Who is Stan Lee?

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber on December 28, 1922 in New York City. Growing up he enjoyed writing which landed him such jobs as writing obituaries for a news service and press releases for the National Tuberculosis Center. In 1939 he became the assistant at the new Timely Comics division of pulp magazine and comic-book publisher Martin Goodman's company. Marshaling his childhood ambition to be a writer, young Stanley Lieber made his comic-book debut with the text filler "Captain America Foils the Traitor's Revenge" in Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941), using the pseudonym "Stan Lee", which years later he would adopt as his legal name. Lee later explained in his autobiography and numerous other sources that he had intended to save his given name for more literary work. This initial story also introduced Captain America's trademark ricocheting shield-toss, which immediately became one of the character's signatures.

He later went on to create some of the most popular comic-book characters including, Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men and the Fantasic Four.