Stan Lee - Jonathan Ross Interview

Stan Lee interview from Jonathan Ross' "In Search of Steve Ditko" BBC documentray.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Ditko
• Jonathan
• Lee
• Ross
• Stan
• Steve

[youdoitillwatch]

I met Stan Lee once and I asked him about his name, which I didn't realize at the time he had changed to Stan "Lee." When I asked him about it he said he was thinking of changing his last name to "What" because when he gets introduced to people they say, "Oh, Stanley what?"

Real genuinely friendly guy in person.

[BlumpkinSpecial42]

I'm with Ditko. I'm not going to give a lion's-share of the credit to the guy who said "Hey, let's ado a comic about a guy named Spider-man with Spider- powers. Steve, flesh that out!" Lee's a fucking hack. If he was a legitimate artist with any integrity, he'd be doing a lot more to make sure that creators benefit from their creations in the same way he has benefited from what he CO-created.

[MrLunitunz]

@DeepSouthWrestling1 You're entitled to your opinion on Lee. Personally I think his work on Batman was excellent.

I've always said that McFarlane owed a lot to Ditko, but that's why I like him. Spider-Man artists post-Ditko were emphasising the 'Man', Ditko/McFarlane focused on the 'Spider'. And McFarlane paved the way for Bagley, who is one of my favourites, and who provided a nice mix between Ditko and Romita's general method of artwork.

[DeepSouthWrestling1]

@DeepSouthWrestling1 ... a current ish of JLA, I'm convinced Jim Lee is the most overrated "cartoonist" in existence. What's worse is their lazy ways ultimately played havoc on the entire distribution system... comics are only recently starting to show signs of recovery with the inroads made into the book market.

[DeepSouthWrestling1]

@MrLunitunz : Actually, I don't mind stylization, it's not knowing how to tell a story that irked me... incomprehensible layouts, one-and-two page splashes that did nothing to further the story, general laziness as far as rendering goes, simply not understanding anatomy, architecture, etc... they were horrible. As pedestrian as someone like Buscema was, he could draw rings around every one of those guys. McFarlane's Spidey owed so much to Ditko, it's not funny... after recently flipping thru...

[MrLunitunz]

@DeepSouthWrestling1 Finite books will always be better than long-run comic book characters. But I will disagree with you on the Image artists. Erik Larsen and Jim Lee are very good illustrators. Todd McFarlane forgot how to draw human faces after his first few issues of Spider-Man but aside from that he did some very good things with Spider-Man. Yes, the massive muscles style wasn't necessarily the greatest but all of Image was taking Kirby's lead, for better or worse.

[DeepSouthWrestling1]

@MrLunitunz : No such thing as a second-rate character, only second-rate creators. When the Image artists started their rise, that's when I gave up on DC/Marvel... the Shooter years were bad enough, but at least several good things did come out of that era. I didn't like any of the Image artists, and when every other comic started looking like them, I turned to underground stuff like Love & Rockets and R Crumb... and, honestly, that stuff's better than corporate owned characters...

[MrLunitunz]

@DeepSouthWrestling1 Wow. You really haven't been reading or following Marvel for years, have you?

Yes, Spider-Man's a member now. And I originally thought it was stupid idea too, because he's a loner character and he works best as a solo character instead of teamed-up with all the other Marvel characters. But it made sense, because Spider-Man is Marvel's most popular character and what made JLA work was having DC's most popular characters team-up. Why do a book with second-rate characters?

[DeepSouthWrestling1]

@DeepSouthWrestling1 ... imagine Spidey in the Avengers, that sounds like a terrible idea. But for all I know, he could be a card-carrying member as we speak, and have been for years. I'm sure most of the characters have been so mucked about by the last couple of generations of Marvel employees, they hardly resemble who Lee/Kirby created. Just fodder for Hollywood, I suppose...

[DeepSouthWrestling1]

@MrLunitunz : I've heard that story, about Goodman playing golf with Donnefield and having the JLA discussion, but Donnefield denied it ever happened, so... and I don't think Goodman was particularly intimate with the actual contents. Only if there was a problem. I imagine Lee came to the Avengers on his own. The title would have done better, of course, if Kirby had remained on and had a good run. As it is, putting Heck on was what hurt the most. Unfortunately, Heck never sold. And I can't...