Comic books and music often go hand in hand, especially in the alternative music scene. Musicians across the music scene are mourning the death of Stan Lee, who helped create imagination in all of us with Spider-Man and Marvel Comics. In an interesting and intriguing post entitled What Marvel’s Stan Lee Meant To Me, Black Veil Brides vocalist Andy Black recently penned a story about what the highly influential comic book creator meant to him, both growing up, and the natural ties comics have to the greater counterculture. Having recently posted about Lee’s passing at the age of 95 on Twitter a few days ago, it’s no surprise that Andy Black was influenced by comics – so many of us certainly were.
“Stan Lee was also a person who stood for positive values. When the Comic Books Code was introduced in the 20th Century, it tried to ensure that comics weren’t ‘infecting the minds’ of the youth. This was something that forbid writers to do anything even remotely creative, and Stan Lee took a stand against it. He rebelled and said that you should be able to show kids these circumstances so that they have a better understanding of the world going into adulthood. It’s impossible to quantify the impact Stan Lee had as a creator on every level of pop culture.”
The article, made possible by Kerrang!, dives deep into the man himself – what Stan Lee stood for, ultimately, was positive values. It’s more than worth a read – check out the full article here.
“There are loads of people who themselves were influenced by Stan Lee who now inspire me, as well as Stan himself, of course. It would be impossible to create an emotionally-driven comic book character in 2018 without being influenced in some way by the work he did. In 2013, I watched a documentary about him, and he was talking about how new projects were his key to happiness – he created problems for himself to solve, and that kept him on the right track in life. At that time, I wasn’t thinking that way: I was going on tour, getting drunk and coasting through life, and watching that documentary about Stan had a huge effect on me. It made me realise that if I had the ability to do all these different things, why wasn’t I doing them? Stan Lee had a big emotional impact on my life, which is a crazy thing to say about a person I never even met and didn’t know personally.”
Sad to hear about the passing of Stan Lee. Not only was he instrumental in creating some of the most iconic & influential characters in the American literary canon, he seemed to be a genuinely kind, decent & caring person & that above all else is the greatest “super power.” RIP https://t.co/ZnpgvORLRM
— Andy Biersack (@andyblack) November 12, 2018
