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If you are a Stan Lee fan, you will understand this one.

I remember being a couple hours away from streaming on Twitch. I do not even remember what was on the easel at the time, but I was scrolling social media when I saw the news that Stan Lee had passed away.

I was immediately saddened.

Stan Lee was one of the people who helped shape the artist I became. Before I understood style, technique, branding, or what it meant to have a voice as an artist, I was tracing comic book characters. Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, the Wasp, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, Daredevil, and Doctor Strange were not just characters to me. They were part of my foundation.

As a kid, comics gave me a world to study. I learned from the poses, the colors, the expressions, the action, the drama, and the way every panel could tell a story without needing a lot of words. That visual language stayed with me.

As I grew, comics and comic art grew with me — from tracing as a little kid, to drawing my own comics in elementary school, to developing my graffiti style as a teenager. Even now, my color palette still carries the impact of those early years. The bold reds, blues, yellows, shadows, highlights, and movement all come from that world in some way.

Years later, I found myself revisiting that same visual language in my own art.

So when I heard Stan Lee was gone, I thought about those characters.

And I wondered how they would feel.

Most likely, they would feel like me.

Saddened.

I grabbed the biggest canvas I had and immediately knew what I wanted to paint. I sketched a little, turned on my stream, and started painting Spidy with his head in his palm, high above the city where no one could see him be vulnerable, with the rain mixing with his tears.

That image said everything I was feeling.

Spider-Man has always connected with people because he is not perfect. He carries responsibility, pain, pressure, humor, mistakes, and heart all at the same time. Stan Lee understood that the most powerful heroes were not the ones without problems. They were the ones who kept going while carrying them.

I relate to that too.

This painting is about grief, but it is also about gratitude. It is a thank-you to Stan Lee for creating characters that gave so many artists, kids, dreamers, outsiders, and future creators something to hold onto.

Spidy is not just a superhero painting. It is a moment of silence. It is a love letter to comics. It is a tribute to imagination, vulnerability, and the heroes who taught us that even when you are hurting, you can still keep showing up.

Sometimes even superheroes need a quiet place to cry.

— SAVO

 

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