Everyone will remember Stan Lee as the lovable grandpa of the Marvel universe...
"Are you Tony Stank?"
All those wonderful cameos aside, Stan Lee was a cornerstone of the comics industry dating
all the way back to 1939.
For eight decades, Lee compiled a remarkable list of achievements and changed comics forever
— but there's still plenty that many Marvel fans don't know about his life and legacy.
Let's take some time to remember and appreciate Stan Lee for introducing us to Earth's mightiest
heroes.
Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, which was perfect timing to enter the
workforce during the Great Depression.
He was always interested in writing, and when he turned 18, he got a job with Timely Comics,
the company that would later become Marvel.
It just happened to be owned by Martin Goodman, who was married to Lee’s cousin.
How much this family connection helped Lee get the job remains disputed.
At the time, Lee assumed his career in comics would be short-lived, and worried that it
might hurt his ambition to become a respected novelist.
As a result, he adopted "Stan Lee" as a pen name and spent years introducing himself to
people simply as "a writer," without telling them what he wrote.
Lee had been working at Marvel for less than a year when Joe Simon and Jack Kirby discovered
that Martin Goodman had been stiffing them out of royalties on their popular creation,
Captain America.
Outraged, Kirby and Simon quit Timely for National Comics, the company that would later
become DC.
Goodman immediately appointed the 19-year-old Stan Lee to replace Simon as editor-in-chief.
At the time, he had mostly written short "filler" comics and brief text stories that were only
included so the comics could get a cheaper rate on postage.
According to Lee, the appointment was supposed to be temporary, but Goodman became distracted
with other branches of his publishing company and forgot to replace him.
As it turned out, Lee remained in the post for the next three decades, although, like
most comics creators of his generation, he did take a few years out to serve in the army
during World War II.
It was there that he had his greatest fame as an artist, designing posters warning soldiers
against sexually transmitted diseases, with the catchy caption "VD?
Not Me!"
After the war, superheroes suffered a shockingly rapid decline in popularity, and over at Timely,
all superhero comics were canceled.
Lee, desperate to stay in business, had little room for creativity.
Despite efforts to copy other companies’ success with Westerns and monster comics,
the company repeatedly risked bankruptcy during the 1950s, to the point that Jack Kirby said
he once came in to find Lee sobbing while movers were taking furniture out of the office.
Goodman eventually made Lee fire all the other employees, including many of his closest friends,
but kept Lee himself around.
When Lee was 39, he told his wife, Joan, that he wanted to quit, but DC had recently reinvigorated
superhero comics with their new team book, the Justice League of America.
In an attempt to replicate those sales, Lee and Jack Kirby co-created the Fantastic Four,
a huge hit that saved the company and changed comics history.
Steve Ditko's departure
With Steve Ditko, Stan had co-created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, but by the mid-60s, their
relationship had deteriorated to the point of being almost nonexistent.
Ditko had always been a little intense, but as his tenure on Amazing Spider-Man continued,
he attempted to inject the stories with references to Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy, in which
he was an ardent believer.
That put him at odds with Lee, and eventually, they just stopped speaking to each other,
even as they continued working on the comic.
The final straw came when the two creators disagreed over the true identity of the Green
Goblin.
Lee wanted it to be Norman Osborn, the father of Spider-Man's best friend; Ditko allegedly
wanted the Goblin to be an unrelated criminal.
Lee won the argument.
Ditko exited the book and was replaced by John Romita Sr., who stayed with Marvel many
years.
Despite their disputes, Lee and Ditko were two forces to be reckoned with — and both
left us in the same year.
Ditko passed away on June 29th of a heart attack at the age of 90, while Lee followed
a few months later on November 12th at the age of 95.
On the page, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby may have been the team responsible for building the
majority of the Marvel Universe and telling some of the best comic book stories of all
time, but behind the scenes, Kirby’s frustration with his collaborator was growing throughout
the '60s.
To Kirby, Stan was the consummate corporate creator, serving as the editor-in-chief and
the public face of the company that Kirby saw as exploiting his talent.
