Marvel's master: It's Stan Lee's birthday

"Our goal is that an intelligent adult should no longer be ashamed to walk down the street with a comic book," Stan Lee once said in an interview. At first, he was ashamed to put his name under his work in the "dirty magazines" and therefore, somewhat embarrassingly, chose the pseudonym "Stan Lee" rather than his real name Stanley Martin Lieber, which he was born with on December 22, 1922. He actually wanted to write great literature, socially relevant and profound material - nothing he thought of when he heard the word "comic". But as a teenager, he got a job at the comic/pulp publisher Timely, which would later become big under the name Marvel - initially as a cheap assistant who copied, removed pencil marks from drawings or proofread texts. At the age of 17, he was promoted to the youngest editor in the comic sector, and just two years later he found himself somewhat taken by surprise in the unexpectedly vacant position of editor-in-chief - only temporarily, actually, but he ultimately kept the title until 1972. What followed is history: Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and the X-Men together with illustrator Jack Kirby, followed later by Daredevil, Doctor Strange and Spiderman with other illustrators. What made the characters so successful? Their weaknesses. Lee deliberately did not design the characters to be perfect and infallible (like Superman, for example), but instead gave them character flaws or health problems along the way. This allowed readers to identify with the heroes and feel close to them. The concept worked and Stan Lee became one of the most successful comic authors in the world. Happy birthday, Stan Lee!