Briefly on Stane Lee and Julie Schwartz's introductions to 2008's JLA/Aveengers trade

When I wrote about Kurt Busiek and George Perez's JLA/Avengers a few months ago, there was one interesting aspect of the trade collection I read that I couldn't quite find a way to fit into the post, so I've decided to return to it now in a separate post. The particular 2008 trade paperback collection I used for my re-read included a pair of introductions from comics veterans who were integral in the creation of both of the title teams (as well as so much else that went on at Marvel and DC over the course of decades), Stan Lee and Julie Schwartz.

Everyone, of course, knows Lee. Even if this is your first visit to a comics blog, and if you somehow arrived here and started reading this post by accident, you probably know who Stan Lee is, as he's perhaps the only true household name that the medium has ever produced. The legendary editor, writer and promoter of Marvel comics not only co-created the super-team The Avengers (along with his frequent collaborator Jack Kirby) and not only served as The Avengers' first writer, he also co-created all five of the team's founding members (again, along with Kirby, and a couple of others like Ernie Hart, Don Heck and Larry Lieber).

As for Schwartz, he spent over 40 years as an editor with DC Comics, and was pivotal in the publisher's recommitment to superheroes in the latter half of the 1950s, working with writers and artists to reintroduce new, second-generation versions of The Flash, The Green Lantern and others, helping usher in waht became known as the Silver Age of superhero comics (and, indirectly, as we'll see, inspiring Lee and company's creation of the Marvel Universe). It was Schwartz who decided to also update the Justice Society of America team, and thus the Justice League of America debuted in 1960.

In 2008, the year these introductions were published in this collection, Schwartz had already been dead for several years, having died in 2004 at the age of 88 (This may explain why his introduction says "By Julie Schwartz, As told to Robert Greenberger"). And as for Lee, he was 86, and about to start the last decade of his life (He would die in 2018, at the age of 95). 

The introductions are set side-by-side in two parallel columns, not unlike those that were printed on the inside front cover of the first DC/Marvel superhero crossover, 1976's Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man #1, although in that case they were penned by Lee and his then DC equivalent, Carmine Infantino. 

Amusingly, the Stan Lee introduction is much longer than the Schwartz one, continuing for another six paragraphs after Schwartz's had ended. More amusingly still, neither man gives much in the way of an indication that he's actually read the comic they are supposedly introducing (Not that I blame either man, given their age at the point they must have been writing these). 

Schwartz, at least, proves he's well aware of who the creative team is, the fact that there are a ton of characters involved, and that the story will involve the first fighting and then teaming up. His intro ends thusly:

It may seem like a tired old plot, but in the hands of true professionals they make it entertaining. Kurt and Georg have my admiration for taking the time and care to fit in so many heroes, villains and other familiar beings. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to proofread it all!

As for Lee, he eventually gets around to saying "There are countless thrills and chills on the action-packed pages ahead," but then, that's the same thing he would say about any Marvel comic (or any comic he himself had anything to do with). 

So if not the comic collected within the trade, what do they talk about? 

The history of the two teams, or at least the origins of the team each man is involved with, although, in Lee's case, it takes a bit to get to it, and he also talks about himself (and, charmingly, Schwartz) quite a bit too.

Lee's introduction is perhaps predictably jokey and jocular, as well as somewhat self-deprecatingn and often about the very writing he's in the act of doing. It's very Stan Lee.

He talks about the legendary 1960s golf game between National/DC Comics publisher Jack Liebowitz and Atlas/Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, in which Liebowitz said his new comic Justice League of America "was selling like there's no tomorrow."  

Writes Lee:

Well, might Marty didn't need a house to fall on him. As soon as the golf game was over he raced to a phone and called yours truly.

"Stan," he bellowed, "National's Justice League is a hot seller. I want us to get on the bandwagon too. Cook me up a book which stars a whole team of heroes — and to it yesterday!"

