One of the biggest influences on modern pop culture, in both the comicbook world and the cinematic output based on it that dominates the motion picture industry today, has died. Stan Lee was 95.
Born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, he grew up poor in Washington Heights, where his father worked as a dress-cutter. A lover of adventure books and Errol Flynn movies, Lee graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and began spinning stories when he joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project, appearing in a few stage shows.
In 1939, Lee got a job as a gofer for Marvel predecessor Timely Comics. Two years later, for Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's Captain America No. 3, he wrote a two-page story titled The Traitor's Revenge! that was used as text filler to qualify the company for the inexpensive magazine mailing rate. He used the pen name Stan Lee and would first co-create Destroyer for Mystic Comics. Proud of his Jewish heritage, he'd intended to use his full name for when he broke into other literary fields, but the name stuck. He still imbued most of his characters with the tenets of his background. "To me you can wrap all of Judaism up in one sentence, and that is, 'Do unto others,' he once said. "All I tried to do in my stories was show that there’s some innate goodness in the human condition. And there’s always going to be evil; we should always be fighting evil."
After being named interim editor at the age of 19 of what became Marvel Comics, he enlisted in the Army during World War II, served in the Signal Corps, where he wrote manuals and training films with a group that included Oscar winner Frank Capra and future Dr. Seuss, Theodore Geisel.
1961 saw Lee and Kirby looking to compete with the likes of DC Comics, launching the Fantastic Four, followed by The Avengers in 1963. Marvel characters created or co-created by Lee include Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Iron Man and more than 300 others.
In the 1970s, Lee gave up working full-time on the stories themselves and became Marvel's biggest champion, writing regular columns and promoting the company. He also started an animation company and moved to Hollywood to build contacts in the entertainment industry.
His characters would go on to have huge lives in the world, first primarily on television in both live-action and then animated form, and, across the last decade, in the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Disney slowly drawing the various elements back together following its whopping $4 billion deal in 2009. Lee became known to a new audience via his cameos in the various movies.
Lee's own professional life did not always go as smoothly, with his Stan Lee Media company collapsing in bankruptcy and lawsuits and his personal life, following the 2017 death of his beloved wife Joan, fraught with claims of problematic assistants and swindlers looking to take advantage of his advancing years. Yet his legacy remains, one that will stand the test of time.
"I used to think what I did was not very important," he told the Chicago Tribune in April 2014. "People are building bridges and engaging in medical research, and here I was doing stories about fictional people who do extraordinary, crazy things and wear costumes. But I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed." You said it, Stan.
Lee is survived by his daughter, JC, and younger brother Larry Lieber. Empire's Chris Hewitt had the pleasure of talking to the man last July and you can hear that funny, freewheeling interview here.
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