Stan Lee made comic books great again
If there was one character who was omnipresent in the Marvel comic books universe, it was Stan Lee. Lee, who died on Monday, defined an exuberant, confident American era that seems to have vanished along with him. A member of the World War Two greatest generation, he played a decisive role in making comic books great again, starting in the 1960s, when he sought to reinvent the moribund genre with characters who bickered with each other when they weren’t worrying about their love lives. [caption id="attachment_10404225" align="alignleft" width="269"] The Amazing Spider-Man #18[/caption] Gone was the sterility of DC’s Superman, a paragon of perfection, to be replaced with ironic detachment and human foibles. Sometimes heroes were scared.
