11.15.18 Tampa Bay Bureau Chief’s Desk

There are a few things people tend to figure out about me rather quickly, whether they get to know me well or only casually.

The first is that I’m into politics. Voting is rad, even more so when it’s done in the name of equality and every vote is counted. Second, I have a totally normal love and appreciation for (read: obsession with) Disney, particularly “The Little Mermaid.” I mean, how many wonders can one movie hold? Finally, people tend to guess that I love everything about Marvel. It’s been that way since I thumbed through my first comic book at whatever reading comprehension I could muster at seven years old.

The Walt Disney Company acquiring Marvel Entertainment in 2009 should’ve sparked a national holiday.

That’s why Nov. 12 was unexpectedly dark for me. It’s an important date in my circle of life: my wedding anniversary. This year we celebrated two wonderful years. I had planned on writing this column about that or politics — it’s my first time living in Florida during a recount – but instead, I feel compelled to talk about The Man upstairs. The creator of universes.

Obviously, I’m talking about Stan “The Man” Lee, Marvel Chairman Emeritus. He passed away Nov. 12, 2018 at 95 years old, decades after co-creating the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men and dozens of other characters that helped guide me through childhood and beyond.

I was an awkward kid and didn’t always have many friends, but his creations taught me right from wrong, that the good guys tend to win if they work hard enough and that bigotry is for the birds. The X-Men, hated and feared because of how they were born, particularly spoke to my little gay self. Stan was a real superhero to me and as I began to write, a professional role model.

I met Stan once, in 2006. I still have the framed and signed X-Men poster hanging in our apartment bearing his signature to prove it. It was years after he’d left behind the day-to-day at Marvel and years before the well-deserved hype of Marvel Studios and his countless cameos.

He’d taken to the road to meet with fans and share his stories. It was at some random library in Nowhere, Ohio and was one of the most exciting moments of my life up until that point.

He talked about a number of his creations and years at Marvel, highlighting an ideology captured perfectly in his regular “Stan’s Soapbox” column from 1968. I think they are words we cannot stress enough in today’s political climate, so I’d like to share them here.

“Let’s lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today,” Stan wrote. “But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they can’t be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them—to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are. The bigot is an unreasoning hater—one who hates blindly, fanatically, indiscriminately. If his hang-up is black men, he hates ALL black men. If a redhead once offended him, he hates ALL redheads. If some foreigner beat him to a job, he’s down on ALL foreigners. He hates people he’s never seen—people he’s never known—with equal intensity—with equal venom.

“Now, we’re not trying to say it’s unreasonable for one human being to bug another,” he continued. “But, although anyone has the right to dislike another individual, it’s totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race—to despise an entire nation—to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance.”

Aside from his penchant for social justice, what’s always struck and inspired me about Stan is that after years of unfulfilling ventures, he almost quit writing – well before he’d create Spider-Man at age 40. He gave reinvention one last shot and created The Fantastic Four in 1961. The rest is history.

It’s reinvention that we tackle in this issue. Two inspiring individuals, one in Central Florida and the other in Tampa Bay, left behind the corporate world to successfully chase their own dreams. In news, we review the progressive waves that swept Tampa Bay, Central Florida and the country during this year’s midterm election. In Arts and Entertainment, we log onto GayMovieDB.com, an expansive LGBTQ film database, and check in with the Orlando Ballet.

Watermark strives to bring you a variety of stories each issue, your stories. I hope you enjoy this latest issue.

And once more for Stan: Excelsior!