Stan Lee

 

Stan Lee  (born Stanley Martin Lieber   December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018) was once an American comedian e book writer, editor, publisher, and producer. He rose thru the ranks of a family-run enterprise known as Timely Comics which would later come to be Marvel Comics. He was once the foremost innovative chief for two decades, main its enlargement from a small division of a publishing residence to a multimedia agency that dominated the comics and movie industries.

In collaboration with others at Marvel—particularly co-writers/artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko—he co-created iconic characters, together with superheroes Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Ant-Man, the Wasp, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, the Scarlet Witch, and Black Widow. These and different characters' introductions in the Sixties pioneered a greater naturalistic strategy in superhero comics, and in the Seventies Lee challenged the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, circuitously main to adjustments in its policies. In the Nineteen Eighties he pursued the improvement of Marvel homes in other media, with combined results.

Following his retirement from Marvel in the 1990s, Lee remained a public figurehead for the company, and often made cameo appearances in videos and tv indicates primarily based on Marvel characters on which he obtained an govt producer credit, which allowed him to end up the best grossing character in movie of all time.[2] He persevered unbiased innovative ventures into his 90s till his demise in 2018. Lee was once inducted into the comedian e book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He obtained the NEA's National Medal of Arts in 2008.

Early life

Stanley Martin Lieber was once born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City,  in the condo of his Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia (née Solomon) and Jack Lieber, at the nook of West 98th Street and West End Avenue.  Lee used to be raised in a Jewish household. In a 2002 interview, he noted when requested if he believed in God, "Well, let me put it this way... [Pauses.] No, I'm no longer going to attempt to be clever. I simply do not know. I simply do not know."  On every other interview from 2011, when requested about his Romanian origins and his relationship with the country, he stated that he had in no way visited it and that he did now not comprehend Romanian due to the fact his mother and father by no means taught it to him.

Lee's father, educated as a costume cutter, labored solely sporadically after the Great Depression.  The household moved similarly uptown to Fort Washington Avenue, n Washington Heights, Manhattan. Lee had one youthful brother named Larry Lieber. He stated in 2006 that as a toddler he was once influenced via books and movies, especially these with Errol Flynn enjoying heroic roles. Reading The Scarlet Pimpernel, he known as the title persona "the first superhero I had study about, the first personality who may want to be known as a superhero."  By the time Lee was once in his teens, the household was once residing in an condominium at 1720 University Avenue in The Bronx. Lee described it as "a third-floor rental dealing with out back". Lee and his brother shared the bedroom, whilst their mother and father slept on a foldout couch.

Lee attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.  In his youth, Lee loved writing, and entertained goals of writing the "Great American Novel" one day.  He stated that in his childhood he labored such part-time jobs as writing obituaries for a information carrier and press releases for the National Tuberculosis Center; turning in sandwiches for the Jack May pharmacy to places of work in Rockefeller Center; working as an workplace boy for a trouser manufacturer; ushering at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway;  and promoting subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. At fifteen, Lee entered a excessive faculty essay opposition subsidized via the New York Herald Tribune, known as "The Biggest News of the Week Contest." Lee claimed to have gained the prize for three straight weeks, goading the newspaper to write him and ask him to let anyone else win. The paper advised he seem into writing professionally, which Lee claimed "probably modified my life."  He graduated from excessive faculty early, aged sixteen and a half, in 1939 and joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project

Publishing career

With the assist of his uncle Robbie Solomon,  Lee grew to become an assistant in 1939 at the new Timely Comics division belonging to pulp journal and comic-book writer Martin Goodman. Timely, through the 1960s, would evolve into Marvel Comics. Lee, whose cousin Jean  was once Goodman's wife, used to be formally employed with the aid of Timely editor Joe Simon.

His obligations have been prosaic at first. "In these days [the artists] dipped the pen in ink, [so] I had to make certain the inkwells had been filled", Lee recalled in 2009. "I went down and acquired them their lunch, I did proofreading, I erased the pencils from the completed pages for them".  Marshaling his childhood ambition to be a writer, younger Stanley Lieber made his comic-book debut with the textual content filler "Captain America Foils the Traitor's Revenge" in Captain America Comics #3 (cover-dated May 1941), the usage of the pseudonym Stan Lee (a play on his first name, "Stanley"), which years later he would undertake as his criminal name.  Lee later defined in his autobiography and severa different sources that due to the fact of the low social popularity of comedian books, he was once so embarrassed that he used a pen title so no person would accomplice his actual title with comics when he wrote the Great American Novel one day. This preliminary story additionally delivered Captain America's trademark ricocheting shield-toss.   It would be tailored into a sequential artwork story in 2014 with the aid of Lee and Bruce Timm in Marvel's seventy fifth Anniversary Celebration.

