Stanley Martin Lieber

One of the most fascinating people presented in Friday’s class was Stanley Martin Lieber, aka Stan Lee the creator of the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk and Thor. Up until the point of Vincent’s presentation I had minimal knowledge, or even much interest in comic book characters at all. Although I had seen a lot of the movie adaptations, they were all in my conservative mind a “guy thing” due to the violent nature of a lot of the plots.  When Vincent informed us that the plots were actually allusions to the events that were going on in the United States at the time I was completely flabbergasted. Suddenly the clichéd heroism of these characters became real to me and I understood why people admired Lee’s characters so much. These characters not only momentarily diverted your attention from the troubling state of the US at the time, but they also subliminally foreshadowed a time when there would be relative prosperity in the US. In a somewhat exaggerated sense, Lee’s characters were therapeutic.

Lee’s comic book characters weren’t the only thing about him that I found admirable. Like Vincent mentioned Stan Lee also made cameos in a number of film and television productions of Marvel characters. He also has a website which is a little more in tune with the 21st century, including things like a twitter feed, news updates and videos of movie productions and even some of him just ranting to his fans. This one’s my favorite :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmzctTm1jU

 

Source:

http://therealstanlee.com/