Stan Lee turned 88 yesterday and he’s still going strong. Further proof: Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Business Journal recognized him as one of their “Eight Over 80”: business people in Los Angeles in their 80’s still leading professional lives. Here’s the piece.
I guess comics really aren’t for kids any more.
There was a time when Batman looked like this:
This is more like what you’ll find now:
This isn’t a new trend. Even Wolverine looked a little… milder… in his debut.
Now he’s more likely to look like one of the vicious, battered bums in the backdrop of a Bukowski novel:
But even with all the changes that any character will go through over the course of almost 70 years, I’m still surprised to find what a downer Archie has become. I hated high school, so I couldn’t relate to the character at all, no matter how great a time he seemed to be having with Moose and Jughead and those fetching girls of his. But now even Archie is a victim of the recession, battling joblessness in what Slate calls “a middle-class hell.” Here’s their take on it, and here are some representative graphics. Looks interesting — if you can handle it.
Somehow or other, the LA Times recently finagled a phone interview with the reclusive R. Crumb, whom I got to see, once, at a comic-book convention in either Philadelphia or New York, 25 or 30 years ago. Opportunities since then have been just as limited.
I’ve enjoyed Crumb’s work for more than 30 years now. I admire his talents, his frankness, and his artistic scruples. But Crumb the man is getting left further and further behind. Which is fine for him. For me, it’s different. What he sees as relentless commercialism, I see as an offshoot of a web of possibility that almost all of us were utterly closed off from until the past 20 years. Thanks to the Internet, we can connect with almost anyone. We can self-publish — instantly. We can self-produce goods and services. We can record and upload and share and sell digital music. Artists in particular should cheer the new age. It isn’t for Crumb — but it’s great for the rest of us.
My next car won’t be this one — but you can get it.
Thanks to Paul Crist for letting me know about this.
What if the Tea Party takes over more than just the Republican Party? The Boston Globe shows us what would happen if they took over the comics as well.
We’ve written here before about our enjoyment of Sir Ian McKellen. Here’s a photo of his participation in the recent protest against the Pope. (To quote a gay friend of mine, “Just say nope.”)
By the way, posting this image earlier a little bit ago on my Facebook page resulted in the following dialogue with a Facebook friend (whom I actually know but haven’t seen in… 10 years?). This little exchange really shows how issues of sexuality, politics, and Sir Ian McKellen, all intersect over the all-important topic of Marvel Comics.
LEE: Mind you, I had my doubts about Gandalf, but I did not realize that Magneto was gay. What about his two children, Wanda (The Scarlet Witch) and Pietro (Quicksilver)? Which brings us to the question of “how exactly do you define ‘gay’?” At least with regard to Marvel comics characters. By the way, Magneto himself is confused — 40 years as a villain, but with recurring stints as a hero. What’s up with that?
FB FRIEND: And ‘Scarlet Witch’ married an android — what do we call THAT orientation?
LEE: And then they had “children” who, it later turned out, where magical constructs who destabilized the entire Marvel universe. Things were so much simpler when relationships were between one human and another. Now you’ve got mutants and androids and magicians and supervillains. And whatever The Beast is, what with the blue fur and flews and all.
FB FRIEND: I didn’t know that about their kids. (Sorta wondered how they could…you know.)
OTHER FB FRIEND (whom I also haven’t seen in at least 10 years, and probably more like 15): I think he is saying he is both Gay (Gandolph) and Straight (Magne to),,,right?
FB FRIEND: I want to go on record, though, in supporting equal marriage rights for mutants, androids, Inhumans, aliens, cyborgs, wizards, ghosts, angels, demons, demigods, elementals, monsters, talking animals, and humans exposed to radiation (that somehow made them stronger, faster and better looking).
LEE: What kicked off Avengers Disassembled was the Scarlet Witch’s discovery that her “children” were magical constructs accidentally created by her chaos magic. From there, things got worse: She wished into existence the notion of “No …More Mutants,” which recast the entire universe into one without mutants. When the “real” Marvel Universe was finally reconstituted, most of the mutants were gone, and no new mutants were being born — a problem that has bedeviled them since. Recently, the first new mutant, named, of course, Hope, and related, of course, to Scott Summers (as, seemingly, all red-haired women in the Marvel Universe are), was born. Once you put it all down in writing as I just did, it’s easy to understand, though it does give succor to the notion of certain Evangelists and U.S. Senators that mutants and androids should not procreate. (Lest we all wind up in an alternate universe. Which seems like a danger we’d all want to avoid. Unless we’re working a dead-end job at 7-11.)
