Stan Lee – Mythologist, Bard and Hero

 Let’s talk about Stan Lee; I cannot measure the debt I owe this man, or express how sharply I feel its significance, and though I never met him in life, I hope to see him on the misty shores of the blessed isles, beyond the western shore, on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, or walking in Elysium, a hero among heroes in the emerald heavens beyond.

 Long live The Man! Stan Lee! Huzzah!

 Stan Lee saturated my imagination, imprinting it with cheap-ink on cheap paper, nuance-free, in a three-color-process.

 In those pages he taught that with great power comes great responsibility. He taught that it is always okay to punch a Nazi…he taught us that it is the duty of free people everywhere to fight against tyranny, and that it is the responsibility of America and Americans in particular to stand up against the divisive powers of Hate and Nationalism, of Jingoism and Fascism wherever they fester.

 Stan Lee introduced everyone who read his comics to the classical worlds of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, he introduced us to Jung, Einstein and Heisenberg. He showed us that the fight for civil rights includes the rights of all people, and that the good guys are on the side of tolerance, justice and love. He called on us to look out for our friends, to try to understand what they are going through when they are struggling, and to include in our group people who are different from us: including the quiet, the shy and the meek…and all of those who are otherwise marginalized.

 He taught us that there is a power hidden in everyone, waiting to be expressed, and that our powers sour among the alienated but flowers among friends.

 Stan Lee schooled us; he showed us that even mutants should be loved and respected, and protected in a world full of people who hate and fear them, from those who would persecute them without regard for their humanity. He encouraged us to identify with them, to see within ourselves the outcast, the disenfranchised…as an outsider. He insisted that we have an obligation to secure their rights, and that this is the surest way to safe-guard our own.

 We are to do so by any means necessary.

 Stan Lee opened my eyes to the cosmos; through his imagination I took flight.

 I went surfing with the Alien, we journeyed to the heart of a singularity, traversing dimensions of thought beyond time…he taught me to pursue the meaning of life, grasp the nature of reality, and discover its purpose…or assign one to myself.

 In the final analysis Stan Lee taught me the cold truth: there is no solution to the existential dilemma, that the galaxy and the universe itself is a cold place, indifferent to our drives and desires, but that human beings have a choice, and that the courageous choose to serve the good.

 He teaches in the tradition of the great masters, that we do not have to follow our appetites or be consumed by them…he taught us that the greatest thing we can aspire to is to love, and to be loved in turn. He taught us that friendship matters more than power, more than beauty, more than anything.

 Stan Lee, was the bard of our day, overflowing with the gift to inspire; it was his own super-power.

             To him I say:

 Excelsior!