He was my boss and sometimes I liked him and sometimes I hated him, but I always did what he told me to, sometimes grudgingly, like when he'd have me run the errands his wife didn't feel like doing, but I always did them. Because he worked so hard, tried so hard, was so enthusiastic, you'd want to make it easier for him. He's got a one-man show going, he won't delegate, which is why he works so hard. In the world of the Marvel Comics Group, God doesn't look like Charlton Heston. He looks like Stan Lee.

Sometimes God used to remind of Errol Flynn. I remember once going into Stan's office to give him some letters and finding him eight feet tall standing on a chair. A balloon with "I'll show you who walks away from here!" in it flew out of his mouth as he leapt from the chair and started faking punches at an artist.

Stan has been editor of Marvel Comics since he was 17 and Marvel was called Timely, over 30 years ago. He used to have a collection of all the comics he had ever put out, a collection that would be worth quite a lot of money now. He had it stashed in the cellar of the house he used to have in Hewlitt, Long Island. But one day he went down to look through some old issues and found that the whole collection was ruined. It had gotten wet from a leak through the walls, and the books were all mildewed, and crumbled in his hands at the touch.

Stan (The Man) Lee revolutionized the comic book industry ten years ago by deciding to let his superheroes live in the real world: his real world. He made Spiderman a neurotic, guilt-ridden, insecure superhero with romantic problems, financial problems, sinus attacks and fits of insecurity, embarrassed about appearing in public in a costume. Lately Spiderman's life has become almost unbearable. Peter Parker is committed to his role of Spiderman, fighter for justice and good, and yet it is this role which has alienated him from the world he seeks to help. His girl Gwen hates Spiderman for killing her father, and he's so busy playing "Web-Spinner" he hasn't time for anyone who really matters, like his Aunt May who smothers him with motherly attention and can't be told about his secret identity because she would die of a heart attack. The public thinks he is a thief and murderer. He can't win. If he should forsake his super-powers and try to be just Peter Parker, he feels guilty for not fighting crime and doing the good he knows he can do. Stan told me he thinks of his Superheroes as copies of himself.

When I asked him for an interview, he asked me if I would be nice. He said the world was a hostile place. I guess that's just the mood he's in lately. Things have been tough around Marvel. His best artist Jack Kirby went over to National not so long ago and Kirby had been with Marvel since the beginning. Gil Kane said in an interview in Alter Ego that Jack and Stan had painted themselves into a corner by converting everything at Marvel into the same model, and now everybody's losing interest in that model. Well, Stan's alone in the corner, still Facing Front and smiling, but a little down sometimes.

The day of the interview, Stand was in a good mood though, speaking with exclamation points at the end of every sentence even though he had a cold and his sinus trouble was acting up. I asked him where he'd like to sit and he said, "You do what's best for you! Have a sourball! You're my guest!"

We talked for a while, then played back the tape recorder to see if we were picking everything up, and Stan said, "You know, that sounds so icky, I wouldn't like me if I met me and I sounded like that. I've gotta try to sound more rugged."

I asked Stan if his personal life was a lot different from his life as a comic book editor, like if his wife and daughter were into comic books.

"I don't think my daughter has ever read a comic book in her life, and I doubt that my wife has. They get very bored if I even discuss the subject. All they want is the paycheck every week. Sometimes I think that' all I want. Actually, I don't know where one life ends and the other begins, 'cause I really work seven days a week. I come to the office two days a week, to do my editing and talk to people, and at home I do my writing and talk to people on the phone. Sunday, Sunday night, Saturday, Monday, everything. That's one thing I don't like about my job. There isn't enough time to spend with people. Being a writer is the loneliest. . .

"But anyway, I think this is what has held my marriage together. I've got the greatest wife in the world. I'm absolutely crazy about her and every time I see her or have a date with her, it's like a treat, it's like I'm staling time away from work and nobody knows it. 'Cause I got a story to write, but I say, 'Come on, let's go out to dinner, I'll finish it when I get back.' So it's a few precious stolen hours, and maybe if I had a regular job, I'd get tired of going out every night."

Stan is devoting his life to convincing people they shouldn't condemn the comic book field. He thinks he can do a lot of good with those books. "You know I'm very square and preachy sometimes, but the more I realize that people are to some degree affected by what we write, the more I'm aware of the influence we have, the more I worry about what I write. I don't want to be misunderstood, I don't want to send one kid off on the wrong road. I never try to say to the reader, this is the way it should be, 'cause I fell who am I to say it?

"I think the only message I have ever tried to get across is for Christsake, don't be bigoted. Don't be intolerant. If you're a radical, don't think that all of the conservatives have horns. Just like if you're a John Bircher, don't think that every radical wants to blow up the nation and rape your daughter.

"Maybe I sound like a Pollyanna, but I think most people want to same thing. They want to live a happy family life, they want to be at peace, they want no physical violence, nobody to hurt them, and they want the good things that life has to offer. But I think everybody sees us reaching that nirvana by a different path.

"And I think one of the terrible things in the world is that we are so inclined to think in black and white, hero and villain, good and bad, if you don't agree with me I've got to destroy you. If we could only learn that the world is big enough for all of us. For a guy who wants to wear his hair long, and a guy who wants to be a skinhead. Neither of 'em has to be bad.

"I try not to make my villains all bad. Like Dr. Doom is a lovable villain. He thinks of himself as a guy who wants to rule the world 'cause he thinks he can do a better job than anyone else. And he is amazed that people try to stop him. There's no law against wanting to take over the world. You can be arrested for being a litterbug, but you're not breaking the law if you try to take over mankind.

