In the ’60s, the ideas for the new characters originated with me because that was my responsibility.… I dreamed up the Fantastic Four, and I wrote a brief outline. I gave that to Jack Kirby, who did a wonderful job on it.
—Stan Lee videotaped deposition on May 13, 2010, for Marvel Worldwide Inc., v. Kirby et al.
I came up with The Fantastic Four. I came up with Thor. Whatever it took to sell a book, I came up with. Stan Lee has never been editorial minded. It wasn’t possible for a man like Stan Lee to come up with new things—or old things for that matter.
—Jack Kirby The Comics Journal #134, February 1990
According to Lee’s many-times-told story, in early 1961, he had been about to quit his job when he was called into publisher Martin Goodman’s office. According to a 1998 conversation Roy Thomas had with him, Lee was about to resign literally the day that Goodman told him they should do superheroes, piquing Lee’s interest enough for him to postpone quitting.1 Goodman had found out that superhero-team comic Justice League of America was a hit for DC Comics. Debunked legend has Martin finding it out from a bragging DC executive during a golf game. However he found out, a publisher as obsessed with circulation as Goodman would have made it his business to know, one way or another, what and how his competition was doing.
With the slow but steady superhero revival with the newly reimagined Flash and Green Lantern, as well as Justice League (as well as continued publication of the never-canceled titles featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman), Goodman knew that there was a trend in the marketplace for such characters, and especially for superhero teams. True, Timely’s experiment with new superhero Dr. Droom earlier that year seemed to be going nowhere. But maybe a team book would do better.
And so, he directed Lee to produce a superhero team book, no doubt assuming Stan would dredge up Timely’s old heroes, maybe add one or two new ones, and rush out a team comic something like his All Winners comics of the 1940s. Kids were kids. If they liked superhero teams, give them a superhero team.
Lee, however, didn’t want to just revive the old Timely heroes, at the very least because the last time they tried that, in 1954, the books had tanked. Telling Joan about his newest assignment, Lee recalled how she told him (as she seems to have told him numerous times in an ongoing conversation) that he might as well try to do something different—quit complaining about being forced to churn out formulaic pap—and see what would develop. The worst that could happen is that Martin would fire him (unlikely, since Lee was a relative and the new book would just be one of a number of titles), and he’d been claiming to want to quit, anyway. Lee has said that he came up with the characters, wrote a story outline, and gave it to his “most talented and dependable artist,” Jack Kirby.2
In various versions of Lee’s telling of this story, sometimes Martin is excited and enthusiastic about reviving superheroes; other times, he’s detached and neutral, just making another in a long series of business decisions. In some, Martin calls Lee into his office; in others, Martin comes to Lee’s office. While the differences are subtle, they seemed to reflect Lee’s feelings about Martin and about comics in general when the various versions were told. Interestingly, though, in all the versions, Martin is the active participant, giving Lee the order to revive superheroes. Significant variations regard whether Lee was literally about to quit that same day or whether he was just going about his regular work duties, with no specific plan for leaving the company. For instance, as Lee said in 2010:
Martin Goodman asked me to create a group of heroes because he found out that National Comics had a group that was selling well. So I went home, and I thought about it, and I wanted to make these different than the average comic book heroes. I didn’t want them to have a double—a secret—identity.
And I wanted to make it as realistic as possible. Instead of them living in Gotham City or Metropolis, I felt I will have them live in New York City.…
I wanted everything real, and I wanted their relationship to be real. Instead of a girl who didn’t know that the hero was really a superhero, not only did she know who he was, but they were engaged to be married, and she also had a superpower.
So, you know, things like that. And I thought I would try that. So I wrote up a very brief synopsis about that, and naturally I called Jack, because he was our best artist, and I asked him if he would do it. He seemed to like the idea.
He took the synopsis, and he drew the story and put in his own touches, which were brilliant.3
On being shown a copy of the original synopsis, Lee commented:
We discussed it, and we embellished it, and we made little changes. But this was the beginning of it.4
As Lee recalled, either before or after—or perhaps both before and after—writing up the story synopsis, he discussed the characters with Kirby. Kirby drew the first issue, which was then scripted by Lee and inked by, probably, George Klein, who was a regular DC and sometime Timely inker. And the rest, as they say, was history. Or a version of history.
