100 Greatest Human Beings Who Ever Lived: #76 Stan Lee

Greetings, True Believers! We now reach the Greatest Human Being Ever to Live and Be Involved in the Comic Book Business, Mr. Stan Lee. Yes Superman is certainly the biggest icon of popular culture to emerge from comic books, and everyone does seem to love the Dark Knight, but the cultural and social impact that the creations of Stan Lee have had are almost immeasurable. To wit, an abridged list of characters Stan Lee either created or was a co-creator of:

• Spider-man
• The Fantastic Four
• The Incredible Hulk
• Iron-Man
• The X-Men
• Thor
• Dr. Strange
• Daredevil
• Striperella

Okay, so maybe he shouldn't be so proud of that last accomplishment, but still. That is an impressive list. What's more impressive is that he actually had a social conscience in writing these titles. He famously defied the Comics Code's ban on doing stories involving drug use when he did a Spider-man story where Spidey's best friend acquites a pill problem. Doing so caused the tight-asses at the Comic Book Authority to loosen the hell up and comic books are probably better off for it. Lee also neglected to condescend to his readers, using sophisticated vocabulary in his stories and responding to critics of this practice by saying, "If a kid has to go to a dictionary that's not the worst thing that could happen."

What's more, Stan's creations are all pretty deep and meaningful, especially considering how shallow and pulpy comic books tended to be up to that point. Spider-man is an angsty teenager, dealing with the death of his uncle. The Incredible Hulk tackles some of our worst nightmares about the dangers of nuclear radiation. And the X-men is an absolutely transparent allegory of the struggle for civil rights with Professor X and Magneto cast in the roles of Martin and Malcolm respectively. I think X-Men in particular continues to speak to people today, especially as we have right-wing, Evangelical Christian lunatics running around casting aspersions on gay people. Think of some of the anti-mutant rhetoric by some of the baddies in the old X-Men books and just substitute "fag" for "mutant" and I think you'll find that Lee could very well have been writing about gay people in the 21st Century.

But when I think of Stan Lee, I think most fondly to his extended cameo in the Kevin Smith classic, Mallrats. To this day, I, like Brodie, continue to wonder, is the Thing's dork REALLY made out of that rocky stuff or not?

The 75th Greatest Human Being Who Ever Lived was one of history's greatest generals. And he also apparently REALLY loved to eat pussy, too.