Comic books are responsible for creating a curriculum of cheap thrills, gaudy pictures and simply constructed sentences that stunt the imagination of an entire generation, a journalist wrote in 1940.
Comics teach children to hate authority figures, a tool that leads to deviant criminal acts, and promotes sexually charged and lurid violent acts. These were other things 1940s journalists wrote about the young industry of comic books. The writers and artists retaliated by stating that any form of reading is a good thing for children to be doing.
"Stan Lee And The Rise And Fall Of The American Comic Book," was a book released in 2003, 15 years before Stan Lee died of natural causes on Nov, 12.
I acquired this book briefly from the Rohnert Park Library. It's a good read for any fan of comic books. Stan Lee, a Marvel Comic book icon was indeed a focal figure for spawning Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, The Silver Surfer and hundreds more comic book heroes and villains.
Time Magazine credited Lee as the creator of Spider-Man in 1998. Five years later, when this book was released, it stated that Lee was the co-creator of the webbed wonder. Lee tended to be a credit hog, but none the less, he was a skilled writer, artist, promoter and publisher.
Lee was smart, in the 1940s as an artist and writer for Marvel Comics he was one of the first to credit himself. Remember the many Marvel Comic book covers of 60s and 70s that were littered with Stan Lee presents...?
In the 40s, Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko were Marvel Comics for all intensive purposes. All three of these men drew and wrote original stories for Marvel Comics. Of course there were other writers and artist for Marvel, but these three men alone co-created Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Silver Surfer, and the dozens more that flourish on the big screen to this day.
In 1966, Ditko quit working for Marvel Comics and he was not happy at all that Lee received full credit for creating Spider-Man. Essayist Greg Cwiklik stated that Lee took too much credit as a writer. Many people in the comic book industry in the 1990s considered Lee to be irrelevant or the public image for a corporate bully (Marvel) rather then an underdog pop hero. That's what I really enjoyed about this book, written by two journalists, Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon, it's not all praise for Lee.
When I was 4-years-old in 1968, The Silver Surfer was introduced to the masses. Lee acknowledged that Jack Kirby was the creator of the Silver Surfer, which he was, but Lee made the cosmic wanderer poetic;
'Paradise unearned is but a land of ruins' Lee wrote for the Silver Surfer when the Beatles were still together.
In 1988, Lee also wrote the 64 page graphic Silver Surfer comic book, "Judgment Day," drawn by French artist John Buscema.
The Silver Surfer was Lee's favorite comic book character. The Surf man, also my favorite comic book character failed to find a sizable audience. The Silver Surfer was directed toward older readers and tended to have more pages and a higher price then other Marvel comic books. Lee said the Silver Surfer was a career high light for himself.
The 60s were the hey-day for Marvel, Spider Man was also created in that decade.
I lost interest in the book when it detailed business aspects, but Peter Paul, co-founder with Lee in the late 90s or early 2000s for Stan Lee Media, an Internet start-up company that turned out to be a financial scam headed by Paul.
Paul was on trail for the Stan Lee Media company that was shut down in the early 2000s. Lee was not much a business man, at meetings in the 90s, he said very little and often doodled during the meetings. Lee said about Paul, he'd never be so trusting again. Paul was still on trail when this book was published. Izzy Schurr, aka, Mark Schurr
