Page 7 - Demo

Story by Rhiannon Drysdale
Life of a
Marvel
The life and legacy of Stan Lee
DC Comics had brought superheroes back into comic books with the respective successes of the Flash and the Justice League of America. Consequently, Lee
was assigned to make superheroes
for Marvel, working with others like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby to co- create characters that could compete with DC.
As Lee was already
planning on changing
careers at the time,
he took his wife’s advice, writing
stories and characters that he liked. After
all, he presumably had nothing to lose. The
resulting characters, well-known bastions
of fiction such as Spider-Man, Daredevil,
the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, and of course
the Fantastic Four, were a far cry from the t o o - perfect, ideal heroes of before whose problems never lasted long, if at all.
If the superheroes of before were considered to be well-received, then Lee’s newest creations exploded with popularity, taking the genre by storm. Working well into the 1990s, Lee used his comics to tackle complex social issues such as drug abuse and discrimination, and to be a voice for positive reform in America and the
world as a whole.
Shortly before the turn of the century, Lee
retired from his regular duties as publisher—
although he continued to appear in every Marvel movie with a brief cameo. Lee’s cameos are often the most looked for across every movie from Black Panther—where he took advantage of the titular character’s winning streak in a casino—to Captain America: Civil War, where he appeared as a mail carrier with a package for ‘Tony Stank’. He may appear in some yet to come posthumously, as he died on November 12
of last year, leaving a legacy behind unlike any other. One of Lee’s best known quotes was, perhaps, his traditional sign-off: excelsior. It translates roughly to “ever upward”, reflecting Lee’s steadfast determination and
Ask any class at Edgewood—or really, at any American high school—about Stan Lee. Chances are, most if not all of the students will have some idea of who he was. Lee revolutionized the comics industry and the entertainment industry as a whole during his time at Marvel Comics, a business he built up from a family-run one to one that would become essentially synonymous with superheroes. With all this in mind, some might think that Lee always dreamed of making comics. That would actually be wrong.
In 1939, 17 year-old Stanley Lieber got a job at Timely Comics. His duties included refilling the inkwells and erasing pencil lines on finished, inked comics. Two years later, when he finally got the chance to write his own story, he was so embarrassed by the low social status of comic books, he decided to use a pseudonym—and Stan Lee was born.
“I changed it,” Lee was quoted in TIME Magazine earlier this year as saying, “because I felt someday I’d be writing the Great American Novel and I didn’t want to use my real name on these silly little comics.”
Those ‘silly little comics’ would
become his life’s work, although he
still had a long way to go. In 1942,
Lee joined the United States Army.
He would serve in the same division
as Theodore Geisel—better known as Dr. Seuss—as, according to him, a “playwright”,
a job that only nine men in the army ever were assigned. Even as he worked on projects such as training films in the aptly named Training Film Division, he still continued writing for Timely Comics over mail.
In the 1950s, Timely Comics was rebranded
as Atlas Comics. By then, Lee had risen through the ranks of the company to become
the editor-in-chief as well as the art director. The only problem was, he was growing unhappy with his work and seriously considering changing careers. Then, the 1960s hit, and with them came another name change, this one much more familiar to readers: Marvel Comics.
As Lee’s disinterest continued to grow, something else did, too—the nation’s interest in superheroes. Under the guidance of editor Julius Schwartz, competitor
passionate innovation.
So, as Lee himself would say: “Excelsior!”
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