Originally published at: Look at how Stan Lee transformed himself into a real-life superhero | Boing Boing
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Stan is a chameleon, unless you were a fan you’d never know. Amazing is right !
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I have to give him credit. Not only did he work that 70s lounge lizard look better than most who tried it , but he pulled it into the subsequent decades and made it part of his personal brand. Excelsior!
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Completely true. I really just came here to say that this is what was known as the 70s. Stan may be a prominent example but this kinda happened a lot. There’s a reason the idea of the mid-life crisis really caught on.
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Man… I have not seen a younger Stan Lee before… my brain needs some time to adjust to this.
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Look at how Stan Lee was a supervillain.
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Steve Rogers, Peter Parker, Natasha Romanoff, Stephen Strange, T’Challa, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton, Peter Quill, Carol Danvers, and many more are all completely mortal (sometimes gifted, well-studied, or talented, sometimes not) human individuals who gain extraordinary powers or technologies.
Whereas DC tends to focus on demigods–Superman, Wonderwoman, Aquaman, etc.
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And thus Glorious Godfrey, minion of Darkseid, was born.
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Came here for this. Typical Holllywood behavior.
Speaking of his claim that Marvel characters made scientific sense, I remember reading a similar thing about Thor – Lee wanted the character to fly without using magic, so instead Thor used to fly by throwing his hammer really hard and just not letting go of it. So, you know, we’re not talking about science science here.
But I also completely get what he means; with Marvel, everything does have an explanation, provided you don’t even vaguely check their working. People routinely come back from the dead, grow new powers or totally change their appearance, but the reader’s always owed some explanation, which is why it feels like so much more of a complete world.
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I never realized he had a rug…I guess I missed the obvious.
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Marvel has three worlds - fantacised normality (Spider-Man), futuristic science (Fantastic Four), and Space (Guardians). They do a good job of keeping them in their area, and then get conflict by banging the edges together.
DC tends to always be giant in scope as the characters are almost always larger than life. DC also is far more optimistic, in general. DC sales always suffer when they go grimdark.
To further blend the edges of fandoms, DC is more of an aspirational view, like Star Trek, where as Marvel is more relatable, like Star Wars.
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Also, the messes don’t just go away. They affect future storylines. I guess the demigods have butlers to clean up after them?
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Nice to see Gzowski on screen again. I figure (being the savvy showman he is/was) Stan was intent on staying abreast of the times - he knew his audience & knew he had to present himself as the brand - and in those days (and still true today) all it took was one good tab of acid to completely re-chart your chosen path. Wearing a roadkill hat - well - that’s also a choice.
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Marvel comics are successful because they are about ordinary people who’ve been given superpowers. It’s a good approach, and one that seems to be absent from most movies featuring Marvel superheroes.
Have you watched any of the MCU films…?
I’m honestly surprised how long Alfred’s been gone. I’m not certain, but I believe he died previously and came back, but currently they went Bruce talking to a memory of him for a while because he’s super mopey without the grounding.
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If one ignores DC’s All Batman, All the time policy. 
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DC has the same set up:
Fantacised normality (Batman, Green Arrow, Hellblazer)
Futuristic science/magic (Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Swamp Thing)
Space/Cosmic (Green Lantern, 4th World, Dr. Fate)
Stan is the Chameleon??
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