Stan Lee Dies At 95

By Russ Burlingame

COMIC BOOK 

Legendary comic book writer and editor Stan Lee has passed away. He was 95.

Lee, the most celebrated figure in American comics, began his comics career in the 1940s and is widely credited with revolutionizing superhero storytelling by co-creating (largely with the late Jack Kirby) the Marvel Comics Universe in the 1960s.

Lee had a hand in the creation of Spider-Man, The Avengers, The X-Men and hundreds of other characters for Marvel and other publishers during the course of his career. As the face of the publisher for decades, Lee cultivated an image as the godfather of comics, and became the ambassador between comics and the outside world. At a time when most critics did not take the art form seriously, Lee was one of the first comics creators to speak at colleges.

As a result of his Marvel pedigree, Lee is also one of the highest-grossing film producers of all time, having been kept on as an executive producer for Marvel Studios films as well as those from Fox and Sony which feature characters from Marvel. There is a certain symmetry to that, since in the early days it was Lee who most aggressively pursued TV and movie deals for Marvel.

Over decades of such productions, Lee has also become the king of the cameo, appearing in dozens of Marvel-related film and TV projects. He can next be seen in Captain Marvel. Lee filmed a number of cameos with Avengers directors Joe and Anthony Russo prior to his death, so it is not clear when his final film appearance for Marvel will be.

It was Lee who famously pulled Marvel back into superhero comics in the early ‘60s, commissioning The Fantastic Four after his then-boss Martin Goodman heard DC honcho Jack Liebowitz talk about their success with Justice League of America. This came at a time when superheroes were a genre that had been on the brink of extinction for nearly a decade, but with the entire industry struggling, Lee and Goodman were determined to find hits where they could.

Following the success of The Fantastic Four, Lee would go on to play a role in the creation of dozens of titles and characters that would revolutionize the Silver Age of comics, ushering in a veritable Marvel Age.

He was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. Lee received a National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush in 2008.

Born Stanley Lieber in 1922, Lee was raised on Errol Flynn movies and dreamed of one day writing the “Great American Novel.” He joined the newly-formed Timely Comics in 1939 -- a partnership that would shape the pop culture landscape, as Timely ultimately evolved into Marvel Comics.

Interestingly, Lee was officially hired into comics by Joe Simon, who collaborated with Jack Kirby to create Captain America (although he was related to the publisher, so he had pretty good odds). Lee would shape the future of Captain America along with Kirby years later. At first, he mostly emptied Simon and Kirby’s ashtrays and filled their inkwells.

After a couple of years as a menial worker at the publisher, Lee graduated to some writing work, including a prose story featuring Captain America and some backup features, in 1941. Later that year, Lee -- only 19 years old -- took over as interim editor of the publisher following the departures of Simon and Kirby.

WHAT DOES 3D ANIMATION BRING TO ANIME THAT 2D DOES NOT

I don’t know exactly what you had in mind when you used the word Anime and Animation interchangeably. But some people have come to label the word Anime as a Japanese style Art-form, rather than seeing it as a truncated form of the word Animation itself.  But generally, I think that all the 12 principles of animation were fashioned after Traditional styles and as technology began to evolve come 2D & 3D, some subsets of Computer Generated Imagery, (CGI). So no doubt, animating in these later styles will also follow these principles. However since some computer applications are vector based, achieving some results in 3D can be faster because they follow both Mathematical and computational approaches. 

NARUTO

Take for example, the 11^th principle, which focuses on Solid drawing, in 2D achieving the right Volume, Weight and Balance is done by either shooting a reference and Rotoscoping the images frame by frame, or relying on the ingenuity of the artists to draw the objects from various angles. However in 3Ds or any Stop-motion animation, the models are first solidly built before commencing animation. Then animating the objects from all angles become faster. Even for some studios that claim to do only Traditional or 2D Anime, we sometimes see some lightly rendered 3D objects with pen outlines scattered at the backgrounds. This redundant task of manually achieving Solid drawings has been mitigated using 2- 3D hybrids for faster results.  

FIRST PERSON

WHY I WOULD NEVER EAT IN THE DARK AGAIN

“Hey, are you not a Nigerian? Or is that you don’t know where your mouth is again in the dark?” my cousin asked as insisted on having a light put on in the room before I eat, “better eat now,” he continued, “because you don’t know when power will be restored; besides your food is getting cold!”

I sat there at the dining table and watched the others ate in the dimly lit room. Then finally my aunt arrived with a candle in her hand. “Sorry Josh,” she said, “your uncle seems to be having some little trouble starting our generator set. Let’s hope power will be restored before it gets darker than this, but meanwhile let’s still manage the candle light.”She looked at my plate and observed that my food was still the way it was, then she asked, “But why are you not eating? You don’t like it?”

“Don’t mind Joshua mum,” my cousin retorted as he made some annoying sounds as his eating spoon made contacts with the ceramic plate. “He likes forming a lot, as if he isn’t the same Josh that left home for school less than four months ago.”

But all the while, I was mute. The dining table was now fairly lit and I could clearly see every thing that was on the table. So I picked up the spoon and shoved it into the bowl of the Jollof rice apportioned for me. Gradually, my mind went back to the event that happened to me at school, I smiled. 

It was late in the evening on that faithful day; and as usual some of the guys at my hostel went out to play football at sports center. Later that day we returned hungry and exhausted, as usual, after taking my bath, I brought out my cooking pot from the cupboard. I believe I was one of the smartest dudes at the hostel. I always made sure that I had something ready for dinner before I join others in any sporting event. So that day I had already prepared myself some few slices of yam and fried egg. I then hurriedly dished some for myself and put in on the table. But as I was about to settle down to eat one of my colleagues knocked on my door. Immediately I heard his voice I hid the plate of food under my iron bed, I was famished and wasn’t ready to share any portion of it with anybody, besides I already knew what he had came for. Earlier that day in class he had already pleaded to come late in the evening to borrow one of my textbooks and I obliged – one act of generosity a day was enough, I reasoned. I urged him to come in as I began to search for the text book in my locker. But shortly after, the light of the hostel went off, it was around 8:30 PM; however I was lucky enough to have spotted it some few seconds earlier, so I picked it up and handed it to him in the dark, then he left and I was relieved. It was my room, so navigating through it was not an issue for me since I understood all its nooks and crannies - even in the dark! 

HAPPY TEACHER'S DAY!

DAD'S FAILED PROMISE

RAM & ROM