Stan Lee

Stanley Martin Lieber was born in Manhattan in 1922 to Romanian-Jewish immigrant parents. At seventeen he joined Timely Comics, the company that would become Marvel, and adopted the pen name Stan Lee. He became interim editor at nineteen and, after serving stateside in the Army during the Second World War, spent the postwar decades writing across every genre the struggling publisher produced.

In 1961, collaborating with artist Jack Kirby, Lee co-created the Fantastic Four, launching the Marvel revolution. With Kirby, Steve Ditko, and other artists he co-created Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, Black Panther, and Daredevil, heroes burdened with rent, guilt, and self-doubt. His conversational captions and direct address to readers built Marvel into a shared universe with a devoted fandom.

Lee became Marvel's publisher and public face, championing comics as legitimate storytelling and later delighting audiences with cameo appearances in the Marvel films that made his characters global icons. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2008 and died in Los Angeles in 2018 at ninety-five. His signature farewell, Excelsior, endures as shorthand for the optimism and imagination he brought to popular culture.