This is not my real post about Stan Lee. I haven't even started on it yet because, among other reasons, I keep getting calls from friends or from reporters who want to interview me about Stan. There's also this fire thing going on in my state affecting many people I know and care about. That's kind of distracting, too. We're still under a Too Much News Watch.
The trouble with having mixed feelings about someone is that there are those who just want to dwell on the negative ones. The last interviewer wanted me to really dump on Stan but before I fully realized that, we'd had a conversation that was about 95% positive from my end. The fellow's probably busy at this very minute trying to build his piece around the 5%. And me? I'm thinking maybe I should stop giving interviews for a while.
I am impressed with some of the posts I see around about Stan and how much he meant to so many lives. Is there anyone who doesn't have a photo of themselves with him? It's quite a contrast from when his old collaborator Steve Ditko passed away. Nobody had a photo of themselves with Steve.
Those of you who feel like I do that our friend Jack Kirby was wronged by credits in the past, please remember that (a) Marvel now credits Jack where for decades they did not and (b) a lot of people who are writing news stories about Stan today do not know the difference or the significance of "creator" as opposed to "co-creator." And the phrase "Hulk creator Stan Lee" does not mean that Stan was the sole creator of the Hulk, just as the phrase "Los Angeles Dodger Clayton Kershaw" does not mean that Clayton Kershaw is the only Los Angeles Dodger.
Also, while I'm at it: Joe Simon was not merely a writer who worked with Jack Kirby. When asked what he did and what Joe did, Jack used to say, "We both did everything except that Joe was better at dealing with business matters than I was." And there are some other errors in obits for Stan I'll try to address here later or tomorrow or sometime.