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 As a writer and editor, Lee was key to the ascension of Marvel
into a comic book titan in the 1960s when, in collaboration with
artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he created
superheroes who would enthrall generations of young readers.
"He felt an obligation to his fans to keep creating," his
daughter J.C. Lee said in a statement to Reuters. "He loved his
life and he loved what he did for a living. His family loved him
and his fans loved him. He was irreplaceable."
She did not mention the circumstances of Lee's death but the
celebrity news website TMZ said an ambulance was called to his
Hollywood Hills home early Monday and that he died at
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
“Stan Lee was as extraordinary as the characters he created,"
Bob Iger, Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Co <DIS.N>, said
in a statement. "The scale of his imagination was only exceeded
by the size of his heart.”
Disney bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for $4 billion to
expand Disney's roster of characters, with the most iconic ones
having been Lee's handiwork.
Lee was known for his cameo roles in most Marvel films, pulling
a girl away from falling debris in 2002's "Spider-Man" and
serving as an emcee at a strip club in 2016's "Deadpool." In the
2018 box-office hit "Black Panther," which featured Lee's
leading black superhero, he was a casino patron.
"There will never be another Stan Lee," said Chris Evans, who
starred as Captain America in Marvel movies. "For decades he
provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort,
confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy."
Americans were familiar with superheroes before Lee, in part
thanks to the 1938 launch of Superman by Detective Comics, the
company that would become DC Comics, Marvel's archrival.
Lee was widely credited with adding a new layer of complexity
and humanity to superheroes. His characters were not made of
stone - even if they appeared to have been chiseled from
granite. They had love and money worries and endured tragic
flaws or feelings of insecurity.
CHARACTERS WEREN'T JUST SUPER
"I felt it would be fun to learn a little about their private
lives, about their personalities and show that they are human as
well as super," Lee told NPR News in 2010.
He had help in designing the superheroes but he took full
ownership of promoting them.
His creations included web-slinging teenager Spider-Man, the
muscle-bound Hulk, mutant outsiders The X-Men, the close-knit
Fantastic Four and the playboy-inventor Tony Stark, better known
as Iron Man.
Dozens of Marvel Comics movies, with nearly all the major
characters Lee created, were produced in the first decades of
the 21st century, grossing more than $20 billion at theaters
worldwide, according to box office analysts. The website Box
Office Mojo said "Black Panther" had a worldwide gross of $1.34
billion.
Spider-Man is one of the most successfully licensed characters
ever and he has soared through the New York skyline as a giant
inflatable in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Lee, as a hired hand at Marvel, received limited payback on the
windfall from his characters.
In a 1998 contract, he wrestled a clause for 10 percent of
profits from movies and TV shows with Marvel characters. In
2002, he sued to claim his share, months after "Spider-Man"
conquered movie theaters. In a legal settlement three years
later, he received a $10 million one-time payment.
Hollywood studios made superheroes the cornerstone of their
strategy of producing fewer films and relying on big profits
from blockbusters. Some people assumed that, as a result, Lee's
wealth had soared. He disputed that.
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"I don't have $200 million. I don't have $150 million. I don't have
$100 million or anywhere near that," Lee told Playboy magazine in
2014. Having grown up in the Great Depression, Lee added that he was
"happy enough to get a nice paycheck and be treated well."
In 2008, Lee was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest
government award for creative artists.
UNCLE'S HELP
Lee was born as Stanley Martin Lieber in New York on Dec. 28, 1922,
the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania. At age 17, he became an
errand boy at Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into
Marvel. He got the job with help from an inside connection, his
uncle, according to Lee's autobiography "Excelsior!"
Lee soon earned writing duties and promotions. He penned Western
stories and romances, as well as superhero tales, and often wrote
standing on the porch of the Long Island, New York, home he shared
with his wife, actress Joan Lee, whom he married in 1947. She died
in 2017.
The couple had two children, Joan Celia born in 1950 and Jan Lee who
died within three days of her birth in 1953.
In 1961, Lee's boss saw a rival publisher's success with caped
crusaders and told Lee to dream up a superhero team.
At the time, Lee felt comics were a dead-end career. But his wife
urged him to give it one more shot and create the complex characters
he wanted to, even if it led to his firing.
The result was the Fantastic Four. There was stretchable Mr.
Fantastic, his future wife Invisible Woman, her brother the Human
Torch and strongman The Thing. They were like a devoted but
dysfunctional family.
Lee involved his artists in the process of creating the story and
even the characters themselves, in what would come to be known as
the "Marvel Method." It sometimes led critics to fault Lee for
taking credit for ideas not entirely his own.
He described his creative process to Reuters in outlining how he
came up with his character Thor, the god of thunder borrowed from
Norse mythology.
"I was trying to think of something that would be totally
different," he said. "What could be bigger and even more powerful
than the Hulk? And I figured why not a legendary god?"
To give Thor more rhetorical punch, Lee gave him dialogue styled
after the Bible and Shakespeare.
As for Tony Stark-Iron Man, he was based on industrialist Howard
Hughes, Lee told interviewers.
Lee became Marvel's publisher in 1972. He went on the lecture
circuit, moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and pursued opportunities for
his characters in movies and television.
Through it all, he kept connected with fans, writing a column called
"Stan's Soapbox" in which he often slipped in his catchphrase "'Nuff
Said" or the sign-off "Excelsior!" In his later years, he gave
updates via Twitter.
Lee all but parted ways with Marvel after being made chairman
emeritus of the company. But even in his 80s and 90s, he was a
wellspring of new projects, running a company called POW!
Entertainment.
"His greatest legacy will be not only the co-creation of his
characters but the way he helped to build the culture that comics
have become, which is a pretty significant one," said Robert
Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Diane Craft, Bill Trott
and Nick Zieminski)
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