Illustration by Nasier Norman
By Mirialys Canela
Stanley Martin Lieber was Marvel Comics Inc.’s greatest veteran, standing by its side since 1939, back when it was just a small publishing company called Timely Publication. There he worked as an office boy. Yes, Stan Lee started by fetching the lunch and coffees for the guys who actually did the writing and drawing. Then he was upgraded to writing text filler for the companies only prevailing superhero of that time which was Captain America.
Being a gopher and a text filler wasn’t the spark that Stan needed to become the master of Marvel, as we know him today. It had the opposite effect. He said, “So I figured, I’m not gonna use my real name which I’m saving for these silly comics. So I cut my first name into two, called myself Stan Lee.”
However, everything changed in 1941 when the original comic creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby left to due to some disagreements with the publisher Martin Goodman. As a temporary fill-in, Goodman asked 19-year-old Stan to manage that post until he finds new editors and writers which he never did.
Early in 1942, Stan Lee entered the service, because America had entered World War II. He wasn’t recruited to fight but to just make cartoons and propaganda for the war. When he came back in 1945, he was now officially an editor, art director, and writer for the yet to be called Marvel. He met his wife Joan Boocock and married her in 1947 and had a daughter three years later.
By late 1950 now Timely Publications was named Alast comics. However, post the war the comic industries weren’t doing so good and made whatever. The publisher weren’t accepting any of his work. Therefore, that behavior made Stan frustrated, driving him to brim of quitting.
The first Marvel superhero came in 1961 with the collaboration with Jack Kirby, The Fantastic Four. It was created as a comeptitor to the popular DC comic, The Justice League of America. So, on the brink of quitting rather than going down with the Marvel ship, (it was losing money and going bankrupt), Stan Lee created an empire. Following the success of the Fantastic Four, a slew of new characters soon sprung from Lee and his Marvel cohorts, including the Hulk, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and the X-Men.
See a list of all Stan Lee characters
Stan is known for making his characters real, with common problems that affect us all. So even though they have superpowers, the Marvel heroes share the same problems that we all share. Spider-Man is just a high school kid and a dorky one at that, and he has some of the greatest powers of them all. All the power he has and he still has troubles everyday in school and in his life.
Following the success of the Fantastic Four, a slew of new characters soon sprung from Lee and his Marvel cohorts, including the Hulk, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and the X-Men.
In July, 2017, Lee suffered the loss of his one and only wife, Joan, after being married for nearly 70 years. After a brief illness himself, Stan went back to work. He kept a full schedule all the way into his 90’s, like a superhero himself. However, just like many of the characters that are most likely going to die in Avengers: Endgame, Lee died on November 12, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. Stan Lee’s death has left a deep hole in the hearts of his fans.
