The Limitlessness of Imagination

Although he spent a lot of his later years bending his talents more towards self-promotion than some might like, and although he might remember the creation of many iconic Marvel Comics characters as more in his ledger than some others would say, Stanley Martin Lieber left this world having increased its overall portion of creativity much more than most other people did.

As Stan Lee, which was first a pen name and then later his legal one, he had a huge share in the creation of comic book icons like Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and others. Disputes between Lee and artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko may have muddied the waters of origin too much to ever know from whose mind what detail sprang, but Lee's influence is undeniable and significant. As a writer and editor at Marvel, Lee oversaw a more human kind of hero behind the masks and under the capes. The "secret identity," if there was one, wasn't just a convenient device for soaking up some page count: It influenced who the heroes were and how they behaved, and introduced the idea of flaws and failures into the four-color funnybook world.

Sometimes that way of thinking didn't work so well, as when Lee greenlit the death of Peter "Spider-Man" Parker's girlfriend Gwen Stacy. For all of the advances made during the 1960s, Spider-Man writer Gerry Conway and Marvel book editor Roy Thomas couldn't open their Parker/Spider-Man box wide enough to encompass a married Peter Parker, so they decided to permanently remove her. "Realism" could deal with a hero mourning the loss of his love but was apparently stymied by the idea of a normal family life.

Still, the idea of truly human heroes -- whether biologically human or not -- took root and grew throughout the industry. It found its way into other companies and other storylines, and fueled some of the best prestige events in the medium, such as Watchmen, Marvels and Kingdom Come. It's the foundation for the conflict in the Kurt Busiek/George Perez JLA/Avengers crossover, and underlies Busiek's superlative Astro City series and to a large degree even Bill Willingham's Fables. An even more reality-based vision of the superhero world was fleshed out in "The Ultimates" series of books from Marvel, and the current Marvel Cinematic Universe works very much from the Ultimates vision of the characters.

In later years Lee maintained a heavy public appearance schedule, relishing his opportunities to interact with fans as often as he could manage. If some of that interaction fed his vanity as well, it's hard to begrudge him enjoying the kudos he had worked pretty hard to merit.

Lee was born to Jewish immigrants but for much of his adult life was agnostic about the idea of actual deities. So we can't be sure just exactly what he might have believed about an afterlife and what it contained. It would be fitting, of course, for this great prince of storytellers to open his eyes in a realm of endless tales, each one greater than he could have ever possibly imagined and building without end -- and it wouldn't be such a bad place for anyone else, either -- so why not hope that's what is indeed the case and say as Lee himself would have said:

Excelsior!