Stanley Martin Lieber was born December 28, 1922, to Jewish immigrants, Jack and Celia Lieber. Stan was born and raised in New York City, along with his younger brother, Larry, who would follow him into the comics business. Stan attended Dewitt-Clinton High School, whose alumni also included famed comic book creators Will Eisner, Bill Finger, and Bob Kane. Throughout his youth and early adult years, Lieber aspired to greatness—from becoming a critically acclaimed writer to starring in blockbuster films. It was through the family business of comics publishing, however, that Lee would make his break into mainstream culture.
Stan Lee poses at the premiere of the film Spider-Man. An icon of the comics world, Lee entered the industry in his teens and over the course of his long career helped to give birth to many comics legends, including the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the Amazing Spider-Man, and the X-Men, all of which have enjoyed long popularity and have crossed over into major popular culture franchises well beyond comic books. (Reuters/Corbis)
In 1939, Lieber was hired at Timely Comics—the publisher for such titles as Marvel Mystery Comics and Captain America Comics. His uncle (Robbie Solomon) hired him as an assistant, and through familial connections to publisher Martin Goodman, Lieber was given his first comics writing job. It was in May 1941 that “Stan Lee” made his first appearance as the writer in Captain America Comics #3. He originally intended to use the pen name as a means of protecting his birth name from the stigma of being associated with comics, but he would later legally change his name to Stan Lee. By the end of that same year, Lee stepped into role of assistant editor—beginning one of the longest tenures in the comic industry—a position he would hold in varying capacities up to editor-in-chief and then publisher, following Goodman’s retirement in 1972.
However, World War II pulled Lee away for a period of time while he served stateside in the United States Army Signal Corps from 1942 to 1945. During this period, Lee helped develop communication materials such as training films and manuals, pamphlets about vehicle and equipment care, and other related ephemera. Also during this time, Lee was provided further opportunities to develop his technical writing and editing skills, which would serve him well upon his return to civilian life and the increased editorial responsibilities awaiting him at Atlas Comics, the newly reminted name for his previous publisher.
In the years following Lee’s return to comics, however, significant cultural changes began taking place as the country quickly moved in a far more conservative direction, guided in large part by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the “Red Scare” sweeping across the United States during the mid-to-late 1940s and throughout the first half of the 1950s. Not unlike other aspects of popular culture, comics found themselves under the scrutiny of congressional inquiries thanks in large part to the biased and misguided efforts of Dr. Fredric Wertham. Many smaller publishers ended up going out of business due to the increased restrictions of the Comics Code Authority (an internal governing body charged with self-policing the comics publishing industry) and the general stigma attached to the medium as a whole for being a source of adolescent deviancy. Even those publishers like DC Comics and Atlas, who remained in business, saw their number of publications and print runs diminish exponentially. It was during this period that Lee, now married and a father of one daughter, diversified his writing portfolio to include stints on comics in the romance, science fiction, fantasy, humor, and western genres as well as children’s comics, which had become the only funny books that were considered acceptable, according to the ultraconservative culture of the time. Not surprisingly, these stories proved dull and limiting for the ambitious writer and editor, and they nearly drove Lee out of the business until he was given free rein to create a superhero comic the way he wanted to as a response to DC Comics’ resounding success in bringing back the superheroes.
In 1961 and 1962, Stan Lee worked alongside Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko (and others) to usher in what has now become known as the Marvel Age of Comics. This first took place with the publication of The Fantastic Four #1 in November 1961. Discussing Marvel’s rise to prominence, Lee related:
In the 60s, the ideas for the new characters originated with me because that was my responsibility. And what would happen is the publisher, Martin Goodman, for example, with the Fantastic Four, he called me into his office one day. And he said, ‘I understand that National Comics,’ which later changed its name to DC, ‘but I understand that National Comics has a book called The Justice League. And it’s selling very well. I want you to come up with a team of superheroes. Let’s do something like that.’ So it was my responsibility to come up with such a team. And I dreamed up the Fantastic Four, and I wrote a brief outline. And at that time, you know, I gave that to Jack Kirby, who did a wonderful job on it. (Lee, interview)
Likewise, Lee recounts a similar process in the development of other notable superheroes such as Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, Daredevil, Thor, and Spider Man with co-creator and artist Steve Ditko. Lee has recorded himself telling the story of how he shared a conversation with his wife in which she encouraged him to finally tell a comic in the vein he would want—not one that he needed to worry about selling. The result was Spider Man, a counter-cultural notion of a conflicted teenager who found himself becoming a hero even though his origin was far from heroic.
