It’s been two years to the day that Stan-the man-Lee shuffled off this mortal coil to the Merry Marvel Marching Band in the sky at the age of 95.
The legendary comic-book editor-in-chief was one of the architects, along with Jack “King” Kirby, and Steve Ditko among others of what would be later called the ‘Marvel Universe.’
Above: Lee and Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman who died in August of 2020 from colon cancer.,
Lee was often attacked and pilloried in life by fellow creators for taking credit for everything, and changing the creative of some things artists really wanted to keep.
This was especially the case in terms of his falling out with Jack Kirby.
But to give the allegations context and understand why there would be confusion, we have to look at he ‘Marvel Method.’
The ‘Method’ was a way for Lee to have a bunch of titles running concurrently and on time.
To give editorial a heads start, Lee started doing everything using the Marvel Method, and Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and John Buscema, essentially the official architects of what we now know to be the Marvel Universe, agreed to use the method.
WATCH: Lee sat down with The New York Times in 2015 to talk about his life and career.
CBR wrote: Generally speaking, the two most notable ways to write a comic book are the “Full Script Method” and the “Marvel Method.” In the full script method, a writer will write out a comic book script somewhat similar to a film screenplay, describing each panel for the artist to then draw. Some writers, like Alan Moore, get extremely detailed in what they want to have drawn on each panel. Here is a Moore script page from The Killing Joke, which he did with artist Brian Bolland…
The writer would then add dialogue to the finished pages (sometimes the writer would have already noted the dialogue that they are thinking of for the panels, but not always).
Then there is the Marvel Method, which involves the writer either delivering a general plot for the comic book issue to the artist, the writer and artist collaborating on a general plot for the issue or the artist coming up with the plot by themselves. These general plots can be all over the place in detail. They could consist of a written plot synopsis or it could be delivered verbally. The artist would then layout the pages for the story based on the plot and then the writer would add dialogue to the finished pages.
Quartz said of Lee:Fantastic Four No. 1, which featured a squabbling family as eager to trade punches with each other as their opponents—as well as titles like The AmazingSpider-Man and The Uncanny X-Men, which soon followed—breathed new life into a genre adrift. The comic books were packed with action, the characters were flawed and human, and the stakes they fought for were big, even galactic.
Gerry Conway, a comic writer who scripted Spider-Man and dozens of other titles over five decades, described the impact of those early Fantastic Four issues in a recent blog entry:
I’ve never been hit by lightning but I have to imagine the shock might be similar to what I experienced reading that early adventure of Reed Richards, Sue Storm, her kid brother Johnny, and Ben Grimm. If you weren’t a comic book reader at that time you cannot imagine the impact those stories had. There’s nothing comparable in the modern reader’s experience of comics–nothing remotely as transformative. … Over a series of perhaps five issues, a single year, Stan and Jack Kirby transformed superhero comics in an act of creative alchemy similar to transmuting lead into gold, and just as unlikely.
Marvel’s sales skyrocketed and the comic-book renaissance Lee and Kirby ignited soon spread to their rivals at DC, who eventually abandoned whimsical plots in favor of more sophisticated stories that tackled racism and drug addiction.
Comics probably wouldn’t have disappeared entirely without the dynamism and energy injected by Lee’s Marvel heroes, but their revival was not assured, and it’s hard to imagine today’s entertainment landscape without them.
Rolling Stone again: Lee was a walking reminder that it wasn’t a company or a corporation or a brand that made all these things we love. Nor were they a “modern mythology” that sprang out of the collective unconscious before being marketed back to the masses. These godlike heroes and villains were the work of human hands and human minds, Lee’s among the foremost. Marvel was made possible by a person.
Indeed, Lee’s greatest contribution to the Marvel Universe was, well, the Marvel Universe. As a writer, editor, and employer, Lee provided the connective tissue that held the disparate creations that he and writer/artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko were churning out month after month during the company’s great flourishing, from the debut of Fantastic Four #1 in 1961 through his final issue as the writer of Amazing Spider-Man in 1972. (Kirby departed the company under bitter circumstances in 1970; he was the John to Lee’s Paul, and not for nothing does their collaborative period roughly coincide with the existence of the Beatles.)
This doesn’t just mean the idea of a “shared universe,” in which the events of an issue of The Incredible Hulk one month would be reflected in an issue of The Uncanny X-Menthe next. It means the catchphrases (“Excelsior!” “Face front, True Believers!”); the camaraderie (Lee invented the idea of “The Bullpen,” where all of Marvel’s writers and artists were said to work and interact, even though most barely ever set foot in the office); and the endless affection for alliteration that was his hallmark as the company’s editorial voice. The charming rhyming goofines of “Stan the Man” is just one example.
Lee, according to The New York Times, “was born Stanley Martin Lieber on Dec. 28, 1922, in Manhattan, the older of two sons born to Jack Lieber, an occasionally employed dress cutter, and Celia (Solomon) Lieber, both immigrants from Romania. The family moved to the Bronx. Stanley began reading Shakespeare at 10 while also devouring pulp magazines, the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mark Twain, and the swashbuckler movies of Errol Flynn. He graduated at 17 from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and aspired to be a writer of serious literature. He was set on the path to becoming a different kind of writer when, after a few false starts at other jobs, he was hired at Timely Publications, a company owned by Martin Goodman, a relative who had made his name in pulp magazines and was entering the comics field.”
Mr. Lee was a central player in the creation of those characters and more, all properties of Marvel Comics. Indeed, he was for many the embodiment of Marvel, if not comic books in general, overseeing the company’s emergence as an international media behemoth. A writer, editor, publisher, Hollywood executive and tireless promoter (of Marvel and of himself), he played a critical role in what comics fans call the medium’s silver age.
Many believe that Marvel, under his leadership and infused with his colorful voice, crystallized that era, one of exploding sales, increasingly complex characters and stories, and growing cultural legitimacy for the medium. (Marvel’s chief competitor at the time, National Periodical Publications, now known as DC — the home of Superman and Batman, among other characters — augured this period, with its 1956 update of its superhero the Flash, but did not define it.)
