He gave superheroes bills, tempers, and girlfriends
Stan Lee (1922–2018) turned Timely Comics into Marvel by letting heroes bicker among themselves, worry about rent, and even catch colds. With Kirby and Ditko he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and a shared universe that remade pop culture.
Stanley Martin Lieber was born 28 December 1922 in Manhattan to Romanian Jewish immigrants Celia and Jack Lieber; brother Larry followed. Depression-era poverty moved them to Washington Heights and a Bronx walk-up. DeWitt Clinton High School, odd jobs, and an apocryphal Herald Tribune essay-contest legend preceded early graduation at sixteen and a half in 1939. Uncle Robbie Solomon got him into Martin Goodman's Timely Comics that year; cousin Jean was Goodman's wife. He filled inkwells and fetched lunch until a May 1941 Captain America Comics text piece—his first published prose there—introduced the pen name Stan Lee, kept so comics would not stain a future serious novel, and showcased Cap's ricocheting shield-toss.
When Joe Simon and Jack Kirby quit in late 1941, Goodman made the nearly nineteen-year-old interim editor; Lee stayed editor-in-chief until becoming publisher in 1972. Army Signal Corps service from 1942—classification "playwright," among nine in the U.S. Army—put him beside Capra, Charles Addams, and Theodor Geisel writing training films; he still mailed Timely scripts weekly, once unscrewing a mailbox to meet deadline. Mid-1950s Atlas years meant romance, Westerns, and horror until boredom. After DC's Flash and Justice League successes, Goodman ordered a new team; wife Joan urged him to write stories he liked since he planned to quit anyway.
Lee and Kirby launched the Fantastic Four in 1961—flawed, naturalistic heroes—then Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, X-Men; with Ditko, Doctor Strange and Spider-Man; with Everett, Daredevil. Avengers and revived Captain America shared one universe. Peter Sanderson likened 1960s Marvel to the French New Wave against studio-like DC. Lee later challenged Comics Code limits, chased Hollywood in the 1980s, and after 1990s retirement remained Marvel's cameo figurehead—briefly the highest-grossing film actor by credit total. Eisner Hall of Fame 1994, Kirby Hall 1995, National Medal of Arts 2008: he died 12 November 2018, aged ninety-five, having made superheroes human enough to last.
Source: Stan Lee
