Stan Lee

Net Worth

$50,000,000

Born in (City)

New York

Born in (Country)

Date of Birth

28th December, 1922

Date of Death

12th December, 2018

Mother

Celia Lieber

Father

Jack Lieber

Children

Joan Celia Lee
Jan Lee

About

Stan “The Man“ Lee, the unforgettable originator of fictional superheroes, also an editor, producer, publisher, and an American comic book writer known for his best work with Marvel Comics. Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Daredevil and Ant-Man are some of the superheroes among hundred others who were brought to a reality life by him. For his exceptional imagination into the world of modelling unanticipated benevolent characters, he has been nominated for several eminent and reputed awards and won many times under different categories. Four of them accounting to Lifetime Achievement Award forefronting at contrasting stages. He also bagged a NAVGTR Award in 2017 for his hilarious performance in Lego Marvel’s Avengers. The natural cameos of this unremarkable gentleman will be miserably missed by his huge fan following in the future phases of Marvel movies.

Early Life

The also-know-as Stanley Martin Lieber was born in Manhattan, New York City on 28th December of 1922. His immigrant parents were Romanian-born Jewish and was siblinged with a brother. Lee said he was influenced by books and movies in his childhood, particularly the heroic roles played by Errol Flynn. He was schooled at the DeWitt Clinton HIgh School in Bronx. He dreamt of writing the “Great American Novel” some day and worked at such part-time jobs of writing obituaries for press releases for the National Tuberculosis Center and a news service in his youth. At his mid-teens, he contendered an essay competition at high school which was sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune newspaper, they called it “The Biggest News of the Week Contest,” where he claimed to have won prizes for three consecutive weeks. “Probably changed my life”, he portended, succeeding to the paper suggesting him to pursue writing professionally. He joined the WPA Federal Theatre Project in 1939 after graduating from high school at his sixteen and a half age. In the 50s decade, Lee created a number of comic-book series, Black Marvel, Jack Frost, the Destroyer, Whizzer, and The Witness with a group named Atlas. With Jack Kirby, another American-based mastermind at the comic-writing, Lee created The Fantastic Four in 1961, a series of which led his current group and him to evolve into the major forces in the world of comics, Marvel. Soon, the three of them, with Steve Ditko, practiced and adapted a collaborative workflow, “the Marvel method,” leading them to the technique of insights on story plotting and also to generate new content. This led to the birth of the powerful characters living in a thoroughly shared universe, gathered together into a team, The Avengers.

Road to Success

Author Danny Fingeroth dives into the legendary comic book creator's career, both the good and the bad, in new book "A Marvelous Life." SEATTLE — Stan Lee was, and may still be, the most famous comic book creator of his time. From Spider-Man to the Hulk, he is well-known for creating the foundation of characters that make up the Marvel Universe. Despite his success, there are still questions about the controversies and conflicts that haunted Stan Lee's career. In A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee, author Danny Fingeroth attempts to answer these questions using interviews with Lee, as well as Lee's colleagues, relatives, and friends. Fingeroth sits down to discuss the man that inspired his book and the impact his career had on the comic book world. ABOUT THE BOOK: A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee (St. Martin's Press), is the first comprehensive biography of the comics legend, creator of Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Hulk and others. Longtime Marvel Comics writer and editor Danny Fingeroth worked with comic book creator Stan Lee for over forty years, collaborating on many projects, co-editing The Stan Lee Universe, an annotated collection of rarities from Lee’s person archives and based A Marvelous Life on interviews, archival research and personal experiences with Lee. Danny Fingeroth is a pop culture critic and historian whose books include Superman on the Couch. He appears in conversation with Rob Salkowitz who writes about comics, entertainment and media for Forbes, Publishers Weekly and ICv2. He's author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture and teaches in the Communication Leadership graduate program at the University of Washington.

Challenges

Yep, among the many challenges Stan Lee has faced, one of his biggest was in fact arachnophobia. Back in the old days, people were less receptive to certain things compared to people today. If they didn’t like it they would probably avoid it and pretty much anything related to it, real or fake without a second thought. Spiders for most were one of those things at that time. So when Stan Lee was in the process of creating and pitching Spider-Man, he was met with criticism and skepticism from his publisher. Instead of giving up, he kept on and debuted Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy vol 15 and it was history. If Stan had listened to his publisher so many great Marvel movies, comics and characters wouldn’t exist and Marvel most likely would have shut down in the 80s or even sooner.

