The “Stan Lee Way” of Creating Great Characters
Introduction
Like many who were exposed to Marvel characters at a young age, I was first introduced to some truly amazing characters through the creations of famed comic book writer Stan Lee. It was from watching Marvel adaptations, reading his work, and studying his characters throughout my childhood, adolescence, and beyond that I learned much of what I know about creating great characters in stories. But just how exactly do you create great characters? Gathering from what I frequently pick up on and come across in Stan’s work, I believe there are generally three main components to creating great characters. They need to be Relatable, Interesting, and/or Compelling. In this foray into Stan’s creative process I will be looking at how Stan Lee implemented these elements into his characters and how you can implement them yourself.
How Do You Create A Character That is Relatable?
A relatable character is a character that feels so real that the reader feels as if they actually know them. Readers want to empathize with characters, regardless of setting, but we only easily empathize with a character that is genuine in some way. If the character has no real substance, the reader will very likely get bored. It is about creating a real character, not a blank canvas. Real characters are imbued with flaws. Because characters are people and people are imperfect, we need to give our characters something that makes them imperfect in some way, for we as imperfect people see ourselves in them. The flaws should serve to make the character more “Human” (even if they technically aren’t). It is important to understand that this concept is true regardless of setting and what kind of character you are trying to create, because, in the words of Stan Lee, “Even if they have super powers, they have to be believable. What they do has to be what any normal person would do in those situations.” One of Stan Lee’s best (and most iconic) examples of this is Peter Parker aka Spider-Man. Spider-Man is so popular specifically because he is a conflicted character. He is flawed, and because of the way he was conceived, he is believable. As Stan Lee explains, “I tried to keep it realistic in order not to make him a typical hero. I made him an average guy who was kind of unpopular. He was sort of a nerd, the kids didn’t like him, he was a bookworm, he didn’t have enough money, he had to support his old aunt. He was an orphan, he was shy and so forth. And, it turned out he was somebody that the readers could relate to. He became very successful. He became our most popular character.”
In essence Stan would make his characters more relatable by putting more emphasis on the person behind the superhero persona, thereby making the person more important than the persona itself. That is character relatability in a nutshell.
How Do You Create a Character That is Interesting?
The quality that every good character has is that they engage the reader in the story that is being told. In other words, they are interesting. When creating a good character, what you should be considering is not how to create a good character, but instead, “How can I make this character interesting?” When creating a character that is interesting, the best way to look for inspiration is look for and think of what kinds of things you personally find interesting. As Stan Lee puts it, “You can only do your best if you’re doing what you like to do. If you’re trying to write to please other people, you don’t know other people. You think you do, but you don’t. But you know yourself. And if you write something that pleases yourself then it can be genuine. If you can please yourself with what you do, there have to be other people who have the same taste.” For example, when Stan Lee first created the Hulk, much of his inspiration came from two characters in film that he had personally found interesting. These characters were Frankenstein’s Monster, and Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.
“I combined Jekyll and Hyde with Frankenstein,” Stan explains, “and I got myself the monster I wanted, who was really good, but nobody knew it. He was also somebody who could change from a normal man into a monster, and lo, a legend was born. I had always loved the old movie Frankenstein. And it seemed to me that the monster, played by Boris Karloff, wasn’t really a bad guy. He was the good guy. He didn’t want to hurt anybody. It’s just those idiots with torches kept running up and down the mountains, chasing him and getting him angry. And I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to create a monster and make him the good guy?’”
Stan Lee took two characters of personal interest to him and fused them together to create a character that he himself would find interesting. In turn others would find this character interesting as well.
How Do You Create a Character That is Compelling?
The most compelling stories are those where the problem is tied to the very core of who the character is. All compelling characters should have a problem to overcome. Stan Lee himself has said Marvel has always been and always will be a reflection of the world right outside our window. His work was very symbolic of the era he lived in, perhaps none more so than the X-Men. Just like many other fictionalized stories, the X-Men are compelling because they draw parallels to real world problems. They were designed to parallel the Civil Rights movement, as well as xenophobia and genocide. By creating characters who face prejudice due to being different, they are instantly compelling to the reader.
They fight for people who hate and fear them, and they fight for equality just as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X did in the Civil Rights movement. They fight to end hate and fear against them. As Stan Lee elaborates, “In X-Men, I guess my intention was to show that the world never fully tolerates people who are different. So here, nobody could have been more different than these mutants that I created, and actually, we showed that people feared them, and then little by little began to hate them, because they were different.”
This is so compelling because almost everyone grows up feeling different. And over time, the X-Men no longer just applied to Civil Rights movements in the 60s; it has also become a metaphor for the gay rights movement. The X-Men are the essence of intolerance, and what I see to be the essence of how to craft compelling characters with a compelling narrative to match.
One Final Note
One bonus piece of information I gathered from Stan Lee- one of the best ways to truly understand how to create characters that are relatable, characters that are interesting, and characters that are compelling, is simply by reading and watching; monitoring and observing. A lot. Stan Lee’s philosophy on learning how to improve as a storyteller was “The more you read, the better you’re going to become as a storyteller.” Stan Lee was an avid reader and it is through studying the works of other writers, by reading about iconic characters and taking mental notes about their personalities and their characteristics that you learn to write better characters, and what makes a great character.
Citations
Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, Amazing Fantasy Issue #15
Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, The Incredible Hulk Issue #1
Chris Claremont & Brent Anderson, X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills
Stan Lee and Peter David, Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir
Stan Lee — My love of reading and writing (38/42) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v79H15uxfXk
With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story (Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct9VTQnPa5c
Stan Lee: Advice for Comic Book Writers and Other Artists
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjb05OurpBc
Stan Lee’s Top 10 Rules For Success (@TheRealStanLee)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejWqPvzqi3c
Jason Concepcion, Stan Lee Gave Us Relatable Superheroes
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/11/14/18094480/stan-lee-gave-us-relatable-superheroes
Brent Lang, Remembering Stan Lee: Marvel Legend Succeeded by Making Superheroes Human
https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/stan-lee-appreciation-marvel-comics-1203026684/
Ken Paulson, Superhero Stan Lee fought for justice and diversity with relatable comic book characters
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/11/12/stan-lee-comic-books-superheroes-justice-diversity-good-hero-column/1981744002/
Elleen Reslen, ‘Keep Moving Forward, and If It’s Time To Go, It’s Time’: Stan Lee’s Most Inspiring Quotes: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a25016796/stan-lee-memorable-quotes/
Victor Frankenstein vs. Bruce Banner http://www.craigcarey.net/fall2012/2012/09/20/victor-frankenstein-vs-bruce-banner/
https://twitter.com/therealstanlee/status/1101896870610132992