Excelsior, Stan Lee!

Sad news, True Believers.

 

Stan Lee has bid us his last “Nuff Said”.

 

The news that Stan Lee had died was a significant shock to the system. I may be a DC guy at heart from my youngest days as a comic book fan but I’ve always recognized the importance of Stan Lee to this crazy medium I hold so dear.

 

There is no small degree of consternation around the legacy of Stan Lee. Too often, the mainstream press about Marvel Comics painted Lee as some kind of lone impresario, creating whole comics with nothing but his will and his imagination.  Lee, hungry for good press for Marvel Comics, sometimes did not disavow the press of such notions.  But unlike Bob Kane who went to his grave denying Bill Finger a creator role for Batman, Stan Lee was willing to set the record straight and give credit to stalwarts like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. But even then, there were disputed accounts of who created what. Whatever his talents as a writer, Stan Lee was also a consummate salesman for both Marvel Comics and for “Stan Lee”. 

 

But on this day of loss, let’s focus on what Stan Lee did right.

 

Let’s start with the Stan the salesman. Stan established a dialogue with readers in the letter pages, in Stan’s Soapbox. Stan had a gift for making the readers feel like a part of the process of making a comic book, peeking behind the curtain as the shenanigans of the Marvel Bullpen. Stan helped turn consumers of comic book products into partners in the process. Marvel readers were invested in Marvel’s books. Stan didn’t just sell comics, he sold a relationship between the creators and the readers. 

 

Then there was Stan the writer. Reading a Stan Lee comic book today is almost like reading a parody of a comic book. Breathless dialogue and bombastic captions were staples of a Stan Lee script. But the thing to remember is that when Stan was doing this, it was new and it was different. Every page was fraught with tension, peril, possibilities for adventure or doom.

 

But even more important to a Stan Lee script were characters. They might read as overwrought and hyper dramatic today but these were characters who felt things, experienced genuine emotions of love, fear, joy, hate and more. Stan’s earliest creation with artist Jack Kirby was the Fantastic Four, a quartet of people granted powers by a freak accident. But what made them unique among comic book teams was they didn’t always get along. They were ultimately a family but like all families that love each other, they also sometimes ticked each other off. Compared to the wholesome comradery of Superman and Batman over at DC, the Fantastic Four were real people.

 

If Stan the salesman had a way of talking to readers, Stan the writer also had a way of making his characters communicate with the readers as well. 

 

I’ll chat about Stan some more in a later post.  

 

Meawnhile…

 

Excelsior, Stan Lee!  You will be missed.