Stan Lee speaking at the 2014 Phoenix Comicon on June 8, 2014.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, Shared Under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Today, every true believer is mourning, for the master has passed on to Asgard. Excelsior.
News outlets report that comics legend Stan Lee passed away. He was 95. Lee passed at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, after being rushed there following a medical emergency. He was declared dead shortly thereafter.
Lee’s passing comes just under eighteen months since the passing of Lee’s wife, Joan Lee, who was 93. They were married 69 years at the time of her death. He is succeeded by daughter Joan Celia Lee.
Stan Lee was a legend in the comics world, known for co-creating countless prominent characters and franchises, including:
- Spider-Man
- The X-Men
- The Avengers
- The Incredible Hulk
- Doctor Strange
- The Fantastic Four
- Daredevil
- Black Panther
- Iron Man
- Ant-Man
- Thor
Stan Lee (full name Stanley Martin Lieber) was born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan. The son of Jewish immigrant parents from Romania, Lee was influenced by books and movies, especially those starring Errol Flynn. His family moved to the Bronx by Lee’s late teens, where they loved in “a third-floor apartment facing out back.”
In his high school years, Lee worked numerous part-time writing jobs, including writing obituaries for a news service and ad copy for a hospital. He graduated from high school at age 16.
Lee entered the comics industry in 1939, when he entered Timely Comics (Later Marvel Comics) as an assistant. He made his debut as a comics writer in May 1941, when he wrote “Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge” in Captain America Comics #3 under his Stan Lee pseudonum. In 1941, Lee rose to the role of editor-in-chief at Timely, a position he’d hold until 1972 when he succeeded owner Martin Goodman as publisher.
In later years, Lee became a figurehead for Marvel, appearing at comic book conventions across the country and delivering lectures on behalf of the company.
In the 2000s, Lee published two manga titled: Heroman (2010), a collaboration with Tamon Ohta, and Ultimo (2008), which was a joint work with Hiroyuki Takei.
In 2012, Lee underwent an operation to have a pacemaker installed.
Stan Lee’s contributions to the comics industry are innumerable. He is credited with bringing superheroes to reality, by introducing flawed, human characters. No longer gods and billionaires, his characters struggled with real-world troubles, such as paying the rent, or endured challenges of prejudice and discrimination in real-world locales like New York City.
Since his retirement, Lee became infamous for his cameos in nearly every Marvel Cinematic Universe film, as well as various other media projects.
We at Anime Herald would like to offer our deepest condolences to Mr. Lee’s family and friends.
Sources: People, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, The Wrap
Comics Legend Stan Lee Passes Away At Age 95 – Samantha Ferreira
