See You in the Funny Papers, Stan Lee: A Thankful Reflection on His Works and Imagination

I was working from home last Monday--in part, thinking about the random encounter table mentioned in my last post--when my wife came into the dining room and informed me of Stan Lee's passing. I can't say it was a surprise given his recent health issues, but it was nevertheless saddening. The surprising part was the wholly inappropriate dialogue that followed in the media, questioning not only his legacy but frankly our right--as individuals--to value the brand of entertainment he revolutionized.

Stan was a huge part of my childhood--a favorite uncle, even though we never met. He introduced my Saturday morning cartoons in a way that made me feel like he was speaking directly to me--that he'd created characters like Spider-Man and The Hulk just for me. My allowance money might as well have been direct deposited at the local drug store where I was continuously buying what my grandmother called "funny books." Her choice of words didn't reflect a language barrier, mind you. She didn't call them "funny books" because she couldn't remember the term "comic book." Rather, she called them that because of a generational bias--as she'd grown up thinking of the melding of cartoon art and newsprint exclusively as a vehicle for sophomoric comedy. But I knew that comics could be a portal into other worlds filled with action and adventure--and I also knew that I had my boisterous, colorful "Uncle Stan" to thank for many of those worlds.

To be sure, Stan didn't invent comic books or superheroes. And while he did usher in "The Marvel Age of Comics"--a decades-long era of dominance by that brand and its characters--it would also be appropriate to note that numerous other writers and artists contributed to building the brand and its success as well as the multimedia empire to follow. But there can be no denying that he was the harbinger of, and the spirit of, a revolution in his industry and art form. And despite several recent protestations to the contrary, what he and his peers created was indeed art.

I'm not going to try to sell you on the idea that the Marvel comics of the 60s, 70s, or 80s were the Shakespearean plays or Greek mythology of our day--though they were paradigm-shifting. That said, there has always been a tension between what people choose to label as "high culture" and what they choose to label as "low-brow." Historically, those distinctions have often had a lot to do with socioeconomic class--with the wealthy and educated using such labels to devalue the preferences and pastimes of the lower class. Today, it appears to have more to do with various traditional media outlets wanting to regain control of the narrative--to re-establish themselves as taste-makers even as new media continue to drown out their voices.

In both cases, their arguments stem from a logical fallacy--which is to suggest that you can use value judgments to rank cultural phenomena. You can like jazz or you can dislike jazz--which is a subjective decision. Alternatively, you can compare two jazz performances using generally accepted and highly standardized criteria--ones recognized by jazz musicians and aficionados--and rate one as better than the other according to those criteria. But what you can't do is to say that jazz is better or worse than rap--because you can't really stack art forms against each other without introducing a ton of subjectivity. In essence, how you rate them says more about how you value the people who like them than it does about the intrinsic value of those pastimes.

And that may be the oddest thing about the recent backlash against Stan Lee's legacy--as his fandom is diverse, multi-generational, and relatively well educated. It would be a stretch to call those fans--their feet planted firmly in the mainstream--a fringe group. So their rejection of the subjective value judgments of those railing against the "infantilization" of pop culture is every bit as valid as the assertions of Lee's detractors.

In many ways, I think I've grown to like and understand Lee even better as I get older--as he was never one to act his age. While he'd been part of the comics industry for many years, he was heading into his 40s when he created many of his signature characters--the Avengers, the X-Men, and more. He was recording voice-overs for cartoons in his late 50s. My children recognize his voice from some of their favorite video games of recent years--games created when he was in his 80s and 90s. And we have yet to see the last of his cinematic cameos.

Dylan Thomas famously wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rage at end of day." While the admonition is general, how each of us chooses to act on it is deeply personal. And if you take Lee's own most famous admonishment just as seriously, then it's also true that with great power comes great responsibility. For most of us, the greatest power we wield is in the shaping of our own life stories--in exercising the responsibility to decide where and how to spend the limited moments of our lives. It is therefore one of the more peculiar aspects of modern life in America that we have a ceaseless interest in telling other people how to live, effectively usurping both that power and the associated responsibility.

For my part, I've found that being a comics fan has helped me relate to my children and my nephews--a source of endless conversation and familial bonding. And I can't count how many times it's been an ice-breaker among new acquaintances and colleagues who either enjoyed comics as kids or have since become hooked on Marvel movies and TV shows.

