1) Industrial self-censorship. The killbox of creativity, free thinking, and ideas. The graveyard of free expression.
2) When a creativity driven industry is besieged by exterior and interior calls to self-regulate, self-police, and self-asphyxiate, that industry is driven to a slow prolonged death.
3) To compare it to cancer isn’t too far off the mark. Cancer is the growth of abnormal destructive tissue that eats away at the host body. An industry’s drive to censor itself is that same style of abnormal destructive growth that chews at the foundations of the industry.
4) The Comics Code Authority was one example of industrial self-censorship. 
5) Calls from puritanical zealots from inside and outside the industry grew to a zenith, declaring that comics as a medium had gone too far, that the combination of words and pictures in booklets had become far too graphic for people, that the themes were (insert -ists here)
6) Instead of government regulation, which they would have been protected from with judicious application from the first amendment the comics industry as a whole created the Comics Code Authority, a governing body that would stamp its seal of approval on what it found appropriate
7) Comics entered their dark ages as writers and artists were forced into an arbitrary and self-contradicting morass of rules and double standards in order to get the seal of approval and be able to be sold in stores.
8) Today, the man who can be credited with singlehandedly ending that idiocy died. Stan Lee has passed away.
9) He published a miniseries of Spider-Man fighting against drugs, the depiction of which were forbidden by the Comics Code Authority, and he published it without their approval.
10) He admitted years later that the defiance was inadvertent. The way he had depicted drug abuse would have been approved under one censor, but not the one who on a fluke was the one in charge at that moment.
(And apparently some FUCKHEADS are responding and disagreeing without letting me FUCKING FINISH MY POINT. Jackasses.)
11) When the book was published without the seal anyways, and was a commercial success regardless of the seal, the CCA had to adapt, and they had to start giving way on rules in which previously it had been a shifting standard depending on who reviewed your comic that time.
12) From there, it was a slow decline, this time of censorship, as other comic companies who had previouly attacked Stan Lee for defying the CCA started to ignore it, finally abandoning it forthright in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
13) I’m not going to say Stan Lee was some firebrand champion of free speech. I’m going to tell you, Stan Lee was a good person, who at a moment of facing down with an industry’s cancerous self censoring drive towards destruction, said “This is really dumb,” and ignored it.
14) David walked up to Goliath who had scared and cowed everyone else into submission, said, “What’s everyone so afraid of?” and pelted a rock at Goliath’s face.
15) Stan Lee inadvertently exposed industrial self-censorship for what it was. A toothless farce.
And he did it by just being a good person.
And he did it by just being a good person.
16) Stan Lee doesn’t have a mythos. There isn’t some grand blown up story of his rags to riches superstardom. He had a skill he turned into a job, a job he built a company around, a company that became a foundation of an industry, and he never stopped being a good person.
17) A friend of mine, years ago at a convention in Florida, she had finally gotten a booth in artists alley, and was late, hauling ass through the convention center with her books and supplies in hand.
18) In her blind panicked sprint, she ran into someone and bowled over, her materials all over the floor.
19) The old man she ran into was unhurt thankfully, and started to help her regather her belongings. While he did, he found a 4x6 drawing that fell out of her sketchbook that caught his eye.
20) He asks how much for the sketch, and she’s beyond apologetic offering to give it to him for free as an apology. He says absolutely not, and helps her to her feet before walking away with the sketch.
21) The man was Stan Lee. He stuck a hundred dollar bill in her hand.
22) Stan Lee was a good person that never forgot that he was just that: a person. He never grew too big for his own head. He never claimed to be the leader of some social movement.
23) And with that power, the power of being a good person in a position of authority beyond his wildest dreams, he shook the foundations of culture with but a whisper.
24) He wasn’t Stan Lee standing at the podium of the oscars pontificating about morality or climate change or politics or any of that other utter shite. One word from him, and he could have sent an uncounted army of adherents in one direction or another politically.
25) That fame, that authority, that comes with a responsibility, and he NEVER abused it. Stan Lee is a legend not just because of what he did as the head of Marvel, but for what he could have done but refrained from it.
