In "The World Outside," I examine comic books showing up in outside media, like TV shows, sports, novels and films.

Today, we look at an odd little 1983 interview between Stan Lee and Alan Thicke on Thicke's short-lived late night television talk show, Thicke of the Night.

Let me start off by saying that it is hard to give the late Alan Thicke too much guff over this, as this was more of a broader cultural issue of the era. Comic books simply were not held in particularly high esteem for MANY years. So it is not shocking to see the treatment that Stan Lee got when he was a guest on Thicke of the Night in 1983, although host Alan Thicke likely leaned a little heavier than normal on Lee, so it is still a bit surprising to watch it now, almost 30 years later.

Alan Thicke was a writer and host in Canada and the United States who almost famously wrote a bunch of notable TV theme songs (I just did a TV Legends Revealed about it here).

He had a popular talk show in Canada and in 1983, he was given the chance to star in a syndicated late night talk show designed to compete against Johnny Carson's venerable Tonight Show. The show was given a tremendous amount of hype....

Thicke, naturally, wrote the theme song for his show, which ended up a bit more popular than the show itself...

It only ran for a single season, but luckily for Thicke, he bounced back a year later with the hit TV sitcom, Growing Pains, which is what he is best known for today.

Anyhow, in an early episode, he had Stan Lee on as his last guest and right from the get go, you can tell that Thicke is NOT into comics. Just look at his face as he displays some then-current Marvel Comics...

Stan Lee, at this time, had left the day-to-day operations of Marvel and was in Hollywood trying to cut deals for TV shows and films based on Marvel properties, so it's pretty funny as Lee doesn't know anything about the contents of the Marvel Comics of the era, so he has to just talk about it in general terms, mostly from his time as the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel.

Early on, Thicke hits him with a 1954-esque, "is this what our kids should be reading?" bit with the cover to Spectacular Spider-Man #76...

Thicke somehow gets it into his head that the Black Cat is just a normal woman being injured, which is bizarre, since she's plainly in a costume. Thicke argues that the comic is misogynist.

Lee basically just segues into talking about how good comic books are for teaching kids to read.

The talk show great, Steve Allen (who actually launched The Tonight Show way back when), helps Lee out a BIT by noting that comics ARE good to get kids into reading...

But even Allen does it in a condescending way and is mostly setting up a joke about how there should be a Spider-Man meets Hamlet comic book (in a real groaner, Lee uses Thor as a counterpoint, "It's based on Norse mythology! And the characters talk in a Shakespearean dialogue!").

Thicke goes back to the whole "is this what we want our kids to be reading?" by moting that when we he read comics, it was like Woody Woodpecker, and now it's the Fantastic Four...

Which doesn't make ANY sense, but whatever. Thicke also seems to believe that Spider-Man is bald because of his mask. Lee gets in a good point about how the mask allows all types of children to think of Spider-Man as looking like them (of course, Lee loses some points for saying "Anyone, from Orientals to Eskimos, can see themselves as Spider-Man."

At the end of the bit, Thicke wishes Lee best of luck with trying to get Marvel Comics into films and TV shows. I think we know what happened there. Thicke tragically passed away in 2016, by which point, though, he had likely already seen Marvel movies become blockbusters.

Like most syndicated talk shows of the era, there is an extensive credit sequence, and we get to see Steve Allen reading a comic book...

A young Gilbert Gottfried is the one guy there who actually seems to treat comics with some respect.

Comedian Charlie Fleischer, who would be the voice of Roger Rabbit in a few years, does a bit where he reads a comic book really dramatically..

Here's the whole bit....

If anyone has a suggestion for an interesting time when a comic book ended up getting featured in a TV show, music video, novel, etc., drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!