Stan Lee: With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story
IFQ’s Shawn Lukaszewicz caught up with Stan Lee on the red carpet for “With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story” VIP movie premiere at iPic Theaters in Pasadena, CA on April 19, 2012. Stan Lee (born December 28, 1922) is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.
IFQ: Are you excited for the release?
Stan Lee (SL): I’m a pretty cool guy. It takes more than this to excite me. Of course, I’m excited! [Laughs.]
IFQ: After watching the film for the first time, were you in some sort of shock or awe regarding how far you have come?
SL: The first thing I said was there ought to be more scenes of me! [Laughs.] They are interviewing all of those other people; you better spend all that screen time on me. It was too late. They had done it already.
IFQ: What’s next for you?
SL: We are working on lots of things. I have this company called POW! Entertainment and we are doing a movie in China about a Chinese superhero. We are doing another movie in India.
IFQ: Does that mean that you have to fly back and forth?
SL: No. I’m smart. I let other people do the flying. We are developing a couple of TV series. We are developing the biggest outdoor show that’s ever been done. You know like Cirque du Soleil, but even bigger than that. The audience is part of the show. That’s being done in Macau.
IFQ: Do you plan on bringing that over to the USA?
SL: It depends how it does. We have taken over Macau; they have the biggest theatre we could find. We are working on the internet. I have my own movie channel. I have my website:
therealstanlee.com, as oppose to the fake Stan Lee. [Laughs.] I have some stuff on Vuguru, which is Michael Eisner’s internet channel. We have something called Stan Lee’s World of Heroes.
IFQ: What is your favorite Marvel character?
SL: Me. [Laughs.] It’s hard to say. No matter what I say, all the guys who do the other characters would be angry at me. So, I love them all.
IFQ: How did you get involved in the comic book world? How did you find your way to the top?
SL: Accidentally. I used to draw, but I’m not as good as the guys who do the scripts, and I wrote. I heard there was a job open at the magazine management company. I had no idea that they had a little comic book department. I found out there was a vacancy in the comic book department. The whole department was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. When they needed someone to write extra dialogue or captions, I’d get that. Little by little, some point they left. The publisher was stuck with just me and I was only about 17. He said, do you think that you can hold down the job of Editor until I find a real person. When you are 17, what do you know?