Lee graduated from writing filler to genuine comics with a backup feature, "'Headline' Hunter, Foreign Correspondent", two troubles later, the usage of the pseudonym "Reel Nats"  His first superhero co-creation used to be the Destroyer, in Mystic Comics #6 (August 1941). Other characters he co-created throughout this period, known as the Golden Age of Comic Books, consist of Jack Frost, debuting in U.S.A. Comics #1 (August 1941), and Father Time, debuting in Captain America Comics #6 (August 1941).

When Simon and his innovative companion Jack Kirby left in late 1941 following a dispute with Goodman, the 30-year-old writer mounted Lee, simply below 19 years old, as intervening time editor .The teenager confirmed a knack for the commercial enterprise that led him to continue to be as the comic-book division's editor-in-chief, as properly as artwork director for an awful lot of that time, till 1972, when he would prevail Goodman as publisher.

Lee entered the United States Army in early 1942 and served inside the US as a member of the Signal Corps, repairing telegraph poles and different communications equipment.  He was once later transferred to the Training Film Division, the place he labored writing manuals, coaching films, slogans, and every so often cartooning. His army classification, he said, used to be "playwright"; he introduced that solely 9 guys in the U.S. Army had been given that title. In the Army, Lee's division protected many well-known or soon-to-be well-known people, such as three-time Academy Award-winning director Frank Capra, New Yorker cartoonist Charles Addams, and kid's e book creator and illustrator Theodor Geisel, later regarded to the world as "Dr. Seuss."

Vincent Fago, editor of Timely's "animation comics" section, which put out humor and speaking animal comics, crammed in till Lee again from his World War II army provider in 1945. Lee used to be inducted into the Signal Corps Regimental Association and used to be given honorary membership of the 2nd Battalion of third U.S. Infantry Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord at the 2017 Emerald City Comic Con for his prior service.[71]

While in the Army, Lee obtained letters each week on Friday from the editors at Timely, detailing what they wished written and by way of when. Lee would write stories, then ship them returned on Monday. One week, the mail clerk not noted his letter, explaining that nothing used to be in Lee's mailbox. The subsequent day, Lee went by way of the closed mailroom and noticed an envelope with the return tackle of Timely Comics in his mailbox. Not inclined to pass over a deadline, Lee requested the officer in cost to open the mailroom, however the latter refused. So Lee took a screwdriver and unscrewed the mailbox hinges, retrieving the envelope containing his assignment. The mailroom officer noticed what he did and grew to become him into the base captain, who did now not like Lee. He confronted tampering costs and should have been despatched to Leavenworth Prison. The colonel in cost of the Finance Department intervened and saved Lee from disciplinary action.

In the mid-1950s, by way of which time the organisation used to be now typically acknowledged as Atlas Comics, Lee wrote tales in a range of genres such as romance, Westerns, humor, science fiction, medieval adventure, horror and suspense. In the 1950s, Lee teamed up with his comedian e book colleague Dan DeCarlo to produce the syndicated newspaper strip My Friend Irma, primarily based on the radio comedy starring Marie Wilson.  By the quit of the decade, Lee had emerge as disenchanted with his profession and regarded quitting the field.

Marvel Comics

Marvel revolution

In the late 1950s, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz revived the superhero archetype and skilled full-size success with an up to date model of the Flash, and later with the Justice League of America super-team. In response, writer Martin Goodman assigned Lee to come up with a new superhero team. Lee's spouse recommended that he scan with tales he preferred, given that he used to be planning on altering careers and had nothing to lose.

Lee acted on the advice, giving his superheroes a improper humanity, a exchange from the perfect archetypes generally written for preteens. Before this, most superheroes had been idealistically best human beings with no serious, lasting problems.  Lee added complex, naturalistic characters who may want to have horrific tempers, matches of melancholy, and vanity; they bickered amongst themselves, involved about paying their payments and impressing girlfriends, acquired bored or occasionally even bodily ill.

