#72 Stan Lee: Founder of Marvel

What I learned from reading Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee by Stan Lee and George Mair. Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and prosaic. It's a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye, and the imagination, a literate celebration of unbridled creativity, coupled with a touch of rebellion and an insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon (1:15) discovering his love of reading at an early age (8:45) accidentally finding his life's work at 17 years old / hilarious level of optimism (12:35), there is opportunity in things that other people say will rot your brain (22:30) Stan Lee's advice on writing (26:00) be your own biggest fan (28:00) the turning point of Stan Lee's life (38:20) humans scorn the abstract (45:20) a lesson in human nature (51:30) the power of direct sales (55:29) ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  ¿Cómo sucedió? ¿Cómo entré en esto? Yo, un chico que casi siempre ha escrito fantasía, de repente tengo que lidiar con los hechos. Los hechos de mi vida. Aunque me acerque a pensar, esos hechos mismos son bastante fantásticos. Si no hubiera vivido todo esto, ni siquiera podría creerlo. Durante esos años extraños, luchando, me emborraché de vergüenza porque era un simple escritor de cómics. Y ahora, debido a esos mismos cómics humildes, aquí estoy, la estrella destacada de un libro realmente adulto. El héroe de mi propia historia. Probablemente hay algo moral escondido ahí. Deja de darte cuenta mientras avanzamos. Para decir la verdad, no puedo esperar a leer las páginas que siguen,

• 0:45David Senra?

  dado que tanto del pasado ha logrado homogeneizar en los recesos de la trama de la mente. Es una oportunidad para descubrir pequeñas verdades sobre mi propio ser inscrutable y los gente titánicamente talentosa con la que he trabajado. Aquí hay algunas frases que escribí hace algunos años para describir mis sentimientos sobre lo que los comics Marvel representan. Marvel es una cornucopia de fantasía. Una idea loca. Una actitud de atrevimiento. Una escape de la cumbre y el prosaico. Es una fiesta serendipitosa para la mente, el ojo y la imaginación. Una celebración literal de la creatividad sin brillo

• 1:29David Senra?

  junto con un toque de rebelión y un deseo insolente de gritar en el ojo del dragón. Ahí lo tienes, mi opinión sobre Marvel y el genro de fantasía en general. Y tal vez mi propia filosofía en particular. Si esas palabras te dan una corde, sigue. Si no lo hacen, prefiero no saber.

• 1:53David Senra?

  Okay, that was an excerpt from the book that I want to talk to you about today. And that is "Excelsior: The Amazing Life of Stan Lee." And I guess I'll just jump ahead before I jump back into the book, because that's a bizarre word, right? Like, the title of the book. I don't know if I've ever even seen that word anywhere else. And so I looked it up, and he talks about it later in the book. But there's two things. First, I want to tell you the definition. And second, he has a really great idea right off the bat. And he decided to make the word "excelsior," which means "ever upward," his life motto. But I also love the idea of having a life motto. And that's something I'm going to think about, and see if I can come up with one of my own. Maybe you want to do the same.

• 2:34David Senra?

  Okay, so, as you could just see from that little excerpt, this guy, I mean, no surprise, he, I was gonna say he's a hell of a writer, which, I mean, that's kind of obvious. He built a, what, what is now, what, a multi-hundred-billion-dollar industry, based off of his ideas and the creation of, you know, characters like Spider-Man, X-Men, The Avengers, which I think just overtook, and is now the most, like, the highest grossing movie of all time. And what I love most about the book, and what you're going to come to learn over the next little bit of our time together, is that we're seeing, as with all these biographies, we see the end result.

• 3:16David Senra?

  So, everybody knows who Stan Lee is now, everybody knows who Marvel Comics are, even if you're not into the movies or the books. But what I loved about reading this book so much is that, the vast majority of his life, he was filled with unbelievable doubt. He talks about, right from, he says, "During those strange, struggling, early years, I wallowed in embarrassment because I was a mere comic book writer." So, I'm going to talk a lot about that today, because I found that probably the most interesting part of the book.

• 3:44David Senra?

  So I want to start where I always do, which is the early life, or I try to always do. And we're going to see that some of the unpleasantness of his early life actually benefited him later on. So not only did I have this book, but I have another biography of his called The Amazing Fantastic Incredible, A Marvelous Memoir by Stan Lee, that I'll probably turn into another episode of Founders in the Future. But in that book, he talks about the unpleasantness of his, like the relationship between his parents, gave him one hell of a work ethic, and we're going to see what he means by that. He says, "I always felt sorry for my father. He was a good man, honest and caring. He wanted the best for his family, as most parents do, but the times were against him. At the height of the depression, there were just no jobs to be had.

• 4:25David Senra?

  Seeing the demoralizing effect that his unemployment had on his spirit, making him feel that he just wasn't needed, gave me a feeling that I would never be able to shake. It's a feeling that the most important thing for a man," and I would also add "person." He's writing this book in 2002, when he's 80 years old. He doesn't pass away till he's 95. So let me just interject there again. "It's a feeling that most important thing for a person is to have work to do, to be busy, to be needed. Today, I never feel more fulfilled than when I'm working on a number of projects at once, which is really nuts, because I'm always wishing I had more free time. Still, when I'm busy, I feel needed, and that makes me feel good."

• 5:10David Senra?

  So he's going to reflect a little bit about like what it was like growing up during the depression and seeing his parents struggle and frankly argue constantly about money and the lack thereof of money. "They were both good, loving parents, and I think the only thing that gave them any pleasure was their children. My brother and I always regretted that fate had not been kinder to them and that they couldn't have had happier lives." I think that's like the greatest tragedy in life to to waste the one life you have and to spend it being miserable and unhappy. And unfortunately, I think that's like the the default for most of human, the humans that have ever lived.

• 5:51David Senra?

  I think the estimate I read one time was like, it might be about 105, 115 billion humans that have ever existed. And I mean, what percentage of them had a truly happy, fulfilled life? Probably a very small percentage, very hard to do. "All right, they must have loved each other when they when they were married, but my earliest recollections were of them two arguing, quarreling incessantly. Almost always, it was over money or the lack of it. I realized at an early age how the specter of poverty, the never-ending worry about not having enough money to buy groceries or to pay the rent, can cast a cloud over a marriage. I'll always regret the fact that by the time I was earning enough money to make things easier for them, it was too late."

• 6:36David Senra?

  And he talks about reflecting like one of his earliest memories of his father, his father sitting at the kitchen table, going through the want ads, spending all day applying for jobs, coming back with no luck, and then doing it over and over and over again. And I just want to read this one sentence, and Stan just has a wonderful way with words. And this was his his impression as a young as a young person seeing this happen to his family, says, "Forced idleness is a terrible thing." That's a hell of a sentence. And you know what's weird, though, to me, now that I've read the book? So he was definitely not idle. I think I talk a little bit about it later on, but if in case I don't. He basically wrote all day long, every day, constantly.

