Beverly Hills -Stan Lee sits in his Santa Monica Boulevard office, surrounded by images of his creations: A life-size statue of the Amazing Spider-Man, a poster of the Incredible Hulk, a desktop figure of Ben Grimm, aka The Thing.
And then there's his Dell desktop computer. He has yet to master it (give the man a break, he's 86 years old). But he embraces it as a creative tool - and sees it as the next frontier for the comic books he helped turn from a kids' amusement to one of the world's most fertile and influential entertainment media.
Which is why he's about to launch his next superhero creation on it.
"It's going to be a big thing," Lee predicts of Time Jumper, a superhero he's created and, in collaboration with Walt Disney Home Entertainment, will soon be sending to a small screen near you. "It will be on the Web; it'll be on the telephone. I hope it will turn into a TV show, a movie, who knows what?"
Lee gets pretty animated when he talks about Time Jumper.
"He's a teenager who can travel in time through a device that he has called the Articulus. But it's more than just time travel; it's like James Bond. There are villains out to get him, and he's on a mission. It's the whole thing. Also, there's an organization called CULT (Council of Unlawful, Loathsome Terrorists) after him." Yes, the man responsible for Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and Iron Man, one of the premier mythmakers of the 20th century, is still in the game. And plans for Time Jumper sound ambitious, as well as cutting-edge. Set to launch toward the end of the summer, the title will be available for download onto multiple platforms, including the Internet and cell phone. Plans call for a traditional comic book as well as a "digital comic book" that, viewed online, will include enhanced visuals, music, voices and storyboards that move at their own pre-set pace. No comic character has been launched on so many platforms simultaneously, Disney officials and Lee say.
"There's a niche here that really doesn't exist anywhere else," says Lee's partner, Gill Champion, a one-time movie producer (Fort Apache, The Bronx) who has spent more than a quarter-century in entertainment marketing and promotion. "I don't think anybody's doing as many cross-platforms as we are. And I don't think there's anybody that's recognized in the [comic book] brand like Stan is."
