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Reuters

Stan Lee, the legendary comic book writer and co-creator of Marvel Comics superheroes, has died at the age of 95.
Lee created or co-created Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hulk and dozens of other superheroes that have become mythic figures in US pop culture with soaring success at the movie box office.
He was recognised by fans in recent years for his cameo appearances in each of Marvel’s live-action films.

His death was announced on Monday by his daughter, J.C. Lee.
As a writer and editor, Lee was key to the ascension of Marvel into a comic book titan in the 1960s when, in collaboration with artists such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he created superheroes who would enthral generations of young readers.


Americans were familiar with superheroes before Lee, in part thanks to the 1938 launch of Superman by Detective Comics, the company that would become DC Comics, Marvel’s arch-rival.
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Lee was widely credited with adding a new layer of complexity and humanity to superheroes. His characters were not made of stone – even if they appeared to have been chiselled from granite. They had love and money worries and endured tragic flaws or feelings of insecurity.
“I felt it would be fun to learn a little about their private lives, about their personalities and show that they are human as well as super,” Lee told NPR News in 2010.

He had help in designing the superheroes but he took full ownership of promoting them.
They included web-slinging teenager Spider-Man, the muscle-bound Hulk, mutant outsiders The X-Men, the close-knit Fantastic Four and the playboy-inventor Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man.
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Dozens of Marvel Comics movies, with nearly all the major characters Lee created, were produced in the first decades of the 21st century, grossing over US$20 billion at theatres worldwide, according to box office analysts.
Spider-Man is one of the most successfully licensed characters ever and he has soared through the New York skyline as a giant inflatable in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Lee, as a hired hand at Marvel, received limited payback on the windfall from his characters.
Comic legend Stan Lee drops US$1 billion lawsuit against company he co-founded
In a 1998 contract, he wrestled a clause for 10 per cent of profits from movies and TV shows with Marvel characters. In 2002, he sued to claim his share, months after Spider-Man conquered movie theatres. In a legal settlement three years later, he received a US$10 million one-time payment.
Hollywood studios made superheroes the cornerstone of their strategy of producing fewer films and relying on big profits from blockbusters. Some people assumed that, as a result, Lee’s wealth had soared. He disputed that.

“I don’t have US$200 million. I don’t have US$150 million. I don’t have US$100 million or anywhere near that,” Lee told Playboy magazine in 2014. Having grown up in the Great Depression, Lee added that he was “happy enough to get a nice paycheck and be treated well.”
In 2008, Lee was awarded the National Medal of Arts, the highest government award for creative artists.
Lee was born as Stanley Martin Lieber in New York on December 28, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants from Romania. At age 17, he became an errand boy at Timely Comics, the company that would evolve into Marvel. He got the job with help from an inside connection, his uncle, according to Lee’s autobiography Excelsior!
Lee soon earned writing duties and promotions. He penned Western stories and romances, as well as superhero tales, and often wrote standing on the porch of the Long Island, New York, home he shared with his wife, actress Joan Lee, whom he married in 1947 and who died in 2017.
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The couple had two children, Joan Celia, who was born in 1950, and Jan Lee, who died three days after her birth in 1953.
In 1961 Lee’s boss saw a rival publisher’s success with caped crusaders and told Lee to dream up a superhero team.
Lee at the time felt comics were a dead-end career. But his wife urged him to give it one more shot and create the complex characters he wanted to, even if it led to his firing.
The result was the Fantastic Four. There was stretchable Mr Fantastic, his future wife Invisible Woman, her brother the Human Torch and strongman The Thing. They were like a devoted but dysfunctional family.
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“Stan’s characters were always superheroes that had a certain amount of humanity about them or a flaw,” said Shirrel Rhoades, a former executive vice president of Marvel and its publisher in the mid-1990s.
“As iconic as Superman may be, he’s considered a Boy Scout. He doesn’t have any real flaws,” Rhoades said. “Whereas you take a Spider-Man, kids identify with him because he had his problems like they did. He suffered from great angst.”
Lee involved his artists in the process of creating the story and even the characters themselves, in what would come to be known as the “Marvel Method”. It sometimes led critics to fault Lee for taking credit for ideas not entirely his own.
He described his creative process by outlining how he came up with his character Thor, the god of thunder borrowed from Norse mythology.
“I was trying to think of something that would be totally different,” he said. “What could be bigger and even more powerful than the Hulk? And I figured why not a legendary god?”
Comic book icon Stan Lee faces sexual assault lawsuit
To give Thor more rhetorical punch, Lee gave him dialogue styled after the Bible and Shakespeare.
As for Tony Stark/Iron Man, he was based on industrialist Howard Hughes, Lee told interviewers.
Lee became Marvel’s publisher in 1972. He went on the lecture circuit, moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and pursued opportunities for his characters in movies and television.
Through it all, he kept connected with fans, writing a column called “Stan’s Soapbox” in which he often slipped in his catchphrase “’Nuff Said” or the sign-off “Excelsior!” In his later years, he gave constant updates via Twitter.
“Stan was a character. He was a character as much as any he ever created,” Rhoades said. “He created himself, in a way.”
He also made cameos in most Marvel films, pulling a girl away from falling debris in 2002’s Spider-Man and serving as an emcee at a strip club in 2016’s Deadpool.
The Walt Disney Co bought Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for US$4 billion in a deal to expand Disney’s roster of characters, with the most iconic ones having been Lee’s handiwork.
By that point, Lee had all but parted ways with Marvel after being made a chairman emeritus of the company. But even in his 80s and 90s, Lee was a wellspring of new projects, running a company called POW! Entertainment.
“His greatest legacy will be not only the co-creation of his characters but the way he helped to build the culture that comics have become, which is a pretty significant one,” said Robert Thompson, a pop culture expert at Syracuse University.


