Photo by Steve Sherman
In 1970, my then-partner Steve Sherman and I spent a few days up at the offices of Marvel Comics, which were then on Madison Avenue in New York City. A few minutes ago, I was browsing Ye Olde Internet and I came upon these photos that were taken in that office in 1970 and I thought, "Gee, the office looks just like it did when Steve and I were there. Even some of the same things are pinned up on the walls. Those must have been taken only a few months before or after we were there."
Then I noticed the photos were taken by Steve Sherman. No wonder everything looked just like it did when we were there.
Quick funny story. As you may be able to tell, most of those who worked in the office then were in little cubicles, surrounded by walls which did not reach all the way to the top. These photos were taken on a Tuesday or Thursday. Stan Lee was the guy in charge but Stan only came in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays so "The Boss" was not there that day.
Some in the office were annoyed at a rule that Stan had just laid down. The offices were a fun place with a lot of joking about and inter-office pranks. Many of the artists working there were known to dash off and pin-up insulting cartoons about each other and sometimes, these cartoons could get a bit raunchy. John Romita, whose duties then included drawing covers for some romance comics, had drawn alternate versions of a couple of those covers in which the posing and dialogue was exactly the same but the women were nude. Some of the dialogue took on different meanings when that change was made.
Stan had ordered all this stuff off the walls since once in a while, children were brought in to tour the office. The folks who worked there seemed to feel that was an unfair decree on his part. Only a few drawings were naughty and those were easily hidden when kids came by. The staff felt that what Stan was really trying to get rid of were the cartoons kidding each other. Since he was the head guy, an awful lot of them were about him.
Anyway, since Stan was out that day, a new round of cartoons about him went up, depicting him as a bad sport. Marie Severin, who was appallingly good at caricatures, drew one of Stan ordering all the cartoons off the walls, especially the ones that made fun of his toupee, which was then about as big a secret in comics as the fact that Clark Kent was Superman. In the drawing Marie did, Stan was yelling, "No one knows about my hairpiece!" and the hairpiece had a huge price tag hanging off it and everyone else on the staff was laughing and yelling at him, "You've got it on backwards!"
Also, some naughty drawings were pinned up. The plan was that at the end of the day, all of this would be taken down to comply with Stan's order. None of it would be there when he came in to work the next day.
Suddenly though, they heard Stan's voice! It was coming over the top of the room dividers near the front. He'd just come in!
Everyone panicked, rushing to rip down drawings that were naughty or about Stan. They got them all down just as he came around the corner —
— and it wasn't Stan. It was his brother Larry. Larry Lieber, who wrote and drew for Marvel, sounded just like Stan when he spoke loud enough. There was a burst of relieved laughter and John Verpoorten, who was the production manager, suggested this was a sign from God; that they'd gotten a reprieve and shouldn't risk putting the drawings back up.
Marie Severin took about a dozen of her Stan-mocking cartoons and slipped them into a manila envelope to take home. Then she turned to me and said, "You just witnessed the end of an era. Cartoons on the walls were where most of us did our best work." Of course, the tradition resumed a few weeks or months later.
I'm really glad Steve took all those photos of the office but I wish he'd taken the inside ones about a half hour earlier…when the cartoons were still up.