For the past few days, the Comics Internet's been buzzing about a teaser image that's cropped up bearing the cryptic legend "Stan's Back":


Based on the trademark signature, we know it's a reference to Marvel Universe co-creator Stan Lee, but Stan Lee doing what is a question nobody seems to be able to answer. There are a ton of theories over what this might mean--from it being a promotion for his new super-hero line at Archie to its similarity to the "Mark Waid Is Evil" campaign meaning a possible project from BOOM! Studios--but each one gets hung up on the whole "back" thing.

Simply put, Stan hasn't been gone from anything long enough to have something to come back to, unless you count the "Just Imagine Stan Lee's DC Universe" books, which we don't think anyone is hankering to return to. He's still doing super-hero comics--heck, he even did a Spider-Man story as recently as last year--so unless he's going back to doing anti-VD posters for the Army, we're stumped.

Or we were, until we finally stumbled on the answer.That's right: ComicsAlliance has exclusively uncovered the actual full promos, and we've discovered that the truth is far simpler:


It's an ad campaign to raise awareness of, well, Stan's back.


While his cameos in movies like "Daredevil" and "Spider-Man" saw Stan's distinctive 'stache-and-glasses mug given screen time, more recent flicks like "Spider-Man 3" and "Iron Man" have shown him from the rear, which make his signature cameos harder to spot.


We hope this might make things easier, and be on the lookout for the next ad campaign, which aims to clear things up even further:

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