I’m on vacation so of course I am thinking about how music is expressed on different formats, like this new Chris Stapleton record I got for Christmas. Note that it only has three tracks on side A and the center is blank - the album came on 2xLPs, like a lot of new vinyl.

I'm going to attempt to chronologically list all of the Marvel characters Stan Lee had a hand in creating. Working with his genius collaborators, Stan and his team produced an insane amount of iconic characters in a roughy ten year period. (Thread)

With his younger brother, writer Larry Lieber, and Jack "the King" Kirby:

Groot

Tales to Astonish #13 (November, 1960)

With writer Lieber, and artist Kirby:

Fin Fang Foom

Strange Tales #89 (October, 1961)

With the King, Stan gives birth to the Marvel Universe:

The Fantastic Four

Fantastic Four #1 (November, 1961)

With Jack Kirby:

Mister Fantastic

Fantastic Four #1 (November, 1961)

1. Now that Stan Lee is being eulogized far and wide, it's important to remember how marginal Stan Lee and his collaborators (Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) were in the 1950s and 1960s.

2. Marvel Comics (before that Atlas) was just a cog in the machine of a bottom pulp publisher run by Martin Goodman, the husband of one of Lee's cousins. It was the lowest of the low in the publishing world.

3. Now Mario Puzo (not yet the author of the Godfather) shared offices with Stan Lee in the 1950s and 1960s. Puzo wrote for garrish men's adventure magazines and, like Lee, dreamed of writing a novel & breaking out. But Puzo looked down on Lee.

4. Flo Steinberg, 1960s secretary at Marvel: "They were always making jokes about us. They'd come in and giggle. mario Puzo would look in and would see us all working on his way to the office and say, 'Work faster, little elves. Christmas is coming.'"

5. When JFK was killed, the whole office of Magazine Management was stunned and quiet. Except Lee. He continued working. "He was still working on the comic books," Puzo said. "Like that was the most important thing in the world."

Time to lift the lid? Can you ‘live tweet’ reading a 6 year old playbook you co-wrote and it not be the be the most boring thing ever? How could something written about social media 6 years ago possibly even be relevant eh?! #StorytellingAtScale

From a creative perspective we could almost stop right here... the biggest challenge in churning out content is that you don’t give yourself the time to make exceptional content that you’d actually want millions of people to see... like your TV ads. #StorytellingAtScale

This doesn’t seem... controversial? But we gave it a whole page because frankly all too often it still is 🤷‍♂️ #StorytellingAtScale

An integrated campaign that brings the same campaign idea (and distinctive assets ideally) to life but in a way that makes sense on social...? Sounds pretty obvious. This was the output of the first ever UK ‘Publishing Garage’ workshop with Facebook & Elvis. #StorytellingAtScale

Ahh yes, perhaps not award winning creativity but let’s acknowledge FB isn’t always the biggest/broadest brand building canvas... practical occasion based (category entry point even?) content and simple reminders or prompts play a big role. #StorytellingAtScale

on a very basic level it is astounding to me that seemingly half the country is hooked on the adventures of The Vision & Scarlet Witch, whose last series together was a precise contemporary of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, and which was quarter box fodder for decades

in hindsight, of course, the idea of framing a superhero story as a suburban dramedy seems novel and fresh to people, but that’s only because other people spent literally three and a half decades sleeping on it

now, of course, many new fans who look into the history of the matter might wonder why such a seemingly popular and fecund direction for these two characters was permanently shelved in the late 80s, what set of factors could possibly have -

they were able to put back some of what was broken - in time - but they never were able to get back to the marriage, and by the time the characters had new status quos in the early 90s the company had moved away from those kinds of genre experiments, and the rift became permanent

the Vision was a humorless drip for years, doing much the same schtick as Data during the precise years ST:TNG was airing

and as a consequence of those stories Wanda permanently became the poster child of women who cannot handle their power because of female inconstancy ...