The Creative Genius of Stan Lee Explained

When Stan Lee created The Incredible Hulk, he knew he had a winner.

Ol' Green Skin operates on an anger reflex common to all of us. Managing pent-up rage until it explodes into unbridled raging fury is a notion familiar to us all. Indeed, The Incredible Hulk is alive, and hopefully dormant in all of us.

This is the key to Stan Lee's success. He builds entire characters on psychological components that add up to describe the human condition.

Iron Man is an 'after hours' superhero. Haven't all of us secretly wished for an exciting alter-ego to offset the mind numbing humdrum and drone of everyday life? Ben Grimm, a.k.a "The Thing", is maligned and misunderstood. A lovable freak with a giant heart. Have all of us not felt this way at one time in our lives?

Here are some characters that Lee might have come up with, given the inclination, and a bottle of Maker's Mark:

The Procrastinator
A lesser known, lower key superhero, paper product warehouse manager Bruce Baninksi, known as 'The Procrastinator', uses passive aggressive tactics to gently wear down Evil, like a piece of turquoise in a rock tumbler. Wearing a drab gray spandex one-piece with a yellow "P" emblazoned on his chest, The Procrastinator uses famous one line catch-phrases such as "I'll meet you in Central Park, tomorrow!" and, "Call me next Wednesday and we'll discuss the fate of Manhattan, and if I'm not there, leave me a message, and I'll get back to you!" Baninski sublimely defeats super villains, usually driving them into other lines of work, namely social services, human resources and parody writing.

Manpower
When one of the regular super heroes goes on vacation or gets down-sized, Manpower "temporarily" replaces him/her/it. He pretends to have the skills to carry out the hero's functions, despite having little talent beyond the ability to type 30 words per minute. He's a constant drag on the other hero's productivity with his endless questions (Hey, Spidey, how do you shoot webs again?) but he's constantly employed because he costs less than the real heroes and needs no health care.