26) For his refusal to exercise that authority, to preach for a point of view or topic that most seem to spend every waking moment fighting...
He was attacked for it.
He was attacked for it.
27) I’m not going to get into Twitter arguments over his legacy. I’m just not. The industrial self-censorship is taking root again, after a decade in remission it has come back in the form of the same people who want to attack and tear down Stan Lee’s legacy.
28) He wouldn’t want that kind of fighting over his legacy. He never did. He was always supportive. Hell, when they turned Captain America into a Hydra agent, he still supported the writers and wished them luck in writing a good story. That’s the kind of person he was.
29) Instead... let me share with you an eyewitness account of his passing. CNN factchecked me on this, so you know its 100% accurate. Don Lemon should be doing a short segment on it tomorrow.
30) Times Square, New York. A rip in the air, a hole in space, from which raw heat and energy emerged, streaks of plasmic discharge lashing out like whips and scorching the pavement around it.
31) It caused a panic, of course, as any physics-defying event that is setting taxi cabs on fire is wont to do. But more frightening, more dreadful, was the feeling that there was something on the other side of this rip in reality.
32) That gut feeling, the instinctual terror of looking at something that you cannot identify but you know is wrong and should not be. The shadow in your closet that you know is staring back at you, suddenly made manifest and bathed in an otherworldly light.
33) So frozen in terror were those that had not had the good sense to run away in a blind panic that we could only watch helplessly as a shriveled old man in a red sweater with a cane hobbled forwards towards the shear.
34) He stopped mere feet from it, the breathing of whatever being on the other side enough to nearly knock him off his feet, but the old man stood his ground, and he looked up into it.
35) “You style yourself a god? A demon? A destroyer?” He said, his words seemingly carried by the energy and echoing across the large intersection that had grown deathly silent except for the humming and pulsating shear.
36) “You were coming. Your kind always comes. You are entropy. You are chaos. You are catastrophe. But not today. Today, I’m here, and I am your opposite. I am a creator.”
37) The thing that should not be let out a screech like nails on a chalkboard that’s fallen on the tails of a herd of cats. Windows of buildings shattered into a fine powder, cars shifted from the force, those who didnt cover their ears soon enough bled from them.
38) But the old man... he was unfazed. “I’ve created heroes and villains, gods and monsters. Universes and mythos. Ants and the devourers of planets. More realities have begun and ended at my hand than you can conceive.”
39) The shear grew wider and the enegy began to bulge out over the old man as he continued to stand his ground against the thing tried to force its way into reality.
40) The old man did not stop. Could not stop. Taking his cane in both hands, he tapped it on the asphalt he stood upon, the tip striking the pavement creating what felt like an echoing boom.
41) “Greater still are the minds I freed, the minds I helped inspire. More and more do people create, more and more are people inspired. Where once there was one universe now an unlimited multitude of potential exists.“
42) He tapped his cane once more, the building pressure from the tear in reality causing the street to crack beneath him. “Ideas which together can coalesce and become a force unstoppable, a million forces which are unstoppable. A billion.”
43) Slowly, cautiously, the energy began to calm, whatever thing attempting to violate our physical reality began to pull back and retreat. The old man stepped forwards towards the portal, the plasmic discharge almost licking his face.
44) “But nothing, nothing makes me happier than knowing that my work here is done. That I lit the bonfire that cannot be quenched. That the world will shine brighter with new ideas taking form.” He moved forwards once more, making ready to step into the energy itself.
45) The words of hs bystanders were lumps in our throat, our eyes pleading for him not to go. His eyes panned the scene and he smiled. “I’m not leaving you. Not forever. Nothing is forever after all.”
46) He casually tossed his cane into the energy as he straightened his back facing the portal. “I’m just the one who holds the door open and flips the lights on. Someone’s gotta go and make sure the next world burns as bright as this one with creation.”
47) He began to stop through as the energy dissipated around him. “Someone’s gotta light the bonfire to draw together all the wanderers in the next life. How else will the rest of you join me in Excelsior?”
/end
