Word: stan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Peter Parker would understand. A mortal man, going about his mortal business, is bitten by a bug--a special, powerful bug--and it changes his life. Only the bug that bit Stan Lee isn't radioactive; it's interactive. With the print-comics industry besieged by villains (the rapacious Sega! the Pokemon league of doom!), the co-creator of the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Parker's alter ego, Spider-Man, is taking comics online. (Insert "Web"-slinging pun here...
...nearly 60 years, Lee, 77, was a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, a comics-world superstar and creative pioneer beloved of cultural critics and artists like Federico Fellini. Now, overseeing artists and techies at the Encino, Calif., offices of Stan Lee Media, the lanky, spry Lee is crafting his first new characters in 25 years--and recrafting himself as a new-media baron. "When I got into comics, it was the early days of the industry, and it was all new," says Lee. "Here's another chance for me to get in at the beginning...
Here's what else is really cool. Since the company began trading publicly last August, Lee's stake has earned him more money than he made in a lifetime with Marvel, testimony to the Web's ability to transmute famous names into cash. Stan the Man is now Stan the Brand...
That too is a second chance. Lee had a lifetime contract, which made him a salaried employee--"high salaried," he grants--without ownership of the lucrative characters he created. But when Marvel went into bankruptcy in 1996 (it emerged in 1998), his contract was voided, and associate Peter Paul--Stan Lee Media's co-founder--helped him cut a new deal. Today Lee is Marvel's chairman emeritus ("Whatever the hell that means") and devotes about 10% of his time to that company. He and Paul soon lined up partnerships with such firms as IBM and Macromedia, which supplies...
...work (Still waiting for that pun! --Ed.), he's developing a new incarnation of Mighty Mouse for Viacom and executive-producing a summer movie based on the X-Men. But Lee has a bigger target still. "I know it sounds silly," he says, "but I hope we can make Stan Lee Media so big and prosperous that we can eventually buy Marvel." Silly? Last week his company's stock hit an all-time high, its market capitalization of $311.7 million eclipsing Marvel's $197 million. If The 7th Portal doesn't make people believe there's magic in cyberspace, Stan...