• 7:16David Senra?

  And he didn't necessarily enjoy the process of writing, because he's like a extrovert, a gregarious person, he wanted to be around people, and when you're writing, you have to be kind of alone. But he definitely enjoyed the process of having written, which I've come across a couple of times, where even some of my favorite writers, I don't really like writing, I just like the fact that I have written. So there's a lesson there. But this whole idea about seeing, um, So the force side on this, he was definitely never idle. Even, you know, he's reflecting on some of the projects he's taking on when he's in his 70s at the time. He just kept going, going, going. But this whole idea about, he realized from an early age about what the absence of money can do to a family. So Stan was never poor, but he definitely never captured even a, he captured a tiny

• 7:59David Senra?

  percentage of the, of the value that he would create. He talks about several times in the book that he was just, he was a creative person. He was really good at making stories and writing and doing that, but he constantly got ripped off by better, or taken advantage of by better businessmen. Okay, so let me skip ahead. Sometimes you're gonna hear Stan refer to himself, like when I'm reading. That's the words he wrote. He also has a co-author in the book and his name is George Mayer. And so whenever we're talking about Stan, that's George writing. So George is writing this. He says, "Even in those difficult times, there was one joyful thing for Stan. It was the thing that eventually changed his life forever. It was his love for reading, for losing himself in the magical world of books."

• 8:42David Senra?

  Okay, now we're gonna get to Stan's description of that. He said, "I can't remember when I first learned to read, nor can I remember a time when I wasn't reading. It was my escape from the dreariness and sadness of my home life. I read everything I could find, everywhere, every chance I got. In school, reading and composition were always my best subjects. At every meal at home, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, I'd have a book or magazine to read while I ate. My mother used to say that if there was nothing to read, I'd read the labels of ketchup bottles, which I did." And then we're gonna hear that as, as we're not surprised at all, Stan was kind of a misfit, like he was an outsider. He didn't fit in. He was a weird person.

• 9:26David Senra?

  And I mean weird in the most loving way possible. And then we're gonna learn about a lesson that he never forgot. So he said, "In school, I was always something of an outsider. That's because I usually, I was usually the youngest kid in my class and in my social group. So his parents didn't have any money. They made him study really hard so he could basically skip grades and finish school faster so that he could get to work and help the family." So this is part of the impact of the depression had on families like mine. "My mother wanted me to finish school as soon as possible so I could get a job and help support the family, which is another reason I had the work ethic drummed into me at an early age. I studied hard and skipped grades, which put me in with older kids. But as you might imagine, it's no fun being the youngest kid in class."

• 10:08David Senra?

  So then he talks about, it's amazing, he's, you know, close to 80 years old writing these words, and he could still remember his favorite teacher, which was this guy named Leon Ginsberg. And he talked about, like, something that he learned from Leon that he applied for the rest of his life. He said, "He would entertain the class with humorous and exciting stories to illustrate teaching points. It was Mr. Ginsberg who first made me realize that learning could be fun, that it was easier to reach people, to hold their attention, to get points across with humor than any other way. It was a lesson I never forgot, and a lesson I've tried to apply to everything I do." So, he's definitely, like, this book is pretty funny, like, he's very, um, and he comes

• 10:49David Senra?

  off extremely likeable, even though he is extremely confident. Um, most people would consider him an arrogant person. Um, and again, I'm not, I don't really have a problem with that. I'd rather, I'd rather you be who you are, and if you're really, deep down, like, an arrogant person, like, a lot of people let other people's personality, kind of like, distract them. Um, so think about, like, how much we've learned collectively about Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and James Dyson, any of the people we've covered. Do you think any of them are not arrogant? Like, they may hide their arrogance, in the case of Steve Jobs, he definitely didn't hide it, but, um, I just, I think you should learn from people that, uh, even people you disagree with, you know, and I'm not saying you have to

• 11:32David Senra?

  go and act like you shouldn't be an ass or mean to people for no reason, but I just think that, um, you have to be who you are, and I prefer real arrogance over false modesty. And Stan, I mean, you're gonna see some of the stuff he names, like, his projects and stuff, like, he definitely had, he definitely knew he was really good at what he done, he was doing. Alright, so this is his first jobs. He began a series of part-time jobs, including writing obituary notices for a news service. Now, he's probably, I think he was like 14, 15 years old at the time. Um, then that led to a job writing publicity for the National Tuberculosis Hospital, which is kind of weird, and then he also got a job at a movie theater being an usher. So he was just doing whatever, he would take whatever work he could get at that time, um, even if he didn't like it, but in the

• 12:17David Senra?

  case of the movie, uh, being an usher, it's one of his favorite jobs. Okay, so this is, now we're gonna, he's graduated high school and we're in the year 1939. Stan is 17 years old. And this is how he finds his life's work. And the bulk of the podcast is gonna be us reflecting on how he feels about his life's work, because I think that was the most fascinating part about the book and the most surprising to me. It says, "My Uncle Robbie told me that they might be able to use somebody at a publishing company where he worked. The idea of being involved in publishing definitely appealed to me because he liked to read and write. I began working as a gopher for $8 a week at this small company located in the McGraw-Hill Building at 42nd Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan.

• 13:01David Senra?

  I didn't realize it at the time, but I had embarked on my life's career."

• 13:11David Senra?

  Okay, so this is how he becomes a comic book writer by accident. "Then my big break happened. As the number of comics expanded, there was more work than Joe and Jack could handle." These are the people working, the place is called, it changes names multiple times before it becomes Marvel, so I guess I should bring that up. I didn't know, Stan Lee is not technically a founder of Marvel Comics, but as you'll see, he worked there for 40 years. He was the one, he was the editor, he was the man in charge, doing everything else. And most, at the time, most of the people that owned, like the company was sold five or six different times before Disney owns it. And they were just like shuffling executives.

• 13:53David Senra?

  They didn't pay much attention to like the creative department, even though the creative departments are the ones actually creating the products that gave them all the profits that they would, they would collect. And they would say dumb things like, "Oh, like, you know, business people are much more valuable than you, Stan." They'd even talk like down to them, which is really silly, especially in today's day and age when we know that product is so important. And they say stuff like, "Oh, you know, if I raise the, if I raise the price of a comic book from 12 to 15 cents, that one act by me will make more, make us more money than everything you do in a year." And it's like, "Well, no, it wouldn't, because if you didn't have Stan Lee writing all these novels, like, he's the one that came up with Spider-Man, and all the, and the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers, and all these other people." Like, you go out and play golf all day.

• 14:38David Senra?

