Casual movie-goers may only know Stan Lee as the weird old guy who shows up in every Marvel movie, unaware that the kooky nonagenarian is the kaleidoscopic mind behind the crusaders that have come to dominate modern multiplexes. His past creations aren’t all we should be celebrating him for, however, as Lee remains at the forefront of the comic book industry’s move towards embracing more diverse perspectives, a problem with which it’s long struggled.
As a response to the bigotry displayed both in Charlottesville this past weekend and in our own White House since then, Lee shared a column he wrote back in 1968—the year the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. ignited a number of violent protests across the country—that, sadly, remains as relevant today as it was then. Published as part of his “Stan’s Soapbox” column, it emphasizes that “bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today” and that the only way to defeat a bigot is to “expose them—to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are.”
Read the whole thing below:
Lee also took a moment to celebrate the progress we are actually seeing, namely the arrival of Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther into the Marvel universe.
God willing we’re all that woke at the age of 94.