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| NOCC: Stan the Man at Wizard World - Part I |
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I have had the pleasure of attending Question and Answer sessions with Stan "the Man" Lee on more than one occasion. At the 2013 Wizard World New Orleans Comic Con (which, in fact, occurred in late 2012), Stan Lee was an absolute delight and was presented with an (early) birthday cake to celebrate his 90th birthday. 90 years... and still so vibrant! I'm always excited to hear tales of the early days of Marvel and, evidently, the sentiment resonated with the large crowd that packed the room.
Stan Lee is always entertaining, but this one started off zany at the very beginning. He began by addressing the audience and setting expectations with this:
Hello, true believers! I have a confession to make: even though I look like a model of perfection to all of you, I don't hear as well as I used to, so I won't be able to hear whatever questions you ask - assuming they ask any; they may just sit on their hands, they may do nothing. But, he's going to repeat the question to me. My only problem is: he doesn't speak very clearly and I don't often understand what he says... Let the entertainment begin!
Immediately upon finishing that brief introduction, a person affiliated with Wizard World Comic Con rushed up on stage from the side, with "breaking news" to talk to Stan Lee and Danny Fingeroth and announced that they would be giving a sneak peak of Stan Lee's cameo from the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man 2. Then, he turned his cell phone toward the audience and, supposedly, played it. I say "supposedly," because unsurprisingly no one in the audience could make out the postage-stamp sized video.
The host responsible for repeating the questions for Stan Lee was none other than Danny Fingeroth, who as Stan put it, "By the way, if you don't know this, Danny Fingeroth used to be one of our top editors and writers years ago at Marvel - after that he went legit." |
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Danny Fingeroth:
The Super Bowl. What the hell were you doing at the Super Bowl? Did everybody see Stan with Todd McFarlane at the Super Bowl?
Stan Lee:
Well, there's this little company called "Doritos" ...and they're one of the sponsors of the Super Bowl so they had a big contest. All over the world, people could enter from every part of the world, and they were asked - everybody was asked to make up their own commercial - thirty second commercial or maybe it was sixty, I don't remember - the five winning commercials would be sent to the Super Bowl. And of those five, two of them would be shown at the Super Bowl. And of those two, one would be judged the winner and the person who did it would get a million dollars and a chance at a real movie. So, they received hundreds of thousands of entries and they boiled them down to a few dozen great ones that I had to look at, 'cause they wanted me to be one of the judges, because obviously my taste is so superb and I know so much about potato chips.
At the Super Bowl, they insisted that I come there and sit with the Doritos people at their private little booth there on top and I really had more important things to do. I went there and I met the people who submitted the five entries and I met the person that won and so forth and that's probably the dullest story I have ever told and why did you ask me about that?
Danny Fingeroth:
Because it's the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is something someone would not normally associate with Stan Lee.
Stan Lee: I'm associated with everything. Last year, they asked me to go to San Francisco, where the San Francisco Giants - or whatever the name of the team is - the baseball team - they wanted me to be there for some reason, so I went there and they had me go out in the field and talk to their star pitcher and they televised it all nice - I have no idea why I was there - they paid me for it, so I went, of course. What's my big sport in life? Oh - I have POW Entertainment, that's my company. We're working on something called ...I think the Defenders - something like that - and it has to do with Hockey. We made a deal with the hockey league. I hope you're all big hockey fans.
In the next year or two, you'll be hearing a lot about this. We made up a special superhero for each team. There are like million teams - it was a big job and you'll be hearing about it; I'm not supposed to talk about it, so strike that from your memories.
Danny Fingeroth:And running into Todd McFarlane at the Super Bowl, was that planned, or?
Stan Lee: I run into Todd McFarlane all over. Wherever you go, there's Todd McFarlane. I think he's a spirit and nobody knows it. But, I do think he's a great guy - I'm glad I taught him how to write and draw.
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Danny Fingeroth:And you're going back to New York for some kind of thing?
Stan Lee: Why did I go to New York? Oh - oh! I did a commercial for the United States Post Office, so I want you to start using stamps and stuff. The commercial - this will surprise you - it was in conjunction with Spider-Man. It's Spider-Man and me in a commercial for the New York Post Office and they'll probably start running this commercial when the Spider-Man movie opens up in a month or so (crowd starts talking loudly) - Excuse me! I was speaking. See, now I have to start over again. So, I did this commercial...
Watch the USPS commercial with Stan Lee and Spider-Man
Anyway, you'll see it and you'll say, "Wow, I remember Stan telling me about this" and you'll get all excited, as well you should.
Danny Fingeroth:And, um, everybody saw you on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Stan Lee: Sometimes things don't turn out the way you think they should or would. They said to me, "You're going to be on a train and two of our characters are going to be having an argument and the guy is going to be yelling at the girl and you're going to be sitting with two lovely girls and (I liked that) and, um, you hear them yelling and you're a distinguished gentleman and you don't like a man yelling at a woman and you walk over and tell him that you think it's terrible that he speaks to the girl that way and then you leave."
