What Was Stan Lee's First Cameo?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Nov 11, 2018

In their latest spotlight on notable comic firsts, CSBG reveals what Stan Lee's first cameos were in comics, TV and film!

Stan Lee passed away on November 12, 2018. For a full account of the legendary comic creator's life and legacy, please read CBR's obituary.

In "When We First Met", we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

Reader Ekko wrote in to ask me what Stan Lee's first cameo was. What's interesting about this is that this sort of thing has a couple of different possible answers, so let's split it up into a few different instances of "first," from his first appearance in a comic book, his first appearance in a comic book story, his first appearance in a television show and his first appearance in a movie.

As you may or may not know, back in the old days, the postal rates for comic books played a major role in the development of the comic books themselves. The price that was charged for starting a new volume was high enough that comic book companies would go out of their way to avoid starting new volumes if they could avoid them, which is why so many comic book titles just picked up the numbering of earlier titles instead of starting new ones (plus, at the time, when comic books were more of a browsers market, higher numbers were considered a MORE appealing thing than a low-numbered comic book, so people tried to avoid #1 books. Justice League of America #1, for instance, totally hides the #1 as much as possible). More notably, there was a special postal rate provided so long as you had at least two pages worth of text in the book, so comic books all had text pages back in the day (later, letter columns took care of this requirement and even later, the rate stopped being an issue).

In any event, in All-Winners Comics #2, Stan Lee did a text story (with art by Jack Kirby) that explained how the Whizzer and the Destroyer joined the other heroes. It involved them running into the Editor (Lee himself) and convincing him that they should be allowed to join the series....

In 1943's Terry-Toons Comics #12, Lee cameod as an Office Boy (amusing, since he was already the Editor-in-Chief by that time)...

Okay, so that's the first cameo by Stan in comics, so now let's move on to when Stan first made a cameo in a television show and a movie!

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Stan's first TV and movie cameo!']

Now, obviously, Stan Lee narrated the Incredible Hulk cartoon in the early 1980s and then narrated some episodes of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. That doesn't count as a cameo, right?

Therefore, 1989 is a big year, as Stan finally makes his first real cameo as the trial foreman in the trial of Bruce Banner in the TV movie, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk.

That same year, he made a cameo/guest appearance in an episode of Muppet Babies, which I forgot went on forever (what cartoon show of the era has FIVE seasons?). He allows himself to be covered in webs...

It's a really cute bit. Check it out here.

As for his first FILM cameo, that came a year later, in a film called Ambulance, starring Eric Roberts. Roberts' character is a comic book artist and Stan is his editor (Larry Hama cameos, too!).