Monday we were told the sad news of Marvel Comics founding father’s passing. Stan “The Man” Lee died Monday, November 12,  2018 at the age of 95. We posted the news that day, just a plain black background with Stan’s signature, his date of birth and death and the word “Excelsior!” which we borrowed from the TheRealStanLee.com web site. We were so numbed by the news that’s really all we could think to do. But it seemed appropriate. Today, we want to do a bit more. We’ve started with the basic information from Wikipedia, and added our own memories from readings of articles and books about the Marvel Age and Stan Lee and added photos and pieces of art from all over.

Stan Lee • 1922–2018

A cool animated gif we found on the web. We could not find the artist’s name to credit him, but it’s so cool we just had to share it.

Co-Creator of

Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Mighty Avengers, Daredevil, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Dr. Strange, The X-Men and MORE characters and titles than we have room to list!

Stan and his Marvels!

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber on December 28, 1922. He passed on November 12, 2018. He was an American comic book writer, editor, publisher and briefly president of Marvel Comics Group, as well as fulfilling some of these roles for other companies. He is best remembered as the writer, co-creator and editor-in-chief presiding over the founding of Marvel Comics,  during the Marvel Age lasting from 1961-1970 and leading to its expansion from a small division of a magazine publishing house to a large multimedia corporation in itself.

Stan Lee working with Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and several artists—co-created the fictional Marvel comic book characters: Spider-Man, the Hulk, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Black Panther, the X-Men, and—with his brother, co-writer Larry Lieber—the characters Ant-Man, Iron Man, and Thor. He pioneered a more complex approach to writing superheroes in the 1960s, and in the 1970s challenged the standards of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to it updating its policies.

After retiring from Marvel, Stan remained a public figurehead for the company, and frequently made cameo appearances in movies based on Marvel characters. Meanwhile, he continued independent creative ventures into his 90’s until his death in 2018.

Stan Lee was inducted into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2008.

Early Life

Stanley Martin Lieber was born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City, in the apartment of his Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia (Solomon) and Jack Lieber. His father, trained as a dress cutter, worked only sporadically after the Great Depression. Stan had one younger brother named Larry Lieber. He said in 2006 that as a child he was influenced by books and movies, particularly those with Errol Flynn playing heroic roles.  By the time Stan was in his teens, the family was living in an apartment in The Bronx. Stan described it as “a third-floor apartment facing out back”. Lee and his brother shared the bedroom, while their parents slept on a foldout couch.

Stan attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. In his youth, he enjoyed writing, and entertained dreams of one day writing the “Great American Novel”. Stan said that in his youth he worked such part-time jobs as writing obituaries for a news service and press releases ; delivering sandwiches for the Jack May Pharmacy to offices in Rockefeller Center;  ushering at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway; and selling subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. He graduated from high school early, aged 16½ in 1939, and joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project.

Early Comics Career

One of the last series Stan wrote for Marvel was “Stan Lee Meets…”. This one featured Spider-Man. Other “meetings” featured the Thing, the Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange.

Stan Lee became an assistant in 1939 at the new Timely Comics, a division of Martin Goodman’s pulp magazine company, with the help of his uncle Robbie Solomon. Timely, by the 1960s, would evolve into Marvel Comics. Stan Lee, whose cousin Jean was Goodman’s wife, was formally hired by Timely editor Joe Simon.

Stan was not much more than a “go-fer” at first. “In those days the artists dipped the pen in ink, so I had to make sure the inkwells were filled”, Lee recalled in 2009. “I went down and got them their lunch, I did proofreading, I erased the pencils from the finished pages for them”. Marshaling his childhood ambition to be a writer, young Stanley Lieber made his comic-book debut with the text filler “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge” in Captain America Comics #3 (cover-dated May 1941), using the pseudonym, Stan Lee, which years later he would adopt as his legal name. This initial story also introduced Captain America’s trademark ricocheting shield-toss.

Two issues later, Stan graduated from writing filler to actual comics scrpting with a backup feature, “Headline Hunter, Foreign Correspondent.” Stan’s first superhero co-creation was the Destroyer, in Mystic Comics #6 (August 1941). Other characters he co-created during this era which fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books include Jack Frost, debuting in U.S.A. Comics #1 (August 1941), and Father Time, debuting in Captain America Comics #6 (August 1941).

