13 November 2018 - Stan Lee Dies Aged 95
Stan Lee, Marvel Comics' Real-Life Superhero, Dies at 95
Mike Barnes (The Hollywood Reporter, 12/11/2018)
Stan Lee, the legendary writer, editor and publisher of Marvel Comics whose fantabulous but flawed creations made him a real-life superhero to comic book lovers everywhere, has died. He was 95.
Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.
Stan Lee Is Dead at 95; Superhero of Marvel Comics
Jonathan Kandell and Andy Webster (The New York Times, 12/11/2018)
If Stan Lee revolutionized the comic book world in the 1960s, which he did, he left as big a stamp — maybe bigger — on the even wider pop culture landscape of today.
Think of “Spider-Man,” the blockbuster movie franchise and Broadway spectacle. Think of “Iron Man,” another Hollywood gold-mine series personified by its star, Robert Downey Jr. Think of “Black Panther,” the box-office superhero smash that shattered big screen racial barriers in the process.
And that is to say nothing of the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor and other film and television juggernauts that have stirred the popular imagination and made many people very rich.
A True Believer Remembers Stan Lee
Glen Weldon (NPR, 12/11/2018)
"Stan Lee" was a pseudonym. Which is to say: an alter ego. A larger-than-life persona whose secret identity was that of not-particularly-mild-mannered writer Stanley Martin Lieber.
Stan Lee's origin story lacks the cataclysmic, life-altering trauma suffered by the many heroic characters he co-created. But it is just as relatable, as it is marked by the kind of dashed hopes and frustrated dreams so many of us experience. The son of a dress cutter, Lieber dreamed of becoming a novelist — but he had taken a job as an office boy at Timely Comics, which was owned by his cousin's husband. By age 18, he had been hired as an editor. And that was, essentially, that: The work was demanding, yet he clung to the notion that he would one day find the time to become Stanley Lieber, Great American Novelist, author of high-minded short stories, novels, essays, plays. To keep that possibility alive, he determined to churn out his comics work under the name Stan Lee.
Those novels? They never happened. Stanley Lieber never found the time to write them, because Stan Lee became too busy. The characters and stories he created instead — with a lot of help from artists and co-plotters like Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby and others — have infiltrated the cultural ether, the very semiotic air all of us breathe. Around the planet, they are not merely recognized, they are embraced, imitated, argued over. Especially that last thing.
Stan Lee: auteur of the superhero world and perhaps last legend of pop culture
Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian, 12/11/2018)
If only I had kept it, and kept it in good condition. It would be the nearest I have ever had to a pension plan.
In February 1973, as a 10-year-old, I bought the first issue of the new UK edition of something called Spider-Man Comics Weekly for 5p from my local shop – and the addiction continued for a couple of years.
Previously, my comic of choice had been something called Whizzer and Chips. Now Spider-Man introduced me to a dark and disturbingly adult world of superheroism laced with depression, frustration and failure to get the girl. Peter Parker’s terrible life persuasively and seductively mimicked our own banal humiliations; his alter ego was therefore a compelling wish-fulfilment fantasy.