You've heard of Stan Lee, no?

Sex and death are intricately linked. You almost cannot have one without the other.

Comics is suffused with death-obsession and sexual imagery. I mean it almost puts E.A. Poe to shame, particularly if Poe had the sex-exploitation sensibilities of Joe Esterhaz.

I sometimes, briefly, wonder what it is about superheroes that these men and women at Marvel/DC are seeing that relates to their exploitation of sex and death?

I mean, sex and death are primary to most great literature. But isn't it painfully obvious to the writer/artists of Marvel/DC that superheroes are not great literary archetypes? Isn't the notion of a superhero a kind of "portal" to more complicated fictional worlds and characters?

Would Peter Pan's story benefit from the inherent knowledge that Peter had cut out Captain Hook's good eye with his little sword, and had f*cked Wendy in the a** prior?

••

Isn't that Alan Moore's next book?

I didn't make that comment to disparage the original post, and certainly
not Stan Lee. I meant it as it relates to a persistent theme in these parts,
namely that everything in the past is noble and beyond reproach, and
everything that exists today is evil and cynical. Nostalgia is all well and
good, right up to the point where it flies in the face of reality.

Stan was inarguably a talented, imaginative man who transformed his
industry. To pretend that he was not prone to hyperbole and self-
promotion is, at best, disingenuous. It seems a lot of people here hold
more modern writers and artists to a different standard, based not on
actual facts, but on a general disgruntlement with comics today.

Stan has said many times that he was once embarrassed to tell people he
wrote comic books. Does that now and forever tar him as someone with
disdain for the industry? He has made countless efforts throughout his
career to be in the movie business - efforts which included some really,
really bad interpretations of Marvel characters. Does that make him
someone who saw comics as a stepping stone to hollywood, or someone
who would bastardize the standard images of characters to make a buck?

He rather famously talked about Marvel being popular on college
campuses when they were not, and claimed a "New Marvel Age Of
Comics" when they were still nowhere near the sales of DC. Does that
make him a liar? I don't think so. I think he's a guy who has worked hard
and had a lot of fun in his industry, who wanted to expand his horizons
and make the most of his opportunities, and whose job it was to sell
comics. He is a man who sometimes made bad choices. He is a man who
sometimes made unfortunate comments. He is a man who sometimes
misremembers the way things happened. And yet, if any of those
scenarios were anyone other than Stan, you guys would be all over him as
some kind of creep, cashing in on your favorite characters. You guys are
angry that Bendis said "Sit back and watch us unveil a storyline like no
other"? Oh my God, that's about as Stan Lee as you can get!

Neal Adams LEFT comics to draw advertisements and movie storyboards.
Yet all you ever read on this board is how wonderful he was, but how
awful it is that current comic writers and artists want to leave comics
someday to make movies.

There is endless discussion here about "revisionist" movies that mess with
the "canon" to sell movie tickets. And yet, how much of what was "canon"
about the Superman you know and love was retconned by radio and TV?
Love that redheaded teen, Superman's pal, Jimmy Olsen? Great. Does his
casting as a dark haired 30 year-old Jack Larson in the 50s TV show
anger you as much as Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury? Does it piss you off
that the character was added to the comics only after becoming popular
on a radio show because it was sponsored by a breakfast cereal, and the
sponsor wanted kids on the show?

Look, I've been a member of this forum for something like 5 years now,
and I'm not stupid -- I know this rant will be met with "well, if you hate
this forum so much, why are you here." (At least, from those of you who
don't already have me on ignore.) But I really hope that at least one other
person on this board will take my comments for constructive criticism.

Everything different is not necessarily bad -- nor is it necessarily new. As
parents, some of us decry comics these days as being inappropriate for
kids. And I'm sure that none of them ever heard their own parents or
grandparents ask them why they were wasting their time with that junk.
Or telling them "you know those characters aren't real... I don't want you
jumping out a window because you think you can fly."

How about some perspective?

Edited by Sean Blythe on 18 November 2010 at 11:29am