Stan Lee (1922 – 2018): A Life for Comics – Comic Books – Culture

The old man was a magician. In one of his many stories, the manga "Ultimo", created with the cartoonist Hiroyuki Takei, Stan Lee is immortalized in the form of a puppeteer. Dr. Dunstan is a researcher interested in the depths of human nature and the power of super-beings. He created two superhuman dolls that represent evil and goodness in their purest form. When he is attacked by highwaymen, the dolls are out of control, a fantastic and millenary adventure begins.

This story by Stan Lee offers the puppeteer a fitting incarnation of the born Stanley Martin Lieber man in 1922 in New York and died today at the age of 95. US media reported Monday night.

A message that should not only sadden many comic fans. No living author has probably shaped the American comic book and the billions of entertainment industries that have resulted in it as harshly as Lee – and no one has been so controversial as him. Because the author and the editor, inspired by a huge ego, was not only a skilled stripper and storyteller with a penchant for human heroes and pathetic dialogues, but above all a gifted self-advocate .

Teenager, he devoured penny books and Shakespeare

While many fans still admired the Jewish-Romanian immigrant son as a creator of Spider-Man, Avengers and many other cartoon icons, others viewed him as an ornate impostor of the creativity of his companions.

In his autobiography "Excelsior – The Amazing Life of Stan Lee", he portrays the portrait of a creative handyman. As a teenager, he devoured pennies, comics, Mark Twain and Shakespeare. At 17, he went to the publishing house of his uncle, who later became one of the two largest American comic book publishers, Marvel.

After his presentation, he invented from the sixties superheroes like the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Hulk and Iron Man, who have transformed the Western entertainment industry in a sustainable manner. Because they not only have their super powers, but also their weaknesses and their daily problems, and live in a world similar to the current American reality. In addition, they are younger than Superman, Batman and Co, who had dominated the genre before.

And their adventures were no longer served as short films, but extended to epic soap operas, which, in addition to excessive action and a growing fantasy world, also left much room for human drama and personal difficulties. from the suffering caused by their external existence. Main characters offered. They offer their readers numerous projection screens that explain the success of Hollywood blockbuster movies based on these series to date – in which Lee has completed his appearance in old age in the best way from Hitchbad.

"I've never seen Stan Lee write anything"

What was Lee's success story? Most likely, he primarily acted as an impresario, mastering him as a ringmaster, putting the talents of others to serve a common cause. "I've never seen Stan Lee write anything," said cartoonist Jack Kirby, whose dynamic style has influenced American comics.

The cartoonist Andreas C. Knigge said in his book "All About Comics": "In fact, Kirby invented the new heroes, Lee animated them and gave them human traits and their vulnerability. . " The collaboration with Steve Ditko is probably similar that drew the first adventures of Spider-Man and is considered a co-inventor of the character, but then left the publishing house Marvel bitterly.

Plausible is that Lee was primarily a mediator who wanted to make good comics and artists who worked for him, while he had to meet the expectations of the public at the same time as the evolving publisher, like the was doing Sean Howe in his book "Marvel Comics – The Unpublished Story" suggests.

In addition, Lee explained that he was born from the need to revise the method of creating comics to "Marvel Way", which subsequently made it difficult to accurately clarify the proportion of different parts: he discussed with the editors the possible lines of conduct of the next issues, then The designer has developed the layouts and sequences of images in which the author then inserted dialogs.

Stan Lee, unlike his early companions until old age, remained vital and very confident. After an operation at heart, he told his fans a few years ago that he was using – like Iron Man – pacemakers, "to make sure that I can lead you for another 90 years ".