  Like, you may own the company, but you're definitely not the most important person there. So, to me, I think, and to a lot of people, when they think of Marvel Comics, they think of Stan Lee. So, um, just keep in mind, he didn't technically start the company. I mean, he did get equity way, way, way later, after getting screwed over a couple of times, but he is the founder of Marvel, for all intents and purposes. Um, so at the time, I think it's called like, I don't, can't remember. I didn't, oh, ti- it's called Good Old, uh, it's called Timely, is the name of the company. Um, so, he's being a gopher, and then they're like, "Hey, kid, we have too much work to do, will you, will you write some stuff?" He's like, "Yeah, of course, I would love to." And so he says, "My first story appeared in Captain America: Number Three, which was dated May 1941.

• 15:20David Senra?

  His fir- uh, my first actual comic book script, uh, which was, uh, came two issues later in Captain America: Number Five, which was dated in August 1941. I was barely out of high school, and I was now a full-fledged comic book writer." Um, now, this is interesting, because his real name is not Stan Lee, it's like Stan Lieber? And, um, he's got, so, one thing I think we, uh, another thing I think we should all learn from Stan is like, i- if you're, especially if you want to start your own thing, you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to be creative, whether you want to run a one-person business, you want to run a giant company, or just want to do your own thing and have freedom, like, I just think you should opt to op- you should opt into optimism, even if that's not your natural personality, as, because like, if you're optimistic about your future possibilities, then you have a chance of getting there.

• 16:05David Senra?

  But the people that write off the bat are negative, and think, "Oh, it's never gonna work," and they come up with all the reasons it's not gonna work, well, we know those are like self-fulfilling prophecies. So, being negative is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Doesn't mean being optimistic is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but it gets you closer there than ever. And Stan was, he had, like, um, I called it hilarious levels of optimism, and you see this as a really young person. And, um-

• 16:30David Senra?

  This story illustrates us perfectly because he decides to come up with the name Stan Lee because he didn't want to ruin his real name for when he writes the great American novel. He's seventeen and this is how he's thinking. So he says, "I had decided that nothing would stop me from one day writing the great American novel." Typical, isn't it? A guy gets a few comic book scripts under his belt and decides he's the next Hemingway. Being only seventeen at the time and not yet having become the incredible sophisticated and knowledgeable super person that I am today. See, he says it in jest, but he does really believe that he's special. And again, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that. "I somehow felt it would not be seemly to take my name, which was certain to one day win a Pulitzer, and sign it to a mere humble comic strip." So context before I finish that.

• 17:15David Senra?

  Comic book, anybody that worked in the comic book industry in the 1940s and at this, around this time, they were like embarrassed. They would, when people were like, "Oh, what do you do? I'm a graphic illustrator." Or, "Oh, I'm a writer." Because they were seen as like, like, just, like, there was no prestige. There was a prestige in like if you wrote a novel or a book, or if you had like a shiny nice magazine. But comic books, which is interesting because I'm going to get into in a little bit, like the sheer numbers that they sold, which is just mind boggling. I mean, eight hundred thousand copies in an issue kind of thing. But it was still frowned upon and kind of like, you know what, it reminds me of when I read Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Conferential. Like now chefs are like, you know, like there's show, TV shows about them. We look up to them. People travel all over the world to eat their food.

• 18:00David Senra?

  And he's like, "That's not how it was." Anthony Bourdain was talking, he's like, "That's not how it was when we started." Like, the restaurant industry was an industry of misfits and drug addicts and, you know, people that were way out of mainstream. Funny, Danny Meyer, if you remember the podcast I did on him, he said very similar things. That's why even though he was in love with food and would love to own a restaurant, he never thought it was a possibility because he wanted, you know, people told him, "Oh, go be an attorney because it's more prestigious." And I saw, so I don't remember where it was, but I think, I think I heard on a podcast, somebody said like, "You know how you know you're doing the wrong thing? Is if you're doing anything for prestige." And I was like, damn, that's a really good, simple idea. Um, because that's the wrong motivating factor.

• 18:43David Senra?

  You shouldn't be doing it because what other people think about you. Alright, so, um, so he's like, "Listen, I'm gonna win a Pulitzer, I can't use his name." Says, "Thus, I was caught up in the fantasy of using a pen name." "Something suitable for strips while saving my real name for the saga that would make me immortal." "And that's how Stan Lee was born." He actually, um, eventually changes his name, so that's his real name. Okay. Um, so there's a bunch of notes I left myself on here, let me just read them. "Timing is critical, the comic book business was booming, uh, plus impatience is a virtue, plus a good idea." So let's see what the hell it was talking about. Okay. Oh, so this is crazy. So, um, Martin Goodman is the guy, he's, Martin Goodman is married to Stan's cousin.

• 19:28David Senra?

  That's how, um, that's the company he starts working at, and that's called Timely at the time. Martin Goodman, I mean, we'll, we'll learn more about him later on, but the way he described him, he kept referring to him as his friend, but the way he described him was like, "You guys don't sound very friendly." And I could see that they weren't really friendly. But anyways, um, publishers, he's, he's a publisher, he runs like other stuff. He's, comic books is one of the things, but he also like does like, they call them like glossy, or something like that, like basically highly produced glossy magazines. But, "Check out the size of the market," and this is still in the 1940s. "By the middle of the war," meaning World War II, "publishers were selling 25 million comic books a month." That blew my mind, I had no idea.

• 20:12David Senra?

  Alright, says, "I've always been a fast writer, mainly because of my impatience and wanting to get finished as soon as possible." So this is a description of what I meant earlier when he says that he, um, he didn't like writing, but he likes having written. "Also, I'm a gregarious guy, I like being with people, talking to people, even arguing with people, but I can't do that when I'm writing. Writing is about as lonely as an activity as you can find." So that's why he was so fast. "So I wrote my little training films and instructor..." Oh, I'm sorry, I, um, skipped over something. He's, he's working at Timely, but then he's drafted into the army. And then he was convinced that he was gonna go and, um, he wanted to actually go. So even if he wasn't drafted, he would've signed up, and maybe he did sign up, I don't actually remember, but...

• 20:54David Senra?

