Dr Mike Robinson ~ UL Communication

There were three Stan Lees: Stan the writer, Stan the promoter, and Stan the icon.

In 1939, a relative got Stanley Lieber what we would call a “gopher job” at Timely, the comic book company that became Marvel. Stan eventually worked his way up as a writer, publishing his first all text story “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge” in Captain America Comics #3 (1941). Stan Lee was the pen name he used then so that he could use his real name for the literary career he envisioned.

Even after Stan was drafted into the Army, he moonlighted for the company.

Already a successful writer, Stan’s real contribution came in 1961. The company had changed its name to Marvel by then, but Stan was tired of it all and wanted to move on. Assigned to write a superhero team book to rival DC’s Justice League of America, Stan thought about quitting rather than return to what he saw as very formulaic writing. Luckily, Stan listened to his wife Joan, who explained to him that this was his opportunity to do what he wanted to do. If his bosses didn’t like it, well he was going to quit anyway right?

This is when Marvel Comics became Marvel Comics. The team Stan came up with was the Fantastic Four. Co-created with artist Jack Kirby, the Fantastic Four were different. The FF were a profoundly human team when compared to the boring comradery of the JLA. The FF fought, squabbled, lived, and loved. The melodrama in their lives matched the cosmic worlds they explored.

As good as the FF were, this idea of human characters in superhuman adventures found its perfection in 1962’s Amazing Spider-Man (co-created with artist Steve Ditko). Spider-Man had the best supporting cast in comics ever and a rogue’s gallery of villains that is probably only matched by DC’s Batman. And, of course, Spidey taught us that with great power there must also come great responsibility.

Stan stepped away from writing, showing up more as “Stan the Man,” himself-created nickname. Stan had that knack for promotion. As a writer and later editor, he encouraged characters to move between books, thus cross-promoting the Marvel Universe. On his Stan’s Soapbox page, Stan called fans the “True Believers”. He always pushed the latest work by the company’s line as its greatest. Everything was exciting and new. Marvel felt like a place where one belonged. From time to time, Stan would also write some very progressive pieces about the importance of equality and understanding. And Stan visited many university campuses.

Stan wasn’t always careful in this aspect. This is the time where he sometimes let promotion carry him away. Working together creatively with others is always tricky and Stan did not always show his co-creators their due.

Still, this is how the icon was born. Stan left his traditional Marvel duties and became a kind of walking embodiment of Marvel. Stan had a distinctive voice. I grew up listening to him narrate a host of superhero cartoons. But his cameos in the Marvel Cinematic Universe made him visually distinctive, someone to watch out the way we used to search for Waldo in puzzles. I just saw him in Ralph Breaks the Internet. My son shouted his name.

Stan Lee died on November 12th . By all reports, he loved what he did in all three of his lives. There was much to learn from him, but I think that enthusiasm is perhaps the best lesson.

Dr. Mike Robinson, UofL Communication Studies Professor~

“How many times have you been to King’s Dominion?,” my mother asked me on the phone when I told her we were planning our latest trip.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “Maybe twenty?”

The number of visits is hard to calculate because eventually the trips blur together into the strange time that is nostalgia.  Internet sources say the place opened in the summer of 1975. So that must have been the year of my first visit.

I know my family went very early in the amusement park’s construction. Back then, Lion Country Safari was the main draw. The air conditioned comfort of a monorail ride was still a few years off, so we drove our relatively new Volvo station wagon through that zoo.  I remember a baby rhino gently brushing against the car as it walked by in a way that sounded like the end of the car’s paint job. My father had this kind of resigned look with a faint glimmer that at least this would be one hell of a story to tell later. Dad loved a story.  But amazingly, the car was fine.

Few attractions were open when we went through the zoo.  Jeeps were racing around in the area that would become the lake that took up a place of prominence in the park for many years.  I think there was some kind of petting zoo because I accidently stepped in pig excrement. Pretty awful as experiences go, but the clean-up was so horrible my mother never made me wear those dreaded black sandals again so that was a victory.

I probably went once per year after that.  My mother drove us until my friends and I were old enough to drive ourselves.  And I know that one summer, when Mom was away visiting family; Dad took me there for two days.  He talked me into riding the Rebel Yell, which was then the scariest thing I’d ever seen.

The annual tradition continued until I moved away for graduate school in 1991.  And of course, I’ve taken my own family many times since moving to this part of the world.  My daughter honed her eerie, nigh invulnerability to rides at Kings Dominion.

During this fall break trip we just took, I was keenly aware of the nostalgia factor.  My son is now roughly the age I was on the big two-day visit. And I got my boy to ride the Rebel Yell (now renamed Racer 75).  I think he was braver than I was on my first ride, although he denies it.

But Kings Dominion itself was also responsible for my walking reveries.  Amusement parks have found a way to extend their seasons by transforming into Halloween attractions at night.  The familiar opening area of the park before the Eiffel Tower replica is festooned with scary décor, including fake grave markers for the rides at the park that have since come and gone.

Perhaps it was fitting that I was walking around thinking of rides that no longer were there.  After all, Halloween is a time that marks a blurring between the worlds of the living and the dead, the present and the past.  Apparently, even coasters can have ghosts.