In the years to follow, Stan Lee would make a name for himself through continuing to revolutionize Marvel Comics with Kirby, Ditko, and many other artists, writers, and editors. Where the DC comics were known for their iconic superheroes, Marvel established itself as the publisher whose superheroes had real problems, real personalities, and real-world conflicts. While the DC superheroes became ideals for readers to aspire to but never embody, Stan Lee cultivated a series of comics in whose characters readers would find something that they could relate to in one manner or another. Lee further created this sense of community between the readers and his comics through his regular “Stan’s Soap Box” letter columns wherein he could speak directly to the readers in a “no nonsense” fashion and preach his utopian and progressive ideals. Taking into account the rising interest in civil rights during the 1960s, Lee proved adept at reading the moment and both playing and feeding into the cultural interests of the time.
Of course, all was not as it was necessarily made out to appear. Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (2012) along with Gerard Jones’s Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (2005) point out that much of the feelings of goodwill between publisher and creator were often manufactured for the benefit of the reader and sales. Not surprisingly, the lawsuits between Marvel Comics and the Kirby estate continued into the twenty-first century over the rights to intellectual property developed by Jack Kirby alongside Stan Lee, who has been compensated by Marvel for his contributions to their characters’ successes. Steve Ditko removed himself from the discussion altogether, preferring a life of solitude away from the limelight.
It is worth pointing out that, unlike his counterparts at DC Comics, Stan Lee is far more gracious about sharing the praise with his co-creators. DC editorial has been criticized for treating Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster quite poorly, and many believe Bob Kane managed to contractually steal all credit from Bill Finger, who is arguably responsible for a significant portion of the Batman mythos. Lee, on the other hand, would go on record time and time again affording equal credit, even if only in spirit and not in a legal sense, for the creation of the canon of Marvel superheroes to Kirby, Ditko, and whoever was involved with a given character’s origins. Although this difference may not right the alleged financial wrongs done to these artists, it is still a distinction worth noting.
When Stan moved up to being Marvel’s publisher in the 1970s, Roy Thomas stepped in as the editor-in-chief in 1972. From this point until and even after his retirement from Marvel, Stan Lee became the face of Marvel Entertainment in one capacity or another. Known to have desired the fame and fortune of Hollywood and freed from the constraints of the daily grind of publishing, Lee was better able to travel the country, talk to readers at school, colleges, and other public venues, and market his work and himself. Even into the latter part of the twentieth century, Stan Lee continued to pursue other creative projects, heading his own companies, Stan Lee Media and POW Entertainment, and developing various comic, television, and cinematic properties with varying degrees of success. Even as the aging comic legend entered into his nineties, he continued traveling the country at numerous comic and pop culture events, making cameos in blockbuster superhero films, and working the crowds with the same infectious enthusiasm that started him in the business as a nineteen-year-old boy.
Forrest C. Helvie
See also Batman; DC Comics; Kirby, Jack; Marvel Comics; Spider Man; Superman
Further Reading
Jones, Gerard. 2004. Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book. New York: Basic Books.
Lee, Stan, and George Mair. 2002. Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee. New York: Touchstone.
Morrison, Grant. 2011. Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human. New York: Spiegel.
Smith, Colin. 2012. “On Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.” Sequart Organization website. http://sequart.org/magazine/16909/on-marvel-comics-the-untold-story-by-sean-howe/. Accessed May 15, 2014.