Stan Lee was born 100 years ago today, and fans on social media are out in force celebrating the legacy of the most famous comic book creator in American history. Lee, the most celebrated figure in American comics, began his comics career in the 1940s and is widely credited with revolutionizing superhero storytelling by co-creating (largely with the late Jack Kirby) the Marvel Comics Universe in the 1960s. Lee had a hand in the creation of Spider-Man, The Avengers, The X-Men and hundreds of other characters for Marvel and other publishers during the course of his career. As the face of the publisher for decades, Lee cultivated an image as the godfather of comics, and became the ambassador between comics and the outside world. At a time when most critics did not take the art form seriously, Lee was one of the first comics creators to speak at colleges.
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Born Stanley Lieber in 1922, Lee was raised on Errol Flynn movies and dreamed of one day writing the “Great American Novel.” He joined the newly-formed Timely Comics in 1939 — a partnership that would shape the pop culture landscape, as Timely ultimately evolved into Marvel Comics.
Interestingly, Lee was officially hired into comics by Joe Simon, who collaborated with Jack Kirby to create Captain America (although he was related to the publisher, so he had pretty good odds). Lee would shape the future of Captain America along with Kirby years later.
It was Lee who famously pulled Marvel back into superhero comics in the early ’60s, commissioning The Fantastic Four after his then-boss Martin Goodman heard DC honcho Jack Liebowitz talk about their success with Justice League of America. This came at a time when superheroes were a genre that had been on the brink of extinction for nearly a decade, but with the entire industry struggling, Lee and Goodman were determined to find hits where they could.
Following the success of The Fantastic Four, Lee would go on to play a role in the creation of dozens of titles and characters that would revolutionize the Silver Age of comics, ushering in a veritable Marvel Age.
Lee, who was restless in comics and considering a career change, went for the gusto when reinventing superheroes “The Marvel Way,” and the result was a series of massive successes that revolutionized the company. The Fantastic Four debuted in 1961, followed by The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, The X-Men, Spider-Man and Daredevil.
Lee also established the idea of a shared universe — that the events of one comic would have an impact on other comics because the characters all coexisted. He wasn’t the first to do this — there had been superhero team-ups in the Golden Age — but the Marvel Comics of the ’60s was the first to really take advantage of the opportunities that the shared universe offered, and Lee was the one who was determined to make timelines and continuity work.
Yesterday, DC released an anthology of stories set in the shared universe Lee created for them in 2001. Earth-6: A Celebration of Stan Lee gave audiences ten new stories set in the same world as the 2001 and 2002 one-shots released as Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating…, and giving Lee a chance to pitch reinventions of classic DC properties.
As a result of his Marvel pedigree, Lee is also one of the highest-grossing film producers of all time, having been kept on as an executive producer for Marvel Studios films as well as those from Fox and Sony which feature characters from Marvel. There is a certain symmetry to that, since in the early days it was Lee who most aggressively pursued TV and movie deals for Marvel. Over decades of such productions, Lee became the king of the cameo, appearing in dozens of Marvel-related film and TV projects. His final film appearance was in Avengers: Endgame, but Marvel recently inked a deal to use his likeness for the next 20 years. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law featured a wink-and-a-nod reference to Lee and his Marvel Universe co-creator Jack Kirby.
Among Lee’s many awards is the National Medal of Arts, awarded by President George W. Bush in 2008, and the Disney Legends Award, which he received in 2017. He was also inducted into the comics industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame, the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
