Once upon a time, comic books were thought of as Z-grade literature and those who delighted in their escapism were acne-ridden losers on the ladder of life's lowest rung.

No one had a good word to say about them. Especially New York psychiatrist Dr Frederic Wertham, who deemed their contents "evil". Through public diatribes and his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent, Wertham wanted to give comics a Fahrenheit 451-style funeral, to prevent kids from becoming sadistic delinquent psychopaths, or worse still to his mind, queers and Communists. He partially succeeded. But the comic book industry refused to die, and gradually breathed superhuman life back into its bloodied and battered costumed carcass.

It took several decades, but finally comic books flicked a big 'fuck you' to their detractors by becoming a mega-buck industry. The chance to turn comics into cash cows had instant appeal with Hollywood's shakers and movers. Desperate to produce the next high-concept superhero flick, they morphed into rabid pit bulls tearing at each other's throats.

Although some got close, most attempts at comic book blockbusters failed to capture the power and vision of their source material. Then along came Bryan Singer, who stunned everyone into gaping submission with his awesome X-Men adaptation.

Which brings us to the point of this brief history lesson: the individual whose importance in the evolution of comic books has seen him forego his mortal self and become every bit as superhuman as his incredible creations.

Part Dr Frankenstein, part Einstein, he's the workaholic genius who made Marvel Comics the home of the more surreal, yet totally believable, superhero. He spawned (among others) The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Dr Strange, Daredevil, and the star of the soon to be hotter-than-a-holiday-in-hell big screen spectacular, Spider-Man. His name is Stan Lee, and without him the world would be a far duller place.

Your 70-plus years have been one wild ride: what do you consider to be the make-or-break moment in that amazing life?

Wow. Probably when I wrote The Fantastic Four, because I was about to quit my job at Marvel Comics. My wife told me: "Well, why don't you do one more book and do it the way you'd want to?" So I did and that really was the start of the Marvel we know today. And if I had quit, my life would have, I imagine, taken a totally different turn. I might have become famous, who knows? [laughs]

At such a crucial moment, where did you get the inspiration for The Fantastic Four?

Well I don't know that it was an inspiration, it just seemed like such a logical thing to do. I wanted to write the kind of comic book that I would have wanted to read, about people I could believe in a little bit more. I know it's still fantasy, but I wanted to give the Fantastic Four emotions, problems and a relationship among each other that I would find believable and entertaining.

All your superheroes have human failings. And you were way ahead of your time empowering females, by elevating them above the role of merely being girlfriends and giving them powers of their own.
I wanted to get away from clichés because up until then it had always bothered me that all the females in the books just seemed to be in a story as an excuse for the hero to have somebody to rescue. And all of the teenagers were just sidekicks. The Human Torch, Johnny Storm, was only 16 or 17, so I wanted to make him a fully-fledged superhero, not just a kid who follows others around. I wanted to make the female - Invisible Girl - a real part of the team and I didn't want to have her not know who the hero really was. So I didn't give them secret identities, they all knew each other. Then I thought it would be even more unique to let the girl be engaged to the hero. So there's nothing coy about it.

When you served in the army didn't your creative prowess with words and images lead to one of your strangest assignments?

Oh, yeah. The venereal disease poster. They were having trouble in the army with too many enlisted men coming down with venereal disease. It's funny, they kept telling me it was enlisted men, so I assumed that officers were so high and mighty they would never get a venereal disease [laughs].

But at any rate I was asked to do a poster that would admonish the enlisted men, saying every time they had done the wild thing with a girl overseas, they should go to one of the 'prophylactics stations' which dotted the landscape in Europe. Set up by the army, they were little places with a green light above the door. When you walked in there, they did terrible things, which I don't even want to think about - but which apparently cured you, or prevented you from getting an incurable disease. At any rate it was like mission impossible. My assignment, if I would accept it, was to do this poster that would warn the soldiers to go to these little 'pro stations'. I thought: "What on Earth could I do?" Then finally I drew a little cartoon figure of a soldier walking through a door with a green light above it. He looks very smug and self-satisfied, and a dialogue balloon above his head said "VD? Not me!" They must have printed a hundred trillion of those things. So in my own humble way, I think I probably won the war single-handedly, because if that stopped them from getting ill then they were all ready and set to fight. And that's the untold story of how we won the war [laughs].

One of the craziest moments in Marvel Comics' history has to be the stunt regarding the KISS comic book.

The blood thing? Oh, that was just unbelievable. It wasn't my idea, I swear. I don't remember whose idea it was, but somebody thought that the group KISS had such rabid fans, that if every page of the KISS comic book contained a minuscule amount of actual blood from their idols, it would mean so much to them. So they chartered a plane and I went with the group. We flew to where our printing plant was located, and the four members of KISS and I stood by a vat of red ink, which was used for the printing process. They each stuck a needle in their finger and let a few drops of blood fall into the ink, so that it could then be claimed that a little bit of their blood was in the ink that was used to print the book. Therefore a little bit of KISS was in every book. And somehow or other it seemed to have worked [laughs]. We sold countless copies of that comic book.

Your stories forever deal with the perpetual conflict between good and evil. How do you define evil?

To me, evil really is anything that hurts other people. It seems to me no matter what you do, I don't care what it is, if it doesn't hurt anybody else, it isn't evil. But people who knowingly do something that will cause pain or unhappiness to someone else, they are evil in my book. In fact, my whole idea of religion can be boiled down to one sentence and that is: "Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you." I think if everybody followed that credo, this planet would be a paradise.

In light of 11 September last year, do you think the US has a need for a superhero now, more than ever?

Well you know, we're combining fiction with truth here. I think the world always needs heroes in the sense that it always needs people who do good things. I don't know of any superheroes in real life, but there certainly are plenty of heroes.

Who do you regard as heroes?

It's been said before, but those policemen and firemen during the tragedy in New York. The ones who ran back into those buildings and gave their lives to rescue other people. But there are many kinds of heroes. The average man who goes to work every day to support his family, who works honestly for long hours and does it uncomplainingly. The woman who spends her time bringing up the children, doing the cleaning and everything. I mean life is difficult. Life is complicated, and people who somehow get through it and leave the world a little better for it - to me, they're heroes.

That's exactly where you came into my life, and countless others', throughout child and adulthood. We've all had rough moments and regular, boring jobs at times, and you've helped us to escape them - you're one of those heroes.

Oh, bless your heart. That's so nice to hear. Thank you.

You wrote: "Sometimes I think I must be an alien, because I'll never fully understand the human race." Is there something you're not telling us?

[Laughs] Well, you discovered my secret. I'm from the planet Zenn-La. That was the Silver Surfer's planet. No, there's nothing I'm not telling you. My life, I'm afraid, is an open book.