Kirby’s version of the team’s creation was significantly different (as well as inconsistent across various tellings). The two men’s opposing visions and versions are, of course, the source of much conflict to this very day.
In a nutshell, Kirby is on record as saying, at various times, that he brought the new team and the first issue full-blown to Lee, who, desperate to keep his job, was thrilled to be able to publish it. Kirby has said that he’d been urging Goodman to start publishing superheroes again, realizing that they were having a resurgence in popularity. “I had a lot of faith in the superhero character, that [superheroes] could be brought back very, very vigorously,” Kirby told comics pioneer Will Eisner. “I had to fight for the superheroes.… I had to regenerate the entire [Timely] line. I felt there was nobody there who was qualified to do it. Stan Lee was my vehicle to do it. He was my bridge to Martin.
“Stan Lee was not writing,” he told Eisner. “I was doing the writing.”5
Whoever came up with them, the team consisted of Reed Richards (“Mr. Fantastic,” who had super-stretching powers); Ben Grimm (the superhumanly strong “Thing”); Susan Storm (the “Invisible Girl” who, well, could turn invisible at will); and Johnny Storm (the “Human Torch” who had control over fire). These were the four characters who formed the core of what would become known as the Marvel Universe, the future icons who debuted in Fantastic Four #1.
Before he’d burned his bridges at DC and returned to Timely, Kirby had drawn and been involved with creating and writing for that company, the Challengers of the Unknown series, which featured a quartet of adventurers who, like the FF, were formed after a fateful aircraft crash-landing. Some have pointed to the similarity in origins as proof that Kirby’s version of the creation of the FF is closer to the truth.
And yet … while Fantastic Four does indeed bear some resemblance to Kirby’s Challengers (cocreated by Kirby with Joe Simon), it also resembles other teams, in and out of comics, including the Justice League and Timely’s own All-Winners Squad. The Human Torch (albeit another version) had been a Timely character. Mr. Fantastic was similar to classic superheroes Plastic Man and the Elongated Man, who were both reminiscent of sideshow “rubber men.” The Invisible Girl was one of many invisible characters in fiction. The Thing was, on the surface, not unlike the monsters that Lee and Kirby had been churning out for several years. The space race story elements were torn from the headlines of the day. (And there is even a theory that the second part of the first issue—the battle with the Mole Man—was a reworked Timely/Atlas monster story that was in the drawer, although Lee has denied that.)
Strangely, as if to show that the comic was not foremost in either man’s agenda, the art in Fantastic Four #1 is arguably weaker than work Kirby was doing that same month in Rawhide Kid and on the story of the monster called Orrgo in Strange Tales. And yet editor / writer / art director Lee—not to mention Goodman himself—let FF go to the printers. It almost seems as if this comic was executed as what the cocreators likely saw it as: an extra assignment given to them by a publisher who had nothing better to do than hand down an edict based on an informed hunch, while they were busting their humps to put out the already-existing titles. It’s as if Lee and Kirby were saying: Here’s your superhero team comic, Martin—in case you didn’t notice, we don’t own Superman or Batman. But you’re the boss, so here’s your superhero team book—from a company that hasn’t produced a viable superhero for years. You can put them in the hall of fame next to Dr. Droom.
And so, here, with the start of Fantastic Four, is the beginning of the most historically significant part of Lee’s and Marvel’s stories—and it is also the part most shrouded in ambiguity. This is the period that everyone would love to have a detailed chronology of, an unambiguous ringside seat to what “really happened.” Because, while lightning would be caught by the Lee and Kirby team in multiple bottles multiple times, this was the first time they had captured it—even though they had worked together on numerous stories before.
