Stanley Lieber wanted to write the great American novel. Finding a writing job in the meantime wasn’t easy and what he could find was working for Timely Comics. Not wanting the “stigma” of comics at the time to negatively impact his goal as an author, Leiber took the pen name that would soon make him known around the world for those very comics, becoming the ambassador of Timely’s rebranding as Marvel Comics. It would bring him more fame and fans than he ever thought possible. He created a number of cultural icons and many of those creations would go on past comics into television (both live-action and animated), movies, video games, and not just in the United States. And they would know him as Stan Lee.
Yesterday came the news that Stan Lee passed away. I wonder if one of the people writing his obituary, one of the writing jobs he used to have, will be the next celebrity?
We don’t have an exact cause of death, but Lee really had some rough last few years. His wife, the one who kept him in comics, passed away. He created a media company that was taken from him and tried to sue for control of his name and creations. Recently he dealt with elder abuse as his manager tried to use him. It’s terrible that anyone would take someone so important to a medium and use and hurt him like this because they don’t care about comics. Heck, this crap shouldn’t happen to anyone. I would be remiss not to scold these scumbags.
Now that we have that out of the way let us not dwell on the negatives. Let’s look at the positives and see just what Stan Lee brought us.