When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left in 1941, Martin Goodman promoted Stan, who was only 18 years old, to be the interim editor. Stan showed a knack for the business that led him to remain the comic-book division’s editor-in-chief, as well as art director from that time until 1972. 30 years as interim editor has to be a record! 😉 He remained in that capacity until he succeeded Goodman as publisher.

Stan Lee served in the U.S. Army Signal Corp. His function eventually was a writer of publications.

Stan Lee entered the United States Army in early 1942 as a member of the Signal Corps, repairing telegraph poles and other communications equipment. He was later transferred to the Training Film Division, where he worked writing manuals, training films, slogans, and occasionally cartooning. His military classification, he says, was “playwright”; he adds that only nine men in the U.S. Army were given that title. Vincent Fago, editor of Timely’s “animation comics” section, which put out humor and funny animal comics, filled in until Stan returned from his World War II military service in 1945. Stan was inducted into the Signal Corps Regimental Association and was given honorary membership of the 2nd Battalion of 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord at the 2017 Emerald City Comic Con for his prior service.

In the mid-1950s,  Stan wrote stories in a variety of genres including romance, westerns, humor, science fiction, medieval adventure, horror and suspense. In the 1950s, Lee teamed up with his comic book colleague Dan DeCarlo to produce the syndicated newspaper strip, My Friend Irma, based on the radio comedy starring Marie Wilson. By the end of the decade, Stan had become dissatisfied with his career and considered quitting the field.

The Marvel Revolution

In the late 1950s, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz revived the superhero archetype and experienced a significant success with its updated version of the Flash, and later with super-team the Justice League of America. In response, publisher Martin Goodman assigned Stan Lee to come up with a new superhero team. Stan’s wife, Joan, suggested that he experiment with stories he preferred, since he was planning on changing careers and had nothing to lose.

Stan Lee and Marvel Cinematic Universe Characters

Stan acted on that advice, giving his superheroes a flawed humanity, a change from the ideal archetypes that were typically written for preteens. Before this, most superheroes were idealistically perfect people with no serious, lasting problems. Stan introduced complex, realistic characters who could have bad tempers, fits of melancholy, and vanity; they bickered amongst themselves, worried about paying their bills and impressing girlfriends, got bored or were even sometimes physically ill.

The first superheroes Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby created together were the Fantastic Four, inspired by the Kirby adventure team, Challengers of the Unknown, Jack did for DC Comics a year or so prior to returning to Marvel. The team’s immediate popularity led Stan and Marvel’s illustrators to produce a cavalcade of new titles. Again working with Jack Kirby, Stan 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 successful character, Spider-Man, all of whom lived in a thoroughly shared universe. Lee and Kirby gathered several of their newly created characters together into the team titled The Avengers and would revive characters from the 1940s such as the Sub-Mariner and Captain America.

Stan Lee’s Auto-biography: Excelsior

Comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that in the 1960s:

DC was the equivalent of the big Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC’s reinvention of the superhero … in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had run into a creative drought by the decade’s end. There was a new audience for comics now, and it wasn’t just the little kids that traditionally had read the books. The Marvel of the 1960s was in its own way the counterpart of the French New Wave… Marvel was pioneering new methods of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing more serious themes, and in the process keeping and attracting readers in their teens and beyond. Moreover, among this new generation of readers were people who wanted to write or draw comics themselves, within the new style that Marvel had pioneered, and push the creative envelope still further.

Stan meets the Thing in 2006.

Stan Lee’s revolution extended beyond the characters and storylines to built a sense of community between fans and creators. He introduced the practice of regularly including a credit panel on the splash page of each story, naming not just the writer and penciller but also the inker and letterer. The credits and even the story introductions and sometimes  the narration in the middle of the story spoke directly to the reader with a friendly, chatty style. Stan remarked that his goal was for fans to think of the comics creators as friends. A sign he was succeeding showed up in fan mail they received which began with “Dear Stan and Jack” rather than the customary “Dear Editor.” Letter columns became a focal point of each issue and fans would buy the books and quickly flip to the back to see if their letter made it into he letter sections. The letter pages grew from 1 to as many as 3 pages, some of which were filled with the latest news and goings on of the Marvel Bullpen. The regular news soon found its own page in each issue in addition to the letters page as the Bullpen Bulletins page. Another extension of this friendly policy was Stan’s recorded messages to the newly formed Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club in 1965. The record contained not only Stan’s voice but the voices of most of the Marvel Bullpen artists.

