Comic book writer, editor, publisher, producer
(December 28, 1922-November 12, 2018(aged 95))
Father
Jack Lieber (1893–1965)
mother
Celia Solomon (1898–1947)
Early life
1. Lee attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.
2. In his youth, Lee enjoyed writing and entertained dreams of writing the "Great American Novel" one day.
3. He graduated from high school early, aged sixteen and a half, in 1939 and joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project.
4. At fifteen, Lee entered a high school essay competition sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune, called "The Biggest News of the Week Contest." Lee claimed to have won the prize for three straight weeks, goading the newspaper to write him and ask him to let someone else win.
Marriage
5. He married Joan Clayton Boocock, originally from Newcastle, England, on December 5, 1947, and in 1949.
6. the couple bought a house in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island, living there through 1952.
Early career
In his youth, Stan, had a great interest in books and films, as in those that Errol Flynn was in, genres of action and heroics. He studied at the DeWitt Clinton High School located in the Bronx. He graduated from high school at age of 16 in 1939. At the time, he joined the WPA Federal Theater Project but had to interrupt his process because he enlisted in the army for five years; served during the Second World War until 1945 in the division of the Signal Corps. When he left, he began to write movie scripts. For this time, Lee faced a tragic event in his life. His wife Joan Clayton Boocock, with whom he had gotten married on December 5, 1947 and he were about to have their first daughter. Joan Celia Lee. She was born in 1953. However, she died three days after her birth.
He worked in part-time jobs as a writer of death and burial books; also, he wrote press releases and specialized articles for the National Tuberculosis Center. He was a very versatile young man. He worked in a pharmacy as a delivery man and as a receptionist in a Trouser factory. After a while, thanks to the collaboration of some relatives, he started working as an assistant at Timely Comics, which in 1950 worked under the name of Atlas Comics and in 1960 as Marvel Comics, the publisher was owned by Martin Goodman, the husband of his cousin.
Being 20 years old, he debuted as a scriptwriter in the editorial. His first writing was entitled “Captain America Foils Traitor’s Revenge”, contained two pages, in which the protagonist was Captain America. Stanley Martin Lieber signed his first work under the pseudonym “Stan Lee”. Later, he decided to change his legal name for his pseudonym.
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. Besides, Stan Lee’s work, the contribution of his brother, the screenwriter and draftsman Larry Lieber, the screenwriter and draftsman Steve Ditko, the screenwriter and draftsman Bill Everett, the cartoonist Don Heck and, above all, the screenwriter and cartoonist Jack Kirby (co-creator of Captain America) these men secured the splendor of Marvel in the 60s.
Marvel competed with DC Comics, so in 1961 Marvel assigned the creation of the “Fantastic Four” in the hands of Stan Lee as a response to the “Justice League” created by their rival publisher. “The fantastic 4” became very popular. Soon after, he created, along with the cartoonist Jack Kirby and the cartoonist Steve Ditko, the most notorious characters of the publishing house, which marked the beginning of the Silver Age of the American comic. Thanks to the success, Stan was promoted as editor-in-chief in 1970s. Later, his excellent assistant, Roy Thomas would be Stan’s successor. Although he did not move away from writing, he continued to write columns and scripts occasionally, such as the series of specials “Just Imagine” at this time he was no longer part of Marvel.
This great artist has a range of creations, among his most outstanding creations are characters such as Black Panther, Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, the Avengers, X-Men, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and Nick Fury, also ventured into manga art, with Heroman. In all the films made by Marvel he appears as executive producer and in many, he has made “cameos”, which means the brief appearance of a character known among the spectators in a serie or film, and who plays an irrelevant or secondary character.
In the following years, Marvel created the character of less popular impact, such as “Blade” (1973) or “The Punisher” (1974). However, they decided to promote and get the most out of their star characters in comics, television or movies. In the movies, the appearances of their superheroes multiplied from the beginning of the XXI century with the improvement of Computer Generated Images, the acronym in English CGI.
In 2008, the president of the United States George W. Bush gave him the American National Medal of the Arts, in recognition of his hard and admirable work. In 2011, with 88 years, he was given a star on the important Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Later years
1. In September 2012, Lee underwent an operation to insert a pacemaker, which required cancelling planned appearances at conventions.
2. In July 6, 2017, his wife of 69 years, Joan, died of complications from a stroke. She was 95 years old.
3. In April 2018, The Hollywood Reporter published a report that claimed Lee was a victim of elder abuse.
4. Lee died on November 12, 2018, six weeks before his 96th birthday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, after being rushed there in a medical emergency earlier in the day.
Awards
- 1. The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame
- 2. Jack Kirby Hall of Fame
- 3. National Medal of Arts
- 4. Disney Legends
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