Stan Lee, co-creator of much of the Marvel Comics Universe, has died at the age of 95, as confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter and verified by his attorneys. Lee reportedly passed away after being rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, earlier this morning.
There will no doubt much written about Stan Lee over the coming days, as he was a household name even to those who don’t read comic books. He was a controversial and divisive figure, with many wishing to attribute the brilliance of the Marvel characters he created with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to his artists. As Abraham Riesman recounted in his essay for Vulture in 2016, the contradictory accounts given by Lee and Kirby for the creation of the Marvel Universe haven’t exactly helped in determining Lee’s legacy. As Jonathan Lethem wrote in his essay collection, The Disappointment Artist, “Kirby always wanted to drag the [Fantastic] Four into the Negative Zone — deeper into psychedelic science fiction and existential alienation — while Lee, in his scripting, resolutely pulled them back into the morass of human lives, hormonal alienation, teenage dating problems and pregnancy and unfulfilled longings to be human and normal and loved.”
What is not in doubt is that Stanley Martin Lieber was born to Romanian Jewish immigrants in New York on December 28, 1922. In 1939 he began working as an assistant at Timely Publications, which was owned by Martin Goodman, who was married to Lieber’s cousin Jean. His first written work for the company came in the text story ‘Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge,’ for “Captain America Comics” #3 (cover date May 1941). He used his high school nickname ‘Stan Lee,’ intending to save his real name when he wrote highbrow fiction.
After Pearl Harbor, Lee served in the Signal Corps, repairing communication equipment, before being transferred to the Training Film Division, where he wrote training manuals, films, and did some cartooning. After the war, Lee settled down, and returned to work for Goodman, writing many comics throughout the 1950s in a diverse variety of genres, including an early attempt to revive the Human Torch, Captain America and Namor with “Young Men” #24 (December 1953).
In 1961, Lee and Kirby created “The Fantastic Four,” a superhero family who bickered with each other, had to cope with the pressures of celebrity, and, with Ben Grimm/the Thing in particular, the horror of being transformed physically by their new superpowers. Lee, Kirby, Steve Ditko, and many others continued to gift the world with more angst-filled superheroes like the Incredible Hulk, Ant-Man and the Wasp, the Mighty Thor, the Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, Daredevil, the X-Men, Doctor Strange, the Inhumans, Nick Fury, the Silver Surfer, and Black Panther. These characters always had human frailties, whether it was disabilities like blindness or broken hands, or a sense of alienation from a frightful, angry world. Lee and Kirby revived Captain America, originally created by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, and gave him the most tragic backstory of all: the man out of time, protecting the world he was gone from for decades, guilt-ridden by the loss of his sidekick Bucky.
As Marvel’s characters grew in popularity and the Merry Marvel Marching Society fan club sprouted chapters across campuses in the States, Lee became a common speaking guest. He spoke in public and from his Soapbox column to learn from the superheroes they read, to not just watch evil being defeated on a page, but to fight and speak out against any they saw in real life. Lee grew out his hair and a mustache, increasingly resembling the shaggy haired, bespectacled students he spoke to. In 2008, Lee was awarded the National Medal of Arts, partly because of how “these new stories provided a medium for social commentary” and for how his soapbox “[spoke] to the comic book reader about social justice issues such as discrimination, intolerance, and prejudice.”
By 1998, Lee left Marvel to co-found Stan Lee Media, but found himself a victim of Peter F. Paul. In 2001, he co-founded POW! Entertainment. There he continued contributing to new projects like the TV series Stripperella and Lucky Man, the YouTube channel MarvelousTV, and the young adult series The Zodiac Legacy.
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and Robert Downey Jr. in 2017
By the 21st century, Lee was the face of Marvel’s legacy, cameoing in the countless Marvel Comics movies and TV shows. He was one of the few comics creators to become an action figure, and was a playable character in video games based on The Amazing Spider-Man films and Lego’s Marvel toy line. Even in his 90s, he was a regular presence at conventions and premieres. He was also still the officially credited writer of the syndicated “Amazing Spider-Man” newspaper strip.
Lee was married to Joan Boocock from 1947, until her death in 2017. She was widely attributed as helping him persevere when he was struggling with what would become his lifelong role at Marvel during the early ’60s. Lee’s final year was marked by legal troubles, allegations of elder abuse, and restraining orders, the full lurid details of which are recounted here.
Lee had two daughters, Joan Celia “J.C.” Lee (b. 1950) and Jan, who died in infancy in 1953. Lee is also survived by his brother Larry Lieber.
