Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, marvel, roy thomas, stan lee

Roy Thomas Says Stan Lee Was 'Ready To Leave This Earth'

Published Mon, 12 Nov 2018 14:25:25 -0600

Last updated Thu, 15 Nov 2018 18:23:03 -0600

This morning, Bleeding Cool posted a picture of Stan Lee with Roy Thomas, the Marvel EIC who succeeded him. We didn't know this may have been the final photo taken of Stan, before he died today.

Roy Thomas tells us,

I'm sadder than I can say that Stan has died… even though I know, from my recent phone conversations with him, that he was more than ready to leave this Earth. I'm so grateful that, by sheer circumstance, I got to spend a half hour or so with him this past Saturday, less than 48 hours before he passed away.

At that time, it was obvious that he lacked much of the old Stan Lee energy that everybody had got to know at conventions and in movie cameos, but when I asked him about future cameos, he expressed a real interest in making them, if he could find a way to do it without their being too much trouble. He asked me about Dann and all the animals on our place (Dann had, at his request, sent him a DVD we made for him a couple of years ago), and got fairly animated when talking about his battles with publisher Martin Goodman over doing Spider-Man.

I opined as how maybe the one important creative decision Goodman ever made was when he commissioned Stan to create a super-hero group back in 1961. Stan seemed to get a kick out of that. He posed for a couple of pictures with me, and then the last one with me and my friend and manager John Cimino, who had worked (in concert with Stan's buddy and handler Jon Bolerjack) to arrange for Stan and me to get together one more time. But I wish I could look forward to seeing him and sparring around with him again. Still, I consider myself so very lucky to have known and worked with him for so many years… one of the most important mythmakers of the 20th century.