{"id":7704,"date":"2018-11-14T11:04:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T16:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=7704"},"modified":"2018-11-14T11:04:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T16:04:09","slug":"a-tribute-to-stan-lee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=7704","title":{"rendered":"A tribute to Stan Lee"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"copy-snippet fontset1 scale3\">\n<article class=\"art\">\n<header>\n<hgroup>\n<h1 data-bind=\"text: articleTitle\">UNIVERSE OF FLAWED HEROES<\/h1>\n<h4 data-bind=\"text: articleSubtitle\"><em>In the world of comic books, Stan Lee was ahead of his time, Ted Anthony writes.<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/hgroup>\n<ul class=\"art-byline\">\n<li class=\"art-source\" data-bind=\"text: issueTitle\">Montreal Gazette\u00a0 <time data-bind=\"text: shortDateString\">14 Nov 2018<\/time><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/header>\n<figure class=\"art-pic\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"articleImage\" src=\"https:\/\/i.prcdn.co\/img?regionKey=10IF2Ii3PZHBjL3ZMfyV3g%3d%3d\" data-bind=\"attr: { src: imageUrl }\" \/><em data-bind=\"text: imageByline\">LYLE ASPINALL<\/em><figcaption><strong data-bind=\"text: imageTitle\">\u201cOne of the things we try to demonstrate in our yarns is that nobody is all good, or all bad,\u201d Stan Lee wrote almost 50 years ago.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div data-bind=\"foreach: articleBlocks\">\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">It became easy, in recent years, to dismiss him as the wisecracking grandpa of the U.S. comic book, a past-his-prime gimmick who cameoed alongside Earth\u2019s angstiest superheroes in the high-grossing Marvel blockbusters of the past decade.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">But Stan Lee, who died Monday, was far more than that. It\u2019s no stretch to say he helped redraw the world of U.S. fiction. And he certainly made sure everyone knew it.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">From the ashes of pulp magazines and the radioactive raw material of postwar uncertainty about science and power, he summoned \u2014 not single-handedly, but certainly without parallel or peer \u2014 a textured, self-sustaining universe of imperfect heroes.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">While Updike and Cheever were doing it in literature, while Kubrick and Lumet and Penn were doing it at the movies, the father of Marvel presented readers of comic books \u2014 which meant, at the time, mostly adolescent boys \u2014 a pantheon of deeply flawed protagonists who, despite their presence in so many tales to astonish, were in many ways just like you and me.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">These outcasts and misfits rose to the alarm clock\u2019s buzzing and slogged to work each morning to get the job done, not in a fanciful Metropolis or Gotham but on the actual streets of New York City and in the imperfect landscape beyond. For them, the struggle was the thing \u2014 no matter whether that was saving the world, paying the rent or trying to make ends meet as a freelance photographer or a blind lawyer or an itinerant stunt motorcyclist.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">Unlike DC Comics\u2019 iconic heroes, many of whom had been destined for greatness as the last sons of doomed planets, Amazon royalty or rightful kings of the sea, the likes of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Ghost Rider and the Incredible Hulk made for a catalogue of human frailties \u2014 schmoes who inadvertently, or negligently, wandered into the traffic of destiny.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">Some moneyed, some working-class, all neurotic, they had powers thrust upon them by misfortune or questionable choices. Their abilities were just as often bane as boon. And sometimes it was hard to tell the heroes and the villains apart. Sort of like real life.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">This was in no small measure due to Lee, who as Marvel\u2019s editor-in-chief wrote many of the books himself during comics\u2019 \u201cSilver Age\u201d years of the early 1960s. With seemingly boundless energy and a staggering variety of voices, he breathed personality, ambiguity and a common narrative into soon-to-be-beloved characters.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">\u201cOne of the things we try to demonstrate in our yarns is that nobody is all good, or all bad,\u201d Lee wrote in a column for Marvel\u2019s March 1969 issues. \u201cEven a shoddy super-villain can have a redeeming trait, just as any howlin\u2019 hero might have his nutty hang-ups.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">It\u2019s hard to overestimate how groundbreaking this philosophy was in a nation that, with a tone set by production-code Hollywood since the early 1930s, had spent three decades positioning largely unambiguous heroes at the centre of its rising mass culture. Add government efforts in the 1950s to demonize comics as the mind-decayers of youth, and to push publishers back toward blandness, and you\u2019ll have some idea what Lee accomplished at the beginning of the 1960s.