Wednesday 4 November 2020

ROUND YOUR WAY (back in 1975, anyway)!

In the year following first contact with Ray Wergan in 2011,
I made a series of discoveries that changed the course of the book in a major way, inspired by what I was now learning from British Marvel’s first overseer. I forget what I was researching one winter afternoon, but I stumbled across an exciting catalogue listing from an American museum. This formed part of a much larger holding at the American Heritage Centre (AHC) based on the campus of Wyoming University, who had been gifted the Stan Lee Archive.

The archive comprises material from several different deposits made by Lee in the years preceding his demise, and so you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled across that master list of its contents – notated as a series of storage boxes containing various materials. There were three that caught my attention, although I’d spot a fourth one on a later occasion (a short audio recording for a UK radio commercial): British Correspondence 1973/4; Transworld correspondence; and in one of the audio/visual boxes videotapes of his appearance at The Roundhouse 1975.

The first teaser advert for The Roundhouse event

I know, videotape! Of the show at The Roundhouse! I was stunned by the prospect that it might be viewable.

Of course, I got in touch with the AHC immediately, although I remained doubtful that I’d be able to access anything given that I wasn’t resident in the US. I couldn’t have been more wrong! The team were wonderfully helpful from the outset, and arming their researches with a list of key words, I soon received a packed PDF of all that correspondence at a very fair cost  well worth it for the time taken to locate and scan all the pages. This stash of paperwork revealed a wealth of behind the scenes details via memos, letters, print contracts and sales reports. It also created more material to ask Wergan questions about too, naturally, starting up a continuing dialogue.

If you’ve been following TwoMorrow’s recent output, then you’ll have seen such books as Stan Lee Universe that have dipped into the Wyoming holdings. However, I think it’s fair to say that although the archives are open to one and all, the significance of that Roundhouse box will have been lost on most people in the US. Inside that storage box were two black-and-white video reels – an early professional format – which former Marvel London studio man Alan Murray informed me had been recorded by the young, comic-loving fans working for London’s first cable company. This documents Stan’s first major interaction with British comic fans on the evening of 20th October 1975.

There was one teensy-weensy, small snag, however. Whoever first requested such material had to pay the digital transfer costs. Not cheap for such a specialist job.

One of the two video reel boxes housing a visual treasure trove...

It was only this year that I was finally able to make the necessary arrangements to have the footage transferred by an archival specialist with the machine in the US capable of running the precious reels. The tapes were not in good condition, so the footage is – sadly – no longer in broadcast quality (quite where Stan kept the tapes we’ll probably never know). Thankfully, we’ve caught it just in time, so despite the visual glitches, the odd missing frame or picture hold, the audio remains rock solid throughout the entire show… and it’s a long one at nearly two-and-a-half hours’ worth!

In fact, the only thing that it didn’t include was the band performance by Good Habit, which wasn’t filmed (although a brief snatch of a soundcheck can be seen, and the lead singer's opening dialogue can also be seen and heard), but everything else was there from start to finish, captured by a single camera located in the gallery. It's an amazing time-trip to a very different era, and I feel amazingly privileged to be one of the first to view it since the original event happened.

Projection behind the band throughout their performance, while Spidey patrolled the audience
giving out special vitamin pills to fortify the audience for the evening ahead (no, really!)


Due to copyright considerations, I hope you'll forgive me for, at present, not uploading even a sampler onto YouTube. If this becomes possible later, then I’ll seek out someone to help me edit the footage slightly into something more manageable, as there are some staging portions that could easily be trimmed or removed to speed things up a bit (the pace is somewhat leisurely by today's standards, shall we say). It would certainly be nice to perhaps hold some kind of special one-off screening at some point. For now, I’ve posted the only two screen grabs that I’ve had time to capture so far (from notes I made of suitable sections during the initial viewings), and you’ll find a brief extract from a full transcription below, which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Most of the extracts published in the fan press were fairly accurate in what they quoted, but it’s great to finally be able to take it from source to eliminate mis-hearings/typing. Naturally, this has been an extremely useful resource in addition to all the audio interviews that Alan Murray held on to, several phone interviews I’ve conducted over the years (Larry Lieber, Herb Trimpe and Neil Tennant), and of course countless e-mail conversations with folks on both sides of the Atlantic.