"I think I've done pretty well, 'cause we've gotten so many letters from parents and kids. I got one letter last year, a Christmas card that said, 'You don't know me but my son has been so influenced by your books over the years. He's a wonderful boy, the class valedictorian last year, and I just want to tell you that I think his father and I and you have done a good job of rearing him.' And I get so much mail like that. Very often I get letters from, of all things, ministers, preachers saying, 'I used a few pages from your Silver Surfer, Avengers, Captain America as the basis for a sermon'!"

Stan is under contrast to Magazine Management and his job is to produce comic books that will make them money. Readers think of Stan as such an idealist, they are shocked to learn that money is a consideration. He had just gotten a letter that morning that said, "I'll never read another comic book, and screw you Stan. We always thought that money didn't mean that much to you, and if you drop the Silver Surfer because of money, it means you've been fooling us just like everybody else has, and up yours." Stan said he wanted to sit down and write the guy, but there was no return address. He wanted to tell the kid that if they didn't make money, the comic book department would be closed down, and then they wouldn't be able to do any good at all.

"The other day the station manager of a radio station, a long-haired kid, but a nice kid, told me, 'You know it's a funny thing, Stan. Most of the kids I know my age (he was in his early 20s), we don't believe anything we read in Time or Newsweek, or any of that junk, but we believe what we read in Marvel Comics.' Maybe what the world needs is truth, even more than love.

"I have a theory about love. I started thinking about it the other day, and the more I think about it, the more I think about it. I wonder if we are wrong in stressing love because we've tried love for about 2000 years and it seems not to have worked. And it's just possible that hate is just as strong an emotion within the human condition. Why not learn how to live with hate? Let us not try to drive hate out of existence, maybe it's impossible. Maybe we should be saying, look to be truthful, we all have hate. But once we accept the fact that hate is as strong an influence as love, let us learn how to live with it, to direct it into useful channels."

Stan thinks of himself as the world's most anonymous celebrity, even though his books sell around 60 million copies a year. The people who read the comics know of him, and the people where he's lectured, but most people have never heard of Stan Lee. He is always surprised to find that the disc jockeys and radio personalities who interview him are fans of his. One fan of his is Federico Fellini. He told me of the time Fellini had come to see him. The switchboard operator had told him, "Federico Fellini is here to see you," and he said, "Yeah, and tell him Santa Claus is in here." Stan thought it was a gag.

"But in he walked with an entourage. He had a translator, and his manager, and a friend of his, the guy who makes Strega Liqueurs, and I was so thrilled, and I figured I didn't know what he was doing here, but it will give me a chance to talk to him and ask him a million questions. I didn't have a chance to ask him one thing. he spent two hours interviewing me! Through his translator, asking me where do you get your ideas, how long have you been doing it. And I said about a dozen times, 'This is insane. I'm with the most famous director in the world. Don't talk about me. I wanna talk about you!' It was intensely flattering, but I was embarrassed. It was like a scene from one of his movies. Nutty. He was interested in these books. It turned out that he started out doing comics in Italy. He recognizes the similarity of techniques between comics and motion pictures."

Now Stan is working on a screen play with Alain Resnais. "He's one of my very best friends, through the comics. He's a fan of Marvel's. He came up here once, same thing: 'I want to meet you.' With a tape recorder and a camera. We got to talking and he told me he learned to read and write English mainly through Marvel comic books. He's been reading them for years and he knows these stories better than I do. He's one of those fans that spot my mistakes. He'll say, 'Stan, don't you remember, Red Skull can't do what you said, because three years ago you had him say he couldn't do that.' He's one of the sweetest guys, we double dated together."

What does Stan think of himself?

"Well, I think I'm pretty dull--no, I don't think that. I think of myself as a communicator. It seems to me the most important thing in the world is communication. Take the President of the United States. I often think that what we should elect is not a politician but a communicator. I think what the world needs is somebody who can talk to other people. And can explain things so they'll understand, and sort of give people faith in themselves and in their fellow man. I think that what we're suffering from today is that nobody believes anybody else. What happens is we have become so divisive, we only believe ourselves and people exactly like us.

"I'm not a hippie, I'm not a conservative, I don't know what the hell I am but I don't think labels are that important because, boy, I'll tell you, I've been with guys whose hair is down to their ankles and would scare anybody, they just looked so weird, and they were the greatest guys in the world. And some of my friends are real establishment people. One of my best friends is the chairman of the board of one of the most respectable companies in the world and he's the greatest guy living. And I just don't think it matters what kind of philosophy you have as long as you're a good guy within that philosophy. I belong to all worlds, am comfortable in all worlds."

When it came time to take some pictures, Stan went over to the mirror to spiff up a bit. "My hair isn't even on straight!" he said. Stan Lee used to be Stanley Lieber, and Stanley Lieber is bald. But Stanley Lieber hardly exists any more. Stan said he doesn't even recognize him in the mirror. He said his daughter doesn't allow him to go out unless he looks like Stan Lee.

"You know how I got this beard? I went to a Christmas party about three years ago, and when I left I was feeling no pain. I jumped up in the air to click my heels and I feel down and broke my ankle. I was in bed for two weeks, so I didn't shave, and when I got out of bed and went to get a razor, my wife grabbed one arm and my daughter got the other arm and they said if you shave that off we're through with you! You're suddenly glamorous!"