Marvelous Belief

In the 1960s, the world of comic books was dominated by two companies. The first was DC, home of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Flash. The second was Marvel, home of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and X-Men. DC heroes were square-jawed, staid, and tended to be dull. “This looks like a job for Superman,” Superman proclaimed. He also liked to announce, “Up, up, and away” (right before he started to fly). By contrast, Marvel heroes were irreverent, witty, insecure, and playful. Spider-Man called himself, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.” His nickname was “Spidey.” Ben Grimm, also known as The Thing, liked to announce, “It’s clobberin’ time!” (right before he started to clobber).

DC was Dwight Eisenhower; Marvel was John F. Kennedy. DC was Bing Crosby; Marvel was the Rolling Stones. DC was Apollo; Marvel was Dionysus.

Marvel’s guiding spirit, and its most important writer, was Stan Lee, who died in 2018 at the age of 95. Lee helped create many of the company’s iconic figures — not only Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and the X-Men, but also the Black Panther, the Avengers, Thor, Daredevil (Daredevil!), Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer, and Ant-Man. There were many others. Lee defined the Marvel brand. He gave readers a sense that they were in the cool kids’ club — knowing, winking, rebellious, with their own private language: “Face Forward!” “Excelsior!” “’Nuff said!”

Aside from their superpowers, Lee’s characters were vulnerable. One of them was blind; another was confined to a wheelchair. By creating superheroes who faced real-world problems (romantic and otherwise), Lee channeled the insecurities of his young readers. As he put it: “The idea I had, the underlying theme, was that just because somebody is different doesn’t make them better.” He gave that theme a political twist: “That seems to be the worst thing in human nature: We tend to dislike people who are different than we are.” DC felt like the past, and Marvel felt like the future, above all because of Marvel’s exuberance, sense of fun, and subversive energy. (...)

In terms of cultural impact, was Lee the most important writer of the last 60 years? You could make the argument. His characters have given rise to countless movies, television shows, and novels. As Liel Leibovitz puts it in his sharp and engaging new book, “Lee’s creations redefined America’s sense of itself.” Countless children, and not a few adults, have identified with Bruce Banner, alter ego of the Hulk, who warned: “Mr. McGee, don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” And whatever our role in life, many of us have never forgotten Lee’s line from the first Spider-Man story: “With great power there must also come — great responsibility!” If, as Shelley said, “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” then Lee, the poet, was responsible for more than a few laws. (...)

In that respect, Lee had something in common with George Lucas, architect of the Star Wars story, who was also able to offer variations on universals. Lucas was self-conscious about his use of often-used tropes. He was greatly influenced by Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which argued that many heroes, in many myths and religions, followed a similar arc (“the monomyth”). The arc had many ingredients, but as Campbell summarized it:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

As far as I am aware, there is no evidence that Lee read Campbell, but the lives of many of Marvel’s superheroes included important features of the monomyth, offering them enduring and cross-cultural appeal, and evidently tapping into something in the human spirit. It helped, of course, that Lee was also a terrific, inventive storyteller, with a pathbreaking insistence on seeing vulnerability, neediness, and sweetness in superheroes (Spider-Man was just a teenager who felt shy and awkward around girls).

But that wasn’t Lee’s secret sauce. It was his exuberance — contagious, joyful, defiant, and impossible to resist. When Peter Parker first meets the gorgeous Mary Jane Watson, the love of his life, her first words to him are these: “Face it, tiger … You just hit the jackpot!” For decades, one of Lee’s favorite words was “Excelsior!” In 2010, he offered a definition (on Twitter no less): “Upward and onward to greater glory!”

by Cass R. Sunstein, LARB |  Read more:

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