Stan Lee RIP

The death of Stan Lee on Monday has no doubt inspired much reflection from those who grew up on his many tales to astonish. The Marvel Age of Comics created, before a string of billion-dollar grossing movies, many volumes of half-baked analysis. I have no wish to add to that. What follows are a few lines of tribute to Stan the Man's contributions to storytelling. 

It is something of a mystery as to why, after more than 10 years of trying, almost every corner of the Marvel Universe has made the trip to the big screen successfully, except the one title that started the whole thing – The Fantastic Four. The quartet gave birth to two mostly unsatisfying outings (giving us the first appearance of Chris Evans in colorful tights) and another attempt that largely arrived stillborn (despite the presence of Michael B. Jordan). Evidently, playing the Human Torch is a kind of training wheels for bigger things. 

But the Fantastic Four provided the Big Bang for the Marvel Age. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, for more than 100 issues, created the architecture for much of what we see in the movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and beyond. The coming Captain Marvel film will feature the Skrulls, the alien race who bedeviled the FF in its first year of existence. The four made the first trip to Wakanda to meet Black Panther. It was Johnny Storm who rediscovered Captain America (though this was later a hoax, it was an effective trial balloon that led to the character’s resurrection with the Avengers.) Doctor Doom, a disfigured figure of nobility and intellect wrapped in armor and robes, can be seen as the prototype for Darth Vader.

The FF met the Inhumans, traveled to the Negative Zone, and hobnobbed with all the various characters of Marvel’s other magazines. Month after month, through the sixties, the Fantastic Four was the laboratory for Marvel's demolition and recreation of how comic books were conceived, produced and celebrated in popular culture. 

But long before Thanos – there was Galactus.

Perhaps the ultimate FF adventure – and an example of Stan Lee’s abilities as a storyteller – is the 1966 three-issue arc of Fantastic Four 48-50: The Galactus Trilogy.

This story has been told elsewhere. Lee and Kirby created their stories through a routine: a consultation/brainstorming about the plotline of a particular issue, Kirby drawing the pages and Lee later filling in the dialogue. For the 50^th issue of Fantastic Four, the two wanted something besides the usual rogue of the month. The idea was to create a demigod who would be beyond the calculus of good and evil, something different than a costumed goon bent on world domination. Kirby later said he drew his inspiration from the Bible. What came was Galactus, a giant being who roamed the cosmos in search of planets from which he could consume the energy needed to sustain his life. His quest is neverending, and he leaves husks of planets behind in his wake. The fate of every life on earth hangs in the balance.(I've often wondered where in the Bible that inspiration came from. Daniel's vision of "The Ancient of Days?" The Angel of Death? One look at Galactus' world destruction machines and you might be reminded of Ezekiel's vision of the wheels.)

To accentuate the adventure, Kirby created a nearly naked shining figure on a surfboard, whom Lee dubbed the Silver Surfer. The Surfer, Kirby explained, because he was the herald of Galactus, was himself a being of immense cosmic power who sought out the planets his master would destroy.

Reading the three issues more than 50 years later, we are reminded of how much the medium has shifted since. Lee and Kirby had been part of comic books since virtually the beginning of the industry, and had seen it morph from a subversive child entertainment into the childish material of the 1950s. The panic that comics contributed to social ills - which inspired the Comics Code Authority - mandated neutered stories and spawned banal plotlines. Heroes fought villains in convoluted storylines where little was at stake, lives were only obliquely threatened, and those threats were easily dispatched. War comics. Romance comics. Monster comics. Western comics. The plots were interchangeable, sometimes engaging, but mostly forgettable. The medium would have died if Lois Lane never strayed from her monthly mission to prove Clark Kent's secret identity, or Xom, the space creature, succeeded in devouring the Earth. "We knew we were writing for kids," Lee remembered. "Or so we thought." To achieve an end run around this, the Marvel storylines focused, not on the external conflicts, but the internal ones that power brings to our heroes.

Most early Marvel superheroes owe their abilities to radiation in one form or another, given that the Marvel Universe came into being during the Cold War. Atomic power served the same kind of storytelling function that magic had for centuries. Space, because of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard, was a fertile playground for the imagination. We assumed it was where we were going to spend the future. 

On the page, Lee abided by the rules of the comic book genre. No one ever speaks in the comics. They shout! They declaim! The exclamation points give the prose its power, as does Lee’s penchant for alliteration. Our superheroes may speak in pedestrian rhythms, but the cosmic figures talk with Shakespearean intonations.

