The so-called Marvel Age of comics began with the 1961 publication of the first issue of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four. Writer Lee and artist Kirby are widely credited with revolutionizing the superhero genre when they created a set of characters who didn’t wear outlandish costumes and who’d acquired their powers in a freak accident but weren’t so crazy about it.
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The Fantastic Four prompted an unprecedented amount of fan mail, which inspired Lee to develop a stable of complex, humanized characters. He and Kirby designed the Incredible Hulk–another hit–and the Mighty Thor, but in 1962, when Lee pitched the idea of a skinny, geeky teenager with spiderlike powers, he was unsure whether Kirby or another Marvel artist, Steve Ditko, should be the one to illustrate the story. As Lee tells it in his Origins of Marvel Comics, initially Kirby was given the assignment and he depicted Spider-Man as he usually drew his characters: bombastic, bulging, and over-the-top. That wasn’t what Lee had in mind, so the duties went to Ditko, who Lee felt more capable of adequately rendering a “superloser.”
This weekend, for the first time ever, Lee is auctioning off some of his pristine file copies of Marvel comic books at the annual Wizard World comics convention. Other featured guests include Top Cow Productions founder Marc Silvestri, special effects artist Stan Winston, and actor Luke Perry. It starts at noon on Friday, July 5, and runs through Sunday, July 7, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, 5555 N. River Road in Rosemont. Tickets are $20 per day, $40 for a three-day pass; children under ten get in free. Call 847-622-3692 or see www.wizardconventions.com for more information.
