All language subtitles for Slugfest s01e04 Reverend Billingsley.eng

- NARRATOR: One thing that
DC and Marvel had in common

was their commitment
to their fans.

Both companies had active
letters pages in each of their comic books

and viewed this mail as a
crucial way to engage with readers.

For Stan Lee in particular,
communication with his readers

was as crucial to
the success of Marvel

as the sales of the
comic books themselves.

- It gives you the feeling that
however nutty the work you're doing may be,

the reader is finding some
element of realism and sinceriy in it.

- NARRATOR: Even though
Marvel prided itself on pushing boundaries

with edgy content and
controversial storylines,

two creators were about to
test just how far they could push these limits.

♪

- After we had all the
other characters, we had The Fantastic Four.

Then we had Spider-Man,
then The Hulk.

And at one point I said,
"Gee, we don't have a magician,

and kids are
interested in magic."

It seemed to me Doctor
Strange was a good name for a magician.

"The master of
the mystic arts!"

- I've never made
it much of a secret

about the fact that I
enjoyed the '70's in all regards.

There was sex and rock and
roll, and all that stuff...

uh... and drugs.

Doctor Strange
became a big hit

because he went from
being this weird magician

to being a cosmic
kind of guy.

And people enjoyed it.

A lot of stuff had not been done
in the '70's.

And we were all given
complete creative freedom at Marvel

to do what we
wanted to do...

And what we wanted to do was,
like, take everything further--

Take it to places that
it hadn't been yet,

and that's sort of what happened
with Doctor Strange.

I was doing Doctor
Strange with Frank Brunner.

I'm not going to argue
that we were probably high at the time.

It was a period when a lot of
our readers were also doing drugs

and we figured a lot of our
audience would appreciate more cosmic stories.

- We have Strange travel back
in time, and keeps going back,

like, way back.

He can save Lancelot
from a dragon.

- BRUNNER: Mmm-hmm.

Fucking dragons, man.
[exclaims] Okay. Far out.

- THOMAS: Controlled
substances may have been a little uncontrolled

in some of those stories.

As they were doing these
stories, they were getting more and more cosmic,

building from the... being
just a master of the mystic art

to being Sorcerer Supreme
and everything else.

- ENGLEHART: We did this one
story about this magician

who was traveling
backwards in time.

Strange is chasing
him through time,

and we had adventures
as that was going on.

But in the end, Strange
didn't catch him

and he got all the way
to the beginning of time.

- The thing is, how
far back can he go?

I mean, what happens if he
goes all the way back in time?

Who'd be there in the beginning?

- God?

- You ready to draw God?

- Wouldn't be the first time.

- THOMAS: All of a sudden,
they got themselves a story

where this Sise-Neg, which is
"Genesis" spelled backward.

Basically, He was God.

And we had lots of
gods with little g's,

like Thor, and Zeus,
and Odin, and so forth.

But this was gonna be God,
you know? With a capital G.

- TUCKER: Stan
Lee was all for putting the rel world into his comics.

But I think when
it came to religion

and having literally
God in your comic,

he balked at that.

- STAN LEE: No, no,
no. Roy? Get in here!

Roy, the last thing we need
is conservative Christians

coming after us over this
stuff. This cannot be God.

We can't have it be actual God.

What are these guys on, drugs?
Don't answer that.

Just make it a god, lowercase
'g' you know, like Thor.

[stutters] And just be
kind of vague about it.

We got to address this now.

Otherwise we're gonna need to
print a retraction on this.

- GRAND: It was
already printed...

the Marvel Premiere
14 that has that seismic ending.

And Stan Lee decided to
send a retraction order on that story.

- He'd been in the
business long enough

to know you don't wanna be
offending large swaths of your audience.

- And Stan Lee said, "Well,
you're gonna have to issue a retraction",

and the creative team
did not want to do that.

- They got upset because
they didn't want their story

to be messed up by Stan
or me or anybody else.

And I said, "I'm sorry, but
I'm not here to work for you."

- ENGLEHART: We had complete
freedom, and we enjoyed complee freedom.

But he might, in the future,
look a little more carefully

at what we were doing and we
didn't want him to do that.

- So when this Doctor Strange
issue came out,

Stan Lee happened to receive
one particular piece of fan mail

from this
preacher in Texas.

- THOMAS:
"Dear Mr. Lee,

the other evening, at our
church's Christmas social,

a young member of my
congregation showed me a comic book you present

called Marvel
Premiere 14.

He told me that
it dealt with God.

After reading this issue,

I must commend you on your
taste and your perception

you, your editor,
and your writer

showed in the handling of
a very difficult subject.

It is magazines such as yours
which truly perform the Lord's work

and open new eyes
to His majesty.

Thank you, Mr. Lee,
for your fine work.

Sincerely, Reverend
David Billingsley.

Denton, Texas."

Looks like you have friends
in pretty high places.

- Stan saw it, thought,

"If you've got ministers saying
it's okay, maybe it's all right."

- TUCKER: He backs off
his criticism of the issue

and says, "Okay, you know,
never mind about that retraction."

- We're gonna print this
right in the front,

at the top of the
letter section.

All right, go on, get out of
here. Maybe I should start doing LSD?

- Stan Lee really, really valued
fan letters

and thought that letter
represented what people thought about the issue.

- That's just great, Stan.
Wait, what was his name?

Billingsley.

- I'm from Indiana.
It was Christmas time.

I was flying home by way of
Dallas to get to Indianapolis.

I looked in letters pages

and found somebody
who had written the letter

and it used to print
their addresses.

- I'm just glad
that the religious community

feels the same way we do.

Yeah. I mean, I thought we
were being very respectful.

So that letter is just... wow.

- ENGLEHART: And I
made sure to mail this thing from Dallas

so it would be totally legit.

- TUCKER: And it's a fun
thing to see because it immortalized for all time,

that little act
of rebellion.

- Thanks, Stan,
I'll see you soon.

- TUCKER: And that's how
Steve Englehart, probably under the influence of acid,

outsmarted Stan Lee.

- By the time it
got back to Stan,

it was so much in the past that
it just became kind of a joke.

- Stan and I laughed about it
in a later incarnation.

- NARRATOR: Doctor Strange's
creative team may have had to get sneaky to get cosmic,

but their ability to
connect with modern readers

was giving Marvel
the edge over DC.

Despite their success
courting hip fans,

Marvel still had to prove
that they could hold their own

against DC's classic and
most powerful superhero.

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