Peter Parker would understand. A mortal man, going about his mortal business, is bitten by a bug--a special, powerful bug--and it changes his life. Only the bug that bit Stan Lee isn't radioactive; it's interactive. With the print-comics industry besieged by villains (the rapacious Sega! the Pokemon league of doom!), the co-creator of the Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Parker's alter ego, Spider-Man, is taking comics online. (Insert "Web"-slinging pun here. --Ed.)
For nearly 60 years, Lee, 77, was a writer and editor for Marvel Comics, a comics-world superstar and creative pioneer beloved of cultural critics and artists like Federico Fellini. Now, overseeing artists and techies at the Encino, Calif., offices of Stan Lee Media, the lanky, spry Lee is crafting his first new characters in 25 years--and recrafting himself as a new-media baron. "When I got into comics, it was the early days of the industry, and it was all new," says Lee. "Here's another chance for me to get in at the beginning."
It's the beginning of what Lee hopes will become a new way of making comics: simple online animated shorts Lee calls "webisodes." Designed to accommodate slower modems, they will run between 3 and 5 minutes--complete with bone-crunching, cape-swishing sound--and take between 1 1/2 and 3 minutes to download at 28.8K. The site also features trivia quizzes and fan pages designed to foster community (just as, Lee notes, print comics did, with their pals-y tone and rowdy letters sections). The first new series, The 7th Portal--about multicultural computer geeks who travel cyberspace to protect Earth against a villain from another dimension--debuts Feb. 29 at www.stanlee.net www.stanlee.com was snapped up by an enterprising Texas jeweler, no relation, with whom the company is wrangling).
As in much media today, the strategy for success in online comics is cross-pollination, licensing and alliances. Viewers will watch webisodes for free, but the fledgling company hopes to strike deals for video games, books and TV series, and is working on the apotheosis of today's superhero: theme-park rides. The company has signed with Acme City, a website owned by TIME's parent company, Time Warner. And in a particularly odd cross-media teaming, Lee will create print comics and webisodes starring the Backstreet Boys. (Dare we dream of a death match with 'N Sync?) "There's a lot of females in our audience," says Boy Nick Carter, "and [comics are] a really cool way to get guys involved."
Here's what else is really cool. Since the company began trading publicly last August, Lee's stake has earned him more money than he made in a lifetime with Marvel, testimony to the Web's ability to transmute famous names into cash. Stan the Man is now Stan the Brand.