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DixonLyrax t1_j239p1w wrote

Reply to comment by CheddahFrumundah in Stan Lee, 1987. Today is his 100th birthday by BlackMoldComics

The Superhero genre perhaps, the medium would have been fine without him.

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CheddahFrumundah t1_j245zjs wrote

Idk man, after what the CCA did to them EC boys, superheroes kinda saved it it seems. That said though grain of salt, my ass wasn't alive and checking newsstands in the late 50s, so if you know better I'll take your word for it.

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DixonLyrax t1_j249um5 wrote

It was a DC book that kicked off the Silver Age of comics with Showcase #4 in 1956. Fantastic Four #1 didn't debut until 1961 and it took more than a decade before Marvel comics sales overtook DC. Stan had given up writing full time by then. For the vast majority of his career at Marvel he essentially functioned as a brand ambassador and pitch man. US comics got stuck in a weird superhero monoculture for a couple of decades. Meanwhile over in France, Japan and Korea there was a full scale mass market comic book revolution that eclipses the US industry in scale by an order of magnitude. Stan was important for sure , but his greatest production was himself.

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