Stan Lee 1922 - 2018

Stan Lee passed away early Monday morning at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 95.

Best known for creating "superheroes with feet of clay," his career practically began at the beginning of American comic books.

Hollywood Reporter:

Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.

Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee's daughter, J.C. Lee, also confirmed his death.

Lee's final few years were tumultuous. After Joan, his wife of 69 years, died in July 2017, he sued executives at POW! Entertainment — a company he founded in 2001 to develop film, TV and video game properties — for $1 billion alleging fraud, then abruptly dropped the suit weeks later. He also sued his ex-business manager and filed for a restraining order against a man who had been handling his affairs. (Lee's estate is estimated to be worth as much as $70 million.) And in June 2018, it was revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department had been investigating reports of elder abuse against him.

He was bigger than life and impacted millions of kids for generations. For me, he personified superhero comics. In the first Marvel comic I bought, Daredevil Special #1, he's in there. So is the artist Gene Colan. They have a little 2 or 3 page filler where they talk about the process of coming up with a comic book. I had never seen anything like it: a casual cameo of the real world people who made the comic I was holding in my hands. Sure, most of the book was Daredevil trying to beat these badguys -- but THIS! Wow. It was the first Marvel comic I ever bought, and I was hooked. I had no idea that decades later, the tradition of "a cameo by Stan Lee" would continue in the multi-billion dollar Marvel movie franchise.

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