The first superheroes Lee and artist Jack Kirby created collectively had been the Fantastic Four. The team's instant reputation led Lee and Marvel's illustrators to produce a cavalcade of new titles. Again working with Kirby, Lee co-created the Hulk,Thor,  Iron Man,  and the X-Men;  with Bill Everett, Daredevil;  and with Steve Ditko, Doctor Strange and Marvel's most profitable character, Spider-Man , all of whom lived in a completely shared universe. Lee and Kirby gathered numerous of their newly created characters collectively into the crew title The Avengers and would revive characters from the Nineteen Forties such as the Sub-Mariner and Captain America. Years later, Kirby and Lee would contest who deserved credit score for growing The Fantastic Four.

Comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that in the 1960s:

DC used to be the equal of the large Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC's reinvention of the superhero ... in the late Fifties and early 1960s, it had run into a innovative drought by way of the decade's end. There used to be a new target audience for comics now, and it wasn't simply the little children that historically had study the books. The Marvel of the Nineteen Sixties was once in its very own way the counterpart of the French New Wave... Marvel was once pioneering new strategies of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing greater serious themes, and in the technique maintaining and attracting readers in their teenagers and beyond. Moreover, amongst this new technology of readers have been humans who desired to write or draw comics themselves, inside the new fashion that Marvel had pioneered, and push the innovative envelope nonetheless further.

Lee is revolution prolonged past the characters and storylines to the way in which comedian books engaged the readership and constructed a experience of neighborhood between followers and creators. He added the exercise of typically which include a deposit panel on the splash web page of every story, naming no longer simply the author and penciller however additionally the inker and letterer. Regular information about Marvel body of workers participants and upcoming storylines used to be introduced on the Bullpen Bulletins page, which (like the letter columns that seemed in every title) was once written in a friendly, chatty style. Lee remarked that his aim was once for followers to suppose of the comics creators as friends, and regarded it a mark of his success on this the front that, at a time when letters to different comics publishers had been commonly addressed "Dear Editor", letters to Marvel addressed the creators by using first identify (e.g., "Dear Stan and Jack"). Lee recorded messages to the newly fashioned Merry Marvel Marching Society fan membership in 1965. By 1967, the manufacturer was once well-enough ensconced in famous way of life that a March three WBAI radio software with Lee and Kirby as visitors used to be titled "Will Success Spoil Spiderman [sic]".

Throughout the 1960s, Lee scripted, art-directed and edited most of Marvel's series, moderated the letters pages, wrote a month-to-month column known as "Stan's Soapbox", and wrote infinite promotional copy, frequently signing off with his trademark motto, "Excelsior!" (which is additionally the New York kingdom motto). To hold his workload and meet deadlines, he used a gadget that was once used in the past by means of a number comic-book studios, however due to Lee's success with it, grew to become acknowledged as the "Marvel Method". Typically, Lee would brainstorm a story with the artist and then put together a short synopsis alternatively than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the dispensed range of pages with the aid of deciding and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist became in penciled pages, Lee would write the phrase balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists have been co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Lee constructed upon.

Following Ditko's departure from Marvel in 1966, John Romita Sr. grew to be Lee's collaborator on The Amazing Spider-Man. Within a year, it overtook Fantastic Four to emerge as the company's pinnacle seller. Lee and Romita's memories centered as a good deal on the social and university lives of the characters as they did on Spider-Man's adventures.The testimonies grew to be greater topical, addressing troubles such as the Vietnam War,[98] political elections, and pupil activism. Robbie Robertson, delivered in The Amazing Spider-Man #51 (August 1967) was once one of the first African-American characters in comics to play a serious assisting role.[101] In the Fantastic Four series, the prolonged run through Lee and Kirby produced many acclaimed storylines as properly as characters that have end up central to Marvel, together with the Inhumans and the Black Panther, an African king who would be mainstream comics' first black superhero.

