Chances are, if you’re a male over the age of, say, three, you’ve carried on the intellectual and philosophical conversation about what super power you would want to have. This is one of those “ready for life” questions every young man must answer, just in case. The list is endless. Telepathy, invisibility, invulnerability, time manipulation, mind control, the ability to walk through walls. Enhanced physical skills (like super strength and quicker reflexes), the ability to manipulate your environment (gravity or the weather). The power to grow younger or older, or the ability to change your shape. Women usually say they would want to fly. Seriously? With all those possibilities and more? A friend once suggested that the best power to have would be to make whatever you dream come true. But I pointed out that, if you saw a bank robbery in progress, you would have to go home, go to bed, relax enough to go to sleep and dream, and by this time the robbers would be gone and already spending their ill-gotten gains. And your arch-nemesis would just be some guy with a stick, poking you every time you looked like you were going to fall asleep.
But what would you do if you really had super powers? You still gotta eat. Would you use your super powers to help land a job? If you could read minds you could be the best short-order cook in the world! You would know what the customers want even before they come into the restaurant! But that would get pretty tedious. Marvel’s Luke Cage was the first super hero to successfully charge money for his services (in 1972), but let’s face it, super villains just don’t exist. So how would you use your incredible gift of unique abilities if there were no super villains to fight? Personally, I would probably just use my super powers as a way to get to see women naked.
One of my lifelong dreams has been to meet Stan Lee. This was from a time when I actually had life dreams, say age 10 or so. Even though Stan co-created all of Marvel Comics’ best known characters (including Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, The X-Men, Daredevil, and Dr. Strange) I think what endeared me to him was the way he endowed the other Marvel creators with silly nick-names and personalities and made it seem they were all one big happy family. Marvel was a company that made me feel that each and every thing they did was for me. Stan and all the guys (and gals) were just a bunch of happy-go-lucky people who created comic books just for my sake because they thought I was special. We were all a part of an “in-crowd” phenomenon called The Marvel Age of Comics, and it seemed Stan himself would love nothing better than to hang out with us, which he conveyed through his monthly “Stan Lee’s Soapbox” editorials and the frequent footnotes sprinkled throughout the comic books, peppered with phrases like “Face front, True Believer” and “’Nuff Said!” (it was the ’70s...).
I was browsing the internet one day last year when I saw that Stan was going to be at the Big Wow Comicfest comic book convention in San José. Stan was a healthy 90 years old, but had heart surgery a year before to install a pace maker. Since I now live less than an hour and a half away from San José, I figured now would be a good time to get to see him. I put off buying tickets, so I missed being able to pay Stan to sign something for me, but I did get in on time to pay $50 to get my picture taken with him! I told Terri “Could you imagine somebody actually paying you for the privilege of getting their picture taken with you?” I can’t even imagine.
The line started at one end of the convention center, went up the stairs, through the large lobby, up a long hall, back down through that same hall, through a room, down another hall, then you came to the room with Stan. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, facing a camera by the far wall. Everyone did as they were told, which was, as soon as the person (or people) in front of you move from Stan, move next to him, wait for the picture to be snapped, then MOVE AWAY! We were told they tried to get 10 pictures a minute. When my turn came, I couldn’t think of anything to say to Stan (The Man) Lee, and after the click of the camera, when I was ushered away, Stan said something to me (I didn’t quite catch it) and then he turned his head a bit and said “There you go!” I still couldn’t think of anything to say. We all want to be able to say something fiendishly clever when we meet our heroes, something that makes them say “Hey, that was fiendishly clever! Why don’t you come over to the house tomorrow night? We’re having spaghetti!” But sometimes it’s probably better to just smile. Which I didn’t get to do in this case. At least not to his face.
NEXT TIME; UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH STAN LEE!! DON'T MISS IT!! FACE FRONT, TRUE BELIEVER!! 'NUFF SAID!!