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| Stan Lee passed away. |
Comic book legend and entertainer Stan Lee passed away today at the age of 95.
The legendary co-founder of Marvel Comics passed away in Los Angeles. He created the most iconic Marvel heroes. Like Spider-Man, Captain America, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, and S.H.I.E.L.D.
Lee, who began in 1939 created memorable names in the comic book industry. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a brief illness.
Lee's family confirmed his death.
Lee had a legal woes during his final years. His wife Joan had passed away in 2017. He sued executives of POW! Entertainment a company he created in 2001 to develop film, TV and video game properties for $1 billion allegeding fraud, then abruptly dropping the suit weeks later. He also sued his ex-business manager and filed for a restraining order against a man who had been handling his business affairs. There were reports from the Los Angeles Police Department that Lee was being abused by his caretakers.
Lee along with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko made Marvel Comic the number one publisher of comic books and entertainment.
The Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009. The merger was beneficial to the companies. With that merger, Marvel released three hugely successful movies.
He was born Stanley Martin Lieber in Manhattan, New York. He grew up poor. His father was a Romanian immigrant and a laborer. He was lover of adventure books and Errol Flynn movies, Lee graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project, where he appeared in a few stage shows, and wrote obituaries.
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| Spider-Man was modeled through Stan Lee. |
He was named interim editor at 19 by publisher Martin Goodman when the previous editor quit. In 1942, he enlisted in the Army and served in the Signal Corps, where he wrote manuals and training films with a group that included Oscar-winner Frank Capra, Pulitzer-winner William Saroyan and Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss). After the war, he returned to the publisher and served as the editor for decades.
Following DC Comics' lead with the Justice League, Lee and Kirby in November 1961 launched their own superhero team, the Fantastic Four, for the newly renamed Marvel Comics, and Hulk, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and X-Men soon followed. The Avengers launched as its own title in September 1963.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Manhattan's high-literary culture vultures did not bestow its approval on how Lee was making a living. People would “avoid me like I had the plague. … Today, it's so different,” he once told The Washington Post.
Not everyone felt the same way, though. Lee recalled once being visiting in his New York office by Federico Fellini, who wanted to talk about nothing but Spider-Man.
In 1972, Lee was named publisher and relinquished the Marvel editorial reins to spend all his time promoting the company. He moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to set up an animation studio and to build relationships in Hollywood. Lee purchased a home overlooking the Sunset Strip that was once owned by Jack Benny's announcer, Don Wilson.
Survivors include his daughter and younger brother Larry Lieber, a writer and artist for Marvel. Another daughter, Jan, died in infancy. His wife, Joan, was a hat model whom he married in 1947.
Like Alfred Hitchcock before him, the never-bashful Lee appeared in cameos in the Marvel movies, shown avoiding falling concrete, watering his lawn, delivering the mail, crashing a wedding, playing a security guard, etc.
In Spider-Man 3 (2007), he chats with Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker as they stop on a Times Square street to read news that the web-slinger will soon receive the key to the city. “You know," he says, "I guess one person can make a difference … 'nuff said.”
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