Let me assure you, Gentle Readers, you are probably not missing out on anything important.
Gary Groth has assured me that most of the “interview” has been eradicated. With the curt answers the questions were getting, though, the situation became a something/anything panic to keep the answers coming. Granted, some of the questions were a bit idiotic, especially considering they came from questioners who should have known better. Accordingly, four friends and I shouldered into the center of the grouping and set up a barrage of questions designed primarily to keep Stan from slipping out during a pause for breath. Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone in attendance tried to get to Stan after the panel - “unfortunately,” because Lee had already twice delayed a “personal” interview with your reporter, and the time was after ten PM. Lee's second appearance put him onstage with a symphony conductor, a dance expert, and the aforementioned Ezra Goldstein, for the misguided purpose of discussing the Fine Arts Festival's inane theme, “Yeah, But Is It Art?” Fewer than two dozen people attended this panel, which consisted of a boring plethora of unenthusiastic attempts to stay on this uninspired topic. An edited transcript of the panel appears below. Lee also fielded questions from the audience during this panel, which ranged from excellent (how Lee felt about other writers switching about his characters' origins) to terrible (“How old is Jack Kirby?”). In the first, Lee answered questions from an onstage panel consisting of: Pierce Askegren, comic collector and aspiring writer Ezra Goldstein, editor of the theatre-oriented magazine Dramatics David Wendelken, a journalism instructor at JMU, and myself. Nevertheless, Stan Lee was the main guest of honor at JMU's Fine Arts Festival in March, and was involved in two presentations during his one-day stay. Which could explain why Lee’s appearance there filled less than half of a small on-campus theatre. There are no comic book or science fiction clubs, no comic-collecting professors, no comics shops, and no courses even vaguely resembling “Comic Books as Popular Culture 101.” James Madison University, a relatively isolated school in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, doesn't really offer that air of student bohemia that one would normally associate with a school Stan the Man would be likely to visit. This interview is from The Comics Journal #42 (October 1978) Stan Lee with Chris Claremont at the Dimension Convention in 1982, New York Statler Hotel
From the TCJ Archives Hello, Culture Lovers! Stan the Man Raps with Marvel Maniacs at James Madison University