Founders - #72 Stan Lee: Founder of Marvel

Episode Date: May 19, 2019

What I learned from reading Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee by Stan Lee and George Mair. Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and prosaic. It's a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye, and the imagination, a literate celebration of unbridled creativity, coupled with a touch of rebellion and an insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon (1:15) discovering his love of reading at an early age (8:45)accidentally finding his life's work at 17 years old / hilarious level of optimism (12:35), there is opportunity in things that other people say will rot your brain (22:30)Stan Lee's advice on writing (26:00)be your own biggest fan (28:00)the turning point of Stan Lee's life (38:20) humans scorn the abstract (45:20)a lesson in human nature (51:30)the power of direct sales (55:29) ----Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here. ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

How did it happen? How did I get into this? Me, a guy who's almost always written fantasy, suddenly having to deal with facts. The facts of my life. Although come to think of it, those facts themselves are pretty fantastic. If I hadn't lived the whole thing, I might not even believe it. During those strange, struggling early years, I wallowed in embarrassment because I was a mere comic book writer. And now, because of those same humble comic books, here I am, the featured star of a

real grown-up book, the hero of my own life story. There's probably a moral hidden there. Feel free to search for it as we roll along. To tell the truth, I can't wait to read the pages that follow, since so much of the past has managed to homogenize in the plot-cluttered recesses of my mind. It's a chance to rediscover little truths about my own inscrutable self and the titanically talented people I've worked with. Here are a couple sentences I wrote some years ago to describe my feelings about what Marvel Comics represents. Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and the prosaic. It's a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye, and the imagination. A literate celebration of unbridled creativity coupled with a touch of rebellion and an insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon.

There you have it, my take on Marvel and the fantasy genre in general, and perhaps my own philosophy in particular. If those words strike a chord with you, read on. If they don't, I'd rather not know. Okay, that was an excerpt from the book that I want to talk to you about today, and that is Excelsior, The Amazing Life of Stan Lee. And I guess I'll just jump ahead before I jump back into the book because that's a bizarre word right like the title of the book I don't know if I've ever seen that word anywhere else and so I looked it up and he talks about it later on the book but there's two things first I want to tell you the definition and second he has a really great idea right off the bat and he decided to make the word excelsior, which means ever upward, his life motto.

But I also love the idea of having a life motto. And that's something I'm going to think about and see if I can come up with one on my own. Maybe you want to do the same. Okay, so as you could just see from that little excerpt, this guy, I mean, no surprise, he, I was going to say he's a hell of a writer, which, I mean, that's kind of obvious. He built a, what, what is now what, a multi-hundred billion dollar industry based off of his ideas and the creation of, you know, characters like Spider-Man, X-Men, The Avengers, which I think just overtook and is now the most, like the highest grossing movie of all time. And what I love most

about the book and what you're going to come to learn over the next little bit of our time together is that we're seeing, as with all these biographies, we see the end result. So everybody knows who Stan Lee is now. Everybody knows who Marvel Comics are, even if you're not into the movies or the books. But what I loved about reading this book so much is that the vast majority of his life, he was filled with unbelievable doubt. He talks about, he says, during those strange, struggling early years,

I wallowed in embarrassment because I was a mere comic book writer. So I'm going to talk a lot about that today because I found that probably the most interesting part of the book. So I want to start where I always do, which is the early life, where I try to always do. And we're going to see that some of the unpleasantness of his early life actually benefited him later on. So not only do I have this book, but I have another biography of his called The Amazing, Fantastic, Incredible,

a marvelous memoir by Stan Lee that I'll probably turn into another episode of Founders in the Future. But in that book, he talks about the unpleasantness of his, like the relationship between his parents gave him one hell of a work ethic. And we're going to see what he means by that. He says, I always felt sorry for my father. He was a good man, honest and caring. He wanted the best for his family, as most parents do.

But the times were against him. At the height of the depression, there were just no jobs to be had. Seeing the demoralizing effect that his unemployment had on his spirit, making him feel that he just wasn't needed, gave me a feeling that I would never be able to shake. It's a feeling that the most important thing for a man, and I would also add person, he's writing this book in 2002 when he's 80 years old. He doesn't pass away until he's 95. So let me just interject there again. It's a feeling that most important thing for a person is to have work to do, to be busy, to be needed. Today, I never feel more fulfilled than when I'm working on a number of projects at once, which is really nuts because I'm always wishing I had more free time. Still, when I'm busy, I feel needed and that makes me feel good. So he's going to reflect a little bit about like what it was like growing up during the depression and seeing his

parents struggle and frankly argue constantly about money and the lack thereof of money. They were both good, loving parents, and I think the only thing that gave them any pleasure was their children. My brother and I always regretted that fate had not been kinder to them and that they couldn't have had happier lives. I think that's like the greatest tragedy in life, to waste the one life you have and to spend it being miserable and unhappy. And unfortunately, I think that's like the default for most of the humans that have ever

lived. I think the estimate I've read one time was like it might be about 100, 500, 15 billion humans that have ever existed. And I mean, what percentage of them had a truly happy, fulfilled life? Probably a very small percentage. Very hard to do. All right. They must have loved each other when they were married,

but my earliest recollections were of them two arguing, quarreling incessantly. Almost always it was over money or the lack of it. I realized at an early age how the specter of poverty, the never-ending worry about not having enough money to buy groceries or to pay the rent, can cast a cloud over a marriage. I'll always regret the fact that by the time I was earning enough money to make things easier for them, it was too late. And he talks about like reflecting like one of his earliest memories of his father, his father sitting at the kitchen table, going through the want ads, spending all day applying for jobs, coming back with no luck, and then doing it over and over and over again.

And I just want to read this one sentence. And Stan just has a wonderful way with words. And this was his impression as a young person seeing this happen to his family. He says, forced idleness is a terrible thing. That's a hell of a sentence. And you know what's weird, though, to me now that I've read the book? So he was definitely not idle. I think I talk a little bit about it later on, but in case I don't, he basically wrote all day long, every day, constantly.