When he started at DC, Kirby wasted no time in making his feelings known by turning his
collaborator-turned-nemesis into a comics character.
In the pages of Mister Miracle #6, Kirby introduced Funky Flashman, telling readers “I know
him, you know him, but does anybody need him?"
Accompanied by a sniveling minion named Houseroy, thought to be based on Stan’s assistant,
Roy Thomas, Flashman was a con man out to exploit others’ talent, and was first seen
taking an allowance that was automatically dispensed from a statue, literally pulling
the money out of someone else’s head
Despite the bad blood, Kirby and Lee were able to make peace in 1993, shortly before
Kirby’s passing.
"I don't think there's any artist in the field today who doesn't owe Jack something."
In the 1960s, Marvel was just a small division of a company called Magazine Management, and
they weren't actually the most profitable part of the company.
That honor went to a line of "Men's Magazines" with extremely creative names like
Stag, Male, and Complete Man.
Sensing an opportunity to capitalize on that success, Lee decided to combine Magazine Management's
two most prominent departments.
The result was The Adventures of Pussycat, which made its debut in 1965 as what Lee called
a “cutie” comic.
"Oh man…"
While Lee's gamble on The Adventures of Pussycat didn't really pay off, the scandalous story
included work from Lee, Wally Wood, and Al Hartley, who wound up leaving Pussycat and
Marvel after finding religion.
He spent his remaining career drawing Christian-themed Archie comics.
It's easy to argue that Stan's most important role wasn't as a comic book writer or editor
but as an ambassador for the medium.
Long before he was a notable cameo in the world's most popular movies, he served his
ambassador role with a set of videos designed to give viewers a look behind the scenes of
the comic book industry.
Released on VHS in 1991, The Comic Book Greats was a 12-part documentary series hosted by
Lee where he interviewed creators about their process.
Not only did it feature legends like Batman co-creator Bob Kane, it also put the spotlight
on some of the hottest creators of the era.
Among the most interesting segments are Stan's interviews with Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Rob
Liefeld, and Whilce Portacio, four of the artists whose incredible success at Marvel
would lead them to found Image Comics.
McFarlane and Liefeld's interviews even managed to feature obscure first appearances of a
characters that would later make their way into the comics.
Challenged by Stan to create a whole new hero or villain on a tight time limit, Liefeld
drew Die Hard, a future member of his super-team, Youngblood — and quickly had a cheerful
Stan asking questions about what he called our new character.
Stan always had a knack for following trends, so it's no surprise that in 1998, he co-founded
a company called Stan Lee Media in order to produce "webisodes" for an Internet audience
— including an animated comic about the Backstreet Boys.
"No way!
I hate when that happens."
It also shouldn't be surprising that in 2000, when the dotcom bubble burst, SLM went defunct
and filed for bankruptcy.
What happened after that, however, nobody saw coming.
The short version is that SLM claimed that Lee assigned all of the rights to his characters
to the company, and they've been suing Marvel, Disney, and Lee himself for billions of dollars
since 2007.
"Do what I ask or Earth and all your friends are doomed."
It probably goes without saying, but the lawsuits and appeals have consistently been called
"frivolous" and dismissed in court.
Lee himself did his best to extract himself from both the company and its ongoing legal
mess.
Unfortunately, the one thing that isn't in dispute is that they own the name "Stan Lee
Media," linking Lee's name to their actions despite his best efforts to shut them down.
"Ah, forget it."
The ups and downs of Stan Lee's career aside, he co-created and helped introduce some of
our favorite characters to the world.
With the help of late, great legends like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Stan Lee made
the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, Black Panther, the Hulk, and
many other iconic characters household names.
As the Marvel Cinematic Universe is starting to eclipse its printed counterparts in terms
of pop culture influence and recognition, we should remember Stan Lee for being the
wonderful grandfather of superherodom that he was, whether it was being the ambassador
to the comic book industry or giving Peter Parker amazing advice on-screen.
"I guess one person can make a difference… enough said."