I know it's due to some fuckery, but he really is the face of Marvel for me
I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of any individual that was pound-for-pound as effective of a spokesperson for their company as Stan Lee was for Marvel. I’m stumped.
95 is a hell of a run, and yeah I been bracing myself for this for a while now.
His legacy is complicated (and now may be even harder to discuss those complications) but damn if he didn't have a huge impact in my life. So much of who I am as a person was shaped by reading the books that Stan had a hand in creating.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
There will never be another Stan Lee. For decades he provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort, confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy. He exuded love and kindness and will leave an indelible mark on so, so, so many lives. Excelsior!!
I was first interviewed for Stan Lee's obituary about 20 years ago. I was happy he defied the reaper and carried on. With Stan gone, an era really does come to an end. He was the happy huckster that comics needed. And he really did alliterate like that when you talked to him.
I am not going to be able to speak about this this morning, I can see that.
But under the persona, Stan Lee was a real human being. I met him three times and three times he told me something literally life-changing.
I hope everyone knows, he cared about us. That was no act.
This is bitter news. We were lucky to have him.
Untold millions of lives made better by stories.
Endless people who learned responsibility from Spider-man, acceptance from the X-men, self-forgiveness from the Hulk.
Stan Lee put better heroes in our vision.
Forever the Man.
We all knew this was coming. But it doesn’t stop the tears.
I am finding a bit of amusement that my last memory of him, he almost accidentally ran me over with his Rascal scooter backstage at a con. But he was so kind and funny about it. I’m glad our last meeting was laughter.
Okay, that’s it for now. I need to go process this.
Comics is a community in huge part because Stan said it could be.
He made this stuff and it’s been our companion in dark times, our smile when we needed it, our courage, too.
HawkstoneDon't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things. Somewhere outside of BarstowRegistered Userregular
I learned much later in life that his business dealings were unsavory. It doesn't change the monumental contribution he made to my life. I was Trans, Fat, artsy, a nerd...you name it, if it was social death in a small town I was pretty much all that. Stan along with The King and Mr. Ditko gave me a world to escape to, taught me about prejudice and diversity and how to take the high road in the face of that, they inspired me to be creative myself. I will always be in debt to Stan The Man.
Inside of a dog...it's too dark to read.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
The more I think about it, the more I'm shaken up by it.
For all his faults and valid critism, Stan Lee had in hand creating stories and heroes who have taught millions of people about responsibility, acceptance, honor, redemption, diversity and that regardless of how hard it was doing the right thing was the correct thing to do. The world is better off because he lived.
I was sad but not emotional or teary until my dad just texted the Family group text.
"Saw Stan Lee died. It goes in the family chat because he was always a part of our family."
I remember him showing me the old 1960's cartoons of Iron Man, Thor, Cap and Namor when I was a kid, narrated by Stan. He really was always there in our house somehow.
PSN: mxmarks - WiiU: mxmarks - twitter: @ MikesPS4 - twitch.tv/mxmarks - "Yes, mxmarks is the King of Queens" - Unbreakable Vow
it's gonna be an interesting next couple of years between his cameos, the stuff with his daughter, and his scummy business practices all ping ponging in and out of the spotlight
I read every single issue of Spider-Man by Stan Lee for my dissertation
In it, there are problems. Problems with sexism and such like that. But Stan Lee always tried to be progressive. When he wrote Spider-Man, he didn't shy away from civil rights or Vietnam, he sent Flash overseas and wrote a harrowing story where the ordinary Vietnamese people who help him when he is lost and injured get killed in a US military airstrike on their village, he had Peter Parker meet civil rights protestors, who made searing criticisms about the wealth and power of the white man, and how he needed to take responsibility for how he got there. He never used racism as a weapon, even J Jonah Jameson, Spider-Man's enemy, would not ever tolerate racism and immediately shut it down when he experienced it.
When people sent letters in saying they didn't like it, he respectfully refused to change his stance on writing stories about the modern struggles of modern people, about injustice, inequality and racism.
It was imperfect, the work of a white voice, but it was significant that in the 60s, this was the message that he put out. And what needs to be remembered is that Stan Lee was the heart of that change in comics from four colour fantasy, where the US was perfect and the heroes proud patriots, and made his heroes question whether things were right, and decide that things did need to change. Which is not something that comics always lived up to, but hundreds of thousands of people read Spider-Man every month. He reached a lot of people and his message was a progressive one. I think there are things he did in the comic business that need to be criticised, but I think the man did a lot of good with his work. He didn't just entertain, he tried to challenge and uplift. Not always successfully, not in some areas. But I think he tried.
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Goose!That's me, honeyShow me the way home, honeyRegistered Userregular
As for seeing Avengers 4, I sooner hope he saw Into the Spider Verse and loved it, because that looks excellent from every trailer I've seen and that's more what I connect Stan to than anything else.