And he didn't necessarily enjoy the process of writing because he's like an extrovert, a gregarious person. You want to be around people. When you're writing, you have to be kind of alone but he definitely enjoyed the process of having written which i've come across a couple times where even some of my favorite writers i don't really like writing i just like the fact that i have written so there's a lesson there but this whole idea about seeing um so the forced idleness he was definitely never idle even uh you know he's reflecting on some of the projects he's taking on when he's in the 70s at the time he just kept going going going but this whole idea about uh he he realized from an early age about what the absence of money can do to a family so stan was never poor but he

definitely never captured even a he captured a tiny percentage of the um of the the value that he would create he talks about several times in the book that he was create. He talks about it several times in the book that he was a creative person. He was really good at making stories and writing and doing that, but he constantly got ripped off by better, or taken advantage of by better businessmen. Okay, so let me skip ahead.

Sometimes you're gonna hear Stan refer to himself, like when I'm reading, that's the words he wrote. He also has a co-author in the book, and his name is George Mayer. And so whenever we're talking about Stan, that's George writing. So George is writing this. He says, even in those difficult times, there's one joyful thing for Stan. It was the thing that eventually changed his life forever. It was his love for reading, for losing himself in the magical world of books. Okay, now we're going to get to Stan's description of that. He said, I can't to get to Stan's description of that.

He said, I can't remember when I first learned to read, nor can I remember a time when I wasn't reading. It was my escape from the dreariness and sadness of my home life. I read everything I could find, everywhere, every chance I got. In school, reading and composition were always my best subjects. At every meal at home, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I'd have a book or magazine to read while I ate. My mother used to say that if there was nothing to read,

I'd read the labels of ketchup bottles, which I did. And then we're going to hear that as we're not surprised at all, Stan was kind of a misfit. Like he was an outsider. He didn't fit in. He was a weird person. And I mean weird in the most loving way possible. And then we're going to learn about a lesson that he never forgot. So he said, in school, I was always something of an outsider. That's because

I was usually the youngest kid in my class and in my social group. So his parents didn't have any money. They made him study really hard so he could basically skip grades and finish school faster so that he could get to work and help the family. So this is part of the impact of the Depression had on families like mine. My mother wanted me to finish school as soon as possible so I could get a job and help support the family, which is another reason I had the work ethic drummed into me at an early age. I studied hard and skipped grades, which put me in with older kids. But as you might imagine, it's no fun being the youngest kid in class. So then he talks about, it's amazing, he's close to 80 years old writing these words,

and he could still remember his favorite teacher, which was this guy named Leon Ginsberg. And he talked about something that he learned from Leon that he applied for the rest of his life. He said he would entertain the class with humorous and exciting stories to illustrate teaching points. It was Mr. Ginsberg who first made me realize that learning could be fun, that it was easier to reach people, to hold their attention, to get points across with humor than any other way. It was a lesson I never forgot

and a lesson I've tried to apply to everything I do. So he's definitely, like like this book is pretty funny like he's very um And he comes off extremely likable even though he is extremely confident um I most people would consider him an arrogant person um, and again, i'm not That I don't really have a problem with that. I'd rather I'd rather you be who you are and if you're really deep down like an arrogant person,

like a lot of people let other people's personality kind of like distract them. So think about like how much we've learned collectively about Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, James Dyson, any of the people we covered. Do you think any of them are not arrogant? Like they may hide their arrogance. In the case of Steve Jobs jobs he definitely denied it but um i just i think you should learn from people that uh even people you disagree with you know not saying you have to go and act like you shouldn't be an ass or mean to people for no reason but i just think that um you have to be who you are and i prefer real arrogance over false

modesty and stan i mean I mean, you're going to see some of the stuff he names, like his projects and stuff. He definitely knew he was really good at what he was doing. All right, so this is his first jobs. He began a series of part-time jobs, including writing obituary notices for a news service. Now, he's probably, I think he's like 14, 15 years old at the time. Then that led to a job writing publicity for the National Tuberculosis Hospital, which is kind of weird. And then he also got a job at a movie theater being an usher. So he was just doing whatever.

He would take whatever work he could get at that time, even if he didn't like it. But in the case of the movie, being an usher is one of his favorite jobs. Okay, so this is now we're going to, he's graduated high school and we're in the year 1939. Stan is 17 years old. And this is how he finds his life work, his life's work. And the bulk of the podcast is going to be us reflecting on how he feels about his life's work, because I think that was the most fascinating part about the book and the most surprising to me. He says, my uncle Robbie told me that they might be able to use somebody at a publishing company where he worked.

The idea of being involved in publishing definitely appealed to me because he liked to read and write. I began working as a gopher for $8 a week at this small company located in the McGraw-Hill building at 42nd Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan. I didn't realize it at the time, but I have embarked on my life's career okay so this is how he becomes a comic book writer by accident then my big break happened as the number of comics expanded there was more work than Joe and Jack could handle these are the people working um the the place is called it changes names multiple times before it becomes uh marvel so i guess i

should bring that up um i didn't know stan lee is not technically a founder of marvel comics but as you'll see he worked there for 40 years he was the one he was the editor he was the man in charge doing everything else and most at the time most of the people. He was the man in charge doing everything else. And most at the time, most of the people that owned, like the company was sold five or six different times before Disney owns it. And they were just like shuffling executives. They didn't pay much attention to like the creative department, even though the creative department was the ones actually creating the products that gave them all the profits that they would collect. And they would say dumb things like, oh, business people are much more valuable than you stand. They would even talk down to them, which is really silly,

especially in today's day and age when we know that product is so important. And they say stuff like, oh, if I raise the price of a comic book from $0.12 to $0.15, that one act by me will make more make us more money than everything you do in a year and it's like well no it wouldn't because if you didn't have stan lee writing all these novels he's the one that came up with spider-man and all the and the fantastic four and the avengers and all these other people like you go out and play golf all day like you may own the company but you're definitely not the most important person there so to me i think and a lot of people when they think of of Marvel Comics, they think of Stan Lee. So just keep in mind, he didn't technically start the company.

