Stan Lee: The Godfather of Marvel Comics
Stan Lee spend most of his career as the writer,
director, editor, and producer of Marvel Comics.
He created some of the world’s most popular
comic book characters, like Spider-Man, Iron
Man, The Hulk, and the rest of The Avengers.
What started out as the creative ideas of
a teenage boy evolved into one of the most
profitable movie franchises in all of history.
Today on Biographics, we’re going to talk
about the legendary life of Stan Lee.
Early Life
On December 28th of 1922, Stanley Martin Leiber
was born in New York City.
His parents, Jack and Celia, were Romanian
Jewish immigrants who left for a better life
in the United States.
His father was a tailor, but he was laid off
during the Great Depression, so they were
constantly struggling to make rent.
His parents could only afford a one-bedroom
apartment, and they did their best to provide
for their son.
His mother and father slept on the couch and
allowed him to have a real bed.
Most of the memories Stan Lee had of his father
was seeing him sitting at the kitchen table
flipping through the want ads in the newspaper,
trying to find a new job.
These were usually gigs that never lasted
very long.
Eventually, his father would find steady work,
and their lives would improve, at least a
little.
When he was 9 years old, his mother gave birth
to his younger brother, Larry.
That same year, he got a bicycle for Christmas.
Stan took this opportunity to ride his bike
all over New York City, and hardly spent an
time at home getting to know his younger brother.
Since his parents were struggling so much
with money, they encouraged Stan to get good
grades so that he would have a brighter future
than they did, and they encouraged him to
find part-time jobs as soon as he could.
He took this very seriously, and even skipped
a few grades so that he could graduate from
High School sooner.
He attended an all-boys school, and since
he was so much smaller and younger than his
classmates, he struggled to make friends.
He was often daydreaming about his favorite
movies and always had his nose in a book.
As soon as he was old enough to work, he got
his first job at a garment factory.
A year later, he moved on to become an usher
at a movie theater called The Rivoli.
He loved this job, because he was allowed
to see as many movies as he wanted for free.
He was able to also make money doing something
he enjoyed, and it helped to relieve his parents’
financial stress.
He began to pay for his own expenses, so that
his parents could focus more on this brother
Larry.
Even at a young age, his parents and teachers
could tell that he would grow up to be someone
special.
At this stage in his life, Stan imagined that
he would be involved in the movie business
as either an actor or a screenwriter.
His favorite movie growing up was the 1935
film Captain Blood which was about swashbuckling
pirate adventures.
He loved the elaborate fight scenes, and would
often imagine becoming the hero of those films.
At 15 years old, Stan entered a writing contest
for the New York Herald Tribune.
He won, and the editor reached out to tell
him that he should pursue writing as a full-time
career.
Since he had graduated High School early,
he was able to get a job writing obituaries
for a newspaper, but after awhile, he thought
that this was boring and quite morbid, so
he tried to see what other opportunities were
out there for writers.
At 16 years old, he got a job at Timely Comics
assisting the head artist, Jack Kirby, and
the head writer and editor, Joe Simon.
The overarching publishing company actually
made most of their income from pulp fiction,
and comics were more of an afterthought.
In the beginning, Stan was hired to make coffee,
erase pencil marks on Jack Kirby’s drawings,
and other various errands.
His income was only $8 per week.
After modern inflation, that’s more like
$141.60.
Back then, Timely Comics followed the trends
of whatever was popular at the time.
DC Comics was their main competitor with Superman,
so the characters they created were often
a recycled idea in one way or another.
At this point in time, Jack Kirby and Joe
Simon had already inventing superheroes like
The Human Torch and Captain America.
Stan was eager to move on from just making
coffee.
He pitched a story for a Captain America script
after the third issue was published.
They liked his ideas, and they agreed to use
it in the following issue.
This is when he decided to create the pen
name Stan Lee, which is just his first name,
Stanley, split in half.
He figured that someday, he could move on
to become a novelist under his real name,
Stanley Martin Leiber.
When he was 18 years old, Stan Lee had been
working at Timely Comics for two years, and
he was assisting Jack Kirby and Joe Simon
with all of their various duties in the company.
Both Kirby and Simon were having a financial
dispute with Marvel Comics’ publisher, Martin
Goodman, and they decided to quit.
Stan was the only one left, and his boss asked
if he would be willing to step into all of
the roles of head writer, editor, and art
director.
This was meant to be a temporary fix while
Goodman searched for an experienced replacement,
but Stan actually ended up being great at
doing all of these jobs at once.
At the time, he focused mainly on producing
the Captain America comics, because there
are only 24 hours in a day, and he had his
work cut out for him.
At that time, the comic book industry was
booming, because people wanted to escape the
fears they had about the war by reading stories
of heroes both in the newspapers and in fiction.
World War II was raging on.
Jack Kirby and Joe Simon had already established
a theme of Captain America coming face-to-face
with Adolf Hitler on more than one occasion,
so Stan Lee carried on their legacy by acting
out his fantasies of being in combat overseas.
