Excelsior!

So Stan "the Man" Lee died yesterday and it hit me a lot harder than I thought it would. I'm not typically the kind to get really upset of a celebrity death, though Prince and MCA both threw me at the time, and Lee was 95, so on an intellectual level, I knew he wouldn't be around much longer; but I still found myself close to tears for much of yesterday. It's been a bad year for me, emotionally, I lost my job  around April and didn't bother to watch out for myself afterwards. By September, I was self-harming and even had a close call with suicide. Things are better now, I start a new Student Counselling role in a couple of weeks and have been volunteering to give myself something meaningful to do. Then Stan Lee died and I kind of felt empty for the better part of a day. 

As a mental health worker, I know that everything comes back to grief and/or trauma sooner or later, but knowing that I'm experiencing grief and doing something about it are two different things. Despite my background in English Literature, I can think of few authors who have had as much influence over my life as Stan Lee and his many collaborators. Spider-Man comics where the first things I ever read, and I grew up in the boom period of Marvel Cartoons in the early 1990s. Throughout my entire life, I have read comics, and mostly Marvel Comics, and they have shaped the way I think and act. When I was a child, I wanted to be a superhero, as an adult, I advocate for social justice and try to save lives through my mental health work in suicide prevention. 

If it hadn't been for Stan Lee and the Marvel crew of the 1960s, I don't think superheroes and comics would be around in the form they are now, and certainly wouldn't have been as prevalent in my childhood. Despite taking credit for almost everything Marvel touched in the Silver and Bronze age, Stan was one of a team, but I think it gets forgotten that his being the face of the company in those halcyon days was a decision made by the management so that only Stan had to do the PR stuff that Kirby et al didn't want to do. Over time, Stan became not only the face of Marvel Comics, but the face of the genre. Batman and Superman may be the most recognisable superheroes of all time, but Stan Lee is the best known comic creator by a wide margin. 

Lee spent essentially his entire life in the comics industry, his creative efforts touching from the 1950s through to today. That's a hell of a legacy. Think of how many kids, too young to read, that run around in Spider-Man costumes, or how big the Marvel films are at the moment. It's not hyperbole to assert that without the Lee and Kirby-led boom of the Silver Age, none of this would exist. No MCU, no modern comics, no superhero film industry thanks to the success of Spider-Man, Blade and X-Men. No Lead Capes and my endless superhero miniatures project. 

Thank you, Stan Lee, I will miss you but cherish your continued presence in my life.