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Stan Lee created flawed and relatable icons like Spider-Man and Black Panther
Marvel legend Stan Lee, who died on Monday at the age of 95, revolutionised pop culture as the co-creator of iconic superheroes like Spider-Man and The Hulk. He ended up in the comics business by accident, thanks to an uncle who got him a job when he was a teenager filling artists’ inkwells and fetching coffee. “I felt someday I’d write the ‘Great American Novel’ and I didn’t want to use my real name on these silly little comics,” Mr. Lee once said, explaining why he had forsaken his given name, Stanley Lieber.
Multiple heroes
From Spidey to Black Panther to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, Mr. Lee collaborated with other authors and illustrators to put his lively imagination on the page. Iron Man, Thor and Doctor Strange would follow — and today, all three heroes have multi-film franchises that rake in hundreds of millions of dollars. Born on December 28, 1922 to Jewish immigrants who migrated to the U.S. from Romania, Mr. Lee got that first assistant’s job at age 17 at Timely Comics and began rising through the ranks.
He teamed up with illustrator Jack Kirby in the 1960s to invent the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. Together they would pioneer new ways to tell stories, with deeply flawed heroes and serious themes. Even the villains showed complicated feelings.
“When the time came to create a teenaged hero for Marvel Comics, I decided to depict him as a bumbling real-life teenager who by some miracle had acquired a superpower,” Mr. Lee wrote in a 1977 column, “How I Invented Spider-Man.” Mr. Lee and his collaborators churned out hit after hit and he took over at Marvel in the 1960s, creating the “Marvel Universe”.
He formally left Marvel in the 1990s but remained chairman emeritus. In recent years, he ran into legal troubles and scandal. A massage therapist sued him for sexual assault, accusing him of inappropriate touching during two sessions in 2017. Mr. Lee denied the allegations.