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Obituaries

Stan Lee, co-creator of Marvel Comics superheroes and titan of pop culture, dead at 95

Stan Lee, who created a new breed of superhero, has died at age 95. Photo: AP

TOPSHOT - Comic book writer Stan Lee (L) and actor Chadwick Boseman attend the world premiere of Marvel Studios' "Black Panther," on January 29, 2018, in Hollywood, California. / AFP PHOTO / VALERIE MACON

Actor Lou Ferrigno (L), who played the "Incredible Hulk" in a US television series, and Dean Cain (R), who played "Superman" in a television series, pose with Stan Lee (C), the creator of their characters, at Lee's 60th Anniversary in Entertainment Gala in Hollywood, CA 29 February 2000. (ELECTRONIC IMAGE) AFP PHOTO/Lucy NICHOLSON

** FILE ** Stan Lee, 79, creator of comic-book franchises such as "Spider-Man," "The Incredible Hulk" and "X-Men," smiles during a photo session April 16, 2002, in his office in Santa Monica, Calif. A judge in Manhattan federal court has ruled that Lee, chairman emeritus atMarvel Enterprises Inc., is entitled to 10 percent of the profits from movie and television productions involving Marvel characters, as well as movie-related toys manufactured and sold by the company itself. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Comic book icon Stan Lee faces sexual assault lawsuit

Stan Lee is being accused of inappropriate behavior during two massages in 2017. Photo: AP 

REFILE - CORRECTING TYPO IN NAME Premiere of “Avengers: Infinity War” - Arrivals - Los Angeles, California, U.S., 23/04/2018 - Actor Chadwick Boseman (L) and comic book legend Stan Lee. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Comic legend Stan Lee drops US$1 billion lawsuit against company he co-founded, saying it was ‘confusing to everyone’

In this October 20, 2016 file photo, Stan Lee arrives at the premiere of Doctor Strange in Los Angeles. Photo: AP

FILE - In this April 23, 2018 file photo, Stan Lee, left, and Keya Morgan arrive at the world premiere of "Avengers: Infinity War" in Los Angeles. After the death last July of his wife Joan, the Marvel mogul has found himself in the middle of a fight over his finances and properties that has led to lawsuits, a restraining order and a police investigation of elder abuse. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

Comic legend Stan Lee sues the company he founded for US$1bn, claiming executives tried to steal his image

Famed comic book creator Stan Lee says executives from the company he founded took advantage of him at a time when he was despondent over the death of his wife Joan and suffering from macular degeneration. Photo: AP

Police investigate ‘elder abuse’ of Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, 95, as restraining order is imposed on manager

In this April 23 photo, Stan Lee, left, and his manager Keya Morgan arrive at the world premiere of “Avengers: Infinity War” in Los Angeles. Lee has taken out a restraining order against Morgan who had been acting as his business manager and close adviser. Photo: AP

REFILE - CORRECTING TYPO IN NAME Premiere of "Avengers: Infinity War" - Arrivals - Los Angeles, California, U.S., 23/04/2018 - Actor Chadwick Boseman (L) and comic book legend Stan Lee. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

FILE - In this Oct. 27, 2017 file photo, famed comic book creator Stan Lee appears at an NBA basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Toronto Raptors, in Los Angeles. A Chicago masseuse is suing Marvel Comic's Stan Lee, accusing him of inappropriate behavior during two massages in 2017. Maria Carballo filed the lawsuit Monday, April 24, 2018, seeking more than $50,000 in punitive damages and attorney fees from the 95-year-old comic book writer. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill File)

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Stan Lee created or co-created characters including Spider-Man, The Hulk and Iron Man, that defined the superhero genre
Lee was known for his cameo roles in most Marvel films



Stan Lee’s characters – including Spider-Man, The Hulk and Iron Man – defined the superhero genre.


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Stan Lee, co-creator of Marvel Comics superheroes and titan of pop culture, dead at 95

.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Stan Lee created or co-created characters including Spider-Man, The Hulk and Iron Man, that defined the superhero genre Lee was known for his cameo roles in most Marvel films

Stan Lee created or co-created characters including Spider-Man, The Hulk and Iron Man, that defined the superhero genre

Lee was known for his cameo roles in most Marvel films