When I was in second grade, there was a PBS show called The Electric Company. Kind of a level up from Sesame Street. They had frequent segments with Spider-Man who spoke in word balloons, forcing the viewer to read. This kicked off a Spider-Man fad in the class. It being the early 70s, the teacher was willing to encourage non-standard modes of learning, and she supported the reading of comic books along with more traditional fare, and I have vague memories of the Electric Company being part of the educational viewing during the school day. The reading bug already had me pretty badly, but Spider-Man helped fuel the fires.
Yes, I learned to read with Spider-Man. Thank you, Stan Lee for the impact that your creativity has had on me. Rest easy, and Excelsior, True Believer.
Hm. In re-reading it, this may only be powerful to me since I know my brother and I know the depth of meaning to those words.
Eh, maybe you'll appreciate them anyway. Plus I've already copy and pasted.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Since it's come up a few times, me on Stan Lee and business from the thread in D&D:
Anyway, having said all that, I'm going to offer my strictly personal feelings about Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and authorship:
Did Stan Lee rip Kirby, Ditko, etc off financially? No. They were ripped off financially, but multiple sources suggest this was the doing of actual Timely/Atlas/Marvel owner Martin Goodman, a notorious skinflint; after he retired, he sold the business to Cadence Industries, trading kind of stereotypically scuzzy old-world family business practices for modern, ruthless, corporate business practices. Stan Lee himself never at any point actually owned Marvel and could not override its owners' wishes. Lee claims to have fought with his uncle about the subject, and some people suggest that he did, but as they were family and did most of their business privately it's honestly impossible to say if Lee was an advocate for his employees or not. Nevertheless, an advocate was all he could have been.
Creators' rights were pushed forward, decades later, by a combination of powerful, influential industry professionals and pressure from fans. Jack Kirby didn't survive to see this change, but Steve Ditko (who died this year) did, and was offered a big check upon the release of the original Spider-Man. He refused, stating that what he cared about was the principle of Lee acknowledging that he, Ditko, was Spider-Man's creator. Lee emphatically maintains that he, Lee, had the original idea and has never backed down from that claim.
Jack Kirby also claimed at one point in the 1980s to have actually created Spider-Man and then "given the sketch" to Ditko, but those close to Kirby reportedly felt that this was an early sign of Kirby's senility.
Did Stan Lee rip them off creatively? This is, to me, the tougher and more interesting question. It is absolutely impossible to deny Kirby and Ditko's co-authorship of the comics; some of the surviving art boards have their pencilled-in suggestions for dialogue still on the pages. These characters could not have been created or have succeeded without the artists' contributions and they were absolutely entitled to the monetary benefits of that. It's also true that in his role of Marvel salesman, Lee tended to talk about himself as the "creator" of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four rather than the co-creator.
However, it's also the case that Lee was a cocreator; the work bears his stamp, and neither artist ever found equivalent success on their own. Kirby's work creating the New Gods at DC, where he went after Marvel, is much-loved for its inventiveness but not as much for its plotting or dialogue. Steve Ditko went to the C-list publisher Charlton Comics and created the Question, a mean-spirited libertarian vigilante who was the inspiration for Watchmen's Rorschach, and then left Charlton to create and independently publish Mr. A, an even more mean-spirited libertarian vigilante. Kirby was by far the nicer and more creatively successful of the two artists, but in both cases severing their partnership with Lee seems to have cost them something, a humanizing connection.
Lee, meanwhile, cultivated a third fertile creative relationship, this time with the artist John Romita, who replaced Ditko on Spider-Man starting in the mid-#30s and turned Ditko's cast of haunted, bug-eyed neurotics into sexy soap-opera teens in cutting-edge late-60s flower child fashions, sending sales skyrocketing. I think the fact that Lee was creatively fecund with multiple people suggests it wasn't just their talent at work.
And while Lee-the-publisher was quick to sell himself as Mr. Marvel, he never denied his collaborators' work. When he'd come back from California to visit, the younger artists used to complain about his long lectures praising Kirby and exhorting them to draw more like "The King."
the tl;dr: beyond his ability as editor to hire and fire, Lee was never in a position to get creators financial or legal recognition for their work, though he probably should have been a stronger voice in their court. He also acknowledged Kirby and Ditko's contributions when asked, though he wasn't always great about volunteering that information.
Stepping outside the sphere of those two particular creators, it's also important to note that under Lee as editor, every issue of a Marvel comic credited the entire creative team, including the inker, letterer, and colorist. This was not standard practice in the industry, especially for those last three positions, and DC didn't start crediting writers and artists until nearly a decade later.
I can't put into words how much of this man's work shaped every stage of my life
A lot of the time I hear people talk about how they learned morality and responsibility from their parents or some other role model, but while mine weren't bad, when I think back about where my sense of morality came from...I have to say X-Men and Spider-Man. I was a kid of the 90s, so the stories I read came from other writers, but they still followed Stan's original ideas: X-Men taught me bigotry as an ideology was far more dangerous and evil than any one bad guy, and Spider-Man taught me that having the power to do the right thing is a responsibility that we can never put down. Compared to tips from my dad like "get a summer job, you'll earn money"...practical, sure, but it's not what shaped me.
