Stan Lee
Hello! Today I am going to talk about Stan Lee a comic book writer, editor, publisher,
and producer
Stan Marley Lieber was born on the 28 th December in 1922 in Manhattan, New York
City, in the apartment of his Romanian-born Jewish immigrant parents, Celia and Jack
Lieber, at the corner of West 98th Street.
He passed through some difficulties during his childhood and in his adolescence he
attended DeWitt Clinton High School in Bronx. During it, Lee enjoyed writing while
he had many part-time jobs as writing obituaries for a newspaper and press releases
for the National Tuberculosis Center, delivering sandwiches for the Jack May
pharmacy to offices in Rockefeller Center, working as an office boy for a trouser
manufacturer, ushering at the Rivoli Theatre on Broadway and selling subscriptions to
the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. At fifteen, Stan entered in a high school
essay competition sponsored by The New York Herald Tribune, called «The Biggest
News of the Week Contest», which he gained for three straight weeks when he asked
the newspaper to let someone win. When this institution saw the talent of Stan Lee it
suggested that Lee should look into writing professionally, which he claimed that
«probably changed my life».
He graduated from high school with 16 years in 1938 and in the next year he joined
the WPA Federal Theatre Project, which was established during the Great Depression
as part of the New Deal to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs
in the United States and later in the same year he entered in Timely Comics (nowadays
Marvel Comics) as a writer assistant. His first work was a Captain America comic
named "Captain America Foils the Traitor's Revenge" in 1941 and after his colleagues,
Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, quit he became the interim editor
Although he liked his job he had to enter the United States Army in early 1942 and
served within the US as a member of the Signal Corps, repairing telegraph poles and
other communications equipment. Later, he was transferred to the Training Film
Division where his main job was making cartoons and write slogans. His military
classification was playwright and it was said that he was one of ten men that received
that classification.
In 1945, with the end of the war, Stan Lee came back to Timely Comics where he
continued working and in 1947 he married with Joanna Lee, who he had one child
(Joana Celia Lee) in 1950 and another one in 1953 (Jan Lee), who unfortunately died
three days after her birth.
The end of the decade of 1950 was very atribulated for Stan. He was very dissatisfied
with his career and thought about to quit it. To add insult to the injury DC comics, the
biggest Marvel rival, was in its selling peak because of the new characters and teams
like Justice League. Although, these bad years were a disguised bless when the Marvel
´s director, Martin Goodman asked Lee to write stories that could compete with DC
stories. Finally, Stan Lee decided to try one more time and his wife was essential to
the project because she encouraged him to write something that he really loved since
he was planning to quit and had nothing to lose. Lee started to write and with the help
of his colleague, Jack Kirby that illustrated he stories they created the Fantastic Four
that was a huge success and lead these two geniuses to create lots of other famous
characters like Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Doctor Strange and Marvel´s most successful
character Spider Man.
We can question ourselves about the success of Lee stories because they look like
exactly like other stories. Although, the biggest difference was that Stan gave his
superheroes a flawed humanity, a change from the ideal archetypes that existed in
other superheroes that were idealistically perfect people with no serious lasting
problems. He introduced complex but naturalist characters who could be bad tempered
or stubborn and feel worried with normal problems like paying bills or impressing
girlfriends or were even tired and physically tired and questioned their choices. Lee
also used comic books to comment about real world problems like drugs and racism.
Stan Lee had great skill in what he did, his scripts and creations were amazing; It was
such that Marvel Comics went from being a small publisher to a multimedia
corporation at an international level.
Lee stopped writing monthly comic books to assume the role of Marvel publisher in
1972. Lee became a figurehead and public face for Marvel Comics. He made
appearances at comic book conventions around all over the world and moved to
California in 1981 to help develop Marvel's TV and movie properties. Since Marvel
and other companies started to produce films with Marvel characters Stan Lee made
60 cameos until the year of his death, 2018 in the 12th December.
In 2010 The Stan Lee Foundation was founded to focus on literacy, education, and the
arts. Its stated goals include supporting programs and ideas that improve access to
literacy resources, as well as promoting diversity, national literacy, culture and the
arts. Stan Lee won innumerous prizes but the most important are The National Medal
of Arts, which he received in 2008 and a Star in The Hall of Fame.
