Stan Lee, the comics magnate and former editor-in-chief of Marvel comics, died on Monday at 95. He leaves behind not just one significant cultural empire, but many. Love him or not, he changed an industry, a storytelling platform, and the world.
As with any creative who works well into their ninth decade, there are a lot of stories to tell about Lee by people who better knew the sheer depth of his work than me. In Vanity Fair, GQ contributor Joshua Rivera says Lee "outsized ambition and gift for showmanship would help him survive the collapse of an industry and usher in its rebirth."
The showmanship part is important: Stan Lee was not just one or Marvel's finest minds alongside Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, but its face. No better is that exemplified than in his ubiquitous movie cameos. Lee has appeared, in one way or another, in virtually every film based on a Marvel character released in the last 20 years. It's easy to see where his reputation as something of a glory chaser came from—contrasting and contradictory accounts around who created which characters and universes have raged on since Marvel's earliest days. For better and worse, Lee was always the figure people saw at the center of the Marvel operation.
In creating or co-creating legacy names like Spider-Man, Thor, The Fantastic Four, and the concept of Marvel's interconnected works and universe as a whole, Lee helped revitalize the flagging comics industry, and set the table for the related success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the highest-grossing film franchise of all time by quite some distance.
Lee will make his final Marvel movie cameos next year, in 2019's Captain Marvel and the de facto wrap-up movie Avengers 4. It's likely we'll also see him in the second installment of the third Spider-Man reboot, Far From Home. A Stan Lee cameo has become a Marvel trademark at this point, and often inspires a small round of approving applause from opening weekend crowds. You have to imagine that applause will be just a little bit louder next time around.