Creating Characters With Stan Lee

GameDailyBiz has an interview with Stan Lee that touches on a talk he gave at the 2005 D.I.C.E. Summit entitled "Superheroes - Creating Characters for the Ages". From the article: "I submitted the idea of Spider-Man to my publisher and he hated it. I said my hero was a teenager -- the publisher said a teenager could not be a hero but only be a sidekick. I said he was insecure and had personal problems -- my publisher said a hero does not have personal problems... The lesson to be learned, don't listen to experts because they don't know what they're talking about and just get you down."

A hero

[FidelCatsro]

"a hero does not have personal problems." someone should of told that to batman , who was by all accoutns completly psychotic and had schitzo effective episodes where he saw his parents murderd which drove him to wipe out crime with a vengance

Re:A hero

[Pluvius]

I'm not sure that those aspects of his character were really explored until well past the 60s.

Rob

Re:A hero

[FidelCatsro]

I am a little young to remember those days , but what really stood out to me about batman was the fact that he was completly crazy and all the more intresting for it

Re:A hero

[jayhawk88]

Pluvius is right though. When Batman first came out in the 40's, his character was very dark and almost pulp-like. He killed bad guys on a regular basis. But when he got popular during the Golden Age, he was definitely the "Adam West" style Batman, who's biggest non-Batman-related concern was whether to go to the Charity Bachelor Auction or not. We still were told why he became Batman of course, but the comics were all about his actions as Batman, and any story we saw as Bruce Wayne was just peripheral.

I

I read that as the publisher being insecure...

[TelJanin]

...and having personal problems. With the "teenager could not be a hero but only be a sidekick" statement, I think that might be the right way to read it.

Interesting article

[Pluvius]

Just make sure you don't apply it to City of Heroes, otherwise Marvel might sue you.

Rob

Re:Interesting article

[superpulpsicle]

This is abit off topic... but... does anyone know when the original marvel "uncanny X-men" DVD will EVER come out? I am referring to the cartoons televised in the early 90s.

oblig penny arcade ref

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we thank the gods this [penny-arcade.com] never made it or be upset it was never given a fair chance?

Re:oblig penny arcade ref

[Sebadude]

His redraw is awesome though.

It's managers in general that are clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

don't listen to experts because they don't know what they're talking about

Lee is wrong to attribute this cluelessness to "experts". Real experts know what they're talking about but are almost never seen in the roles being discussed, which are effectively managerial positions.

Some experts move to management of course, but as soon as they do that they start to become "past experts", and then they very rapidly become no longer experts at all even when they think they are. When you don't *DO* stuff yourself, you lose touch with the real doer's world and start talking hypotheticals.

And that's the upside of the problem. On the more common downside, management came up through the ranks without ever doing anything that required training a clue beyond how to run a spreadsheet.

The archetypal PHB is an pretty accurate portrayal that all of us easily recognize in our companies, and even the cartoon versions taken to extremes for a laugh still have a considerable amount of truth in them.

Lee was talking to management. Surprise, surprise, they got it totally ass about face.

Re:It's managers in general that are clueless

[cowscows]

I think he was talking about "experts" with the quotes around it. If he didn't actually make the little air quotes while saying it, it was probably implied.

What's really challenging about it all is that if you're just some guy trying to get involved in an industry, there's all manner of people who already have claimed their stake there, and you've got to deal with them. And it's hard knowing who got there cause they're good, who got there cause they're lucky, and who got there because their uncle is a big

Re:It's managers in general that are clueless

[rpillala]

It's too bad you posted AC because now I can't be a fan. You've summed up a big problem in education reform which is that people making decisions believe in their expertise when they shouldn't. Some people (and you can spot them right away) enter teaching in order to do something else. There's nothing wrong with being career-minded but these people want to "get 5 years of teaching under their belt" so they can work for the state or go into administration. I guess they don't realize that the farther they

Re:Don't Listen To Stann Lee!...

[unitron]

So you're saying that Stan Lee had a publisher named Stann Lee?

Not enough depth

[El_Muerte_TDS]

I don't know. So far Stan Lee's characters didn't have a lot of depth, they're quite flat.
Pretty much all games these days have an extra dimension to think in.

Re:Not enough depth

[Pxtl]

Well, just like reading old Heinlen or Tolkein, it is better to remember the context of the times they were working in - these were new approaches, new ideas that had never before been considered.

Re:Not enough depth

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Actually, it was meant as a joke, e.g. 2D vs 3D

tbh, most game characters have even less depth than the average comic character.

Re:Not enough depth

[mister_llah]

I don't know about that, Mary Jane had a pretty nice rack.

ob simpsons quote

[howman]

Stan Lee won't leave my store.

Didn't Stan Lee say this Spider-Man history...

[antdude]

... on Spider-Man 2 DVD?

Re:Didn't Stan Lee say this Spider-Man history...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stan Lee is like that Uncle who tells the same stories and the same jokes at every gathering.

okay...

[Tom7]

The lesson to be learned, don't listen to experts because they don't know what they're talking about ... and so I didn't read the article.

The real lesson

[Jaeph]

The real lesson here is that there are no hard and fast rules with art.

-Jeff