The story regularly mentioned as Lee and Kirby's greatest success is the three-part "Galactus Trilogy" that started out in Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966), chronicling the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic massive who desired to devour the planet, and his herald, the Silver Surfer. Fantastic Four #48 was once chosen as #24 in the one hundred Greatest Marvels of All Time ballot of Marvel's readers in 2001. Editor Robert Greenberger wrote in his introduction to the story that "As the fourth yr of the Fantastic Four got here to a close, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby appeared to be solely warming up. In retrospect, it used to be possibly the most fertile length of any month-to-month title for the duration of the Marvel Age." Comics historian Les Daniels referred to that "[t]he mystical and metaphysical factors that took over the saga had been flawlessly suitable to the tastes of younger readers in the 1960s", and Lee quickly observed that the story was once a preferred on university campuses.  Lee and artist John Buscema launched The Silver Surfer sequence in August 1968.

The following year, Lee and Gene Colan created the Falcon, comics' first African-American superhero, in Captain America #117 (September 1969).  In 1971, Lee circuitously helped reform the Comics Code.  The U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare had requested Lee to write a comic-book story about the risks of pills and Lee conceived a three-issue subplot in The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (cover-dated May–July 1971), in which Peter Parker's nice buddy turns into addicted to prescription drugs. The Comics Code Authority refused to supply its seal due to the fact the tales depicted drug use; the anti-drug context used to be viewed irrelevant. With Goodman's cooperation and assured that the authentic authorities request would supply him credibility, Lee had the story posted besides the seal. The comics offered properly and Marvel received reward for its socially mindful efforts. The CCA consequently loosened the Code to allow bad depictions of drugs, amongst different new freedoms.

Lee additionally supported the usage of comedian books to grant some measure of social commentary about the actual world, regularly dealing with racism and bigotry.  "Stan's Soapbox", without promotion an upcoming comedian e book project, additionally addressed problems of discrimination, intolerance, or prejudice.

In 1972, Lee stopped writing month-to-month comedian books to anticipate the function of publisher. His ultimate trouble of The Amazing Spider-Man was once #110 (July 1972)  and his remaining Fantastic Four used to be #125 (August 1972).

Later Marvel years

Lee grew to be a figurehead and public face for Marvel Comics. He made appearances at comedian e book conventions round America, lecturing at faculties and taking part in panel discussions. Lee and John Romita Sr. launched the Spider-Man newspaper comedian strip on January 3, 1977. Lee's closing collaboration with Jack Kirby, The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, used to be posted in 1978 as phase of the Marvel Fireside Books sequence and is viewed to be Marvel's first photograph novel.Lee and John Buscema produced the first difficulty of The Savage She-Hulk (February 1980), which delivered the woman cousin of the Hulk, and crafted a Silver Surfer story for Epic Illustrated #1 (Spring 1980).

He moved to California in 1981 to advance Marvel's TV and film properties. He was once an govt producer for, and made cameo appearances in Marvel movie variations and different movies. He on occasion back to comedian e book writing with a number of Silver Surfer initiatives along with a 1982 one-shot drawn with the aid of John Byrne, the Judgment Day picture novel illustrated by way of John Buscema, the Parable restrained collection drawn through French artist Mœbius, and The Enslavers photo novel with Keith Pollard.Lee used to be temporarily president of the whole company, however quickly stepped down to turn out to be writer instead, discovering that being president used to be too a good deal about numbers and finance and now not adequate about the innovative procedure he enjoyed.

Later years and death

In September 2012, Lee underwent an operation to insert a pacemaker, which required cancelling deliberate appearances at conventions.Lee ultimately retired from conference appearances by means of 2017.

On July 6, 2017, Joan Boocock, his spouse of sixty nine years, died of problems from a stroke. She was once ninety five years old.

Lee died on November 12, 2018, simply one month earlier than his 96th birthday, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, after being rushed there for a clinical emergency formerly in the day. Lee had formerly been hospitalized for pneumonia in February of that year. The instant reason of dying listed on his demise certificates was once cardiac arrest with respiratory failure and congestive coronary heart failure as underlying causes. It additionally indicated that he suffered from aspiration pneumonia. His physique used to be cremated and his ashes had been given to his daughter.

Roy Thomas, who succeeded Lee as editor-in-chief at Marvel, had visited Lee two days prior to his demise to talk about the upcoming e book The Stan Lee Story and mentioned "I assume he was once prepared to go. But he used to be nonetheless speaking about doing extra cameos. As lengthy as he had the electricity for it and did not have to travel, Stan was once continually up to do some extra cameos. He obtained a kick out of these extra than something else."