{"id":1943,"date":"2011-03-02T21:27:50","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T02:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2011-03-02T21:27:50","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T02:27:50","slug":"the-day-stan-lee-showed-some-humility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/02\/the-day-stan-lee-showed-some-humility\/","title":{"rendered":"The day Stan Lee showed some humility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If there&#8217;s one thing that my old boss Stan Lee wasn&#8217;t known for, it was humility. Not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that. Shepherding the Marvel Universe  into being was hard enough, but selling it to the world was even harder. You&#8217;ve got to be a salesman. And that requires bombast, which Stan had (still has) oozing out of his pores. But humility? Not so much.<\/p>\n<p>Why is why, when Bill Mantlo, who was the writer of <em>Marvel Two-in-One<\/em>, which teamed up The Thing with a different character each issue, suggested Stan as one month&#8217;s co-star, it was surprising that The Man would say &#8230; well, see below.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MemoBillMantloStanLeeThing.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MemoBillMantloStanLeeThing-232x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"MemoBillMantloStanLeeThing\" width=\"232\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1944\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MemoBillMantloStanLeeThing-232x300.jpg 232w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MemoBillMantloStanLeeThing-793x1024.jpg 793w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/MemoBillMantloStanLeeThing.jpg 1700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Nothing ever came of it, and I have no idea why. Was it Marv? Was it Roy, Len, or Archie? Or was it that mysterious &#8220;etc.&#8221;? Who knows? But the team-up never happened.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s that? You say you remember a team-up between Stan and Benjamin J. Grimm? Ah, but that wasn&#8217;t 35 years ago, just five, in <a href=\"http:\/\/marvel.com\/comic_books\/issue\/5224\/stan_lee_meets_the_thing_2006_1\"><em>Stan Lee Meets the Thing<\/em><\/a>, published in 2006.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing1-194x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"StanLeeMeetsTheThing1\" width=\"194\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1946\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing1-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing1.jpg 434w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bill Mantlo had nothing to do with this eventual meet-up. Instead, the issue was written by The Man himself, and drawn by Lee Weeks and Nelson DeCastro.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing2-300x122.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"StanLeeMeetsTheThing2\" width=\"300\" height=\"122\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1947\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing2-300x122.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing2-1024x419.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/StanLeeMeetsTheThing2.jpg 1258w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I won&#8217;t say it was a story 30 years in the making &#8230; but Bill Mantlo <em>was<\/em> there first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there&#8217;s one thing that my old boss Stan Lee wasn&#8217;t known for, it was humility. Not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that. Shepherding the Marvel Universe into being was hard enough, but selling it to the world was even harder. You&#8217;ve got to be a salesman. And that requires bombast, which Stan had (still [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,18,20,19],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bill-mantlo","tag-comics","tag-marvel-comics","tag-stan-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}