Farewell Stan Lee
Stanley Martin Lieber was born on December 28th, 1922 in New York City. His parents, Celia (Solomon) and Jack Lieber (a dress cutter) were Romanian Jewish immigrants.
On December 5th, 1947, Stan married Joan Clayton Boocock, who was from Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The two remained married for seventy years, until her death at 95 years of age in July of 2017.
When Joan died, Stan credited her with supporting him early on in his career, 'when he was trying to create superheroes that he and others could care about.'
On November 12th, 2018, after being rushed to the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, California, Stan joined his beloved Joan, and the world lost one of its most playful, imaginative storytellers, known to fans as Stan Lee.
Lee worked closely with artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, John Romita Sr., Don Heck, Bill Everett, and Joe Maneely, co-creating Spider-man, The Hulk, Doctor Strange, Black Panther, The Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Daredevil, Thor, The Xmen, among many other well-known, and well-loved characters. He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received a National Medal of Arts in 2008.
Stan Lee's career in comics began in 1939, when, with the support of his uncle Robbie Solomon, he became an assistant at Timely Comics (a division of Pulp Magazine). Timely Comics would later become Marvel Comics.
Lee began by doing very basic work, filling inkwells, fetching lunch for the artists, proofreading, erasing pencil marks from finished pages, until his debut in Captain America Comics, in May of 1941, where he used the name Stan Lee for the first time, later making the legal change.
In late 1941, Lee became interim editor of Timely Comics. He was just shy of nineteen years of age. In 1942, began serving the United States Army as a US member of the Signal Corps, first repairing telegraph poles and communications equipment, but was later transferred to Training Film Division where he wrote manuals, slogans, worked on training films and cartooning. He returned to Timely Comics in 1945, following his service in World War II.
When DC Comics Julius Schwartz brought back the superhero with the Flash, and later Justice League of America, Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman tasked Stan Lee with creating a new team of superheros. With his wife's encouragement, he made a shift in approach, incorporating mood swings, depression, vanity, in-fighting, even financial concerns, boredom or illness into his characters' lives.
The first superhero group, co-created by Jack Kirby, was The Fantastic Four, whose popularity led to the creation of an onslaught of new characters, incorporated into the same universe. Gathering the characters together, Kirby and Lee created The Avengers series, now an ongoing sensational box-office series of blockbusters at the movies.
Lee appeared in many of the Marvel films, an Easter egg treat hidden for fans to thrill at. A memorable cameo is Stan Lee's appearance as himself in the film Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. Lee is seen with three blond women, and Tony Stark (played by Downey Jr.) mistakes him for Hugh Hefner. Lee said this was his favourite cameo appearance. In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark mistakes him for Larry King - continuing the joke.
The characters that Stan Lee helped to create currently represent some of the biggest names and storylines in recent cinematic history. For those characters who did not have much film credit to their names prior to starring in one of the Marvel movies, such as Thor's Chris Hemsworth, scoring a role in one of these films can lead to instant career success and superstar status.
Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse is set to hit theatres on December 14th, 2018, and then 2019 sees Captain Marvel, Avengers 4, Dark Phoenix (from the Xmen series), Spider-man: Far From Home, The New Mutants all see the big screen, with Gambit (another X-men film) following closely in 2020.
Stan Lee created characters who had a very vulnerable, familiar quality, and that have taken on legendary proportions in the hands of The Walt Disney Company (that has owned Marvel since 2009), and that will continued to excite and thrill audiences and create new fans.
Lee's contribution to characters that challenge themselves to face the very thing that is at the core of their own fears and limitations will continue to inspire. One tremendous gift before the end of of his life is certainly that he had not just the opportunity to witness his legacy take shape, but also the playful invitation to participate. While fans have a lot to look forward to, Stan Lee, and his fun cameos, will most certainly be missed
'Faith is my sword. Truth is my shield. Knowledge my armour.' - Doctor Stephen Strange.
Thank you Stan Lee, for your hand in worlds within worlds, beyond worlds, where the sky isn't the limit, but just another starting point.
Information retreived from Mdb.com, Wikipedia and Time.com