Stan Lee Has Left the Baxter Building

Illustration by Lee's longtime collaborator, Jack Kirby.

A salute in passing to the great Stan Lee.

One should not lament. He died age 95. He got his innings in. Time to try something new.

But he was a major presence in my childhood, and probably is still a major influence on me.

He was, of course, the editor and writer behind Marvel Comics, back when it was becoming Marvel comics, the “silver age,” the creator or co-creator of the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Iron Man, Thor, X-Men, Hulk, and the rest. Back when Lee was in command, I used to buy every title of Marvel comics every month, as soon as they came out: all the superhero comics, plus Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos, plus their three Western comics.

Before Lee, comic book superheroes were cut from cardboard, with no distinguishing features, it seemed, other than their specific powers. Otherwise, Aquaman was interchangeable with Superman, Flash, or Green Lantern. Lee gave them personalities, issues, struggles, and had them bicker with one another. Often they found themselves rejected by the public, or wanting to quit being a superhero.

While this was revolutionary in comicry—so much so that Lee thought it might get him fired, and only did it once he figured he was fed up with the job anyway—it was not really the innovation it seemed. What Lee was really doing was telling hero legends properly at last. He was returning to their origins.

For that is just what “super heroes” are or were: heroes. If you care to look, all classical or Medieval heroes had super powers. It is not some recent innovation. Perseus had winged sandals, and Medusa's deadly head. Herakles had a lion skin that made him invulnerable, and arrows of hydra poison. Bellerophon had a flying horse, Pegasus, which kept him out of harm's way, beyond the reach of Chimera paws. Achilles was invulnerable except at the heel. Arthur had his magical sword Excaliber. Solomon had a flying carpet, the mysterious shamir that could cut through anything, and could command demons. Generally, in the old stories, these were gifts from the classical gods or God, rather than the result of radiation or mutation—gifts from the great god Science.

And, unlike the DC superheroes of the Fifties, traditional heroes always had serious real-life problems. Herakles, for example, like Peter Parker, could never get a date. Worse, he now and then went mad, like Hulk. In one such fit, he killed his wife and children, thinking they were attacking aliens. Remorse over this drove him to become a hero, just as remorse over the death of his parents drove Peter Parker to become Spiderman.

Jason's wife was a witch, who killed their children. His king was out to have him killed. Perseus was betrayed by his grandfather, his stepfather, and his father-in-law. Samson also had significant women problems, as you might recall. And so did King Arthur. Moses was an outlaw, then rejected by his public.

Lee just reinserted this essential element to the mix, retoring to the stories their mythic power. Daredevil was blind, Thor in civilian life walked with a cane. The Hulk could not control his transformations. The government was out to get him. The Thing was repulsive to women, and taunted on the street. Iron Man's super suit was needed to keep his heart going.

Lee's advantage was probably that, being Jewish, he had been schooled in Torah. It includes all the classic stories. Other kids no longer learn the stories; they were all new to them. Lee simply mined them. The Fantastic Four, his first and to my mind greatest creation, seems based on Jewish demonology. Each of the members has one of the powers traditionally attributed in Jewish legend to demons: the ability to stretch at will, the ability to become invisible, being able, like the Muslim jinn, to burst into fire; and the Thing visually resembles the golem. This dark subtext gave great imaginative power.

Sub-Mariner, aka Prince Namur, appears in one of the earlier FF stories. Although he is the rightful ruler of an undersea kingdom, he is suffering amnesia, has forgotten who he is, and is living on the street as an alcoholic. Great story. It is one of the stories of King Solomon in the Talmud. There is also an echo of Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel.

Daredevil's blindness echoes Samson's. Ant-man extended the parable of David and Goliath; his ability to control the ants is shared with Solomon.

Lee's famous burst of creativity in the Sixties was probably based on this mining of the Talmud. This is why it did not last into the Seventies; at a certain point, all the good stories have been told. I suspect Lee himself felt this coming, and this is why he turned to Norse mythology as well, with Thor: in search of new material. But here Lee himself had not yet digested the stories. He mostly told them verbatim as a second feature in the Thor comics. He was learning on the fly, and so the stories were not integral to his new character. Thor, as a result, comes across as wooden in a way his other heroes do not.

Since then, since Lee left, the comics have been wandering aimlessly, with no idea what the formula is. They learned nothing from Lee. They have gone for gimmicks: hey, let's make Captain America African American! Let's make Hulk female! Let's get political, and justify ourselves by taking all the “right” positions! Let's try celebrity tie-ins! Or worse, they make a phony splash by supposedly killing off a character, and then reviving him or her. These are all just so many sharks lined up in a row and jumped.

And one shark in the line generally gets a free lunch.