FB FRIEND: Yeah, “Disassembled”, “House of M”, “Civil War”… Ya notice that all the major trouble used to come from the bad guys, but now it’s mostly traditional heroes causing all the strife? Is this meant to mirror the divisions in our own “real”… universe?! Hmmm… The Republican party IS disassembling itself, and the Scarlet Palin’s ‘House of Tea’ is taking over. Whoa! I need to get current in my comic reading! I believe ‘Daredevil’ is the heavy now? Who could he represent? Maybe Rahm Emanuel quitting the White House to run Chicago. Yeah…I see it now…
In which Stan Lee defends video games — and once again claims that he (and evidently he alone) “created Spider-Man, Iron Man and the Hulk, the virtual ancestors of the characters in today’s games.” I guess Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko played no role.
I spent part of my day of doing essentially nothing (thank you, Grover Cleveland) rearranging the reading pile next to my bed. Why haven’t I yet bought Jonathan Franzen’s new novel even though I hunger and thirst for it? Because I’ve got this enormous reading pile to get through. I’m trying to read through it, not add to it. Which means that before I get to Franzen I should finish:
Non-fiction:
Business:
Comics and graphic novels:
Unsolicited plays
What’s missing? Two things: magazines and novels. (Or short-story collections.) My rule of thumb with magazines is this: Be devastatingly quick about it. Get it, read it, recycle it. It’s the only way to get through them. Why no novels? Because I’ve read all the ones that were in my queue. (Not my long-term queue — which consists of one book I think about often but haven’t gotten to yet: “The Brothers Karamazov.”) I go through binges of reading either a lot of biographies/histories or a lot of novels; I recently ended one of those novel-reading binges. Hence my desire for the new Franzen, “Freedom.” No, I don’t plan to get it right now. But I am leaving for Las Vegas on Thursday…. Watch me pick it up at the airport.
This line from a story on LATimes.com, about the reissue of Terry Zwigoff’s exemplary documentary, “Crumb,” caught my eye:
“A habitual crank with a pronounced antisocial streak and an aversion to mainstream culture, the director Terry Zwigoff has one of the most distinctive sensibilities in American movies.”
The rest of the piece goes on to refer to Zwigoff as someone bethrothed to non-mainstream culture; by extension, Crumb is discussed as someone outside the mainstream. I read this and wondered, does R. Crumb truly qualify as outside the mainstream?
Given this fantastic success, including the sort of success that most matters in the U.S. — financial — one has to ask, what does one have to do to be mainstream? At one time, the response might have been: appear on a sitcom. But as all mainstreams have splintered into niches, as the broadcast network triumvirate has subdivided into the limitless choices offered by satellite and cable, when shows like “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Ideal” and “The Whitest Kids You Know” are able despite rather small audience numbers to to draw enough sustenance to survive, then the idea of “normal” has left the room.
So why is Crumb, for all his obvious success and enormous cultural impact, still regarded as outside the mainstream? Because 40 years ago, that’s how he seemed. When the counterculture got covered by the mainstream, when straitlaced organs like Time magazine dropped in on what was happening in Haight Ashbury, they said Crumb was out of it. And he was. But that was 40 years ago. The culture has changed. Many of the topics reserved for adult-oriented underground comix are now laugh lines on everyday TV. Given that, Crumb is the new normal.
For the past couple of hours, I’ve been having a discussion over on Scott Shaw!’s Facebook page about the relative merits of Stan Lee, not as an influential cultural force, but as a person. It started with this wall post from Scott: “I’m beginning to perceive many similarities between Stan Lee and William Shatner.” People started enumerating the similarities:
And then we came to this one, from Scott: “Apparently unaware of former co-workers’ resentments of ’em.” This was after Scott had mentioned working with Stan. So here was my reply:
“Scott, did Stan later take your work, sign his name to it, and sell it? Just checking.”
Which elicited the thread I’m going to quote from, below. Note everyone’s discomfort. We all feel beholden to someone who was an essential force in giving us the Marvel universe we love — and at the same time we’re hoping he makes amends of some sort while he’s still here.
Scott Shaw Lee, no, Stan did not “take my work, sign his name to it and sell it”. And I don’t think he did that to anyone else, either. Stan is no angel, and I’m not in agreement with some of the things he’s done — or has failed to do — but he’s made plenty of valuable contributions to comics, that is a fact.
Lee Wochner Scott, specifically what I’m referring to are the prints by Kirby or Joe Simon, without their signature, that Stan is signing for money. I had heard about it — and then I saw them at the Con. It just doesn’t feel (or look) right.
Scott Shaw I was completely unaware of that, Lee. I’d like to learn more, if you could please direct me…
Lee Wochner Scott, I just sent you an example. It doesn’t feel good to criticize Stan Lee — one of the formative writers of my life (with Jack Kirby) — but the relentless profiteering and the diminished recognition of the contribution of others doesn’t feel very good either.
Here’s the image I sent to Scott. Note the “Official Certification” of Stan Lee’s signature. See anyone else’s name on there — like Jack Kirby’s?
Lou Mougin Stan may not be perfect…who is?…but by all standards, he seems to have been a heck of a good guy to work with, and when you compare him to guys like Mort Wienieburger, Jim Warren, and some of the others of that time, who would probably have had your b*lls for breakfast if you disagreed with them…he comes off pretty well.
about an hour ago ·
Dean Griffith Stan Lee seems like a okay guy..I just don’t like the fact that he acts and gets treated like he is the only one that created EVERYTHING at Marvel
about an hour ago ·
Thomas Shim He really should give more credit to less self-promoting talent, tho. Then again, history is rife with this kind of dichotomy: Disney & Iwerks, Ruth & Gehrig, Jobs & Wozniak, Gates & Allen. The list goes on (in various degrees of analogous appropriateness.)
about an hour ago · · 1 personLoading…
I read an interview with John Romita Sr once, and he came off as a very honest & even-handed fellow. He said something like, in regards to Kirby/Lee creations, that it was impossible to overestimate the important contributions of both men, …that the one couldn’t have accomplished what he did without the other. Same goes for Ditko. And then when you think of the not-too-shabby work with Heck, Everett, Romita, Colan, Buscema, Severin, Kane, Trimpe, etc etc (names that were never hidden), I think it’s silly not to regard Lee as a great creative figure in comics or pop cultureSee More
54 minutes ago ·
I know this sounds weirdly ass-kissing, but I truly believe that Stan doesn’t realize the damage he’s contributed to in regards to his creative partners over the years. Maybe it’s living in the Depression, maybe it is unethical, but I find …it hard to believe that such a nice, talented guy would intentionally screw his partners. Yet I wince (or worse) every time I see he’s allowed someone to give him sole credit for a character or concept rather than correcting them. On the other hand, I’ve never seen Stan so pressed for a straight answer about the creation of Spider-Man in IN SEARCH OF STEVE DITKO, and he seems absolutely honest in his opinion…one I wouldn’t agree with, by the way. Stan is a real enigma, but I find it impossible to vilify him completely. I guess I just want Stan to become the TRULY good guy he thinks he is…because I know that deep inside he really IS a good guy who’s let his “survivor” instincts get out of control. I just can’t help but admire Stan Lee on creative and personal levels.
50 minutes ago ·
Lee Wochner I don’t think that anyone here is minimizing the contribution of Stan Lee. The operant question is: Are the contributions of his collaborators being fully recognized? Kirby seems to have created an entire cosmos (or three) on his own, without any assistance from Stan Lee. Could Stan Lee have (co-)created the Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Inhumans, Asgard, Wakanda, etc. etc., without Jack Kirby?
49 minutes ago · · 1 personLoading… ·
Lee Wochner And I agree with everything Scott just posted.
48 minutes ago · ·
And would add: Just because someone truly, really, believes something to be so — that doesn’t mean it is so. Stan is in denial. The recurrent picture of Stan Lee in Dan Raviv’s book “The Comic Wars” is of someone blissfully ignorant of how he’s accepted credit he shouldn’t have — and even of how people sometimes act badly. Sample line: “Even though he was a master of heroes and villains, Stan Lee was reluctant to think of anyone in the bankruptcy fight as the bad guy. ‘I liked (Ron) Perelman and I liked Bill Bevins,’ he said. ‘I really wanted it to work out for them. … Bevins asked me, ‘How much money are you getting now?’ I told him, and right then and there he made it three times as much!'” Read between the lines: Bevins is a good guy — because he offered Stan three times as much right off the bat. No other consideration came into effect — including which owner would serve Marvel (and Stan Lee’s legacy) better. Does this make Stan Lee a bad person? No. Does it make him someone with an unknowingly self-serving point of view? You be the judge.
40 minutes ago · ·
Lee Wochner And now I guess I’m done. Because I’m really not having any fun coming off as trashing Stan. I love comics, and Marvel comics, and I personally feel I owe Stan Lee a great deal. It’s just some of his behavior that deeply saddens me. I still like Picasso’s work, and evidently he was a real SOB….
39 minutes ago · ·
Scott Shaw It’s even harder when you know and immensely like Stan, who is never less than generous whenever we’ve dealt with each other. He really is a friend!
33 minutes ago ·
This isn’t the first time I’ve complained on this blog about Stan Lee’s blissful ignorance — here’s a representative post — and it probably won’t be the last. (And it’s well worth reading the comment on that post as well.) Why do I keep coming back to this? Because of my conflicted feelings. Since moving to the West Coast 22 years ago, I have run into Stan Lee probably a dozen times. Each time, even when, say, just passing by him at the Beverly Center, I feel a little twinge: equal parts excitement and regret. Two weeks ago when I was down at the San Diego Comic-Con, I was hurrying into the Marriott for a taping. (I was a scheduled interviewee for Morgan Spurlock’s forthcoming documentary about the Comic-Con. We’ll see if I make the final edit.) There was a clutch of excitement and security downstairs in the lowest level. An excited boy who looked to be about 16 turned to me and said, “Stan Lee was down there! Right there! It was Stan Lee!” I looked at him and remembered sharing that level of excitement when I was that age… and said nothing.