Over the course of two years, the major heroes of the Marvel Universe were created or, in some cases, reinvented. The questions that beg to be answered are: How did it happen? How did this small team of solid, dependable professionals, with Lee and Kirby and Ditko at its core, whose members had been plugging away at comics for anywhere from seven years to more than two decades, suddenly come up with a pantheon of pop-culture icons who, today, nearly six decades since their creation, are generating more interest and income than anyone would ever have dreamed? Show us the magic, describe who did what, dissect each and every word and image in each story, so we can see exactly who created which parts of Marvel’s pantheon—and, while you’re at it, acknowledge and reward each of them fairly and appropriately.
Of course, there are no clear answers to those questions. Comics writers and artists, even if they discuss their collaborations in advance, work largely in isolation, at desks and typewriters (later, computers) and drawing boards. Much of their work is done in their heads, in their supposed “off hours,” and is then brought to life on paper. Or it is spontaneously generated with little or no conscious forethought. Rarely is the creative process documented. Why would it be?
The resulting comics can be scrutinized and analyzed, even the remaining evidence of typed and drawn material can be looked at and dissected, but in the end, it remains a mystery, despite the number—and passion—of people convinced they know the definitive answers.
As Kirby biographer Mark Evanier has written:
Among those who worked around them at the time, there was a unanimous view: that Fantastic Four was created by Stan and Jack. No further division of credit seemed appropriate. Not on that, not on all the wonderment yet to come.6
And as Raphael and Spurgeon wrote:
When … the new Marvel comics became successful, who created which character, to what extent, and when became important questions, both legally and ethically. But … as the new formula books spilled out of Marvel’s offices … the way to ensure the best possible new superhero line, created on the run, was for everyone involved to contribute whatever ideas they had when they had them.7
When Fantastic Four debuted, it seemed indeed a half-hearted follow-up to the ambivalently presented first “modern” Timely/Atlas superhero, Dr. Droom. Who knows? Perhaps Goodman had suggested superheroes in that case, too, and Droom was a passive-aggressive attempt to just do one and be done with this whim of Martin’s so that they could get on with the work they had already committed to getting done.
Indeed, the same month that FF made its debut, the company also released five fantasy comics, two Westerns, three romance titles, and one humor comic. (This was a total of twelve comics, demonstrating that the eight-titles-a-month restriction originally imposed by distributor Independent News was being relaxed.) Looking closely, it does seem that most of the other titles the company put out that month were crafted with more effort and enthusiasm than Fantastic Four. But clearly, there was a buried spark of some kind in the team’s debut.
The relatively lackluster feel of the premiere FF issue, as well as its potential, were noticed by at least one fan, one who had an informed sense of the history of the medium and of the company. Writing in the ComiCollector fanzine, twenty-four-year-old Missouri high school English teacher Roy Thomas wrote:
Despite its faults—and this first issue has some glaring ones—THE FANTASTIC FOUR holds promise of becoming one of the better comics now on the stands, in this reviewer’s opinion.8
Thomas heaped praise on the Thing, calling him “a frightening champion of justice,” continuing, “Something is needed in a period of all-too-handsome supermen to remind us that goodness of heart and an attractive physical appearance are not necessarily synonymous.”
Indeed, Thomas (who would, of course, go on to write and edit for Marvel for many years) sensed here perhaps the most innovative and passionate element in the debut FF issue: the Thing. While Reed Richards—physically resembling Hugh Beaumont’s Ward Cleaver from the 1950s Leave It to Beaver TV series—spoke like a scientist from a ’50s science-fiction movie, and Johnny and Sue Storm adhered to fairly stereotypical comic book speech patterns, Ben Grimm’s Thing character actually evolved in the course of the story, almost as if Lee were developing Grimm’s personality as the story progressed. Early on in the issue, the Thing spoke in a formal manner, declaring, after a panicked cop’s failed shot at him: “His first shot missed … but he’ll not get another chance.”
But by the team’s origin’s end, on here (of the 25 that the story will occupy), Ben declares, in a much more colloquial manner: “I ain’t Ben anymore—I’m what Susan called me—THE THING.” Later in the story, when the team is in action against the issue’s villain—the Mole Man—the Thing defeats a monstrous stone warrior. Seeing this, Sue declares, “You’ve done it, Ben! You’ve beaten him!” To this, Ben replies, “What did you expect? I’m the Thing, ain’t I?”
