Power Lunch January 29, 2010, 12:05PM EST

Stan Lee: Purveyor of Wonder

At 87, the comic book legend is still spinning tales, including several in the works for investor Disney

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You know you're in a hallowed place for comic book lovers when you enter the offices of POW! Entertainment (POWN). The cramped, unattended entrance is dominated by one of those swivel racks you find in a magazine shop or candy store, only this one is stuffed with classic comics such as Black Rider, Captain America, and Thor. An enlarged '60s-era cover of The Fantastic Four fills one wall, an early Spider-Man cover another wall.

This four-room suite is where Stan Lee operates. For those who didn't misspend their youth reading comics, Stan Lee is the godfather of comic books, the guy responsible for Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, and dozens of other Marvel Comics characters who leapt from colorful pages into the hearts of young boys everywhere. Now, at 87, Stan Lee runs POW!, short for Purveyors of Wonder.

Lee may be the wonder. At an age when most people have long since retired, he has no intention of throttling back. The new ideas still come to him at what seems like supersonic speed, even if he no longer draws the characters he dreams up. His legendary creativity is what attracted The Walt Disney Co. (DIS), which on Dec. 31 paid $2.5 million for a 10% stake in POW! Disney has several deals with Lee, including a "first look" arrangement to turn his ideas into movies.

"We're in the content creation business," says a surprisingly robust Lee, sitting in a room dominated by pictures of himself with former Presidents, toys (many of them with his face in place of, say, the greenish scowl of the Hulk), and the obligatory posters of his comics. One has the shapely figure of Stripperella, a stripper by night and super agent by day. It's an animated show that Lee created seven years back for the Spike channel, whose clientele is a tad older than the usual comic book crowd. It only lasted a season on Spike, but you can catch Stripperella on your mobile phone, thanks to the Web site GoComics.com.

POW! Entertainment's Creative Force

POW! hasn't been a Wall Street superhero. Along with his business partner, movie producer Gill Champion, Lee formed POW! in 2003 through a reverse merger with a former minerals company. POW! is a penny stock, trading at a mere 13.5¢ a share. The idea of the reverse merger, the company says, was to jump-start Lee's new business rather than go through the lengthy process of an initial public offering. The man, after all, was 80 at the time.

The truth is Lee has never been much of a winner when it comes to the business side. An earlier venture, Stan Lee Media, filed for bankruptcy in 2001, amid SEC irregularities in which Lee was never implicated. Today, Lee says the incident is better left forgotten. In 2005 he sued his longtime employer, Marvel, settling for more than $10 million, which he contended he was owed for movies that featured characters he created. "It was just a disagreement in interpreting the contract," he says. "I never for a moment had a problem with Marvel. I worked with them then, am working with them now."

This time, Lee has put together a company suited for today's media world, where ideas rule and the ability to distribute those ideas across multiple media outlets is nearly as important. POW! has only six employees, says Champion, 69, including a chief financial officer and lawyer to handle agreements to license the characters Lee creates. Lee is the sole creative force; the remaining two employees are assistants.

Lee is clearly the main attraction.