The Four Color Media Monitor

Stan Lee's turned 92 years old, and here's a rare 1988 interview with him at California's Wondercon convention. The most flattering part here has to be what Lee brings up towards the end, about the late Ronald Reagan:

The interview ends with Lee discussing plans to send then-President Ronald Reagan an original panel from the "Spider-Man" comic strip, after hearing that the President was a fan of the character, and asking him to hang it next to the Declaration of Independence, or an equally "humble sentiment" to that, Lee added.

How about that. Until now, I had no idea Reagan was a fan of Spidey, something I'm sure various leftists aren't impressed with at all, not even those working right inside comicdom already.

Having said that, there are some leftists who may say they're fans of Lee's, but have done more than enough to prove otherwise, like Tom Brevoort, mentioned in this Wash. Post article:

“There’s no question that Stan and the innovations he came up with saved the comic book and the superhero,” Tom Brevoort, Marvel’s senior vice president of publishing, has told Comic Riffs — noting that Lee and the artists he worked with “made me want to do this professionally.”

“By crafting characters with feet of clay and personal problems — and not writing down to an audience that was perceived to be primarily 8-year-olds — Stan opened the doorway for more sophisticated and interesting treatments of any subject matter in comics,” Brevoort said. “He made comics interesting and rel­evant and fun again.”

And what has Brevoort done this past decade? The exact opposite. He may have begun with decent taste as an editor, but by 2005, he was already on his way to writing down to the audience, and he talks that way too. It's head-shaking how people like Brevoort claim to be fans yet take only so many steps that contradict this. A most telling example is how they've marginalized Mary Jane Watson-Parker since One More Day, trashing a chance to make her one of the most recognizable civilian co-stars next to Lois Lane (who's also been marginalized by DC in the past few years). The company wide crossovers now dominating the MCU don't help matters either.

As great as it is to see Lee still going strong, and flattering to know Reagan was a Spidey fan in his time, it's very sad to see the people now in charge of Marvel doing considerable disfavors to Lee and the other past contributors who worked so hard to bring all these creations to onetime fans to enjoy.

Labels: bad editors, conventions, good writers, marvel comics, msm propaganda, politics, Spider-Man