Comics Grinder

Anyone looking for an easy way to hook into comics can look no further than the legendary, Stan Lee. He’s a super easy gateway and, for those who look deeper, this will quickly lead to Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and so forth. Having been interviewed countless times, Stan Lee concluded that he can reverse the roles and be the host himself. Within the YouTube premium channel, “Stan Lee’s World of Heroes,” you will find “Cocktails with Stan.” This is something to see, believe me.

Stan Lee may appear all cute and cuddly, the super easy gateway to comics, but he’s still the same hard-edged guy from his heydey at Marvel. Felicia Day perhaps regrets how she stumbled into a description of her new hobby, ice sculptures. She sort of lazily described to Stan that it’s all done with a chainsaw. “A seesaw? Felicia, please enunciate!” “Chainsaw!” “Oh, chainsaw! But, how the devil would you get the finer details?” Then Felicia admitted that she also uses a chisel! “Oh, a chisel! Well, then it’s not all done with just a chainsaw as you would have had us believe,” lectures Professor Lee, to the surprise and utter dismay of  his pupil. The above photo don’t lie, folks. Marvel over all the funky body language. Or view the interesting exchange for yourself here.

Next on the hot seat, the lovely Cara Santa Maria, host of science-centric “Talk Nerdy To Me,” who manages to hold her own with her signature sexy laugh used as a shield as masterfully as Captain America. This time, Stan goes in for the kill but it is a short-lived victory. Cara begins to describe her life’s journey. After getting a Masters degree in Neurobiology, she intended to pursue a PhD in New York but, as she puts it, she fell in love with a boy across the country. “You said that you were in New York but you fell in love with somone across the country. Did you see a picture of him?” No, Cara corrects herself, she met her beau in California. “Then that’s what you should have said. I have to teach you how to tell a story,” nags Stan. No sooner have they gotten through that bit than it comes out that the boy in Cara’s story is Bill Maher. Stan is insistent that Cara reveal details about her and Bill. Cara insists that the details he wants aren’t so private. As it turns out, by the time of this interview, Cara and Bill had broken up well over a year before. You can judge for yourself here.

Just as things are drifting off course, in jumps Jenna Busch, the co-host, or sidekick, to “Cocktails with Stan.” Jenna is a good egg. She has written tons of stuff about pop culture for a myriad of sites. However, she needs to remember that she’s no longer just a super blogger and she does not have the George Burns protective cover that Stan enjoys and seems to approve of anything he says. Jenna’s attempt to save the moment was to ask Cara a science question: “Why do men have nipples?” Not exactly a challenging question or even that interesting. Jenna could have provided an even better save for her boss by having prepped him beforehand about Cara and Bill Maher.

“Cocktails with Stan” is not going to be winning any Peabody awards or even give “Kathie Lee & Hoda” a run of their money. For now, it’s amusing and, what the hell, it’s Stan Lee, for God’s sake, and he’s 90-years-old. The good thing about this show is that everyone seems to want to have a cocktail with Stan. Everyone on the show ultimately comes out a winner. And you can end up learning about some very cool people, like Cara Santa Maria, who is doing a great service by energizing young, and not-so-young, people about science on “Talk Nerdy To Me.”