- I've told this story so
often it might even be true. I can't remember. - [Scott] I grew up with a very nerdy dad who got me into comics and
superheroes from a young age. I remember when the Spider-Man and X-Men movies came out and I
was immediately entranced by the world of superheroes! And I didn't know why,
but my dad would chuckle every time he saw a certain old man pop up in those films. It didn't matter because
the powers, the costumes, the exciting, fantastic
adventures showcased in these heroic tales
were all so enchanting. I would later learn that
that seemingly random old man co-created nearly every
character that profoundly influenced my life up to that point. - I thought he'd be taller. - Not just the heroes like
Spider-Man and the X-Men, but the villains too! Gang, Mysterio of all
characters legitimately changed my life! Seriously, but that is
a story for another day, the point is that, as I'm sure
he was for countless others, Stan Lee was directly
responsible for my love of superheroes, and I had to meet him. Stan Lee was, in every sense of the word, a capital C, Creator. Alongside his frequent
collaborators like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and many other talented artists and writers,
Stan's mind shaped worlds that, in turn, shaped ours. His writing has permanently carved its way into our culture, whether through the tiniest panel on a
page or in the largest silver screen productions ever attempted. It's impossible to know
just how many lives Stan impacted through his work in comics, and through his life as
a genuine human being. I gotta be honest with
you, the news of Stan Lee's passing still hasn't
fully sunk in yet for me. I haven't had the time to
stop and reflect on it. So that's what I wanna
do here in this video. Take the time to slow down and process this mental hurricane of
thoughts and emotions, while also shining a spotlight
on how Stan Lee wrote comics. What made his brand of
storytelling so unique? So, here goes nothing. 1961. The Fantastic Four was introduced. Actually, can we go back a bit further? It's important for context. Thanks. 1938. Action Comics #1 premiered
featuring a funny-looking guy in blue tights and a bright red cape. The cultural reaction was-- - It's a bird!
It's a plane! It's Superman! - Well, you know. (majestic music) Superhero comics quickly
became the new thing as artists and writers
started churning out colorful characters faster than
readers could keep up with. All publishers needed was
for one or two to stick, and sure enough, more than a few did. It truly was the Golden Age of Comics. But, a lot of these stories
were a bit, emotionally simple. Most of the popular
superheroes at DC Comics, for instance, were pretty one-dimensional. Superman was the big blue boy scout, Batman the dark, vengeful detective. Don't get me wrong,
these were great stories, but the characters lacked
that broad range of emotion you and I experience every day. Then, 1961. The Fantastic Four was
introduced to the world! Famously, these were
characters that Stan Lee co-created as he was
on the edge of leaving the comics industry for good. But then his wife Joan stepped in. - And then when Stan
was almost ready to quit doing comics, he decided
that that was enough, that's when I said to him, do it your way, sweetheart, do it exactly your way! - [Scott] The result was
a team of superheroes with complex emotion. They loved each other,
they hated each other, they supported, respected, and
could not stand each other. This was a team who fought with each other and fought with each other. The Fantastic Four earned
the moniker of Marvel's First Family because
that's exactly what it felt like reading their stories. And this injection of emotion was brought to other Marvel projects as well. The Incredible Hulk
wasn't just stories of an angry, smash-tastic monster. Bruce Banner was tormented by his transformations into the green behemoth. Even Hulk could be calm
or curious depending on the situation. On any given day, the
X-Men could struggle with feeling either proud or
ashamed of who they are, resulting in difficult
personal and political questions regarding
mutantkind's place in the world. Then, of course, there's Spider-Man. - I've told this story so
often it might even be true. - So I put it on my bucket list to meet the comic book legend, Stan Lee. Literally, I made a genuine bucket list in high school with dozens
of ridiculous personal goals like mastering the art of the yo-yo? Seriously? Guess I got to get to work on that one. (rock music) Either way, right in
the middle of the list was this, Meet Stan Lee. However, as the years kept passing, I wasn't sure if I was ever
going to shake the hand of the man who influenced my life so much. But I kept holding on. Maybe, maybe some day. There's a lot that made
Spider-Man different than the superheroes who came before him, but arguably the most
significant factor that made the web-head standout was that he was a teenage superhero. Before Spider-Man superheroes were almost exclusively adults, and
if there was a teenager, they'd be relegated to
the role of sidekick. Not only did introducing
a full-fledged teenage hero give readers a
