We live in Marvelous times—at least for fans of movies starring comic book superheroes. One of the dominant players in the caped crusader universe, Marvel Comics, is a collaborative team coached by Stan Lee. At 89, he’s still working and still imagining new directions. What’s next, Century Man?
With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story gives many of the high points and a few of the lows, including his dot.com bubble venture that collapsed amid allegations of securities fraud. A child of poverty during the Great Depression, Lee put a lot of himself into Spider-Man, an everyday boy from modest circumstances wrestling with the morality of power. Lee’s insight into superheroes was always that the man behind the mask needed to be fully human, with all the flaws and virtues that entails.
He began as a gopher under Jack Kirby, who would become his chief collaborator and illustrator for many years. The original character he worked with, Captain America, coincided with World War II and the villains were ripped from the headlines. As time passed, Lee conceived such super heroes as The Hulk, under twin influences of nuclear anxiety and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and X-Men, whose message of tolerance spoke to growing legions of outcasts. After conquering the comic book racks, he went to Hollywood and produced a successful Spider-Man TV cartoon, which widened exposure to Marvel’s wares. With the dawn of the new millennium, new technology converged with a rising generation of filmmakers weaned on super heroes. Franchises such as X-Men, Iron Man, Spider-Man and Thor began to fill multiplexes. Lee’s dominance seems almost complete.
The interviews in With Great Power show that success couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. Lee comes across as gregarious, practical minded, unpretentious and—yes—animated. The documentary is out on DVD.
