STAN LEE QUOTES

American comic book writer & creator (1922- )

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What did Doctor Doom really want? He wanted to rule the world. Now, think about this. You could walk across the street against a traffic light and get a summons for jaywalking, but you could walk up to a police officer and say "I want to rule the world," and there's nothing he can do about it, that is not a crime. Anybody can want to rule the world. So, even though he was the Fantastic Four's greatest menace, in my mind, he was never a criminal!

STAN LEE

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Well, the biggest thing I like about [Spider-Man] is that he seems to be so successful. Everybody else seems to like him. Basically the thing that always intrigued me, what I always wanted to produce was a character that the average reader could identify with. He's not the strongest man in the world. And in his normal identity as Peter Parker, he's not as handsome as Brad Pitt, he's not a great athlete. He's just a regular guy like most guys. And I think that has helped to create the popularity that he has because so many readers can just identify with him.

STAN LEE

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Well, I guess we were looking for something to hook some new readers. Also, I think boredom had a little to do with it. We had been turning out books for about twenty years. Same old type all the time ... so I figured, let's try something a little more offbeat. Let's try to ... I think the big policy was to avoid the clichés. For example in the Fantastic Four, the first cliché was: all superheroes wore costumes. We soon learned that was a mistake because, much as the readers like offbeat things, there are certain basics that we must have, and apparently superhero fans do demand costumes as we learned in the subsequent mail.

STAN LEE

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We're lucky. Most of our men are good story men. In fact, they have to be. A fellow who's a good artist, but isn't good at telling a story in this form ... in continuity form ... can't really work for us.

STAN LEE

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The publisher had me doing western magazines, crime magazines, men's adventure magazines, even romance and teenage magazines and one day he came to me and he said you know one of our competitors has a book called The Justice League and it's selling well and it's a bunch of superheroes, why don't we do some superhero magazines? I said OK, I wanted to keep my job so I came up with The Fantastic Four and the others and that was the only reason. If my publisher hadn't said 'let's do superhero stories' I'd probably still be doing A Kid Called Outlaw, The Two Gun Kid or Millie the Model or whatever I was doing at the time.

STAN LEE

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The "problem" is that Comic-Con is so damned successful. People who are there seem to have a wonderful time. The very size of it makes it exciting. Wherever you look, there's something exciting. The attendees are always looking around for a familiar face. It's either 'There's a movie star!' Or, 'There's a TV star!' Or, 'There's the guy who drew the Green Lantern!' It means so much to the fans. It makes them feel like they're where it's happening. It's like Woodstock.

STAN LEE

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That's what everybody tells me. "I would've had a great comic-book collection, but my mother made me throw them away." But when I was growing up, my mother didn't care. As long as I was reading, she didn't care if my room was filled with comics. I could have saved everything. I was just too stupid to do it.

STAN LEE

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Someone wants to do a movie of my life now and he's writing a script, and I said to him, "What the hell could you do? I've never been arrested, I haven't taken drugs, I've had the same wife for 54 years -- where's anything of interest to people?"

STAN LEE

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Some people will say, "Why read a comic book? It stifles the imagination. If you read a novel you imagine what people are like. If you read a comic, it's showing you." The only answer I can give is, "You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?"

STAN LEE

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Some artists, such as Jack Kirby, need no plot at all. I mean I'll just say to Jack, "Let's let the next villain be Dr. Doom" ... or I may not even say that. He may tell me. And then he goes home and does it. He's so good at plots, I'm sure he's a thousand times better than I. He just makes up the plots for these stories. All I do is a little editing ... I may tell him that he's gone too far in one direction or another. Of course, occasionally I'll give him a plot, but we're practically both the writers on the things.

STAN LEE

Tags: art

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Once, I'd written a Western story, and one of the panels was just a hand holding a six-shooter, and there was a puff of smoke coming out of the barrel, and a straight horizontal line, indicating the trajectory of the bullet. So that page was sent back to me from the Code office, saying that the particular panel was too violent. I asked them what they meant, and they told me--I swear--"The puff of smoke is too big." Well, of course. So I had the artist make the smoke a little smaller, and the youth of America was saved.

STAN LEE

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Never speak harshly of your enemy -- when you can kick 'im in the shins instead!

STAN LEE

Tags: enemies

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My favorite movie star, far and away, was Errol Flynn. I thought that this guy was the greatest because he always played such heroic roles. He was either the sheriff of Dodge City, or he was Robin Hood, or he was Captain Blood. When I would leave the theater, I'd be about 10 years old I guess ... I would imagine I had a little crooked smile on my face the way Errol Flynn did, and an imaginary sword at my side. I'd be looking around for little girls that might be [attacked] by some bullies.

STAN LEE

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Kids like comics as much as ever, but a very unusual thing happened. There used to be a very big collectors' market; all of a sudden people were paying high prices for back issues of comics. Houses like Sotheby's would have big auctions, and kids would read that a comic book, which originally cost a dime, was sold for $20,000. There were newspaper articles: "Comic books are a better investment than stocks." So, instead of buying one issue of a magazine, they'd buy twenty. They wouldn't even read them, never took them out of the cellophane. Suddenly a book that sold 200,000 was selling a million or half a million. It was the greatest thing. Then the market crashed.

STAN LEE

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Jack [Kirby] and Joe [Simon] wrote and drew the stories themselves in the beginning and I was just, like, the office boy. But after a while they had more writing than they could handle and I was the only guy around, so they said, "Hey Stan, you think you can write this?" When you're seventeen years old, what do you know? I said, "Sure, I can do it!" And that was it.

STAN LEE

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Jack Kirby to me was far and away the king. I gave him the name King Kirby ... everything he drew was just the way it should be.

STAN LEE

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It's geeks who really make or break a TV show or movie or videogame.

STAN LEE

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It's a tremendous challenge, because there have been so many characters created over the years. Every time you think you come up with a great name, you find out somebody has already done it. Dreaming up the stories isn't that hard, but coming up with a good title is the toughest part.

STAN LEE

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In the early days, I was writing scripts for virtually all the books, and it was very hard to keep all the artists busy; poor little frail me, doing story after story. So I'd be writing a story for Kirby, and Steve Ditko would walk in and say, 'Hey, I need some work now.' And I'd say, 'I can't give it to you now, Steve, I'm finishing Kirby's.' But we couldn't afford to keep Steve waiting, because time is money, so I'd have to say, 'Look Steve, I can't write a script for you now, but here's the plot for the next Spider-Man. Go home and draw anything you want, as long as it's something like this, and I'll put the copy in later.' So I was able to finish Jack's story. Steve in the meantime was drawing another story. Then Don Heck would come over and say, "Hey Stan, I need something to do." I'd say, "Well, I can't write it for you Don, but here's the plot for Iron Man, you go and draw it, and I'll put in the copy later." That way I could keep five, six, ten artists busy; they were drawing, and as they'd bring in the strip, I'd put in the copy. Okay, it started out as a lazy's man's device--or maybe a guy who just didn't have enough time--but we realized this was absolutely the best way to do a comic. Because any artist who really belongs in this field--and of course our artists do--is a storyteller himself. He tells stories with pictures; he has imagination, he knows continuity, he knows how a story should be told.... Don't have the writer say, 'Panel one will be a long shot of Spider-Man walking down the street.' The artist may see it differently; maybe he feels it should be a shot of Spider-Man swinging on his web, or climbing upside-down on the ceiling or something.

STAN LEE

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If we don't blow ourselves up, the future will be wonderful.

STAN LEE

Tags: future

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