For those unfamiliar -- here's the poem in question:

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                                              Percy Bysshe Shelley

I'm glad to see the text of this poem; I think I last read it in freshman English back in college. Entirely possible I'm misremembering its intent.

From what I read online, it seems Shelley associated Ozymandias with Ramses II, who had quite a time as pharaoh in ancient Egypt. The arrogance of power certainly meshes well with Adrian Veidt.

Off on a tangent: Something that struck me in the last few days-- have the creators of characters ever told "a story that should never be told"? I'm sure there are examples out there but am curious if anyone can recall any.

A newspaper strip is not a comic book. It has different rules and needs.

Does anyone here actually LIKE the marriages of Superman and Peter Parker?

Spidey as a husband seems a set-up for an inevitable spouse death, probably at the hands of whomever is the "Goblin of the week". I see the Superman wedding as something that would be fodder for a one-issue of Julius Scwartz-era Lois Lane, not a logical part of continuity.

Someone dress me down here..tell me why I'm wrong.

And he was really surprised when it "slopped over" into the comics. Stan was writing the strip, at the time, as a soap opera, and he felt having Peter and MJ older and married would better serve that purpose. He didn't expect the comics to follow his "lead".