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Stan Lee Has Passed Away

Creator of much of our modern mythology, and a really nice guy. Thank you Stan
 
Long, long ago, Stanley Lieber (a.k.a. Stan Lee) was sick of writing comic books. He wanted to quit his job and try something else. His wife told him "Look, why don't you just write the kind of comic book you want to write? What are they going to do, fire you?" and so Stan Lee wrote the Fantastic Four, which led to the creation of what we now call the Silver Age of comics.

Stan Lee an Jack Kirby almost single-handedly gave birth to the Silver Age and created many of the characters you are now watching in those MCU movies.

Stan & Jack created the first black superhero at a major comic book publisher (Black Panther). The two created so many firsts including the kind of diversity firsts that make me wonder why our usual white supremacist woman-hating incel friends read Marvel comic books at all. Stan created the X-Men because he was tired of coming up with new explanations for where superpowers came from and wanted to be able to say that people were simply born with their special abilities, and accidentally became Marvel comics' standard metaphor for racism/homophobia/bigotry for decades to come.

Creating the X-Men was quite possibly the most deliciously subversive thing Stan Lee did. He created a metaphor for racism that invited millions of white boys to identify with the minority victims of bigotry in a pretty profound way, and he did it not long after a huge comic book hullabaloo in the US Senate led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Had parents caught whiff of what he was up to in that comic book, it would have created a huge controversy. He did exactly what caused all that wailing about "but the children!" with regards to comic books in the 1950s.

Granted, it's likely that Stan Lee and Marvel did Jack Kirby wrong, but it's impossible to understate the impact Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had on the comic book industry. They whacked American popular culture with a sledgehammer and we're still feeling the reverberations all these decades later.

I'm just glad that unlike Jack Kirby, Stan Lee got to hear the praises of the world before he died.

Excelsior!*

* This is a Stan Lee frequent joke, espcially on the editorials/letters to the editor section of comic books. The joke is that he keeps using the word excelsior incorrectly, thus demonstrating that he didn't bother looking the word up in a dictionary before using it. ​

PS[ent]mdash[/ent]Stan Lee didn't write Deadpool, but he was kinda notorious for 4th wall breaking and meta-narratives back in the day, so you can say Deadpool (and the X-Men comic books showing up in the Logan movie) are products of the environment Stan created.
 
I just went to see Venom, and read the news during end credits, just after Stan Lee's cameo. He'll be missed. I suppose he might have had time to do his Infinity War part 2 appearance at least, and maybe Spider-Verse? So we'll still have a chance to salute "The Man" farewell in the cinema a couple of times more.

 
That’s sad. I’m glad he lived long enough to see the MCU come about and witness his life’s work become the most popular thing on the planet with everyone on that planet recognizing and celebrating his role in creating it.

Excelsior!
 
Stan had a great impact on me growing up as I devoured every comic I could find. I'm sure the way he weaved social issues into his stories heavily influenced the way I see the world now. And I was glad today to see this quote from the letters page showing that it was both intentional and desirable to Stan Lee for comics to do so:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dr0tZ3NW4AEjyyY.jpg:large
 
Goodchild said:
Stan had a great impact on me growing up as I devoured every comic I could find. I'm sure the way he weaved social issues into his stories heavily influenced the way I see the world now. And I was glad today to see this quote from the letters page showing that it was both intentional and desirable to Stan Lee for comics to do so:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dr0tZ3NW4AEjyyY.jpg:large
Click to expand...

I remember Falcon correcting Captain America about microaggressions, and Spider-Man insulting another superhero for microaggression decades before I ever heard the term microaggression.

It's decades later, and most of the rest of popular media is afraid of depicting:
  • an African-American character correcting a sympathetic white character about microaggression
  • a white character correcting another white character about microaggression

I saw that in Marvel comic books back in the 70s/80s, but I still don't see it much on TV or movies. Stan would have been an editor, not a writer by then, but his influence still made things like that possible.
 
My daughter was a big fan of Stan. She was crying at work today when she found out. We went to a comic con about 5 years ago so she could meet him and get a photo and autograph. I'm glad we did.
 
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnByuUqMeko[/YOUTUBE]
 
[FONT=&quot]Stan Lee didn't invent the iconic super hero, but he did reinvent it. Stan Lee turned flat, predictable 2 dimensional characters and reinvented them and the world they inhabited.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Suddenly, heroes were complex. They had strengths, weaknesses and flaws, and their world had nuance and shades of grey among the black and white. Often, their world reflected ours in not so wonderful ways, causing us to reflect on ourselves.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Stan Lee is a true American icon, and he inspired me with his comics and ideas, and as a kid, helped me to feel a little less alone, even as the genre itself was struggling.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The most rewarding part about the recent Marvel movies was watching his ideas come to life, and that's been a joy.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Thanks for the stories old friend.[/FONT]
 
Actually teared up at work when I heard this. Not even sure why....just sad that such an icon is no longer gracing this world. My daughter and I met Stan Lee two years ago and I'm so glad that we did. We will have that photo forever.
 
My wife and I were both saddened to hear the news. We had framed the picture we took with him at Comic Con years ago, our favorite celebrity photo.
 
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