MARVEL-OUS MASTER
Stan Lee, whose superheroes changed comic book industry, dies at 95
Stan Lee, who died at age 95 yesterday, helped give the modern world many of its most popular and enduring superheroes, and it’s not just hyperbole to say that he was one them. A comic, cameomaking mainstay of Marvel films, including “Avengers: Infinity War,” Lee helped revolutionize and update the American comic book industry in the 1960s in the way that Elvis and the Beatles revolutionized the music industry and transformed an entire culture.
Lee and his partners, who included Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others, took on industry leader DC Comics with its lineup of at the time arguably staid, idealized and archetypal characters Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern and offered an alternative vision just in time for a rebellious generation seeking something different from its more conformist predecessors.
Marvel superheroes were not just superheroes. They were young people with the same flaws, neuroses and problems that young Baby Boomers, who were looking for an alternative to postWorld War II 1950s America, could relate to and enthusiastically share.
The Fantastic Four, including the young, incendiary Johnny Storm, were scientists transformed by sci-fi magic into super-villain-battling freaks, one of them made out of orange rock and called simply Thing. The Incredible Hulk had serious anger management issues. Spider-Man was a messed up adolescent in superhero guise with frequent bad judgment. The X-Men were mutants, a code word for social outcasts, nerds and pariahs with unique superpowers. It’s no wonder they became heroes of the LBGT movement in their new millennial film incarnations. When Lee and Kirby formed the Avengers, Captain America, another former nerd, was reintroduced from the 1940s to join the group.
Goodbye Clark Kent. Hello Bruce Banner, brainiac scientist with, not an invincible alien from Kypton, but a big, green monster called the Hulk hiding inside him and ready to pop out at the most awkward moments and declare, “Hulk smash!” Daredevil is blind, but in the Marvel universe that leads to the development of superpowers to fight evildoers.
If you thought it was hard dealing with normal hormonal changes, imagine what it would be like if you were bitten by a radioactive spider and could suddenly crawl up a wall and developed super strength and Spider-Sense? The truth is that every comic-bookreading child of the ’60s could imagine that, and that is why Marvel and SpiderMan became such a sensation. The comics connected to the dreams, uncertainty and unease of young people growing up in the shadow of the Bomb and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Sure, the Marvel superheroes fought the forces of evil just like all other superheroes. But they had a lot harder time getting their act together because they were far from perfect.
The Marvel superheroes are even more profitable today with their global film audiences, even if some might argue they have become the slaves of soulless corporations. Complete with his own origin story, Lee was the human heart of those Marvel movies, including the upcoming “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (Dec. 14), and now he is gone. Who will fill the void?
Lee, a recipient of a National Medal of Arts, a Hugo Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, was born Stanley Martin Lieber in Manhattan in 1922 and grew up in the Bronx the son of RomanianJewish immigrants. He changed his name to Stan Lee around the time he and his partners created all the aforementioned characters, as well as Doctor Strange, Ant-Man, Black Panther, a groundbreaking African-American superhero just in time for the civil rights movement, Iron Man and Thor. The latter was proof that Lee and his fellow visionaries were in the business of minting a new pantheon of more relevant and complex mythological gods and goddesses for the modern world.
As a member in good standing of Marvel Mania International, I feel obliged to end by thanking Lee for the gifts he gave us all. Stan Lee brought the world Marvel Mania. Long may it live.