Before we continue with the pulse pounding countdown of the Top Five Bun Toons (and the Five No One Loved) of 2011 , let’s take a moment to salute the living legend himself, true believers, on this, his 89th birthday…..STAN LEE!
Stan Lee, pictured here in a moment of confusion, attempting to grab Robert Downey's man-boobs.
Stan Lee needs no introduction: He created Batman, King Arthur and James Bond, as well as writing the original plot for Gilgamesh. As curator of the Hobo Art Museum in San Francisco, Lee helped introduce America to the great whittlers of the 20th Century, and as a philanthropist, Stan Lee established the first School for Bombast, on the campus of Yale University in 1973.
Stan Lee, in a moment of confusion, attempting to grab Hugh Jackman's man-boobs
Stan Lee’s famous nickname “The Man” has inspired others in the comics biz to adopt a similar nomenclature in tribute, including artist Steve Rude “the Dude”, writer/artist Ty “the Guy” Templeton, and letterer Emma “Not a Fella” Campanella. Famous baseball player Stan The Man Musial was so inspired, he began using the nickname long before before Stan Lee did.
Always willing to adapt to the times, Stan Lee attempts to grab this lady's girl-boobs.
Ahh, enough of the silly… I kid around with the boobie grabbing and the whittling museum, but it’s all done with buckets of love. Without Stan, there’s a vast wasteland of Richie Rich digests and Lois Lane Annuals and that’s the comix biz. But Stan gave us Spider-Man and the Hulk and The Fantastic Four and so many others that no one could count ’em all up without a handbook. He reached into the hearts of kids and adults on every continent, probably everywhere that civilization exists, and spread out little pulp paper bits of joy that changed the world, and every last one of us working in the field wish we could grow up to BE him.
Happy 89th Birthday, Living Legend! You’re a real life hero to all of us.
I'm pretty sure he's rubbing this guy's nipple.
NOW BACK TO THE 2011 COUNTDOWN! First a TOP FIVE BUN TOON-
By one of those cosmic coincidences that only the Watcher truly understands, the Number #4 Bun Toon on the 2011 hit parade features none other than the Birthday Boy himself. It comes from February, and it asked the most magical “What if…?” of all.
Clearly, making fun of American comic books does fairly well on this blog, getting thousands and thousands of hits. Making fun of Belgian comics has a different result. When you consider the huge hoards of Belgians roaming the internet looking for suitable comic-based entertainment, the Bun Toon below should have done better. But well…c’est la vie.
Maybe people were thrown by the French, who knows? As the saying goes in Paris, “Il fait froid ce matin, et ma auto ne marche pas”. Now that Tintin is a huge movie star, perhaps this toon will get some attention. Maybe then, I’ll be as big as Stan Lee.
A boy can dream.
Ty the Guy OUT!
Come back tomorrow for the strangest Bun Toons of all….
Click here to be taken to the complete and utter history of Bun Toons online, since 2010!
And…don’t forget, today is the day that the legendary banned Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 sees print. Okay, it saw print when it first came out. In Ireland. Everywhere else it got pulped. And okay Kyle Baker’s story (the reason for the ban) has been printed and reprinted and then a couple times after that. But yayy!! Now ALL the pages are in print and there’s a few drawn by Ty Templeton.
Get it today at your Local Comics Store!!
Ty Templeton's ART LAND!! 
I remember liking the Asterix/Tintin one a bit more than the Stan one myself. I especially like Asterix’s Magritte reference in the first word balloon.
But your comment about Stan Musial brings to mind a thought I’ve had about the Marvel Bullpen nicknames: did Stan take the inspiration for them from baseball (and other sports) players, like Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, Musial, and so on? It seems likely, but I’m not sure anyone’s really pointed it out before.
Anyway….
The nicknames that Stan used are ENTIRELY stolen from sports figures, and it’s not particularly a secret to us older folks. Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio and “King” Clancy (a legendary hockey player of the same era) were household names in the mid-century and Lee would have expected his audience to recognize the joke when he called his staff Joltin’ Joe Sinnott and “King” Kirby. I hate to break it to ya, but shouting “Excelsior” and “Face Front, true believers” didn’t originate with Stan either.
Oh, I figured it wasn’t exactly a secret, but it’s one of those things where unless it’s explicitly pointed out, you tend not to think of the origin of it. (Where did Excelsior and Face Front… come from, actually?)
It’s kinda like how unless it’s pointed out, you don’t know that Foghorn J. Leghorn is a parody of a real politician from the era (if you’re like me, and born many years later, that is.)
Another thing, thinking of Stan — since he was, particularly in the mid-late ’60s such a “salesman” of comics, I’m oh so hoping that somehow there’ll be a cameo of Stan on Mad Men in the new season (which is/isn’t the last?). It’d be way cool.
Great b-day present you just made for Stan Lee: in one fell swoop you have destroyed every single character in the Marvel universe. Congrats!
Cheers!
Steven Willis
XOWComics.com
Don’t forget Stan Lee Presents, “The New Testament” at the Council of Nicea. Emperor Constantine and most of the Bishops were very impressed.
All except Cardinal Kirby, who complained about the mistreatment and became Hindu for about seven years.
Don’t feel too badly about people not ‘getting’ Tintin. I posted a bunch of Tintin parodies at my site with barely a nibble. The low turnout for the Tintin movie would’ve filled me with concern if it hadn’t made gangbusters overseas already. Hopefully it’ll reach a wider audience once it’s released onto Blu-ray/DVD.
http://sundaycomicsdebt.blogspot.com/2011/12/alternate-tintin-interpretations.html
Actually, the “what if comic books were realistic” sketch has been done to death. While I haven’t seen anything like that Obelix vs TinTin comic.
I’m italian, by the way, and the Asterix comics and cartoons were big here in the ’90s…. that probably made that comic even funnier to me. We like to see things related to what we love; Americans like their superhero parodies, French and Italians feel familiar when they see Asterix an Obelix.
I’m a Canadian, and though it might seem to the rest of the world that it’s like being a junior American, the experience of growing up Canadian in the 60s and 70s at least had the distinction of including French comics on our news stands, so Asterix and Tintin are as important to me as Batman and Spider-Man. In fact, I was reading Asterix and Tintin long before I knew who Spider-Man was…and often in their original French. Lovely to hear that you’re from Italy, one of the world’s most beautiful countries. If only you could clean up some of those crumbling buildings in Rome, and modernize it, then you’d have something.
Hey – neat Tintin/Asterix comic! Is there anything you can’t draw spot-on?
For those who don’t speak French, some clarifications:
-Asterix’s first line is a greeting and a reference to artist René François Ghislain Magritte (thanks Wikipedia!)
-TinTin replies by calling him a potato.
-Obelix comes in, saying Belgian reporters are crazy
-Obelix then references his origins
Fin
I like being a hoard of Belgians.
finally a website to which ” I ” can relate!
well i person did it