  The interesting part is he thought he was gonna go fight and somehow he got classified as a playwright, as a screen, like a screenwriter. And so, there wasn't many screenwriters in the army, so the army doesn't send him to fight. They, they have him, they're like, "Hey, we need, we have a bunch of conscripts, people that like, don't have anything, any idea what the military's about, and we need to like, train them." So, they made, um, like, films and instruction manuals, and so that's what Stan did. And the good idea, I mean, is how he was able to keep his job at Timely while he was still in the, the army, and we're gonna see that, that ties into how fast he works. He says, "So, I wrote my little training films and instruction manuals the same as I've always written everything else, as fast as I could. I never expected that one day the officer in charge would tell me to take it easy because the others in our unit were turning out the material at a much slower pace, and I was

• 21:39David Senra?

  making it look as if they were dragging their feet. Well, since I had to slow down, that left me with lots of spare time on my hands, and it was then that an idea hit me. If there wasn't enough military work for me, I decided to outmaneuver the army by doing freelance scripts for Timely, uh, for Time the Comics. Unlike many men who went to war, I didn't leave my job, I took it with me." Okay, so now I'm skipping ahead a little bit, and this is actually, um, important, I think. Um, because we always talk about how like, almost all the people that we cover on the podcast were criticized heavily at the time. Um, I don't know if Stan was criticized, I think most of his criticism was self-criticism, just feeling that he was wasting his time. But the note of that myself was, there's always opportunity in things that will rot

• 22:22David Senra?

  your brains, so I'm gonna tell you what I mean about that, and then this is a good way to not care what other people think. He says, "While I really enjoyed my job and the stories I was writing, there was one thing that both irritated and frustrated me. It was the fact that nobody had a good word to say about comic books." Remember, this is still after the fact that it's still like 25 million a month. So, it's, part of me is like, "Stan, just look at your sales numbers, like, they clearly enjoy it," but I think he was meaning the larger, overall society. And I guess he says here, "To the public at large, comics were at the very bottom of the cultural totem pole. Most of the adult world didn't buy them, didn't care about them, and didn't want their children to waste their time reading them. I tried to tell myself that it wasn't all bad because the next day I'd be immersed in a world of fantasy and imagination,

• 23:06David Senra?

  doing work that was fun and absorbing, while many of the people who denigrated comics couldn't make that claim for themselves." That's what I, that specific paragraph is what I mean about why you don't care what other people think. If somebody's close to you, somebody you respect's giving you constructive criticism, that's one thing. But the idea is like, well, you're, you know, I'm enjoying the work I do. He's not making much money at the time. Most of the money's going to the man, uh, to the owner of the company, unfortunately. Uh, but he's immersed in a world of fantasy and imagination and the people criticizing, like, he's loving what he's doing and most of the people are criticizing, surely can't say the same thing. And this whole idea about most adult worlds didn't want them buying them, reading them. I heard, I heard this idea and I took a note on it, so let me pull that up for you real quick. So, this really interesting person I've come across on Twitter recently, he's been on a couple podcasts, his name's Josh Wolfe.

• 23:49David Senra?

  He, uh, he's an investor, I think, in Lux Capital. And, um, he's, he has this quote, let me just read the quote from this podcast. He says, "The most valuable words in investing are, 'It will rot your brain.' When those words are uttered by a parent, it presages the next $10 billion industry." And so he goes and gives examples throughout time. He says, "The rock and roll in like the 70s, TV in the 80s, the internet, video games. I would add comic books to that." Because think about how valuable, we're still in the 40s, maybe the 50s at this point in the book. And now, fast forward 60 years later, whatever the case is, however, 70 years, whatever it is. And, um, you know, i- is there... How valuable is the comic book? Like, just take Marvel alone.

• 24:34David Senra?

  Like, the intellectual property that Marvel's developed. You're talking about they've made, what? Tens of billions of dollars, if not more? Probably not, it's gotta be more than that, between all the comic books, strips, newspaper, uh, they, they even turn them into like a daily newspaper, uh, strip that Stanley was doing for like 20 years every day. Um, just the amount of money it would generate is fascinating. So that $10 billion number is actually a little low. Okay, uh, skipping, skipping.

• 25:03David Senra?

  Okay, so there's two important things in this one paragraph. First, this is gonna be Stan's advice on writing. And then, as we see with most of the people that go on to do amazing things, they studied the history of their profession. Whether they read books about it, like Elon Musk suggests, that's where, part of where I got the idea to do this podcast. Because when Elon was asked, "Hey, like, how did you learn about business? Did you read business books?" He's like, "No, I looked for help in a historical context. Books, basically. I liked biographies." And are they learning from people like in their profession that came before them? So Stan studied the great writers. And he said, now, this is the co-author George describing Stan's advice to writing.

• 25:45David Senra?

  He says, "Yet his advice to writers was sound then and remains so now. It has boiled down to these rules. One, have a provocative beginning. Two, use smooth continuity from panel to panel. Three, concentrate on realistic dialogue, which leads to good characterization. Four, maintain suspense throughout. And five, provide a satisfying ending. That pretty much well sums it up the way your Freud's, Shakespeare, and Hemingway did it. And of course, it was the way Stan endeavored to do it all during his career." Okay, so now we have here Stan reflecting on, he's still in the thick of it. Again, comic books are selling, but they're not really respected.

• 26:30David Senra?

  And self-doubt is the largest, I mean, this is a biography on Stan Lee, and I think his co-star is the self-doubt, which is fascinating considering how successful what he created turns out to be. But he has this point, he's like, "Listen, I don't want to copy. I want to create." And unfortunately, he's working for somebody that only gives, like, they don't care about what they're doing, they just want to make a dollar. And they'll do that by first seeing what other people are doing and then quickly copying. So he says, "I was writing many, if not most of the stories, and I admit I enjoyed their variety. Yet I said to myself, 'None of this is making an impression on anybody.' We were reasonably successful, we made some money, but what bothered me is that we were always following the trends and never setting them." That changes later, and I'll tell you more about that.

• 27:12David Senra?

  Martin Goodman, that's the owner of the company he worked for, would merely check the sales figures of all the various comic book companies, see what was selling well, and then say to me, "You know, Stan, everyone else's knitting stories seem to be selling well, so let's do books about knitting." Then at some later date, he'd say, "The funny animal books are doing well." So we'd switch to funny animal books. That's, I mean, that sounds like a terrible place to work, doesn't it? It went on and on and on. Every few months, a new trend, and we'd be right there faithfully following each one. I hated that word, "following." Even though it was a good job and I enjoyed working with all the artists and other writers, it really wasn't creatively fulfilling. I felt that we were a company of copycats.

• 27:54David Senra?

  We'd see what type of comics were selling well, and then we'd flood the market with new titles in that same vein. But it was a job, I was good at it, and things could have been worse. So I just stayed with it, occasionally wondering where it was all leading to. I could never have imagined how it would all shake out.

• 28:14David Senra?

