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Creating comics for an audience

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No space to store the original comics
Stan Lee Writer
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It's a funny thing, I never saved the books. None of us did in the beginning. A lot of people did after that. I never had the room. When the comics originally were done in the early '40s, '50s, they were drawn… the original artwork was much bigger than they draw it now. The pages were really big. And thick, they were thick sheets of illustration board, and in the early days the books were 48 pages when we first started... 60… 64 pages. And we were doing a lot of books and our office was half the size of this. And the printer would send the original artwork back, so from one book the original artwork would be a pile that went up to the ceiling. There was no room in our office, so if somebody came to bring us a sandwich for lunch we'd… ‘Hey kid, before you go back take some of these pages would you? Would you like them?‘ Wow. The cleaning woman… ‘Hey miss could you keep these, or throw them away somewhere?’ and the same with the comic books. The printer would send us all the left-over comics. We had no room for them. So… I don't like to think about it. And if I could tell you how many people have said to me — you know, when I do lectures or just go to comic book conventions — they come over to me and they… ‘Gee Stan, my mother made me throw out all the comics’. I'm the one guy my mother didn't make me throw them out, I could have kept them but I had no place to put them so I threw them out.

The creative genius of American writer, Stan Lee (1922-2018) brought us 'Spider Man', 'X-Men' and 'The Hulk'. They climbed tall buildings and fought the bad guys, but had normal worries too, about love, acceptance and family. Readers loved them and Marvel Comics, with Lee at the helm, went on to become hugely successful. In 2010 the Stan Lee Foundation was founded to focus on literacy, education and the arts. On January 4, 2011 Lee received the 2428th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Listeners: Leo Bear

Leo Bear is a Hollywood-based features writer. Her background is in news and features writing. Leo spent five years on the entertainment newsdesk at BBC Worldwide before going freelance and moving out to Los Angeles. She specialises in writing lifestyle features, celebrity interviews, health stories and travel features for publications including Eve Magazine, OK! Magazine, Total Film, TV Hits and Conde Nast Gourmet Travel Guide.

Tags: Marvel Comics

Duration: 1 minute, 30 seconds

Date story recorded: April 2006

Date story went live: 24 January 2008