As a fog descends on the city, our silver-haired hero walks the cold, dark, merciless streets. Villains — first thought of as allies — have betrayed him. Where does he seek refuge in this onyx-colored midnight? He turns the corner and there it is — the neon glow of the sign cuts through the mist like a lighthouse beacon. Our champion heads straight into… a strip club?

If you haven’t guessed yet, our hero is the venerable comic book legend, Stan Lee. Stan the Man has risen above the mire of Stan Lee Media and has moved on. He started POW! Entertainment in November 2002, and he has a new animated series, Stripperella, on Spike TV.

Back in February 2000, Stan Lee and his new Stan Lee Media launched the much hyped stanlee.net, which was a front-runner in the online animation boom. At that time, the company had market capital exceeding $300 million. That was about $100 million more than Marvel Comics, the home where Lee created such characters as Spider-Man and The X-Men.

In November 2000, like many hopeful dot.coms, Stan Lee Media signed a bridge financing deal that secured the company’s future. However, a clause in the deal voided the funding if Stan Lee Media’s stock price dropped below $1. In only a matter of weeks, the stock plunged from $8 to well under $1, forcing NASDAQ to eventually delist the stock from the exchange. At this point, Stan Lee Media was forced to lay off nearly all of its 140 employees, and, only a year after its triumphant birth, Stan Lee Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Fantastic Four is the next of Lee's marvelous creations to come to the big screen. © Marvel Comics.

However, the worst was yet to come. President/ceo Ken Williams and co-founder Peter F. Paul got into a bloody battle of words over who was to blame for the company’s downfall. False allegations of all sorts, including fleeing the country and embezzlement, were thrown around like The Hulk tosses tanks. Finally, in June of 2001, the courts entered the fray, indicting Paul, SLM evp Stephen Gordon; Jeffrey Pittsburg, a Long Island, New York-based analyst and securities broker who wrote reports boasting about SLM shares; and Charles Kusche, a Darien, Connecticut-based stock advertiser. The four were charged with conspiracy to manipulate the company's stock price through improper transactions. The legal wranglings are still working their way through the judicial system.

Lee doesn’t like to talk about what happened. When I asked him about Stan Lee Media and how it affected the formation of POW! Entertainment, he said, “As you may know, some people [at Stan Lee Media] did some things that were less than legal. With POW!, it’s much smaller and the people I’m working with I trust implicitly.”

So who are these trusted partners? Gill Champion (is that a secret identity name or what?) is serving as coo. The veteran producer is a long-time friend of Lee. Rounding out the top trio is Arthur Lieberman, a New York attorney, who serves as chief of business affairs. Set up at MGM Studios in Santa Monica, California, POW! has already inked more than a dozen feature and television production deals. Lieberman negotiated a first look deal in April 2002 with MGM and Cheyenne Enterprises, the production house of actor Bruce Willis and producer Arnold Rifkin.