Stan Lee, RIP

Stan Lee, RIP – Stan Lee, a one-time Army Signal Corps artist and writer, died (appropriately) over the Veteran’s Day holiday.  Veteran of World War II, the creator of a huge number of successful comic-book characters was the veteran of innumerable comic book wars.  He also inspired generations of writers who, like me, strive to tell compelling stories in a tight, literarialy-visual format.

I fell in love with comic books in time to get the first Fantastic Four (the super-hero comic that made Stan Lee’s career), Spider Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Daredevil and so many more (including some that didn’t break into stellar stardom, like my favorite Howard the Duck).  My late mother tossed them out after I went to college (how many people of my generation can say that … way too many to count), but that didn’t stop my life-long passion for comics (and now, graphic novels), a passion I have shared with my oldest son and his oldest daughter.

In his later years, Stan Lee played an integral role in bringing his beloved characters to TV and cinema, transforming best-selling comics into some of the best-selling movie series of all time.

If you want to be able to tell stories that brim with humanity, which present fantastic visions of today (and tomorrow) without losing touch with the real nature of the individuals who become meta-human, you could do a lot worse than reading and studying the work of Stan Lee.

Stan, we’ll miss you.  But your legacy lives on.