July
20 Special Report Extras

Often in putting together articles for print, there's a lot of good material that doesn't make the cut. But thanks to the Internet, they don't have to go to waste. Here are a few leftover tidbits and quotes from stories I wrote for Variety's Comic-Con and Stan Lee issues.

Stan Lee on meeting Federico Fellini at the Marvel offices: "Years ago, when I was still working in New York in the '60s, Federico Fellini came up to see me. It was really funny. The receptionist one day said 'There’s a Mr. Felony to see you!' I saw everybody. And like here, we had a long and narrow hall leading to my office and I recognized (Fellini) immediately because he was wearing black, with a black hat, with a raincoat thrown over his shoulders, a black raincoat, because I don’t think any Italian director would ever have his arms in the sleeves of his raincoat. And behind him were four associates of his, and they were walking in single file because it’s a narrow hallway, in descending order of height. He was the tallest, then the next. … It was just such a funny sight. And it turned out he was a fan. And it was very frustrating. I wanted to talk about him and he wanted to talk about me, through a translator, and we got kind of friendly. In fact, years later when my daughter went to Italy, he entertained her a little bit."

Stan Lee on Jack Kirby: "I had met Jack, of course, when I started (at Timely). He was with Joe Simon. And then when he came to Marvel (in the late 1950s) it was really wonderful because he was so great to work with. Like Joe Maneely, he was incredibly versatile, he could do just about anything. Of course he specialized in the superhero type. And I worked with Jack the same way that I did with Ditko, and with John Romita and the others. I was writing, in the beginning, I was writing almost all the stories for the artists and it reached the point where I couldn’t keep them all busy. Now they were freelancers, so if I didn’t have a script for one of them, he wasn’t working, he wasn’t getting paid. So in order to keep them all busy, instead of writing a complete script, I would, for example, say to Jack — Jack would come up to the office and say 'Stan, I just finished the Fantastic Four, I need the next one.' And I’d say 'Jack, I haven’t got time to write it yet because I haven’t finished Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man yet, but I’ll tell you what, this is the story I want you to tell. I want Dr. Doom to be the villain and he tries to kidnap Sue Storm and they do this and that and go rescue her. And you go ahead and draw it any way you want.' So without a script, just because we discussed what the story would be, Jack would go home and draw it. He’d bring in the artwork and then I would write the dialogue and the captions after he brought in the (artwork). So in that way, I could keep him busy. And when Steve Ditko needed a script, same thing. I’d say 'I haven’t got time for the story but this is what I’d like.' And I did that with John Romita. I started doing it with everybody because it enabled me to keep them all busy at the same time. And then I found we actually got better stories that way because it’s easier to write dialogue when you’re looking at the drawing, when you see the expression on the fellow’s face. It’s easier for the writer to write something compatible with the drawing than it is for an artist to draw the exact picture that the writer has in mind. So in that way, we became the fastest production company. We were turning out scripts faster than anyone else and I think our material was better. Luckily, I was working with artists all of whom had a great story sense. There are some artists who couldn’t do that. Unless they have a script in front of them, they don’t know what to do. But all of our artists were visual storytellers and that made it great and they were just wonderful to collaborate with."

"Night of the Living Dead" director George Romero talked about his upcoming six-issue Toe Tags project for DC Comics — his first comics work. "I actually had a lot more running time than I normally do with a movie, so I really could tell a bigger story."

"Superman-Batman" writer Jeph Loeb says he still loves writing comics. "They are an incredibly entertaining, challenging, emotionally satisfying medium and you can tell a story very quickly that will appear monthly," he says. "The development period is almost nonexistant, it’s extremely satisfying, and mostly, going to a comicbook store and seeing a comic with my name on it is a thrill." His work on the "Smallville" TV show is a perfect complement. "They pay me to sit in a room and talk about Superman all day long. I don’t think it gets better than that."

