经济学人下载:"漫威之父"斯坦·李去世 享年95岁(2)

So you would never have suspected anything of Stanley Leiber as he was growing up poor in Manhattan, with his father out of work, living on hot dogs and wandering the streets alone in summer while his friends were away at the camps his parents couldn’t afford. But he could feel that inner strength stirring! It came from words. He read and read and read. Adventure tales, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Zola, Dickens, Shakespeare. He loved the sound of words, the music of vowels and consonants jostling each other. Inside him, he really believed, lay the Great American Novel!
所以你绝想不到，斯坦利·利博成长于曼哈顿一个贫穷家庭，父亲失业，只吃得起热狗，夏季朋友们都去夏令营时，他只能独自在街上闲逛，因为父母根本支付不起夏令营的费用。但他能感觉到内心的力量在颤抖！是文学给了他力量！他手不释卷。从冒险故事读到马克·吐温、儒勒·凡尔纳、左拉、狄更斯、莎士比亚。他爱单词的发音、如音乐般美妙的元辅音交织碰撞。他深信，伟大的美国小说就在他心中！

Yet he stumbled into comic-book writing instead, at Timely Comics, Marvel as it became. And wallowed in embarrassment! People scorned him for his silly trade. On the literary totem pole in New York Stanley Lieber was the lowest of the low. Yet they did not know—even he did not know!—that as soon as he had signed himself “Stan Lee” on his first bit of text-filler in 1941, hiding himself as he thought, he was putting on his superhero clothes! Once the bright beams of his new ideas had dazzled his boss at Marvel (it took a while), nothing stopped him! Pulse-pounding characters flowed from him all the time. He could write five books a week. Sales of Marvel’s titles rose from 18.7m in 1961 to 32m in 1965 until DC Comics, and Superman and Batman, were stunned and reeling! Stan Lee’s legions of fans and true believers were exhorted to march onwards, shouting his watchword “Excelsior!” To the highest!
但却意外地在《时代漫画》（后更名为《漫威漫画》）上开始创作漫画书。且一度陷于尴尬境地。人们嘲笑他那愚蠢的行当。在纽约文学界，斯坦利·利博地位微乎甚微。但他们没料到——即使他本人也没意识到——1941年，在第一次填写漫画内容时署名为“斯坦·李”后，他以为是在隐藏身份，实际恰恰是穿上了超人外衣！一旦他新想法的闪光点得到漫威老板的赏识（这花了一些时间），就没有什么能够阻止他了！随后络绎不绝创造出令人拍手称赞的漫画角色。一周就能创作五本书。漫威漫画的销量从1961年的1870万部上升到1965年的3200万部，直到DC漫画、超人和蜘蛛侠的出现，已经节节走高、令人惊叹！斯坦·李吸引着大批粉丝和忠实信徒的持续支持，秉持着口头禅“精益求精！”直至天下第一！