10 Stan Lee Facts For His True Believers
5. Not All His Ideas Came To Fruition
It’s common knowledge that no one thought Spider-Man would succeed except Stan Lee. Writers and executives told Stan that people hate spiders and readers don’t want to read about a teenage superhero. Luckily, Stan trusted his gut and created one of the most influential superheroes of all time.
However, many of Stan’s ideas never saw the light of day. Originally, Spider-Man was going to be called Fly-Man. His costume would be inside a ring that activated when pressed. This idea was used for the superhero, the Flash.
Stan Lee wanted the X-Men to be called The Merry Mutants. Stan’s collaborating writers rejected the name because they had no idea what a mutant was. The team’s nemesis, Magneto to was meant be revealed as the brother of the X-Men founder, Professor X.
One of the biggest changes made against Stan Lee’s wishes was for Spider-Man’s nemesis, Green Goblin. Although the character was eventually revealed to be Norman Osborn, Stan wanted the Green Goblin to be an ancient creature found in an Egyptian sarcophagus. Although his collaborator, Steve Ditko convinced Stan to make Goblin a human, Ditko wanted it to be a brand-new character while Stan wanted him to be someone that Spider-Man knew. This argument got so heated that Ditko quit writing Spider-Man after Amazing Spider-Man #38. In the very next story, Green Goblin was revealed to be Norman Osborn.