Stan Lee died today.
Many know him only as the co-creator, with talented artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, of many of the great Marvel Comics superheros. But, he was far more than that.
Stan Lee was a great teacher of liberal values to a generation of comic readers. He was a constant voice teaching the perils of bigotry and hate. He not only recognized that “with great power comes great responsibility,” but walked the walk.
In 1963, Stan Lee created the X-Men, a thinly veiled allegory for race relations featuring the mutant others being persecuted for being different. In March 1964, Stan Lee pulled no punches in the 6th issue of the war comic Sgt. Fury.
In an astounding sequence for its times, Nick Fury (then portrayed as white, now played by Samuel L. Jackson in the movies) called out a soldier for being a “died-in-the-wool low-down bigot” for refusing to sleep in a bunk bed with a black soldier.
The Black Panther movie received much acclaim for featuring an almost exclusively black cast. Few people, however, noted that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby took a bigger risk in 1966 when they created the first black superhero.
These weren’t isolated examples. There are many others. Including his Soap Boxes, of which the most notable is represented at the top of this diary.
Marvel readers, you can be sure, noticed Stan Lee’s support of civil rights. One reader wrote Stan in 1969 to complain about Marvel’s support for civil rights, ending his letter by stating “I’m not a racist, just a concerned Marvelite who doesn’t want his favorite comic company to be ruined by something that doesn’t concern you as comic publishers.”
Stan’s published response in the letters page of the comic?:
“But, such matters as racism and inequality do concern us, Tim — not just as comic mag artists and writers and publishers, but as human beings. Certainly it’s never been our intention to portray all, or even most, white Americans as hard-core bigots or screaming racists. Maybe it’s just that we think that many people in the land of the free have too long turned their backs or averted their eyes to the more unpleasant things that are going on every day. Maybe we felt we could do something — even within the relatively humble format of what used to be called a ‘comic-book’ – to change things just a bit for the better. If we failed, let’s just say that we’d at least like to have it said of us that — we tried.”
Stan Lee didn’t stop trying.
Last Fall, Stan posted a video in which he stated: ."Marvel has always been and always will be a reflection of the world right outside our window. That world may change and evolve, but the one thing that will never change is the way we tell our stories of heroism. Those stories have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender or color of their skin. The only things we don’t have room for are hatred, intolerance and bigotry.”
Stan Lee deserves to be remembered on a site like this for more than just being an entertainer.
‘nuff said.