SPINNING A WHOLE NEW WEB COMIC BOOK INNOVATOR SHIFTS FOCUS TO INTERNET.

Byline: Jason Z. Cohen  Staff Writer

ENCINO - From Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man and The X-Men, comes the next innovation in entertainment: the Internet.

OK, so it's been around for a while, but the Internet is ripe for new development, said Peter Paul, co-founder of Stan Lee Media Inc.

So at 8 tonight, Lee is hosting a giant Hollywood bash to launch Stanlee.net, the comic book creator's foray into the World Wide Web as an entertainment medium.

The company says it's the first to have episodic animation programming designed for distribution on the Internet.

The main focus of Stanlee.net will be ``The 7th Portal,'' an online animated series chronicling the adventures of a new cadre of superheroes - a group of software beta testers - trying to save the world from evil forces.

``We believe that this effort to introduce a high-concept episodic animated series represents the coming of age of the Internet as a bona fide and viable entertainment medium that will be on par with television in its delivery,'' said Paul, whose previous marketing achievements include making a cultural icon out of an unemployed, golden-maned romance novel cover model named Fabio Lanzoni.

Lee is not the first to embrace the Internet as a medium for entertainment content, said Dan O'Brien, an analyst with Maryland-based Internet research firm Forrester Research.

Tim Burton is another animator who is taking advantage of the medium's compatibility with animation.

Burton, who created ``The Nightmare Before Christmas,'' has signed a deal to create 26 animated episodes for distribution online.

But Lee is getting out into cyberspace first.

And as data transfer speeds increase, the Internet will grow into more of an entertainment medium, O'Brien said.

``There's a lot of jockeying going on among various creative media people,'' he said. ``Heretofore, it's been a communication medium and an information medium, and to a lesser extent an e-commerce medium, but not an entertainment medium.''

If anyone can repackage comic book content for the Internet age, Stan ``The Man'' can, said Chris Bleistein, deputy director of the Massachusetts-based Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an industry advocacy group.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lee created such comics franchises as Spider-Man, The Avengers and The X-Men, breathing new life into the medium.

``Once before, Stan Lee revolutionized the comics industry and set it on its head,'' Bleistein said. ``Everyone's wondering, Can he do it again?''

Paul thinks so. He's billing tonight's launch as nothing short of the introduction of an entirely new entertainment medium.

While the Internet has grown into a pervasive source of information, it hasn't reached its potential as a source of entertainment with content created exclusively for distribution online, Paul said.

``All the other studios are repurposing content from other media,'' he said. ``They will have to follow what we'll be pioneering.''

The Internet is a great place for comic book superheroes, Bleistein said.

``Its actually a fairly logical progression. The fact you can introduce motion and filmic effects on the Internet just increases the palette that's available for comic creators,'' he said. ``It's a move the entire industry is beginning to embrace.''

For the Internet, animation is a reasonable first step in its development into an entertainment outlet, O'Brien said. The current state of technology is not quite able to handle live video and sound yet.

But video and sound will eventually be more practical, he said.

That means new players will join the game, and some of them will win, O'Brien predicts.

``I think you'll find some of the successes coming from outside the traditional industry,'' he said.

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Photo: (color) Comic book artist Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and The X-Men, is moving to the Internet for his next series, ``The 7th Portal.''

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer