How Stan Lee has influenced you and all of modern culture

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Yesterday, 95-year-old Stan Lee died - the face of Marvel, the creator of Spider-Man and the Hulk, a man whose appearance on the screen has always caused delight.

Heroes who raised generations

What superheroes do you know? I am sure that almost everyone who comes to mind in the first place (with the exception of Superman, Batman and Captain America) is created by Stan Lee personally or together with other masters.

Spider-Man, Hulk, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Panther, X-Men, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Thor. There are more than a hundred characters in total. From those who played bit parts in comics 50 years ago, to those who are tattooed on T-shirts and stuffed in the form of tattoos.

Each character created by Stan Lee was not accidental and played a role (even one that is not visible at first glance) in solving problems of society and the world - from racism to the arms race.

The Fantastic Four, coined by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, is, on the one hand, a response to DC and their Justice League, and on the other, one of the first attempts to attract a wider audience to comics. F4 is an ordinary family, which not only saves the world from another tyrant, but also sorts out the relationship and tries to get along in a common house. Yes, and also, unlike classic comic book heroes, he does not hide his personalities.

I am 8 years old, I rewind to the beginning and this is not the first time I watch a videotape on which 10 episodes of the 1994 Spider-Man series were recorded. It is this hero who is the first fictional character who influenced me. For my friends, Spider-Man is someone who has super powers and who constantly fights villains in colorful costumes, then fights again and will certainly become a winner.

The same cartoon was remembered for the hero's motto - that famous phrase: "Great responsibility comes with great power." Once you have strength, you need to use it correctly.

Spider-Man was invented by Stan Lee. And it was he who wrote the first 100 issues of the solo comic The Amazing Spider-Man. It was Stan Lee who put this simple but important truth into the hero, which has become a refrain throughout my life.

"X-Men" - a series of comics, which one after another revealed the problems of society. This is the first team where heroes from different countries, continents and, most importantly, cultures appeared - because all people are equal. The team of mutants are fighters for equality, and Charles Xavier is Martin Luther King, who believes that despite the differences, people remain human. The most famous villain, Magneto, went through the Holocaust and wants peace for his people.

It was "X-Men" that became the first successful film adaptation of comics. And stories about them have not left the screens for 18 years.

Black Panther is the first black Marvel hero to become a symbol of the struggle for independence and respect for tradition. Through Doctor Strange, Lee and Steve Ditko showed that anyone can change: today you are a successful selfish surgeon, and tomorrow you are the archmage who sacrificed everything to save his planet.

Daredevil is a blind lawyer who has proven that feats can be performed without a suit. Iron Man is the comics industry's answer to the Cold War.

Through their characters, Lee and his team brought up topics that were formally taboo: corruption, drugs, gang wars, abuse of power. What they did not dare to say directly appeared on the pages of comics.

Stan Lee spoke not only in metaphors, but also quite bluntly. In 1967, Stan's Soapbox began appearing in the main series of comic books, a column in which Lee spoke directly to his readers and spoke out about what was exciting the world right now.

First editor-in-chief and then publisher, Lee gave almost his entire life to Marvel Comics and became its voice.

He also managed to work with eternal competitors - DC Comics. Maestro wrote comics for all the major series of the publishing house: about Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Shazam. Even Green Lantern and Aquaman did not go unnoticed.

An industry that changed culture

In the late nineties, Marvel was on the verge of bankruptcy, and therefore began selling the rights to film its characters to film studios. Then the company could not even imagine that 20 years later they would own the largest film franchise in history.

X-Men is the first comic book adaptation to spawn a universe of its own. Yes, there have been numerous adaptations of the Batman stories, but it was the mutant team that created the groundwork for what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the future.

In 2008, Marvel made its first film of its own, Iron Man, and in 2009 the company was bought out by the Disney conglomerate. Since then, Marvel Studios films have been released every year. Now there are already 20 of them, and in the top ten highest-grossing films in history there are at least four authorship of Marvel.

And Stan Lee was and remains an integral element of all these films: he appears in every film based on Marvel comics in a cameo role. It seems that the word "cameo" is another thing that came to life thanks to Stan.

Stan Lee's life is a long road full of adventure. This is best described by biographer Bob Batchelor in his book "Stan Lee. Creator of the great Marvel universe. " Read it if you want to know more about Marvel's face.

Just 10 years ago, comics were the lot of strange, scared guys, and only tiny brochures about the most famous characters were published in Russian. Now all the bookstores are inundated with numerous stories about superheroes and ordinary people, talking unicorns and anthropomorphic cat detectives.

Decades ago, Stanley Lieber, creating another character, could hardly have imagined that the simple truths that he and his team put into characters would change the world. Thanks Stan Lee!