Stan Lee Passes Away

Stan Lee, chairman emeritus of Marvel who co-created such iconic characters as Spider-Man, passed away yesterday at the age of 95.

“Stan Lee was as extraordinary as the characters he created,” Bob Iger, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, said in a statement. “A superhero in his own right to Marvel fans around the world, Stan had the power to inspire, to entertain and to connect. The scale of his imagination was only exceeded by the size of his heart.”

Lee began his comic-book career as an assistant at Timely Comics, eventually working his way up to penning his own stories, beginning with a Captain America comic book in 1941. Timely eventually become Atlas Comics and then Marvel Comics, where Lee was editor-in-chief and then publisher. He later went on to form POW! Entertainment as a  venture for TV and film projects, and frequently appeared in cameo roles in the films based on Marvel characters.

World Screen interviewed Lee in 2012 as he was crafting new brands at POW! “Whether we’re writing a comic book, whether we’re developing a motion picture or a TV series, the only thing we look for is, the project has to be filled with surprises, the reader or the viewer must be seeing and enjoying something that he or she has not seen before, and it should hold the audience’s interest. It should seem fresh, new, exciting, and it should be fun. Whatever, we do, we want it to be fun.”

On creating the traits of his many beloved characters, Lee noted, “Basically, if you’ve read my stories you know I’m very scientific minded. For example, I didn’t just have Spider-Man gain a spider power miraculously, I did it as scientifically as possible—he was bitten by a radioactive spider. It could have happened to anybody. When the Hulk became the Hulk, it just didn’t happen casually—there was a gamma-ray bomb that exploded. If you ask me what a gamma ray is, I would have no idea at all, but it sounds very scientific, I think. The Fantastic Four, they gained their powers from cosmic rays, of which I know as little as I do gamma rays, but they sound impressive. At that point I ran out of rays, so when I had to do the X Men, I took the cowardly way out, I said, well they’re just born that way, that’s all. They’re mutants. That got me off the hook there. I can give you a very clear and definite understanding as to why I and the people at POW! and at Marvel are so much more scientific than the competition. Here’s the example. You’ve seen Superman flying on the screen, haven’t you? What is his means of propulsion? What makes him fly? He doesn’t have a jet engine, there’s nothing pushing him, he just sort of assumes a horizontal position, lies on the air and off he goes. When I wanted a character to fly, such as the Silver Surfer, I gave him a flying surfboard—perfectly scientific, perfectly understandable, and not the least bit as frustrating as wondering how Superman does it. So as you can see, science is really something I’m very much into and every factor of our stories is as scientifically accurate as I can make them!”

Lee was a frequent participant at fan conventions, a role he relished throughout his career. “I just love it,” he told World Screen. “All my life I’ve done it and people in other companies used to say, ‘Why do you waste time spending so much time with the fans?’ And I used to say, you guys are crazy that you don’t do it. These fans are the ones who are keeping you in business and when you talk to them and they tell you what they like and what they don’t like, it’s the greatest education you can get for the work that you do. To me the fans are the most important. In fact, I’ve even formed an army, I’ve formed a brigade, and I, of course, am the beloved generalissimo and all of my fans are brigadiers.”