Q&A with Marvel godfather Stan Lee

Spider-man and X-Men creator Stan Lee visited USC Tuesday to discuss his career and achievements. The 91-year-old sat down with Daily Trojan Lifestyle Editor Daniel Grzywacz to talk about the recent popularity of Marvel movies, Marvel’s success in comparison to DC comics’ struggles and even which of his superheroes he’d like to  be.

 

Daily Trojan: Thanks for taking the time to sit with us, Stan.

Stan Lee: It is pretty damn nice of me. (Laughter).

DT: I’ll dive right in because we don’t have much time. Marvel is at an all-time high, because of the movies, which have brought a complete influx of fans. Why do you think it’s exploding now, as opposed to before? I mean, Marvel’s been around for so long.

SL: Well, the reason now is they’re able to do the special effects in the movies that they weren’t able to do years ago. If we had done movies of Spider-man or Thor years ago, it wouldn’t have been as effective. We couldn’t have had Spider-man swinging on his web through the city and make it look as believable. Then with all the techniques we have today they can make the most fanciful super-story with giants and monsters and other dimensions look believable and credible to an audience, and that’s why. And also, Marvel has better stories than anybody else.(Laughter).

DT: Well, I can’t argue [with] that. They’ve managed to make movies, make stars out of a whole bunch of characters, including Guardians, who were completely obscure. Even many die-hard Marvel fans hadn’t heard of them a couple years ago.

SL: A lot of people hadn’t heard of them! I hadn’t heard of them! And somebody reminded me that I made up the name. I don’t remember having done that, but anyway, it did very well. Probably because of my cameo.

DT: That’s the real reason why the movies are blowing up, I’m sure. O.K., we’ve got Doctor Strange coming up, Ant-Man and you said Black Panther was in the works?

SL: I wouldn’t be surprised.

DT: Are there any other characters that you would like to see, that you would think —

SL: Oh, I would like to see all of them, but I think we’ve covered most of them already. I may have to go out and invent some new ones. (Laughter).

SL: I’d like to see the Silver Surfer come back again and I’d like to see a Fantastic Four movie where Doctor Doom is shown the right way and Galactus is done the right way. But that’ll happen.

DT: Yeah, they didn’t even actually show Galactus.

SL: No, they didn’t know how to do it. Now they can figure it out.

DT: Another thing about the Marvel movies is that we can’t have Spiderman and the X-Men and the Fantastic Four with the Avengers. Do you think that they will eventually be able to come together?

SL: Probably not. Because as long as they’re successful, the different studios that have the right to distribute them will never let that right go. Unless the studios themselves decide to join in and do a movie of both of them, but it’s a little bit unlikely. It’s a shame.

DT: It is a shame. Marvel is also diving again into TV now.

SL: Oh with, um, S.H.I.E.L.D.

DT: Yeah with S.H.I.E.L.D. and Daredevil is coming up. Will we get to see a cameo with you?

SL: Well they’d better! (Laughter) The only thing I’m annoyed about, I wish they had done Daredevil just a few years earlier so I could’ve played the role (Laughter) I think I would’ve been great as Daredevil. I mean, I can’t hear that well now. (Laughter)

DT: O.K., Another thing is that Marvel is exploding compared to the DC movie universe, which has made some hits, but for the most part hasn’t reached Marvel’s success nearly as much. And they’re doing the Batman and Superman film coming up, but do you think that they’ll be able to catch up [to Marvel]?

SL: No. I’m known for my very interesting responses. No.

DT: Why do you think they’ve fallen so far behind?

SL: ’Cause the people at Marvel are smarter. I’ll give you an example: We used to be called Atlas Publications and when I saw that the books were doing so well I said, “Let’s change our name. We need a better name.” And I’m really into advertising. When I used to read magazines like the Saturday Evening Post I’d read the ads first and then the stories, so I said, “If we get a name like Marvel we can have little sayings like ‘Make mine Marvel’ and ‘Welcome to the Marvel age of comics’ and ‘Marvel marches on.’” And I’d use those when I was writing and treated everything like a big ad campaign. Well, DC, when we changed our name to Marvel they were known as National Comics and they must’ve thought “Well, if Stan Lee changed the name we’ll change our name.” So they decided to change their name, too. And what did they come up with? We were Marvel! They came up with D.C. And you wanna know why we beat them.

DT: Ha, fair enough.

SL: And they’re friends of mine, too!

DT: I’ve got some fun questions now. If you could dress up as one of your creations for Halloween, who would you dress up as?

SL: Probably Spider-man because it’s a skintight suit and it would show off my heroic figure. (Laughter).

DT: If you could have any one of the superpowers you created, which one would it be?

SL: Oh, I think I’d want to be, not because of his superpower, but I’d wanna be Tony Stark. ’Cause he’s incredibly wealthy, indescribably handsome, the women love him and yeah, being Tony Stark wouldn’t be so bad.

DT: Who would win in a fight: Thor or Hulk?

SL: It would depend on who’s writing and who he wants to win. You see, this may come as a shock, but those are fictitious characters.

DT: Alright, what if you were writing the story?

SL: Well it would depend. If I were writing it as a Hulk story the Hulk would win. If I were writing Hulk as a guest star in the Thor series, Thor would win.