Reports are coming in that Stan Lee has passed away. With hundreds of titles and even more characters to his name, Stan “The Man” is one of the great architects in all of comics. It’s safe to say that had he, Kirby, Ditko, and the like not found success with their work at Marvel, comics as we know them today would be very different, if they continued to exist at all.
Lee was instrumental in the creation of the X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, and all their respective members, as well as characters like Spider-Man and Daredevil. His comics were exhilarating adventure tales, to be sure, but he was not afraid to use the platform to discuss social issues either. After all, Black Panther is one of the first black comic leads, and even to this day the X-Men are an allegory for minority oppression.
Lee primarily worked with Marvel characters, but the Just Imagine... project from 2001 saw him reimagine several DC Comics characters as if he had been their creator. Batman was one of those characters, who was recast as a wrestler framed for the murder of his father.
While his contributions have slowed in recent years, he continued to create and write comics well into the later years of his life, and his trademark cameos in Marvel films have become one of modern cinema’s most endearing tropes.
He was 95.
