The death of Comic-book giant Stan Lee: Excelsior!

"I'm the luckiest guy in the whole world", had told Stan Lee in April the "New York Times".

The newspaper was to Los Angeles, in the Bird Streets in the hills of West Hollywood, to see whether the Comic book giant, everything is in order. There were rumors, for the part of Lee himself fired, a lawyer, a nurse and a Memorabilia dealer with Lee's daughter Joan Celia, called have J. C., 67, conspired to gain control of his possessions. Of abuse, and the fact that Lee would be kept in his for the celebrity-quarter of a rather modest, two-storey Villa caught.

It sounded like a story that Lee can come up with would have, at that time, in his time as a Comic book Impresario: super villains who are terrorizing an Old man in his house? At least a case for Spider-Man, the friendly neighbourhood hero! All nonsense, reiterated Lee to the "Times" and seemed frail, but cheerful and relaxed for a man beyond the 90. Year of life. "Life is pretty good to me," he said - and seemed to be with himself and the world in the Pure.

And why not? In the past ten years, a long-cherished dream of Lee, he could never realize was fulfilled: The Comic book superheroes, which he invented in the sixties as the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics either by themselves or inspired, and no longer experience stapling your cosmic and earthly adventure today only the pages of the Comic, but also on the big screen and on television, and the immensely successful.

Around 25 billion dollars a played the films of the Marvel"Avengers", "Iron Man", "Thor", "Hulk" or "Captain America" over the past decade. What Lee created over 50 years ago, along with illustrators such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, experienced in the new Millennium an unexpected Renaissance. The future of Lee's legacy seems to decades; he had the appearance to the end in each of the Marvel films produced a short, last in the Sony/Marvel collaboration, "Venom".

universal validity of the characters

The current Boom of the Marvel heroes is not based solely on the fact that the modern Computer and film technology today is capable of physically radical fantasy worlds and -Make the Comics to give adequately to life on the canvas. The immense popularity of the films would not be conceivable if Lee's stories and characters have universal validity. You have long been an integral part of Western, if not global, popular culture has become, they belong to the inventory of fictional characters to identify with, such as Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck. "At the Moment, he is probably even bigger than Disney," said "Game Of Thrones"author George R. R. Martin recently about Stan Lee.

Stan Lee with his wife Joan in 1975, at a Marvel Party

And the came.

Stanley Martin Lieber, Lee, born in 1922 in a lower middle class family on New York's Westside, the son of a tailor, dreamed as a Teenager of writing at some point, the "Great American Novel", the great novel. From today's perspective, one could argue that he's somehow managed to do that, just not in the traditional way. First of all, it was enough only for the employees in the Pulp and grubby booklet-publisher Timely Comics. The Job of the young Stanley received about relationships: Jean, the daughter of his uncle Robbie Solomon, was married with Timely publisher Martin Goodman. But more than a better boy, he was not at first: "I took (the illustrators and authors), your lunch, and then I read your text and removed the pencil remains of the finished pages," said Lee in 2009, the "Los Angeles Times".

When he published then for the first time, something a couple of excess pages of Comics, which he filled with the Text-adventure "Captain America foils the vengeance of the traitor", was to him a pity to be correct, potentially, for Lite fame rates reserved Name, He shortened it to Stan Lee.

Unprecedented success story

Only a little later did Goodman Lee to the editor-in-chief of the comics division at Timely Comics, which were soon renamed Atlas then Marvel. A stroke of luck for the Comic book and Entertainment history, as Lee noted as a chief, Art Director, writer and General impresario of Marvel quickly that he was a tolerably good writer, but a much better editor.