  Okay, now he's got more advice. So maybe this is a better way to put it. So, um, well, first he talks about how, why he can work so fast. So let me get there first. He says, "I was doing so much of the writing myself, and if I may be totally candid, I'm my own biggest fan. Since I liked everything I wrote, there wasn't that much editing needed." So I've been using the words confidence, arrogance, whatever you want to use, optimism. I think that's a better way to put it. Like, what I was really trying to get to is like, especially if you're standing outside of the norm and you want to do something different, um, something that's just not copying whatever, like the tracks are already done for everybody else, like, I don't see a reason not to be your own biggest fan. Um, even if you're not, like, you may not be producing the quality of work that you

• 28:56David Senra?

  want to now, but being your own biggest fan, like, assuming you're not, like, lazy and giving up, like, you can grow into that quality. Um, and I just, I don't know, I think Stan hit on something. It's weird because he's his own biggest fan, and at the same time, simultaneously, he's, he's doubtful that his life's work means anything. So this is, um, just another reminder, we're hearing some of his inner monologue here, before he becomes a Stan Lee, we all know, that it took him time to realize that he's already found what he should be doing with his life. And that was just mind-blowing to me. Um, not knowing his life story before this, you know, it's perfectly normal to have doubts. Stan Lee had doubts for four decades.

• 29:38David Senra?

  Oh, maybe not four, 30 years, whatever it is, close to that, it's a long time. He says, "The two things I didn't love about my life were the one-hour commute and the feeling that I wasn't getting ahead the way I should be. The haunting feeling that I was only a moderately successful hack."

• 29:54David Senra?

  Think about that. Think about how he's describing himself. That's insane, right? That's what I mean about like, the reason it's so like, I love the fact that human nature doesn't change. He felt this way in the, let's say this 1950s we're in now. There's people in present day that feel that way, and in 150 years from now, there'll still be people that feel the same way. It's really like, sometimes when I feel anxiety, or I'm unsure, like, I pause and I'm like, David, it's not just happening to you. This feeling you're having is part of the human condition. It's been happening in the past, it will happen in the future. So, don't let it freak you out. Calm down, write out your feelings if you need to, write down like, what's bothering you, and then, you know, what, I love the, um, that Henry Kaiser quote. Like, problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

• 30:38David Senra?

  Like, but feeling miserable about it is not helping anything. I understand it's calm, it's like, natural, it's our natural, uh, like, part of being human. But, I feel like that, looking at things, like stepping outside myself and looking back and like, okay. Oh, I'm anxious? Okay, well, most humans are anxious. And they, they always will be, most likely. Um, so what are we gonna do about it? I mean, this guy's calling himself, "I was only a moderately successful hack."

• 31:07David Senra?

  So, why, I mean, if he feels that way, why wouldn't we, right? "Waiting for some elusive big break and the chance to get out of comics and into the real world." This is such an important sentence coming up. "What I didn't understand at that point in my life, was that comics were the real world to me." And he's not gonna understand that for quite some time, we're still early in the book. Alright. Okay, well, we're in like, the middle of the book.

• 31:34David Senra?

  Okay, and that's funny, I didn't even, a few pages later, I'm looking at the note I left myself. "You ever feel like you're wasting your life? Stan Lee felt that way too." And so we're gonna see more of that here.

• 31:46David Senra?

  As time went by, one problem that kept gnawing at me had nothing to do with the comic book characters or plots, but rather with the plot of my own life. I was still feeling more and more frustrated and discouraged. I realized I was almost forty years old and still doing comic books. Was that what a grown man, a husband and father, should seriously be doing? I told Joni, that's his wife, how I felt, and she was totally sympathetic. She said she could understand if I felt burned out. After all, she knew how many years I'd been working at the same job, and she knew how much pressure I was constantly under to turn out script after script. She also understood that I felt somewhat like a DJ in a small town.

• 32:28David Senra?

  I was sitting at the mic, getting the message out, but was anybody listening? Did anybody care? I felt I was wasting my adult life and whatever little talent I might possess on a job that wasn't all that meaningful. I was just making a living, nothing more. This is a dangerous thing about our mind. Our mind plays tricks on us. It caught, like, we have these little seeds of self-doubt, of anxiety, of depression, that can sit there. And, again, I'm just gonna keep bringing this up on the podcast because, like, I know people that are listening to this feel that way too. I've felt that way. And I sure I will in the future. But it's not real. That is not actually happening.

• 33:12David Senra?

  You have to step back and take, and learn from, like, using history as, like, give yourself additional context. And realize that, you know, everybody feels this way, even if they're not gonna talk to you about it. I mean, we're, we're really lucky that Stanley's been so honest, and there is something to be said about a lot of the autobiographies that we've covered on the podcast, where, you know, they usually get to a certain age where they reflect back, and it's not all glorifying, "Look how special I am. I created Nike, or I created Walmart, or I created Marvel." They all talk about the regrets they had, the stuff they wished they could've done differently. And I think that's super valuable because by that age, the past is done. You can't really do anything about it. But if we understand that most people have these regrets, and they're usually the same

• 33:57David Senra?

  kind of regrets, over and over again, usually, you know, "I wish I spent more time with family, maybe I didn't work, maybe I shouldn't have worked this hard," etc., etc., or worked as much, rather. It's inevitable if we're not heeding that advice that we're gonna feel the same way. And I think like that's one thing I don't wanna want to do. I don't wanna have a lot of regrets when I'm older. And you probably don't either.

• 34:17David Senra?

  Okay, skipping ahead. Oh, he's got some great, he's just such a, he's an amazing writer. Even like, go back to like, let me go back to the beginning. Cause I wanna read that too. I wasn't planning on doing this, but I can't. I wanna save that. I'm gonna take a picture of this.

• 34:34David Senra?

  The way he describes his, what he describes, I'm gonna read what he, uh, how he describes Marvel Comics. Because listen to the words. Cornucopia, swashbuckling, humdrum, prosaic, andipitous feast of the mind. So it says Marvel is a cornucopia of fantasy, a wild idea, a swashbuckling attitude, an escape from the humdrum and the prosaic. It's a serendipitous feast for the mind, the eye and the imagination. A literate celebration of unbridled creativity, coupled with a touch of rebellion and the insolent desire to spit in the eye of the dragon. Whatever you say about that paragraph, if you like it or you don't, you're gonna remember it. And I think he was extremely good at marketing and promotion. He, a lot of the books actually dedicated to the fact that he felt his bosses didn't know anything about it.

• 35:18David Senra?

  So for an example, the, why, where he came up with that weird Excelsior motto? He started at a time, Marvel was the first one company to, um, to realize, hey, we have a lot of fans. Why don't we create some kind of club where we can communicate with them? And then we get special things like pins and, and letters from me? And like behind the scenes of how we make the, um, the comic books they love? Um, it winds up being really successful and then his boss made him shut it down because they were short sighted and silly. Um, but he, he's talked about how he would communicate with his fans as just like, like, like a person. Like I didn't talk like a business because I'm not a business, I'm a person. So he started using these words and he noticed other comic book companies copy that. So they would use like his folksy language.

• 36:02David Senra?

