nrc
11-13-18, 12:49 AM
America lost one of it's greatest story tellers today with the passing of Stan Lee.
Having grown up as a Marvel Comics "True Believer," one of my fondest memories is of my Dad taking me to the local carry out to pick up the latest comics. Stan Lee's pantheon of heroes were an integral part of my youth. Even that hot teenage girl I eventually married first knew me as "Spiderman" on the CB radio. Not every nerd can parlay comic books and CB radio into marrying their high school sweetheart but with great power comes great responsibility.
I became a genuine Marvel partisan at time a when they were still that other comic book company. I started out watching super hero cartoons and TV shows of all kinds but when it came time to start reading the source literature as a wizened preteen it was really Spiderman and Marvel comics that captured my imagination.
Eventually I came to understand that the reason was one of Stan Lee's greatest contributions to the comic book format: putting super heroes into rich, complex stories with good dialogue and having them deal with real, human problems rather than just the latest super villain threatening the world. When Peter Parker's friend Harry Osborne became addicted and overdosed on drugs things got real (or "relevant" as we called it then).
It was when Stan Lee's Gold and Silver Age characters met the great artists and writers of the Bronze Age that the comic art form reached its full potential, spawning the stories that are creating block buster movies today. And that's largely thanks to Stan Lee.
Rest well Stan "The Man" Lee. We know that no true hero is ever really dead.
Having grown up as a Marvel Comics "True Believer," one of my fondest memories is of my Dad taking me to the local carry out to pick up the latest comics. Stan Lee's pantheon of heroes were an integral part of my youth. Even that hot teenage girl I eventually married first knew me as "Spiderman" on the CB radio. Not every nerd can parlay comic books and CB radio into marrying their high school sweetheart but with great power comes great responsibility.
I became a genuine Marvel partisan at time a when they were still that other comic book company. I started out watching super hero cartoons and TV shows of all kinds but when it came time to start reading the source literature as a wizened preteen it was really Spiderman and Marvel comics that captured my imagination.
Eventually I came to understand that the reason was one of Stan Lee's greatest contributions to the comic book format: putting super heroes into rich, complex stories with good dialogue and having them deal with real, human problems rather than just the latest super villain threatening the world. When Peter Parker's friend Harry Osborne became addicted and overdosed on drugs things got real (or "relevant" as we called it then).
It was when Stan Lee's Gold and Silver Age characters met the great artists and writers of the Bronze Age that the comic art form reached its full potential, spawning the stories that are creating block buster movies today. And that's largely thanks to Stan Lee.
Rest well Stan "The Man" Lee. We know that no true hero is ever really dead.