Also, I have to say, Stan Lee probably lived the creative's dream in a way probably no other geek ever has or maybe will. Tolkien might've been competition if he'd lived another 40 years. But I think every person who's ever created a setting or a group of characters and seen them perform adventures in their imagination has wondered to themselves, gods, I wish I could see this done with a mega budget, by people who really understand it, and an audience that appreciates it, and I think the MCU is probably the perfect realization of that dream.
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I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of any individual that was pound-for-pound as effective of a spokesperson for their company as Stan Lee was for Marvel. I’m stumped.
His legacy is complicated (and now may be even harder to discuss those complications) but damn if he didn't have a huge impact in my life. So much of who I am as a person was shaped by reading the books that Stan had a hand in creating.
Fuck, man, now it hurts
Also the Spider-Man game on PS4 had a good Stan cameo.
I feel like Stan Lee would be the kind of guy who would have been absolutely down for CG cameos after his passing.
Austin Walker has some good words about how he feels, and I am mostly the same
Well its not incorrect.
it was my sanctuary
thank you, Stan Lee
.
This video just hit me hard. I don't know why.
For all his faults and valid critism, Stan Lee had in hand creating stories and heroes who have taught millions of people about responsibility, acceptance, honor, redemption, diversity and that regardless of how hard it was doing the right thing was the correct thing to do. The world is better off because he lived.
"Saw Stan Lee died. It goes in the family chat because he was always a part of our family."
I remember him showing me the old 1960's cartoons of Iron Man, Thor, Cap and Namor when I was a kid, narrated by Stan. He really was always there in our house somehow.
oh my god the dollar one is so good. it's crazy how he was like, actually good in front of a camera
In it, there are problems. Problems with sexism and such like that. But Stan Lee always tried to be progressive. When he wrote Spider-Man, he didn't shy away from civil rights or Vietnam, he sent Flash overseas and wrote a harrowing story where the ordinary Vietnamese people who help him when he is lost and injured get killed in a US military airstrike on their village, he had Peter Parker meet civil rights protestors, who made searing criticisms about the wealth and power of the white man, and how he needed to take responsibility for how he got there. He never used racism as a weapon, even J Jonah Jameson, Spider-Man's enemy, would not ever tolerate racism and immediately shut it down when he experienced it.
When people sent letters in saying they didn't like it, he respectfully refused to change his stance on writing stories about the modern struggles of modern people, about injustice, inequality and racism.
It was imperfect, the work of a white voice, but it was significant that in the 60s, this was the message that he put out. And what needs to be remembered is that Stan Lee was the heart of that change in comics from four colour fantasy, where the US was perfect and the heroes proud patriots, and made his heroes question whether things were right, and decide that things did need to change. Which is not something that comics always lived up to, but hundreds of thousands of people read Spider-Man every month. He reached a lot of people and his message was a progressive one. I think there are things he did in the comic business that need to be criticised, but I think the man did a lot of good with his work. He didn't just entertain, he tried to challenge and uplift. Not always successfully, not in some areas. But I think he tried.
Like.. they say comic books are like our modern myths, the stories we tell each other to learn and to be better and to entertain.
With that light, Stan Lee could easily be compared to historic greats - both good and bad.
man watching this makes me think netflix needs to produce a drama series about stan lee and his rise in the industry starring marc maron
Hm. In re-reading it, this may only be powerful to me since I know my brother and I know the depth of meaning to those words.
Eh, maybe you'll appreciate them anyway. Plus I've already copy and pasted.
the tl;dr: beyond his ability as editor to hire and fire, Lee was never in a position to get creators financial or legal recognition for their work, though he probably should have been a stronger voice in their court. He also acknowledged Kirby and Ditko's contributions when asked, though he wasn't always great about volunteering that information.
Stepping outside the sphere of those two particular creators, it's also important to note that under Lee as editor, every issue of a Marvel comic credited the entire creative team, including the inker, letterer, and colorist. This was not standard practice in the industry, especially for those last three positions, and DC didn't start crediting writers and artists until nearly a decade later.
the real panel just says "advice"
This is the originalest version
olden times were weird
A lot of the time I hear people talk about how they learned morality and responsibility from their parents or some other role model, but while mine weren't bad, when I think back about where my sense of morality came from...I have to say X-Men and Spider-Man. I was a kid of the 90s, so the stories I read came from other writers, but they still followed Stan's original ideas: X-Men taught me bigotry as an ideology was far more dangerous and evil than any one bad guy, and Spider-Man taught me that having the power to do the right thing is a responsibility that we can never put down. Compared to tips from my dad like "get a summer job, you'll earn money"...practical, sure, but it's not what shaped me.
Also, I have to say, Stan Lee probably lived the creative's dream in a way probably no other geek ever has or maybe will. Tolkien might've been competition if he'd lived another 40 years. But I think every person who's ever created a setting or a group of characters and seen them perform adventures in their imagination has wondered to themselves, gods, I wish I could see this done with a mega budget, by people who really understand it, and an audience that appreciates it, and I think the MCU is probably the perfect realization of that dream.
They measured from underneath back then too.