Stan Lee touched the lives of so many people. He and Jack Kirby were the pioneers of Marvel Comics that have spawned so many incredible stories and characters across the world. He’s one of the few celebrities that crushed me when he passed. But I’ll never forget the first time I read a whole X-Men arc. I was left in awe of how deep and intertwined the characters were, how nuanced the issues and battles they faced were. Nothing was purely black and white.
Professor X saw humanity through a hopeful lens, striving to achieve peace through lawful justice and diplomacy. Magneto had experienced the Holocaust firsthand, and sought only to protect his fellow mutants, through violence if necessary. The X-Men as a group were based on the struggles of the Civil Rights movement.
The nuance and depth of these characters sank into my soul and never left. I wouldn’t be who I am today without them. And one of the incredible things about these comics is they came from an incredible man who used his platform not only to publish incredible stories but also provide some poignant remarks through a periodical piece called “Stan’s Soapbox.” One particular entry I’d like to highlight is below.
This is just a piece of the man. There was so much more to him, but this one is probably his most famous “Soapbox” moments. And I was reminded of it this last weekend when I was seeing news coverage of an individual I won’t dignify in naming. This person was in the bed of a truck at a protest in Minneapolis, holding a sign that said “I love black people but I hate [N-word].” Deplorable on all counts. But that’s not exactly why I’m writing this. That just sets the stage.
At a certain point during the rally, a person dressed as Spider-Man jumped into the bed of the truck and began beating this individual. The rally quickly turned into a small riot, but for a few glorious seconds that have been immortalized across the internet, Spider-Man was saving the day.
One of my absolute favorite stories from comic history is more about tongue-in-cheek malicious compliance than an actual written story. And I have no idea how true it is, but I’m hopeful that it happened the way I was told.
In the 1970s when Donald McGregor was writing “Jungle Action”, one of the Black Panther’s first arcs, someone told McGregor to “put more white people in the story.” Donald, being a man of unshakable moral fiber, basically said “alright.”
The very next issue saw King T’Challa venturing to America to save someone and subsequently encountering the KKK. T’Challa then proceeds to beat seven shades of shit out of all of them and return to Wakanda unscathed. And there you have it; more white people in the story in the only acceptable response to racism.
Cover Penciler: Gil Kane
Cover Inker: Dan Adkins
Penciller: Billy Graham
Inker: Bob McLeod
Colorist: Petra Goldberg-Scotese
Letterer: Denise Wohl
Editor: Marv Wolfman
All this to say; racism has no home in this country. Stan Lee had it right when he suggested that violence is not the answer. And while this is absolutely not an endorsement of violence, the memory of Stan Lee lives on in all of us comic book nerds and Spidey fans out there, and I can’t overlook the novelty of a racist getting punched in the face by a man dressed as our Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler.
They fear what they perceive as different, and anything rooted in fear will eventually demand hatred to survive.
Pax et justitia