Stan Lee: Superhero

Stan Lee rules. For lots of reasons. Okay, lots and lots of reasons. And one of the most important ones is that he’s kind of a superhero himself -- a man who looked at a world full of bigotry and decided to take it on.

If comic book characters like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man seem a tad different, their creator Stan Lee says that's the point.

"The thing I had in mind was to make it a story against bigotry of all sorts, because here were people who were certainly different than everybody else, but they were good, they were trying to do the right thing," Lee tells the San Francisco Chronicle in Sunday's editions.

"But as so often happens in real life, if you have a different religion, a different country, a different sexual orientation, whatever the difference is, people -- not all people, but it happens -- are going to dislike you, distrust you, fear you."

I'm not exaggerating when I say that I believe The X-Men is one of the most important pieces of work ever created about fighting bigotry, and I will always be grateful to him for it.

(Crossposted at Shakespeare's Sister.)