I mean, he did get equity way, way, way later after getting screwed over a couple times, but he is the founder of Marvel for all intents and purposes. So at the time, I think it's called like, I can't remember. I didn't, oh, it's called Good Old, it's called Timely is the name of the company. So he's being a gopher and then they're like hey kid we have too much work to do will you write some stuff he's like yeah of course i would love to and so he says my first story appeared in captain america number three which was dated may 1941 his for uh my first actual

comic book script uh which was uh came two issues later in Captain America number five, which was dated in August 1941. I was barely out of high school and I was now a full-fledged comic book writer. Now, this is interesting because his real name is not Stan Lee. It's like Stan Lieber. And he's got – so one thing I think we – another thing i think we should all learn from stan is like if you're especially if you want to start your own thing you want to be an entrepreneur you want to be creative whether you want to run a run person business you want to run a giant company you just want to do your own thing and have freedom like i just think you should opt to opt you should opt

into optimism even if that's not your natural personality as because like if you're optimistic about your future possibilities then you have a chance of getting there but the people that right off the bat are negative and think oh it's never going to work and they come up with all the reasons not going to work well we know those are like self-fulfilling prophecies so being negative is a self-fulfilling prophecy doesn't mean being optimistic is a self-fulfilling prophecy but it gets you closer there than ever and stan was he had like um I called it hilarious levels of optimism. And you see this as a really young person. And this story illustrates this perfectly because he decides to come up with the name

Stan Lee because he didn't want to ruin his real name for when he writes the great American novel. He's 17 and this is how he's thinking. So he says, I had decided that nothing would stop me from one day writing the great American novel. Typical, isn't it? A guy gets a few comic book scripts under his belt and decides he's the next Hemingway. Being only 17 at the time and not yet having become the incredible, sophisticated, and knowledgeable super person that I am today. See, he says it in jest,

but he does really believe that he's special. And again, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I somehow felt it would not be seemly to take my name which was certain to one day win a pulitzer and sign it to a mere humble comic strip so context before i finish that comic book anybody worked in the comic book industry in the 1940s and at this around this time they were like embarrassed they would have been people like oh what do you do i'm a graphic illustrator or oh i'm a writer um because they were seen as like like just like there was no prestige there's a prestige and like if you wrote a novel or a book or if you had like a shiny nice magazine but comic books which is interesting because i'm going to get into and a little bit

like the sheer numbers that they sold which is just mind- boggling. I mean, 800,000 copies and an issue kind of thing. But it was still frowned upon and kind of like, you know what, it reminds me of when I read Anthony Bourdain's book, Kitchen Confidential, like now chefs are like, you know, like their show TV shows about them, we look up to them, people travel all over the world to eat their food. And he's like, that's not how it was. Anthony Bourdain was talking, he's like, that's not how it was when we started. Like, the restaurant industry was an industry of misfits and drug addicts and, you know, people that were way out of mainstream. It's funny, Danny Meyer, if you remember the podcast I did on him, he said very similar things. That's why even though he was in love with food and would love to own a restaurant, he never thought it was a possibility because he wanted, you know, people told him, oh, go be an attorney because it's more prestigious. And I saw, so I don't remember where it was a possibility because he wanted his you know people told him i'll go be an attorney because it's more prestigious um and i saw so i don't remember where it was but i think

i think i heard on a podcast somebody said like you know how you're you know you're doing the wrong thing is if you're doing anything for prestige i was like damn that's a really good simple idea um because that's the wrong motivating factor you shouldn't be doing it because what other people think about you. All right, so he's like, listen, I'm going to win a Pulitzer. I can't use his name. He says, thus, I was caught up in the fantasy of using a pen name, something suitable for strips, while saving my real name for the saga

that would make me immortal. And that's how Stan Lee was born. He actually eventually changes his name, so that's his real name okay um so there's a bunch of notes i left myself on here let me just read them so uh timing is critical the comic book business was booming uh plus impatience is a virtue plus a good idea so let's see what the hell i was talking about okay oh so this is crazy so um martin goodman is the guy he's martin goodman is married to stan's cousin that's how um that's the company starts working at and that's called timely at the time martin goodman i mean we'll see we'll learn more about him later

on but the way he described him he kept referring to him as his friend but the way he described like this you guys don't sound very friendly and i could see that they weren't really friendly but anyways um publishers he's a publisher he runs like other stuff he's comic books one of the things but he also like does like they call them like glossy or something like that like basically highly produced glossy magazines but check out the size of the market and this is still in the 1940s by the middle of the war meaning world war ii publishers were selling 25 million comic books a month that blew my mind i had no idea all right he says i've always been a fast writer mainly because of my impatience and wanting to get finished as soon

as possible so this is a description of what i meant earlier when he says that he um he didn't like writing but he likes having written also I'm a gregarious guy. I like being with people, talking to people, even arguing with people. But I can't do that when I'm writing. Writing is about as lonely as an activity as you can find. So that's why he's so fast. So I wrote my little training films and instructional. Oh, I'm sorry.

I skipped over something. He's working at Timely, but then he's drafted into the Army. And then he was convinced that he was going to go and he wanted to actually go so even if he wasn't drafted he would have signed up and maybe he did sign up i don't actually remember but the interesting part is he thought he was going to go fight and somehow he got classified as a playwright as a screen like a screenwriter and so there wasn't many screenwriters in the army so the army doesn't send him to fight they they have him they're like hey we need we have a bunch of conscripts people that like don't

have anything any idea what the military is about and we need to like train them so we they made um like films and instruction manuals and so that's what stan did and the good idea i mean is how he was able to keep his job at timely while he was still in the army we're gonna see that that ties into how fast he works he says uh so I wrote my little training films and instruction manuals the same as I've always written everything else, as fast as I could. I never expected that one day the officer in charge would tell me to take it easy because the others in our unit were turning out the material at a much slower pace. And I was making it look as if they were dragging their feet. Well, since I had to slow down, that left me with lots of spare time on my hands. And it was then that an idea hit me. If there wasn't enough military work for me,

I decided to outmaneuver the army by doing freelance scripts for Timely, for Timely Comics. Unlike many men who went to war, I didn't leave my job. I took it with me. Okay, so now I'm skipping ahead a little bit. And this is actually important, I think. Because we always talk about how almost all the people that we cover on the podcast were criticized heavily at the time. I don't know if Stan was criticized. I think most of his criticism was self-criticism, just feeling that he was wasting his time. But the note I left myself was there's always opportunity in things that will rot your brain. So I'm going to tell you what I mean about that.

