POW! Entertainment Inc. (fka POWN)

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EXCLUSIVE: Stan Lee's New York, The 'Purveyor of Wonder' recalls Marvel's early days

http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/11/20/stan-lees-new-york-the-purveyor-of-wonder-recalls.html

Stan Lee's creations continue to generate billions of smiles, and these days, billions of dollars. So it's safe to say that the current crop of proud and boastful business leaders could learn a thing or two from a man whose contributions to a nascent industry helped transform it into a pop culture phenomenon.

Talk about "disruptive innovation," Lee co-created some characters you may have heard of: Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and the X-Men. The upstarts of Silicon Alley could also take a cue from Lee's humble nature. Behind his bravado, the New York Business Journal discovered that the Mark Twain of comics doesn't particularly enjoy blowing his own horn. Instead, the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics talks up his old pals in the industry, their Manhattan stomping grounds, where their favorite haunts were and how their off-beat ideas paid off — an unknowingly change publishing forever.

Marvel, which was first headquartered in the McGraw-Hill Building — where it originated as Timely Comics in 1939 — has bounced around New York City over the years between the Empire State Building and various Midtown locales. Today it remains based in Times Square on West 50th Street. Lee, a nonagenarian who turns 93 next month, currently works in sunny Santa Monica, California and is still innovating at the helm of his own company POW! Entertainment. Among the new projects he has lined up include a U.K. drama series, a recently published biography (in graphic novel form of course), a feature film and a live action musical — as if being the grand ambassador of America's art form wasn't enough.

The following Q&A includes his thoughts on life in New York, his cameos (or lack thereof) in the Marvel-inspired shows being filmed here, and what his favorite big screen moment was.

Do you think being based in New York was crucial to Marvel's success?

To me it was. I was able to make all of our characters live in New York. (The Fantastic Four from Manhattan, Spider-Man from Queens, Captain America from Brooklyn, Daredevil from Hell's Kitchen, and the X-Men in Westchester County.) That way everything we wrote seemed more authentic. For example, if the characters were going to a movie, they’d go to Radio City Music Hall. The mere fact that they lived in New York gave everything a realistic feeling, not like Central City, or any city where Batman lives — those made up cities. We were emanating real places. The Fantastic Four had their headquarters, the Baxter Building, on the East Side around 42 street.

Did the Manhattan setting of these comics affect the tone that your work took?

It was inspired by Manhattan. I know Manhattan, and in those days it was the whole world. And the characters, you have to empathize with them. I always tried to give them personal lives with some complexity that affected the work they did as superheroes. Spider-Man, for example, dealt with guilt over his uncle’s death — a feeling he wouldn’t have had if he had been more on the ball.

At the time, did you, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby and the other Timely artists and writers have favorite places or haunts in the city?

I only worked with Simon and Kirby when they were a team. It was for a short time, then they left a few months later. We didn't fraternize. I was the guy who ran down and got them sandwiches, proofread, filled inkwells. We weren't really close. When I was editor, by then, I would meet people from National Comics — what DC Comics used to be called. Carmine Infantino (DC's editorial director and later publisher) and I were good friends. Everyone thought DC and Marvel were having a big feud, but we were basically good friends. Every so often at night, or on a Friday, Carmine and I would head to The Friar Tuck and bring along writers and artists. There was also Longchamps, and Prexy's hamburgers.

What were some of your more outlandish, or off-beat, ideas to shake up the comics industry? I recall one about a KISS comic book that would be printed with drops of blood from the band.

Nothing was as crazy as the KISS blood incident. One time I formed a club which I thought would make people interested in comics. It was the MMMS (the Merry Marvel Marching Society). Where we were marching, we didn’t know. But we were on our way! We had a lot of fun with that club. A lot of readers would write to us and, even then, I had a lousy memory. If I forget what a character’s name was, we’d get a million letters saying, “Stan, don’t you know your own character’s names?” And so we came up with the official Marvel No Prize. Anyone who found a mistake would get a “no prize.” We would mail them an envelope saying “Congrats you’re a lucky winner!” And they would open up the envelope and see that, of course, it was empty. But our readers cherished those envelopes. Grown ups saved them and, even today, come up to me at conventions and ask me to sign it for them. I enjoyed making readers laugh and thinking of anything that was different than other books.

What projects do you have on the horizon?

We have a television show that’s being produced in England called "Stan Lee’s Lucky Man." It’ll premiere in mid-January. Two movies are being developing with Chinese producers. One is "Arch Aliens" and the other is "Realm." There’s also a live action musical we’re working on that’s very high tech — with an adventurous theme of course. Lastly, Simon and Shuster just released "Amazing Fantastic Incredible," a graphic novel about the story of my life.

How did growing up in New York inspire you?

Well, the thing is, when I was a kid I read anything I could lay my hands on. I wished I could write a character like Edgar Rice Burroughs did with Tarzan, or Arthur Conan Doyal with Sherlock Holmes. I loved everything Jules Verne wrote. Highly imaginative unique things. When I got older, and got a job for a comic book company, it was a far cry from Mark Twain but little by little I was successful because I loved writing. And New York has always been, to me, an innovative place. It has such an excitement to it. Every square inch is a story. You look around and anything you see could be the basis of an adventure.

Are you appearing in any of the new Netflix shows that Marvel is filming here in New York (i.e. Jessica Jones, Luke Cage)?

In Jessica Jones, instead of giving me a cameo, there’s a photo of me on a desk in one of the shots. If you ask me, they could have done better than that. I don’t have much to do with the shows. And for the films, I mostly just get a cameo.

Which film cameo was your favorite?

Maybe the one in "The Avengers: Age of Ultron." The scene where Thor is drinking a very strong Asgardian drink and he says “It’s not for you. It’s too strong.” But he lets me drink the thing and in the next scene two guys are carrying me out and I’m muttering “Excelsior...” — dead drunk.