Stan Lee: The Homer of Our Times
It’s a recognized proverb that superheroes are the modern myths, that the stories played out by super-powered character with outsized personalities are just as reflective of our current society as the exploits of Zeus and the Olympians were to the ancient Greeks. However, this wasn’t always the case. The first superhero comics were appropriately about god-like figures, divine beings who used their abilities and traits to maintain the status quo of a utopic world threatened by outlying imperfections. They were more propaganda pieces for the American dream and an assurance that the depression of the 1930s was finite than realized characters with their own traits and flaws. If this had stayed the case, it’s unclear just what popular culture would look like today.
But we don’t really have to wonder because in November of 1961, Stan Lee, head comic editor and writer at Timely Publishing, soon to be renamed Marvel Publishing, debuted ‘Fantastic Four #1.’ Despite being based fairly blatantly on the recently released and very popular ‘Justice League of America’ comic line at rival company DC Comics, ‘Fantastic Four’ immediately drew critical and audience acclaim.
The premise was fairly simple: they were superheroes who also happened to be a tight family unit and, unlike other hero teams at the time, they all had definitive flaws that were reflected in their powers. Mr. Fantastic could stretch his body to amazing proportions but was too rigid and uptight to stretch his personality, the Invisible Woman could disappear right before your eyes but all she wanted was to be seen and heard, the Human Torch wielded flame as easily as he breathed oxygen but needed to learn to keep a cool head, and the Thing was a giant rock monster with an immediately threatening presence but was really just a giant, friendly goofball with ironically thin skin.
Suddenly, superheroes weren’t just new demigods for children to worship through the weekly ritual of spending allowance money on new issues, they could be realistic people with real world issues that readers could work through with them. The Fantastic Four’s fragile family dynamic was the opening act which made audiences open to reading about Iron Man’s substance abuse, the X-Men’s civil rights crusade, Thor’s confrontation of his own privilege, Spider-Man’s inadequacy issues, Hulk’s emotional instability, Daredevil’s overcoming his disability, and countless other heroes whose journeys were no doubt crucial to the creative and emotional development to entire generations.
Lee’s legacy is all the more remarkable considering he had absolutely no intention of it ever happening. In his early career, he famously harbored a grudge against the comic book industry. He considered it a lowbrow medium unworthy of his talents, so much so that he used the pen name Stan Lee so he could save his real name, Stanley Lieber, for more respectable work. When his then editor-in-chief Martin Goodman assigned him to make a team of superheroes to compete with ‘Justice League of America,’ Lee was fully intending to leave comic books behind to seek his fortune in more serious exploits. It was his wife, the late Joan Boocock, who suggested he write the kind of story he actually wanted instead of the pulp fluff he usually had to pen. After all, if he was leaving the industry, what did he have to lose?
The surprise success of the Fantastic Four prompted Lee to stay in comic books. He told himself at the time that it was only going to be a temporary position, but Goodman quickly gave him full creative control over Marvel’s comic division. After his hits started piling up, Marvel’s focus slowly left magazine publishing and became focused squarely on comics. Over time, Lee learned to not only appreciate the niche position he filled in the zeitgeist, but to celebrate it.
Notably, Lee insisted on communicating with his audience through ‘Stan’s Soapbox,’ a monthly column in his comics where he addressed his readers, posted op-eds, and discussed the issue’s narrative. Lee considered this a vital part of his creative process. He prided himself on writing human stories for human readers and determined that he needed real, human feedback in order to do so. Over the decades, ‘Stan’s Soapbox’ openly addressed racism, bigotry, and corruption with Lee’s frank, clear voice guiding readers away from what he once referred to as “the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today.” ‘Stan’s Soapbox’ was also instrumental in creating a shared sense of community among comic book readers, a phenomenon which eventually evolved into the massive annual comic conventions at which Lee’s presence was something of a staple.
While most will know him through his creative exploits and his famed cameos in most Marvel properties, his friends and coworkers knew him as an earnest, good-natured man who loved nothing more than to look out over a crowd of people dressed up like the characters he’d created and shout “Excelsior!” But there is a deeper, underlying sense of loss in his recent passing. We didn’t just lose a fun comic book guy who had a few humorous seconds devoted to him in all the Marvel movies, this isn’t the run of the mill celebrity death. This feels more personal than that. Even people unfamiliar with comics and only tangentially aware of the Marvel brand are feeling his loss stronger than they reasonably should.
The reason for this goes all the way back to the opening sentence of this article. Comics are the modern myths and nobody crafted comics quite like Stan Lee. He wasn’t just a writer, he was more akin to a skald or a bard, a teller of loosely-interpreted pagan scripture. Storytelling was so natural and ingrained in him that when he joined the army in 1942, he was one of only nine men in the history of the military to be given the title of ‘Playwright.’ But while he was a storyteller, he was also a business and family man. He understood both his readers and the American dream that they grew up internalizing in a way most of us never will. And it was this understanding that gave him the insight to create such flawed yet compelling characters and stories.
Stan Lee is dead. He wasn’t just a writer. He wasn’t just the man with the white mustache and aviator shades. He wasn’t just the “thwip thwip!” guy. He wasn’t just “Excelsior!” He was our Homer, the keeper of our myths and stories, the crafter of our childhoods and the reason that some of us are still hopelessly lost in them all these years later. He lived a life we can all sit back and envy to one degree or another.
Someday history will forget Stan Lee. His name will last much longer than yours or mine will, to be sure, but it too will one day be lost in the future annals. But even if he experiences the terrible second death of being forgotten completely, Spider-Man will still swing through the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Hulk will still smash, Iron Man will still fly in a suit of golden armor, and Thor will still say things like “Verily,” and “I say thee nay!”
Stan Lee is dead…
Excelsior.