Tim Quinn’s Marvel UK Memories: Interviewing Stan Lee

By Tim Quinn on July 1, 2018

Stan Lee on ITV’s The South Bank Show, broadcast in the mid 1990s — *Stan Lee on ITV’s* The South Bank Show, broadcast in the mid 1990s

Stan Lee has been a hero of mine since I read one of his comics when I was just seven years of age. So you can imagine what a blast it was many years later to bring in The South Bank Show TV cameras to produce an in-depth interview with Stan ‘The Man’ Lee in his New York office at Marvel Comics.

Only a mere portion of the recorded interview was used in the resulting TV show.

The nitwits in Marvel management had warned me not to mention DC Comics, as they didn’t want my show to promote the rival company. My first question to Stan was: “Tell me how it all began for Marvel Comics?”

Without a pause he replied: “All thanks to DC Comics who had already created two of the finest characters in comic book history, Superman and Batman…”

Marvel management fumed behind the cameras as Stan went on at length about the wonders of DC for the next ten minutes, but they didn’t dare stop The Man…

*A page from the transcript of the Stan Lee interview recorded for The South Bank Show*

Tim Quinn – writer, publisher and more – is the genius behind the FAB4000 project that he created with Russ Leach, inspired by Jayne Massey and her seeing eye dog Witney who feature in the stories. Ken Dodd gave his support to the project, and Tim recently released latest edition for the Merseyside charity, Liverpool Heartbeat – www.liverpoolheartbeat.com.

• Find out more on Facebook. You can find Tim online at mightyquinnmanagement.com

• Buy ARGH – Tim’s autobiography – from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

• Buy the Doctor Who title, It’s Even Bigger on the Inside by Tim Quinn and Dicky Howett- from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

Tim Quinn

Tim Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1953, the very same year Beryl the Peril first appeared in The Topper. Coincidence? We think not! His mother named him after her favourite childhood comic book character, Tiger Tim. Educated by Irish Christian Brothers whose prospectus boasted, “We will instill a fear of God into your child”, it was little wonder Tim chose a life in comedy. And there’s nothing more comical than working in or for the comics industry at times, for companies that include Marvel UK, where he was Head of Special Projects…