and white illustrations and photographs, the latter captioned with puns and satirical quips. Like Mad, the magazine took on popular culture topics, parodying films and fads, such as the James Bond thriller Live and Let Die, which they changed to Live and Let Spy, featuring Agent 07-11 and a series of scantily clad females. In addition to overseeing the magazine, Lee contributed, often adding puns to campy photos, such as a piece on the campus streaking craze that swept the nation during that era. A photo of two officers carrying a naked man by the shoulders and feet featured Lee’s typical humor: “Wait’ll they find out I’m the Dean!”17 The magazine lampooned everything, taking swipes at race relations, President Richard M. Nixon, and even Marvel, including a recurring feature on the challenges of Teen Hulk.
Growing up, Lee had loved newspaper comic strips, so once he got into comics, he developed ideas. Over the years, he created heartwarming strips such as Mrs. Lyon’s Cubs and Willy Lumpkin, but they never lasted long. In October 1976, Lee teamed up with freelance artist Frank Springer to create The Virtue of Vera Valiant, a campy comic strip for newspaper syndication that satirized the melodrama of television soap operas. The title character earned her moniker because of her role in an odd love triangle—head over heels for a man whose wife fell asleep on their honeymoon and never woke up.
After serving in the Army during World War II and getting an art school education, Springer began his comic book career, but did not start with Marvel until the mid-1960s. Soon, though, like many of Lee’s favored freelancers, the artist worked several different characters, honing each one’s style under Lee’s guidance. Eventually, Springer took over on Spider-Man, drawing the book from the mid-1970s into the 1980s. When he began working with Lee in the mid-1960s, Springer says that the writer had unwavering power, explaining, “At that time, Stan Lee was the guy you talked to about whether you did this book or not and how you did it and whether you did the next one.”18
Vera Valiant featured Lee’s madcap sass and dry wit. The strip opens on a macabre note, when Vera’s brother Herbert botches a suicide attempt. Vera learns that he is flunking out of correspondence school and is distraught. When she turns to Winthrop, the dashing CPA, for comfort, she exclaims, “What will become of Herbert . . . if he’s expelled from correspondence school?” Winthrop deadpans: “We won’t let that happen! The world needs podiatrists!” Later, when the accountant confronts the deadbeat sibling regarding all his sister has given, he explains, “She’s always dreamed of a podiatrist in the family!”19 In three panels per day and eight on Sundays, Lee and Springer presented a zany adventure featuring podiatry, space alien real estate agents, and a wife suffering from “sleeping disease” for fourteen years.
Much closer to his heart, in 1977 Lee debuted a Spider-Man comic strip for syndication. At the time, Spider-Man sold millions of comic books a year, giving Marvel and Lee a great deal of cachet with newspaper editors. Initially appearing in about one hundred newspapers nationwide, the Spider-Man strip—penned by Lee and drawn by John Romita—gave newspapers a shot at attracting a younger readership. By mid-1978, about four hundred newspapers had picked it up, which provided Lee with an entrée to a new demographic of adult readers.
Lee had some difficulty adjusting to the constraints of a daily cartoon strip. No matter how much background and subplot he hoped to put into the effort, he still had a limited number of panels per day. How could a writer used to filling page after page boil a plot down to three frames when, according to Lee, the first box had to recap, the next box moved the story ahead, and the third box left the reader with a cliffhanger?20 Steadily, he adapted to the minimalist style and grew to love the daily strip. The work gave him interaction with readers who wrote detailed letters about plot points, character motivations, and other topics. He explained, “At least I know someone’s out there—someone’s really reading the stuff!”21 For Lee, the excitement readers had for the strip led to a wealth of ideas, so many, in fact, that he had difficulty paring them down.