  He's like, well, now I need something like, I clearly see they're, they're stealing from me, copying from me, rather. And, um, I need like, I need to make it obvious. So that's where he went to Latin. He's like, well, if they use the word Excelsior, then it would clearly know that they're saying, hey, I got this idea from Stan. Um, okay, anyways, I just went on a weird tangent because this is a great sentence. Sometimes mediocrity can be as disappointing as failure.

• 36:32David Senra?

  The experience taught me an important lesson. I learned that a person's opinion isn't necessarily right just because he happens to have an important title or be the head of a company. I was determined never to try to create something according to somebody else's lights if I didn't feel comfortable doing it. So it's more of the, like allowing other people to infringe upon his creative outlet. He wanted to do like a, like a comic strip about like a big city New York cop. Because he grew up and lived in Manhattan for most of his life. So that's what he felt he knew. And then he was, other people convinced him to change it to like a, it was gonna be something called Barney's Beat.

• 37:17David Senra?

  Like, you know, the cop beat. And then they changed it to like a, instead of a hip, big city cop, they wanted Barney to be a small town mailman. And it was called Willie Lumpkin. And he was just, this is terrible. And he's like, I'm making work that I don't give a crap about. And that's why he comes up with, sometimes mediocrity can be as disappointing as failure.

• 37:37David Senra?

  Okay, so now we've got to the turning point of Stan's life. Remember, most of the book, he's talking about interesting things he creates, but then he shares multiple examples of just complete dissatisfaction with his life. So this is the turning point of his life. By the early 1960s, my urge to quit the comic book field had become stronger than ever. So think about that. He was, let's see, how, when was he born? Let's check real quick.

• 38:02David Senra?

  Oh, no. I Googled to pull up his Wikipedia page to find his birthday. One of the headlines is Stanley's former business manager charged with elder abuse against late icon. That's terrible. Uh, okay, so 2019, 22?

• 38:19David Senra?

  Yeah, 1920, okay, so he's almost 40 years old before he reaches the turning point of his life. It's actually a really important part of the book. I'm gonna read a lot from here. Um, okay, so my urge to quit the comic book field had become stronger than ever. The titles were no longer selling the large numbers they once did. As far as I could tell, the comic book industry was in trouble. I felt we were merely doing the same type of thing over and over again, with no hope of either greater financial rewards or creative satisfaction. But as so often happens, a tiny, almost unnoticed pivotal event can change the course of a person's life. This particular pivotal event was a chance golf game between Martin Goodman, remember that's the guy that owns the company, and Jack Liebowitz, the publisher of National Comics. LeWitt casually mentioned to Martin that a new series that National had introduced,

• 39:04David Senra?

  The Justice League of America, consisting of a team of superheroes, including Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, all in one book, was selling surprisingly well. He thought it might indicate a resurgence of readers' interest in the superhero genre, especially in teams of superheroes. "He rushed in to see me as soon as he returned to the office. 'Stan,' he said excitedly, 'can you come up with a team of superheroes like The Justice League?'" Now, how crazy is this? This is happening in 1961. That is, of course, he's gonna come up with The Avengers, and The Avengers will now, let's see, 70, 80, 90, 50 years later, become the most, what, the most popular, or most highest grossing movies of all time? "Coincidentally, it was that very afternoon that I had been planning to tell him that

• 39:49David Senra?

  I wanted to leave the company. I finally decided I was getting too old to be turning out simplistic comic books day after day." That's what he means about "an unnoticed pivotal event can change your life." "Martin caught me off-guard with his enthusiasm for creating a new superhero title. He was so fired up about it that I couldn't bring myself to tell him I wanted out. I decided to let it go the next day." And this is when he gets an absolute genius piece of advice from his wife that changes his life, and changes, now, after this day, Sam, or, stamped, Stan, comes from being like doubting he was doing right, and miserable, like, just being like this hack, he called himself, to just saying, "You know what? I don't have nothing left to get, like, I have zero fucks left to give, and now I'm

• 40:34David Senra?

  just gonna do things how I wanna do it." And this becomes the birth of the Marvel Universe, because of what he does here. She goes, "So, that night, I told Joanie of my decision. She was completely supportive, but then she added something I hadn't thought of. 'You know, Stan, if Martin wants you to create a new group of superheroes, this could be your chance for you to do it the way you've always wanted to. You could dream up plots that have more depth and substance to them, and create characters who have interesting personalities, who speak like real people.'"

• 41:01David Senra?

  It's such a key. Then she said something that should have occurred to me right away. And it was the thing that made up my mind. Remember, you've got nothing to lose by doing the book your way. The worst that can happen is that Martin will get mad and fire you. But you want to quit anyway. So what's the risk? At least you've gotten it out of your system. That did it. My mind was made up. So then this is the birth of him writing superheroes. Before that, you know, they were all perfect. They'd be like the, you have the Superman. He's good looking. He has no, like very few weaknesses. Handsome, strong, etc., etc. He starts making these people that are kind of neurotic. Like the Fantastic Four, where the lead guy is like, he's like a, he talks too much.

• 41:45David Senra?

  He annoys the people around him. You got Thing, who's like this ugly creature. You have Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who's like, has the same insecurities that all teenagers have, and is not good with girls, and all this other stuff that kind of makes them more human-like. They just happen to have weird, you know, powers. Okay, so this is an example of what I was saying earlier about, I understand that most people prefer modesty, but I'm not necessarily sure if I believe that's the best, the best advice for entrepreneurs or people that are being creative. And I don't mean like, so to me, when people are saying like, if people are not humble

• 42:27David Senra?

  enough, I think like you could be extremely confident, like Stan Lee was, but still be humble in the sense that like, to me humility is the understanding that like, you don't know everything and you can still learn from other people. So you could be confident in your abilities and still be receptive that other people and other events have stuff to teach you. So it says Stan was, and this is an example of like, this guy clearly, he had a high level of, like he was his own biggest fan. He's already told us that, right? So Stan was a bundle of optimism after launching his new group of superheroes. He started telling everyone who'd listen that the Fantastic Four was going to be known as the best superhero comic book ever produced.

• 43:06David Senra?

  Come on, that is hilarious. And he does this extremely early, watch this. "It arguably attained that exalted status by the time it reached the third issue, at which point Stan began to think his braggadocio might actually have been too modest. Therefore, on the cover of issue number three, he dared to print, in the hyperbole he so dearly loved, these imperishable words above the masthead, 'The World's Greatest Comic Magazine.'" He did that, what is this, 1960s? So, in my other hand, you can't see, I have a book, so the book in my left hand, published in 2002. That's his first autobiography, the second one, where he talked about in his first autobiography, he's gonna have to write another one, so he did. But he doesn't write it, it's 2015.

• 43:51David Senra?

