Marvel legend Stan Lee was a modern-day bard, and that makes sense, because his greatest creative influence was none other than William Shakespeare himself. Over the years, Lee was always eager to cite Shakespeare as the GOAT English-language author, and as such, the high bar that Stan the Man sought to reach for in his own writing.
Shakespeare's influence looms large over the Western literary canon, even 400+ years after he lived, wrote, and died in 16th/17th-century England. Yet most people wouldn't think to include Marvel Comics in that legacy. Except they should, because Stan Lee's transformative approach to superhero storytelling saw him working straight out of Shakespeare's playbook.
As Lee put it in a magazine interview from way back in 1970: "[Shakespeare] was the complete writer." Shakespeare's drama was peak drama, and his comedy was uproarious for its era. Shakespeare helped invent the modern English language, and laid the foundation, brick-by-brick, play-by-play, for what we know as "popular culture" today. Centuries later, Stan the Man had a similarly outsized impact, helping to turn Marvel superhero stories into the modern mythology of his time.
Think the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the greatest epic of its generation? That wouldn't have been possible without Stan the Man, and Stan Lee wouldn't have become the groundbreaking writer he was without worshipping the Bard.
Stan Lee's Marvel Comics Success Was Made Possible By His Devotion To The Works Of Shakespeare
Lee's Literary Ambitious & Inspiration, Explained
Here's what Stan Lee told IT Magazine during a 1970 interview:
I THINK MY BIGGEST INFLUENCE WAS SHAKESPEARE! No one was more dramatic than he was. When he was humorous the humor was so earthy & rich. He was the complete writer. I was just telling somebody this morning who was up here to do some writing for us to get as close to Shakespeare as possible. Because whatever he did, he did it in the extreme.
This was just one of many references Lee made to the Bard being his #1 influence over the years. It's one of the things Lee was actually most consistent about. For the Marvel Comics maestro, "get[ting] as close to Shakespeare as possible" was always the goal. And it can't be understated how important this was to Lee's success.
There's the old saying: "shoot for the moon, because even if you miss, you land in the stars." Stan Lee lived that advice by trying to live up to a Shakespearean ideal. Lee's literary pretensions left him dissatisfied with the state of comic books early in his career, and eventually he realized the medium, and specifically the superhero genre, weren't going to elevate themselves.
That's the direct throughline from Shakespeare to Stan Lee: inventiveness and ambition. Neither author was content to do the same thing as his peers. To use a sports analogy: while other 16th-century English playwrights and 20th-century comic book scribes were looking to hit a single and safely make it to first base, Shakespeare and Lee swung for the fences. And both turned out to be prolific home run hitters.
Stan Lee Was The Shakespeare Of 20th Century Superhero Comics
Lee's Legacy Is Akin To Shakespeare's Literary Lineage
Today, Shakespeare gets a bad rap, at least outside the literary circles that still worship his work. Generations of people who were forced to read Romeo & Juliet and Hamlet in high school came away with the impression that Shakespeare is boring, which couldn't be further from the truth. Like Stan Lee said, nobody did drama, or comedy, quite like William Shakespeare.
Just like no one wrote comics like Stan Lee until Lee came along. It's fair to call Lee the Shakespeare of the comic book medium. A singular creative visionary who pushed boundaries and redefined what was possible on the page, just like the Bard did for the stage centuries earlier.
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For Stan Lee, the equation was simple: great writers study Shakespeare, plain and simple. Just like how today writers in every genre, and every medium, from comic book creators to literary-minded novelists slugging out the purplest of prose, would do well to look back at Stan Lee's work and career at Marvel Comics in the 1960s and '70s to learn a thing or two about how to raise the stakes of their work and bring something startlingly new to the table.
What do you think, readers? Was Stan Lee really the Shakespeare of his time and place?
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