Over Halloween weekend, Stan Lee got to meet Grumpy Cat. Sure, that's kinda cool. I can only assume it was a heartwarming moment where two overexposed media titans met, stared at each other, and together decided to capitalize on this opportunity to please a fan and maybe just maybe go viral. Why not?
Posing for the camera, Grumpy Cat gave her usual mean mug, because what are cats if not honest about their intending to take advantage of us? Not to be outdone, though, Mr. Lee himself frowned. What resulted was a pretty cute picture.
Stan Lee and Grumpy Cat. #HappyHalloween pic.twitter.com/GesgyQyGCa
— Brad Keene (@BradKeene) November 1, 2015
But don't be misled, True Believer! Stan Lee has absolutely nothing to be grumpy about.
Even if you don't read comics, you've almost certainly heard of Stan Lee. At the very least, you know his face:
That alone is a big deal even if you don't know why exactly. The comics industry — and, as a consequence, the movie industry — pays this man an insane amount of deference, to the point that his just showing up at places is cause for excitement in some corners of the fandom.
Lee gets to say "Excelsior!" and is still taken seriously
Seriously, why on Earth would Stan Lee be grumpy? He’s a nonagenarian who gets to appear in some of Hollywood’s most bankable movies. He gets (in many ways undue!) credit for helping create the modern Marvel universe, one of the single most important pop cultural mythologies of our time. He gets to say weirdo things like "Excelsior!" and people still take him mostly seriously. Wouldn't you be over the moon if you were in his shoes?
I don't want you to think that I'm overreacting to a cute internet picture. I swear I'm not. I just want to make it clear that the idea of Stan Lee being "grumpy" about anything other than maybe old man aches and pains and phlegm is silly, tantamount to him pretending to be Spider-Man. Oh wait...