character that may have been easier to relate to,
I mean that's literally the whole point of other
heroes having sidekicks to begin with, but it
also allowed Stan Lee the opportunity to infuse even
more emotion into the story. I can only speak for
myself here, of course, but I remember my hormonal teenage years feeling like my brain
was continuously flooded with every feeling all the time always. Swinging between emotional extremes like, well, like Spider-Man. I mean, just take a look
at Amazing Fantasy #15. Held within a single page
of Spidey's first tale, we see Peter Parker's
love for his Aunt May and Uncle Ben, the pride
he takes in his studies, the rejection and humiliation
he faces at the hands of his classmates, and
seeds of his vengeful ego. After acquiring his spider powers, that self-serving mindset
stuck around as Peter let a thief pass him by. Why bother? Now that he has powers, he only needs to look out for himself. What a ridiculous, frustrating
prick of a superhero. And this is the brilliance
behind Stan's writing here. He sets Peter up like this to fall hard. You know the story. One night as he's headed
home, Peter notices a police car parked in front of his house. And once again, we observe the medley of emotions that Peter experiences. He's stunned and heartbroken to learn that Uncle Ben has been murdered by a burglar. His grief turns rapidly
into anger as he demands to know who the killer is
and where they are hiding. Spider-Man is fuming with
rage when he confronts the man who murdered his uncle. But upon the revelation
that the criminal is the same thief that Peter
let slip by earlier, his rage morphs into
shock, guilt, and shame. This sweeping range of
emotion was dealt out through just 11 pages. In Stan's essay from the
book, What Is A Superhero, he outlines why creating
characters with realistically complex emotions and
relationships was vital to his entrancing superhero tales. - [Narrator] I try to
make the characters seem as believable and realistic as possible. In order to do that, I
have to place them in the real world, or, if
the story is set in an imaginary world, I have
to try to make that imaginary world as realistic-seeming as possible, so the character
doesn't exist in a vacuum. He has to have friends, enemies, people he's in love
with, people he doesn't love, just like any human being. The contrast between him and his power and the normal world is one
of the things that makes the stories colorful and
believable and interesting. - As time moved on, I was
beginning to accept that it just wasn't in the
stars for me to meet Stan. It's not a big deal. It's not. But then, for literally
no reason I can think of, I was invited to the premiere
of Captain America Civil War. Why was I there? I'm nobody! It doesn't make sense! Either way, it was a surreal
experience to say the least and my life has only gone
downhill since that day. But while in the carpet in the distance, I could see Stan Lee rapidly approaching. Or, as rapidly as a man
in his 90s could approach. This was my moment. This was my likely one
and only chance to meet the man whose work changed my life, look him in the eyes, and
give him my humble thanks. (heart beats) And I missed it. It's not just the emotion
that made Stan's writing stand out in the comic world. I mentioned this before in my video about supervillain monologues,
but Stan Lee loved to somewhat pretentiously
show off his rich vocabulary through excessive dialogue and captions he'd pen in the
pages of superhero stories. In this pretty uncomfortable interview on Alan Thicke's short-lived late-night talk show Thicke of the Night... - [Alan] So this is something that our children are reading, Stan. - Well you're making me
feel incredibly comfortable. - [Scott] Stan revealed his reasoning behind his verbosity. - Without trying to be
overly dramatic, which I love to try to be, comic
books basically are probably the last
bastion, the last defense against the creeping illiteracy occasioned by television,
because, as you know, most kids will spend as
much time as possible in front of a TV set. You can't get him to read. But, you take a Marvel
comic book and put it on the coffee table between the youngster and the TV set, and slowly,
but surely he will grab that book and pick it up
and look at those ridiculous pictures and be fascinated by it. Now, in order to know what's happening, he's gotta read the words. And even though he doesn't
want to read particularly, before he knows it he's
enjoying the story. I might add, also, and
I don't want to get too sticky about this, we're
still talking about comic books, but we use
college-level vocabulary. If we wanna use words like proselytize, misanthropic, we go ahead and we do it! And we don't worry about the young kids. And we find that they
enjoy the stories as much as the older ones, but we've encouraged an entire older audience to read comics too. - Stan understood that,
yeah, kids might read comics, but that's no excuse to
dumb down the vocabulary. You look at a book like Lee
and Kirby's Avengers run, and you have Iron Man talking about transistors and other electronics, Ant-Man and Wasp researching chemicals and isotopes, Captain America
reflecting on his painful memories of the war,