So, in the space of one issue, the Thing/Grimm character has quickly evolved from someone who speaks in a formal, somber manner, into a character who utilizes the William Bendix / Broderick Crawford way of speaking that has come to be associated with him. A close view of the word balloon with the sentence “I’m the Thing, ain’t I?” shows an extra space between ain’t and I. One can speculate that Lee might have originally written aren’t I?, or even, am I not?, then realized that the character’s persona as it was developing demanded that he speak more informally.
Kirby, too, lavished what seemed to be more attention—as did inker George Klein—on the Thing than on the other characters in the book. Drawn with more power, personality, and mood than others in the issue, it’s clear that Kirby, as much as Lee, somehow seemed to identify with and personalize his handling of the character, even in this earliest appearance. In later years, Kirby would come to increasingly identify with the Thing, to the point where Jack would make himself the character’s alter ego in a 1978 story (in which Kirby also presented Lee in the Mr. Fantastic team leader role).
A bit later in his ComiCollector review, Thomas opined: “With a little added imagination in both stories and artwork—plus, perhaps the addition of a fifth character, such as the Sub-Mariner … I think this comic could be worthy of a large circulation.”9
Of course, the series—starting with issue #2 and certainly by #3—did indeed come to incorporate that “added imagination.” It also came to understand what it actually was and what it could be. But in issue #1, what was there was largely potential. As if in rebellion against the tightly plotted stories being done by DC Comics at the time, Fantastic Four #1 is a chaotic mess. Assuming that Lee’s plot outline (one of the few that exists for the Lee-Kirby team’s working history) for a thirteen-page origin was the template Kirby used to draw the artwork, the story is nonetheless all over the map. (The synopsis can be found in numerous places, including Fantastic Four #358.) Lee’s opening instructions in the outline/synopsis were:
Story might open with a meeting of Fantastic Four. As meeting starts, caption tells reader that we go back a few weeks to see how it all began …
From there, the synopsis goes into a flashback of the team’s origin. But as drawn by Kirby in the published story, the first eight pages take place in the present. Reed Richards shoots off a flare signal, summoning the rest of the team to their headquarters (in Central City in an unnamed building). Without any mention in Lee’s synopsis, we now get an introductory scene for each of the three other members of the team.
We see Susan Storm bolting from a society tea, startling bystanders knocked over by this invisible being. We see the Thing—disguised in overcoat, hat, and shades—as he tries to buy some clothes for his massive frame, who then smashes his way through streets and sewers as he heads for the meeting. Finally, we see Johnny Storm, working on a hot rod in a local garage, burst into flame and zoom through the sky toward the source of the signal, chased by air force planes whose pilots don’t know who or what he is—in a route that, according to the narrative captions, takes him “less than an hour” for some reason. The planes fire nuclear missiles at him, from which, at the last minute, he is saved by a stretching Mr. Fantastic.
The exciting, albeit illogical, character introductions take seven pages. Finally, on here, we at last go into the flashback Lee had asked for and learn the origin of the team, of their ill-fated spaceflight “to the stars” to beat the “commies” to it. Bombarded by cosmic rays—as more than one wonk has noted, genius Reed “forgot” to adequately shield the spacecraft—they are transformed into the Fantastic Four and vow to use their powers to help mankind. The vow takes place on here.
On here, back in the present, Reed tells them about the mysterious disappearance of atomic plants all over the world, and then we cut away, on here, to “French Africa,” where another such plant is sucked into a hole in the earth, from which then emerges a monster—the giant green one seen on the issue’s cover—that terrorizes a group of soldiers. Then, commanded by its master—the Mole Man (or Moleman as he’s called in this, his first appearance)—the monster returns to “the Earth’s core.”
