George R.R. Martin on the Stan Lee Contribution That Will “Echo Through the Ages”

The connection between A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin and the late comic-book creator Stan Lee might not be immediately apparent. Lord of the Rings writer J.R.R. Tolkien and Martins mentor and sci-fi legend Roger Zelazny are his most oft-cited influences. But if you pull the camera back beyond Martins most famous and fantastical world of Westeros to his larger body of work, which includes the upcoming Syfy adaptation of his novella Nightflyers, a more coherent pattern of Lee-esque storytelling emerges. In fact, Martins first published works were letters he wrote to Lee and artist Jack Kirby as a young comic-book fan growing up in New Jersey. Speaking with Vanity Fair from his home in Santa Fe Monday afternoon, Martin reflected on how Lee forever changed the way we tell stories.

Though he got his start in comic books, its impossible to consider Lees lasting legacy without acknowledging that the world he created has likely been the biggest factor in shaping Hollywood over the past decade. The men and women who grew up on a steady diet of Lees comic universe at Marvel are now the ones dictating the stories we see in theaters and at home. That includes Martin, who absorbed the lessons of Lees heroes and anti-heroes as a boy and filtered them through the lens of Tolkien in his decade-defining blockbuster saga Game of Thrones. “Im still digesting it,” Martin says of Lees death. “Stan Lee was probably the most important in the history of comic books at least since [Jerome] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster who created Superman. They started the whole thing but he re-started it and made it so much better.”

In his first published letter to Lee and Kirby—which you can watch him read out loud on the History Channel—fifteen-year-old Martin sounds like one of his own starstruck fans as he gushes wildly about Fantastic Four #17 (1963): “It was absolutely stupendous, the ultimate, utmost.” In the face of this praise, Lee and Kirby replied, “We might as well quit while were ahead.”

Of course, the pair didnt, and, as Den of Geek editor John Saavedra pointed out in a forensic examination of Martins Marvel love affair, a later Lee creation stands out as perhaps the most obvious influence on Martins famously shocking style of storytelling. Martin wrote another letter in response to 1964s Avengers #9 that included the line: “Stan, old boy, you can put another notch in your pen for this masterpiece.” The story in question introduced a new team member—Wonder Man. His arrival in the series was hyped and ballyhooed, but the character himself didnt survive the issue. This is the Ned Stark of the Marvel Universe.

Speaking with John Hodgman for public radios The Sound of Young America, Martin himself made the connection:

I liked Wonder Man. And you know why? [Laughs] Now its coming back to me vividly! Wonder Man dies in that story. Hes a brand new character, hes introduced, and he dies. It was very heart-wrenching. I liked the character—it was a tragic, doomed character. I guess Ive responded to tragic, doomed characters ever since I was a high-school kid.

Of course, being comic books, Wonder Man didnt stay dead for long. He came back a year or two later and had a long run for many, many decades. But the fact that he was introduced and joined the Avengers and died all in that one issue had a great impact on me when I was a high-school kid.

Saavedra also observes that Martin absorbed Lees fondness for families that are forged, rather than the ones were born into: “Dont forget the Nights Watch, which might be the most powerful example of family in the entire series: lost, cowardly, bad, and honorable men from all over the land, coming together to protect the world from a common threat. If that doesnt scream Avengers to you, then I dont know what.”

But perhaps the most lingering influence Lee exerted on Martin was a fondness for the overlooked and under-represented. In the pages of Game of Thrones, Martins most quotable creation, Tyrion Lannister, famously said: “I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.” As is often the case with Tyrion, this might as well have been something Martin himself said. It certainly also applies to Lee who was more captivated by the mutants and freaks of the X-Men and Fantastic Four than he was the Übermensch Kryptonians of Siegel and Schuster fame. “If my books and my stories can . . . make people realize that everybody should be equal, and treated that way,” Lee told the Huffington Post in 2016, “then I think it would be a better world.”

Martin himself coincidentally echoed this very sentiment earlier in our conversation about the Syfy series Nightflyers. Martins involvement with the series itself was severely restricted thanks to an exclusive deal he signed with HBO. In fact, this latest, loose adaptation of his 1980 sci-fi horror novella about a haunted spaceship only exists thanks to the 1984 contract he signed when the story was made into a movie long before the first volume of A Song of Ice and Fire was published. “It took me by surprise,” Martin says when he discovered Syfy and Universal Cable Productions were developing the series. Lo and behold, buried in the language of his decades-old deal were the rights to a Nightflyers TV series. While the Syfy adaptation may be loose—Martin had to stop himself before spoiling who all died in a novella that would surely make a more faithful adaptation impossible—it has all the hallmarks of a Martin story including end-of-the-world stakes, outsized adventure mingled with relatable human drama, and a makeshift family forged in the fire of extreme danger.

The A Song of Ice and Fire author, then, was only tangentially involved in developing the series which is being billed as “from the mind of George R.R. Martin.” He gave the shows producers feedback on the pilot but thats all hes seen of the 10 episodes, which are very loosely based on his own work. But there is one area where the author decided to exert some control. Back in the 80s, when the book was first published, Martin was dismayed to discover that Nightflyers captain Melantha Jhirl had been depicted on the cover as a white woman, despite being described in the book as “a head taller than anyone onboard, large-framed, large-breasted, long-legged, strong, muscles moving fluidly beneath shiny coal-black skin.” Thirty years later, Martin still sounds aggrieved as he explains to me that the very name, Melantha, is taken from the Greek for “dark flower.” He insists: “Thats why I chose the name.”

When it came time to cast the film, Martin says, a white actress was chosen for the lead. Its a move he protested at the time and bitterly regrets to this day. “Maybe I didnt protest loud enough, maybe I should have threatened to sue. I could have fought harder. But I wasnt as famous or powerful back then.” Martin gathered the full force of post-Thrones fame and influence to call up Universal Cable Productions and demand a black actress play the role this time around. Much has changed since the 80s—and even since the largely white Game of Thrones premiered almost a decade ago—and Martin found little pushback. Actress Jodie Turner-Smith will be playing the pivotal role when Nightflyers premieres on December 2.

Martin says that casting a sci-fi series set in the near future is a different prospect than casting a show like Game of Thrones based on “predominantly white” medieval Europe, but also acknowledges: “We need to keep that in mind to diversify some of these things.” HBOs upcoming Thrones prequel series will do exactly that, with a casting call going out to a much broader pool of people than the original. This is a casting tip Martin himself said he learned decades ago while working on TV shows like Beauty and the Beast, Max Headroom, and The Twilight Zone. He started writing background characters as “Black Cop” or “Fat Cop” instead of simply “Cop 1”and “Cop 2” in order to get a roster of actors that didnt look like every other slim white man in Hollywood.

Of course, Martin is no longer writing background characters, and is now in a position to influence what the leading lady on a splashy new TV show looks like. “We writers, whether were writing novels or screenplays, have a tremendous amount of power there,” he explains. “It all starts with us, on the blank page.” Minutes later, having moved on to the subject of Lee, Martin subconsciously repeated the same sentiment: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Pausing to chew over that piece of advice comic-book lovers and filmgoers alike have seen Uncle Ben give to Peter Parker, Martin summed it all up: “Thats a line that will echo through the ages.”

All 10 episodes of Nightflyers will be debuting across Syfy platforms timed to the beginning of the linear telecast starting December 2. Episodes 1–5 will debut Sunday, December 2, through Thursday, December 6, at 10/9c, and Episodes 6–10 on Sunday, December 9, through Thursday, December 13, at 10/9c, with limited commercial interruption across all platforms.

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