Marvel Comics creator Stan Lee has died

Stan Lee, co-creator of Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Black Panther, and many other beloved Marvel comic-book characters, died Monday. He was 95. Lee was declared dead at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee’s daughter.

Born Stanley Lieber to Romanian immigrants in New York City, Lee started at Timely Comics (later renamed Marvel) in 1939. In his first comic publication, he signed his name “Stan Lee” because he didn’t want his real name on something so trivial. He wanted to write the great American novel.

Lee served in the Army during World War II, then returned to the comic world. Comics featuring the superheroes he created (including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and the Avengers) became, in a sense, his great American novel. Flawed and complex, his characters diverged from hunky archetypes.

“I used to think what I did was not very important,” Lee told the Chicago Tribune in April 2014. “People are building bridges and engaging in medical research, and here I was doing stories about fictional people who do extraordinary, crazy things and wear costumes. But I suppose I have come to realize that entertainment is not easily dismissed.”

Driven by Lee’s creativity, Marvel Comics introduced serious themes, made comic creators more available to fans, and created the “Marvel Method,” a fast-paced system progressing from Lee’s skeletal ideas to artists’ renderings to Lee’s scripting. Marvel experienced massive success and Lee, the face of the company, became publisher in 1972. In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Entertainment for $4.24 billion. In the years that followed, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, anchored by the Avengers franchise, exploded in popularity and success.

A storyteller at heart, Lee’s early aspirations toward literary greatness pushed him to turn comic books from trivial illustrations to human stories, universal and enduring. Lee was preceded in death by his wife of 69 years, Joan B. Lee, and an infant daughter, Jan. He is survived by his daughter, Joan Celia Lee.