So if you like to fish, then fish. If you like to sail, then sail. If you like to immerse yourself in the works of creators like Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas or J. R. R. Tolkien, then go ahead and do that. It's your journey--your course to chart. And if an incredibly enthusiastic pied piper with greying temples, sunglasses, and a broad grin happens to lead you down a path full of green giants, wall-crawlers, and super soldiers, you can follow with confidence. It may not be the road less traveled, but it's not such a bad place to end up after all.

Excelsior.

Life as a NPC (Part 1): My Adventure with Random Encounter Tables as a Way to Plan Free Time

Most people who know me are aware that I'm a planner. It may be my defining trait, in fact, though I'm too close to the subject to say for sure.

That's not to say that I can't have fun. But like my work, the fun things that I do are typically planned well in advance. Theme park and amusement part trips, movie premieres, gaming events and comics conventions--almost all of them occur on a continuously updated and thoughtfully prepared schedule.

However, where my preparation tends to fail me is in those inevitable moments of unplanned free time between commitments: that half day at the end of a long weekend when you've made better-than-expected time in getting home, the morning or early afternoon of a Saturday when the first of your planned activities doesn't occur until midday, the afternoon of a sick day when you find yourself at home and feeling better, etc.

Even then, I'm not stymied by a lack of interests. Rather, I'm confounded by the abundance of them. I like to write. I like to read. I play games. I like to draw and make things with my hands. I like to watch TV and movies and listen to podcasts. My fandoms are numerous: science fiction, fantasy, comics, and other pop culture franchises. And my family shares most of them.

So when I have time on my hands--but only a little bit of it, perhaps a few hours at most--that's when it can be difficult to choose. The debate that ensues is generally unfocused and can often occupy so much of the available time as to render any resulting decision meaningless. Just as often, the conversation doesn't go anywhere and we end up turning on the TV. (I may or may not be developing an unhealthy devotion to Destination America shows like Mountain Monsters and Alaska Monsters.)

Then it hit me one day recently that I needed to plan not to plan. That is to say, I needed to plan for spontaneity. And I already had a mechanism to model after--the random encounter tables common to role-playing games.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, random encounter tables are printed tables in game modules or other RPG resources that allow a game judge to insert story elements into a campaign based on a die roll. How simple or complex they are depends on the number and type of die being rolled. The number of table options depends on the number of die faces or combinations available. So a random encounter table based on a single six-sided die could have a maximum of 6 outcomes--fewer if the creator of the table decided to assign an outcome to more than one die face (i.e., the roll of a 5 OR a 6). These tables can also be chained together to drive more complex outcomes--with a result from one base table leading to rolls against other secondary tables.

For some people, even just the idea of putting their free time into fate's hands would create no small existential nightmare. However, I'm a peculiar (and, I think, uncommon) mix of anal retentive and whimsical. So the idea of taking the time to not only catalog the various things I enjoy doing but to also value weight them is actually pretty appealing to me. And while I'm still trying to wrap my mind around exactly how I want to use the table, I'm skeptical that I'd do much more than use the die roll to expedite conversation by providing a proposition to either embrace or reject.

Of course, just creating a table presents challenges. I have eclectic interests, and not all of my pastimes will lend themselves to a spur-of-the-moment decision. To be viable for a random encounter table, activities will need to conform to the following conditions:

• They can't require planning or preparation that would require more than a small fraction of the available time--which would typically be no more than a handful of hours
• They likewise can't require travel that would require more than a small fraction of the available time
• I'd likely assign a monetary cap--$50? $100?--since I'd want to control costs associated with any completely unplanned short-duration activity
• It also seems like I'd want to exclude the continuation of any ongoing, longer-term tasks--as it feels like a truly spontaneous act would be undertaken without those kinds of entanglements

So what do you think? How spontaneous would you be willing to be? And what kinds of activities would you put in a random table of your interests?

If you'd like to see what kinds of activities I include--and the logic I'll have used--please join me for Part 2.

All Over but the Screaming: Transitioning from Halloween to the Holidays

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know that I, for one, always find it difficult to switch from celebrating Halloween to preparing for Christmas. When my children were younger, it was one of our traditions to go trick-or-treating at the local mall on the last Friday before the 31st. What we encountered--especially in those years when Halloween was just a day or two away--was a strange and surreal juxtapositioning of incompatible images. The mall was primed for Christmas--their high season--and they just wanted to get Halloween out of the way. The department stores were already swathed in red bows and bunting even as young associates dressed as zombies, vampires, and black cats sat on folding chairs handing out candy to the tune of "Monster Mash" and "Beware the Blob." Invariably, we'd end up walking out of the mall with a flyer reminding us that Light Up Night was coming--sometimes the very next Friday.

