Stan Lee: My last final Saturday with the comic book icon

The former editor, Roy Thomas, spoke to Spider-Man about the comic book creator and showed him pictures of a forthcoming biography: "He was always talking about making more cameos."

Roy Thomas was hired by Stan Lee in 1965 and succeeded him as editor of Marvel in 1972, when Lee became the editor. Two days before Lee's death, Thomas spent a last Saturday with his former boss and longtime friend.

When Stan moved to California for the first time in the early 80s, he invited my wife and me to the place where he was staying before buying his house. It was a rented location on the Westside with marble floors. At one point, he apologized and came back on roller skates. I do not know if the owners of the place enjoyed it by rollerblading on its marble floor. I had never seen anyone rollerblade on a marble floor.

I was just with Stan on Saturday. It had been agreed a week earlier for me to come from the east. It was said that Stan had said that he did not want to see anyone, but when they mentioned my name, he said, "I would like to see Roy." Which was very flattering. I was just with him for half an hour, less than 48 hours before his death. He was on the couch, facing the pool, had somehow a view. He was very dressed and so on. He just did not have the energy that he had the last time I saw him. He looked fragile, but he was walking and walking alone.

He seemed to be happy to see me. It was something different from the usual cycle of his life, the last few months since his health had dropped. He asked about the Spider-Man comic book I've been working on for 18 or 19 years. Until a few years ago, he was working on it with me.

In a certain way the subject of [Marvel publisher and Lee’s uncle] Martin Goodman has come. He did not look for excuses to say derogatory things about people. But in the last decades of his life, he briefly explained how "Martin thought people would not like spiders" and "a child can not be a hero". He pulled out his feelings. I told him, "I think Martin Goodman's last big creative decision was to make the decision to form a group of superheroes.After that, I thought that he could come off. " Stan thought it was fine.

We had a copy of the new book that had just appeared, The story of Stan Lee, that I wrote for the editor Taschen. Stan had glaucoma at this stage of his life. We were looking at the book and talking about some of his pictures. He said that he should see if he could plug in his magnifying glass and everything and watch. For the book, we found pictures of people he talked about for years but no one had ever seen. We found a photo of this teacher that he loved so much that he talked about it all the time. We had to put a pillow on his legs because this book is very heavy. Then we opened it. It gave us a chance to discuss some things and we went through a lot of things.

I think he was ready to leave. But he always talked about making more cameos. As long as he had the energy and he did not have to travel, Stan was always ready to make other cameos. He had a kick from those more than anything else.

A version of this story appears in the November 14 edition of The Hollywood journalist magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.

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