Stan Lee was a legend.
To anyone who thinks that their creativity can’t make a difference in the world – dive into his story. He’s created an entire universe of characters with unique stories, challenges, strengths, and flaws.
One of the things I appreciated most about his characters, without getting too nerdy, is the backstories of some of the Marvel villains. To create a great antagonist, I think it’s key to give them relatable characteristics – to make audiences feel like they could, given a similar set of circumstances, relate to the bad guy. If you’re asking questions like, “Is he really all bad?”, you’ve nailed a good antagonist in my opinion.
Take Magneto, for example, the antagonist of the X-Men comics. Magneto has an excellent back story that will leave you feeling for him. His family was born in the 1920s to a German-Jewish family, and he saw his mother, father, and sister executed by the Nazis. Later on in his story, Magneto consistently is influenced by the way humans treat mutants as second class citizens (something he saw from the Nazis during his childhood). Because of this influence, he rejects the possibility of human-mutant coexistence, and ultimately wishes to see mutants win a war against humans. The character’s early story has often been compared to Malcolm X.
Stan Lee was the master of telling stories that made us see multiple shades of characters. The good in bad, the bad in good, the weakness in strength and the strength in weakness. He was a creative genius, and he’ll be missed. The good news is he created something so brilliant, so extensive and beloved, that he’ll live on in his work forever.
As Stan often ended his articles:
Excelsior!
