Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 250

Here are a couple of excerpts from a book I recently read, "Stan Lee: A Life in Comics," by Liel Leibovitz:

Lee argued that law and order were important tools to keeping society intact; Shero responded that they were nothing but racist instruments designed to punish African-Americans. Lee said he believed that both “the Establishment” and the young radicals shared an interest in ending the war in Vietnam; Shero snarled and said the Establishment wanted to keep the war going for fun and profit. Lee said he saw himself as a liberal; Shero replied that there’s not much difference between liberals and conservatives, and that it would take real radicalism to solve America’s many systemic problems. For the first time in nearly a decade, Lee looked less like the pied piper of hip than like another aging man, rapidly losing touch with the culture.

His creations had struck a chord because, unlike their predecessors, they were designed not to provide answers but to provoke questions. They were deeply Jewish heroes, always quarreling, rarely certain, never submissive. Above all, they were intrigued by life’s greatest mystery, the charge to go on living in a covenant with other humans who were ultimately unknowable and with a God who was ultimately unreachable. Their rights and responsibilities in this strange setting intrigued them, and even when they failed to live up to their potential—which they all did, all the time—they still couldn’t imagine not trying. Theirs was rarely a comforting path—grace was for Superman and the gentiles, not Spider-Man and the Jews—but it was sustainable, and as they pursued it they grew just a little bit wiser, just a little bit more compassionate, just a little bit closer to God.