Starting in 1958, after he had brought to the earlier Timely-artist Jack Kirby back on Board, began a unprecedented success story. Together, they created a team of super heroes that were not a draw Aliens like Superman, not a rich heir with gloomy neuroses, such as Batman or the noble Amazons goddesses like Wonder Woman, characters that rival DC Comics succeeded. The "Fantastic Four", the Kirby and Lee in 1961 brought to the market, were Kaçak Bahis very normal people, the languages, such as simple New York, and came only by chance, their superhuman powers and abilities.

the success of The "Fantastic Four", today marvel's "First Family", showed Lee that he had hit a nerve. Within a few years, he and Kirby invented the estranged son of God "Thor", the green fiend exploding "Hulk", the socially persecuted mutants from "X-Men", the African Prince Black Panther, the blind Streetfighter "Daredevil", the lone-star-Herald "Silver Surfer" and many others up to today well-known Comic book heroes.

Lee's ideas bubbled, characters and scenarios filled book series to book series, in part, he wrote, only concepts that were drafted by the signatories. At the end of the process, Lee filled bubbles, only the hands. An effective, but also confusing mode of operation, the Lee gave in later years, many legal disputes with subscribers of their rights to characters and stories, including Jack Kirby (1917 - 1994), the Marvel in 1969 in a dispute left.

Also, Steve Ditko (1927 - 2018), an immensely talented Comic book artist, was already in the middle of the sixties, the Wide, frustrated by the fact that Lee was the shining light of Marvel's stylized, adopted by the Fans in the letter pages of the books of God with "Excelsior!", but no glory on the Creative at the drawing Board to RUB off. Copyright was in this manic, unleashed times.

U.S. President George W. Bush honored Lee in 2008 with the National Medal of Arts

Whether it's Kirby, Ditko and co. without the tireless pulse of the transducer and the Story would be a catalyst, such as Lee have been possible to Marvel in this socially turbulent and revolutionary decade, a formative Comic - book and pop-culture instance, remains an open question. In any case, Lee strengthened the ultimately fruitful, collaborative Interplay of author and Illustrator, the dominant work is in the mass comic until today's form. But it was not until far in the nineties, the creative services of illustrators, Letterern and colourists to recognize and adequately recognise and reward. Lee has spoken to these conflicts never.

Spider-Man even went to the dentist

Along with Steve Ditko created the Lee in 1962, probably the essential Marvel heroes: Spider-Man. The link, constantly witzelnde Teenager from Queens, by the bite of a radioactive spider, super-powers and the elastic network of threads, swings through the urban canyons of Manhattan, is Lee's masterpiece: a Anyone from a poor background, in the school gehänselter Nerd, who has the power of guilt, and a sense of responsibility to be a hero. "With great power comes great responsibility", this by Lee from Voltaire about Churchill and Roosevelt up to Peter Parker's spider man channeled Credo of the lynchpin of the Marvel Mythos, the beginning of each of hardship, the heroes travel through a universe full of villains and destinies.

Stan Lee at the 2011 Comic Con in San Diego

The key to the success of this epic, cosmic stories? Their suitability for everyday use and human earthiness and Lee's anarchic sense of Humor: they tried to make everything as realistic as possible, said Lee: "There was a Spider-Man Comic and he had to go to the dentist. Superman would never do that! Apart from the fact that the drill would break on his teeth." Until today, the "Amazing Spider-Man is" one of the most popular titles in the Marvel program.

the successes and the creative eruptions of the so-called "Silver Age" of Comic history between 1960 and 1970, could Lee after his change from Marvel's editor-in-chief for the publisher is never able to tie. From the publisher with a lifetime Appanage of a year up to a Million dollars in supplies, he moved in 1980, with his last year, late wife Joan to Los Angeles in the house in the Bird Streets and tried to transport his hero to the TV, then into the digital age - with a little luck and lots of financial setbacks: For his vision of a computer animated or real filmed Comics were the Eighties and nineties is simply not yet ripe.

The Marvel audience, he stayed on as mascots get, over the decades, he became the face and synonymous with the magic of the American Mainstream Comics. He was thought to be nearly as immortal as the hero figures and Say that he invented or inspired.

Stan Lee, died Monday in a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 95 years old.