Excelsior: A Eulogy For Stan Lee

I don’t have a lot of memories of my childhood. Some people just don’t have brains that work like that. There are flashes of things here and there, snippets of conversation, memories of events without details…that sort of thing. My mind skips over most of it.

But I very clearly remember the first comic book I ever owned. It was 1987, and I was eleven years old. My family went on a trip for summer vacation — we did this often. And for this trip, my parents bought some comics for us to read while we sat in the back of the truck heading off to…well, wherever we went that year. That part, I don’t recall…but I do remember the cover of one issue absolutely transfixing me. This picture of what looked like a red and white robot threatened by a menacing-looking, ghostly robot with the worlds “IRON MAN” in bold, riveted letters above them. And on the bottom, with a spooky trembling look to the first couple of words, read “The Ghost and the Machine.”

It was Iron Man #219, and it was where my love of comic books truly began. I will never forget pulling the cover back to reveal the first page. It featured a muscular Tony Stark in a tiny shirt which read “Forbes 500” and ridiculously small shorts jogging on the beach with two bikini-clad women gawking at him. (The fact that Tony intrigued me just as much as the women was a first sign, though I didn’t realize it at the time, of my queerness.) And again, above them were words that struck me: “Stan Lee Presents: The Invincible Iron Man.”

By now, you are probably aware that Stan Lee passed away on Monday morning at the age of ninety-five. I don’t think I need to cover the facts of Lee’s career too heavily. Even people with almost no knowledge of comics know that he was “The Man” when it came to comic books, just as his self-given moniker stated. There are already countless articles out there — not to mention full libraries’ worth of books — that talk about his history and how he helped grow the comics industry into the force of nature that it is today.

That said, I also don’t think you can overstate how important Stan Lee was to not only comic books, but to pop culture as a whole. Even before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a multi-billion dollar franchise spread across multiple media formats, Lee had left his mark on nearly every facet of entertainment. He changed the face of the comic book industry in many ways. The kids who grew up on his stories ended up becoming the heavyweights of narrative fiction. Everyone from Joss Whedon to Rob Zombie to Mick Foley have been touched by his work.

But for me, it’s much more than just pop culture. That almost feels weird to say, because pop culture basically is my life at this point. I’m a lucky man in that I get to do what I love. I report and comment on movies, comics, television, wrestling, and video games every day. But without Stan Lee, I don’t think that would be the case. Lee’s work brought me into the world of being a fan and instilled a deep passion for genre. I wouldn’t even know the words to describe these kinds of things until I was a young adult. But for this quiet, shy and nerdy young kid, Stan Lee’s work (and that of the many people at Marvel) was essential. It gave me a place I could let my substantial imagination run wild.

Even more than that though, Lee helped frame my personal identity in ways I would only come to realize many years later. I grew up wanting to be a writer because of Stan Lee and others at Marvel like Steve Englehart, Chris Claremont, Walter Simonson, and David Michelinie. And while I credit much of who I am as a person to how I was raised, many of the ideals that I stand by came from comic books. Lee and much of his staff helped to teach me to stand up for what’s right and to fight injustice. They gave a young white kid in the incredibly Caucasian Portland metropolitan area characters of color to look up to and respect.

And Stan himself, in his Soapboxes, often addressed issues that mattered. Many of his short editorials would diverge from his usual alliterative Marvel hyping to excoriate racism or address timely topics. One particular column he wrote struck with me and shaped how I would view and write stories. While addressing complaints about politics and “moralizing” in Marvel Comics, Lee wrote, “It seems to me that a story without a message, however subliminal, is like a man without a soul…None of us live in a vacuum — none of us is untouched by the everyday events about us — events that shape our stories just as much as they shape our lives.” I think that several multi-million dollar film franchises be well-served to keep that particular soapbox in mind while their scripts were being written.

As I got older, my relationship with Lee and his work became more complex. As I came into the realization of my identity as a bisexual man, I began to see how Lee and his writers’ work made that transition easier for me. I had queer subtext that inspired me in the pages of X-Men, and I had Lee’s assurance that being different was okay. That seems trite now, but in the era where even good old liberal Oregon was only narrowly defeating legislation equating homosexuality with bestiality and necrophilia, that meant something.

As a teenager, (briefly) a college student and a young adult, these stories inspired me to try my hand at writing my own. My love of geeky things — largely inspired by comics — led me to connect to others who had similar interests. These are friendships I have maintained for the whole of my life. And they, with their own attitudes which were molded by Lee and those he influenced, have touched and changed my life in innumerable ways.

And of course, Lee’s impact on pop culture grew exponentially in the 21st century. With the rise of Marvel comic films from X-Men to the MCU, Lee become an indelible part of the media landscape. His cameos in nearly all the Marvel adaptations only served to further establish his importance to mass media. His appearances at Comic-Cons regularly drew lines that dwarfed megastars, as fans lined up willing to pay huge money for a few moments with Lee and the chance to get a picture or signature. Throughout it all, Lee was the quintessential hype man and, by all accounts, was gracious with every fan who came his way, without exception. One of my few regrets is not getting Lee’s signature at Wizard World Portland a couple of years back.

And yet, as who I am became more and more indebted to Lee, my perception of him changed. There are more than a few people who will touch on the more problematic aspects of Stan Lee. The way he often took sole credit for creations that weren’t entirely his. (See: Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby.) The way he engaged in suspect (if not fully unethical) business practices that hurt writers and artists, all while putting the merriest of jokey faces on the “Marvel Bullpen.” These aren’t isolated stories; they’re well-documented cases of Lee that for many cast a pall on the good that he did in his career.

I’ve often struggled with how to separate a person’s misdeeds from their achievements. I know that there are many people who can’t see past the harm he did to others in the industry, and how he rode his way to fame in no small part on the backs of people he stepped on. But I also can’t help but think back without fail to the first time I opened that comic to the image of sweaty Tony Stark and seeing the words “Stan Lee Presents” for the very first time.

In the end, Stan Lee will always be someone I look up to. Not as a flawless individual, or as an ideal human being. (None of us are that.) But as a man who had a passion and followed it. In doing so, he changed the world in many ways, great and small. His enthusiasm for his characters, and his zeal for life, were things which cannot be denied. He created, co-created or facilitated the creation of some of the most enduring characters in modern narrative fiction and paved the way for nerdy, geeky people like me and many others to grow into who we were meant to be. For all of his flaws, he helped make this world a better place and his stories will live on forever.

Excelsior.

(Quote Image Credit: Marvel.com)