The brightness of his life was occluded in his later years by financial squabbles and possible family difficulties, which seemed to be drifting towards resolution if not actually resolved. Such was the drama, in fact, that when Glory showed me the news of his passing this afternoon on her phone, my first reaction after sadness was relief, and the hope that he is at peace now.
My people, the nerds, speak of Stan in largely reverent terms, although not exclusively. There are certainly those who felt he did poorly by his co-creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and there is certainly evidence to back up some of those claims. There are those who characterized him as selfish, while others attributed it to emotional carelessness; spirits burned by the white-hot exhaust of his rocket powered career. Stan Lee was clearly a man who enjoyed describing his life less in terms of a heading and more about velocity and altitude.
Stanley Lieber began his comics career by doing no more than keeping the inkwells filled at Timely Comics, but got into writing two years later with a text-filler story about Captain America in 1941. He took the pen name "Stan Lee" because he wanted to save his birth name for greater things, like a play or proper novel. During the war, he wrote training manuals and films, one of nine men in the U.S. Army with the military classification of "playwright".
After the war, he returned to writing and editing a myriad of titles for what was now Atlas Comics, but his heart wasn't in it. With nothing to lose, he created characters like The Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man - costumed, super-powered individuals who also suffered through family squabbles and financial turmoil - creating the Marvel Universe in the process.
Moving swiftly from writer, editor and editor-in-chief and finally to publisher, Stan was a relentless proponent of the medium, doing interviews, tv spots, public speeches and even college lectures on comics, a field once thought of as so sordid that writers would rather be associated with pornography.
Had Stan been content to punch a clock, writing and publishing the same westerns, romance and funny animal comics he had been saddled with, who knows how different the world of pop culture may have been? Stan saw to it that even if you didn't read comics, you knew who Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor and The Hulk were: you saw them on lunchboxes, t-shirts and stickers. You saw their cartoons on Saturday morning television, and at one point, even heard the theme song of one of them on Top 40 radio. Later on it was toys, and after that, it was video games. Wherever a colourful story of good versus evil could be depicted, Stan saw to it that a Marvel hero was there - bright, dynamic, unmistakable.
And even as publisher, he still took the time to write Stan's Soapbox every month, letting Marvel Zombies and F.O.O.M.(Friends Of Ol' Marvel) members alike in on the behind-the-scenes happenings in the Marvel Bullpen, and explaining the philosophical underpinnings to what many regarded as escapist fare:
Instead of turning a blind eye to things like youth unrest, racism, bigotry and chauvinism, Stan called it out from the Soapbox, and empowered his writers and editors to do the same in the Mighty Marvel Manner. The fact that there are still those who think seeing diversity in comics is a mere sop to political correctness, and that the word "Comicsgate" is even a recognizable term is a slap in the face to the progress that Stan and others like him have made. But have no fear, True Believers - there are way more of us than there are of them, and we will win in the end. Bu don't take my word for; Stan said it himself, in one of the last videos he released just over a year ago:
Despite a number of terrible false starts, including the decade that a Spider-Man movie spent in the courts while James Cameron waited to write and direct a movie about him, Stan finally succeeded in bringing his creations to the big screen, first with 2001's Spider-Man, by Sam Raimi, and the later Marvel Studios movies that began in 2008 with Jon Favreau's Iron Man.
A decade later, there is far more to Stan Lee's legacy than the score of cameos he leaves behind in those Marvel movies, but I am glad for those cameos all the same. The reach and scope of cinema is far greater than that of comics, something The Man always acknowledged, and wherever his spirit resides, I am confident that Stan will be grateful that his creations found that spotlight.
And I hope that future nerds will watch these films with their parents and grandparents and ask who that man is, and that most of them will say, "why, that's Stan Lee; he helped to create almost all these characters back in the late twentieth century." I don't know which MCU film will be the first without a Stan Lee cameo, but I am confident that when the realization dawns that I have just seen it, I am probably going to weep a little bit.
I don't know that Captain America: Civil War will have the staying power of something like Chaucer's The Miller's Tale or anything like that, but I know that character, and his humility, leadership and idealism has remained a part of our collective imagination for almost eight decades now. I don't think Peter Parker will ever displace Hamlet as the voice of moral consciousness, but I am confident that kids for generations will read the tale of a young man who tried to trade his gifts in for fame and fortune only to reap tragedy instead, and it will resonate with them in a way that the Dour Dane never will.
Stan held up a funhouse mirror to our lives and our world, lives which, if we were very fortunate, were humdrum, safe and ordinary. The images he held up were larger-than-life and more colourful than "reality", but we could still see our world and ourselves within its reflection. He strived to make the images bolder and the mirror bigger almost every day of his life, telling simple stories of good and evil in the biggest book or screen he could reach. These stories were meant primarily to entertain, but Stan knew they also presented the opportunity to moralize a little, a soapbox for idealism to an audience of young readers desperate for it.
He knew this audience and this opportunity represented great power, but he also recognized that with that great power...must also come great responsibility. And despite being a relentless huckster of wares and a blatant and shameless self-promoter, Stan Lee never shirked that responsibility, and pop culture in general, and millions of nerds in specific, are better for it. The soapbox may be empty for now, but it remains in place for new messages of positivity, idealism and heroism.
My greatest hope is that Stan knew how much adoration there was in the world for him despite his many troubles. Two weeks back, exalted fanboy first class Kevin Smith led a cheer via video from L.A. Comic Con to let him know exactly that:
I think that about says it all.
Thank you for everything, Stan Lee. Godspeed, and, of course, excelsior!
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Stan had a hand in creating some of the most iconic characters in comics, some of which Time magazine was good enough to list:
Heroes created by Stan Lee
• Ant-Man
• Ancient One
• Avengers
• Beast
• Black Panther
• Black Widow
• Captain Marvel
• Cyclops
• Daredevil
• Doctor Strange
• Fantastic Four
• Groot
• Hawkeye
• Hulk
• Human Torch
• Iceman
• Invisible Woman
• Iron Man
• Jean Grey
• Mister Fantastic
• Nick Fury
• Professor X
• Quicksilver
• Scarlet Witch
• Spider-Man
• Thing
• Thor
• Wasp
• X-Men
Villains created by Stan Lee
• Doctor Doom
• Doctor Octopus
• Green Goblin
• Kaecilius
• Kingpin
• Loki
• Magneto
• Sandman
• Vulture
• Whiplash
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UPDATED:
Acclaimed comic writer Brian Michael Bendis recollects his interactions with Stan Lee in this wonderful comic-style New York Times piece.
Cartoonist Jon Rosenberg (Scenes from a Multiverse, Goats) recalls an interaction he witnessed at San Diego Comic Con:
One
night at SDCC I was sitting in a lounge at someone's hotel, waiting for them. I
don't remember the circumstances well, but I do remember Stan Lee walking
through the hallway on his way to his room after a very long day.
An
eight-year old kid ran up to Stan, and his chaperones moved to intercept. Stan
waved them off and bent down to talk to the kid. I couldn't hear what they were
saying but they talked for a while, took pictures. Stan signed something for
him, and then he left.
This
wasn't in front of a crowd of people. It was late, and Stan is very old, and
SDCC is exhausting even for someone not in their 90s. But he stopped and gave
this kid a few minutes he'll remember for the rest of his life. Not for
personal gain, just because he loved to do it.
Anyway,
that was the time I saw Stan Lee. He was a generous man who gave millions of
kids something to be happy about. RIP.
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