DOMINIC

Dominic Mah is a writer, director, and ex-professional gambler. He is currently prepping and fundraising to shoot a movie, a feature-length dark-comedy-type-movie. He also blogs about pop culture, girl problems, casinos, and Robotech at http://dommah.com/. Mispronounced in the right way, his name is a strong Vietnamese curse word.

There are lot of writers in the world (96% of them seem to live in West Los Angeles), but only a few have written something that changed the world forever. For example, Karl Marx. The guy put something on paper that started most of the major wars of the 20th century. Even if you haven’t read his work (and who has, really?), people live and die and nations form and upheave, all under the spectre of his words.

There’s another writer whom I believe should be up for the Greatest Creative Output and Influence of the 20th Century: STAN LEE. I mean, Fitzgerald, Stephen King, J. K. Rowling, yeah, they’ve all written some novels. They have created a handful of cultural icons between them. Stan Lee just sat down and made up Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and Daredevil. And the Hulk. And those are just the ones you’ve probably heard of. He also invented a million villains, from the Green Goblin to Titanium Man. So we’re talking thousands of issues of the original comics. About umpteen billion$ of movies and TV and basically every event film of the early 21st century. But never mind all that. These are characters that are in our culture and in our heads every single day, even if you are cool and don’t like comics at all. Most writers would be geeked to create just one character about which someone could start a conversation in a bar. Stan Lee created FOUR of them, before he even had the idea that a guy with the proportionate abilities of a spider might be really cool.

(Yes, of course, the artists co-created the iconography….but it’s the writer who gave them a soul to distinguish them from being empty advertising icons. I’m looking at YOU, Transformers, Captain Planet et al. )

Stan Lee, like Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, is of Jewish background. The connections between Jewish tradition and vital American pop culture is extensive and better discussed elsewhere. Still, I really wish Stan Lee had been born Asian. How would history have been different? Let’s take a look:

IF STAN LEE WAS AN ASIAN DUDE: An Alternate Timeline

1961-64 The Marvel Universe: In an unparalleled period of creativity, Stan “The Man” Lee invents The Fantastic Four, Spider Man, the Hulk, The X-Men, Iron Man, The Avengers, and Daredevil. Whaaaaat?! The world will never be the same. He collaborates on many of these creations with Korean-American artist Jack Kalbi, noted for his super-masculine poses and hyper-dramatic forced perspectives. Although at first his ethnicity is de-emphasized, it eventually comes out that an Asian guy is responsible for a cultural contribution as American as, say, rock n’ roll and bean burritos.

1978 The Hulk TV show: Asian American masculinity issues hit prime-time TV in the same year as Bruce Lee’s last film, “The Game Of Death.” During this turbulent time, there are sporadic violent incidents of Asian dudes “hulking out” under stressful situations; many cars are thrown at employers, casting directors, and unapproachable girls. A time of mutual cultural understanding infests the land.

1978 Spider Man in Japan: this happens exactly as it happened in our reality:

1980′s The Wackiest X-Men Stories Ever: In both timelines, the 80′s are the pinnacle of creative audacity in the X-Men. Ninjas. “Alien” knockoff aliens. The Dark Phoenix saga. More Ninjas. A Whole Lot Of Throwing Stars. All culminating in the late 80′s storyline in which Psylocke, the prim British telepath, becomes Japanese, and a ninja, for NO FATHOMABLE REASON. There are also a lot of stories involving ninjas. However, within the alternate Asian Stan Lee universe, the X-Men writers embrace Asian issues beyond our capacity for masked violence. In 1989, “Uncanny” unleashes a controversial storyline in which Cyclops’s optic blasts are cured by reverse epicanthic-fold surgery. Of course, because it’s the X-Men, his powers are restored in a crisis situation, when Scott goes to face the tanks in Tiananmen Square. Remember, there is no “Jumping The Shark” in X-Men comics; thanks to Stan Lee’s mind-expanding body of work, comics are the one American art genre in which Anything Really Frickin’ Goes.

1994 The (first) Fantastic Four film: During a fervent period in the history of American indie film, a rather cheezy b-movie by recent Academy Award recipient Roger Corman is released featuring the first family of superheroes. Riding on the recent female-oriented success of “The Joy Luck Club,” the final showdown is a mah-jongg match won by the (formerly) Invisible Women’s special and obscure Invisible Tile Technique. The movie still bombs, but emboldens a generation of Filmmakers of Color.

2000′s The Spider-Man and Iron Man films: Comic book franchise films start going crazy, and suddenly it’s cool to know who Spider-Man, Wolverine and Ant-Man are. Asian dudes with glasses, in general, have always known. That’s what we’ve BEEN talking about.

2010: Stan’s nephew Jim Lee is appointed co-publisher and all-around creative bigwig of Marvel’s main competition, DC Comics. This is an ironic twist, given that Marvel heroes are known for their grounding in real-world social climates, while DC heroes are traditionally more godlike and idealized. Stan has a stiff drink and reflects on the rebellious ways of the younger generations.

201? the near-future Avengers film: A watershed event for Asian-American pop culture, as the filmmakers choose to forego the more obvious (and obviously flawed) villain options of Loki, Kang, aliens, a giant squid, etc…..and instead send the team up against the kind of Big Villain that we all really wanna see in a tussle with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes:

RED RONIN. That is what I am STILL talking about. ‘Nuff said. True Believers.

(You can read Dominic’s previous guest blogs here and here)