The story then cuts back to FF headquarters, where the team learns of this latest A-plant theft. Reed improbably figures out that the source of all the trouble is on Monster Isle. The team then flies in its private jet to the island, its name no doubt a deterrent to curious tourists, where they battle a pair of—what else?—monsters. Johnny and Reed are captured by the Mole Man. Mole Man then flashes back to his own origin—and his discovery of the island and its eponymous inhabitants.
In a climactic final scene that takes two pages, consisting of fifteen very cramped panels, the team escapes the monsters. The Torch then uses his flame to “cause a rockslide, sealing us off from those creatures,” although the art sure makes it look like he’s roasting them alive underground. Told that Reed let the Mole Man go—“I left him behind—he’ll never trouble anyone again!” says Reed—the team flies off, looking to the future in one of the least exciting panels ever drawn by Jack Kirby.
To say the issue was feeling its way is an understatement. The story is choppy, internally inconsistent, lackadaisically drawn, and indifferently plotted, whether by Lee or Kirby or a combination of the two. The other stories the team did that were on sale that same month, such as those in Rawhide Kid and Strange Tales, were, as far as craft and readability, far superior, far more polished. As reader Bill Sarill wrote of the story in a letter published in issue #3’s letter column:
Just finished reading Fantastic Four [#1] and must admit to being disappointed. I expect better things from the team of Lee-Kirby. Jack is capable of better art work [sic].… The story also suffers from “Creeping Monsterism” to paraphrase Jean Shepard [sic], that has dominated most, if not all, of your comics for some time.
Sarill was obviously a serious fan, as opposed to a casual reader, as evidenced by his knowledge of Lee and Kirby’s names and careers. That the title’s premier letter column would print a negative letter like his was fairly remarkable. Though Lee would often say that he knew FF was a hit because of the sudden deluge of mail, the fact is that the first few letter columns contained numerous letters from staff members and comics freelancers, including Sol Brodsky, Stan Goldberg, and Jim Mooney, whose knowing winks accompanying their missives would have been apparent to the few aware of who they were. Other letters were from serious capital-F Fans, such as Thomas himself and Ronn Foss. Yet here, interestingly, with Sarill’s letter, Lee allowed use of the precious letter page real estate (essentially, a promotional page in disguise) to print a note that doesn’t merely point out a misspelling or coloring error but that takes him and Kirby to task for not doing their best work.
Equally as interesting, Lee’s response was not to defend himself and Kirby, but to literally say, “See how fair we are? We print the knocks as well as the boosts.”
Of course, printing Sarill’s letter also enabled Stan to get hip writer and radio personality Jean Shepherd’s name into a superhero comic, a subliminal way to tell readers that this comic—this company—this editor—was something different from what they had encountered before. Dropping the name of a campus icon like Shepherd in a response to a brutally critical letter was an indication that, while it might not be The Paris Review, there was something going on in these comics worth sticking around for, no matter what Bill Sarill thought. (Shepherd, incidentally, popularized the catchphrase “Excelsior!” before Lee took it up as his own.)
As was true even in some of Lee and Kirby’s later, more polished work, significant scenes of action in Fantastic Four #1 are not shown, but are, bewilderingly, described in captions, indicating that Lee was determined to tell a story that was different in some ways from the one Kirby had drawn. Kirby, pacing the story at his own discretion—which much more often than not would yield works of astonishing power and expressivity—had left a lot of story for the last couple of pages, which are composed of numerous small panels, where a reader might reasonably expect to have been given more pages with larger panels to show the explosive action going on.
While it’s unlikely children of 1961 were reading the story so closely that they’d consciously notice this, in retrospect, the issue reads like the comics equivalent of two captains fighting for control of a ship’s wheel. Lee and Kirby’s struggle for story control would continue throughout the next ten years but, almost miraculously, would lead to comics that were usually all the better for the conflict.