The popularity of the Spider-Man daily comic led the Tribune syndicate to launch a full frontal assault. The company asked DC to create one for the Justice League of America, dubbed The World’s Greatest Superheroes. Veteran Superman writer Martin Pasko initially authored the strip. George Tuska, who had previously been the writer/artist on the Buck Rogers strip over its last decade (1959–1967), as well as drawing Iron Man and The Hulk for Marvel, penciled the DC comic, and Julius Schwartz edited it. Initially the strip centered on the adventures of all the JLA heroes, including Wonder Woman, Batman, and the Flash, but eventually focused primarily on Superman. The competing cartoon strip also found its way into newspapers nationwide.22
Discussing his creative process for the web-crawler strip, Lee explained: “I first try to come up with a unique human interest angle, or a compelling sub-plot, some problem for Peter that seems virtually unsolvable. And one of the best ways to do that is to say ‘What If?’”23 What Lee liked to do was load his stories up with complicated plots and obstacles that created a momentum to push the story toward a conclusion. At one point, he admitted: “The formula for the Spidey strip should be to treat it almost like a soap opera.”24 Lee faced an inherent challenge—entice younger readers to daily comic strips while simultaneously keeping older readers interested.
Cadence executives had more experience in book publishing than comic books, so naturally they moved in that direction. Lee had always wanted to write a novel and had dabbled in self-publishing earlier in his career, so the idea of writing a series of Marvel books, which were really more like edited collections with brief new introductions and essays, appealed to his vanity and the ever-pressing time constraints.
Working with the venerable New York publishing firm Simon and Schuster, Marvel published a series called “Marvel Fireside Books” that were written or edited by Lee and comprised of short essays and reprints of many superhero and villain origin stories. Between 1974 and the end of 1979, some eleven Fireside Books were published, ranging from the launch of Origins of Marvel Comics (September 1974) to Marvel’s Greatest Superhero Battles (November 1978).
Readers delighted in the Fireside series because it gave them a relatively inexpensive and convenient method for digging into the birth of the Marvel Universe (Origins cost $11.95 in hardcover, while a book on Silver Surfer ran $7.95). Until that time, they had to rely on reprint issues or tracking down old copies. According to a Marvel internal document from May 1978, the series sold well, listing the following sales figures: Origins (one hundred sixty thousand sold), Son of Origins of Marvel Comics (one hundred thousand), Bring on the Bad Guys: Origins of Marvel Comics Villains (seventy thousand), and 1978’s How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, coauthored with artist John Buscema (twenty thousand hardcover alone).25 Lee worked on these titles in the evenings, after he finished the Spider-Man and Vera Valiant newspaper work and his many other writing commitments.26
In 1977, Lee edited one of the titles in the Fireside series, The Superhero Women, a book of essays and reprints of comics featuring female heroines and villains, including Wasp, Red Sonja, and Medusa. The book addressed the issues regarding women in superhero comics, a mounting concern during the era. Lee explained that Marvel never had a policy about creating books for male versus female readers, instead crafting stories “savored by anyone who loves fantasy and adventure.”27 Yet, over the years, Lee had attempted to build readership for female superheroes and kept a close eye on subsequent sales figures. His interest seemed to go beyond circulation numbers to a genuine concern for attracting female readers.
Although not considered revolutionary when it came to writing and publishing books for female readers, Lee had great success writing Millie the Model and its many offshoots, as well as other titles aimed at girls and young women. When he and Kirby brought back superheroes to the Marvel line, he had made the Fantastic Four’s Susan Storm an interesting character with real power, not just a weak sidekick or stereotypical girlfriend figure. Still, female superheroes were not always progressive. Wasp, for example, spent most of her time in early Avengers comics gushing over the dreamy Thor and basically flirting with all the male stars, despite her seemingly serious relationship with Henry Pym.
In response to criticisms about the role of heroines, what Lee might explain is that the comic book industry was almost exclusively driven by sales figures in the 1960s and 1970s. Circulation numbers determined which titles were published and those that stuck around, particularly when Marvel’s primary competitor controlled its entire distribution cycle. Books that didn’t sell could not take up a valuable spot on the limited roster.