This, Lee says, is "comicdom's worst-kept secret," and the call that inspired not the Avengers, but instead the Fantastic Four. (As Lee puts it, it was "the reason I dreamed up the good ol' Fantastic Four, which I modestly called 'The World's Greatest Comic.'" Oh, did Lee dream them up? Well, that's one way of putting it; at least he mentions Jack Kirby in the next sentence, with "Aided by the artwork of the titanically talented Jack Kirby"...).

In Stan's telling, DC's JLoA and Marvel's FF were in " a no-holds-barred, neck-and-neck race," and, while that was going on, "we" (by which he means, but doesn't say, he and Kirby, Steve Ditko, Bill Everett and a handful of other collaborators) created  "a brand-new batch of additional super-heroes," those of the first generation of what was becoming the Marvel Universe.

He names them all, of course, and it's only after a few such years that Marvel actually has enough of its own superheroes with their own books to band together into a Justice League-like team, which is how Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Ant-Man and The Wasp ended up facing off against Loki in 1963's The Avengers #1. 

He spends several paragraphs talking about writing a team like the Avengers, and then spends a paragraph on Schwartz:

But I cannot come to the end of this candid little confessional without saying a few words about my co-Introduction writer, Julius Schwartz. I'm both pleased and honored to have the opportunity to appear with this legendary comic-book great in a watershed collection such as this. In all the years that I've known and admired him, we've never actually worked together or appeared in the same magazine before. It's taken half a century for this to happen. But y'know something? Considering the respect and admiration I have for the countless accomplishments of Julie Schwartz, it was well worth the wait.

Well that was sweet, I thought. 

While Lee's introduction appeared in blue ink on the lefthand side of the first two pages, Schwartz's was in red ink, and on the righthand side of the pages. 

Schwartz jumps right in:

The revivals of super-heroes were going so well that my schedule was getting crowded. But when we came up with the next logical step — combining these heroes into a team — no one else would touch it but me! Obviously, we modeled the new team after the Justice Society of America, but as I've said for years, I've never liked the name Society. It sounded too upscale. I preferred something like League, since, after all, everyone followed the baseball leagues.

He goes on to explain that "Every super-hero who had a feature was going to be in the new team," which is why they numbered at seven, and why characters like Martian Manhunter and Aquaman ended up on the team, despite the fact that those two didn't, at that point, have the sorts of resumes  or track records of the other five (if we allow The Flash and Green Lantern to list their forebears' accomplishments as their own,, of course). 

And as for Green Arrow, Schwartz says he couldn't remember exactly why he wasn't there at the beginning, but he had enough heroes for 24 pages anyway (And it's not like GA would never join the team; he would sign up within a year of the League's Brave and The Bold debut, in the fourth issue of their own book).

Schwartz goes on to write a bit about the original creative team—Gardner Fox, who had also written the old JSA stories, and Mike Sekowsky, "the only artist I worked with who could uniquely fit all these characters on each page"—and how the early issues came together, how they were received, and how the team expanded ("Well, we relented and finally let Green Arrow in. I was then sticking to my guns, and waited for heroes to have their own title before they could join, like the Atom and Hawkman.")

And then, how he and Fox introduced the parallel world of Earth-2, and the JLoA met the JSoA, the sales of which were incredible enough to keep the two teams meeting regularly for decades.

"But I never imagined they would ever cross paths with the Avengers," Schwartz writes. "When DC and Marvel first tried to have the teams meet, I was just an innocent bystander, curious to see what would happen."

Nothing, as it turned out. But that was in the 1980s.

"But as the house ad said when we first gave the JLA their own title, Just Imagine!," he writes. "Just imagine seeing the best and brightest from two entirely different companies combatting one another and then working together."

Obviously, neither piece says all that much about the amazing story that follows, the ultimate DC/Marvel crossover, but it was interesting hearing about the origins of the two teams from men present at (and integral to) their creation and, particularly in Lee's case, I found it somewhat revealing of the men themselves to hear what they had to say and how they said it.