On November 12th, 2018,
we lost a storyteller. When you get right down to it, that’s what Stan Lee was.
A storyteller of grand and flamboyant proportions. I considered him to be one
of my personal heroes, and his passing is saddening. Granted, the man was in
his mid-90s and a widower to his wife of 70 years, so I had assumed this was
coming, but it still hurts. An individual as vibrant, as charismatic, as
timeless as Stan Lee… you just kind of assume he’ll keep going on forever. In order
to process… no, celebrate his well lived life, I feel like I should gush a
little about him. And the moment that changed how the world viewed superheroes.
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| He finished his Cameo on Earth... |
In case you are curious, I’m using Amazing
Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir by Stan Lee, Peter David and
Colleen Doran as my source. I suggest checking it out if you have any interest
in the life story of a comic book icon. My personal favorite anecdote in it being
the stressful plane ride Stan took from New York to Reno. See, his soon-to-be wife,
Joan, was in Reno to finalize her divorce from her first husband. Suffering
from an irrational fear that someone might swoop in and take the love of his
life the moment she became available, Stan booked a flight to Reno in order to
marry her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he asked for the fastest route to
Reno, not the most direct. After several layovers, he arrived in Reno and got
his girl. Considering they were together from 1947 until her death in 2017, I
say he was right to rush to her.
Also, while the names might not be accurate to
the time period, I’m going to be referring DC and Marvel by their modern names.
It’s easier on the noodle.
In the late fifties and early sixties,
comic book superheroes were on the rise again. After nearly being shelved
forever due to the complex and bizarre rules of the Comic Code Authority, new
life had been breathed into the genre with the revival of The Flash, and the birth
of the first iteration of the Justice League. Impressed by the dollar figures
that DC comics was pulling in, Marvel Comics Founder Martin Goodman tasked Stan
Lee with producing a Superhero team that could rake in the fans, and cash, like
the Flash and other DC characters. But, and here’s the thing that made me do a
double take the first time reading it, Stan Lee wasn’t sure he WANTED to do it.
According to his Memoirs, Stan had burnt
out on what he felt were the simplistic stories and the completely unrelatable characters
of superheroes. He was worried that if he went along with Goodman’s plan, he’d
basically be churning out the same repetitive generic stories that he had been
forced to do since the inception of the CCA. The story goes that he’d been
complaining about this to his wife and expressed a desire to quit and try
something new, when she offered a different solution. Basically, she told him
to just write the kind of stories and characters that he wanted to. You think DC
heroes are unrelatable? Then write some heroes with actual personal problems. You
think the stories are too simplistic, and don’t deal with real world issues?
Then write a few stories that do. Her argument was, if his new ideas sell well,
great, keep doing it. And if they completely tank, then Stan might be fired but
at least he tried to do something new rather then just giving up.
If I ever get access to a time
machine, I’m going back to the 1960s and shake Joan Lee’s hand and thank her.
Spurred on by his wife and with the
help of fellow Comic Legend, Jack Kirby, Stan created that first team. Using an
old school Marvel Hero, The Human Torch, as a bit of scaffolding, Lee and Kirby
created an entirely new Human Torch, and a team of very human heroes to work
along side him. Boom, Fantastic Four. From there, Stan Lee spear headed the
creation of the original Marvel Universe. And, unlike the larger then life
heroes of DC, there were characters that were designed to be all too human.
Even the one that’s literally a Norse God. Stan’s heroes not only saved the
day, but also dealt with issues that plague most people in one form or another.
They battled things like inner demons (Iron Man’s alcoholism, Bruce Banner’s
inner monster), prejudice (The Thing, The X-Men), and all the hardships of just
growing up (Spider-Man). And the rest, as they say, is history.
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| The only way Stan Lee could tell his story right was as a comic. |
I believe the first time I ever
came across the name Stan Lee was during the series finale of Spider-Man (1994).
In that final episode, after helping to save the multiverse from an insane
Spider-Carnage hellbent on destroying all of creation, Spider-Man makes a few
stops on his way back to his own reality. One stop is to the home dimension of
a powerless Spider-Man, whom was just an actor picked up by accident while
Spider-Man’s allies Madame Web and The Beyonder formed their original team of
Web Warriors. Once there, Peter pops in on Stan’s office, and takes the silver
fox web-swinging as thanks for creating a version of him. Considering I was
only eight or nine at the time, you can forgive me for not completely
understanding who it was Spider-Man was swinging around with. Not the most
interesting discovery of one’s idol, but hey, what can you do? It’s from that
early show, and with some encouragement from my Marvel fan of an older brother,
that I came to love the characters of Marvel and DC.
I don’t think it’s a stretch of the
imagination to say that we, especially I, myself, do owe a great deal of to
Stan Lee. Without him, and the incredibly talented but underrated artists and other
writers of Marvel like Jack Kirby and Steven Ditko, Superheroes would probably
have remained something only young children enjoy. Instead, we live in an age
where many a superhero is a household name, with major films and tv shows
backing them. While the stories remain fantastic and implausible, the men and
women who live the adventures described are about as real as fictional
characters can be, with virtues and faults like anyone else. All of which can
be traced back to one writer deciding to do something different. I never had
the pleasure of meeting Stan Lee. That’s something that I regret, but there’s
no use crying over spilt milk. I can do my best to honor the late, great Stan
Lee as best I can. To Stan, wherever you are, thank you for all of the stories.
Thank you for all of the heroes. Thank you for all of the laughs and tears, the
smiles and frowns, the highs and the lows. Thank you for living such an
Amazing, Fantastic, and Incredible life.
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