And then this is a good way to tell you what I mean about that. And then this is a good way to not care what other people think. He says, while I really enjoyed my job and the stories I was writing, there was one thing that both irritated and frustrated me. It was the fact that nobody had a good word to say about comic books. Remember, this is still after the fact that it's still like $25 million a month. So part of me is like, Stan, just look at the sales numbers. They clearly enjoy it. But I think he was meaning the larger overall society. And I guess he says it here.

To the public at large, comics were at the very bottom of the cultural totem pole. Most of the adult world didn't buy them, didn't care about them, and didn't want their children to waste their time reading them. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't all bad because the next day I'd be immersed in a world of fantasy and imagination doing work that was fun and absorbing while many of the people who denigrated comics couldn't make that claim for themselves that's what that specific paragraph is what i mean about why you don't care what other people think if somebody's close to you somebody respects giving you constructive criticism that's one thing but the idea is like well you're you know i'm enjoying the work i do he's not making much money at the time most of the money's going to the man uh to the owner of the company unfortunately

but he's immersed in a world of fantasy and imagination and the people criticizing like he's loving what he's doing and most of the people are criticizing surely can't say the same thing and this whole idea about most adult worlds didn't want them buying them reading them i heard this idea and i took a note on it so let me pull that up for you real quick so this really interesting person i've come across on Twitter recently, he's been on a couple of podcasts. His name is Josh Wolf. He's an investor, I think, in Lux Capital. And he has this quote. Let me just read the quote from this podcast. He says, the most valuable words in investing are, it will rot your brain. When those words are uttered by a parent, it presages the next $10 billion industry.

And so he goes and gives examples throughout time. He says to rock and roll in like the 70s, TV in the 80s, the internet, video games. I would add comic books to that. Because think about how valuable, we're still in the 40s, maybe the 50s at this point in the book. And now fast forward 60 years later,

whatever the case is, 70 years whatever it is and um you know is there how valuable is the comic book like just take marvel alone like the intellectual property that marvel has developed you're talking about they've made what tens of billions of dollars if not more probably no it's gotta be more than that between all the comic books, strips, newspaper. They even turned them into like a daily newspaper strip that Stan Lee was doing for like 20 years every day. Just the amount of money it would generate is fascinating.

So that 10 billion number is actually a little low. Okay, skipping, skipping. Okay, so there's two important things in this one paragraph first this is going to be Stan's advice on writing and then as we see with most uh most of the people that go on to do uh amazing things they studied the history of their profession whether they read books about it like Elon Musk suggests that's where part of where I got the idea to do this podcast because when Elon was asked hey like how did you learn about business did you you read business books? He's like, no, I look for help in a historical context, books, basically, like biographies. And are you learning from people like in their profession that came before them?

So Stan studied the great writers. He said, now this is the co-author George describing Stan's advice to writing. He says, Yet his advice to writers was sound then and remains so now. It is boiled down to these rules. One, have a provocative beginning. Two, use smooth continuity from panel to panel. Three, concentrate on realistic dialogue, which leads to good characterization.

Four, maintain suspense throughout. And five, provide a satisfying ending. That pretty much well sums it up the way Euphrates, Shakespeare, and Hemingway did it. And of course, it was the way Stan endeavored to do it all during his career. Okay, so now we have here Stan reflecting on, he's still in the thick of it. Again, comic books are selling, but they're not really respected. And self-doubt is the largest,

I mean, this is a biography on Stan Lee, and I think his co-star is the self-doubt, which is fascinating considering how successful what he created turns out to be. But he has this point, he's like, listen, I don't want a copy. I want to create. And unfortunately, he's working for somebody that somebody that only gives like they don't care about what they're doing they just want to make a dollar and they'll do that by first seeing what other people are doing and then quickly copying so he says i was writing many if not most of the

stories and admit i enjoyed the variety yet i said to myself none of this is making an impression on anybody we were reasonably successful we made made some money, but what bothered me is that we were always following the trends, never setting them. That changes later, and I'll tell you more about that. Martin Goodman, that's the company he worked for, would merely check the sales figures of all the various comic book companies, see what was selling well, and then say to me, you know, Stan, everyone else's knitting stories seem to be selling well, so let's do books about knitting. Then at some later date, he'd say the funny animal books are doing well, so we'd switch to funny animal books. That sounds like a terrible place to work,

doesn't it? It went on and on and on. Every few months, a new trend, and we'd be right there faithfully following each one. I hated that word, following. Even though it was a good job and I enjoyed working with all the artists and other writers, it really wasn't creatively fulfilling. I felt that we were a company of copycats. We'd see what type of comics were selling well, and then we'd flood the market with new titles in that same vein. But it was a job, I was good at it, and things could have been worse. So I just stayed with it, occasionally wondering where it was all leading to. I could never have imagined how it would all shake out. Okay, now he's got more advice.

So maybe this is a better way to put it. So, well, first he talks about why he can work so fast. So let me get there first. He says, I was doing so much of the writing myself, and if I may be totally candid, I'm my own biggest fan. Since I liked everything I wrote, there wasn't that much editing needed. So I've been using the words confidence, arrogance, whatever you want to use, optimism. I think that's a better way to put it.

Like what I was really trying to get to is like, especially if you're standing outside of the norm and you want to do something different, something that's just not copying, like the tracks that are laid down for everybody else. Like I don't see a reason not to be your own biggest fan. Even if you're not like you may not be producing the quality of work that you want to now, but being your own biggest fan, like assuming you're not like lazy and giving up, like you can grow into that quality.

And I just, I don't know i think stan hit on something it's weird because he's his own biggest fan and at the same time simultaneously he's he's doubtful that his life's work means anything so this is um just another reminder we're hearing some of his inner monologue here before he becomes a stanley we all know that it took him time to realize that he's already found what he should be doing with his life. And that was just mind blowing to me. Not knowing his life story before this, you know, it's perfectly normal to have doubts. Stan Lee had doubts for four decades. Oh, maybe not four, 30 years, whatever it is close to that. It's a long time. He says the two things I didn't love about my life for the one hour commute and the feeling that I wasn't getting ahead

the way I should be. The haunting feeling that I was only a moderately successful hack. Think about that. Think about how he's describing himself. That's insane, right? That's what I mean about the reason it's so, I love the fact that human nature doesn't change.

He felt this way in the, let's say this 1950s we're in now. There's people in present day that feel that way. And in 150 years from now, there'll still be people that feel the same way. It's really like sometimes when I feel anxiety or I'm unsure, like I pause and I'm like, David, it's not just happening to you. This feeling you're having is part of the human condition. It's been happening in the past.

It will happen in the future. So don't let it freak you out calm down write out your feelings if you need to write down like what's bothering you and then you know what i love the um that henry kaiser quote like problems are just opportunities and we're close like but feeling miserable about it is not helping anything i understand it's calm it's like natural it's a natural like part of being human but i feel like that looking at things like stepping outside myself and looking back and like okay oh i'm anxious okay well most humans are anxious and they they always will be most likely um so what are we going to do about it i, this guy's calling himself, I was only a moderately successful hack. So why, I mean, if he feels that way, why wouldn't we, right? Waiting for some elusive big break and the chance to get out of comics and into the real world. This is such an important sentence coming up. What I didn't understand at that point in my life was that comics were the real world to me.

And he's not going to understand that for quite some time. We're still early in the book. All right. Okay. Well, we're in like the middle of the book. Okay. And that's funny. I didn't even, a few pages later,

I'm looking at the note. I left myself. You ever feel like you're wasting your life? Stan Lee felt that way too. And so we're going to see more of that here. As time went by, one problem that kept gnawing at me had nothing to do with the comic book characters or plots, but rather with the plot of my own life. I was still feeling more and more frustrated and discouraged. I realized I was almost 40 years old and still doing comic books. Was that what a grown man, a husband and father should

seriously be doing? I told Joni, that's his wife, how I felt and she was totally sympathetic. She said she could understand if I felt burned out. After all, she knew how many years I'd been working at the same job and she knew how much pressure I was constantly under to turn out script after script. She also understood that I felt somewhat like a DJ in a small town. I was sitting at the mic getting the message out, but was anybody listening? Did anybody care? I felt I was wasting my adult life and whatever little talent I might possess on a job that wasn't all that meaningful. I was just making a living, nothing more. This is a dangerous thing about our mind. Our mind plays tricks on us. It caught like we have these little seeds of self-doubt, of anxiety, of depression that can

sit there. And again, I'm just going to keep bringing this up on the podcast because like I know people that are listening to this feel that way too. I've felt that way, and I'm sure I will in the future, but it's not real. That is not actually happening. You have to step back and learn from using history as giving yourself additional context and realize that everybody feels this way,

even if they're not going to talk to you about it. I mean, we're really lucky that Stan Lee has been so honest. And there is something to be said about a lot of the autobiographies that we've covered on the podcast, where they usually get to a certain age where they reflect back. And it's not all glorifying.

Look how special I am. I created Nike, or I created Walmart, or I created Marvel. It's they all talk about the regrets they had, the stuff they wish they could have done differently. And I think that's super valuable because by that age, the past is done. You can't really do anything about it. But if we understand that most people have these regrets

and they're usually the same kind of regrets over and over again, usually, you know, I wish I spent more time with family. Maybe I didn't work. Maybe we shouldn't have worked as hard, et cetera, et cetera, or worked as much rather. It's inevitable if we're not heeding that advice that we're going to feel the same way. And I think like, that's one thing I don't want to want, want to do. I don't want to have a lot of regrets when I'm older and you probably don't either. Okay. Skipping ahead. Oh, he's got some great, he's just such a, he's an amazing writer. Even like even like go back to like let me go back to the

beginning because i want to read that too i wasn't planning on doing this but i can't i want to save that i'm gonna take a picture of this um the way he describes his what he describes i'm gonna read what he uh how he describes marvel comics because listen to the wordsucopia, swashbuckling, humdrum, prosaic, and dip it as feast of the mind. So it says, Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and the prosaic. It's a serendipitous feast for the mind,

the eye, and the imagination, a literate celebration of unbridled creativity, coupled with a touch of rebellion and the insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon whatever you say about that uh paragraph if you like it or you don't you're gonna remember it and i think he was extremely good at marketing and promotion he a lot of the books actually dedicated to the fact that he felt his bosses didn't know anything about it so for an example the why where he came up with that weird excelsior motto he started at a time he's marvel's the first one company to um to realize hey we have a lot of fans why don't we create some kind of club where

we can communicate with them and then we get special things like pins and letters from me and like behind the scenes of how we make the um the comic books they love um it winds up being really successful and then his boss made him shut it down because they were short-sighted and silly um but he he's talked about how he would communicate with his family just like like like a person like i didn't talk like a business because i'm not a business i'm a person so he started using these words and he noticed other comic book companies copy that so they would use like his folksy language he's like well now I need something like I clearly see they're they're stealing from me copying from me rather and um I need like I need to make it obvious so that's why he went to latin he's like well if they use the word excelsior then we clearly know that they're saying hey I got this idea from stan um okay so anyways

