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He stole Stan Lee's parking spot — and became his friend. COD professor worked with Stan Lee

Before he talks about his idol, College of DuPage professor Sandy Fries has to get an embarrassing story off his chest.

Fries never copped to it when he worked with Stan Lee and later became friends with the comic-book legend who died Monday at age 95. But sitting in his office on the Glen Ellyn campus, Fries readily admits his blunder: he stole Lee's premium parking space at Marvel Studios.

Hired as a script writer after graduate school at Columbia University, Fries was rushing to a meeting with producers at Marvel and traffic in Los Angeles was, as usual, a nightmare.

So when Fries found an open parking space right near the entrance to Marvel's offices, he thought he had caught a lucky break.

About 10 minutes into the meeting, an assistant knocked on the door to tell an oblivious and soon-to-be horrified Fries that he'd parked in Mr. Lee's private space. Oops.

“That was a very good lesson: don't park in the boss' parking space,” Fries said. “I was educated by his assistant in that way.”

If it was any other celebrity's parking space, Fries could have gotten into serious trouble. But the blunder didn't carry any repercussions for Fries, who worked as a writer for the animated “Spider-Man” series and eventually “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“Stan Lee just made you feel comfortable around him,” Fries said Tuesday. “And any time a fan would ask him for an autograph or picture, he was not Mr. I'm Very Important Show Business Guy.”

Legions of fans are remembering Lee as a larger-than-life genius, but Fries didn't see him as an imposing mastermind. Over lunch, they talked family and marriage. No airs. No pompousness.

Lee would only wait until the end of their meetings to pitch an idea.

“When I had lunch with him, I'm sitting there going, ‘I'm having lunch with Stan Lee. What's this about?'” Fries recalled. “And as I think about it, I was always comfortable with him. I was never, ever nervous around the guy. I should have been because he was Stan Lee.”

Fries, a professor of film and mass communication, has been teaching at College of DuPage for 15 years and lives in Warrenville. On the walls of his office are his pictures with actors Patrick Stewart and Mel Gibson. There's a handwritten note from animator Joseph Barbera calling Fries a “great writer.” He doesn't have a photo with Lee, but his memories of the pop culture icon are still vivid.

“I learned a lot from him by following his example,” Fries said. “He always seemed to be enjoying himself. That's something I learned to try to always do, here as a teacher at COD or writing or just living life in general. Try to enjoy yourself because the resulting writing will be better, because the resulting life that you lead will be better.”

Lee was a pioneer in the silver age of comics, as the creator or co-creator of characters that had relatable, human flaws and as a groundbreaking promoter of the Marvel universe.

“He always did it in a kind of your nice Uncle Stan way,” Fries said. “He was never overbearing. He always did it sort of tongue-in-cheek, ‘Hey we're promoting our properties here but we're all in this together.' When he was doing his cameos, it was always, ‘Yeah here I am doing a cameo, promoting Stan Lee, which is me, but we're all in this kind of joke together.'”

In his book, “Secrets Your Textbook Will Not Tell You: About TV, Movies, and Life,” Fries recalls a career regret. Over one of their lunches, Lee asked Fries if he was interested in helping develop an “X-Men” project long before the cast of mutants became TV and film blockbusters. Fries told Lee he would think it over.

“What happened was I completely forgot about it and never called him back,” he said. “He wanted me to develop it and see if I could turn it into an animated show and I totally forgot about it. I never called back. I don't know why I forgot. I just forget.”

Fries last spoke with him over the phone five or six years ago, just to catch up and shoot the breeze. Lee never brought up the parking snafu.

“He was still creating. He was still going, he was going to conventions until recently,” Fries said. “That's heroic. He kept connecting with hundreds of millions of people as a writer or as an iconic figure, and that's heroic. You know a lot of people give up when they're 80 or 70 or whatever. This guy was full of life, and he kept going. So in his way, he was a superhero, and you could see that in his characters.”

In this June 22, 2004, photo, Spiderman creator and "Spider-Man 2" executive producer Stan Lee poses for photographers at the premiere in Los Angeles. AP file photo
  "He was a phenomenal sales person because he did something that hadn't been done as far as I know. He sort of meshed the creative people at Marvel - the writers, the animators, the artists - with the audience," College of DuPage professor Sandy Fries said of Stan Lee. Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com
  Sandy Fries, who teaches film and mass communication at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, was a writer for "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com
  Sandy Fries keeps memorabilia from his Marvel Studios career on display in his office at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn. Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com
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