The Fireside books were one part of the Cadence strategy in the decade, but it also pursued another lineup of books designed to entice younger readers, such as The Mighty Marvel Superheroes Fun Book (1976) and Marvel Mazes to Drive You Mad (1978). These included a series of coloring books, activity pads, and even a Marvel cookbook, along with a number of calendars that booksellers could use to entice readers to buy more products. Marvel even constructed special sales racks designed specifically for its books and collections. The 1977 display featured a three-sided, color riser card designed by Lee. The launch of the Spider-Man and Hulk books was timed to the release of the live-action television series featuring the Marvel heroes.28
Lee’s writing schedule as publisher juggled the Fireside books along with the daily efforts centered on approving merchandise and advertising copy, as well as the comic books themselves. In addition, he wrote a “Publisher’s Perspective” column each month for Cadence’s Celebrity magazine and continued to author the Soapbox essays. As outside production companies worked on the live-action adaptations, Lee also had a hand in the process as “consulting editor or associate producer,” mainly to “read all those scripts and give opinions.”29
Other writing projects also took up time as Lee worked on books outside the Marvel Universe. In 1979, Stan Lee Presents the Best of the Worst came out. An odd conglomeration of illustrations, pithy facts, and Lee’s irreverent humor, Best of the Worst drew from Lee’s previous work on Goodman’s humor and men’s magazine lines. For example, Lee identified Australian William Gold as “The Worst Writer,” who wrote fifteen books over eighteen years, but only sold one article to a Canberra newspaper, earning a whopping fifty cents. Lee’s primary contribution was a sentence after the narrative, joking: “Probably after lengthy negotiations.”30
After relinquishing the editor-in-chief position at Marvel, Lee was still spreading himself thin. Yet, from another perspective, he enjoyed the freedom from being chained to the editor’s desk. Plus, like other celebrities, Lee had to maximize his efforts at monetizing his fame. He explained: “People feel comic books make millions and millions of dollars, but there are many years when the companies have literally lost money . . . it’s not a case of everybody’s pocketing millions and just trampling on the poor artists and writers.”31 Given the freedom to take on additional work outside the strictures of Marvel, Lee jumped at the chance.
The animation work that had kicked off in the late 1960s and come together in the early 1970s continued later in the decade. In 1978, an animated series called The New Fantastic Four appeared. Both Lee and Thomas wrote many of the scripts. However, the show was the final nail in the coffin of the Lee-Kirby relationship and the King’s days at Marvel. Although Lee had been able to lure Kirby back to Marvel in 1975, the artist had an uneasy relationship with Goodman and still held a grudge against his cocreator for numerous slights (many real and many imagined). According to Kirby biographer Mark Evanier, “He was sick of the business” and wanted out, if only he could think of a different way to earn a living.32
Perhaps the magic had ended for Lee and Kirby, or maybe the King couldn’t stomach any additional snubs, but his final stint at Marvel seemed more or less doomed from the start. He decided against renewing his contract, which would have limited his rights of ownership to past work under copyright and failed to address other issues he had with Goodman. Instead, in 1978, he accepted an offer to serve as an artist for the new animated Fantastic Four series. First with Hanna-Barbera, then with the DePatie-Freleng studio, which ultimately made the FF show, Kirby found colleagues who deeply respected his work, bosses that cared for him, and enough money to get him away from the comic book publishers.
Jack and Stan had a notoriously rocky relationship, but their combined legacy of successes enabled them to cover the animosity with a patchwork of excuses. Once the final schism occurred, they would never really mend it. They ignored the issues that caused the fallout and got along well enough on the FF animated series to actually team up on one more go at Silver Surfer, a graphic novel version released in 1978.
Kirby spent a great deal of his later years blaming Lee for the problems he had with Marvel executives and others, just as he had insinuated back in 1941 that Lee had squealed on him and Simon when they were moonlighting for DC. It is not difficult to imagine Kirby nursing that wound for more than thirty years. Though loving and kind to those around him and his family, the King had a long memory for professional slights and constant feelings that his work was underappreciated.