The Stan Lee meets the Thing cover was a homage to the classic FF # 51.

Throughout the 1960s, Stan acted as the head writer, art director and editor in chief for all of Marvel’s new super-hero and adventure titles. He moderated the letters pages, the Bullpen Bulletins pages which included his monthly column called “Stan’s Soapbox”, signing off with his trademark motto, “Excelsior!” (which he borrowed from the New York state motto) and wrote endless promotional copy for ads. Stan would probably never been able to pull this off without adapting a system that was used previously by various comic-book studios. Stan’s version and the success he had with using it, inspired it becoming known as the “The Marvel Method”. Typically, Stan would brainstorm a story with the artist either in his office or on the phone and then prepare a brief synopsis rather than a full script. Based on the synopsis, the artist would fill the allotted number of pages by determining and drawing the panel-to-panel storytelling. After the artist turned in penciled pages, Stan would write the word balloons and captions, and then oversee the lettering and coloring. In effect, the artists were co-plotters, whose collaborative first drafts Stan built upon.

Stan’s greatest innovation would come back to bite its master. Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko gradually became disillusioned with the Marvel Method and wanted credit and more pay for the extra work they were doing which they saw as actually writing the stories. They felt Stan was just filling in the words from their notes in the margins. There was a little more to it than that. Actually, Jack and Steve should have gotten paid more and plotting credit, which was something later artists would receive. But at this time in Marvel’s beginnings it just wasn’t happening. Martin Goodman was the publisher and the guy who signed the paychecks. He looked at the bottom line. He was not concerned with the way the books were produced as long as they produced a profit. He wasn’t going to give any of the artists any more than he had to. Stan has said many times he would have done things different if not for Publisher Goodman’s veto.

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko were great as a creative team on Spider-Man and Dr. Strange. Unfortunately, the two both had their own vision for the characters which eventually lead them in different directions altogether.

Following Steve Ditko’s departure from Marvel in 1966, John Romita Sr. became Stan’s collaborator on The Amazing Spider-Man. Within a year, it overtook Fantastic Four to become the company’s top seller. Lee and Romita’s stories focused as much on the social and college lives of the characters as they did on Spider-Man’s adventures. The stories became more topical, addressing issues such as the Vietnam War, political elections, and student activism. Robbie Robertson, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #51 (August 1967) was one of the first African-American characters in comics to play a serious supporting role. In the Fantastic Four series, the lengthy run by Lee and Kirby produced many acclaimed storylines as well as characters that have become central to Marvel, including the Inhumans and the Black Panther, an African king who would be mainstream comics’ first black superhero.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s finest achievement was the “Galactus Trilogy” that ran in Fantastic Four #48-50 (March-May 1966). The continued storyline chronicled the arrival of Galactus, a cosmic giant who wanted to consume all the planets natural resources, proceeded by his herald, the Silver Surfer. Fantastic Four #48 was chosen as #24 in the 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time poll of Marvel’s readers in 2001. It seemed to many at the time and looking back years later that after only 4 years of the Fantastic Four, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were really just getting started. It was perhaps the pivotal milestone of the Marvel Age. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that “the mystical and metaphysical elements that took over the saga were perfectly suited to the tastes of young readers in the 1960s.” Stan  would soon discover the the story was a favorite on college campuses. Lee and artist John Buscema launched The Silver Surfer series in August 1968.

Stan “The Man” Lee in 1975

The following year, Stan Lee and Gene Colan created the Falcon, comics’ first African-American superhero in Captain America #117 (September 1969). Then in 1971, Stan indirectly helped reform the Comics Code. The U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare had asked Stan to write a comic-book story about the dangers of drugs and Stan conceived a three-issue subplot in The Amazing Spider-Man #96–98 (cover-dated May–July 1971), in which Peter Parker’s best friend becomes addicted to prescription drugs. The Comics Code Authority refused to grant its seal because the stories depicted drug use. The anti-drug context was considered irrelevant. With Goodman’s cooperation and confident that the original government request would give him credibility, Stan had the story published without the Comics Code seal. The comics sold well and Marvel won praise for its socially conscious efforts. The CCA subsequently loosened the Code to permit negative depictions of drugs, among other new freedoms.

Stan also supported using comic books to provide some measure of social commentary about the real world, often dealing with racism and bigotry.  “Stan’s Soapbox”, besides promoting an upcoming comic book project, also addressed issues of discrimination, intolerance, or prejudice.

