Stan Lee, the legendary writer, editor and publisher of Marvel, died on Monday at the age of 95 in Los Angeles, a family representative told The Hollywood Reporter.
Lee, who was born on Dec. 28, 1922 to Romanian-born Jewish immigrants, started at Timely Comics in 1939, creating or co-creating the Destroyer, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, the Mighty Thor, Ant-Man, the X-Men, Daredevil and the Fantastic Four, among numerous other figures. Timely was later renamed Marvel.
He took a break from the comics scene to write manuals and scripts for training films while serving in the U.S. Army during World War II. He achieved the rank of sergeant.
Ryan Reynolds, who played the Marvel character Deadpool, tweeted: “Damn… RIP Stan. Thanks for everything.”
“Stan Lee always was a big source of cultural pride as a kid, both as a New Yorker and as a Jew,” NBC News political reporter Benjy Sarlin posted on Twitter. “It meant a lot to me that so many great comic creators had similar biographies to my grandparents and that their world was reflected in the work itself.”
He is survived by a daughter, J.C., and younger brother Larry Lieber, a writer and an artist for Marvel.
Lee’s wife, Joan, was a hat model he married in 1947. She passed away last year.