Even though I’ve read comics since childhood and continue to consume a healthy amount each month I’ve never been a big reader of Marvel. But it’s impossible to escape the characters from the Marvel Universe as their reach, even in my childhood, snaked from comics out into TV, T-shirts, posters and any piece of memorabilia that could hold an image. Back before comic shops were even a thing the spinner racks in the local newsagent would be overflowing with random issues, frustratingly irregular, making it impossible to read a full run unless you put the work in and were extremely lucky. You knew the characters though, Spiderman and The Hulk had live action TV shows, Fantastic Four was an animated cartoon series (with incredible music, as sampled by MF Doom), Silver Surfer and Thor would appear on T-shirts, pencil cases, rubbers…

Back when Marvel UK published Star Wars Weekly they would fill out each issue with reprints from the lesser known canon of the Marvel Universe to bolster the page count each week. Hence I read Deathlock, The Micronauts (from a toy line I used to play with), Star Lord, ROM- Spacenight, Warlock and more without knowing their place in the scheme of things. But I had little interest in the ‘fights in tights’ kind of superhero stories, instead preferring the pages of British publications like 2000AD, Eagle, Warrior, Scream et al – comics where you could actually get hold of each subsequent issue without a gap in the story line.

So these lesser-known characters were really the Marvel of my youth but where the company came into their own for me was later, at the cinema. Until the first Iron Man, X-Men and Spiderman films only DC‘s Batman had had even a passable effort made at a superhero/comic book movie (OK, maybe the first Superman film too but that belongs to a bygone era). Finally here was the comic transposed to film done properly, with all the fan service embedded, and with a long-reaching plan that intended to do the ultimate crossover event in film, just like the comics. And they did it! 10 years of planning, building characters for new audiences, sometimes faithful to the comics, sometimes not, but what they achieved with Avengers: Infinity War this year was something I don’t think has ever been done in cinematic history. And we know that this is just phase 1, the celluloid universe they’ve created is even mightier than the paper one and it originated with one man – Stan Lee.

Now, I know it’s not as simple as that, not least with the Jack Kirby family struggles to get his contributions recognised, and there seem to be problems with Lee taking a lot of credit for work he maybe oversaw rather than created. But – as in many of these instances – I believe it’s usually the sum of the people involved rather than any one individual that makes these legendary creations happen and it’s indisputable that Stan was at the helm when a lot of what we now know as the Marvel Universe was created. He cleverly assured his place in the scheme of things by putting himself front and centre in many of the comics’ back pages (and sometimes even the covers) and this continued in the films. My kids have never read a Marvel comic but they know the characters from the films and they certainly know who Stan Lee is too from his sometimes blink-and-you’ll-miss-t cameos in each Marvel movie. After years of them being scorned, Marvel have made comic creations acceptable in Hollywood and bought a whole new generation into comic shops as a result.

He leaves behind a huge legacy, a whole universe of characters, many of who ascended into pop culture before the films and many more who no doubt will in due time. RIP Stan ‘The Man’ Lee.

(Image by Butcher Billy)