Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee is dead at 95

Stan Lee, creator of some of the most enduring characters and stories from Marvel Comics, has died at the age of 95.

The news is confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, following up on earlier confirmation, via Lee's daughter, from TMZ. The earlier report indicated that an ambulance was dispatched to his home in California's Hollywood Hills on Monday morning. Lee later died at the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Lee got started in comics in 1939, when he joined Timely Comics as an office assistant. The publisher, founded by Lee's cousin-in-law Martin Goodman, would eventually transform into Marvel Comics in 1961.?

Lee recognized that his heroes were still human, capable of all the same flaws and fears as anyone else.

Lee's work as an editor started 20 years earlier, when he stepped in as Timely's interim editor in 1941. But the work he's best known for happened in the '60s, when he came up with early Marvel Comics heroes like the Fantastic Four. Comics had traditionally been meant for a younger audience, but Lee saw potential in telling stories for an older crowd.

It was during this period that Lee started his work with Jack Kirby, who had co-created Captain America two decades earlier. Then a freelance artist, Kirby worked with Lee to create what would become some of Marvel's most enduring characters: Fantastic Four, yes, but also the Hulk, the X-Men, and — especially — Spider-Man.?

It wasn't just that Lee created these characters; his work also upended expectations within the comic book industry. Lee, and through him Marvel, recognized that superheroes were still fundamentally human, capable of all the same flaws and fears as anyone else. It's a mindset that led to more human stories, but also one that unavoidably flirted with the political climate as well.

As many have come to recognize in a post-Civil Rights world, the X-Men were an allegory for the racial tensions and widespread discrimination at the time. Lee's mutants were a minority group, subjected to the same prejudices that were dominating headlines as real-life racist ideologies were being singled out and shut down.

Image: Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock

Kirby eventually left Marvel for DC Comics, but Lee worked with a number of other collaborators ?over the years (notably, Steve Ditko and Larry Lieber), leading to the creation of a lengthy list of key Marvel superheroes: Doctor Strange, Thor, Daredevil, Black Panther, Iron Man, Thor, and Ant-Man (to name a few).

Although Lee eventually left Marvel behind to pursue other creative interests, he never fully severed his contact with the multimedia empire he'd helped build or the community that gathered around it. Lee has memorably turned in a brief and entertaining cameo appearance in just about every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. He also never stopped engaging with fans, whether it was through videos recorded for the internet or convention appearances.

Lee's also presumably not quite finished with his Marvel work. While nothing's been confirmed, his cameo track record so far suggests we'll be seeing Lee again in some or all of Marvel's 2019 movies slate: Captain Marvel, the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, and Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Marvel actors, writers, and fans flooded social media with well wishes and fond remembrances shortly after Lee's death was confirmed.