In 2018, I wrote my first and last superhero story, an audiobook called A Trick of Light in collaboration with longtime Marvel editor Stan Lee. It was Stan’s last project—he died after the manuscript had been finalized, but before it was recorded and released as an Audible Original—which made the book a very big deal at that year’s San Diego Comic-Con, the annual expo where extravagantly costumed culture vultures gather in ecstatic celebration of all things franchise and fandom. It was on my last day at Comic-Con that someone presented me with a swag bag which included, I was informed, one of the convention’s most coveted objets d’art: a highly collectible, limited edition Funko Pop! statuette of my late collaborator, complete with aviator glasses and trademark mustache. This miniature Stan was made of plastic, as all Funko Pops! are, but painted to look like aged bronze, which gave it an uncanny effect—like an artifact from an ancient civilization that worshipped a pantheon of bobbleheaded gods.
I was holding the statue in my hands when someone sidled up to me and said, “Oh, wow, that’s going to look so great!”—and then, when I looked confused, added, “You know, in your collection,” at which point I understood: My interlocutor believed that I owned more than one of these objects. Not only that, but that I had them on display in my home. In my collection.
My doll collection.
I was, at this time, 37 years old.
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