Okay, I’ll shut up, and get back to working in the final chapters…

The following extract  covering three popular characters of the day (one not even by Marvel!)  comes from the first round of audience Q+As that evening at The Roundhouse before Herb Trimpe came on stage later, and just a few minutes after host Ted Polhemus had finished trying to get to the essence of what made Stan, well, Stan. As to why Ted and/or Stan are repeating the questions, well that was for the benefit of the audience. There was only a small microphone set-up on stage, so questions from the audience are as inaudible on the recording as they would have been to much of the packed crowd too.

Stan Lee captured in full flow, perched on a reversed office swivel chair, with mainly untouched
glasses on the tea-chest in front of the epidiascope that Trimpe will later draw on
(note the frame distortion at the top of the still, and speckling across the image)


Ted: “Now, Stan, tell us about the Silver Surfer”.

Stan: “Silver Surfer! Okay, Silver Surfer time! The Silver Surfer is one of the strangest examples of something that I can think of. Y’know, the way we used to work, I would give the artist a plot because I was writing most of the stories and I didn’t really have time to… I couldn’t write fast enough to keep all these artists busy. So, you’re wondering, what has this to do with the Silver Surfer? Well, in my own roundabout way, you just watch how we zero in on it. So, I’d be writing a script for Jack Kirby, let’s say, and Steve Ditko would come over and say ‘I need a story’, and Don Heck would say ‘I need a story”, and Gene Colan, and here I am finishing Kirby’s, but I could let these guys sit around with nothing to do. So, I would say, ‘Well, look Steve, I can’t write your script now, but here’s what the plot is; I’ll tell you roughly what the idea is. You go home and draw it, then bring it back to me, and I’ll put the copy in later’. And then I would say that to Don, and to Gene, and to everybody else, and in that way I could keep a lot of artists busy at once just by telling them the story idea, letting them draw it any way they wanted, and I’d put all the words in later. I found out it was the best way to work, because I’d get the real creative thinking of the artist, who wasn’t hindered by a detailed script, and when I wrote the copy, I could write copy that was tailored exactly to what the drawings were. Well, I did that with Jack Kirby, and here we get to the Silver Surfer”.

“On a Fantastic Four story, I said, ‘I want you to get a villain called Galactus, and Galactus is a guy who destroys entire planets by draining the energy of that planet, you see, and it may sound crazy but Jack knew what I meant. He went home and drew the thing, and it was great, and when he gave the drawings to me, I looked at the drawings and I said I noticed he had one character flying in the air on a white surfboard, and I said, ‘Who’s this nut on the flying surfboard?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know. I figured that anybody named Galactus who can destroy whole planets he ought to have an assistant – a herald who goes ahead of him and finds the planets for him to attack’. That sounded okay to me, but I liked the look of this guy on the surfboard, and Jack and I talked about him, we decided to call him the Silver Surfer, and I was so intrigued by him I said, ‘I’m not going to let him talk just like any ordinary guy, but I’m going to give him dialogue that’ll be, I don’t know, almost biblical. He’ll philosophise about the human condition, and the state of the world, and the insanity of the people on Earth, and the fact they have all these wars, and they have crime and there’s poverty, and race hatred and bigotry, and all the terrible things about the human race’. And I really enjoyed it, and I thought it would be great, but I never really thought that people would relate to the Silver Surfer as much as they did. Little by little a whole cult grew up about this character, and we finally put out a series of Silver Surfer books, which Jack was too busy to draw and we had John Buscema draw them, and they became very popular, but again I got very busy and couldn’t continue it. And now, to answer the question as to what happened to him, and when we’ll bring him back, I have fallen so in love with this character I really don’t want anyone else to write the Silver Surfer. I don’t have time to write the series, so he’s sort of in limbo now, floating round on his surfboard somewhere in the galaxy until I’ll get a chance to write him, because I’m not going to let any other writer… it’s like some parent letting somebody else take care of his kid – I couldn’t do that!”

Ted: “But Stan…” [audience applauds]

Stan: “Thank you, Silver Surfer lovers!” [more applause]

Ted: “You’re like a parent to all of these characters – Spider-Man as well – now you let other people write Spider-Man”.


Ted: “What’s so special about the Silver Surfer then?”