I just went on a weird tangent because this is a great sentence. Sometimes mediocrity can be as disappointing as failure. The experience taught me an important lesson. I learned that a person's opinion isn't necessarily right just because he happens to have an important title or be the head of a company. I was determined never to try to create something according to somebody else's lights if i didn't feel comfortable doing it so it's more of the um like allowing other people to to infringe upon his like creative outlet he wanted to do like a like a comic strip um about like a big city new york cop because he grew up and lived in manhattan for most of his life so that's what he felt he knew and then he was other people um convinced

him to change it to like a um it was going to be something called barney's beat like you know the cop beat and then they changed it to like a instead of a hip big city cop uh they wanted barney to be a small town mailman and it was called a Willie Lumpkin and he was just this is terrible and he's like I'm making work that I don't give a crap about and that's why he comes up with sometimes mediocre mediocrity can be as disappointing as failure okay so now we've got to the turning point of Stan's life remember most of the book he's talking about interesting things he creates but then he shares multiple examples of just complete dissatisfaction with his life.

So this is a turning point of his life. By the early 1960s, my urge to quit the comic book field had become stronger than ever. So think about that. He was, let's see, when was he born? Let's check real quick. Oh, no. I Googled to pull up his wikipedia page to find his birthday one of the headlines is stanley's former business manager charged with elder abuse against late icon that's terrible

uh okay so 20 19 22 yeah 19 20 okay so he's almost 40 years old before he reaches the turning point of his life it's actually a really important part of the book. I'm going to read a lot from here. Okay, so my urge to quit the comic book field had become stronger than ever. The titles were no longer selling the large numbers they once did. As far as I could tell, the comic book industry was in trouble. I felt we were merely doing the same type of thing over and over again, with no hope of either greater financial rewards or creative satisfaction. But as so often happens, a tiny, almost unnoticed, pivotal event can change the course of a person's life. This particular pivotal event was a chance golf game between Martin Goodman,

remember that's the guy that owns the company, and Jack Leibowitz, the publisher of National Comics. Leibowitz casually mentioned to Martin that a new series that National had introduced, the Justice League of America, consisting of a team of superheroes including Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman all in one book, was selling surprisingly well. He thought it might indicate a resurgence of readers' interest in the superhero genre, especially in teams of superheroes. He rushed in to see me as soon as he returned to the office. Stan, he said excitedly,

can you come up with a team of superheroes like the Justice League? Now, how crazy is this? This is happening in 1961. That is, of course, he's going to come up with the Avengers, and the Avengers will now, let's see, 70, 80, 90, 50 years later, become the most popular, the highest grossing movies of all time coincidentally it was that very afternoon that i had been planning to tell him that i wanted to leave the company i finally decided i was getting tooled to be turning out simplistic

comic books day after day that's what he means about an unnoticed pivotal event can change your life martin caught me off guard with his enthusiasm for creating a new superhero title he was so fired up about it that i couldn't bring myself to tell him i wanted out i decided to let it go the next day and this is when he gets an absolute genius um piece of advice from his wife that changes his life and changes now after after this day sam are stamped stan um becomes from being like doubt like doubting he was doing right and miserable, like just being like this hack, he called himself, to just saying, you know what, I don't have nothing left to get.

Like I have zero fucks left to give, and now I'm just going to do things how I want to do it. And this becomes the birth of the Marvel Universe because of what he does here. She goes, so that night I told Joanie of my decision. She was completely supportive, but then she added something I hadn't thought of. You know, Stan, if Martin wants you to create a new group of superheroes, this could be your chance for you to do it the way you've always wanted to. You could dream up plots that have more depth and substance to them

and create characters who have interesting personalities, who speak like real people. That's such a key. Then she said something that should have occurred to me right away, and it was the thing that made up my mind. Remember, you've got nothing to lose by doing the book your way. The worst that can happen is that Martin will get mad and fire you, but you want to quit anyway. So what's the risk? At least you've gotten it out of your system. That did it. My mind was made up up so then this is the birth of him writing

superheroes before that you know they were all perfect they'd be like you have the superman he's he's good looking he has no uh like very few weaknesses handsome strong etc etc he starts making these people that are kind of neurotic um like the fantastic four where the lead guy is like he's like a uh he talks too much he annoys the people around him um you like, he's like, he talks too much. He annoys the people around him. You got Thing who's like this ugly creature. You have Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who's like has the same insecurities that all teenagers have.

And it's not good with girls and all this other stuff that kind of makes them more human. Like they just happen to have weird you know powers um okay so this is an example of what i was saying earlier about i understand that most people prefer modesty um but i'm not necessarily sure if i believe that's the best um the best advice for entrepreneurs are people that are being creative um and i don't mean like so so to me, when people are saying like, if people are not humble enough, I think like you could be extremely confident like Stan Lee was,

but still be humble in the sense that like, to me, humility is the understanding that like you don't know everything and you can still learn from other people. So you could be confident in your abilities and still be receptive that other people and other events have stuff to teach you. So it says stan was and this is an example of like this guy clearly he had a high level of like he was his own biggest fan he's already told us that right so stan was a bundle of optimism after launching his new group

of superheroes he started telling everyone who'd listen that the fantastic four was going to be known as the best superhero comic book ever produced. Come on. That is hilarious. And he does this extremely early. Watch this. It arguably attained that exalted status by the time it reached the third issue, at which point Stan began to think his braggadocio might actually have been too modest. Therefore, on the cover of issue number three, he dared to print, in the hyperbole he so dearly loved, these imperishable words above the masthead, the world's greatest comic magazine. He did that, what is this, 1960s? So in my other hand, you can't see, I have a book. So the book in my left hand, published in 2002. That's his first autobiography. The second hand published in 2002 that's his first autobiography

the second one where he talked about his first autobiography he's gonna have to write another one so he did but he doesn't write it's a 2015 in that hand it's one of the most beautiful books i didn't know um it's written like a graphic novel so um i might just i might just do this like a bonus misfit episode for you guys since your support means everything to me. But anyways, I mean, listen to what he named his memoir. Amazing, fantastic, incredible. A marvelous memoir. I mean, this guy's hilarious.

