STAN LEE - A TALE OF ELDER ABUSE

STAN LEE - A TALE OF ELDER ABUSE

Hot take, Stan Lee died today and well, we can't say we didn't see it coming. His wife, who he was madly in love with and married to forever now passed away not too long ago and well, when one goes like that, the other is soon to follow.  But another hot take here - Our hero worship for Stan Lee was a bad thing and he had a terrible last remaining years because of it.

Yeah, I said it. For the better part of the last decade or two, Stan Lee was paraded around comic book conventions by his handlers long past the time when he should have. At the risk of dragging him around basically what should have been a young man's tiring schedule for the sake of charging you a boatload for an autograph and a picture, he was basically put through elder abuse.

It wasn't long ago that his caretaker was charged with mistreatment of the guy. Then again he kind of deserved to be treated like a piece of shit. I know, I'm going to get a lot of shit for saying so, but wax nostalgic all you want, but Stan Lee was a serial molester and they couldn't get nurses to take care of him anymore because he kept sex creeping on all of them. So, like, literally a dude worth 50 million couldn't get anyone to take care of him anymore, but hey, no one got mad at that because he's old and that's acceptable when you created Thor and Iron Man and scream Excelsior a lot.


Yes, we all cheer whenever you see an "easter egg" of him pop up in the latest Marvel films. And I'm sure some will say that the next wave of films and no other phases will be the same without the senile old man popping in and screaming out Excelsior. But you know what, it will be fine. I'm glad that he's no longer going to have to be dragged out and paraded like that.  "But he liked being in front of and with the fans!"  Yeah, you may think that, but the dude was totally mentally checked out. When I met him in the late 90's, he was not there. I can't imagine what time has done to him in that department. Hell, he even wrote David on my Spider-man movie poster. I mean, sure, I'm not bitter at all still on the fact that he basically ruined my world trade center poster of that. But hey, here we are.

It just highlighted the fact that we saw less as a person and more of a prop. We even attribute so many creations on him that were not even that.  Captain America - NOT HIS CREATION.  Seriously folks, stop with this. Kirby and Simon were the creators of that man. Shit, Stan Lee was just a goddamn assistant at that point. He even said that he was just getting them lunch.

The Silver Surfer? Also not his creation. At that point Stan Lee was writing so many books that he would give Kirby the basic plot details of what the book would have and then Kirby would draw it out and fill in the gaps. Kirby created Silver Surfer when Lee told him about the story of Galactus. In fact, Lee didn't even know about the Silver Surfer's existence until it hit newstands and he literally said  "What the hell is this guy?"

All Kirby. And that's the biggest tragedy of the day. The fact that we are going to gloss over even more the contributions of other creators and lump it all on Stan Lee. I will not deny that Stan Lee was a giant in the comic world. That he had a hand in creating some of the most loved comic creators. But for fuck's sake, he did a huge disservice to all the other creators of his era and just took the entire credit for everything and that's pretty fucked up. I'm just left wondering what Kirby quote will be on Stan Lee's tombstone. 

Besides, we all know Comic book characters just never die. Give it six months and we'll see a story about how he made a quick  deal with Mephisto and he's back. Just you watch, TRUE BELIEVERS!

Oh yeah, don't forget... Stan Lee's example of hero creation can be seen for the Spike Network in Striparella, staring Pamela Anderson. Yes, this is who we are worshiping and who folks don't believe is a creation thief. Yeah, I don't get it. Now how long until Facebook gets saturated with edits of Stan Lee disappearing into dust ala 2018's box office hit Avengers: Infinity War?