[ad_1]
Stan Lee, who died Monday at the age of 95, is almost as famous as the many superheroes he's helped to create. Working with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and other artists in the 1960s, Lee inspired Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and so many other superheroes who have dominated pop culture ever since. Long after having stopped writing Marvel comics himself, Lee's production numbers still bore the slogan "Stan Lee Presents" and his many appearances in Marvel films reinforced his creative legacy. His creations have passed through many hands since the 1960s, but coming back to the source, you can see Lee's specific and unique elements brought to these world-famous characters.
The four fantastics
Before Marvel, there was DC. It is said that Marvel's publisher, Martin Goodman, was playing golf in 1961 with a DC rival, who boasted of his successful comic book Justice League of America. Goodman returned to the offices of Marvel (or Timely, the company's appellant until 1962) and ordered Lee, who was then one of his only employees in the comics department, to build your own team of superheroes. Lee is associated with the artist Jack Kirby, who had co-created Captain America for Goodman decades ago. Together, they created a cartoon of superheroes that would change everything.
That was on The four fantastics Lee and Kirby have developed what will now be called the "Marvel Method" – a creative process in which Lee would offer a brief overview of the plot, and then Kirby would design and illustrate a cartoon based on a mix of this synopsis and his own ideas, then Lee would come back to complete the dialogue and legends. Although this method allowed Lee to write so many comic books at a time, it also created an ambivalence about the ideas that belonged to which creator. This has created tensions over the years and, after the dissolution of their partnership, Kirby and Lee then proposed conflicting versions of the creation and development of The four fantastics. But at its peak, their creative collaboration worked wonders. In the first 100 issues of The four fantasticsLee and Kirby introduced the reader to many iconic characters and concepts, ranging from the black panther to the Inhumans to the Galactus. While Kirby illustrated terrifying villains, unusual monsters and kinetic superhero fights, Lee provided the essential voices of the characters. Unlike members of the Justice League, the Fantastic Four formed a family and acted in this way, with all the anguish, the fight and the self-doubt that would define Marvel's characters and differentiate them from their peers.
In addition, the 1965 comics Four Annual Fantastic # 3 – featuring the marriage of protagonists Reed Richards and Sue Storm – featured Lee's first harrowing cameo. Kirby and he appeared in the pages of the comic who were trying to attend the wedding, but they were expelled when it turned out they had no invitation.
Silver surfer
There is no ambivalence about the first person who created the high-flying Sentinel Spaceways. When Kirby came back with illustrations for the three-part story of the "Galactus" trilogy, he was working with Lee The four fantasticsLee was surprised to see a character who was not in his original outline: a silver figure on a surfboard. Finally, Silver Surfer will become the center of some of Lee's most personal and introspective work. While Kirby had wanted the character to be a cold extraterrestrial being like Spock, Lee was really tied to the nobility of the character and his anguished rage to be trapped on Earth as a result of the "Galactus trilogy" ( perhaps analogous to the occasional dissatisfaction of Lee being stuck at writing comic books when he originally wanted to become a novelist). Lee took the character for himself, writing a comic book of 17 issues and advising other writers not to use it.
Spider Man
One of the few Marvel superheroes Lee did not co-create with Kirby will end up being the most popular character in the company. After Kirby tried and failed to design an appealing pattern for a spider-themed superhero, Lee turned to Steve Ditko, the other titan of Marvel's Golden Age. While Ditko provided scenes of acrobatic fights and breathtaking costumes, Lee brought the personality of the character. Every time Peter Parker puts on this red mask, he goes from an excluded nerd to a crispy daredevil who perfectly distorts Lee's legendary humor. As the journalist Sean Howe wrote Marvel Comics: the unpublished story"Lee's brilliant touch was to make Parker deliver a flawless parade of cheesy jokes when he wore the Spider-Man suit: a compelling manifestation of obsessive nervous thought, yes, but most importantly a lightener." 39, effective mood. "
Over the years, the origin of Spider-Man has been told and narrated many times. But no adaptation corresponds to the effective narration of Amazing fantastic No. 15, and no one has ever managed to make a better synthesis of Spider-Man's heroism than Lee's six legendary words on this subject: "Great power involves great responsibility."
X Men
The X-Men were latecomers in the Marvel Universe, arrived in the wake of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor and so many others. At this point, Lee was tired of proposing a new variant of radiation to explain the superpowers of each new character. With the X-Men, he finally found a simple solution to the problem: just call them "mutants". These characters will be born with their powers, no need for radioactive bombs or spiders. Because of their natural powers, these characters are very much like normal humans, with the exception of a feature that distinguishes them.
This has become a fertile metaphor in the era of civil rights protests. Despite saving the world regularly, the X-Men faced only the prejudices and xenophobia of their peers. They were fighting maniacs hating the mutants just as white supremacists were bombarding the 16th-century Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. From a certain angle, non-violent teacher X and the most separatist Magneto could even be interpreted as metaphors of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
The X-Men are not Lee's most popular collaboration with Kirby, but over time they will become Marvel superstars. Later, the creators would diversify the characters and complicate the civil rights metaphor, but from the beginning, Lee gave the X-Men a strong sense of social justice that they still hold today.
Iron Man
Lee co-created his Marvel superheroes in the early 1960s – a time of great upheaval, protest and conflict. Some characters (such as the X-Men) have played directly in the civil rights era and protests in Vietnam, which is why they have become so popular with university-level readers. But there was a character Lee deliberately designed to counterbalance the predominant youth culture: his name was Tony Stark.
"By the time we did Iron Man, I felt really arrogant. I'm a little ashamed of myself. It was a time of war and young people from all over the country hated the war, hated the military-industrial complex, hated everything and rightly so, "Lee said often. "So, I said, I'm going to create a character that represents everything that everyone hates, and I'm going to push them in their throats. I was younger at the time and what do you know when you are younger? So I decided to find a guy who makes armaments. He is a multimillionaire, I shaped him a little after Howard Hughes and a little after me. I wanted him to be very rich, and of course, like all the heroes of Marvel, he had to wear an Achilles heel, so I thought we'd give him a weak heart … The funny thing is that the book behaved very well. "
Decades later, Tony Stark would finally propel Marvel on the big screen. It is safe to say that his sly spirit, interpreted so convincingly by Robert Downey Jr., owed much to Lee's humor.
Related content:
Source link