He's really hilarious. So, yeah, that's the same kind of personality that will say, hey, on issue number three, he wound up being close to right. The world's greatest comic magazine. But he makes a good point here. He's like, listen, there are no hard and fast rules concerning greatness, a condition which is generally in the eye of the beholder. I thought it was one of the best things we had done to date, and I wanted the world to know it.

That's actually a good point. Like no one's going to agree on what's greatest. It's subjective. So why don't you just say that if you believe in the work that you're doing, and he was definitely a marketer and a promoter, like it's going to get people's attention. That's why you go to any city anywhere. It's like the world's greatest pizza, the world's best bagel,

America's best this. It's like, come on, man. That's not real, but it's surprisingly effective. All right. Let's see. Okay, so this is actually... So I have this quote. I say it all the time.

I clearly have borrowed it from somebody else. I don't remember who or where now at this time. But I always tell people, humans score in the abstract. And there's weird value in things that are not just numbers. So he starts this wildly successful um basically he thought he's like why why doesn't marvel have something that's like the what was it called the disney had the mickey mouse club like a club where like you're basically a super fan of it it's actually interesting that he compares marvel to disney considering

the decade and a half later or whatever um dis buys Marvel. But what I mean about human score in the abstract is he had this great idea. He's like, listen, we have a massive enthusiastic community we need to cultivate. And now think about every single company nowadays is trying to build that same thing. They're trying to build a community because you realize that that's a great pathway

to building a business in the modern age. Well, Stan understood that a long time ago. Anyways, so he had two of them. One was like the MMMS, like Mighty Marvel something or another society. And then another one, after that one was canceled, he did it again. It's called Foom, Friends of Old Marvel. Both times, the number crunchers at Marvel saw no reason to continue. It wasn't losing money, but it wasn't a profit center. And it's just like, well, there's no way no reason to continue it wasn't losing money but it wasn't

a profit center and it's just like well there's no way for you to track it at that time whether it was a profit center or not like it was abstraction you had to just believe in it well people they're okay they're not creative they're incapable of thinking that way and this is a lot of humans they just score in the abstract it's like oh um it's a weird thing if it's not like tangible right in front of us, like this has a price on it or this is a return, they get confused by it. But Stan's like, no, I really believe in my heart.

This is where we should be spending resources that it will pay off in the future. Very much sounds like a Jeff Bezos quote or like a Mark Spitznagel quote if you listen to the Dow Capital one. So it says, it's a shame. I always felt that Marvel could have and should have one day rivaled Disney if only those who controlled the purse strings had understood the

value of promotion and public relations. We had what every company dreamt of having, a fervent fanatical fan following all over the country and throughout the world. Yet nobody in the executive suites knew what to do with the invaluable resources except just keep publishing the books and hope they'd sell. They didn't seem to understand the value of having a great fan base they didn't seem to realize it was necessary to nurture those fans to keep their loyalty and enlist their support they never seemed to be aware of how vital it was to maintain contact with those who cared about us because fans can be the most elusive ephemeral group in the world and the suits didn't get it now i'd also say it's interesting how this kind of phenomenon

this abstraction can compound over time if more if you just try to do an avengers today movie and nobody knew what it was wouldn't sell but the fact that you've been building on these stories and increasing the fan base and and constantly producing more stories involving the same characters allows it to build to the point where you can you can have the highest grossing movie or one of the you know most popular attractions or whatever uh it is and these like you just have no idea how much um like value that is to people you know these things like we we cannot predict what we're what what like what we're passionate about and what and how those passions affect us later in life so he's talking about like even um in the first when they did the first like fan club the mmms you would get like a

pin right and like people would wear them on their shirts and stuff like that um and so later on stands like going into a meeting with with uh meeting to do a joint venture with another company. And the people that called in the meeting that came up with the idea, he walks in. He's meeting with four people. Every single one of them was a member of the MMS. And they still had their pin like 30 years later. How valuable is that? Now this guy is getting an opportunity three decades in the future Because he had an impact on somebody else's life

30 years prior So I would just say If you believe in The human element of it And you should Because you have to be good at entrepreneurship I think you have to understand Fundamentally understand people

It's probably worth reinvesting in things That do not have any immediate return not probably there definitely is um okay so now he's really happy now he's back he's like i found it he starts doing spider-man and the fantastic four and then um this is just a note i've already trampled over this note but i'll read it anyways breaks box office records 55 years later in 1963 we also gifted the reading public with the avengers it was another team of superheroes but not new ones and then think about how crazy this is he came up with avengers out of laziness he said probably

out of laziness instead of dreaming up a whole new caboodle of new characters i simply took our already established and popular characters and had them form a team called the Avengers. I thought that was interesting. One, the time aspect of it, but second, it's like, ah, I can make new characters or I can just create new stories based on how other characters relate to one another, which again is just a reflection of human. Think about all the different humans that you interact with and how those relationships then interact with each other. You act differently with maybe your spouse to your best friend to your co-workers to

you know the people you play sports with or whatever the case is um okay now he's going to give us a lesson in human nature and it's you know he gets basically screwed over by Martin Goodman. And we're going to get in there. So this is in 1968. They changed the name from Timely to Marvel because Marvel was now, as a result, Stan's work was making the vast majority of the money. And Goodman decides he wants to sell. So he says, Martin told me that Perfect Film was offering him between $12 and $15 million in cash from Marvel. And that's $12 to $15 million in 1968 dollars. So it's a lot of money today. It's a lot of money even at those numbers. But here's the kicker. Perfect told Martin they wouldn't buy the company unless I signed a contract to stay on.

