Mourning The Passing Of Stan Lee

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Stan Lee passed away today.

Nuff said.

We didn’t just lose an icon of comics with Stan’s passing, we lost a legend. Stan Lee was the man who created characters like Spider-man, The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, The Incredible Hulk, and co-created characters like Iron Man, Daredevil and the X-Men. And as he ushered in the Marvel Age of comics in the 1960’s he created a modern mythology that defined American culture in the 20^th century.

As a kid who was born in the early 70s, I grew up on the Marvel Comics featuring many of the characters Stan Lee created or co-created. Marvel Comics were how I learned to read when I was 4 years old. I knew who all the Avengers were before I started Kindergarten. I grew up on Hanna Barbera’s Fantastic Four in syndication on Channel 5 on weekdays in the early 80s and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on Saturday Mornings, The X-men cartoon in the 90’s and Marvel Action Universe which featured Stan doing an intro before an episode of Iron Man or Fantastic Four started.  

In most of Stan Lee’s comics he opened the imaginations of readers of all ages as he took heroes on fantastic adventures. And in those stories he made brilliant social commentaries about ordinary people in extraordinary situations overcoming incredible challenges. What made Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics so popular was the fact that in spite of the incredible powers the heroes he created had they were people just like you and me. His Marvel was the world outside our window, and his heroes and villains had the same struggles as everyone else.

At heart The Fantastic Four were a family, Spider-man was a teenager trying to learn how to be a responsible adult. Iron Man was a rich man reconnecting with the world of people he became so distant from, Daredevil was a man learning not to be afraid of a world he was taught to fear, Thor was the god who learned how to serve the people by walking among them, The X-men were fighting to overcome racism and prejudice. We all knew people like the characters in a Marvel Comic, and we all related to those heroes on a human level as we read those fantastic adventures.

Stan Lee’s legacy will have an impact on generations to come. The Marvel Age of comics he ushered in during the 1960s was the gateway to millions of kids learning to read, to them learning how to open up their imaginations and seeing the possibilities of the impossible. The mythology he created in the Marvel comics teenagers in the 1960s 1970s and 1980s read has evolved into the cartoons of the 1990s and the live action movies of the 2000s and 2010s. Showing us how the stories he helped create transcend mediums as they are passed on from generation to generation.

Over the course of his career, Stan was blessed by God to see something grand, he saw the comic book industry from its inception in the Golden Age of comics to the dark days of the 1950s to the Marvel Age of comics and the evolution of the superhero movie in the 1990s and 2000s. He literally saw characters and stories he created evolve from images on a page into live images on the silver screen. Not many comic creators get the opportunity to see their characters come to life once in any form of media, but Stan saw his come to life multiple times over his lifetime. God blessed Stan to live a rich and full life and in the 95 years he was on this earth. gvuThe comics he wrote and published had an impact on the lives of millions of kids like me. They gave me hope when I was growing up in the worst part of the Bronx. Iron Man comics taught me how to persevere after my brain aneurysm operation at 7, and how not to let that childhood tragedy define me. From those Iron Man stories I read in Origins of Marvel Comics and the David Micheline/Bob Layton Run of Iron Man in my brother’s collection, learned how to turn tragedy into triumph and not let myself be limited by someone’s idea of who they thought I could be, but become the man I wanted to be.

Thanks for all your contributions to the comic book industry Stan. It was an honor to be there to see you usher in the Marvel Age of Comics. It was an honor to get a chance to buy the comics you created at the newsstand and the comic shop. Thank you for all the great comics and all the great stories you wrote over the years.