Legendary Marvel Comic Book Illustrator And Super-Hero Creator Stan Lee Passes At 95
By Seth Garth
Greg Green has asked me to make comment on the passing of legendary Marvel Comic illustrator and innovative super-hero creator (think Hulk, Captain America, Black Panther) Stan Lee at 95. He said he was in a quandary about asking anybody to do the piece since he had been the one who in 2017 had the writers here, young and old alike, do film reviews of Marvel and DC Comic characters as they hit the screen. This as part of what I think was asserting his authority when he took over the day to day operations of the publication as site manager after a bloody internal battle pitting young against old which resulted in the previous manager being purged and sent into exile. This frankly hare-brained scheme was Greg’s notion of “broadening our horizons,” or some such thing in order to reach a younger demographic. Both young and old writers rebelled against this dictate and more importantly the reader base which is heavily composed of baby-boomers did as well. If Greg, and
I won’t go on and go about his grievous error since we have bloodied the pages on this subject already, has thought to ask any writer, young or old, about what drives the youngsters to the cinema to see these gaggles of super-heroes doing their action a minute stuff against bad guys he would have known that they do not read so-called high brow film reviews in baby-boomer oriented publications. Don’t read at all or not much when the Internet will instantly spoon-feed them whatever they need to know. But enough.
I don’t know much about Stan Lee except as he became a more known figure in the comic book world it was clear he was a max daddy innovator, a guy who could create super-heroes however misshapen and loaded with super-human powers had some human qualities that an average kid or older aficionado could hang onto. And maybe that is his legacy, the kindness and the thought behind his creations which were reflected more fully I think in the comic books rather than the films with the action a minute scenarios which seemed too implausible to dwell on. If the doing no harm in the real world and providing some easy leisure time reading as I did for me as a kid despite not knowing he created many of the characters s then that says enough. RIP, Stan Lee, RIP.