In 1972, Stan stopped writing monthly comic books to assume the role of publisher. His final issue of The Amazing Spider-Man was #110 (July 1972) and his last Fantastic Four was #125 (August 1972).

Stan Lee Presents:

In the 1970’s Stan the Writer / Editor In Chief became Stan the Publisher.

In later years, Stan became a figurehead and public face for Marvel Comics. He made appearances at comic book conventions around America, lecturing at colleges and participating in panel discussions. Stan Lee and John Romita Sr. launched the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip on January 3, 1977. Stan’s final collaboration with Jack Kirby, The Silver Surfer: The Ultimate Cosmic Experience, was published in 1978 as part of the Marvel Fireside Books series and is considered to be Marvel’s first graphic novel. Stan Lee and John Buscema produced the first issue of The Savage She-Hulk (February 1980), which introduced the female cousin of the Hulk and crafted a Silver Surfer story for Epic Illustrated #1 (Spring 1980).

Stan moved to California in 1981 to develop Marvel’s TV and movie properties. He was an executive producer for, and made cameo appearances in Marvel film adaptations and other movies. He occasionally returned to comic book writing with various Silver Surfer projects including a 1982 one-shot drawn by John Byrne, the Judgment Day graphic novel illustrated by John Buscema, the Parable limited series drawn by French artist Mœbius, and The Enslavers graphic novel with Keith Pollard. Stan was briefly president of the entire company, but soon stepped down to become publisher instead, finding that being president was too much about numbers and finance and not enough about the creative process he enjoyed.

Stan Lee’s The Traveler

Peter Paul and Stan Lee began a new Internet-based superhero creation, production, and marketing studio, Stan Lee Media, in 1998. It grew to 165 people and went public through a reverse merger structured by investment banker Stan Medley in 1999, but, near the end of 2000, investigators discovered illegal stock manipulation by Peter Paul and corporate officer Stephan Gordon. Stan Lee Media filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February 2001. Peter Paul was extradited to the U.S. from Brazil and pleaded guilty to violating SEC Rule 10b-5 in connection with trading of his stock in Stan Lee Media. Stan was never implicated in the scheme. In 2001, Stan Lee, Gill Champion, and Arthur Lieberman formed POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment to develop film, television and video game properties. Stan announced a superhero program that would feature Ringo Starr, the former Beatle, as the lead character. Additionally, in August of that year, Stan announced the launch of Stan Lee’s Sunday Comics, a short-lived subscription service hosted by Komikwerks.com. From July 2006 until September 2007 Stan hosted, co-created, executive-produced, and judged the reality television game show competition Who Wants to Be a Superhero? on the Sci-Fi Channel. On March 15, 2007, after Stan Lee Media had been purchased by Jim Nesfield, the company filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment for $5 billion, claiming Stan had given his rights to several Marvel characters to Stan Lee Media in exchange for stock and a salary. On June 9, 2007, Stan Lee Media sued Stan Lee; his newer company, POW! Entertainment; and POW! subsidiary QED Entertainment.

In 2008, Stan wrote humorous captions for the political fumetti book Stan Lee Presents Election Daze: What Are They Really Saying? In April of that year, Brighton Partners and Rainmaker Animation announced a partnership POW! to produce a CGI film series, Legion of 5. Other projects by Stan announced in the late 2000s included a line of superhero comics for Virgin Comics, a TV adaptation of the novel Hero, a foreword to Skyscraperman by skyscraper fire-safety advocate and Spider-Man fan Dan Goodwin,  a partnership with Guardian Media Entertainment and The Guardian Project to create NHL superhero mascots and work with the Eagle Initiative program to find new talent in the comic book field.

Stan promoted Stan Lee’s Kids Universe at the 2011 New York Comic Con. In October 2011, Stan announced he would partner with 1821 Comics on a multimedia imprint for children, Stan Lee’s Kids Universe, a move he said addressed the lack of comic books targeted for that demographic; and that he was collaborating with the company on its futuristic graphic novel Romeo & Juliet: The War, by writer Max Work and artist Skan Srisuwan. At the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International, Stan announced his YouTube channel, Stan Lee’s World of Heroes, which airs programs created by Stan, Mark Hamill, Peter David, Adrianne Curry and Bonnie Burton, among others. Stan wrote the book Zodiac, released in January 2015, with Stuart Moore. The film Stan Lee’s Annihilator, based on a Chinese prisoner-turned-superhero named Ming and in production since 2013, was released in 2015.

