Ubercross Stan Lee

Not Max Headroom.

Crossword puzzles need to be fun! This is a pretty inarguable statement, but when you’re going for the record books, you can lose sight of it sometimes. I’m always fretting that my megacrosswords might lack the sparkle of a smaller puzzle. Well, I know they’re not going to sparkle like a Crosstina Aquafina or a Kate Schmate…if I put the amount of craft per clue in there that they do, I’d maybe finish this project when I’m eighty. Life and art is full of trade-offs.

So for my last Ubercross before this one, I went after the most fun subject I could find, marrying my love of comics—and writing comics—to the Ubercross’s format. This puzzle was all Stan Lee, and its design was traced from his Twitter avatar:

(Yes, he did end up looking a little like Max Headroom. Yes, a spider-web design for the background would’ve been great. I couldn’t get that to work without making some blocks of white too big to fill.)

Stan Lee is probably the most influential writer in American comics, and he’s controversial in the older sense of the word…many people worship him, some hate him, and a lot of us quirk our lips and say “Well, it’s complicated.”

I’m in group #3, but inclined to be kind. I’ve grappled with his legacy before, in the teen comedy Penny and Aggie, in which he and Jack Kirby inspired two characters also named Stan and Jack. Stan Larson was his own character in the end, but as Douglas Wolk said of Lee, he “thought it was hilarious to pretend to be an egomaniac and kind of was one anyway.”

I thought there was something redeemable in the heart of the young Mr. Larson; the readers generally hated him. Make of that what you will.

Anyway, the non-narrative nature of crosswords let me take a more cubist approach as a writer, examining Lee from various angles without necessarily committing to a perspective. Though I worked in the long names of some of his onscreen appearances like AVENGERS INFINITY WAR, a lot of my favorite clues were for shorter answers:

“Someone who is concerned about other people’s well-being and will go out of his or her way to help them even if there is no chance of a reward” (Lee) (4 letters)

Lee-Romita villain who changed archenemies in the 1980s (7)

He's usually an uncostumed supporting character in Marvel, but his name's a DC hero's codename (5)

RR Martin first published in the Fantastic Four letters page (6)

Lee claimed to be a stickler for this hero's hyphenation (but got it wrong himself, sometimes) (9)

Will I do any more “face puzzles” like this one? It all depends on whether the demand is there after Abecedaria gets finished…I’ll assess the crowdfunding and sponsor situation then. I’ve considered doing one for Trump and/or Biden, but I dunno about writing hundreds of clues about current American politics. I think I’d want to stick to the realm of entertainment. Maybe it’ll be Jack Kirby’s turn.