65 Years of “Stan the Man”: Stan Lee Meets The Amazing Spider-Man

It’s been 65 years since Stan Lee first went to work for Marvel Comics. It seems amazing that he spent his first couple of decades there as an essentially anonymous hack, churning out the formula romances, Westerns, and monster stories the company wanted. The story of his eventual breakout, how he was instrumental in jump-starting the 60’s comics explosion and helped to create the Marvel Comics we know today, is fairly well known; what’ s interesting, in the context of this anniversary, is how quickly it was all over. The first issue of the Fantastic Four came out in 1961, and by decade’s end Lee had pretty much retired from the actual writing and editing of comics. He’s never completely left comics (or the Marvel superheroes he helped to create) behind, though, and this book is the first of several novelty issues that will have Lee interact with some of his most famous characters (and the series will mark the most writing Lee’s done for the company since his initial retirement). I’ll let others worry about the continuity issues.

The first offering in this volume is the ten-page title story, and if Stan actually did write it, then I’m frankly impressed. Having slogged through a few of his recent “Just Imagine” titles for DC, I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him to turn out something this dry and pithy. Spider-Man, in vintage 70’s lament mode, drops in on Stan, moping about the difficulties of being Spider-Man. Stan, in the process of baking cookies, offers sly (and cynical) counsel, restoring his famous creation’s sense of responsibility (though, interestingly, Stan avoids the famous “power and responsibility” line). It’s really just a slight shaggy dog of a story, but it’s nice to see that Lee seems to know not to overstay his welcome. Artist Olivier Coipel delivers a clean, elegant Romita-like Spidey.

Joss Whedon’s story is a bit more oblique-it’s set in an interdimensional comic book convention, where different universes’s versions of the same comic fan discuss the effect-or lack of it-that Lee has had on comics in their universe. For Whedon, it’s pretty low-key, but effective, with some good laughs. And we don’t see enough artwork from Michael Gaydos, anyway, so he’s most welcome here.

For me, the heart of the book is the final new story: Fred Hembeck’s very funny two-page cartoon strip, in which some beloved Z-list characters have a spirited discussion about Lee. It’s funny stuff, but when they’re joined by Hembeck himself, he provides an encomium to Lee that would never have occurred to me, but which is amazingly apt for those of us who grew up reading the guy: it wasn’t Lee’s writing that the young Fred responded to so much as his crazy, larger-than-life persona. As Hembeck says, even though none of us actually “knew” Stan Lee, he was probably the coolest adult any of us had regular contact with-he was a grownup who loved comics just like we did. In a less-connected (and less cynical) world, that was no small thing.

I can’t see any obvious reason why they chose Amazing Spider-Man #87 as the reprint that fills out the book (Spidey thinks his powers might be killing him, and accidentally reveals his secret identity); there’s fewer Spidey witticisms than usual, and not much action. On the other hand, it features classic John Romita Sr. art, including his va-va-voom versions of Mary Jane and Gwen, as well as one hilariously “hip” party scene. The glossy pages make the coloring look more garish than the newsprint on which it originally appeared, but it’s not too distracting.

I’m getting a little tired of railing on Marvel about their pricing (and you might well be tired of reading me do it), so I’ll just say that your four bucks gets you 22 pages of enjoyable new material, and the aforementioned reprint. And it’s not like there’s going to be too many other comic pros celebrating their 65th anniversary any time soon.