American comic book writer, editor, publisher and former President of Marvel Comics Stan Lee died Monday at the age of 95˳
Lee gave us over six decades of work like The Incredible Hulk and The Amazing Spider-Man — superheroes we could identify with, characters that allowed us to suspend our disbelief because they reacted to bizarre situations like you or I might˳
In a 1998 interview, Lee told me, “Before Marvel started, any superhero might be walking down the street and see a 12-foot-tall monster coming toward him with purple skin and eight arms breathing fire, and the character would have said something like, ‘Oh! There’s a monster from another world; I better catch him before he destroys the city˳’ Now, if one of our Marvel characters saw the same monster, I’d like to think Spider-Man would say, ‘Who’s the nut in the Halloween get-up? I wonder what he’s advertising?’ “
Robert Scott, owner of Comickaze, a San Diego comic-book store, says Lee put the human in superhuman˳
“He would talk about prejudice, racism,” Scott says˳ “I mean the X-Men, here was a group of people who were only trying to do good things and only trying to help and they were constantly ostracized by being mutants˳”
For Lee, having compelling, thought-provoking subject matter was crucial to his business˳
“The person viewing the cartoon or reading the book should have something to think about, not just look at mindless pages of running around,” Lee said˳
Born Stanley Lieber in New York City in 1922, he took the pseudonym Stan Lee to save his real name for more literary pursuits˳ But those pursuits never came˳ Instead, Lee devoted more than six decades to the comics industry, co-creating Spider-Man, Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man and Daredevil˳ In 1970, he successfully challenged the restrictive Comics Code Authority with a story about drug abuse in Spider-Man˳
But Lee also injected a sense of self-doubt in his characters˳
“That was the revolution that Stan Lee did,” says David Goyer, who adapted the Marvel character Blade for the screen˳ “He was the first one to create, with Spider-Man, superheroes who doubted themselves, who were tormented, who were unhappy˳”
The increased complexity of Marvel’s characters broadened their appeal to older audiences˳ Lee, always a savvy businessman, spearheaded the expansion of Marvel Comics from a division within a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation˳
Lee’s larger vision was to create a shared Marvel universe in which characters from one series would cross over into another˳ He cited one example at a 2008 fan convention: “There was one I loved, I think it was the Fantastic Four, and they were at a ballgame at Yankee Stadium and there were a lot of press photographers there˳ So I told [comic book artist] Jack Kirby to draw Peter Parker in the background with a camera˳ And we made no mention of it, he was just in the panel, and we got about a million letters saying, ‘We saw Peter Parker at the game˳ That’s terrific˳’ And it made it seem like these were real characters who live in the same world and occasionally they get together˳ And that was something I got a big kick out of˳”
Lee built a sense of community between fans and creators˳ He engaged readers through his column, Stan’s Soapbox, and often signed off his letters to fans with the catchphrase ” ‘Nuff said˳” And he became as recognizable as his superheroes through his many cameos on TV and in movies˳
After entering the comics industry as a teenager and helping the medium to mature and expand, Lee’s impact on comics was recognized with numerous awards including the American National Medal of Arts in 2008˳
By giving us superheroes that proved all too human, Lee has ensured himself a permanent place in pop culture˳
‘Nuff said˳