  In that hand, it's one of the most beautiful books, I didn't know,

• 43:56David Senra?

  it's written like a graphic novel. So, I might just, I might just do this like a bonus Misfit episode for you guys, since your support means everything to me. But anyways, I mean, listen to what he named his memoir. Amazing, fantastic, incredible. Marvelous memoir. I mean, this guy's hilarious. He's really hilarious. So yeah, that's the same kind of personality that will say, hey, on the issue number three, he wound up being close to right, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine." But he makes a good point here, he's like, "Listen, 'There are no hard and fast rules concerning greatness, a condition which is generally in the eye of the beholder. I thought it was one of the best things we had done to date, and I wanted the world to know it.'" That's actually a good point. Like, no one's gonna agree on what's greatest, it's subjective. So, why don't you just say that if you believe in the work that you're doing,

• 44:41David Senra?

  and he was definitely a marketer and a promoter, like, it's gonna get people's attention. That's why you go to any, any city anywhere, it's like, "The world's greatest pizza, the world's best bagel, America's best this." It's like, come on, man, that's not, that's not real, but it's, it's surprisingly effective. Um, alright. Let's see.

• 45:04David Senra?

  Okay, so this is actually, so I have this quote, I say it all the time, I'm clearly have borrowed it from somebody else, I don't remember who or where now at this time. But I always tell people, humans scorn the abstract. And that, there's weird value in things that are not just numbers. And he, so he starts this wildly successful, um, basically, he thought, he's like, why, why doesn't Marvel have something that's like the, what was it called, that Disney had, the Mickey Mouse Club? Like a club where like you're basically a super fan of Disney. It's actually interesting that he compares Marvel to Disney, considering the decade and a half later or whatever, Disney buys Marvel. But what I mean about human scoring the abstract is like, he had this great idea, he's like, listen, like, we have a massive,

• 45:50David Senra?

  like enthusiastic community we need to cultivate. And now think about every single company nowadays is trying to build that same thing, they're trying to build like a community. Cause you realize that like, that's a great pathway to building a business in the modern age. Well, Stan understood that a long time ago. Anyways, so he had two of them, one was like the M M M S, like Mighty Marvel, something or another society. And then another one, after that one was canceled, he did it again, it's called Foom, Friends of Marvel. Both times, um, the number crunchers at Marvel saw no reason to continue. It wasn't losing money, but it wasn't a profit center. And it's just like, well, there's no way for you to track it at that time, whether it was a profit center or not. Like, it was abstraction, you had to just believe in it.

• 46:33David Senra?

  Well, people, they're not creative, they're incapable of thinking that way. And this is a lot of humans, they're just scoring the abstract. It's like, oh, um, it's a weird thing, if it's not like tangible right in front of us, like this has a price on it, or this is a return. They get confused by it. But Stan's like, no, I really believe in my heart, this is where we should be spending resources, that it will pay off in the future. Very much sounds like a Jeff Bezos quote, or like a Mark Spitznagel quote, if you listen to the Dow of Capital one. So it says, "It's a shame, I always felt that Marvel could have, could have, and should have one day rival Disney. If only those who controlled the purse strings had understood the value of promotion and public relations. We had what every company dreamt of having, a fervent, fanatical fan following all over the country and throughout the world.

• 47:18David Senra?

  Yet nobody in the executive suites knew what to do with the invaluable resource, except just keep publishing the books and hope they'd sell." They didn't seem to understand the value of having a great fanbase. They didn't seem to realize it was necessary to nurture those fans, to keep their loyalty and enlist their support. They never seemed to be aware of how vital was to maintain contact with those who cared about us. Because fans can be the most elusive ephemeral group in the world, and the suits didn't get it. Now, I'd also say it's interesting how this kind of phenomenon, this abstraction, can compound over time. If you just try to do Avengers today, movie, and nobody knew what it was, wouldn't sell. But the fact that you've been building on these stories and increasing the fanbase

• 48:02David Senra?

  and constantly producing more stories involving the same characters, allows it to build to the point where you can have the highest grossing movie or one of the most popular attractions or whatever it is. And you just have no idea how much like value that is to people. You know, these things like we cannot predict what we're passionate about and how those passions affect us later in life. So he's talking about like even in the first, when they did the first like fan club, the MMMS, you would get like a pin, right? And like people would wear them on their shirts and stuff like that. And so later on, Stan's like going into a meeting with to do like a joint venture with another company.

• 48:47David Senra?

  And the people that called in the meeting that came up with the idea, he walks in, he's meeting with four people. Every single one of them was a member of the MMMS and they still had their pin like 30 years later. Like, how valuable is that? Now this guy's getting an opportunity three decades in the future because he had an impact on somebody else's life 30 years prior. So I would just say like, if you believe in like the human element of it, and you should because like you have to be good at entrepreneurship. I think you have to understand, fundamentally understand people. It's probably worth reinvesting in things that do not have any immediate return. Not probably, there definitely is.

• 49:29David Senra?

  Um, okay, so now, he's really happy, now he's back, he's like, "I found it." He starts doing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. And then, um, this is just a note, I've already trampled over this note, but I'll read it anyways. "Breaks box office records 55 years later. In 1963, we also gifted the reading public with the Avengers. It was another team of superheroes, but not new ones." And then think about how crazy this is. He came up with Avengers out of laziness. He said, "Probably out of laziness, instead of dreaming up a whole new caboodle of new characters, I simply took our already established and popular characters and had them form a team called The Avengers."

• 50:06David Senra?

  I thought that was interesting. One, the time, the time aspect of it, but second, it's like, "Ah, I can make new characters, or I can just create new stories based on how other characters relate to one another." Which again, is just a reflection of human. Think about all the different humans that you interact with and how those relationships then interact with each other, like you act differently with maybe your spouse, to your best friend, to your coworkers, to, you know, the people you play sports with, or whatever the case is. Um, okay, now he's gonna give us a lesson in human nature. And it's, you know, he gets basically screwed over by Martin Goodman. And, uh, we're gonna get in there. So, this is in 1968.

• 50:47David Senra?

  Uh, they changed the name from Timely to Marvel, because Marvel was now, as a result, Stan's work was making, making the vast majority of the money. And Goodman decides he wants to sell. So he says, "Martin told me that Perfect Film was offering him between 12 and 15 million in cash from Marvel, and that's 12 to 15 million in 1968 dollars." So it's a lot of money today. It's a lot of money even at those numbers. But here's the kicker, "Perfect told Martin, 'They wouldn't buy the company unless I signed a contract to stay on.'" Well, yeah, he's doing all the work, the vast majority of the work. "One of my closest friends, who happened to be a brilliant businessman, told me I was in a great position since my being under contract was, quote, 'of the essence for the sale being made.'" "He said I could ask Martin for almost anything and he would have to give it to me."