Certainly Kirby could be cantankerous, and no one doubted his amazing work ethic, but there is also another side to the artist that is rarely highlighted: his quarrels with artistic partners and subsequent feuds or minifeuds that would ensue. Kirby and Lee both developed acolytes and critics over their long careers. Some insiders with little or no skin in Kirby’s long-term reputation, however, have weighed in on the topic. George Kashdan, a longtime DC writer and editor, explains, “Kirby always had fallouts with friends.” He remembers, “Once, we were having lunch together, and he talked about his falling out with Joe Simon.”33 He and Simon would later politely disagree about much of Captain America’s origin and who deserved credit for the character. Later, Kirby would unleash on Lee, essentially attempting to diminish or remove him completely from the creative process and take all the credit for the Marvel lineup.
The time Kirby spent in Hollywood seemed to rejuvenate him. He worked with young artists who were admirers of his art or had grown up emulating him. And he received a salary and benefits that were commensurate with his status as one of the industry’s titans. Kirby later hooked up with Ruby-Spears Productions, which enabled him to do work on the animated Thundarr the Barbarian (1980–1981). They loved his work and gave him the title “Producer,” which he cherished.34
Where Marvel could have used more Lee-Kirby magic in the era was in live-action programming. Reporters salivated in 1975 when Lee announced that a Spider-Man movie was imminent, though one wire service didn’t take comic books or Lee all that seriously, calling him “the man behind Spidey and a horde of other weirdos found in Marvel Comics.” Later, the writer dubs comics “flaky,” and filled with “kinky dialogue.” Lee, always working to expand the idea that comic books crossed age boundaries, told the reporter: “The books combine humor for college kids with action and adventure for the little ones.” Despite the publicity and media response, however, the proposed Spider-Man flick never materialized.35
In 1977, when Spider-Man debuted as a live-action television series, Lee was horrified. “It was so juvenile. Spider-Man had no personality and no humor,” the character’s cocreator explained. “It was one-dimensional.” The challenge for anyone hoping to adapt Marvel characters using actors was that the technology did not really exist that enabled them to really seem larger than life. Lee found the adaptations bland and far less sophisticated than the comic books themselves.36
Live-action Spider-Man seemed to work, however, in “Spidey Super Stories” on the PBS children’s television program The Electric Company. Designed to help kids learn to read (dancer Danny Seagren donned the iconic costume), the short skits first aired in the 1974–1975 season and made the program a “must see” for kids who couldn’t get enough of the superhero. The writing mimicked Lee’s, but Spider-Man never actually spoke. His words appeared in comic-like word balloons, which served as the hook for getting children to practice reading.
Most of the web slinger’s stories on The Electric Company were silly romps. The show’s mainstay actors, such as Morgan Freeman and Luis Avalos, played a variety of odd villains and supporting characters, as well as narrating the action, since the hero remained silent. Running about a dozen skits each season for three years, a typical encounter had Spidey battling the Birthday Bandit, a villain who talks in a rhyming, sing-song voice (the narrator calls him “that foe of fun and festivity”) in a playfully colored suit adorned with a cummerbund and top hat who steals from children’s birthday parties. After a cake-smashing episode and some fisticuffs that gets cake smeared on Spider-Man’s costume, the hero fights off the villain, eventually snaring the bandit in a web, and thus saving the day. In keeping with the Lee playfulness, the final panel is a drawing of Spidey at a laundromat covered with a blanket while sitting in a chair, waiting for his costume to wash. The skit theme song ends with a brassy horn section. The singer wails: “Nobody knows who you are.”
As 1979 drew to a close, Marvel’s internal woes were played out in the pages of the New York Times. Drawing on anonymous interviews and extensive insider perspectives, writer N. R. Kleinfield presented the comic book division as a dys-functional outfit that pitted editors against writers and artists against management. The days of Lee’s Merry Marvel Bullpen and the singsong nicknames seemed like a distant past.
