Stan Lee's History
Stanley Martin Lieber was born on December 28, 1922, to Celia and Jack Lieber. His ancestry is Ashkenazi Jewish.
Stanley Lieber arrived at Marvel when
Martin Goodman hired him. Stan was originally an assistant for
Joe Simon and
Jack Kirby. The first issue that Stan Lee ever wrote was Captain America Comics #3. He changed his name to 'Stan Lee' because he didn't want his name on comic books. He wanted to be an author and write books, so he did not want to have his name published on comics because it was something that society looked down on at the time. He rose through the ranks of the family-run business called Timely Publications which would later become Marvel Comics. He wanted to leave around the time he wrote the Fantastic Four. The only reason that he wrote the book was because his wife told him "Do it your way. The worst they can do is fire you. And you want to quit anyways!" He was the primary creative leader for two decades, leading its expansion from a small division of a publishing house to a multimedia corporation that dominated the comics and film industries.
In collaboration with others at Marvel, particularly co-writers and artists
Jack Kirby and
Steve Ditko, he co-created iconic characters, including the superheroes
Spider-Man, The X-Men,
Iron Man,
Thor,
The Hulk,
Ant-Man,
The Wasp, The Fantastic Four,
Black Panther,
Daredevil,
Doctor Strange,
The Scarlet Witch,
Black Widow, and many more. These and other characters' introductions in the 1960s pioneered a more naturalistic approach in superhero comics, and in the 1970s Lee challenged the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to changes in its policies. One of his last creations was
She-Hulk. In the 1980s he pursued the development of Marvel properties in other media, with mixed results.
Stan Lee died on November 12, 2018 at 9:17 AM after being rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The cause of death was heart and respiratory failure.
