Stars pay touching tribute to Stan Lee

LOS ANGELES — An Army bugler played a mournful taps at a Hollywood memorial for Stan Lee, and military bagpipers sent a solemn “Amazing Grace” into the air.

Standing respectfully around them was another group in its own impeccable uniforms: Lee fans dressed as Black Panther, Wolverine and other members of the X-Men and Avengers.

“This was a guy who spent his life dreaming of writing the great American novel, and he didn’t realize he was doing it, over and over and over again,” said the night’s host, filmmaker Kevin Smith, a friend and super-fan of Lee.

Hundreds of Marvel fans stood and paid tribute along with Lee’s colleagues and friends outside the Hollywood Boulevard theatre where he had put his hand and footprints in cement in a similar ceremony 18 months earlier. Lee died in December at age 95.