Happy Birthday, Stan Lee

Happy 95th birthday to Stan Lee, born as Stanley Martin Lieber on 28th December 1922. He began his career as a comic book author in 1941, but he's most famous for the comics that he wrote from 1961 to 1969. During these nine years he reached a creative peak that no other person has achieved in a whole lifetime.

The comic book characters that he personally invented during these years are still popular today: the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Spider-Man and many others.

In the late 1950's and early 1960's the comic book industry was dominated by DC Comics. DC wrote stories about powerful super-heroes, while Marvel Comics wrote love stories, horror stories and cowboy stories. Lee had previously written super-hero comics, but he'd stopped because he found them too remote and unapproachable. In effect, he considered super-heroes to be too super. In 1961 he created the Fantastic Four as a group of heroes who had great powers, but were very down to Earth and human. For instance, Ben Grimm became the strongest man alive, but he thought of it as a curse because he was ugly. A year later Stan Lee created the Hulk, who was even stronger, but his curse was that he lost his intelligence and became a brute. This became the pattern for all of his later heroes. Nobody was perfect. Iron Man had a weak heart, Daredevil was blind and Thor's alter-ego needed a walking stick.

This wasn't the only innovation in Stan Lee's creations. DC's heroes weren't based in the real world. They lived in fictional American cities with names like Gotham and Metropolis. These cities weren't just far away from the reader, they were far away from one another. The heroes didn't meet one another in their comics, and they had different enemies. DC created a team group called the Justice League, containing their top heroes Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash and Green Lantern, but in the Justice League the heroes seemed to be always together, as if they didn't have a solo career. It was as if they weren't even the same characters. Marvel's characters, on the other hand, were almost all based in New York, so they frequently bumped into one another. Only the Hulk was geographically separated; he was based in New Mexico.

Within a few years Marvel's comics were outselling DC. The underdog became the champion. Unfortunately, this led to business decisions taking priority over art. One of Stan Lee's co-creators, the artist Jack Kirby, was treated unfairly by Marvel Comics as a company. Without going into too much detail, a lot of comic book fans blamed Stan Lee, but he had nothing to do with it. Stan just wanted to write comics; the businessmen and accountants had already taken over his company.

Today I read an article in a German magazine claiming that Stan Lee's influence in the early comics is exaggerated, that the success was due to Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. This is utter nonsense, and easy to disprove. Stan's comics were also drawn by other artists, such as Gene Colan and Bill Everett. All of these comics were highly successful. Do the German experts really think that it's just a coincidence that Stan Lee was associated with all the successful comics, whoever happened to be the artist? They really should go back to school. I don't deny that Jack Kirby was a great artist, but he would never have received the same level of fame without Stan Lee's assistance.

Stan Lee is a genius. He's the greatest comic book writer there has ever been, and probably the best there ever will be. Fifty years on, his contribution to modern culture is still as strong, and it shows no sign of slowing down. He's my hero. I respect and revere him more than anyone else I know.