Posted on 11/16/2018 11:54:31 AM PST by Kaslin
Stan Lee, the reinventor of the comic book, died Monday at the ripe old age of 95.
Comic books get a bad rap, although not nearly as bad as they used to. There was a time when comic books were the cause of an all-out moral panic. After the release of psychiatrist Fred Wertham's book "The Seduction of the Innocent," the Senate held hearings to grapple with the alleged moral rot of comics, which were supposedly fueling juvenile delinquency and moral degeneracy. Batman and Robin, you see, were secretly gay. Superman was an un-American ersatz fascist.
"Superman (with the big S on his uniform -- we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and 'foreign-looking' people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible," Wertham wrote.
The Comics Code Authority was established in 1954 to protect children from consuming Satan's apple in cartoon form.
As silly as all that was, at least the anti-comic puritans took comic books seriously. And while Wertham et al. went too far in the wrong direction, comics are an important window into our society.
Prior to Stan Lee and Marvel Comics, superheroes were fairly two-dimensional characters. Superman was, well, just super at everything. He fought for "truth, justice and the American way." He was also a kind of super-moralist, always knowing instantly what was right. Some writers claim he was the first "social justice warrior."
In Superman's first adventure (Action Comics No. 1), long before he ever battled Lex Luther, he saved a woman from being wrongly executed, stopped a senator from being blackmailed and protected a woman from her abusive husband. "Delivering justice, protecting family and stopping corruption, Superman represented the newly expanded New Deal state," observed Benjamin Moore in The Washington Post.
The New Deal was a real-world example of political philosopher Michael Oakeshott called "politics as the crow flies" -- a rationalist approach that tries to use the state as an active participant in life to achieve desirable ends without much concern for the means. It should be no surprise that Superman transitioned from New Deal warrior to World War II warrior. He was fighting Nazis long before American troops were.
Lee grew up professionally in this "Golden Age" of comics, but he also rebelled against it. While a member of the so-called Greatest Generation, Lee better represented the more ironic attitudes of the postwar generation. His superheroes struggled with their powers and their moral responsibilities. Spider-Man, the quintessential Marvel character (at least until the introduction of Wolverine) was a nerdy, angst-ridden teenager who only reluctantly accepted his role and the idea that "with great power comes great responsibility." Lee's heroes quarreled with each other, had romantic setbacks and sometimes even struggled to make the rent.
The baby boomers, Lee's target audience, were plagued with a great unease about living up to the legacy of their parents' generation. "We are people of this generation," begins the Port Huron Statement, the 1962 manifesto that largely launched the '60s protest era, "bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit." They believed they were special but didn't know exactly what to do about it.
This kind of ambiguity suffused Marvel's storylines. The X-Men were mutants, a government-persecuted minority community, bitterly divided between assimilationists and rejectionists. Their powers were a thinly veiled metaphor for the confusion of puberty. The Thing, constantly harassed by a local street gang, hated that he had become a grotesque, but when given the choice of becoming human again, he opted to keep his powers.
Captain America debuted in his own comic by punching Hitler in the face on the cover, but by Vietnam he was emoting, "I'm like a dinosaur -- in the cro-magnon age! An anachronism -- who's out-lived his time! This is the day of the anti-hero -- the age of the rebel -- and the dissenter! It isn't hip -- to defend the establishment! -- only to tear it down! And, in a world rife with injustice, greed, and endless war -- who's to say the rebels are wrong? ... I've spent a lifetime defending the flag -- and the law! Perhaps I should have battled less -- and questioned more!"
Of course, there was plenty of fighting, derring-do and onomatopoetic "pows," "bamfs" and "snikts." But future historians looking to understand the near-century of Lee's lifetime would be well-advised to look at his life's work.
I read ‘em in the fifties....LOL
Notice that they changed Iron Man in the movies to a person who regrets what his company does.
‘Nuff said!
When I was a kid, I paid no attention to what was DC and what was Marvel...It was just a comic book....
Stan Lee had very little to do directly with Marvel’s comic book output from the mid-1970s onward. He wanted to be the only one who ever wrote Silver Surfer but he wasn’t even involved enough in the comics in the 1980s to stop Marvel from producing Silver Surfer stories by other writers.
I was born in 1957. Never a huge comic book fan but of course I read them. Around say 1965 or so, when I was about eight, I thought Marvel Comics were way beyond corny. Give me Batman or the Flash any day. I also really liked the Blackhawks and Tommy Tomorrow. Just never thought Marvel was all that. I liked Thor, but that was about it.
Very odd to see that the issues they're discussing almost sound like they could be discussed word-for-word on a modern talk show, other than the direct references to Vietnam.
Read a lot of Stan Lee’s Marvel comics,always felt they were the best in the business. I stopped reading once I entered high school.
The comics industry was always leftist, almost entirely founded by leftist, mostly secular, so-called liberal, New York Jews. (Orthodox aside, how many New York Jews are remotely conservative?) Many changed their names, including Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
(Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster modelled the orphan Kal-El and Superman after the story of the orphan Moses: The small rocket ship was the reed basket; space was the river. Kal-El was to lead humanity out of bondage.)
Comics only appeared conservative and patriotic in the Golden Age because NAZIs were regarded as extreme rightists.
The Senate hearings were during the McCarthy era. McCarthy was largely correct, and Wertham was partly correct. There was and is a subversive, insidiously leftist element in most comics.
The Viet Nam quasi-war brought them out of the closet, and they have never looked back.
I collected comics before it was common. I even got a No-Prize from Stan and company. But I was always aware - even at age ten, and long before I knew of the history of the Comics Code Authority - of the leftist philosophy that underlay the storylines.
Regarding the first issue of Captain America, the scrawny Steve Rogers was infused with drugs in order to make him equal or greater than the Nazi bad guys. Great message. The Three Stooges pulled that one when they met Hercules, but that movie is almost long forgotten.
Each and every Marvel character could be dissected and as Lee’s creations be scrutinized in any direction desirable. In Stan Lee’s reality it was often as if Steve Ditko or Jack Kirby never even existed. Others as well were overshadowed by Lee’s outrageous self aggrandizement.
A lot of his origin stories never quite made sense to me when they were first presented. Donald Blake, a lame Doctor finds a stick and becomes immortal Thor. I never understood Dr. Strange or Luke Cage until the dramatizations came along and explained stuff to stupid me, half a century later.
Anyhow, I liked Marvel. They raised the Comic Book bar, no doubt about that.
Iron Man 2 was all about not letting private resources fall to the government
ff
And yes, Archie, Richie Rich, Casper, Little Dot, Little Lotta, and Little Audrey helped get me through kindergarten through the rest of my single digits.
ff
Or The Dark Night Returns...I was strictly Marvel until a buddy turned me onto that.
Never read one, never cared to. Seems like a great way to waste money.
No offense to old time comic fans.
With modern ones all I hear about is how SuperApeman or Turbomegagirl is transsexual or Muslim.
Interesting how every one ever made is being made into a movie/TV show due to sheer lack of ideas in Hollywood.
RIP to the old man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914
I liked Garfield (still do).
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