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Journalism of Courage
Stan Lee revolutionised the comic book world in the 1960s. However, he left as big a stamp — perhaps even bigger — on the wider pop culture landscape of today. From blockbuster films to television juggernauts, in many ways, the most ubiquitous entertainment products of today can be traced to Stan Lee.
Lee was a central player in the creation of many beloved characters in Marvel Comics, from the X-Men to Ironman and the Hulk. Indeed, for many, he personified Marvel, if not comic books in general. A writer, editor, publisher, Hollywood executive and tireless promoter (of Marvel and of himself), he played a critical role in what comics fans call the medium’s silver age.
Lee passed away in 2018, aged 95. As we celebrate his hundredth birth anniversary, a look at his legacy and far-reaching influence.
Under Lee, Marvel transformed the comic book world by imbuing its characters with the self-doubts and neuroses of average people. The success of Lee’s heroes was built on the interactions between the imperfections of their characters and their superhuman abilities. In an interview to The Washington Post in 1992, Lee said that prior to him, comic characters were all “cardboard figures” and “lacked real personality.”
Along with complex character building, Stan Lee also used the medium with previously unseen social awareness, often delving into complex socio-political themes through his comics. For instance, with Black Panther, he created an African superhero with the comics often reflecting prevalent debates around race and racism.
The Incredible Hulk, a Jekyll-and-Hyde story about a decent man turned into a monster by radiation, showed a tormented superhero, who would often cause wanton destruction in fits of anger. However, Lee’s quintessential superhero was Spider-Man. A timid high school intellectual who gained his powers when bitten by a radioactive spider, Spider-Man was prone to soul-searching, leavened with wisecracks — a key to the character’s lasting popularity across multiple entertainment platforms, including movies and a Broadway musical.
In the mid-1940s, the peak of comics’ golden age, sales boomed. Comics such as Superman and Captain America typified the superhero archetype during World War II. Patriotic enthusiasm drove sales and popularity of comics, which almost became a propagandising machine for the state at the time.
Post War, however, there was a crisis. On one hand, the unidimensional superheroes were clearly inadequate to further grow the medium. On the other, comics which indeed experimented more, often taking on lurid themes, faced a loudening clamour for censorship. In 1954, a Senate subcommittee held hearings investigating allegations that comics promoted immorality and juvenile delinquency.
The industry was thus stuck with generic good versus evil stories and family humour, detached from moral ambiguity or social awareness. That is, until Stan Lee revolutionised comic books.
Lee has often been faulted for not adequately acknowledging the contributions of his illustrators, especially Jack Kirby. Spider-Man became Marvel’s best-known property, but Steve Ditko, its co-creator, quit Marvel in bitterness in 1966. Kirby, who visually designed countless characters, left in 1969.
Many comic fans believe that Kirby was wrongly deprived of royalties and original artwork in his lifetime, and for years the Kirby estate sought to acquire rights to characters that Kirby and Lee had created together. Kirby’s heirs were long rebuffed in court on the grounds that he had done “work for hire” — in other words, that he had essentially sold his art without expecting royalties.
In September 2014, Marvel and the Kirby estate reached a settlement. Lee and Kirby now both receive credit on numerous screen productions based on their work.
Stan Lee was a visionary. He had the foresight to know that his characters were made for the screen. He moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to develop Marvel properties. While his early attempts at live-action TV shows and movies were, by and large, failures, bigger things were to come in the 21st century.
Today, his move to live-action is arguably his biggest contribution to popular culture. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) today is the highest-grossing film franchise of all time, way ahead of behemoths like Star Wars or Harry Potter. It has grossed approximately $ 28 billion at the box office, with Forbes pegging Marvel’s value at $53 billion in 2021.
While having a chequered history with critics, the MCU has arguably become the most influential artefact in popular culture in the 21st century, with a global audience and multiple spin-offs. Through its ability to build a story upon story, piecing together a world where all of Marvel’s superheroes live together, it has brought a revolution in the medium of film itself, with an unprecedented intertextual exchange.
“Marvel movies are not cinema,” academy award-winning director Martin Scorsese said in 2019. While his statement was met with much criticism, Scorsese was trying to make a wider point about how the MCU has fundamentally altered the medium of film itself.
Stan Lee’s creations and visionary foresight have been the driving force behind these tectonic shifts in popular culture.
(with inputs from The New York Times)