Captain America comics inspired Stan Lee to
become a real hero himself.
“I, myself, got so caught up in all of that.
Next thing I knew, I had enlisted in the army.
I felt our nation was really in danger, and
I couldn’t live with myself if I were a
civilian, and other people were over there
fighting.”
However, Stan Lee was not expected to go overseas
and fight.
The army recruiter looked over his resume,
and gave him the job of “playwright”.
He was told to stay in the United States and
write scripts for training films and public
service announcements that were shown to the
soldiers.
Even if this was not the fight Stan was looking
for, this was actually a big deal, and all
of the army playwrights went on to have successful
careers, including Theodor Geisel, who is
better known as Dr. Seuss.
When he was 23 years old, Stan Lee was discharged
from the army, and moved back to New York
City to return to his job, where the name
had been changed from Timely Comics to “Marvel
Comics.”
Personal Life
When Stan Lee returned to New York City, he
began to go out on dates and attend a lot
of parties.
Even though kids loved Captain America, adults
looked down on comic books so much at that
time, that he was embarrassed to tell people
that he worked for Marvel.
A lot of women would walk away mid-conversation
as soon as they heard him say “comic books”.
Clearly, these girls were not the one for
him.
All his life, Stan would doodle pictures of
the perfect girl that he always imagined finding
some day, and it was like he could see a vision
of his future.
One night, he showed up to a party, when a
young woman named Joan Clayton answered the
door.
Stan was shocked, because this was the exact
same girl he had been dreaming about all his
life.
He blurted out, “Hello, I think I’m going
to fall in love with you.”
Joan laughed, and she thought this, and the
fact that he wrote comics was charming.
The only issue was that she was actually married
to someone else.
She was originally from England, and she had
become a war bride, and moved to the United
States with her new husband to pursue a modeling
and acting career.
She and her first husband were no longer happy
together, and once she met Stan, she knew
it was time to make her divorce official.
When Stan Lee was 25, the two got married,
and instead of having a fancy wedding or honeymoon,
they use that money to move to Long Island,
where they lived in a penthouse apartment.
When Joan first got pregnant, she painted
their entire house pink, because she wanted
a daughter so badly.
This worked, and she gave birth to a baby
girl named Joan Jr, who they nicknamed “JC”.
A couple years later, they had a second daughter,
named Jan.
Sadly, Jan died after only being alive for
7 days in the hospital.
This was such a traumatic experience for Joan,
that she did not want to have children again.
They tried to adopt, but they ran into a lot
of issues.
Since Stan was Jewish, and Joan was Episcopalian,
nearly every adoption agency rejected them,
because of the differences in religious beliefs.
While all of this was very tragic and difficult
for Stan Lee and his wife, it opened up his
eyes to so many issues in the country that
he had been unaware of up until this point,
and it would become the catalyst for his motivation
to inspire other people.
Evolving Marvel Comics Into a Cultural Phenomenon
At work, Stan Lee was still incredibly dedicated
with his time at Marvel Comics.
They called their staff “the bullpen”,
because they were pumping out one complete
comic book every working day.
He made sure to give everyone on the team
credit with their names on the cover of each
comic book, which was new for the time.
He also gave the group the nickname of “The
Merry Marvel Marching Society”.
After he established more of a leadership
role in the company, Stan eventually convinced
artist Jack Kirby to return to Marvel Comics,
since he was one of the most talented men
in the business.
Kirby’s artwork brought Stan Lee’s ideas
to life in a way that no one else could.
Even though he was not an actor in the traditional
sense, Stan was known for acting out the roles
of the characters when working as Marvel’s
editor and art director in order to explain
what he was looking for in the storyline.
Instead of giving an artist a fully written
script to follow, Stan Lee would give them
a general storyline of what was going to happen,
and he wanted everything to be overly dramatic,
like people in a silent film.
Once the artwork was done, Stan would go back
and fill in the bubbles with the appropriate
dialogue.
This cut down on time significantly, and it
was called “The Marvel Method”.
In the 1950’s, a psychologist named Frederic
Wertham claimed that comic books and television
were corrupting the youth of America.
In 1954, The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile
Delinquency announced that comic books were
dangerous.
They started The Comics Code Authority, which
put strict rules of censorship on what types
of content were allowed to be published in
comic books.
Every new storyline had to be approved by
the Comics Code Authority, and the cover of
the book would have the seal, showing that
it had been checked for any indecent content.
According to their rules, the mention of any
a crime at all was enough to have a comic
rejected.
This censorship was a devastating blow to
Marvel, who made their bread and butter on
superhero stories about fighting crime.
Stan Lee had to lay off almost all of the
artists, and they had to discontinue many
of their comic.
He was forced to write new stories that were
aimed at young children, and they were incredibly
bland and boring, compared to writing about
superheroes.
Stan Lee trudged through this job for over
a decade.
After working in the comic book industry for
20 years, Stan Lee was having a bit of a midlife
crisis.
He had been writing these silly children’s
stories for so long, he was not sure if he
should stay at his job in comics much longer.
