Marvel Comics writer, editor, and publisher (and frequent cameo-maker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) Stan Lee has passed away. The co-creator of Iron Man, Spider-Man, Black Panther, The X-Men and many more iconic comic book series was 95.
He was born Stanley Lieber in New York City in 1922. His father, a dress-cutter, moved the family to several different small apartments as the family tried to stay afloat during the Great Depression, finally ending up in a one bedroom apartment in the Bronx where Stan and his younger brother Larry shared the bedroom, while his parents took the fold-out couch in the living room.
In 1939 his uncle helped Stan get a job as an assistant at Timely Comics (he was officially hired by Captain America co-creator Joe Simon) and he quickly took on a diverse list of tasks, including grabbing lunch for artists, proofreading text, and erasing the penciling from pages once they were inked. In 1941, Lee made his comics writing debut with the filler for a Captain America comic, using the name “Stan Lee” in order to save his birth name for the novel he hoped to write. The bosses liked his work enough to let him contribute more scripts, and when Jack Kirby and Joe Simon both left the company at the end of the year, Lee was promoted to an editorship at just 19 years old. By this point, comics as a medium were past their Golden Age, and Lee spent the 1950s working on a wide variety of comics genres, including Westerns, romances, and funny animal books. But the stories the market demanded were uninspiring to Lee, and by the end of the decade was on the verge of quitting the field entirely.
There are several stories about the origin of the “Silver Age” of comics—the age that Marvel ushered in—but the sweetest one is that Lee’s wife Joan told him to stop writing comics for everyone, and try writing one for himself. Since he wanted to quit anyway, what was the worst that could happen?
Lee thought it over, and began working on a new kind of superhero.
Rather than conforming to the typical idea of a perfect, untouchable superhero, Lee created characters with real problems, family relationships, neuroses, fears, and flaws. They spoke natural (if slightly over-the-top) dialogue. They had trouble paying their bills. In some cases it took them time to learn how to use their powers, and they wrestled with a real sense of temptation to use those powers for evil, or at least for personal gain. In focusing on the kind of stories he wanted to read, rather than the stories that had always been told, he was instrumental in making superhero comics relevant and daring in the 1960’s. In November 1961, Fantastic Four #1 came out to immediate popularity, and Marvel took off from there, turning out a seemingly inexhaustible list of superheroes including Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, The Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Daredevil, the X-Men, and The Incredible Hulk. Stan Lee’s heroes aren’t paragons of perfection, but instead fallible human beings that readers (particularly the generation of kids just hitting their teens in the mid-60s) could empathize with. Without a doubt, the world of gripping heroics was made more relatable through the creations of Stan Lee, and it was this relatibility that re-vitalized the superhero genre in the 1960s.
He collaborated with some of the greatest artists to work in comics, including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who co-created the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, respectively. Lee’s snappy, witty, writing served as a perfect complement both to Kirby’s dynamic, bursting-out-of-the-panel style, and Ditko’s precision and elegance.
While he confessed to embarrassment about his career in comics early on, Stan Lee became one of the great champions of the industry, and led a battle against the Comics Code Authority that forced the organization to reform their policies.
Lee served as a figurehead and public face for Marvel and founded Stan Lee Media and POW Entertainment in the 1990s and 2000s. He was inducted into The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. Though semi-retired, Lee remained active in comics media and only retired from public appearances mere months before his passing.
We are saddened by his loss, but lifted by what he brought into this world. To borrow from his own famous sign-off; onward and upward. Excelsior.
He was a great writer and a great promoter. I saw him once at the NY ComicCon, and he had the room in the palm of his hands; what a dynamic personality. He had a huge impact on the world of comics, and created a fictional universe that is known world-wide. He will be missed.
Granted the collaborative nature of it all, but in the modern world, has one person brought more joy to more people across more cultures than Stan Lee? The bullpen has gone sadly quiet
Oh noooo this is so sad. Not what I wanted to see when I logged in :(
But at least he got to see so many of his movies bring so much happiness to fans!
Farewell Stan Lee, we shall not see his like again. #Excelsior.
I almost believed he was immortal.
I never met him, and I wasn’t even into Marvel until the ’90s, but I have friends and colleagues who work in comics and knew him personally, and I’m sad for them. And he’s just had such a transformative impact on the media and culture, first by bringing new depth and maturity to comics, then more recently as the characters he co-created transformed the landscape of film and TV and he was there as the ever-enthusiastic pitchman for the change. It’s hard to imagine a world where he doesn’t keep showing up in movie cameos.
Face front, true believers.
You might have confused Joe Simon with Joe Shuster. Shuster and Jerry Siegel created Superman. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Captain America.
@6- Corrected, thanks!
The Onion says
“Stan Lee, creator of beloved Marvel character Stan Lee, dies at 95”.
And that really does say it all. I think Stanley Lieber would nod at that, too.
Never fear — they’ll reboot him in a few months, in Ultimate Stan Lee #1.
> Ultimate Stan Lee
Seriously, I hope Marvel doesn’t turn him into a Colonel Sanders figure.
@10 jmeltzer …Uh, I think he already did that to himself, and, like, decades ago.
With all due respect, DC ushered in the Silver Age of comics with The Flash in Showcase #4 (10/56) & Green Lantern in Showcase #22 (10/59). The Martian Manhunter first appeared in Detective Comics #225 (11/55). Even if you preferred Marvel to DC (and I did not, with rare exceptions like Doctor Strange), you have to admit that DC got there first. However, even this resolute DC fan has to admit that without Marvel comic characters would not be as embedded into the culture as they are.
“onward and upward. Excelsior.” ‘Nuff said.
There are very few people who have redefined a medium as much as Stan Lee did. With all due respect to whomever pointed out that DC ushered in the Silver Age of Comics with the new versions of the Flash and Green Lantern, I’d say that those characters were nowhere near as revolutionary as the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man.
The FF in particular completely upended a lot of notions about comic book heroics, Sure, the Thing is the most cited example of how Stan revolutionized comics what with his pathos over his permanent monstrous state. To me, though, the relationship between Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Girl was also revolutionary in that it expanded beyond the typical “girls are icky” attitudes that occurred in a lot of comics. Reed and Sue actually moved forward in their relationship. Granted, Sue played the role of girl hostage a little too often …
For me, Stan’s greatest work, though, was Spider-Man- particularly around the time that John Romita took over on art. To me, it’s one of the best writer-artist pairings in comics history.
I’m 45 years old and grew up reading reprints of Stan’s works (and the originals when I could find them at yard sales). It says something about this guy’s influence that when I told my 11-year-old daughter that he had passed, she said she had always wanted to meet him. She then said she was looking forward to seeing the next couple Marvel movies to see him, even though it might make her a little sad. I’m hoping Avengers IV is dedicated to him.
I’m just glad he got to see his characters and their universe become as big to everyone else as they were to me when I was growing up and experiencing them for the first time. Excelsior indeed …
RIP Stan Lee. A class act. So glad he lived to see that stories like he created are important and mean so much to soo many people -which in Stan Lee’s case, multiple generations and those yet to come.
Baruch Dayan Emet. May his memory be a blessing.
We love you Stan and the great work you have done. Excelsior!
Stan Lee is the only Marvel character to ever appear in a non-Lego DC movie. Granted, the movie was Teen Titans Go To the Movies, but still.