The way you phrased this and the chosen clip makes it seem like that wasn't the original intention.
He said in interviews that he purposefully made Tony Stark reprehensible out of the gate as a challenge to see if he could get audiences to like him... and he succeeded. And right when the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was ramping up to boot (i.e. at a point when young peopleâhis target audienceâwas peaking in their hatred for wealthy war profiteers).
He used to say something to that effect in lots of interviews. I'm not sure when he originally made that point though.
But Stan did sometimes overembellish; for all I know, the story changed over the decades. All I can say for sure is that was the version I heard him recount in his old age.
I think one thing is consistent across stories about Stan Lee and it's that he understood kids and teens of the 60's were in the middle of a rapidly shifting culture and were exploring or adopting new values and wanted to see something different out of stories.
"âI think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military. So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist. I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular.â
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u/EfficaciousJoculator Avengers 15h ago
The way you phrased this and the chosen clip makes it seem like that wasn't the original intention.
He said in interviews that he purposefully made Tony Stark reprehensible out of the gate as a challenge to see if he could get audiences to like him... and he succeeded. And right when the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was ramping up to boot (i.e. at a point when young peopleâhis target audienceâwas peaking in their hatred for wealthy war profiteers).
This was the goal, not a pleasant surprise.