I'm pretty stubborn, so we don't flip the switch quite so quickly in my house. Cobwebs and skeletons and monsters usually continue to lurk around every corner of our home until at least the next Sunday following Halloween. And if things are very busy at work, it could even linger a day or two beyond that. But moreover, the mood lingers. We rarely manage to fit in all of our favorite Halloween movies and TV shows in the days leading up to the 31st, and my interest in them doesn't evaporate at the stroke of midnight on November 1st. The same thing is true for any books I might be reading (or, more likely, listening to on my long commute) or any podcasts I might be enjoying.

I don't/can't hold out forever, of course. Like that last man in his lonely farmhouse fighting off the zombie hordes clawing through his boarded-up windows, I will eventually succumb to twinkle lights and carols and the anticipation of Christmas. But if you, like me, are still fighting the good fight, here are some suggestions for how you can extend a spooky autumn feeling through the first few days of November.

What We'll Be Watching...

We managed to fit in the original Ghostbusters, Cabin in The Woods, Alien /Aliens, Shaun of The Dead, and the 80's version of The Thing in the days leading up to and through Halloween. We also watched a decent amount of TV--mostly Travel Channel and Destination America reality programming about ghost hunts and cryptids. But there are still several things I hope to watch in the next week (or maybe two, if my interest hangs on that long):

• Stan Against Evil - We stumbled across this offbeat comedy on IFC at the beginning of last week. It stars John T. McGinley (from Scrubs) and Janet Varney as sheriffs fighting off witches and demons in modern small-town New Hampshire. We just finished binging season one and season three started on Halloween night.
• Stranger Things - This show is so good, you really shouldn't have to justify watching it at any time of the year. I'm not sure I'll have opportunity to watch both seasons again, so I may just have to settle for the overtly Halloween-themed second season.
• AMC Documentaries - Yes, AMC has more programming than just The Walking Dead--though I must confess that my family does watch A LOT of TWD (and its after-party show, The Talking Dead.) That said, I've watched selected episodes of both James Cameron's and Eli Roth's respective documentary series about the masters of the sci-fi and horror genres. I'll likely fill in the gaps here over the next few nights.

What We'll Be Listening To...

• Podcasts - I listen to a lot of them on my drive to work. 
• This time of year in particular, I favor Aaron Menche's Lore--though his bi-weekly deep-dives into folklore and legend are really great anytime. (The Highgate Cemetery episode from a couple of years ago is my favorite around Halloween--if you're looking for a place to start.) 
• If I'm in the mood for something lighter, there's always the "Beyond Belief" segment from The Thrilling Adventure Hour--featuring reluctant paranormal investigators Frank and Sadie Doyle (played outrageously by comedians Paul F. Tompkins and Paget Brewster). 
• As for horror fiction, there is no shortage of anthology series--such as the No Sleep podcast--available to recall old radio shows like The Inner Sanctum.
• Books - I haven't read much Stephen King since I was in college, but I did take the time to listen to the audiobook version of From a Buick 8 a couple of years ago--largely because it was set nearby in Western PA--and I found it pretty engaging. I figure it's probably not on most people's radars, so I thought I'd clue you in. And if you're not willing to make the time commitment to listen to a full novel, there are also King's short stories--including those compiled in anthologies like Skeleton Crew and Four Past Midnight. (I find Matthew Broderick's reading of "The End of the Whole Mess" to be simultaneously chilling and touching--as well as, in some ways, very timely.)
• Music - I'm not sure where they've gotten to, but I know I had two different Mannheim Steamroller Halloween albums on CD. (Yes--you read that right. On CD.) I'll likely break them out this week as well. Admittedly, that one's kind of a gimme--as listening to their Halloween offering is clearly one short hop away from the numerous Christmas albums.

What kinds of things do you do to keep a spooky vibe in your daily routine through the short days and long nights of mid-autumn? Are you a hold-out too, or do you dive gleefully into the Christmas season as soon as you douse your porch light on Halloween night? Let me know in the comments section below.