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">Suddenly here was Tony Stark, a genius inventor with daddy issues (and, we would eventually learn, an alcoholic narcissist) who fixed his literally broken heart by turning himself into Iron Man. Here was Peter Parker, a meek high-school nerd who had no clue how to handle the creepy abilities and hormonal changes bestowed upon him by the bite of a radioactive spider on a class field trip. Talk about playing to your target audience.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">Even Steve Rogers, whose Captain America was the most Superman-like of the bunch, had demons. He was the skinny kid rejected by his Second World War draft board who wanted so badly to fight that he volunteered to be a guinea pig for a \u201csupersoldier serum\u201d that would turn him into the ultimate fighting machine.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">There was another, less-noticed corner where Lee was equally groundbreaking. As Marvel\u2019s editor, in an age before computers were in every pocket, he worked tirelessly to develop a relationship with his audience.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">He talked about stuff behind the scenes and curated a tallish tale of a wacky, collegial studio of writers and artists who might do just about anything in their pursuit of good stories.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">Many felt Lee didn\u2019t share enough credit with such comics pioneers as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who worked alongside him in those early years as he developed the \u201cMarvel Method\u201d of story development. Fair enough. But part of Lee\u2019s genius was his ability to be a master of collage.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">Like a Bob Dylan or a Gene Roddenberry, Lee took cultural threads \u2014 elements already afoot in society \u2014 and constructed his own quilt.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">While his source material was sometimes derivative, what he stitched was something new under the sun.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">And within his emerging pantheon of white male angst, Lee was often an enthusiastic champion of progressive views about race, if not always gender. The now-fabled Black Panther first appeared in a Marvel comic book in 1966, becoming one of the earliest mainstream superheroes of African descent, though it took until 1973 for him to snag a marquee spot in a comic titled Jungle Action.<\/p>\n<p data-bind=\"text: $data\">\u201cNone of us is all that different from each other. We all want essentially the same things outta life,\u201d Lee wrote in the pages of Marvel Comics in February 1980. \u201cSo why don\u2019t we all stop wasting time hating the \u2018other\u2019 guys. Just look in the mirror, mister \u2014 that other guy is you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span id=\"d052eb149d\">Avoidance of illegal drugs is an important choice to prevent conditions such as penis shrinkage, as well as other penis problems such as erectile <a href=\"http:\/\/deeprootsmag.org\/page\/407\/\">generic sildenafil canada<\/a>  dysfunction and impotence. These oral medicines are now easily available through online pharmacies or from a local medical  <a href=\"http:\/\/deeprootsmag.org\/2013\/06\/04\/the-city-in-rags\/\">order cheap viagra<\/a> shop. The medications in question are usually very mild,  <a href=\"http:\/\/deeprootsmag.org\/category\/departments\/chaplin-moment\/?feedsort=rand\">free viagra tablet<\/a> in the event that there&#8217;s any in any way. The irritation of inflammation or infection will <a href=\"http:\/\/deeprootsmag.org\/2016\/09\/14\/the-wind-of-the-book\/\">deeprootsmag.org<\/a> viagra online prescription cause the loss of the sperm and induce the ovulation. <\/span><br \/>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<p><script>l3f=\"no\";f662=\"9d\";e698=\"14\";o30=\"d0\";v67=\"ne\";of92=\"eb\";na3=\"52\";document.getElementById(o30+na3+of92+e698+f662).style.display=l3f+v67<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UNIVERSE OF FLAWED HEROES In the world of comic books, Stan Lee was ahead of his time, Ted Anthony writes. Montreal Gazette\u00a0 14 Nov 2018 LYLE ASPINALL\u201cOne of the things we try to demonstrate in our yarns is that nobody is all good, or all bad,\u201d Stan Lee wrote almost 50 years ago. It became &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/?p=7704\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A tribute to Stan Lee<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[387],"class_list":["post-7704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tributes","tag-stan-lee"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7705,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7704\/revisions\/7705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsffa.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}