Failures

By most gauges of success, Lee would be successful. He is influential: Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin said in an interview, “Maybe Stan Lee is the greatest literary influence on me, even more than Shakespeare or Tolkien.” Forbes ranked Lee as the ninth most influential celebrity of 2014. Watchmen creator Alan Moore was influenced by Stan Lee’s work. Lee’s work at Marvel Comics also led to Disney acquiring Marvel for US $4 billion in 2009. (But he had no equity in the company. More on that later.) Most don’t look past these accolades into Lee’s actual story. Although he was undoubtedly blessed with a great creative ability (refined through regular writing and several clever experiments), I think one of Lee’s most remarkable accomplishments was his persistence despite his many failures and shortcomings. For starters, Lee was entrepreneurial and creative, but he was far from a robust businessman. As he wrote in his autobiography (co-authored with George Mair) Excelsior!: One of my lifelong regrets is that I’ve always been too casual about money. It’s been made abundantly clear to me, by friends such as Marshall and others, that I should have realized I was creating a whole kaboodle of characters that became valuable franchises, but I was creating them for others. Harry Stonehill was a friend of Stan’s from the service who wanted to go in business with him. Stonehill was going to sell Christmas cards in the Philippines, because there was a short supply. Lee thought he was a lunatic. As he wrote in his biography, Excelsior!: As the months and years went by I kept hearing from Harry. It seemed he now owned the franchise for U.S. Tobacco. Then I learned he had built a large glass-manufacturing company. Next time I heard he had created a fast-growing import-export company. It went on and on. Bottom line: After a few years my old army pal, Harry, had become the wealthiest man in the Philippines! I remember once writing to him and asking, “What kind of car are you driving?” because we always used to talk about cars. He wrote back, “Stan, I own half of the cars here in the Philippines. I’ve got dealerships.” Yep, any time my ego needs deflating, I remember how I was too smart to leave my comicbooks and go into business with ol’ Harry!” That’s a pretty serious missed opportunity. Similar missed opportunities have probably haunted some people you know, as they grow more and more frustrated and wistful with each passing year. “If only…” they say. In another case, here’s how Lee botched an income-generating side project: Now I’ll give you further evidence of what a great business talent I possess. I gleefully told Joanie, “Honey, we’re a success. We made a five-thousand-dollar profit on the books.” And here’s where my embarrassing lunkheadedness comes in. I never thought to go back to press! I mean, I had the photos, I had the original plates, I had all the material. The creative part and the biggest expense was all behind me. I should have printed another ten thousand copies, and then another as long as they kept selling. But not good ol’ one-shot Lee. I was just happy to have proven to myself that I could write and sell my own humor book, and it never dawned on me that I had the foundation of a new publishing business if I would have stayed with it. Lastly, when Marvel was acquired by Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation, Lee was in a perfect position to negotiate practically anything from his employer. His friend Marshall Finck advised him of this, and Lee reacted: Well, Stan “Big Brain” Lee shrugged Marshall off by saying, “Are you kidding? Martin may have his faults, but he’s a friend. I’ve worked for him for twenty years. Do you think I’d insult him by saying, ‘What are you going to give me?’ I know he’ll be fair. I’m not some money-grubbing ingrate who’s gonna take advantage of the situation. Unfortunately, Finck was right. Lee’s publisher and Marvel’s founder, Martin Goodman, never gave him anything. (There’s something to be learned for many artists out here, I’m just not sure what it is.) That happened again in a subsequent acquisition. Let’s not forget the time Stan Lee was investigated by the SEC, FBI, and Justice Department when he had left day-to-day operations at Marvel and started a new venture Stan Lee Media. As it turns out, his partner Peter Paul had left the country to fled to Brazil. Paul was later convicted of securities fraud. These monumental failures would be devastating to most individuals. Just hearing about them would probably scare their friends into never trying again. How the hell did Stan Lee get through all of that? As co-author George Mair wrote: But once again, his ability not to dwell on the past served him well. A new chapter was about to open in his life and Stan was eager to face it.

Achievements

On July 14, 2017, Lee and Jack Kirby were named Disney Legends for their creation of numerous characters that later comprised Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe.|On July 18, 2017, as part of D23 Disney Legends event, a ceremony was held at the TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard where Stan Lee imprinted his hands, feet, and signature in cement.

Quotes

Comic books to me are fairy tales for grown-ups.
Life is never completely without its challenges.
If you are interested in what you do, that keeps you going!