Born
Stanley
Martin Lieber almost a century ago in 1922, the man who
would become far better known by his pen name, Stan Lee, was born
into a family of very modest means with Stan, his
brother, and Romanian immigrant parents sharing a single room apartment in New York during
the 19 30s.
As Lee would recall, "I grew up in New York City during the Depression.
My earliest recollections were of my parents, Jack and
Celia Lieber, talking about what they would do if they
didn't have the rent money.
Luckily, we were never evicted.
But my fa ther was unemployed most
of the time.
He had been a dress cutter, and during the Depression, there wasn't much need for
dress cutters.
So I started working when I was still in high school.
I was an office boy, I was an usher, I wrote obituaries for celebri
ties while they were still alive.
Lots of jobs."
Showing an interest in writing from his teens, Lee's mother was his #1 fan at that time,
"She thought I was the greatest thing on two feet.
I'd come home with a little composition I had
written at school and she'd look at it and say, "It's wonderful!
You're another Shakespeare!"
I always assumed I could do anything.
It really is amazing how much that has to do with your
attitude."
In 1939 at the age of 17, Lee landed a job with a company owned by his cousin,
Jean Goodman's, husband, Martin Goodman.
The company was called Timely Publications.
While the pay wasn't much, a mere $8 per week (about
$147 today), it was potentially a path to a
professional writing gig, though not quite the one he originally envisione
d for himself.
He states, “
When I got there, I found out that the opening was in the comic book department.
Apparently, I was the only guy who had applied for the job.
I figured it might be fun.
So I became a gofer --
there were only two guys, Joe Simon, the editor, and Jack Kirby, the artist.
They were the creators of Captain America, and that's what
they were working on at the time.
I would fill the inkwells, go down and buy lunch, and erase
pages and proofread.
” Two years into the job, he was finally gr
anted a chance to write filler text in the 1941
Captain America #3
comic.
Called, Captain America Foils the Traitor's Revenge
, the story, along with being warmly received by fans, introduced
the idea of Captain America being able to throw and
ricochet his trademark shield, now a defining aspect of
the character.
It was also the first comic in which Lieber, as he was then known, wrote
under the pseudonym Stan Lee.
According to Lee, he chose not to write under his then real
name since he still hoped to one da y write “proper
literature” and had dreams of writing the "great American novel".
Thus, he didn’t want his name to be sullied by his work in comics.
Plans changed, however, when he randomly got a promotion to head editor of the comic
department
at just 19 years old.