not to mention Thor who speaks in a sort of old
english, Shakespearean tongue. Like Thor uses the word
stygian here which just means extremely dark, but it's also funny because the term itself
comes from the Styx river of Greek mythology. This is a sequence between two Norse gods casually dropping references from a completely different mythology. Calm down, Stan! Stan jumped at any opportunity to write extravagant dialogue,
never fearing that large or unfamiliar words would
scare away young readers. He didn't write for children. He wrote for everyone. Filling stories with powerful emotion and the colorful language
necessary to communicate it. I was way too nervous and
Stan just walked on by. I tried to play it off
like it was no big deal, you know because it wasn't, it wasn't. Yeah I kicked myself for that one. But, thankfully I wasn't there alone. My friends, who were also there with me saw how much it meant to me and started rallying people to get
Stan to come back around and take a photo with me. The interaction was brief,
but I got to tell him thanks for everything and that was enough. - I've told this story so
often it might even be true. I can't remember. - That's my favorite quote from Stan Lee. It's a line that he said
often when recounting stories from his past, and I think
it's precisely the right mindset to have when
approaching one's own history. Here, he said it while explaining how he co-created Spider-Man, a
story that he's presented in almost the exact same
wording every time he told the tale, which is a tad suspicious. In fact, if you go through
interviews and books, you can see that nearly
every story Stan Lee told about his time in the comics industry is written in the same identical language, like he's reciting one of
his comic book scripts. As someone who cares
about historical accuracy, this is a pretty frustrating
quality about Stan Lee, but he was a storyteller
through and through. Never really caring about
the boundary between fact and fiction so long as
the audience was captivated. And on some level, I get that. Did my story about meeting Stan Lee happen exactly the way that I presented it? I honestly don't know. I've told that story so
often, it might even be true. I can't remember. Honestly, I didn't want
to make this video. And I'm still worried about uploading it. I don't want it to seem
like I'm putting this guy up on a pedestal like he's
some sort of faultless being. But we're all just trying
to put more good out into the world than harm and I think Stan Lee is far ahead on that score. Through his boundless creativity, unshakable positivity, and endless love for misfits and outcasts
through which he was able to explore the depths of humanity, Stan Lee left this world
in better condition than how he found it, in my opinion. He wielded great power and understood the responsibility that came with it. And although that iconic closing line of Spider-Man's first
story will unquestionably be the quote that Stan is
remembered for the most, I think what he wrote directly after that is even more meaningful when we look back at the legacy of Stan Lee. - [Narrator] And so a legend
is born and a new name is added to the roster of
those who make the world of fantasy the most exciting realm of all! - [Scott] Thanks for watching. I know this was kind of a different video than what I normally do,
but I just wanted to get all my thoughts out there. If you're wondering
who voiced that line at the end just then, it was
Geoff from Mother's Basement who also released his
own video very recently about how Stan Lee impacted
the world of anime. It's absolutely fascinating
and definitely worth a watch. Link in the description, Geoff was also the person who
convinced to make this video so if you liked it, if you
like whatever this was, maybe go over to his video
and leave a nice comment. And as always with these kinds of videos, I won't be putting ads on them so the only reason I was able to make this was because of the support that we
get over on Patreon. And so for the last time this
year, I would like to thank Cristoffer Lange, Lori
Thames, Everett Parrott, John Duffy, Jonathan and Megan Pierson, Jonathan Lonowski, Sonali
Manka, Amanda Trisdale, Ariella Kelley, Dave
Weston, Devin Gosselin, Elisabeth Diamond, Felix
Otto Hoeller, Jonat Campos, KayleeKez, Luis Orozco, Matias
Tironi, Michael Lipinski, Shawn Griffin, Ali K,
Aragix Spel, Bart Labeda, Bjarki Steinn Petursson,
Chris Osborne, David H Adler, David Holley, Denny
Sandberg, Dr Trace Belcher, Jamie Price, Jeff Dumas, Jenny Huapaya, Matt Valentin, Matthew
Jeanos, Matthew Pruitt, Natalie Englund, Nathaniel
Naranjo, Stephen Temple, Tim Shannon, Will Padilla, Zach
Van Stanley, Zachary Bahar, and the rest of the wonderful
nerds who support these videos over on Patreon.com/NerdSync. Your support means the world to me. Once again, I highly
encourage you to check out Geoff's video about
Stan Lee and his impact on the world of anime,
it's super interesting. Or you can watch this playlist of videos about other parts of Stan Lee's history. And if you're new here,
consider subscribing. My name is Scott, reminding
you to read between the panels and grow
smarter through comics. Excelsior!
