Simply because it should or must be done.
Stan Lee on heroes. (The Commonplace Book Project #23)
The Commonplace Project is a daily post based on Ray Bradbury’s advice to aspiring writers: read a poem, a short story, and an essay every day for 1000 days. These posts start with a quote and go wherever the rabbit hole leads. Follow The 1000 Day MFA so you don’t miss a thing.
“That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done, and because it is the right thing to do, is indeed without a doubt, a real superhero.” — Stan Lee, in an interview with CyberSpacers.
Also, in the end credits of Into the Spiderverse.
My husband and daughter and Zach and I went to see it tonight. We were the only people in the theater, which I think verifies that we really were the last Americans to see it.
It’s a good thing, too, because I laughed so hard through parts of it that I embarrassed myself. The only time I can remember laughing that hard is this one time when I was trying to tell Kevin a story that had the word “farthole” in it and I literally could not get that word out of my mouth.
It made me laugh so hard I literally couldn’t breathe. I have no idea why it tickled my funnybone so hard, but it did. For months after, my kids would use Alexa to drop in on me and just say the forbidden word to hear me lose it.
That’s how hard Into the Spiderverse made me laugh. A deep kind of belly laugh that gets worse if you try to stop it. If you haven’t seen it, you really should try to catch it on the big screen.
It isn’t a surprise, I guess, that Stan Lee was a storyteller from the start. In the book Stan Lee: The Man Behind Marvel, there’s a story about him winning a newspaper essay contest three times in a row — then being asked not to enter again so someone else could have a chance.
In the Army, during World War II, Lee had the official title of “Playwright” along with Frank Capra and Theodor Geisel — AKA Dr. Seuss. Their job was to write training materials.
I love the quote above. It’s so simple. A hero is someone who does good because it needs to be done. And I love that he used his substantial platform to do just that. Lee used his characters, his stories, and just his voice to speak out against bigotry throughout his career.
I loved this 1971 Rolling Stone article.
Stan Lee changed his name from Stanley Leiber — because he wanted to keep his real name for when he wrote “the Great American Novel.” He never did that. He did create characters that are still so relevant that sometimes it seems like every third story being told uses one of them.
He was a Hero Storyteller. That’s pretty kickass.
Today’s Poem:
The number 42 plays a part in the film Into the Spiderverse — in an Easter-eggy type of way. I’m not sure if it has anything to do with Jackie Robinson, whose player number 42 is the only one to be retired from all of major league baseball. It seems possible, at least, given Lee’s commitment to battling bigotry.
So, I found this poem and thought it would be perfect for today.
Jackie Robinson…an American Hero by Stanley Cooper
For Jackie, baseball was more than just a game He opened doors for Campy, Mays and others Number 42, now in the Hall of Fame Proved men of all colors could play in life as brothers
Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.
Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes and is the author of Viral Nation and Rebel Nation and the upcoming novel The Astonishing Maybe. She is the original Ninja Writer.
