Let’s see if I can type this with a straight face. Here are some excerpts from Stan Lee’s obligatory origin sequence for his Wonder Woman. Our heroine must get an explanation out of her father, when…:

Maria Mendoza (really! That’s her name! I’m guessing that “Paco Taco” was taken. With Lee’s PC, let’s-put-minorities-in-tradtional-roles-to-prove-that-we’re-diversified egg-walking characterization, who needs bigotry?): “Father! Please answer me!” Judge Mendoza (he solemnly has his back away, and turns only his neck to look at his daughter. So you know this is a dramatic moment): “I’m trying to find the words, my child.” Maria Stereotype: “Is it—[I kid you not! Lee really has a dash there, as if poor Maria had to pause, for the drama was just too swelteringly thick in the room. Of course, Maria could’ve paused to think, You know, I’m not that real clever with words, am I?, or, I wonder if someone would come across me and think of me as a stereotype?] because of what happened years ago?” Father Mendoza: “Yes, Maria. But I never told the whole story. [He didn’t?! Yes! Exposition time! What splendid writing! What, pray tell, kind of innovative origin will Lee come up with?]…It began on the day you were born. A poor farmer, bringing his wife and new baby home from the hospital—[yeah, another dash] was stopped by banditos!…[Let me take over from here: I—I mean ‘the farmer’—was an innocent, and in a lower class, and was wronged by someone above, yadda yadda.]…A shot rang out!…[And those things are never good. Either my Uncle Ben or my wife or my momma or my daughter or my pet rock was killed.]…” Maria the Detective: “You were that farmer!” Mendoza the Socially Wronged: “On that day, I swore a sacred oath…never again would I be a victim [or something like that; you know the bravado mode we in need of vengeance get in: ‘oath’ this, ‘life of dedication’ that.]…I have borne this burden for too long”—

—So have I “true believer.” You get the point right? THIS IS CRAP. ANACHRONISTIC, BOORISH, HAPLESS, CRAP.

Let the sanctimonious praise of Stan Lee stop. For far too long, the industry has praised famous men who have done nothing but further the self-cannibalism of mainstream comics, all because they’re too lacking for idols. Let’s look at it straight: Lee rehashes formulaic variations on the same character-by-numbers storylines he’s employed since his earliest work-for-hire days at Marvel (and before that, too). His dialogue is dimestore, his stories are unoriginal, his musings are inane, his style is self-consciously pulpy; why is this man still celebrated, and why does anyone care about whatever he has to offer to DC’s mythos?

Comic books are a medium that have long suffered idolatry for hacks, simply because its readers are too juvenile or wrapped in their own nostalgia to see otherwise. Outside of a Roy Lichenstein context, what “art” is there in early Marvel Comics? And by saying this, I include Jack Kirby. Sure, there’s an innate power in Kirby’s drawings—just like there’s style in Jim Sterkanko’s, rawness in Joe Kubert’s, classiness in Steve Ditko, etc. But are these people really pillars of the artform? This celebration does nothing but galvanize the same kitschy, image-related superficiality of comics, the same type of ideas that seem to undermine the greatness behind artists like the Hernandez bros., Daniel Clowes, Scott McCloud: in other words, real sequential artists. The form does NOT have to have some intrinsic trash quality or some broad force behind it to be appreciated. But because of Kirby/Lee’s influence, the medium will always settle for second best, care not that its images are constantly devoid of ideas, and prefer cultism over intelligence.

And now to Lee…oh Stan Lee. The man is a horrendous writer. For all these people rushing over Lee’s return: Wasn’t his last main writing job, Ravage 2099, enough? So what is the fervor over Stan Lee’s “recreation” of the flagship DC characters? His idea of what makes a good super-hero—which is all the more perpetuated by DC’s marketing department—is an “interesting” origin story, “colorful” powers, “stellar” costume, “evil” villains…essentially, everything that Wizard has modernized and tries to sell. But he can’t even come up with that! The sheer lack of presence in Lee’s work since he departed the main class of Marvel’s ’60s illustrators gives a little too much credence to all those who believed that Kirby created all the “classics.” The Just Imagine line allows Lee to work modern industry names like Dave Gibbons and Bruce Timm (and older stalwarts like Joe Kubert and John Buscema); the effect is too jarring. The more sleek, relentless, modern lay-outs feel detached from Lee’s anachronistic writing. Stan Lee’s Wonder Woman penciler Jim “Cheekbones & Nipples” Lee doesn’t bother altering his Kirby-cum-Neil Adams style, and he continues to draw all his characters like they’re all Aryans or underlings. So Stan Lee, in turn, pumps up his pulpiness, and writes like his own stereotype, frolicking in the kitsch like he truly believes he’s some genial curmudgeon, the image he so gladly put forth when he wanted he and Marvel to be co-equated. And that rapscallion-act is just a phony act—empty and stupid, worthless and pathetic.

And as for Wonder Woman? A one-shot origin retelling means little—as long it’s from a talentless hack like Stan Lee. If you want to see a good, current version of Wonder Woman, read Alan Moore’s Promethea. If you want to read a good, current comic book, stay the hell away from Stan Lee.