Bill Maher
recently said something dumb (quelle surprise) that criticized that people were
mourning the death of Stan Lee and posited that Donald Trump could have only
been elected by a populace that took comic books seriously. I’m going to give
Maher’s link of comics to Trump the rigorous analysis that it deserves, which
is none at all. But since Lee died, I have been thinking about comic books and
their importance.
I did feel a
little sadness when Stan Lee died. The guy was 95 so the feeling is more that
gratitude for a life well lived that you feel when very old people die, but I
still felt a little pang. I’ve been reading comic books for over 35 years and
Lee co-created the foundational teams of the Marvel Universe: the Fantastic
Four, the Avengers and the X-Men. He wrote those titles for many years and
created a very large part of the Marvel mythos. Lee had a hefty amount of help from artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko,
of course. But Kirby died decades ago and Ditko (who also died recently) was a
recluse, leaving Lee a very visible symbol of the old days of Marvel. So when
he was gone, and people like me lost the man who helped create so many
treasured four-color icons, yeah, there was a little mourning.
Comic books
can be two-dimensional but Lee helped bring a sophistication to them. Marvel
did something in the Silver Age that other publishers weren’t doing: giving
superheroes real personalities and conflicts and basing them in something close
to the real world. Spider-Man was always broke and wracked with guilt. In the
Fantastic Four, the Thing had to come to terms with his mutated form and fought
constantly with the Human Torch. At Avengers Mansion, Hawkeye belligerently
questioned Captain America’s leadership while the Scarlet Witch chafed at Quicksilver’s
overprotection. Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the original X-Men tried to serve a
world that hated them just for who they were. Nobody had done this before in
the medium.
Because of the
work of people like Lee, Kirby and Ditko, later creators were inspired to
create sophisticated comics themselves. This led to what middle-aged people
like me read and still cherish: Frank Miller’s cinematic Elektra Saga in Daredevil, Bill Sienkiewicz’s wildly
impressionistic New Mutants, John
Byrne’s back-to-basics Fantastic Four,
Chris Claremont’s examination of corruption and power in the “Dark Phoenix
Saga” in Uncanny X-Men, and many
more.
Comics are for
kids, critics will say, and when you grow up, you need to start reading
something more adult. But it’s a mistake to think that comic readers are only
reading about Spider-Man, as many of us can actually handle reading more than
one medium or genre at a time. I pick up a comic once in awhile but I am
reading real, actual adult material constantly, to the point where it’s
probably off-putting to my family. I have
to have a book in front of me at all times—have
to. Once I’m done one, I immediately go to the next one like a chain smoker. I
am always reading some doorstop
novel, and I’m also a comic reader. How about that.
This is
something familiar to many people: Caring about more than one thing at once. I
can watch a sportsball game and at the same time, devour news about politics
and world affairs. Someone else can watch reality TV and have an encyclopedic
knowledge of classic music. Et cetera. It’s not hard for most of us and there
are comic readers who do have other interests.
Comic books
have always done more than “inspire people to go see a movie.” They have
inspired people for decades to write and draw, and not just comic books. They
were part of what inspired me to write, and my accomplishments in that field
are nothing to write home about, but they may not have happened at all without
comics.
Comics also
inspire kids to read. This is nothing apart from what the Harry Potter books have done. People have rightly praised JK
Rowling for her contribution to getting kids to read. Why should it be any
different for comics? There are many comics that over the years have developed
characters as well as any other long-running serials.
I don’t read
too many new comics these days but I do still revisit the oldies in their
plastic bags sometimes. A few times a year, I’ll go crate digging for some Bronze
Age back issues. Some of these are issues I once had and lost or traded away
decades ago and when I find them again, I’ll see a panel that I remember from
childhood, and it will inspire nostalgia and recognition, like a little
blooming flower in my head. It’s those little bursts of pleasure that make
comic books worth it for me and other people. Let people have that.
