JUST A FEW DAYS after the $54 million opening week-end of X-Men – a film based on one of Stan Lee’s countless Marvel Comics creations – the real, live, profoundly influential comic-book hero is in his office looking youthful, sharp and even kind of hot for an old dude.

He’s also busy, having recently agreed to engage in a major act of comics glasnost: He’s going to the other side, DC Comics, and doing a new series in which he will reinvent his lifelong competition’s characters. In the comic world, this represents a stunning, even shocking turn of events, like Magneto joining the X-Men. Not, mind you, that taking the comic medium into the future on StanLee.net, the online home of some of his latest creations, wasn’t time-consuming enough.

Still, Lee is squeezing in a visit from Kevin Smith this afternoon. Smith, the wildly gifted filmmaker (Clerks, Chasing Amy, Dogma) and devoted comic-book enthusiast, is such a fan that he enlisted Lee to play himself in his 1995 movie, Mallrats.

“Holy cow, Kevin,” says Lee, greeting the filmmaker in his San Fernando Valley offices. “How are you? You look terrible.”
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SMITH: For those with no clue as to how deeply integral you have been to pop culture for the past fifty-plus years, can you take a moment and list some of the major characters that you had a hand in creating?

LEE: The Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, the Avengers, Daredevil, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, Nick Fury and the Silver Surfer.

SMITH: People who don’t even read comics have heard of those characters.

LEE: Only because I’ve been shout-ing the names around.

SMITH: You really are the ambassador of the comic-book world.

LEE: I’m a huckster. My wife, Joan, says, “I married a goddamn flimflam man.” Don’t put in “goddamn.”

SMITH: When you list all those characters, do you go back to the moment you created them?

LEE: I can’t remember coming up with them. We didn’t know there was anything special. It was a job. I was trying to make a living. I hoped they would sell so they would keep paying me. The funny thing is, I have been creating characters all my life, but they never caught on like the superheroes. For years I did stuff like Tessie the Typist and Hedy of Hollywood.

SMITH: How did you get along with the artists who brought your ideas to life? Because we should say, in all fairness, you are a writer. Some people who don’t know comic books think you just draw comics.

LEE: I work with artists. I had the best artists. I didn’t have to be that good. I had artists who were geniuses. I had artists who – I could give them two words, and they would draw the whole story. All I had to do was put in the dialogue,and I loved doing it that way. Like doing a crossword puzzle.

SMITH: Now you’re going to DC for the first time ever. You’re going to do a reinterpretation of Superman – as if Stan Lee created Superman – Batman, Wonder Woman. We’re kind of taking a little trip back in time, as if you had been on the DC staff versus the Marvel staff.

LEE: Exactly. But it’s not a reinterpretation; it’s basically what I would have done if I had created such characters.

SMITH: How does it feel going over there? Some people wonder, “How could he bear to go work for the competitor?”

LEE: No, we were very friendly. It was nice. We were in the same business. A lot of people think I have defected from Marvel; I haven’t at all. I’m still with Marvel. This is just one offer that was made to me that I don’t think any writer could resist. I am now the chairman emeritus of Marvel. I love Marvel. And I don’t think me doing these books is going to hurt Marvel at all. It’s just such a provocative assignment. If some good will come of it, I’m delighted.

SMITH: Comics being the young man’s game it’s supposed to be these days, is its daunting task to be jumping into the other person’s sandbox and playing with their characters at this point in your life?

LEE: This may sound terrible, but I have never felt daunted by anything. The only thing that worries me – and I’m very worried about this – is getting the time to do it. I finally wrote the outline for the Wonder Woman story, and I want to use the Marvel Method – so after that comes the art. I sent the outline to Jim Lee, and he already sent me about ten pages of art, which I wrote the text for. I wrote it in a couple of hours. The artwork looks beautiful. If I were daunted by doing things, I would be daunted now with StanLee.net, because almost every day I’m doing something new that I haven’t done before. I didn’t know anything about writing for the Internet.

SMITH: In the last year, Stan Lee enjoyed big success. X-Men was just released – big success. StanLee.net – huge. A Spider-Man movie is finally heading into production. And now you’re doing the whole DC crossover thing. How old are you?

LEE: Seventy-seven, but I’m a late model.

SMITH: Most people are retiring at seventy-seven. How do you top it? What do you do next year?

LEE: That’s what’s fun: You just never know.

SMITH: I would imagine the vitality that it all breeds is phenomenal. You don’t look seventy-seven. You don’t behave seventy-seven. You don’t sound seventy-seven.

LEE: I’ve been very lucky. I’ve always worked with people where age didn’t matter. I mean, right now, my staff of artists, they’re all young. But even when I work with old guys, they act young and they think young. In our business, I don’t know how you can get old. You’re telling stories to people and you’re having fun. I think you get old when you don’t enjoy your work. People ask why I don’t retire. I tell them, “Retire from what?” I’m playing, I’m not working.

SMITH: Final question, and this is for all the adults who have been reading comics forever. Is The Thing’s dick made of orange rock like the rest of his body?

LEE: Your guess is as good as mine.

SMITH: Stan, you have to know. You were there. You were the guy.

LEE: Well, let’s assume that it is, because that’s sort of a fun fact to play with.

SMITH: Finally – on the record.