He was already writing screenplays and newspaper
articles on the side, and he was considering
leaving the comic book industry in order to
write a novel.
The only problem was that he still had a wife
and child to support, and he couldn’t walk
away from a paycheck.
He had a conversation with his wife, Joan,
and she encouraged him to take a chance and
try to write a comic for adults, even if it
went against the censorship rules.
They decided that if his publisher hated it,
the worst that could happen was that he was
fired, but he was ready to quit, anyway.
So he really had nothing left to lose.
This is when he decided to create The Fantastic
Four.
These characters are multidimensional, and
they did not always enjoy having super powers.
They dealt with very real issues with one
another, as well as their inner turmoil.
At that time, superheroes from both companies
were very one-dimensional characters like
Captain America and Superman.
It turns out that the audience responded to
The Fantastic Four in a big way, and this
ended up becoming extremely successful.
Marvel’s publisher couldn’t deny the numbers,
so they continued to make more issues, despite
the disapproval and lack of a stamp from the
Comics Code Authority.
Once he was able to express his ideas within
the pages of Marvel Comics, Stan Lee discovered
a new love for the industry.
He began to create more characters like Spider-Man,
who he based on himself as a teenager.
Each one of these characters was a direct
reaction to the world around him.
For example, The Hulk was written during the
Cold War, when people were afraid of nuclear
science.
Iron Man was a response to the hate for the
military industrial complex, and the X-Men
were a social commentary on tolerance for
people who are different than us.
In 1966, Stan Lee created Black Panther, who
was the world’s first black superhero.
He was revolutionizing the industry in just
about every way.
During an interview, Stan Lee said that the
1960’s and 70’s were some of the best
years of his entire career.
He began going on tour to universities around
the United States.
By this point, the children who grew up in
the 1950’s that were told that comic books
would corrupt their impressionable young minds
were embracing them once they reached their
teens and 20’s.
Young people everywhere looked up to Stan
Lee, and he gave lectures on story writing.
In reality, Stan Lee was gathering data on
his fans, and after every Q&A session, he
was writing down notes about ways he could
improve the Marvel Comics storylines.
From The Page to the Screen
In the 1970’s, Stan Lee became the head
publisher of Marvel.
He decided to hand over the responsibility
of the scripts to other writers on the Marvel
team, and he tried to take the superhero characters
to California.
He convinced the executives at Marvel Comics
to let him move his family out to Los Angeles,
and they opened up new offices called Marvel
Productions on the west coast.
He started the cartoon TV series of Iron Man,
and one called Spiderman And His Amazing Friends.
in 1988 he became the head of Marvel Films
and begin to produce feature-length movies.
This ended up being a great business move,
because Spider-Man soon became a household
name.
Unfortunately, everything that Marvel Studios
produced was a success.
They tried to create a show called The Amazing
Spider-Man, which aired on CBS, but Stan Lee
thought that it was awful.
He scheduled a meeting with CBS and tried
to give some creative direction about how
to make the story better, but they ignored
his input, and carried on doing it their way.
They should have listened to his advice, because
the show was canceled just a few episodes
later.
Hollywood studios were having a very difficult
time seeing the potential of these comic book
stories, and having the ability to put them
on the big screen.
Lee said, “It’s hard to explain the frustration.
We had these characters, and we knew how they
should be portrayed, and there were people
who wanted to do them.
But nothing really gelled.”
In 1997, the popularity of comic books dropped
dramatically.
Children were still watching the Marvel animated
series like X-Men on Saturday mornings, but
the profits of the company went downhill.
While it seems almost impossible to imagine
this today, Marvel Comics actually had to
file for bankruptcy.
Thankfully, even though the company was broke,
they still maintained the copyright to all
of their characters, which were worth a goldmine.
During his time of uncertainty, Stan Lee was
approached by investors who suggested that
he start a new company called Stan Lee Media,
which specialized in creating cartoons and
comics that were streamed on the internet.
They started in 1999, and the venture became
so successful, they were able to hire over
200 people to work on the staff.
Unfortunately, some of the executives were
arrested for securities fraud.
It turns out that they had taken advantage
of Stan Lee’s name and reputation for their
own financial gain.
Stan Lee decided that the only way to avoid
the scandal was to start his own company called
POW!
Entertainment.
One of his most popular characters was called
Stripperella, voiced by Pamela Anderson.
Eventually, Marvel was able to get back on
their feet, and they had Stan Lee under contract
so that they could continue to get his creative
guidance to make sure the movies were done
right.
After decades of dreaming of being on the
big screen, Stan Lee was finally about to
appear in Hollywood blockbusters, because
he made sure that his contract included cameo
roles in each new Marvel movie that came out.
For the rest of his life, retirement was simply
not an option, because he loved his job so
much.
Stanley Martin Leiber passed away on November
12th, 2018.
He was 95 years old, and lived every moment
to the fullest with a sense of joy and enthusiasm.
Even if the man is gone, the legend of Stan
Lee will live on forever as being one of the
most influential people in comic book history.
