WAITING
FOR TOMMY: TALKING ABOUT STAN LEE
By
Richard Johnston
RICHARD:
So what made the project worthwhile for you?
JORDAN:
What attracted me to the project was the challenge of trying
to pull together all the strands of Stan's life and career
that are out there in the hundreds of interviews he's conducted
over the years, plus the accounts from his friends and colleagues.
In my view, that had never really been done before in a satisfactory
way.
We also
wanted to "set the record straight" -- which sounds like a
horribly pretentious thing -- but it's also kind of important,
because there are a lot of misperceptions out there about
Stan and what he did, particularly among mainstream journalists
and regular folks.
TOM:
I was just really curious about Stan - let's face it, he was
a big figure in my childhood, like he was for a lot of kids
- and I thought I could help put together a much more interesting
portrait of his career than what came out in the autobiography.
RICHARD:
Was there any specific moment or story you uncovered that
said "that's it - that's the reason I'm doing this"?
JORDAN:
It wasn't so much a game of "gotcha" as it was a project designed
to show his accomplishments for what they were, rather than
what most people think they were. Stan accomplished a great
deal in his life. We wanted to make sure that was all properly
accounted for, and we placed it in the context of the history
of comics.
TOM:
I think it was when we saw a Father's Day TV show from the
late '70s with Stan and a bunch of other famous New Yorkers
and their kids. One of the dads was Don King, which was really
exciting, because Stan and Don in the same room is like the
Superman vs. Muhammad Ali of hype. Stan destroyed him.
I think
the thing that made doing the book click for me was examining
Stan on both sides of the Marvel superhero period - this desperation
to make something of himself in his late 30s, and this dawning
realization in his early 40s that the comics were really starting
to hit. I found that really fascinating.
RICHARD:
So this is a "work of record"? Do you believe you've succeeded?
The caricature on the front cover suggested to me that the
work is a caricature... no photo rights?
JORDAN:
The caricature on the front is a caricature, lovingly rendered
by the amazing illustrator Jeff Wong. The book itself isn't
a caricature (I hope). As for whether we've succeeded in writing
a "work of record," I don't know. That will be up to reviewers
and university librarians to decide, I suppose. It's hard
to ask that question of any writer, because on any given day,
my feelings of self-worth are yo-yoing between overweening
confidence and abject failure. Let me just say that I hope
we wrote a work of record and leave it at that.
TOM:
There are tons of photos in the final version, Rich. Sixteen
pages of them. Including Stan in a swimsuit, and one of Steve
Ditko, although Ditko's not in a swimsuit.
As for
the book, I hope it's good, but more than that I hope no one
looks at my author's photo.
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