Stan Lee
Stan Lee (1922-2018), cocreator of the Amazing Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and the Uncanny X-Men, is one of the most successful writers and publishers of comics. During the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote superhero adventures for Marvel Comics. His storylines imbued the genre with angst and contemporary politics and focused as much on the personal lives of his characters as on heroics. His work, in collaboration with cartoonists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, remains deeply influential. His role as a spokesperson and impresario for Marvel paved the way for the superhero genre to be taken seriously by the critical establishment and for the penetration of Marvel Comics into mainstream American culture.
Stan Lee: Conversations collects interviews ranging from 1968 to 2005. Lee’s charm, good humor, and keen business sense are on display. He has spirited conversations with cartoonists Jack Kirby, Harvey Kurtzman, and Roy Thomas, talk show host Dick Cavett, and Jenette Kahn (head of DC Comics, Marvel’s rival), among others. He talks with candor about his creative process, publishing, film and television adaptations of his comic books, and the evolution of the comics industry. The volume concludes with a new interview conducted by the editor.
In 2005, Jeff McLaughlin, a philosophy professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia and editor of the book Stan Lee: Conversations, asked Lee if there was one question he would ask himself among the thousands he had received in his lifetime—one query he wished someone had thought to ask him. ‘I wouldn’t,’ Lee said, as self-deprecating as ever. ‘There’s nothing really I want anybody to know about me particularly.’ After his display of humility, he laughed.
Jeff McLaughlin is full professor of philosophy at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. He is editor of Graphic Novels as Philosophy and Comics as Philosophy, both published by University Press of Mississippi.
