In the second week of December Alter Ego #150 will be available in shops and as a download from the website of it's publisher Twomorrows. It's a special issue celebrating the 95th birthday of Stan Lee. Not only does it have a new and rare interview with The Man himself, there is also a huge article by me about Stan's efforts to get out of comics between 1956 and 1962. It is based in part on his correspondence with his agent Toni Mendez, which has been at Ohio State University for about thirty years. I could not use any actual quotes from many of the correspondence, but I paraphrased averything that was important. And Stan himself gave us permission to use his own letters, as well as a report hij wife Joan did for his newspaper strip Mrs. Lyons' Cubs. The history of that strip, as well as Willie Lumpkin is described in the article, with many new art samples from various different sources. There are also samples of newspaper strips that did not make it, including the synopsis of a soap opera strip Stan tried to do with Vince Colletta. And to top it all, I found an unknown selfpublished book at yet another university.
Stan's partner in Mrs. Lyons' Cubs was Joe Maneely, who like Stan was trying to find new jobs when all around them the comic industry seemed to collapse. Here is one of the few stories Joe Maneely did for DC, not long before he accidentally fell of a commuter train between New York and Philadelphia and died far to young. Stan tried to continue Mrs. Lyons with Al Hartley, but that never really got off the ground.
