George RR Martin says goodbye to Marvel legend Stan Lee

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• “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin said goodbye to
  Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee on Friday in a blog post.
• Lee died at the age of 95 on Monday.
• Martin said his first published piece of writing was a letter
  in an issue of a “Fantastic Four” comic by Lee and artist Jack
  Kirby when he was 13.
• “Comics as we know them today would not exist except for
  Stan Lee,” Martin wrote. “They might not exist at all, if truth
  be told.”

One legendary creator said goodbye to another on Friday.

George R.R. Martin, author of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels
that HBO’s “Game of Thrones” is based on, said goodbye to Marvel
legend Stan Lee in a heartfelt blog post. Lee, the former
president of Marvel Comics who co-created iconic characters
Spider-Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, and more, died on Monday at the age of
95.

In the post, titled “Farewell to a
Marvel,” Martin wrote that he owes “so much” to Lee,
because his first published piece of writing was a letter printed
in an issue of the “Fantastic Four” comic book when he was 13
years old. Martin said he compared Lee to Shakespeare.

“He was, in a sense, my first publisher, my first editor,” Martin
wrote. “‘Dear Stan and Jack.’ Those were the first words of mine
ever to see print. In the letter column of FANTASTIC FOUR #20, as
it happens. My first published loc, a commentary on FF#17,
compared Stan to… ah… Shakespeare. A little overblown, you say?
Well, okay. I was thirteen…”

He continued: “And yet, and yet… the comparison, when you think
about it, is not entirely without merit. There were plays before
Shakespeare, but the Bard’s work revolutionized the theatre, left
it profoundly different from what it had been before. And Stan
Lee did the same for comic books.”

Martin said that he had drifted away from the comics in the
1950s, but then Lee “came along, and pulled me right back in.”
Along with his co-creators like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee
helped pioneer modern comic books. Martin wrote that what made
the characters Lee co-created so special — from superheros like
The Hulk and Thor to villains like Doctor Doom and Doctor Octopus
— is that they had personalities.

“Quirks, flaws, tempers,” Martin wrote. “The heroes were
not all good, the villains were not all bad. The stories had
twists and turns, I could not tell where they were going. 
Sometimes good guys fought other good guys. The characters grew
and changed.”

He added, “You had to be there to understand how
revolutionary all this was. Comics as we know them today would
not exist except for Stan Lee. They might not exist at all, if
truth be told.”

To read Martin’s full post, click here.