The reporter placed much of the blame at the doorstep of Jim Shooter, labeling him “power-thirsty.” Shooter, who began his comic book career at the precocious age of thirteen, writing for DC, was either loved or hated by the Marvel staff. Some accused the imposing six-foot, eight-inch writer/editor of having an ego even larger than he was. A group of Marvel staffers harbored jealousies because he took the reins as a twenty-something when they believed an insider with more seniority should inherit the role.
Other unnamed company executives were considered, who were “more interested in coining money from licensing deals than they are in the superheroes.”37 Roy Thomas sided with the creative teams, calling Marvel both “callous” and “inhuman.”38 The article revealed the deep mistrust between the comic book editorial side of the operations and the rest of the company, many of whom simply wanted to exploit the characters for licensing and all the product marketing they could muster. While creative teams wanted to focus on craft, the corporate heads demanded profits. The age-old battle between inspiration and capitalism waged on at Marvel.
All of Lee’s stored-up goodwill with the public and the other artists and writers kept him out of the direct firing line. In the article, Kleinfield called Lee a “creative genius” made famous by “inventing heroes” that had realistic life challenges. But, an anonymous writer pointed out some sour grapes at Marvel HQ directed at the old boss, chiding Lee because he “wants to be like Walt Disney” and views comic books as “sort of beneath him.”39
Even as revered as he remained, Lee could not deflect all the heat stirred up in the late 1970s, as the comic book industry felt the squeeze from television and a smaller target demographic. Baby boomers had carried the industry in the early and mid-1960s, but were aging out of their fascination with the medium. In addition, many longtime fans thought that the comics simply weren’t as good.
In response, the industry’s two heavy-hitters—DC Comics and Marvel—both cut back on monthly titles (Marvel from more than forty down to thirty-two). Each brought in more money via licensing deals than in the comics that its heroes appeared in. Lee told the Times that he felt the new in-house licensing division might have ruffled feathers, since some artists and writers had to turn their attention to that part of the business. “It used to be that the only artists in the place were drawing the strips,” he explained. “Now we have artists who have to draw box tops.”40 The nightmare scenario for comic book purists had come true—the Spider-Man lunchboxes and bath towels were now more important to the corporation that owned Marvel than the comic books that ran the superhero stories.
Both DC and Marvel faced declining circulation across the decade, so each determined that quantity would make up for the losses. Overall sales grew, but the standing of the entire industry seemed less stable. Prior to the cutbacks, the two market leaders published dozens of new titles in a vain attempt at profitability. In 1979, Marvel’s operating income was a measly $1.5 million after sales that exceeded $23 million.41 In this kind of tight financial pinch, Lee’s Hollywood deal making held endless potential if the company could deliver a hit or build up its licensing business. The traditional notion that comic books drove licensing deals was flipped on its head. Clearly, the big two of Marvel and DC were licensing agencies first, because that drove profits.
Depending on one’s perspective, the end of the 1970s could have been a total downer or the beginning of something big for Lee. The era contained elements of both sentiments for him. On one hand, as Marvel publisher, he earned over $150,000 a year and had steady added income from college lectures and working on television projects (he was paid separately for this work). Fans mobbed him at comic book conventions and college students cheered thunderously when he appeared on campus. They packed tightly around him, just to inch a little closer to the man who created their heroes and essentially provided a central narrative of their young lives.
Even with so many avenues going in his direction, however, Lee chafed at the thought that he couldn’t get out of comic books. He really wanted to make it in Hollywood. Although the superhero craze had lasted more than a decade and Lee delighted in the characters he cocreated, he fully expected the genre to fade into oblivion. Increasingly, he faced more than a little regret when he spoke about his career, explaining to a reporter: “I would have liked to make movies, to be a director or a screenwriter, to have a job like Norm Lear or Freddie Silverman. I’d like to be doing what I’m doing here, but in a bigger arena.”42 Although a celebrity in his own right and a downright hero to fans globally, Lee couldn’t shake the notion that he could be doing more.
As Lee searched for additional outlets for his superheroes, the effort increasingly brought him to Hollywood, the great American dream factory. As he envisioned the next phase of his career, he looked West to California’s golden shores.