REMEMBERING
THE SOCIAL AND CREATIVE INFLUENCE OF COMIC
BOOK CREATOR STAN LEE (1922-2018)
My
husband woke me at five this morning to tell me that comic book mogul Stan Lee
has died at age 95. That instantly
brought about a rush of childhood memories of the years that we as kids back in
the fifties and early sixties were told that people that read comic books were of lower intelligence and other
such nonsense. These nonsensical notions were usually passed down to us by well
meaning parents, teachers and neighborhood bullies wanting to steal our
treasured comic books that we used our meager weekly allowances to buy, but only
served to make comic books a not so well hidden cult among the youth of America.
We
loved are comic books so much that we bought the newest issues in droves. Whenever we had free time we could sometimes be
caught reading them between the pages of encyclopedias, biology and geology textbooks. They would be confiscated
and trashed but usually not before our parents sneaked a peek at those colorful
pages they had condemned as bad for us. Those pages opened our small world to unimaginable
adventure, intrigue and drama, which was either absent or limited in the early
days of children and youth entertainment. Stan Lee's comic books also gave us, for a
short time a method of escape from the
strict norms of our era, which attempted to define who we should be as kids and
young adults as appose to who we could inspire to become. An attempt that met a
fast and painful death among the so-called ruling class in the sixties.
As
adults and the survivors of the great social suppression attempt of comic books
as well as the attack on human intelligence,
we were the first to see our comic book heroes in movie's theaters back in the late
seventies. Stan Lee's superheroes freed
our imaginations, and made us want to be heroes too. As the decades marched on,
Stan Lee's comic books help to end the divide between the arts, the sciences,
and beyond.
What
Stan Lee created in the early 1940s has an even greater impact on our culture today and worldwide.
There is not a day that goes by where we don’t see a comic book based movie in
theaters or streaming online. Television networks, like the CW, Fox, NBC, and
Freeform air weekly DC Comics series. Each and every day and at any hour we can
buy comic book based clothing, artwork, games, devices in stores and for sell
online.
All
this is due to the help and influence of the creative imagination of Stan Lee.
He
will be truly missed.
Excelsior!
-- Widescreen Online Review
