Hype-Man or Bullshit Artist?

OK, so The Comic Journal has this piece from several years ago looking at some old letters from the early days of Marvel Comics. The linkk made the rounds at the time, but it's worth revisiting to refresh your memory even if you read it before.

But I noticed something that points to Stan Lee as a bullshit artist from Day One. Check out this letter to Jerry Bails from August 25, 1961...

This was written about three weeks after Fantastic Four #1 first hit the stands. Given the lead time comic book production takes, issue #2 was probably done and #3 (when the characters' costumes debuted) was just starting to be worked on. So, Stan's thinking at least one issue beyond that when he mentions the Sub-Mariner. Definitely interesting, but no big revelations there.

Here's what catches my eye. Stan says, "judging by our early sales records, I think we have a winner on our hands." Early sales records? In 1961, at a time when comic book distribution and record-keeping was haphazard at best and publishing decisions weren't made until three months after an issue came out because the data influx was so slow, Stan is claiming to have early sales records? What newsstand was keeping meticulous enough records that they could have any sort of report back to Indpendent News and have them report back to Stan in a matter of weeks?

That line can only come from one of two things. Either Stan is making this up wholecloth or, if you're feeling more forgiving, the handful of copies at one newsstand where Stan picked up his copy of the New York Times sold out. (Honestly, I suspect Stan did not pick up the New York Times, or any other paper. He strikes me as the type who would stop at the newsstand every day, read the headlines and maybe the first paragraph or two of the more intriguing-sounding articles and not actually buy anything. So he'd have a survey of the broad news landscape and could bullshit his way through a casual conversation about any topic, but without a lot of depth of knowledge about said topic.)

For years, I'd been of the opinion that Stan was mostly just an opportunist who was savvy enough to take advantage of the media hype that Marvel found itself immersed in. He played to an audience because of the egoboo, and things kind of got out of hand, but he rolled with it anyway. But in seeing pieces like this, I can't help but think he's been bullshitting everyone about everything since he first started working at Timely. Makes me really wonder about how Joe Simon and Jack Kirby really got fired in the early 1940s, or what really happened to cause the Atlas implosion of 1957.

Stan Lee: Bullshitting everyone since before he was even "Stan Lee."

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