Well, yeah, he's doing all the work, the vast majority of the work. One of my closest friends, who happened to be a brilliant businessman, told me I was in a great position since my being under contract was, quote, of the essence for the sale being made. He said I could ask Martin for almost anything and he would have to give it to me. And this is Stan's response. Are you kidding? Martin may have his faults, but he's a friend. I worked for him for 20 years. I know he'll be fair. Oh, really? You, Stan, have not learned. So he goes to have dinner after the sale. Remember, Martin's married to his cousin. So it's Martin, Stan's cousin, and Stan and his wife. Martin puts his arm around Stan. He says, Stan, I'll see to it that you and Joni will never have to want for anything as long as you live. I'm going to make you a gift of some valuable warrants, which he said were somewhat like stock options. I figured,

at last, this is my pot of gold. He's keeping his promise. As time went by, the warrants proved to be absolutely worthless. But what was even worse, although he said he would, he never actually gave them to me. Nor did he ever in any way make good on the promise that Joni and I would never want for anything as long as we live. No bonus, no bonds, no warrants, either worthless or otherwise. Zilch. I guess there's a lesson to be learned there somewhere. So think about that. This guy gets unbelievably wealthy off of Stan's work and doesn't give him anything. Not a dollar. Nothing.

And then leaves the company two years later. Oh, so he's about to leave the company. And now Marvel's been bought over and over again. So I'm not even going to tell you the names, I guess. So this other company buys it and they morph into another conglomerate called Cadence. So he's still working for Cadence at the time. And Cadence decides, hey, we're going to give you a promotion, Stan, because you're so important. You're going to become a publisher.

And a publisher was basically what Martin was, right? So Stan's like, no, this is fantastic. Martin, let me just read it to you. But once again, Martin proved what a friend and grateful guy he was. He tried every way he could to prevent my becoming publisher because he had been hoping to give that job to his son. Still, despite all Martin can do, Cadence named me publisher of Marvel Comics. What I'm about to tell you now is still hard after all these years for me to accept,

but I swear it's true. When my promotion was announced, Martin actually had the gall to accuse me of disloyalty, of betraying him after all he had done for me. That is a tale as old as time. Remember, I always talk about this idea that we're not rational creatures. We're rationalizing. And those two are very different things. We can't help but see things from our selfish perspective. Needless to say, by this time, I didn't care what Martin said or thought. I was finally free to do what I always felt I could and should have done with Marvel. And that was all that mattered. It freed me up to begin devoting myself to promoting Marvel as it always felt it should be promoted. I wanted to bring our company

to the next plateau to make it the next disney so then he hires a bunch of writers editors um he gets away from writing you know basically all day non-stop and he goes out and promotes and for 10 years this is why we know stan lee he would give like speeches to groups of people whether it's like colleges any anywhere he could and he would he was on the road for like 50 weeks out of 52 weeks a year, just giving speeches, promoting Marvel, talking about that, cultivating fan bases all over the world, which was extremely, extremely smart on his behalf. And you could only imagine if they had been doing this forever, what the results would

have been. I mean, Marvel's a huge success story, a wonderful story, but it took, you know, Stan going out and talking to him. He did things that didn't scale using that famous essay, do things that don't scale. Okay. This is interesting, real quick. Just the power of direct sales,

that I think a lot of people skip out on by the end of the 1970s comic books were so popular that stores specializing comic books opened in neighborhoods throughout the country i remember going to some of these when i was a kid in the comic book trade the this distribution channel was called direct sales as opposed to the normal distribution system of a distributor bringing comic books to the usual general magazine outlet. So they're having their own dedicated channel now instead of being lumped in with these other printed materials. Spotting a new booming market, Marvel actively focused on this sector. So he does things. This is really smart how he talks about it. Well, the result

too is this increased Marvel sales by an additional 420,000 books a month. The size. I still cannot get over how many of these. I mean, I just can't get over how much they sold. It's insane. It says, one of the best things about direct sales was the fact that the comic book store. This is a good point. I finally got to it.

One of the best things about direct sales was the fact that the comic book store owners were Marvel's most effective salespeople. Stan felt he had a good product, but at convenience stores or newsstands, it was lost among hundreds of other items. In contrast, the buyers who walk into a comic book store are already pre-sold. They come in with the intention of buying a comic book. The question is not will they buy a comic, but how many and which ones. Marvel began, and then he does something really smart. Marvel began publishing comic books exclusively for the direct sales market,

which gave the store owners still another reason to promote the company that was giving them an exclusive product that couldn't be purchased anywhere else. So not only do you have a complete alignment of incentives and realizing that the most effective salespeople possible are the people that are working there because you have like a passion, a passionate person about it, but then you're adding on to that and giving them, like rewarding them for doing that and what's going to happen.

It like feeds everything else. So not only are you going to sell the ones that you do that are just produced exclusively for the sales channel but all the other ones as well so it says which gave the store owner still another reason to promote the company that was giving them an exclusive product that couldn't be purchased anywhere else marvel helped the dealers and the dealers reciprocated it seemed to be a powerful strategy and then i'll close on this and i think this is a really important part of the story the fact that you know 30 40 years of struggle and self-doubt, Stan's writing these words at almost 80,

and I think he finally arrived at the holy grail, the thing that we're all looking for, to have work that's so meaningful and enjoyable that you want to keep doing it. And to that point, some final words from the life and wisdom of Stan Lee. The toughest part is, how will I know where to end it? At what part of my life should I wrap it up? Since I'm still insanely involved with a whole caboodle of projects,

at what point should I write the end? A person's career isn't like a movie. As long as you're alive, there's no dramatic fade-out shot, accompanied by suitable music as a credits roll. And I'll be damned if I'll shrug off this mortal coil just to furnish you with a dramatic ending. Of course, I could always just retire, and that would give the book a nice, warm, uncomplicated ending. In fact, people are always asking when I plan to retire. I always ask them, retire to what? Most people retire in order to finally do the things they really want to do, but I'm already doing them.

I can't think of anything better than tackling new movies, TV projects, with a bunch of talented, enthusiastic, creative people. So I'll leave a link in the show notes if you want to buy this or any of the other books that I've covered on the podcast. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for the support. And I will talk to you next week.