Stan Lee

## Biographical Information

Stan Lee, birth name of Stan Martin Leiber, was born on December 28, 1922 in New York, New York. His family consisted of his parents Celia and Jack Leiber, and his brother Larry. On December 5, 1947, Stan Lee married his wife, Joan Lee. Together they had their daughter J.C Lee, and Jan Lee, who passed shortly after her birth.

Stan Lee attended DeWitt Clinton High School and graduated at age 16. Upon joining the WPA Federal Theater Project, he enlisted in the army and served during World War II. Upon leaving the army, Stan Lee started to write movie scripts. He worked as a writer — writing articles, journals, death books, press releases, etc. By age 17, Stan Lee started working for a family relative, Martin Goodman, at Timely Comics (which later became Marvel comics). In becoming an editor and working with Jack Kirby, Stan Lee created well-known superheroes, starting with the Fantastic Four. He eventually started to work with an artist, Steve Ditko, to create Spider-Man. This started his journey as a writer. In 1972, Stan Lee became publisher and director of Marvel. As the Marvel movies were made, Stan Lee made cameo appearances.

On November 12, 2018, Stan Lee passed away.

## Themes

#### Humanness

Stan Lee made it his mission to create superheroes that showed characteristics of superhero “norms”, but also wanted to demonstrate the “human” within them. This is demonstrated within all of the Marvel universe. In opposition to the DC Comics, the Marvel characters have personality, show true emotion, contain flaws, manage personal battles, etc. An example of this is Spider-Man. Although he fights crime, his true identity Peter Parker, juggles school, his widowed Aunt May, and self-confidence. The characters of Fantastic Four exemplify the powers of their true emotions, such as Johnny Storm becoming the Human Torch due to his hot headedness. Alongside their characteristics, Stan Lee also placed these superheroes in real-world settings, such as New York City, which is unlike the DC comics that have settings like Gotham City.Due to these real-world settings, the Marvel characters must manage real-world, everyday life situations. Because of the humanness within these characters, the audience has more of a sense of connections between themselves and the characters.

#### Diversity

As a big push for diversity, starting with X-Men, Stan Lee fought against racism by depicting characters that created a story aligning with the Civil Rights Movement. The two characters, Professor X and Magneto had opposite ideologies of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Professor X has the ideology of teaching the mutants to remain in a peaceful world where humans and mutants can co-exist, and Magneto believed that the mutants should not have to hide their identities just to co-exist. This demonstrates the difference between people of color hiding their identities to assimilate, versus embracing their identities and knowing that people will acknowledge the differences. To push the theme of diversity further, in 1966, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created Black Panther: the first comic book with an African American character/hero. Years down the road, the comics and movies overflowed with diversity — racially, culturally, gender, etc. Examples of these include, female-lead “Captain Marvel”, the first Asian superhero “Shang-Chi”, a half-Black, half-Latino teen Miles Morales, and many more.

## Style

Stan Lee’s writing style began with comic books about superheroes. This medium allowed for demonstrating storytelling through use of images, illustrations, and text or dialogue. In creating the comic books, the creators, including Stan Lee, came up with the term “Marvel Style of Storytelling”. This included a writer beginning to write an overview of the story, then the artists amplifying the story, and then the writer adds details such as captions and dialogue. This style of writing demonstrates a process of developing a detailed plot, which is shown throughout all of the comics. In later years, Stan Lee became a producer for the Marvel movies and tv shows, which were based off of the comics.

## Bibliography

Website with complete lists of comics, tv shows, and movies: https://www.marvel.com/

* Inkpot Award (1974)
* The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame (1994)
* Jack Kirby Hall of Fame (1995)
* Saturn Award (2002)
* Jules Verne Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2007)
* National Medal of Arts (2008)
* Screams Award (2009)
* Visual Effects Society Award (2012)
* Producers Guild of America (2012)
* National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers (2017)

## Criticism

According to the Rotten Tomatoes website, Stan Lee’s Marvel movies ranged all over the board, in terms of ratings from the audience and movie critics. His lowest rating being 9% for *Fantastic Four* (2015) and his highest rating being 97% for *Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse* (2018). To focus on the lowest rating, many of the movie critics mentioned that the *Fantastic Four* (2015) was boring, far from action-packed, cheesy, and uninteresting. The audience felt that this film was one of the worst superhero films made, there was a lack of plot, and did not demonstrate the storylines of the four.

As Stan Lee is the big name in which Marvel Universe is known for, critics question if all the credit should be given to him. In starting to write the comics, Stan Lee worked with his partner, Jack Kirby, until they reached a breaking point. In many articles and reports, Stan Lee fails to mention the teamwork between himself and Jack Kirby. Because of this, audiences started to have skewed views on Stan Lee.

## Additional Information

https://therealstanlee.com/

https://stanleefoundation.org/

https://twitter.com/therealstanlee?lang=en

## References

https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/who-was-stan-lee

https://lithub.com/stan-lee-the-would-be-novelist-who-created-worlds/

https://www.fairobserver.com/region/north\_america/marvel-comics-stan-lee-died-life-stan-lee-comics-21390/

https://globalnews.ca/news/4664741/stan-lee-racism-black-superheroes/

https://nextshark.com/stan-lee-diversity-inclusion/

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11098942/stan-lee-death-marvel-legacy

https://www.comicsbeat.com/marvel-style-marvel-method-comics/

Created by: Gena Tanquilut (CI 452)