STAN LEE, boy ... the man gave me so much pleasure in my lifetime.

Dr. Strange spellcasting, or prophetic "Peace out, man"?

In the week of his death I got an urging to watch the movie Secretariat. Within the first fifteen minutes I was crying. Oh not for Mr. Lee. For the film.

When we are moved to tears by a film it's not because of the moment or the scene we're seeing there and then, it is the storytelling behind it, that led us to that moment or scene. 

See, good storytelling is an entirety that ushers you to emotional experience. But the movement is for the sake of the story, not for the sake of a scene or any specific moment.
What does this have to do with Stan Lee? you wonder. Well, they did call Secretariat the Superhorse (yes, yes, I know Superman is DC, but superpowers are just comicbooks, man).

Hungry for heroes

Stan Lee created, and leaves to be created upon, an invaluable legacy of good -- nay! -- SUPER storytelling that should never be forgotten.

Universities with literature or writing degree programmes should be formulating courses that deal specifically with the art, the craft of comicbook storytelling style.

Marvelous storytelling; and the cover of my own comic (right) bought in my teen years

I have always wanted to be a storyteller, like my grandmother and her grandfather before me. Situation pushed me to study visual arts instead, which I also deeply loved. Thus, to such as me, comics were the very bestest best to feast on: visual literature in truth.

I came up in a generation when "Girls don't read comicbooks!" unless it was Archie or those cute, thick-ankled kids like Richie Rich. But my burgeoning gypsy-child, Earth-mother, Amazon, witch-woman soul's earliest inclination craved for far more than Betty & Veronica could satisfy.

How many manifestly literary-living people got their beginnings "schooling" with comicbooks in their hands?

Reading enriched

For those who do not understand how a desire to read and an avid appreciation of literary works could be bred out of an early love for comics I'll reveal this much: the first time I read the word threnody was in a comicbook; the second time was in Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. 

Think about that.

Comics draw on the literature of fantasy and Science Fiction; also on Shakespeare and the romantics poets with their grand sagas and epics. This social art form played vanguard to diversity, drawing on myth and folklore from myriad cultures around the globe.

All of this built the legacy on which future visual and literal storytellers will construct legacies of their own.

This first page artwork of Storm in a storm blew my mind. I always felt inspired by the inside cover message.

There's much that has been said about Stan Lee: good, bad, etcetera. But people like me have to love him for his legacy and what he gave to our lives. 

The word legacy contains in it aspects of determination, foundation and influence. I was influenced by comicbooks. So many writers were, are, will be.

Comics also climbed out of that wellspring of most people's earliest exposure to storytelling: fairytales ... in which good overcomes great evil.

I think Stan Lee and company were artists who imagined, "What if it was great good overcoming great evil? What if the underdog heroes were not so underdog? What if they were mighty too?

And superheroes were born.

Thank you Stan. To wax most appropriately cliched, YOU THE MAN!