Stan Lee, Inspirational Hero, and Godfather of Marvel Comics Passes Away at 95

(Image credit: Alan Light via Wikipedia)

“I am the least scientific person you’ll ever know,” is a Stan Lee quote he gave during a PBS interview back in 2013 about the ‘Science of Comic Books’ that struck me as funny. Not ha-ha funny, but amusing as he created superheroes and had to describe how they got their powers, whether they were bestowed upon them through magical means, born with them, or through technological advancements. In essence, he used his imagination to inspire hundreds-of-millions of others to use their own.

Only take a look at his blog (now in memorial status), and you’ll see initiatives that he created or backed in one form or another. His last entry was on June 23, 2015, where he announced “Stan Lee's Kids Universe,”- a series of children’s books for kids just starting to read. He also championed the National Science Foundation/National Nanotechnology Initiative- a 2015 contest for high school and home school kids to design a superhero that uses nanotechnology.

It’s virtually impossible to know how many engineers, scientists, doctors, programmers, astronauts, and makers Stan Lee has inspired over his 60+ year career. At the very least, there are a ton of superhero-related projects that are amassed on sites like Left Brain Craft Brain, Instructables, and Hackaday, to name just a few. I wonder how many people were inspired by scientists and inventors like Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Spider-Man, Reed Richards and the Black Panther- all geniuses in the comic world.

(Image credit: US Army via Wikipedia)

It’s incredible to think that Lee was working as an assistant at Timely Comics back in 1939, almost 80 years ago. Back then, he was filling artists’ inkwells, grabbed them lunch, proofread their layouts, and erased their pencil marks from the finished pages. When WWII broke out, Stan joined the Army as a member of Signal Corps repairing communications equipment before transferring to the Training Films division, where he dabbled in cartooning.

Even though he was in the Army, Timely Comics kept his position open until he finished his military service in 1945. By the 1960’s Timely transformed into Marvel, where he hooked up with Jack Kirby to turn out the characters we all know today. Stan worked his entire life creating new projects centered on superheroes- including a production and marketing company, and the Stan Lee Foundation, a charitable platform he used to promote literacy, education and the arts.

Over the last decade (or more), Lee appeared in a slew of Marvel movies in cameo roles, which were often funny, sarcastic and witty even though he was in declining health- in 2012 he had a pacemaker implanted and had been battling pneumonia since early this year. Regardless of his condition, Stan was on-set for the final Avengers movie, where he will appear in his last cameo. He has since left this world to join his wife Joan in the next while leaving a legacy world he created to inspire us and future generations to come.

Stanley Martin Lieber- 1922 – 2018

Excelsior!    

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