Stan Lee Gives Advice About How to Create Superheroes
For creating superhero comic books, you’d be hard pressed to look far beyond advice on a certain subject than the one and only Stan Lee, who has made numerous characters and comic over his decades long career. Stan the man talked with IGN and they asked about how to create new superheroes in a world full of them, so he lent them his wisdom.
First up, what makes a good superpower? According to Lee: “That is one of the most difficult things to come up with when doing a story, because it’s as though they’ve all been done,” Lee said. “Super strength, the ability to fly, invisibility — on and on. I must admit, I have a few new ones. You’ll be seeing them at Comikaze, when you see our little stories. I have a few new ones also that my company POW! — we’re working on some new superhero stories, and I’ve created three new superpowers that nobody has ever seen before. I can’t wait until these come out. But it’s very difficult, because as you can imagine, what’s left?
A funny one was about costume because he relates how he always let the artist come up with that. Lee stated: “All the superheroes have different types of costumes. The only one who didn’t was the Hulk. I couldn’t think of a monster going out and buying himself a costume or sewing one, so I gave him a different colored skin, which was a substitute for that,” Lee said. “But I don’t know what makes a good costume. Frankly, I used to leave most of that to the artist. I’d tell him the character I wanted, and the artist would design a costume. Usually I’d like it. Once in a while I’d say, ‘That’s too corny. Make it a little simpler,’ or something.”
Finally, what’s the most important thing when making a character? Uniqueness and originality, per Stan Lee: “The important thing to look for is originality. And you have to be able to write something that people will be interested in seeing and want to see ‘Where does this go? What comes next? What’s going to happen?’ So you need characters that the viewer is going to care about. Just like in real life, you have friends. Some of your friends you really like to be with — they’re interesting, they’re fun. Some of the people you know, you never see them again, it won’t matter. It’s just a case of giving your characters the kind of personality or problems or something that makes the viewer want to see more of them.”