TV writing experience helped J. Michael Straczynski get into comics because of what he calls the "Prince From Another Land Syndrome," which he says means success in a related field brings at least the appearance of freshness. But TV writers do bring specific traits with them when they tackle comics: "It does open doors, partially because they understand when you work in TV you learn two things: naturalistic dialogue and servicing the main character." Straczynski says that when writers don't know what to do with the main character, they tend to build up the supporting cast to the point they obscure the star. That's the situation he found Spider-Man in when he took it on in 2001 and he quickly put the focus back on defining Peter Parker's character. Now, when he takes meetings at studios, he says he is more often than not asked about his Spider-Man comics than his TV shows such as "Babylon 5."

We interviewed director Bryan Singer about his upcoming stint writing Marvel's Ultimate X-Men comic well before news broke that he'd be doing Superman, possibly instead of another X-Men movie. Singer says his story for the comic plays with time, especially the monthly release schedule, though he wouldn't say more because he felt it would tip his hand. He says Ultimate X-Men was the best fit of of the X-books to his sensibilities and that he and his collaborators are staying within the Ultimate continuity. Singer also says that at the Ellis Island premiere of the first X-Men, he specifically went straight to get Stan Lee's reaction after the screening before talking to anyone else. "He liked it very much, he was very happy."

Brad Meltzer's been everywhere you look these days, with his top-selling DC comic Identity Crisis and his upcoming WB TV series, "Jack and Bobby," not to mention his novels such as "The Zero Game." Meltzer says the reaction to his comics gig was pretty varied. "In the publishing side, people kind of snicker. 'Brad’s doing his pet project,'" says the writer. "The fun part is within that group there is a strong minority who have come out of the woodwork who are comicbook nuts." Among them is writer Walter Mosely, who asked Meltzer if Speedy was still the sidekick to Green Arrow. Meltzer says he was something of a guinea pig when DC asked him to take over the Green Arrow comic, mostly because DC said anyone within the comics biz who tried to follow Kevin Smith would be crucified. But getting an author unknown to comics fans "forces everyone to ask ‘What does DC Comics know that I don’t know?’” That the book retained its readership under his tenure was quite satisfying. "On the Hollywood side, it’s incredible how many people read comic books," he says. Meltzer says comics, novels and teleplays are all different to write. With comics, it was fun to add pictures to the storytelling toolbox, though he says writing for the screen requires him to step back a bit more than either comics or novels. "When you write a screenplay, there’s going to be a true director,” he says.

Writer Roy Thomas, who succeeded Stan Lee as editor in chief of Marvel, describes working with him as an education in writing and editing. Thomas remembers when he started taking over some of the writing chores at Marvel, that Lee heavily edited the first few jobs he did and then decided it was not necessary. "After a while, he said 'It’s not worth it … from now on just show me the first page and the last page and if there’s any problems we’ll work it out.'" Thomas also remembered his role in bringing "Star Wars" to the comics page — before the movie even came out in 1977. He remembers riding with former Fox chief Alan Ladd Jr. in a limo on the way to a screening of Lucas' rough cut of the film. "I said before we saw it, 'It looks great,' based on what I’d read. He said, 'It better be.'" Thomas says he wishes he had a copy of that rough cut, which had WWII dogfight footage subbing for finished effects and lacked James Earl Jones' voice work for Darth Vader.

John Romita, who drew many classic Spider-Man stories with Lee, says the image of Peter Parker walking away from his costume in the trash can that was used in "Spider-Man 2" was originally supposed to be the cover of that issue, Amazing Spider-Man No. 50. But Lee liked it so much, it became a full-page panel in the story and Romita drew the also-famous red cover for that issue. Seeing his scenes, as well as characters he helped design, such as X-Men's Wolverine and The Punisher, hit screens is a real thrill, Romita says. "That’s a rush that only certain people have. I used to equate that kind of satisfaction to Irving Berlin, when you’d hear your song all over the world. I had the same feeling when Wolverine unsheathed his claws in "X-Men 1" and everyone applauds.”

More outtakes tomorrow as we take the train south to Comic-Con Intl.