‹‹True believers, Marvel has decided to increase the quality of its books by one hundred percent! So what do you want a fifty percent increase in price to be?
These brilliant, yet almost mocking, barker words written by Stan Lee in the early 1990s (when Marvel comics had gone from a dollar to a dollar and a half) in his column Stan’s Soapbox perfectly identify the character, especially for those who, in Italy, also read Sergio Bonelli’s albums with the editor of Tex, Dylan Dog and Zagor who, with each price increase of a few hundred lire, made an editorial to humbly apologize to the readers.
Stan Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber in New York to Romanian Jews on December 28, 1922 (a few days ago he would have turned one hundred), and died in Los Angeles on November 12, 2018 is perhaps the most underrated and most overrated character in history of pop culture.
He is certainly the most famous comic book writer and editor: thanks to the many cameos in Marvel superhero films, he is a sort of pop icon, many know him. But, if for the simple fan of Marvel movies, who often doesn’t read comics, Lee is a pop icon, the only creator of the Marvel Universe, many nerds belittle his contribution: in reality he would have appropriated the merits of others , more talented and full of ideas than him, primarily Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. It is an approach that is seen, in part, in books such as ‹‹Jack Kirby›› by Tom Scioli, a comic biography of another of the creators of Marvel superheroes, or ‹‹Stan Lee››, a book about him by Abraham Josephine Riesman, both volumes edited by Rizzli Lizard.
Let’s go back to 1961.
At the beginning of the 1960s, the publishing house that would become Marvel in which Lee has been working since he was a teenager (the publisher is his cousin by marriage, Martin Goodman) and of which he has been editor-in-chief for some time was in full crisis, one step away from bankruptcy . Lee and Kirby, a very good designer but who has been going from failure to failure for years, decide to bet everything on a new comic series, the Fantastic Four, adventurers who receive superpowers thanks to cosmic rays during a space journey. The characters may recall the Explorers of the Unknown, created a few years earlier by Kirby alone for rival DC Comics (of Batman and Superman). But the Explorers were four men, and all with interchangeable characters, here we have two mature men (Reed Richards and Ben Grimm), a girl (Susan Storm, Richards’ girlfriend), and her brother, the fiery Johnny, who often fights with Grimm, who has become a stone monster due to cosmic rays.
They are people, very human, with superpowers, as will be summarized later ‹‹superheroes with superproblems››. They follow the nerd teenager Peter Parker bitten by a radioactive spider who becomes Spider-Man (Lee with Ditko), the scientist Bruce Banner who transforms into the monster Hulk (again with Kirby), Daredevil, the blind lawyer who plays the night avenger (with Bill Everett), and so on.
They are not happy to be superheroes: Peter Parker does it to atone for the sense of guilt for not having stopped the thief who allegedly killed his beloved Uncle Ben, the X-Men are mutants, have superpowers from birth and live in a world that he fears and hates them. The Marvel universe of comics was born (all the characters know each other and interact with each other), one of the greatest fantastic creations ever made.
Readers identify with these heroes, problematic like them, their books sell more and more, possible failure is averted.
And Lee strengthens the bond with them in the credits: he becomes “The Man” or “Smilin’ Stan”, Kirby “The King”, Ditko “Sturdy Steve”, his right-hand man Roy Thomas (also an excellent writer, is always was very good at choosing his collaborators) is “The Boy”.
In the editorials Lee describes the “bullpen”, the Marvel editorial staff, as a sort of group of superheroes, the readers are the True Believers.
Lee is not a classic screenwriter: he uses the Marvel Method he created.
Instead of describing panel by panel in a screenplay which he then delivers to the artist, he merely provides a brief plot (sometimes only oral) and adds dialogue based on the drawings made. Designers like Kirby and Ditko, even complete authors, put a lot, sometimes a lot, of their own.
But the dialogues and the final supervision of The Man make the whole Marvellian. There is irony, characterization, pathos. Kirby, left Marvel in 1970 due to conflicts with Lee, will create many series by himself: great ideas, powerful designs, but the lightness of Lee’s crackling dialogues is missing.
In the early seventies Lee leaves his position as chief editor and becomes first president and then image man of Marvel, without ever completely ceasing to write comics (to talk about them, it would be more correct) and until the end of the millennium he continues to sign a column in the Marvel books, the aforementioned Stan’s Soapbox.
And in the third millennium, thanks to his nice cameos in Marvel films, a true pop icon, even more than Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy whom he admires, is the most famous comic book writer and editor in the world.
The last few years between popularity and controversy
But, starting from the Nineties, also due to an interview of a Kirby disappointed by how he had been treated by Marvel (not only, like Lee, did not have the rights to the characters, but he would have managed to get back part of his drawings originals only after a legal battle) the controversy about the actual greatness of “The Man” starts.
Controversy that grows among the nerdy fans in parallel with Lee’s popularity thanks to the cameos in the film: according to some, Lee would be too considered, given the greatness (of the drawings, but also of the subjects) of a Kirby, true king of comics, like him defined The Man himself.
‹‹Many have tried to relativize Lee’s creative contribution – writes the director of the monthly Linus, the cartoonist Igort, in the December issue, almost entirely dedicated to Stan Lee. – Up to wanting to find elements that can be criticized everywhere, as Abraham Josephine Riesman seems to do, with a moralizing tone, who accuses him of lying. To say that a screenwriter lied, even worse, lied outright, would be like accusing a horse of being a quadruped. The horse is this, a quadruped. Just like a storyteller is the one who invents stories››.
But perhaps the most effective response to these detractors was given by former Marvel editor and writer Danny Fingeroth, who had worked extensively with The Man, in the essay ‹‹Stan Lee. A Marvelous Life››:
‹‹ Stan Lee, through his work as a storyteller and editor, his Marvel book column, and his mail page replies, created the voice of Marvel. He was himself a character in the Marvel Universe. That’s why his cameos in Marvel films have always seemed natural to us, almost taken for granted. When you read a Marvel book it seemed that he was speaking right to you. Sure, he had his flaws about him, like every human being. The problem with him was that people didn’t compare him to another editor or author, like George Lucas from Star Wars. But to… Stan Lee››.
‹‹Excelsior!›› Lee would comment in his Soapbox.