Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- Lee died shortly after being rushed to an L.A. hospital. He had been struggling with multiple illnesses over the past year, reports indicate.
- Since the 1950s, Lee has been one of the most influential figures in comics, helping to popularize heroes that expressed a level of nuance and self-doubt previously unseen in the industry.
- Lee, who’s later years were marked by some financial and legal tumult, is survived by his daughter, Joan Celia “J.C.” Lee.
Stan Lee, co-creator of the Marvel Comics universe that was home to nuanced superheroes like Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, died today in Los Angeles at the age of 95.
The comics titan had reportedly suffered from a number of illnesses recently, including pneumonia, according to TMZ.
Lee, whose full name was Stanley Martin Lieber, was born to Romanian-born Jewish immigrants in New York City in 1922. From an early age, Lee had ambitions to be a writer, and after graduating high school he managed to score a job as an office assistant at Timely Comics, where one of his uncles worked. The job wasn’t very creative at first.
“In those days [the artists] dipped the pen in ink, [so] I had to make sure the inkwells were filled”, Lee said in a 2009 interview. “I went down and got them their lunch, I did proofreading, I erased the pencils from the finished pages for them”
Lee moved up in the company to a position as an interim editor by the early 1940s. He left for a brief stint in the U.S. Army, in which he repaired communications equipment, wrote manuals and occasionally did some cartooning work.
By the 1950s, Lee was back working for Timely Comics, which had become Atlas Comics. He eventually grew dissatisfied with his work, which was mostly writing stories outside of the superhero genre: romances, Westerns, science fiction, suspense, etc.
Things changed when DC Comics hit success with a new version of the Flash, and later a team of superheroes called the Justice League of America. The new comics, at the time, represented a revitalization of a superhero genre that had laid dormant for years. Lee’s published instructed him to conjure up a superhero team that would rival DC’s latest hit.
Lee, working alongside artist Jack Kirby, responded with the Fantastic Four. To create the landmark series, Lee drafted a story synopsis and gave it to Kirby,…
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