Stan Lee turns 87 today having outlasted just about every pioneer, except one of the men who hired him back in the earliest days of his career, Joe Simon.
It’s difficult to express with words just how important Stan Lee is to comic book artists, writers and filmmakers of my generation. He’s one of those creative forces in the medium who influenced every facet of comic book creation and storytelling in the 20th century.
The story by now is of course legend: Stanley Martin Lieber, changed his name to Stan Lee and along with several notable artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, Thor, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and many, many others.
But Stan Lee didn’t just create innovative super heroes and memorably flawed human characters, -he created entire cosmologies, a series of alternate realities that had a concrete continuity (characters referred to past events and interacted with each other often moving around and stepping into each other’s titles and storylines unexpectedly.) This may not seem like much, but anyone familiar with stories from comics’ “Golden Age” knows how limited and unreal early comic books were.
Years ago my dear friend, the cinematographer Joe Zizzo said to me on a movie shoot something that I’ll never forget:
It’s difficult to express with words just how important Stan Lee is to comic book artists, writers and filmmakers of my generation. He’s one of those creative forces in the medium who influenced every facet of comic book creation and storytelling in the 20th century.
The story by now is of course legend: Stanley Martin Lieber, changed his name to Stan Lee and along with several notable artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Hulk, Thor, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and many, many others.
But Stan Lee didn’t just create innovative super heroes and memorably flawed human characters, -he created entire cosmologies, a series of alternate realities that had a concrete continuity (characters referred to past events and interacted with each other often moving around and stepping into each other’s titles and storylines unexpectedly.) This may not seem like much, but anyone familiar with stories from comics’ “Golden Age” knows how limited and unreal early comic books were.
Years ago my dear friend, the cinematographer Joe Zizzo said to me on a movie shoot something that I’ll never forget:
“Everyone invents and is invented by their own version of New York City, whether it’s Jules Dassin, Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee or Stan Lee.”
And that’s the thing about Stan Lee; he placed Peter Parker in Jackson Heights Queens, the Avengers’ Mansion was on Long Island, the Baxter building was in midtown Manhattan.
Clark Kent lived in some made up New York called “Metropolis” but Matt Murdock lived in Hell’s Kitchen.
That’s what Stan Lee has given to the world: a posture toward speculative fiction that approaches the rich potential of novels with characters that could be standing next to you on a subway train. Lee’s characters had tough jobs, they paid rent. They had all of the trouble that most comic book characters, up until that time, were incapable of having.
There are two things I’d like to thank Stan Lee for that often go unmentioned:
Stan Lee challenged the Comics Code Authority and ultimately forced it to reform its policies by pushing for stories about serious topics (In the most notorious case it was a cautionary story about drug abuse in an issue of Spider-Man in the early 1970s.) When faced with a series of editorial changes that would have rendered his story about the perils of addiction meaningless, Lee defied the CCA and ran his story without the Comics Code Authority seal of approval on the cover.
-They’ve been on the defensive ever since thanks to Stan Lee.
Lee also introduced the practice of including an entire credit panel on the splash page of each issue. This meant that for the first time the writer, penciller AND the inker and the letterer were credited directly for their work.
-Comic books are far too labor-intensive an enterprise for anyone to go uncredited.
There isn’t enough space on the internet to list and assess this man’s contributions to his medium, so I’ll just say thanks and hope that another dear friend, Ian Fischer didn’t take it the wrong way when I cursed him under my breath for getting to take a picture with Stan Lee at a convention.
Happy birthday Stan.
-SJ
Clark Kent lived in some made up New York called “Metropolis” but Matt Murdock lived in Hell’s Kitchen.
That’s what Stan Lee has given to the world: a posture toward speculative fiction that approaches the rich potential of novels with characters that could be standing next to you on a subway train. Lee’s characters had tough jobs, they paid rent. They had all of the trouble that most comic book characters, up until that time, were incapable of having.
There are two things I’d like to thank Stan Lee for that often go unmentioned:
Stan Lee challenged the Comics Code Authority and ultimately forced it to reform its policies by pushing for stories about serious topics (In the most notorious case it was a cautionary story about drug abuse in an issue of Spider-Man in the early 1970s.) When faced with a series of editorial changes that would have rendered his story about the perils of addiction meaningless, Lee defied the CCA and ran his story without the Comics Code Authority seal of approval on the cover.
-They’ve been on the defensive ever since thanks to Stan Lee.
Lee also introduced the practice of including an entire credit panel on the splash page of each issue. This meant that for the first time the writer, penciller AND the inker and the letterer were credited directly for their work.
-Comic books are far too labor-intensive an enterprise for anyone to go uncredited.
There isn’t enough space on the internet to list and assess this man’s contributions to his medium, so I’ll just say thanks and hope that another dear friend, Ian Fischer didn’t take it the wrong way when I cursed him under my breath for getting to take a picture with Stan Lee at a convention.
Happy birthday Stan.
-SJ
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He is indeed a giant of 20th century literature. He deserves every ounce of acclaim that has ever come his way and more. Happy Birthday, Stan. And may you have many, many more.
ReplyDeleteYes, he truly is the sh!t.
ReplyDeleteThere's been a lot of revisionism and rancor going on about his legacy, --frankly, if he hadn't been the creator of those characters, his talents as a storyteller alone would make him just as important.
Too much greatness to list here.
I'm glad he's lived to see just how huge this has all blown up to and that he's finally got a few million himself.
I wish Jack Kirby had gotten to see not only the motion pictures, but his influence on people like Mike Mignola and the Hell Boy comics take off.
These guys really set something in motion didn't they?
-SJ
Stan created the Marvel House Style, which is the norm to this day and lead to Jack Kirby providing the creative input he had. Stan also reached out and acknowledged the fans. Unheard of in a time when editors didn't care if Superman never could stretch his cape around the moon before.
ReplyDeleteThe Man coined the phrase "With Great Power, there must come Great Responsibility" 'Nuff Said.
For any comics, action, or sci-fi writer, in any genre, to say they have not been influenced by Stan Lee is like a musician saying the Beatles had no impact on music.
Absolutely Hazzy.
ReplyDeletepeople often forget that above all Lee was a formidable writer, operating way beyond the scale of what was the norm in his time in regards to complexity of story and character development. Those very early X-Men comics are still so damn weird for the time period.
As for his influence, sadly that's probably why he's rarely cited as an influence anymore: for a long time he simply personified creativity and innovation in comics: I think he still does for us.
-SJ
One of the must-reads in comics is This Man, This Monster! from FF #51. How do you follow up the introduction of Galactus and the Silver Surfer? A story that kicks character development into a new level. The villain is a mere plot device.
ReplyDeleteI made a really great response to this... and motherf'ckin' browser crashed.
ReplyDeleteI'll come back to me.