On Stan Lee

[Ack]

Goodnight, sweet prince.


December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018

Lee had a hell of a run. Now, he joins the likes of fellow superhero comics greats such as Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Will Eisner, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and so many, many more. We'll miss you, Stan.

Excelsior!

[noiseredux]

ugh, so sad. I can't even fathom the impact that he had. All those characters, all those stories, all that inspiration... RIP.

[Sarge]

Definitely an amazing run. What an effect he had on our culture!

[marurun]

I'm going to miss seeing his wonderful cameos in all the Marvel movies. The transition from Marvel to Disney is almost complete.

[Dikdikvandik]

Christian, Muslim, Jew, Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, Native, Left, Right, Center, even quite a few SJWs (besides the trolls)
For once we all come together...

To mourn Stan Lee

[Konacha]

When I heard about this, I just got crushed by the news. I never met the man (had a few options to meet him) but I heard all of these stories about him that just made me smile. Plus let us not forget the impact he had on comics and pop culture in general.

[Gunstar Green]

It's one of those things I knew was coming for a while. It's truly the end of an era. I'm glad he got to live long enough to see Marvel turn into the biggest multimedia franchise on the planet.

[Nemoide]

When I was a kid, I didn't really appreciate things he wrote. Early Spider-Man and X-Men felt clunky and awkward compared to the '90s-00s stuff I was used to.
But over the years, I've dived into the history of comics and can see how tremendously fresh things like Fantastic Four were in the early 60s.
A lot of the Marvel superheroes are wildly different from what someone who grew up reading pre-Marvel Comics might expect: no secret identities in the Fantastic Four, an unpopular superhero who is miserable in Spider-Man, a hero seen as a paragon of righteousness wracked with guilt and feeling out of place in Captain America. All of these kinds of characters made them much more relatable for a lot of readers, and the fact that all the heroes lived in ACTUAL New York City and seemed to run into each other regularly made them seem more realistic than a lot of the style of superheroes that came before.

In later years, it became difficult to tell how involved he was with things that carried his name (eg Striperella or Ultimo), but going back to his stuff from the 1960s can really give you a sense of his voice as a writer. Those comics he made might not interest casual readers as much as more modern style comics, but they really laid important groundwork in making superheroes what they are today. And while some folks might not be a fan of his self-promotion, it's pretty astounding that he managed to build up the level of fame that he did. Just about EVERYONE knows who Stan Lee is, what he looks like, and that he says things like "Excelsior!" I'd be hard-pressed to think of anyone else in comics who approaches that level of widespread fame.

I'm glad that he was able to live a long life, that his mind didn't slide into dementia, and that he was able to see the seeds he planted at the start of his career, working on things like Captain America and the Human Torch for Timely Comics eventually forming the basis of the world's most popular multimedia entertainment franchise.
It's unfortunate that he's no longer in this world, but his influence will surely continue be felt for decades to come.

[Gunstar Green]

I always liked the early Stan Lee comics but I'll be the first to admit they usually weren't amazing. Still the characters were likable and relatable and there was a sort of energy to it that I'm not sure anyone really replicated. What came later for Marvel Comics characters is definitely better and very few classic "best of the best" Marvel comic stories that aren't origin stories came from Stan Lee himself, but he got the ball rolling on a new generation of super heroes and a new way of looking at super heroes. It's a big part of why we still care about these characters today. As he often put it they're a part of our modern mythology.

He also made himself the face of the comics industry for better or worse like the post above covered. I think his larger than life personality was as much a part of Marvel's success formula as the characters themselves.

[marurun]

The classic Marvel stuff hasn't aged well, but if you look at the other stuff coming out at the time the Marvel work definitely has the advantage. And even of the actual writing feels a bit hokey now, the characters themselves, their emotional cores, are still highly relevant. The words that come out of Peter Parker's mouth these days are different, but that core character is still the same. The Fantastic Four are still a family dealing with issues surrounding close relationships in between saving the world. The Hulk is still a study of anger and solitude, of diametrically opposed personalities. These characters have held up even as maybe the writing itself has not. And that's a testament to Lee and his collaborators, primarily Kirby and Ditko, but also many others. Lee made power accessible and approachable. His characters were fundamentally human in a way other comic characters were not.