• 51:31David Senra?

  And this is Stan's response, "Are you kidding? Martin may have his faults, but he is a friend. I worked for him for 20 years. I know he'll be fair."

• 51:42David Senra?

  Oh, really?

• 51:44David Senra?

  You Stan have not learned. So he goes to have dinner after the sale. Remember his, Martin's married to his cousin. Uh, so it's Martin, his cousin, Stan's cousin and Stan and his wife. Martin puts his arm around Stan, he says, "Stan, I'll see it to, I'll see to it that you and Joni will never have to want for anything as long as you live. I'm gonna make you a gift of some valuable warrants, which he said were something somewhat like stock options. I figured at last, this is my pot of gold. He's keeping his promise. As time went by, the warrants proved to be absolutely worthless. But it was even worse, although he said he would, he never actually gave them to me. Nor did he ever in any way make good on the promise that Joni and I would never want for anything as long as we live.

• 52:29David Senra?

  No bonus, no bonds, no warrants, either worthless or otherwise. Zilch. I guess there's a lesson to be learned there somewhere. So think about that. This guy gets unbelievably wealthy off of Stan's, Stan's work and doesn't give him anything. Not a dollar, nothing. And then leaves the company two years later. Um, oh, so, so he's about to leave the company and now, you know, Marvel's been bought over and over again. So I, I'm not even gonna tell you the names, I guess. So this other company buys it and they, they morph into another conglomerate called Cadence. So he's still working for Cadence at the time. And Cadence decides, "Hey, um, we're gonna give you a promotion, Stan, cause you're so important. We're, you're gonna become a publisher."

• 53:14David Senra?

  And a publisher was basically what Martin was, right? So Stan's like, "Oh, this is fantastic." Martin.

• 53:21David Senra?

  Let me just read it to you. "But once again, Martin proved what a friend and grateful guy he was. He tried every way he could to prevent my becoming publisher because he had been hoping to give that job to his son. Still, despite all Martin can do, Cadence named me publisher of Marvel Comics. What I'm about to tell you now is still hard after all these years for me to accept, but I swear it's true. When my promotion was announced, Martin actually had the gall to accuse me of disloyalty, of betraying him after all he had done for me."

• 53:55David Senra?

  That is a tale as old as time. Where, remember, I always talk about this idea that we're not rational creatures. We're rationalizing. And those are two are very, they're very different things. We can't help but see things from our selfish perspective. Needless to say, by this time, I didn't care what Martin said or thought. I was finally free to do what I always felt I could and should have done with Marvel. And that was all that mattered. It freed me up to begin devoting myself to promoting Marvel as I'd always felt it should be promoted. I wanted to bring our company to the next plateau to make it the next Disney. So then he hires a bunch of writers, editors. He gets away from writing, you know, basically all day, nonstop. And he goes out and promotes. And for 10 years, this is why we know Stan Lee.

• 54:37David Senra?

  He would give like speeches to groups of people, whether it's like colleges, anywhere he could. And he would, he was on the road for like 50 weeks out of 52 weeks a year. Just giving speeches, promoting Marvel, talking about that, cultivating fanbases all over the world. Which was extremely, extremely smart on his behalf. And, and you could only imagine what if they had been doing this, you know, forever. What that, what the results would have been. I mean Marvel's a huge success story, a wonderful story. But it took, you know, Stan going out and talking to, he did things that weren't, didn't scale. Using that, that famous essay, do things that don't scale. Okay.

• 55:19David Senra?

  This is interesting, real quick, just the power of direct sales. And I think a lot of people skip out on. By the end of 1970s, comic books were so popular that stores specializing in comic books opened in neighborhoods throughout the country. I remember going to some of these when I was a kid. In the comic book trade, this distribution channel was called direct sales. As opposed to the normal distribution system of a distributor bringing comic books to the usual general magazine outlet. So they're having their own dedicated channel now instead of being lumped in with these other printed materials. Spotting a new booming market, Marvel actively focused on this sector. So he does things, this is really smart how he talks about it.

• 56:00David Senra?

  Well, the result too is this increased Marvel sales by an additional 420,000 books a month. The size, I still cannot get over how many of these, I mean, I just can't get over how much they sold. It's insane. Says, "One of the best things about direct sales was the fact that the comic book store..." This is, this is a good point. This, I finally got to it. "One of the best things about direct sales was the fact that the comic book store owners were Marvel's most effective salespeople. Stan felt he had a good product, but at convenience stores or new stands, it was lost among hundreds of other items. In contrast, the buyers who walk into a comic book store are already pre-sold. They come in with the intention of buying a comic book.

• 56:42David Senra?

  The question is not will they buy a comic, but how many and which ones? Marvel began pu-" and then he does something really smart. "Marvel began publishing comic books exclusively for the direct sales market, which gave the store owners still another reason to promote the company that was giving them an exclusive product that couldn't be purchased anywhere else." So not only do you have a complete alignment of incentives and realizing that, that the most effective salespeople possible are the people that are working there, because you have like a passion, a passionate person about it, but then you're adding on to that and giving them, like rewarding them for doing that. And what's gonna happen, it like feeds everything else. So not only are you gonna sell your, the ones that you do that are just produced exclusively for the sales channel, but all the other ones as well.

• 57:26David Senra?

  Um, so it says, "Which gave the store owners still another reason to promote the company that was giving them an exclusive product that couldn't be purchased anywhere else. Marvel helped the dealers and the dealers reciprocated. It seemed to be a powerful strategy." And then I'll close on this, and I think this is a really important part of the story, the fact that, you know, 30, 40 years of struggle and self-doubt. Stan's writing these words at almost 80, and I think he finally arrived at the holy grail, the thing that we're all looking for, um, to have work that's so meaningful and enjoyable that there is no, like, you wanna keep doing it. And to that point, some final words, uh, from the life and wisdom of Stan Lee. "The toughest part is, how will I know where to end it? At what part of my life should I wrap it up?

• 58:08David Senra?

  Since I'm still insanely involved with a whole caboodle of projects, at what point should I write the end?" A person's career isn't like a movie. As long as you're alive, there's no dramatic fade-out shot accompanied by suitable music as a credits roll. And I'll be damned if I'll shrug off this mortal coil just to furnish you with a dramatic ending. Of course, I could always just retire and that would give the book a nice, warm, uncomplicated ending. In fact, people are always asking when I plan to retire. I always ask them, retire to what? Most people retire in order to finally do the things they really want to do. But I'm already doing them.

• 58:53David Senra?

  I can't think of anything better than tackling new movies, TV projects with a bunch of talented, enthusiastic, creative people.

• 59:04David Senra?

  So I'll leave a link in the show notes if you want to buy this or any of the other books that I've covered on the podcast. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for the support and I will talk to you next week.