Stan Lee: the greatest storyteller in history?

[Batu69]

Creator of a host of enduring superheroes, from Iron Man to the X-Men, his own powers have enabled him to see far into the future

 

Superpowered storytelling ... Stan Lee in the 1990s.

 

A billionaire industrialist developing technologies that others believed impossible. A team of heroes using science to understand the universe. A secret government agency protecting its citizens from threats that may not even exist. No, these aren’t characters in a Stan Lee comic: Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the heroic researchers at LIGO, and the secretive folks at the NSA and GCHQ are very real parts of a world – ours – that seems to become more like an extension of the Marvel universe every day.

 

Unless you’ve been in cryogenic deep freeze for the last decade, you’ve probably noticed the wave of Marvel film and television franchises breaking relentlessly across the entertainment landscape. What’s slightly less obvious is that almost all these stories were originally created by the same comic book writer. Deep breath: Spider-Man, the X-­Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, SHIELD, Daredevil: all of them were created by Stan Lee.

 

For the best part of two decades, through the 1960s and 70s, Lee conceived and scripted the pantheon of superheroes that has made Marvel arguably the most significant “shared universe” in today’s entertainment landscape. This period of near superhuman creativity is at the heart of Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvellous Memoir by Stan Lee, co­-authored with Peter David and featuring outstanding illustrations from Colleen Doran. It’s hard to read about Lee’s life story, or consider his career, without concluding that the master of the Marvel universe weighs in as one ofthe great storytellers of the post­war era – perhaps the greatest.

 

If that claim has you bellowing names like Vladimir Nabokov or Margaret Atwood at your screen, that might be because the culture that has raised Lee up to such grand status is not yours. “Geek” and “nerd” were still schoolyard insults when Stan Lee gave us an iconic one: Spider-Man. A young orphan of slight build, Peter Parker is the archetypal geek hiding in his bedroom. Even after a radioactive spider bite gives him great power, Parker meets the great responsibilities that they bring with the heart, soul and odd behavioural ticks of a true nerd.

 

To borrow the words of Mark “The Martian” Watney, Lee’s characters are never afraid to “science the shit” out of any problem they face. The Fantastic Four may be worse for wear after three cosmically awful film adaptations, but Lee’s first super­team remain his most charming creation. Faced with an attack of the Skrulls or the oversize threat of a rampaging Galactus, Reed Richards and crew turn first and foremost to science to solve the problem. It is science (galactic rays) that transformed the four into Mister Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing, and it is science that exposed them to those rays.

 

Science is crucial in Lee’s greatest creations: like the villainous Doctor Doom, who wields super-science for evil, to billionaire inventor Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, who uses his mastery of science to fight for the good. Before Lee, heroes were all supermen, or strutting John Waynes, who triumphed through strength or ruthlessness. Lee’s heroes triumph through brains, invention, innovation and most of all, SCIENCE. It’s all oddly prescient of what geek culture would become 50 years later, with hackers and tech giants wielding enormous power for good and ill. Given the vast popularity of Marvel among geeks, it’s not inconceivable that Lee helped inspire a lot of those people who are reshaping our world today.

 

But Stan Lee’s stories are all just weird fantasy and make-believe! They’re not real. Yes, but as we move from what physicist Michio Kaku calls “the age of scientific discovery to the age of scientific mastery”, Lee’s super-science fantasies seem less preposterous and more prophetic. Like all great mythical worlds, the Marvel universe speaks to us in metaphors, symbols and other non-literal truths. And as the dreamer who brought these modern myths into reality, Stan Lee may well be remembered as one of literature’s greatest heroes.

 

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[Alanon]

Not a big fan of the guy... He might be king based on sheer numbers, but heck, in terms of actual quality, he can't hold a candle to Moore or Gaiman. Speaking generally, to be qualified as a storyteller you need a bit more than a mosaic, often contradicting universe with superheroes dying and being rebooted, it takes continuity and an overall grandeur, something that almost every comic book under Moore's or Gaiman's penmanship somehow gets (even when dealing with a strange pulp title like Swamp Thing). If we're talking something other than the rather short comic book lifespan, the greatest storyteller in history would probably be Homer, as he created the most "enduring" narrative, a masterpiece going strong for over 2500 years...

[funkyy]

43 minutes ago, Alanon said:

Not a big fan of the guy... He might be king based on sheer numbers, but heck, in terms of actual quality, he can't hold a candle to Moore or Gaiman. Speaking generally, to be qualified as a storyteller you need a bit more than a mosaic, often contradicting universe with superheroes dying and being rebooted, it takes continuity and an overall grandeur, something that almost every comic book under Moore's or Gaiman's penmanship somehow gets (even when dealing with a strange pulp title like Swamp Thing). If we're talking something other than the rather short comic book lifespan, the greatest storyteller in history would probably be Homer, as he created the most "enduring" narrative, a masterpiece going strong for over 2500 years...

@Alanon, while some of what you say is correct, you have to remember that Stan created all (or the majority) of these characters from his own imagination. In the beginning they were just on paper in comics but they have evolved to being the cinematic giant that they are today. That doesn't take away from the main point i.e. he created these wonderful,   enduring characters from his own talented imagination. If it was so easy we'd all be doing it. Personally I think he's earned his place in the branch of literature that is comics.

P.S.Homer Simpson is dead??? Omg!!!!!

[Alanon]

Just now, funkyy said:

@Alanon, while some of what you say is correct, you have to remember that Stan created all (or the majority) of these characters from his own imagination. In the beginning they were just on paper in comics but they have evolved to being the cinematic giant that they are today. That doesn't take away from the main point i.e. he created these wonderful,   enduring characters from his own talented imagination. If it was so easy we'd all be doing it. Personally I think he's earned his place in the branch of literature that is comics.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing anyone. For the most part, I was reacting to the flamboyant title. No one can "dethrone" Lee as one of the most significant agents in comic book history. However, what I am saying is that significance, innovation and even overall influence doesn't necessarily mean quality. There's a huge difference among the characters themselves (think Spiderman and Ant-Man, for instance). Not just that, but there's the way he treated them, the way he "nurtures" a hero, or rather, doesn't. That's the point where (for me, at least) Lee loses much of his glamour.

 

If it's all about the protagonist, and less about who he fights, etc etc there needs to be some logic to the way the character of the hero evolves. There have been so many issues starring certain super-guys that no one seems to remember the beginning, or the middle, which allows for everything to be rebootable and go on forever. Gaiman's Sandman is a world with memorable characters, a vivid landscape and great character development (wouldn't it make for a fantastic miniseries?), but it had to end before it got too dispersed. Simply put, Stan Lee's creations are fun, but lacking in depth that transcends the good vs evil matrix. I'm pretty sure that if he'd focused more on nurturing say, five characters instead of creating such a large number, he could have authored several noteworthy sagas that would have communicated with audiences on a more penetrating scale. The way it is, I simply feel like every one is neglected in a way.

[funkyy]

@Alanon, I get what you are saying, but remember from the beginning Stan wasn't writing a novel or one epic story...he was creating characters that, by the nature of the medium (comics), were hopefully going to go on a run of an unknown and indefinite time span which until now has been since the 1960´s and is still evolving. Also the founding impetus was business i.e. to make money...and in that area he has been mega successful...hence the creation of so many characters.

But I think comparing him with other figures of more traditional literature like Shakespeare, Homer, Harper Lee etc is not possible and would be like trying to compare the greatest pop song with the greatest aria. All are great in their respective fields.