Todd McFarlane Visited Stan Lee

Todd McFarlane, the Image Comics co-founder, the artist and writer known for Spider-Man and creating Spawn, recently visited Stan Lee, who has been a bit under the weather following having been admitted to the hospital in February.

Stan Lee recently appeared in a video where he said he had a “little bout of pneumonia,” but said he was feeling better and thinking of the fans.

Todd McFarlane visited the 95-year-old creator of Spider-Man and the Avengers and posted about it on Facebook:

MY RECENT VISIT…

“Stan Lee. I wonder how he’s doing?”

It’s a question, I think, many of us in the comic industry have been asking ourselves recently. With a handful of news articles swirling on the internet about Stan, it has led to lots of questions. Through all of it, I really have focused on just one crucial question…

“I wonder how Stan is doing?”

With that in mind, I want to post about my recent visit to see my dear friend Stan at his house last week (March 29th). To be clear, what I am writing is strictly about the one hour visit I had with him. What Stan does with all the rest of his personal time was not something we talked about during my visit.

When I entered the room where Stan was seated he welcomed me and asked that I sit next to him (since his hearing is far from perfect these days). And…how did Stan look you may ask? Like a 95-year-old man. I think we tend to forget that fact, at times, since he’s become so iconic and seemingly timeless. He’s a man who has been around for nearly a century.

For the next 60 minutes, we talked about things like his growing up in New York, his love of Marvel comics, his even bigger love of his late wife Joanie and how he was doing health wise. He told me that getting old kind of sucked but said, “what are you going to do?” His stories told me how obvious it was that he missed his wife and, how every day, a pair of ducks come swooping down from the sky to land in his pool and then come up to the glass windows begging for food (which his wife would oblige every time). We talked baseball, movies and he asked what it was it like for me to live next to a giant natural desert preserve in Arizona. Basically, it was every day, normal banter mixed with a few fun stories.

But soon it was getting late and I had to get going. As I got up to leave, Stan grabbed my hand and said, “Todd, thanks for coming by. Your visit is much better than any medicine I could take.”

So, what did I observe on my visit for that one specific hour? I saw a 95-year-old friend.

And for me, at least, that was comforting.

TODD