Still, as Thomas—and others—sensed, despite the chaotic and almost tossed-off nature of the story—maybe even because of it—there was a sense that there was something going on here. As Raphael and Spurgeon noted:
Twenty years of benign neglect and creative contempt for the superhero now worked in Kirby and Lee’s favor. Even their smallest changes seemed radical and daring.10
What came through was both Lee’s and Kirby’s instincts to go with their gut, to care less about the logic and consistency of the stories and more about the emotional impact of what they were writing and drawing. For Kirby, the dominant imperative would be to portray, through his art, his characters’ raw feelings and the steamroller intensity of the narrative. For Lee, how his characters said what they said—how poignantly they expressed their thoughts, feelings, and personalities—was as or more important than the stories themselves—and was what ultimately made the stories work. Academics might call this a dialectic, an ongoing arm-wrestling match for dominance between the two creators. Comics readers of the era, including many college students, called it cool.
With all his interest and enthusiasm, Thomas was a relatively rare kind of reader. He and ComiCollector editor Jerry Bails, as well as other adult aficionados of comics, some of whom wrote and read fanzines, were hardly numerous enough to create and sustain an interest in a particular comic book or publishing company. These were dedicated hobbyists, equally, if not more, interested in revisiting the comics-reading joys of their childhoods with adult eyes than with seeing what new superhero fare was being published. Their attention, understandably, was largely with the more numerous and established DC heroes—and DC editor Julius Schwartz did give the capital-F Fans attention and inside information, as did Lee. But at this point in history, such mavens didn’t have the ability to move the needle in sales. What they did have was the ability to influence the editors of the comics as far as content—as seen by Thomas’s suggestion of returning Golden Age Timely antihero the Sub-Mariner to the comics pages—though they would not have had any influence with the average comic book reader to sway them into trying Fantastic Four.
But as Goodman had realized, if DC’s Justice League was popular, then maybe a kid, seeing Fantastic Four on a newsstand, would be willing to gamble a dime on a new team of superheroes. At the same time, the cover copy implied that these new characters might actually be familiar heroes, declaring that they were “together for the first time in one mighty magazine.” And besides superhero-lovers, maybe the audience that liked Timely’s other comics—especially the fantasy, sci-fi, and monster titles—would likewise be willing to invest one-tenth of a dollar on something new like FF to while away the August days as the end of summer vacation neared.
Fantastic Four #1 went on sale, depending on region, on or around August 8, 1961. The Cold War and the space race were in full swing. Russian Yuri Gagarin had been the first man shot into space on April 17. Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, followed on July 21 by Gus Grissom. Less than a week after FF #1 went on sale, ongoing tensions between the Soviets and the West would be embodied in the commencement of the construction of the Berlin Wall in the eastern, Soviet-controlled, half of that city. Aware of the headlines as well as the zeitgeist, a kid perusing the contents of FF at a candy store might well be tempted to actually buy the comic, featuring Americans bravely rocketing into outer space.
But after getting kids to try a new comic, getting them to come back for the next issue and to tell their friends about the new publication were the other important steps to creating a hit. If other kids could be induced, by word of mouth, to add one more title to what they would pick up—that was what a publisher needed. Hey, it’s only a dime. One less Hershey bar that week? One less Spaldeen? Sure, why not?
Indeed, what Thomas and other older fans saw in the comic must have also been apparent to a significant number of less rabid comic book readers. In a letter dated August 29, 1961, Lee wrote to Bails, “Judging by early sales reports, I think we have a winner on our hands!”
He went on to write:
As for the future of the F.F., we WILL have:
COSTUMES
A DIFFERENT TREATMENT (art-wise) OF THE TORCH
ADDITIONAL NEW CHARACTERS IN MONTHS TO COME
(Don’t be too surprised to meet Sub-Mariner again, or Captain America … so stay with us, pal!)
