Marvel's Stan Lee Asked To Cameo In One Of DC's Biggest Superhero Movies
by Joe Roberts · /FilmEveryone knows that Stan Lee loved a cameo, but not many know that this love for live-action appearances extended to Marvel's main rival, DC Comics. According to a former DC publisher, Lee showed up to the premiere of 1989's "Batman" and asked for a cameo in the sequel. It never came to pass, but that's probably for the best.
Believe it or not there was a time when Marvel TV and film projects didn't feature Stan Lee cameos. The world only started to get personally acquainted with the former editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics when he began narrating the animated series "Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends" in 1981 and "The Incredible Hulk" in 1982. The latter would feature Lee's voice at the top of every episode, introducing the story and building anticipation with his infectious enthusiasm. It wasn't until 1989 that Lee made his first live-action cameo in a Marvel project. "The Trial of the Incredible Hulk" was a TV movie based on the Lou Ferrigno-led series and saw Lee show up as a jury member.
That same year, Tim Burton redefined Batman in the public consciousness. 1989's "Batman" was a seminal moment not only for the Dark Knight but for superhero movies generally. If Richard Donner established the fundamental superhero blockbuster rubric with 1978's "Superman," Burton evolved it into something even more potent and effective. In the summer of '89, "Batman" became a box office smash (though it likely never made a profit thanks to a deal struck by the Joker himself, Jack Nicholson). "Bat-mania," as it came to be known, swept the world and despite the fact he had nothing to do with Batman's creation and was the face of DC's rival, Lee wanted a share of the action.
Stan Lee showed up to the Batman premiere and asked for a cameo in the sequel
If you were to watch every Stan Lee cameo back-to-back you'd probably have feature-length footage on your hands. This man never passed up an opportunity to get his face on the big screen, and his willingness to embrace the role of Marvel ambassador was, to some, controversial. Lee was known to have taken credit for work produced by legendary Marvel artists such as Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, with the latter telling The Comics Journal in a 1990 interview, "There was a man who never wrote a line in his life — he could hardly spell — you know, taking credit for the writing."
Despite these controversies, Lee largely remained a beloved figure among mass audiences, and his cameos in movies only helped bolster his image as the ever-upbeat Marvel mascot, propelled in his boosterism by a pure love for the magic of comic books. Asking for a cameo in a Tim Burton Batman movie, however, doesn't really do much to reinforce that image.
In a Facebook post, former DC Comics executive vice-president and publisher Paul Levitz recalled that Lee attended the premiere of 1989's "Batman" as Batman co-creator Bob Kane's guest. According to Levitz, the Marvel legend was "asking if we could get him a cameo in the next one," which nobody at DC followed up on. As the former DC executive VP noted, "That never happened but he got his share of movie glory, didn't he?"
Stan Lee never got his Batman Returns cameo and that's a good thing
Stan Lee did eventually get a cameo in a DC movie, but it wasn't the "Batman" sequel. In 1992, Tim Burton ushered in the franchise era by letting his freak flag fly with "Batman Returns." The sequel to "Batman" was even darker, more disturbing, and generally more Burtonian than its predecessor, much to Warner Bros.' dismay. The studio let their director off the leash for "Returns," allowing him full creative control and getting a twisted expressionist nightmare fairytale in return. The movie is, in this writer's opinion, one of the best films ever made, let alone the best Batman movie. But there's no doubt it was very dark.
All of which is to say that having Stan Lee crop up somewhere in Burton's wonderfully idiosyncratic symphony of misfits and grotesques would have been jarring to say the least. This movie was about as far from the kind of winking, self-referential tone of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as you could imagine, and was in its devotion to its own artistic ideals, almost anti-commercial. A fun little Lee cameo just simply wouldn't have worked.
Now, it could have been that the Marvel impresario was merely joking at the "Batman" premiere. Perhaps he was trying to get a laugh by suggesting he show up in the sequel. But given his love for inserting himself in live-action comic book adaptations, it doesn't seem all that unbelievable that he really wanted to appear in the movie that eventually became "Batman Returns." That's kind of crazy when you think that even "Batman" itself was a fairly unapologetic realization of Burton's artistic vision. Where did Lee think he would fit in this dark, foreboding, industrial decay-scape version of Gotham?