Brazillian Artist and graphic designer Butcher Billy has said his farewells to Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, who passed away at the age of 95.
Billy had gained notoriety for his Marvel post-punk crossover mock covers that featured music icons such as Robert Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, Morrissey.
In an interview with PARANÁ, Billy reminisced how he had two years prior honored Stan Lee in Life, but isn’t sure if the Marvel Editor in Chief emeritus ever saw the work, but he is glad his designs can be associated with the icon of comic book history, who became a pop culture personality in his own right:
“He was a cartoon storyteller” says Billy, “he became an actor in live-action series, in movies, he became the voice and face of what he created.”
Billy has a special fondness for Spider-Man, whose very human struggles were in contrast to the godlike figures of DC comics:
People [had] been asking me to do a Marvel version since I released the first series. I never thought it would be interesting until I started sketching the first drawings. The Vision came quite naturally as I really wanted to add Gary [Numan] to the gang. However I didn’t think it would look as good as it was in my head
When I decided to use DC characters in the first series it was because of the “god” status that they have. However with the Marvel characters I can explore other possibilities for the post-punk singers: for example – the Spider-Man from the 60’s and 70’s has gone through a lot of tragedy…he was funny but also very depressive. His girlfriend died because of him, and he wanted to give up loads of times. He was always struggling between his life as a hero and his life as normal person, and I think that can parallel the life of a certain Joy Division singer
Marvel characters are a bit more fragile—because they mostly struggle with real life issues, and their issues are always quite personal, and I always found those concepts quite relatable.
According to Billy, he will be contributing illustrations in a article of the life of Stan Lee in the Los Angeles Times this week.
Original Marvel/Post-Punk crossover series:
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