Gender: Male Religion:Jewish[1] Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation:Cartoonist Party Affiliation: Democratic
Nationality: United States Executive summary: Created Spider-Man and The Hulk
Military service: US Army Signal Corps (WWII)
As is often the case with people who accomplish great things, Stan Lieber had a bit of an advantage. His cousin was married to Martin Goodman, the owner of Timely Comics. Lee started at Timely as a writer at age 16, just before the company changed its name to Marvel, and he quickly worked his way up to head writer, editor and art director, under the pen name Stan Lee.
For decades, Marvel eschewed complex characters, and had an informal quota on words of three or more syllables. By the time Lee's midlife crisis came along, he knew he had to get out of the comic business -- or do just one comic book he could be proud of. Working with Marvel's master artist Jack Kirby, Lee invented The Fantastic Four in 1961, and gave his teen superheroes utterly human, non superhero problems. They had zits and arguments with their parents. This combination of superhuman powers and human foibles quickly proved popular, and Lee began remaking the Marvel line -- Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Amazing Thor, Daredevil, the X-Men, and more. For decades, Lee was amazingly prolific, scripting at least a couple of comic books virtually every week, and some weeks as many as five. He orchestrated and supervised Marvel's creative side, making sure each series was written and drawn by people who had the right creative spark.
Lee is now mostly retired from Marvel. He briefly oversaw his own Stan Lee Media, until it went down in a blaze of corruption in 2001. The company's vice president, Stephen Gordon and his brother, Jonathan, were convicted of wire fraud, bank fraud, and making false statements in connection with a check-kiting scheme. Lee himself was not indicted.
AKA Stanley Martin Lieber