Stan: “Well, I think one of the special things about the Silver Surfer is everybody, even young kids, are really into philosophy, into what’s the world really about and why are we here, and where are we going? And we all like things that are a little bit metaphysical, and I think the Silver Surfer has all that. He has sort of religious overtones without being religious, you know what I mean? I don’t know. It’s a little hard to explain why something fascinates somebody, but look he affects me the same way – he’s the only character I won’t let anybody else write”.

Ted: “How about the guy waving two Titans comics in the air?”

Audience member: [Inaudible question]

Stan: “Ohhh!”

Ted: “The question is, what’s happening about the Superman/Spider-Man team-up? Which I didn’t know anything about, anyway!”

Stan: “Well, I’ve been keeping it a secret from you, Ted! [laughs] The, um… Don’t ask me why, but for some reason somebody came to me and said, ‘Hey, Stan, why don’t you do a team-up book where Superman and Spider-Man will be in the same book’. Well, my first reaction was, ‘You’re crazy!’, then I thought of it a little bit, and ‘Boy, wouldn’t that be something’, but then I said, ‘Ah, nah! We could never do that!’, and then I thought, ‘Well, why couldn’t we do that?’ Well, to make a long story short, I called the Publisher of the Superman company, a guy named Carmine Infantino – and I hope he appreciates me giving him this valuable free publicity – and I said, ‘Hey, Carmine’… and many people don’t know this, but Carmine and I years ago used to work together – he used to draw strips for us, and he was very good, he was a good artist. Anyway, I said, ‘How about if we do a book with Superman and Spider-Man’, and he said the same thing I had said, ‘Ah, you’re crazy, we can’t do that!’, and then he thought a little and said, ‘Hey, wouldn’t that be something!’. Well, we decided, just for fun, maybe the world is ready. You see, I’m happy about it for this reason. Superman was the first superhero. He’s been around for a billion years. Everybody knows about him – they know about him in Australia, China, all over, and he’s almost become a generic word like Kleenex [mild audience laughter] – Spider-Man is new! We’ve pulled him up by his bootstraps. Our little company – and we are a little company compared to Warner Brothers, which owns Superman – our little company has been struggling to make the world aware of Spider-Man and our characters. I might add, you might be interested in knowing, that Spider-Man and Marvel Comics are now the biggest-selling company in America. We out-sell the Superman books [huge cheers and applause] Thank you! But we are still… we are still comparatively a little company, so I thought what a kick this’ll be – finally even the Superman company has to admit and recognise that Spider-Man is as famous, and they have to want Spider-Man with Superman in order to interest their audience, so for that reason I love the idea, you see!”

16 comments:

  1. Hey, that was cool! The years drop away and we're right there in 1975. It was lovely to hear Stan talk about the origins of the Spider-Man/Superman story, and especially, his thoughts off-the-cuff about the appeal of the Surfer to himself and all ages.
    Perhaps you can use Patreon or something to offset your costs and present your rare find.

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  2. Thanks - I'm sure they'll be some way to do it, so we can present, perhaps at a future convention, when such things are possible again, of course.

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  3. I was there that night, after pestering my mum repeatedly to take me. It was a magical experience for an 11-year-old boy. I'd love to see a video or hear the sound track.

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  4. Hi Paul, as you can gather, this was an exciting discovery (understatement), tempered with some sadness at how poor the recordings now are.

    I'd always envisaged doing a screening at some promotional event for the book - if, of course, there's no rights issue - but its so long, you'd have to go with highlights, I think. The book quotes the most interesting portions of the Stan interview and subsequent Q&A, as well as noting who else was there in the audience that night.

    I can well imagine it left a big impression. Did you get the stamp on something? And were you part of the stage invasion at the end, I wonder? :-)

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  5. Thanks Rob

    I did buy the UK editions of Marvel, Spider-Man and Avengers for that year at the then shocking price of £1 each, or rather my poor mum did. I do think they may have had a stamp. Sadly I sold them a few years later. I was upstairs, I think. So long ago I can't remember, possibly it was just at the back. But i never made it to the stage.

    I hope to read your book when it comes out. Will it be announced here?

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  6. Hi Paul, that'd be all three of that years Annuals, then - obviously a doting mother, a good purchase :)

    The stamp was a way that fans could show that they'd been at the event that night - I think, worded 'I was with Stan at the Roundhouse' (without looking to find a photo with it on).

