On  Monday, November 12th, 2018, Marvel’s publisher, Stanley Martin Lieber, died at age 95 from  cardiac arrest, respiratory and congestive heart failure.  Stan Lee was considered to many as one of the most famous writers and publishers of recent decades. His creative mind  led to rememberable and iconic characters such as the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, the Avengers, X-Men, and of course, our friendly neighborhood Spiderman.

Stan Lee was born in December 28, 1922, in Mathann, New York. He lived with his immigrant parents, who were Jewish-Roman Catholic. He was hired as a office assistant for Timely comics at 1939 and became an interim editor for the company in the early 1940s. That comic would soon be branded “Marvel Comics” soon later in 1961. Lee was also enlisted in the army in World War II, working as a writer and illustrator. In the early 60s, Lee’s boss wanted him to create a comic that would rival DC comics’ “Justice League” which was a big hit at the time. Stan Lee later worked with co-creator Jack Garethy, another legendary publisher and writer, and started the development of Fantastic Four in 1961. Soon after,  Stan Lee introduced his new idea of new superheroes such as Captain America, Black Panther, X-Men, and one of his famously known superheroes Spider-Man. In 2008, Marvel decided to start off the Cinematic Universe with the screening of Iron Man, which is one of MCU most high grossing marvel movies. Stan Lee, of course, had a cameo part in several movies, and his last cameo will be in the upcoming Avengers Endgame.

“I really like the Marvel movies,” said Gareth Persaud, senior. “For a while, they’ve gotten a little repetitive; however, they revamped their material and have brilliant writers. I know there’s a internal power struggle between Marvel and Stan Lee, but now since he’s out of the picture, his fractions of franchises and ideas wil belong to other executives.”

It will be difficult to envision what Marvel’s future will be without the guidance of one of it’s legendary publishers. There was a time when that vision for Marvel’s future was more difficult to see as Stan Lee was about to quit after working for more than 20 years working at the Timely  Comics. He was frustrated with the public’s perception or opinions of comic books at that time. The day he wanted to tell his boss that he wanted to quit was the day when his boss wanted a comic book series about a team of superheroes that was similar to The Justice League. After experimenting with ideas on how to make an original comic book series, he came up with the idea of humans with superhuman abilities to make the characters relatable. In DC Comics, for example, Superman is from another planet, Wonder Woman is an Amazon Woman, and Batman is  a caped crusader. He thought since DC Comics wanted to make Gods more human, he wanted to make humans more like Gods. He wanted to tell stories of characters who seem to be unrealistic but relatable, having great Power but knowing that they have great responsibility. He wanted to create stories that would impact a person’s life.