Arguably the most famous person in comic book history, Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man, and Thor, and Daredevil, and the Hulk, and Iron Man, and X-Men (I could go on), is interviewed by Moviefone, here.
From the piece...
As a lifelong comic fan, I've noticed that, while movies and TV shows based on comics and superheroes are getting hotter, it seems like comic books themselves are in decline, especially among kids. Do you believe that comic books are still relevant today?
Oh, I think they are as long as they're well done. Even though I know we're in an electronic age and everybody is talking like we'll read all our stories on iPads, on the television screen or on your cell phone, there's still something kind of nice about a thin little comic book, which you can look at, turn the pages, see the pictures clearly in color, read it at your own speed; and when you finish, you kind of fold it and put in your pocket or you show it to a friend. You can collect them and they don't take up much room.
You can have a year's collection of comics just on one shelf and you can trade them with friends. I think there will always be comic books, but they may not be the big bestsellers that they had been in the past, but that goes for everything. Everything is changing so quickly with the advent of all the electronic entertainment like video games. I mean, now people spend so much time on video games and playing with their cell phone and texting. It's all new exciting things for younger people coming along, so there's so much that's vying for everyone's attention that there may be less of an audience per month for comic books. There may be less of an audience per month for regular books, or for movies, or for television or for anything eventually, but I think those things will always be with us.
Why do people continue to respond so strongly to the superhero?
I think people are always looking for something that represents the ideal person, or the ideal situation. You know, there's another reason. I feel that almost everybody has loved fairy tales when they were young. I don't know anybody who didn't read fairy tales as a young child. You're reading stories of witches, ogres, giants, monsters and so forth -- kids love that sort of thing. But, after a while, you become too old to read fairy tales; you outgrow them. But I don't think you ever outgrow your love for those types of stories. And if you think about it, superhero stories today are like fairy tales for older people. It's people with powers and abilities that no human beings have. The villains are always bigger than life or the menace is bigger than life and it's like the giants and the dragons in the old fairy tales. So, it's a chance for older people to have that same fun and excitement that they had when they were young reading fairy tales -- at least that's my theory.
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