Some disappearances are more difficult to digest than others. We may expect it and know that the person concerned is old, the shock is there. The news is even hard to believe. And yet, he left on November 12, 2018, four years ago, in Los Angeles. You will read here and there that he was 95 years old, but that he “will remain immortal by his legacy”. A cliche formulation found in various obituaries. But if there is a time when we can afford it, it’s for this dear Stan Lee, whose real name is Stanley Martin Lieber. We all have a history with the pope of comics, a link with his immense work. For some, he is this nice old gentleman who had fun making a lot of cameos in his own stories, like schoolboy winks. For me, as for others, it is above all a spiritual father who has changed our lives. And he started to shake mine up with Spider-Man. Probably before the Sam Raimi movies. Probably with the video game released in 2000, on which I lost many hours fighting against the Scorpion in ultra-pixelated settings. Probably with the animated series broadcast in the 1990s on TF1. Or maybe comics. It doesn’t really matter. The fact is that Spider-Man haunted my childhood in various ways. My first video game memory? The Spider-Man they bought me on PC, until my motherfucker brother broke the CD-Rom. One of my earliest action movie memories? Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. One of my first memories of an animated series, alongside Rugrats or Batman: yes, again and again, Spider-Man. In front of me, Peter Parker, the eternal high school student in glasses turned into a superhero. I dreamed countless times that one day I would be bitten by a radioactive spider. To have his powers. To be able to swing from building to building in a fluid and cool way, screaming like a maniac above the avenues of New York (which I had never walked on in my life). To be strong enough to beat anyone. To jump higher than ever. To have enough reflexes to grab a tray in the canteen without dropping either the apple, or the piece of bread, or the carton of milk and even less the cheese. If Spider-Man touched me so much, it’s that he wasn’t about a soldier or a multi-millionaire like so many other superheroes. I saw here a normal teenager, who lived an almost normal life, in a rather poor home, and transformed in spite of himself into this superhero who did not necessarily attack cosmic mega-villains, but who preferred to be “ your friendly neighborhood”. A role model who shone without forcing at school, did her best to help and thus became the best receptacle of powers – and therefore of “great responsibility”. And through him, I perceived themes that m have spoken. The fear of losing a loved one, the dilemma of getting revenge for a murder, the troubles of a teenager or a young student, financial worries… Basically, these issues make him so human. If this is one of Lee’s trademarks (we think in particular of the question of exclusion from society, central to the X-Men saga), none of his stories have been so close to readers. Yes, Spider-Man made me dream, but I also felt really attached to him. A much stronger feeling than for any other character, and this for a simple reason: it was Spider-Man who led me to discover the world of comics and superheroes and, by the way, the monstrous and inevitable contribution of Stan Lee to pop culture. A true author and creator of geniusCar Stan Lee has not only created heroes, he has invented universes in which it is so easy to immerse oneself, whether through paper, animated films or Hollywood blockbusters. The new generations are perhaps more linked to the MCU films, to the characters of Iron Man, Thor, Hulk or even Black Panther. The old ones are perhaps more attached to glossy paper or old series. Never mind how Stan Lee managed to touch us. The man created an entire section of our childhood with tight suits, saving punchlines and joyful victories. So yes, George Lucas and JK Rowling succeeded him brilliantly in this most difficult exercise, that of making entire generations dream, but Stan remains for me the first to have made these dreams come true. And who can claim to have shaped more than 360 characters who have marked culture forever? Who can boast of having produced a work on a medium initially rejected by all, comics, but which has since become one of the pillars of popular entertainment? Stan Lee was, is, and will be at the heart of my very personal definition of what pop culture is. If my love affair with these characters will never die, the father of part of my childhood has left me. It’s not just his superheroes who are orphans: we all have been, for four years already.
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