Stan Lee Re-imagined Batman with Joe Kubert.

In his later career, Stan’s contributions continued to expand outside the style that he helped pioneer. An example of this is his first work for DC Comics in the 2000s, launching the Just Imagine… series, in which Lee re-imagined the DC superheroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. Manga projects involving Stan include Karakuri Dôji Ultimo, a collaboration with Hiroyuki Takei, Viz Media and Shueisha, and Heroman, serialized in Square Enix’s Monthly Sh’nen Gangan with the Japanese company Bones. In 2011, Stan started writing a live-action musical, The Yin and Yang Battle of Tao.

This period also saw a number of collaborators honor Stan Lee for his influence on the comics industry. In 2006, Marvel commemorated Stan’s 65 years with the company by publishing a series of one-shot comics starring Stan himself meeting and interacting with many of his co-creations, including Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, the Thing, Silver Surfer, and Doctor Doom. These comics also featured short pieces by such comics creators as Joss Whedon and Fred Hembeck, as well as reprints of classic Stan Lee-written adventures. At the 2007 Comic-Con International, Marvel Legends introduced a Stan Lee action figure. The body beneath the figure’s removable cloth wardrobe is a re-used mold of a previously released Spider-Man action figure, with minor changes. Comikaze Expo, Los Angeles’ largest comic book convention, was rebranded as Stan Lee’s Comikaze Presented by POW! Entertainment in 2012.

At the 2016 Comic-Con International, Stan introduced his digital graphic novel Stan Lee’s God Woke, with text originally written as a poem he presented at Carnegie Hall in 1972. The print-book version won the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Outstanding Books of the Year Independent Voice Award.

Cameos

Stan Lee received the National Medal of Arts in 2008 from President George W. Bush.

Stan Lee and his collaborator Jack Kirby appear as themselves in The Fantastic Four #10 (January 1963), the first of several appearances within the fictional Marvel Universe. The two are depicted as similar to their real-world counterparts, creating comic books based on the “real” adventures of the Fantastic Four.

Stan was parodied by Jack in comics published by rival DC Comics as Funky Flashman. Jack later portrayed himself, Stan, production executive Sol Brodsky, and Flo Steinberg as superheroes in What If #11 (October 1978), “What If the Marvel Bullpen Had Become the Fantastic Four?”, in which Stan played the part of Mister Fantastic. Stan also made numerous cameo appearances in many Marvel titles, appearing in audiences and crowds at many characters’ ceremonies and parties, and hosting an old-soldiers reunion in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #100 (July 1972). Stan appeared, unnamed, as the priest at Luke Cage and Jessica Jones‘ wedding in New Avengers Annual #1 (June 2006). He pays his respects to Karen Page at her funeral in Daredevil vol. 2, #8 (June 1998), and appears in The Amazing Spider-Man #169 (June 1977).

In 1994, artist Alex Ross rendered Stan Lee as a bar patron on page 44 of Marvels #3.

Stan Lee’s How To Draw SuperHeroes!

In Marvel’s “Flashback” series of titles cover-dated July 1997, a top-hatted caricature of Stan as a ringmaster introduced stories that detailed events in Marvel characters’ lives before they became superheroes, in special “-1” editions of many Marvel titles. The “ringmaster” depiction of Stan was originally from Generation X #17 (July 1996), where the character narrated a story set primarily in an abandoned circus. Though the story itself was written by Scott Lobdell, the narration by “Ringmaster Stan” was written by Stan, and the character was drawn in that issue by Chris Bachalo.

Stan and other comics creators are mentioned on page 479 of Michael Chabon’s 2000 novel about the comics industry The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Chabon also acknowledges a debt to Stan and other creators on the book’s Author’s Note page.

On one of the last pages of Truth: Red, White & Black, Stan appears in a real photograph among other celebrities on a wall of the Bradley home.  Under his given name of Stanley Lieber, Stan Lee appears briefly in Paul Malmont’s 2006 novel The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril.

In Stan Lee Meets Superheroes, which Lee wrote, he comes into contact with some of his favorite creations. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby appear as professors in Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #19.

Stan Lee’s Mighty 7!

In Lavie Tidhar’s 2013 The Violent Century, Stan appears – under his birth name of “Stanley Martin Lieber” – as a historian of superhumans.