The dynamics of the Fantastic Four began with the first issue. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, is the elastic leader, a brilliant scientist in love with Sue Storm, the Invisible Girl, who merely wants to be by his side. Her brother, Johnny Storm, is the Human Torch, a young man as fiery as his superpowers. But the heart and soul of the FF is Ben Grimm, the Thing, a rock-like bruiser and tortured soul, the outsider who gave the series both comic relief and pathos.

For the coming of Galactus, the action begins deep in space and gradually grows closer to the earth. Our heroes are alerted to the planet destroyer’s approach by The Watcher, himself a giant bald, grandiloquent figure pledged to not interfere in the affairs of the human race. But this time, he breaks his vow, knowing that Galactus will destroy the earth if allowed to.

The Watcher: Heed my words, pillager of the planets! This tiny speck of matter upon which we stand contains intelligent life! You must not destroy it!

Galactus: Of what import are brief, nameless lives...to Galactus?..It is not my intention to injure any living being! But...I must replenish my energy! If petty creatures are wiped out when I drain a planet, it is regrettable...but unavoidable!

The story is full of the kind of action, suspense and invention that one came to expect from Lee and Kirby. The Surfer arrives and summons Galactus, but the Thing “clobbers” the Surfer, rocketing him across New York until the being lands unconscious at the apartment of Alicia Masters, Ben Grimm’s blind girlfriend. It is from her that the Surfer realizes the human race is worth saving.

Though Galactus drives most of the story's action, it is the Surfer who imbues it with its gravitas. The Surfer is, as Alicia puts it, a figure of nobility who immediately bewitches her, and us. He combines the mystic pull of space with the spiritual mythology of surfing - riding a wave in search of some zenlike moment of absolute peace, a connection with energy, fate and nature. The fact that he can be made into a defender of the human race gives the final act of the story its punch. For when the Surfer decides to oppose Galactus, he holds off the devourer until Johnny Storm can return from the other side of the universe with the Ultimate Nullifier, a device which can destroy not only Galactus, but vast stretches of the universe. And so, Galactus decides to spare the earth, for now. But in doing so, he exiles the Surfer to the earth, denying him the ability to return to his home, leaving him a permanent outsider on a planet he will never understand, even though he has saved it.

One legacy of the Lee-Kirby is the endless speculation as to who is responsible for what idea, which characters, what storylines. It is the comic book version of the Paul vs. John calculus that infects Beatle scholarship. Kirby, for all of his invention and the power of his images, was never quite as successful without Stan Lee, while Lee created Spiderman, Dr. Strange, Thor and others apart from Kirby. Controversy followed him in those collaborations as well. To celebrate his work is not to rob Steve Ditko, Larry Leiber or even Kirby of their essential roles in the creations.

But Stan Lee largely outlived those controversies, and lived long enough to see those comic stories transition to worldwide celebration in the movies. He made no bones about the somewhat pedestrian origins of his ideas, as did Kirby. Sure, great literature gave some inspiration, but so did old radio shows, the movies, and even other comic books. By the time the Marvel Age rolled around, the two of them had already been at it for almost 20 years and could sometimes no longer remember which schtick came from which quarter.  

But it’s possible now, as a tribute, to look in awe at the ambition of those stories, the wit they used to tell them, and the style that they created. Comic books began as kid entertainments, and now they largely survive as sometimes pretentious, sometimes inspired ways of telling stories. The Marvel stories, no matter how far they ventured out into the unknown, were always about having fun, and Lee never forgot that.

He created the narrative voice that piloted those adventures, giving the reader a fearless, funny, and unforgettable guide. The stories were not one-offs but a continuous narrative, building on itself, much like the television shows we binge-watch today. Panels sometimes contained wisecracking footnotes referencing earlier adventures. The voice veered between knowing and cajoling, a guide who nudged the action along without stopping it, the voice in the mind's theater who only wanted you to enjoy the spectacle as much as possible. And if necessary, to deliver a lesson. When the first appearance of Spiderman closes, Peter Parker walks away in guilt, knowing the robber he could have caught earlier is the same one who murdered his Uncle Ben. It is Lee's narrator who delivers the verdict:

"And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come -- great responsibility!"

It is Lee, as narrator in Fantastic Four 48, who tells us during a transition that shifts us from one distant galaxy to Planet Earth in one panel, that we are able to make the sudden leap “through the magic of our limitless imaginations.” 

It’s a magic he was happy to share. 

Set Your Fields on Fire

The award-winning novel by William Thornton

Available now

Read the first chapter here

Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"

 You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.

It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.   
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast. 
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book. 
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here. 
Here's a review of the novel by Robbie Pink.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.

Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.  

Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here. 

Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.

This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.