It's hard to write about someone as beloved as Stan Lee was, especially over a week after his dead without restating something thousands, if not millions of other people have already said.
But given how much time I have spent consuming and enjoying comic books either featuring characters he created, or written by Stan himself, it would feel wrong to not even acknowledge the passing of someone who was not only a certified industry titan, but someone who had a profound impact on my life as well.
I'll spare anyone reading this the details of the impact Stan had on my life, because I really don't want to make this about me, but I do want to share a lot of the things that I observed about Stan that really enabled me to connect to him somehow.
Prior to Stan, superheroes could only be square-jawed, adult white guys, while gangly, awkward kids could only be sidekicks, and black people could only be peripheral characters, if they were there at call. Everyone knows how Stan changed the game by introducing the world to characters like Spider-Man, the X-men, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and the Black Panther to name a few, but what not everyone talks about is how, by making so many, if not most of his heroes outsiders of one kind or another, he connected with millions of outsiders all over the world. That's what I connected to, and that's what I'll always remember him for.
Excelsior!
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