To remember the late Stan Lee, TBS’s Conan uploaded an old clip from a 1995 episode of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, in which O’Brien chats with Lee about how, before he started his comic-book career, he worked as a freelance celebrity obituary writer for a local newspaper when he was still in high school. “When a celebrity dies, about 15 minutes later the newspaper comes out and there are three pages of write-ups about him. And you wonder, ‘How did they write it that fast?’ It’s all there in advance — and that’s how you know you’re famous,†Lee tells O’Brien. “I would love to think somewhere — somewhere my obituary is in a file somewhere. Then I’d know I made it!â€
Later in the clip, the two talk about the rivalry between Marvel and DC Comics and the then-upcoming Marvel versus DC comic match-ups. O’Brien complains about Superman being a “bad idea for a character†because he’s good at everything. Lee says that quality is actually Superman’s Achilles’ heel because “he is so unstoppable that they had to later on invent kryptonite because the stories … nobody cared, nobody worried about him!†Lee later adds, “That’s why the Marvel characters are so terrific — because they’re fallible, like me! They have their faults.â€