    Not surprised you didn't make it to the stage, Stan was mobbed in seconds, and the stage hands were in very quickly to clear some space to extract him :)

    Oh, the book will definitely be announced here and across as many other FB groups and other internet sites and print media etc. as possible. I haven't spent forty years on this (effectively) to let it slip out quietly, that's for sure!

    Keep watching here for further updates, is all I can add at present. Thanks for your support.

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  7. I also was there that night and managed to make it to the stage and get my copy of 'Son of Origin of Marvel Comics' stamped which, as previously alluded to, was literally an ink stamp with the wording: 'I was with' and then: 'At the Roundhouse' forming the circumference.
    In the middle was the name 'Stan Lee' and the date: October 20th, 1975.
    I even managed to get Spidey's signature in red felt tip pen on the same inside cover!

    I went with my friend and his Dad and would have been twelve at the time. I was obsessed with Spiderman in those days, and was a regular visitor to the now much lamented 'Weird Fantasy' comic shop in New Cross.

    I still have the book to this day, which formed part of a trilogy along with 'Origin of Marvel Comics' and 'Bring on the Bad Guys'

    I remember those days with incredible fondness and feel sorry that todays generation will never have the sense of excitement and anticipation that Marvel gave us all those years ago.
    As Stan would say - 'Nuff Said!

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  8. Great to hear your memory of the night - the end of the recording shows Stan quickly vanishing under the stage invasion, to the audible concern of the staff there! I don't suppose you have access to a scanner? I've had a few promises of images from stamped books but I don't believe I've yet got any images in the growing visual vault, so if there's any chance you could send me something, that'd be wonderful. Thanks for getting in touch, anyway,

    I feel much the same way about formative years of Marvel Uk, as a latecomer in 1975. Even knowing they were reprints, there was still a distinctiveness about the comics that was different to anything else out there, and not just because they had those glossy covers.

    As you'll have seen from other posts here, and as the book will show in much greater detail, much of this was down to Stan wanting the British comics done right - this was definitely his project - although its only since I've been researching this whole area that this has come to light through interviews and archival material. Understandable, then, that it's not something he was ever given credit for at the time.

    I've been off the book on another project for a few months, but I must post an update before the year's out on how things have progressed, so keep an eye out for future postings.

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  9. Hi Rob, I can certainly provide a scanned copy of the book page containing the Roundhouse stamp - is there a way to send to you personally and I'm more than happy to oblige.

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  10. Yes, you can find me over on Facebook - it's a public page as Rob Kirby - so just ping me a friend request and then you'll be able to PM it over. Many thanks. I do also have a separate e-mail listed here and on FB, but I lost the entire contents last year as it had gone unlooked at for longer than I'd realised (for various reasons) and so was treated as dormant account and cleared off the system, so not sure whether it's receiving or not now.

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  11. Hi Rob, I'm not on FB unfortunately. Sincere apologies for my unsociable nature! Do let me know if there is any other way that I can send.

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  12. Ah, I had a feeling you might say that. Try a_distant_beacon@ymail.com and I'll give it a check tomorrow.

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  13. Hi FOOM - that old e-mail address has been compromised, as I feared. I've just set up a new address you can use, which you'll find via the contact link in the 'about me' details.

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  14. Although it would help if I'd programmed the address correctly! Now sorted.

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  15. I was there. I waited at the stage door after the event ended and got to shake Stans hand and get his autograph. I didn’t wash my hand for a week afterwards. I remembered the over head projector shown in your photo from the video. WOW! This is amazing. I would dearly love to see the video of the night one day. It was a VERY important night indeed for this then 12 year old. Wasn’t Marc Bolan there that night?

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  16. Great to hear that you were there that night. I was as amazed at you when I discovered Stan had kept the videotape reels all these years. Where he stored them, though, gawd knows - they needed a specialist to retrieve the footage (at some cost to me), which is glitchy in places and quite lo-tech in its single camera production value, but fortunately has a rock-solid soundtrack. Copyright concerns not being an issue, it would indeed be nice to arrange a one-off screening in the promo for the book.
    As to your query - Marc was certainly at the pre-show shindig over at the ICA, whether he attended the event itself I can't confirm.
    Apologies for not having time to pin this message up here earlier than I have due to family commitments.

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