STAN LEE QUOTES II

American comic book writer & creator (1922- )

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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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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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We had bought a lot of strips that I didn't think were really all that good, but I paid the artists and writers for them anyway, and I kinda hid them in the closet! And Martin found them and I think he wasn't too happy. If I wasn't satisfied with the work, I wasn't supposed to have paid, but I was never sure it was really the artist's or the writer's fault. But when the job was finished I didn't think that it was anything that I wanted to use. I felt that we could use it in inventory--put it out in other books. Martin, probably rightly so, was a little annoyed because it was his money I was spending.

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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I'm thankful for our writers
Whose imaginations never fail,
And I'm thankful for our artists
Who illustrate each tale.
I'm thankful for our letterers
Who print the words we write,
And without our classy colorists
We'd just be black and white.
I'm thankful for our editors
Who put it all together,
And the gang that proofs each peerless page
In every kind of weather.
I'm thankful for our printers
So dependable and true,
And also for our auditors
Whatever it is they do.
I'm thankful for our sales force
Selling every neighborhood,
And I thank our competition
For making us look good.
Now here's to all of Marveldom
I can't thank you enough,
Yep, you're the ones I thank the most
For reading all this stuff!

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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I'm proud of everything that was done that was successful. I did the hiring and the firing and I'm proud of the fact that we were able to hire people as talented as the artists that we had, like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko and Gene Colan and John Romita and Gil Kane. I'm proud of the fact that I worked with them and I like to think that we brought out the best of these artists and writers. It was a great time. I look back at that time when Marvel was starting I think I couldn't have been with a better group of people.

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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When you can sit down with a plain sheet of paper in front of you and make some notes, and, little by little, you see it take shape and become a concept for a movie or a TV show. That's a real thrill. You watch it go from notes on a paper to a meeting with writers and directors and actors. I can't think of anything that's more exciting.

STAN LEE

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For the first week, I stood in front of that little thing on the sidewalk and wanted to punch anybody that stepped on it.

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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The only time I go on the set is when I have a cameo to do in the picture. I go to the set and I do my little cameo and I meet all the people. It's a great way to spend the day. And then I go back to my own world.

STAN LEE

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Achilles, without his heel, you wouldn't even know his name today.

STAN LEE

Tags: weakness

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First I gave it to Jack Kirby to do, but Jack always drew these very heroic characters, like Captain America. I said to him, "You know Jack, I want this fellow Peter Parker, I want him to be just an average teenager. Don't let him look like your typical muscular superhero." I guess Jack was so used to drawing those kinds of people, that after he drew a page or two I looked at it and I said, "No, that's not right." So I said, "Forget it Jack. I'll give it to another artist." And Jack didn't care; he had a lot of other things to do, and we didn't realize this was going to become such a big script. So I gave it to Steve Ditko, who tended to draw things a little more realistically and more down to earth. And he did it, and I really don't interfere much in what the costume will look like. Steve pretty much invented the [Spider-Man] costume himself.

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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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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There is only one who is all powerful, and his greatest weapon is love.

STAN LEE

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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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Comic book should be written as one word. So from now on, I want you to remember that. I never want to see the word comicbook written as two words. They are not funny books. They are not comic books, they are comicbooks! Remember that, or incur my wrath.

STAN LEE

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If Shakespeare and Michelangelo were alive today, and if they decided to collaborate on a comic, Shakespeare would write the script and Michelangelo would draw it. How could anybody say that this wouldn't be as worthwhile an artform as anything on earth?

STAN LEE

Tags: comic books

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