So I think, "Well, that's the type of thing I would do; I've very chivalrous, so um, they filmed it and I saw it. And when I saw it on television, I said, "They made me look like I was so old and decrepit I needed those two girls to lead me. I thought it would look like they were my girlfriends, but they made it look like they were two nurses. I wasn't happy with it.
Danny Fingeroth:
What's Stan Lee's Mighty Seven? What's that? Tell us about it.
Stan Lee:
So, we decided to do a new group of new superheroes in animated form. And I came up with something called the Mighty Seven and it's on the Hub Network, which nobody ever heard of... but that's where it is. No, you may know what it is, but it's mostly for young kids. And they made a animated movie of the Mighty Seven and the people at Hub liked it so much they asked for two more, so we're now working on the second and third. The first one was just broadcast a few days ago and got a great rating and... oh! We called it the world's first reality cartoon adventure, because we have real people in it and one of the real people, of course, is me; in fact, I'm the star of the show, he says modestly. I'm not going to tell you any more and spoil your fun. There is such a network as the Hub Network. I don't know what you know about it, but you might get a kick out of it ...and it's a whole movie, it's very strange ...and I'm the star.
Q:What's your favorite superhero that you created?
Stan Lee: Oh, I love them all - they're great and they're wonderful and inspirational, but probably Spider-Man, because he's kinda like me; he's intelligent and athletic and... nah, I like Spider-Man. I love them all; it's not easy to say he's my favorite. You mention the others, I love them, too. Sometimes I sit home and think, "Wow! Did I really think all these up? I'm brilliant!"
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Q: I want to know who your favorite villain is; I like the villains.
Stan Lee: I love them all, too. Green Goblin and Doc Ock... you know, talking about Doc Ock - I like to give people nicknames, like Spider-Man is "Spidey" - I mean, you never heard at DC - they wouldn't call Batman, "Batty."
I think, probably, my favorite villain is Dr. Doom and I'm gonna tell you why. He isn't really a criminal. I want you to think about this seriously. What does the really want to do? He wants to conquer the world. Alright, you walk down the street, here in New Orleans, go up to the toughest-looking policeman you can find and say, "Hey! Officer - I'm turning myself in; I want to conquer the world." That's not a crime. Anybody can say that. The guy might say, "Good luck to you." All Dr. Doom wants to do is conquer the world and that's not a crime, so I kinda like the guy.
Q: What made you come up with the Avengers?
Stan Lee: Greed.
We had all these characters separately and they were making money and then we figured, "Hey - if we put them together, we'll make even more money."
Q: What made you want to be in all the Marvel movies that you created?
Stan Lee: Believe it or not - I didn't. I was asked... What was his name? Brian Singer... he directed the first X-Men, I think. He asked, "Hey, would you like to be in one of the scenes?" Well, even though I'm a very shy, retiring person I figured it might be fun, so he had a guy coming out of the, um at a beach, one of the villains or someone was coming out of the ocean walking on the sand and he was strange looking and in the background, I was selling hotdogs and as the guy walks by I'm looking at him like this (makes a dumbfounded look). But nobody saw me, cause everybody was looking at the guy. I was the only guy looking at me on the screen. Well, anyway, that was the first one. And, for some reason, when they did the next Marvel movie, the director must have felt, "Whoa, Stan was in that one, we'll get him in this one." And they've been calling me... I have nothing to do with it. And people ask me, "How did you decide that your cameo would be this, that or the other?" I don't decide. They would call me and say, "We're doing a cameo. Can you be at the studio on the 28th at noon? And I go there at noon and they say, "Here, put this cap on..." And that's another thing...
I'll never understand the movie business. For one cameo, I went in looking as great as I always look; I had a white shirt on, a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers and a Members Only jacket and the girl said, "Okay, Stan, here's your wardrobe: we have an old Members Only jacket, white shirt, jeans and sneakers." I said, "I'm already wearing that. Let's go, let's go - let's start filming." "No, you have to put ours on." "Why do I have to wear yours? I'm wearing just what you want me to wear!" "Those aren't ours." So I had to take off everything I was wearing and put on the exact same outfit. So, I'll never understand movie people. Why did I mention that? Did I improve anything?
Q: If you could have any super power, what would it be?
Stan Lee: If I could have any power, it would be luck. Because, just think of it; If you're lucky, you don't need any other power. Doctor Doom shoots a ray at you, it misses. You want to win the lottery, you win it. If you have luck, everything falls your way, so that's the real great superpower. The reason I've never given that to a character - and you may not have thought of this - it isn't a visual superpower and people like villains - or heroes - who have visual super powers. I mean, if you have the power of Iron Man, you can fly... if you have the power of Spider-Man, you can climb walls and swing on webs. How do you draw a guy who has luck? You draw a guy, that's all. That's not interesting.
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-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins |
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