12 Nov Stan Lee – Entrepeneur, Creator, Businessman, World-Changer

Spider-Man showed a vulnerability and humanness that many superheroes never had. He was instantly relatable minus the super strength. Just a normal, awkward teenage boy with a crush on the girl next door turned into wall-crawling, web-slinging crime fighter.

Captain America gave us hope during one of the world’s darkest times during World War II. He became a symbol for America. In modern depictions in the Marvel Movies, he is a symbol of leadership and values that have become disparaged.

Black Panther was the first black superhero and gave minorities representation during a tumultuous time in our country for race relations. He was one of the richest and technologically-advanced of all the superheroes.

X-Men were created as an allegory to race relations back during the Civil Rights movement. The plight of the X-Men being mistreated as a minority of mutants was a reflection of our society’s most important issues at the time. These were not just empty fairy tales, but lights that shone brightly on the some of the darkest issues of our times.

In the 60s, he made a focused shift to having his superheroes face issues like criminals with mental illness, boyhood crushes, racism, and highlighting their personalities and shortcomings. He created less powerful heroes such as Luke Cage and Daredevil. These characters dealt with religion, obeying the law despite its flaws, gentrification and more. These were in-your-face comic book issues that forced you to pay attention to the world around you, not escape from it.

Stan Lee and his team were constantly harrassed early on in their careers. They were threatened with censorship and had to seek protection from the city of New York at one point. Born in the towering city of Manhattan, it became the backdrop for many of his stories and superhero origins. For years, he did not believe what he did was particularly important. He did not understand how he was starting conversations and changing the perceptions of the way people saw the world. He admitted it took him a while to understand how people were identifying with certain heroes traits and how they became emotionally connected.

Eventually, his comics became so popular that they morphed into TV shows. Generations still remember the incredibly-jacked Lou Ferrigno as the very angry and very green Incredible Hulk. Recently, its impossible to look at box office earnings for the past decade and not find a Marvel movie or two sitting at the top of the charts. The geeks and nerds who loved the comics are now part of the mainstream as every demographic has some knowledge of a few superheroes and can recognize their symbols in tv commercials.

All that said, he was a massive monetary success.

• Sony bought Spiderman for $175 million dollars and promised another $35 million for each movie made (there’s been a lot of them).
• Disney bought Marvel for $4 Billion dollars in 2009. On the most recent Avengers movie, it grossed over $2 billion in movie theaters.
• Currently, Marvel holds 4 of the 10 highest box office earning movies of all time.

I’ll miss his creativity. I’ll miss his vision. I’ll miss his cameos. But he left a legacy behind that will long out-live him. Thank you, Stan. You will be missed.