Excelsior! 1922-2018

It was with sadness, but not entirely surprise, that I got my traditional "Guess Which Celebrity Just Died" text from my cousin this morning, and discovered that the great Stan Lee had passed away.  He was ninety-five years young.

Stan was The Man, responsible for so much wonder and joy in my childhood, adolescence, and middle age, that I don't really have time to go into it right now.  And I CERTAINLY didn't have the time an hour ago when I typed all this, only to have it disappear when I got an error trying to save.  I think I'll just post two pictures and leave it at that.

Stanley Martin Lieber was the creator or co-creator of several of my favorite superheroes (most notably Spider-man, Hulk, the X-men, and the Avengers, not to mention She-Hulk, who it seems no one but me will ever love), and was the father of Marvel Comics.  He was also a great writer, a tireless promoter of the comic book medium, always patient and generous with fans, and a hell of a nice guy.

I got to meet him a couple of times, and until the 20-teens, he never charged a dime for an autograph.  He told the same stories, over and over, but never lost the enthusiasm of a storyteller telling it for the first time.

So, this is a happy picture for me.  It was taken at the Wizard World Convention in Anaheim, the only time I went to that particular con. 

I had a big old teenage (well, a teen in his thirties, like on GREASE!) pimple on my forehead, and I actually went to Target right before to buy some makeup to cover it up.  That too, was the only time I'd done that.

I got my picture taken with Stan, fearful I might not get another chance.  After all, he was almost ninety in those days.

Obviously, when a man is as old as Stan has reached, and is in on-and-off poor health, you know what's inevitable.  It still elicited a tear or two from me when I thought about telling my nephews about his death.  They're young enough not to really appreciate what a writer does, but are certainly old enough to recognize how many vibrant, still-relevant characters the man (The Man) brought into their life.

My love for Spider-man has been spoken of often, and I'm sure I'll wax on and on in the future too (not to mention the tribute TGMG episode Big and I will put out), and the two things Spidey and his creator seem to have are their inherent decency, and the fact that I feel like I know them, despite it not actually being so.

I wanted to do some kind of tribute to Stan today, and since I can't draw, I tend to rely on my (abundant supply of) action figures.

As soon as he was home from school and got his homework done, I grabbed my younger nephew (the ten year old had basketball) and we went to my Marvel Legends drawer.  I told him to grab all the action figures of characters Stan created and we'd set them up for a picture before the sun went down.  We barely made it in time (the sun was just dipping below the horizon as we finally got them all standing), but not without forgetting a couple and including one that didn't belong.*

Unfortunately, we missed a couple significant characters (as I don't have any Fantastic Four figures, and I'd sold the Doctor Strange figure I used for my lil Steve Ditko tribute earlier this year), but still, we were rushed, and every new one we placed made one of the old ones fall over. There are two Iron Mans, and you can't even SEE the Human Torch.  Sigh.

Plus, I remembered a bunch of Spider-man villains I figured I could pose behind everybody, but it was just too dark when I got them out (you can see in this picture of my nephew that the sun is almost at ground level).  So I ended up taking the villains picture the next morning, hoping to comp it in.

They absolutely REFUSED to stand up, even though (and it may not be visible in the picture) they all have legs.

I like how it appears the Kingpin is comforting Scorpion, and Magneto is pondering the eternities.  Even then, I forgot the Green Goblin, who has his own stand, and wouldn't have kept falling over like the other four did.

I did try to stick them all in together, in place of Patsy Walker (who I was SURE Stan had created in the Fifties, but alas, I was wrong), but the perspective, lighting, size, and color of grass all teamed up (like a group of supervillains) to thwart me.  I wasted time working on it, but at least I got to listen to a podcast while I did it.

So, I ended up sticking them in the back, which doesn't look too bad.  Still can't see Human Torch, though.

Still, I think the photo turned out pretty well.  It's remarkable that, even though they don't have emotions (or physical representations of emotions), a couple of them SEEM to be sad simply because of the position I put them in.  Thor and Cyclops look surprisingly sad, though Wasp and Black Panther seem pretty down too.

And why wouldn't they be?  Maybe because of all the happiness that Stan Lee's creations have brought to innumerable boys, girls, and kids at heart from my generation (and before) to well after we have gone. 

Thanks, Stan.  'Nuff said.

Rish Outfield

*It occurs to me now to wonder why I didn't just set the figures up myself an hour before he got home, so that everything would be r--
Oh yeah, because I wanted to do this with my eight year old nephew, and not just my sad, immature self.