Thursday, May 15, 2008

By PATRICK MACIAS

Stan Lee is the co-creator of some of the most loved comic-book characters of all time. As head writer and editor in chief at Marvel Comics during the 1960s and early '70s, Lee presided over the birth of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the superheroes that populate this summer's Hollywood blockbusters "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk." Having transformed the landscape of the American comic book, Lee, now age 85, has set his sights on Japanese anime and manga.

New adventure: The title page from Stan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei's U.S.-Japan manga collaboration Ultimo © 2008 by Stan Lee - POW! Entertainment/Dream Ranch/Hiroyuki Takei/Shuseisha Inc.

From the offices of his POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment company in Beverly Hills, Lee, born Stanley Lieber, explains: "I've been to Japan a number of times. I love the country. I love the people and I love what they do." He continues in his usual affable tenor, immediately recognizable to millions of comic fans from many appearances in public and movie cameos. "I've gotten together with a number of Japanese people who have ideas for comics and animation, and I've had ideas — and before you know it, we've decided we're going to do some things together."

Lee's first foray into writing manga is "Ultimo," a robot-versus-robot story drawn by Hiroyuki Takei (creator of the popular "Shaman King"), which debuted in the pages of manga magazine Jump SQ.II in April. While simultaneously pursuing a host of projects with Disney and Virgin back in the United States, the busy Lee has also signed on for a new anime TV series for Japan called "Hero Man," to be animated by studio BONES, home of the hit "Full Metal Alchemist." With the manga industry battered by flagging sales at home and anime hit hard by piracy abroad, it's easy to see why Japanese companies are eager to court a man with a track record for creating characters that stick in the public's imagination. But Lee, ever a collaborator in comics and other media, is not working in a vacuum.

"Every one of these projects is based on my original idea, but obviously I'm not going to write everything," says Lee. "I come up with the basic concept and the Japanese and I discuss it together. They take my story but put it into their style, which makes it a true collaboration."

Lee, along with artist Jack Kirby, ushered in the "Marvel Age of Comics" in 1961 with the debut of the first issue of "The Fantastic Four." The immediate success of his new batch of superheroes came as a surprise to Lee, who, with two decades in the comics industry already to his name, was growing eager to leave. "Unfortunately, comics got off to a bad start in America," he remembers. "When they started, the publishers felt that they were for very little children or for grownups who were semiliterate, and they had no respect for their audience. Consequently, they never bothered to structure a well-written plot, they never cared about keeping the dialogue realistic, and they didn't worry much about characterization. They just tried to get a lot of pictures of action and figured that would hold the reader's interest. It was only years later, when I think Marvel Comics started publishing stories geared to older, more intelligent readers, that the comic book business began to expand. And now comic books are totally different than they were years ago; they have a lot more respect, mainly because so many multimillion-dollar movies are based on comic book characters."

Yet even as superhero movies dominate at the box office, American comics now sell only a fraction of the millions of copies Marvel moved in their '60s heyday. Instead, kids around the world are far more likely to read comics from Japan: manga. But Lee says, "I'm really not surprised at all. People get bored easily and they're always seeking out things that are different, provided they are well done. Manga has a totally different look to it than the average American comic book. It has a different style and its own mystique. And the fact that it's both different and so well done makes it very appealing to a growing body of American readers."

Now that Lee is creating superheroes for Japanese clients, he's had to change some of his creative methods. "Their (the Japanese) way of approaching a story is a little bit different. For example, when I write a story in America, I take a little time to introduce the characters and build up to a climax. Sometimes in Japanese manga they like to open with a lot of action and get the reader involved right away. It's been very interesting for me, who is used to one style, to be working with people who work in a slightly different style. But the objective is the same: to have characters people can believe in and stories that are interesting and exciting and will keep the reader coming back for more."

Comic book hero: Spider-Man creator Stan Lee is teaming up with Shaman King creator Hiroyuki Takei to launch a new manga. AP PHOTO

While Spider-Man and the X-Men have long maintained fan bases overseas, even predating their recent Hollywood movies, Lee now faces the task of creating superheroes that connect initially with a Japanese audience before being exported to his native U.S. But he isn't worried about the possibility of a culture clash. "Except for the differences in tradition and social mores, people around the world aren't all that different," he says. "They speak a different language, but we pretty much all want the same things. And I think we can all respond to characters that seem to be realistic."

Indeed, during Lee's editorial tenure at Marvel, Spider-Man fought drug abuse, Captain America battled campus radicals, and his sidekick, the Falcon, was the "hero of Harlem." Will this new crop of superheroes, such as Ultimo and Hero Man, continue this commitment to social commentary?

"I don't think you can help it," he says. "It's very hard not to write about things that are happening in the world whenever you are writing about them. For instance, when we look for a good villain today, who better than a terrorist? However, with the work I'm doing with the Japanese now, they're really strictly fantasy stories, and in the beginning they don't much reflect any problems in the world today. But I think as we keep doing them, little by little, some contemporary problems will start sneaking into the stories."

When Lee helped to create Iron Man and the Hulk in the early '60s, the shadow of the Cold War loomed large on the horizon. The original Iron Man comic, for instance, placed our hero behind enemy lines in Vietnam, while the new movie has upgraded him to Afghanistan. Based solely on movie ticket sales, it seems that our world wants Lee's heroes now as much as ever. And Lee hopes that international comic collaborations like the ones he is undertaking with Japan might have special powers of their own.

"I hope it's the way of the future for everything. Because I think the more that people from different countries work together, the healthier it is for the whole human race. We get to know each other, we get to like each other, and we get to understand each other. And when you know and understand people, there's a lot less hatred and a lot less chance for unpleasant situations between countries. And after all, a good story is a good story no matter what the language is or where it takes place." pu,nbio Patrick Macias is editor in chief of Otaku USA magazine. He can be found online at www.patrickmacias.blogs.com

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