Lee concluded by saying that
we have purposely refrained from … giving TOO MUCH [sic]super powers to our characters, as we feel that effects like those are chiefly of appeal to the YOUNGER readers, and we are trying (perhaps vainly?) to reach a slightly older, more sophisticated group.11
Lee and Bails also corresponded about Amazing Adult Fantasy #7—the retitled and reimagined Amazing Adventures—which came out the same month Fantastic Four debuted. Each issue of AAF would contain multiple short, surprise-ending fantasy stories written by Lee and drawn by Ditko. The stories weren’t much different from the other fantasy and science-fiction shorts that were appearing in numerous comics in the line, but having Ditko’s distinctive art style in every story in the magazine gave AAF a unique look and feel. Marketing the package as somehow being for more intelligent readers—and the use of the word “adult” when it meant mature, not pornographic—was an important step in developing a sense in the readership of being special. That sense of being exceptional simply because you were reading the comic, as well as of being in on something important, would become key elements in Lee’s approach to creating and promoting the entire Marvel brand.
Bails wrote to Lee that AAF “is excellent, and will probably sell well.” He also noted that “fans are complaining that they can’t find your mags at local stands.” How many fans? Well, later in the same letter, he says that there are “some 500 active fans,” which most likely means that there were around 500 people who subscribed to his ComiCollector and/or Alter Ego magazines. He added that, referring to the changes Lee promised: “Most of my correspondents clamored for these changes even before seeing Roy’s review.”
So somewhere between Lee’s desire to do a comic “the way he wanted,” as well as his awareness of the possibility of a larger, more sophisticated audience, he somehow intuited that success would be dependent not just on children, and not just on nostalgic, longtime comic book fans, but on a somewhat older, casual reader (or an intelligent younger one) looking for something with more heft than what they’d been reading. Fantastic Four and Amazing Adult Fantasy were the beginnings of his explorations of the possibilities and potential that might be out there somewhere.
Whether he knew it or not, Stan Lee was developing a publishing strategy that was also a personal strategy, a way to at least survive in a marginal company in a marginal industry. Here he was, age thirty-eight, enmeshed in a classic midlife crisis. He wanted more of a challenge and also needed to broaden his résumé in case he felt it necessary to leave or was somehow forced to. His self-publishing and syndicated ventures were successful to a point, but not to the point where he could leave his staff position. But even if he didn’t end up leaving Timely, he needed to enhance his position there. Goodman would give him occasional editing and writing work for the non-comics magazines, but not enough that Stan could switch entirely to that side of the company. And the comics, though stable for now, very recently were not. How long would they continue to be?
Lee had become accustomed to the middle-class, suburban lifestyle that his day job and freelance work afforded him and his family. He wanted out of comics, but he needed to stay put. To be able to do both—to have his cake and eat it, too—would indeed be an “Amazing Adult Fantasy.” As he told historian David Hajdu, of his situation pre–Fantastic Four:
I hated it [working in comics in that era]. I always felt I was going to quit. “I’ll stay here another few months, or I’ll stay another year, get some money together, and then I’ll quit.” But I never got enough money together, and every time I thought of quitting, I’d get a raise, or we’d add a few new books, and they’d get a little bit interesting. And I did enjoy working with the artists. I made a lot of friends.
So I always, in the back of my mind, [thought] “Well, maybe I’ll quit next year,” because I never felt that it was the kind of work for an adult, for a guy who wanted to get somewhere. I was writing these stories—Martin Goodman always felt they were either for young kids or moronic older people.12
So with Fantastic Four and Amazing Adult Fantasy, Lee was beginning a transformation while staying in place. He would, as always, give his boss what he wanted—in this case, a share of the current superhero fad in the comics market—but he would also cultivate an older, more sophisticated audience. He would make comics for people who were culturally aware enough to know who Jean Shepherd was. He would somehow try to make his comics not just kids’ adventures but would also, somehow, engage the magazines in the cultural conversation of the day.
Maybe he wasn’t one of the Ivy League elite that Goodman employed to work on his schlocky magazines. Maybe he hadn’t gone beyond DeWitt Clinton High School. But why couldn’t he, like his high school classmate Paddy Chayefsky, aspire to bigger and better things? Maybe if he associated himself with more sophisticated work, someone at a “real” publishing house would take a chance on him. And if that strategy didn’t work, what did it matter, really? He had nothing to lose.
It wasn’t a plan, exactly—for his career or for his comics line—but it was the beginning of something. Maybe it could lead somewhere.