Stan Lee; the former CEO of Marvel and the creator of super heroes like Spider-Man and The Hulk is probably the single biggest and most influential name in comic book history. As an assistant and later writer at Marvel before it was Marvel, Lee grew to fame with comic books in every genre imaginable.

Stan Lee has written Westerns, Crime dramas, Adventure stories, Mystery and Romance books. After the peak that DC Comics hit with Super-Man and Batman in the golden age (1940′s and 50′s the market had changed and super heroes fell out of fashion for a short while. But it wasn’t long before a new generation of kids and fans were ready for super heroes. The silver age of comics (the 1960’s) made Stan Lee a superstar. Creating the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spiderman and the X Men birthed the Marvel universe of superheroes and brought comics back to the forefront. Marvel would begin to outsell the two biggest heroes in comic books: Batman and Superman and would become the number one publisher in the comic world. Lee fostered amazing artistic talents and partnered with some of the now legendary names in comics; Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Jean Giraud all the way through to younger generations like Todd Mcfarlane, Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee. The first big budget film to kick off the current Hollywood superhero obsession was Lee’s own Spider-Man in 2001. His characters have graced us on the big screen for nearly a decade and at the age 90 Lee isn’t done yet. Under his production company POW Entertainment Lee is developing more superheroes for the big screen. The first will be The Annihilator and features a Chinese hero, Marvel Films do extremely well overseas but featuring an Asian hero is a golden for supporting the extremely lucrative Asian market. Lee is a giant in the industry and I’m convinced his success is due to his charming personality and fantastic sense of humour. EXCELSIOR!

-Max Romano