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Ethan Aldrich
Business Communications
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Blog: What Makes People Great?

In the last blog, we talked about what made Kobe great, and the attributes, achievements,

work ethic needed to set him apart from everyone else in the league. Continuing this series, but

in a different line of work, we are going to examine what made Stan Lee ‘great’. Stan Lee was

known for his creation and animation of todays most well know hero’s, including Spiderman,

Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, and many others. This series of movies, comics, and films that

overlapped and played off each other started a legacy in the movie and comic book industry,

because no one had come remotely close to achieving what Stan Lee did in his career. He is also

very well known for the ‘cameos’ he puts into each

film, these are short breaks in the movie during a

stressful event or at the end to provide comic relief

during the film, where he would actually be in the

movie and say a few lines that generally resulted in

laughter throughout the theatres it was seen in. To see

Picture of Stan Lee while working on a movie.
why Stan Lee was so great, we will look into his

background, what inspired him, what he did and how he did it, and why everything he has done

was perceived as ‘great’.

Stanley Martin Lieber, born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City, born

from Romanian Jewish immigrant parents during the Great Depression. He lived in an apartment

with his parents and his brother Larry, and in the early parts of his life, his family was not well

off, as his parents slept on a foldout couch, while he and his brother shared the bedroom. While

in high school he fantasized of writing the ‘Great American Novel’ in the midst of studying for
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Business Communications
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school and work jobs like writing obituaries for a news service and press releases for the

National Tuberculosis Center. He also claimed to have entered and won a high school essay

sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune three weeks in a row and goaded the newspaper to

write to him and ask him to let someone else win, along with suggesting him to look into writing

as a profession. He was then hired as an office assistant at Timely Comics in 1939 and became

the interim editor for the company in the early 1940’s. He also served domestically in the Army

during World War II, working as a writer and illustrator. However, his real career didn’t start

until the early 1960’s, when Stan Lee was called upon by his boss to create a series for Marvel

Comics (Timely’s new name) that would allow them to compete with rival DC Comics’ hit title

‘Justice League of America’. After some encouragement from his wife, Joan, and help from Jack

Kirby (an artist and co-creator) they created the Fantastic Four to debut in 1961. From that point

on, he has produced many more comics including characters like: The Hulk, Spider-Man, Doctor

Strange, Daredevil and the X-Men, he has taken a competing company and turned it into a Titan

in the industry. Even though he had to grow up through the Great Depression, work multiple jobs

and serve in the military, he never let the obstacles of life get to him, he kept working through it,

even when it was tough and produced entertainment, comics and movies unlike anyone had ever

seen before. His work has set the bar for current and future comics and movies for many decades

to come, and doing it all while having to battle health, legal and life issues, makes the

accomplishment seem all the greater. This reiterates why Stan Lee is considered ‘great’ in the

field of movies and entertainment.

One of the life choices he made, that doesn’t get mentioned enough, but still adds to his

amazing life and career, is about the time he served in the army. Lee enlisted in 1942, shortly

after hearing of the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a lineman for the Signal Corps, and did jobs
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Business Communications
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including repairing telegraph wires and communications. Once the Army discovered his writing

skills, he was transferred to Training Film

Division, given the military classification of

“Playwright” (he was one of only nine men

given the classification), and had him do the

technical writing and designs of the posters.

Image of Stan Lee while he was in the Army.
Lee said as a writer, he used his experiences

throughout his life to influence his characters and hopes they will continue to live on and inspire

others. This shows in the movies he has done for Marvel comics, one of them being Captain

America. The movie was set in 1942-1945 Brooklyn, where Steve Rodgers (the main character)

is attempting to get into the military, and has all of these medical problems, but the medical

inspector lets him anyways. Later in the film,

during Rodger’s basic training, the same doctor

talks to him multiple times and finally convinces

him to be a subject in his science experiment.

After the experiment, Steve has become a freak

Scene from Captain America when Steve Rodgers is going
through inspection, attempting to join the Army.
of nature physically as his body was enhanced

in nearly every aspect, allowing him to do superhuman feats. This was probably intentionally

done by Stan Lee to depict his own struggles to get into the military or other people’s struggles

attempting to sign up. Whatever the struggle or feeling was at the time, Stan’s ability to take

events and common issues around the globe and use them to raise awareness about them or to

take it and spin it a certain way so that people can enjoy watching or reading about it, is

something many comedians and writers today struggle with. This military setting is also shown
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Business Communications
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in the movie Iron Man, where the main character (Tony Stark) who is an entrepreneur, scientist,

and eccentric playboy, is developing weapons and equipment that he demonstrates for the army

and either gives to them or sells it to the army. He and his convoy later get ambushed and Stark

is hit with shrapnel, and then taken hostage by

the assailants, and forced to work with another

scientist to develop a ‘suit’ that would give the

wearer superhuman capabilities. Stan Lee again,

depicts a war happening, and events in a war

that he had probably heard stories about during World War II, such as people getting injured

during firefights or ambushes, or friends and allies being taken hostage and later living to retell

the tale, or how he may have wished to have a suit like Iron Man had to save lives in the war and

end it quickly. Stan’s ability is remarkable when it comes to taking events he has experienced

(like World War II) and other reoccurring problems around the globe today and showing certain

viewpoints and putting it into words and actions, without destroying the integrity of himself or

the many parties depicted in the films is truly outstanding and is rarely accomplished by many

who try. These depictions and stories conjured from the events he has struggled through and

ability to put them into movies is a skill only someone that is ‘great’ can accomplish.

Furthermore, his ability to overlap movies is another reason why he is so ‘great’. From

his X-Men series to the coveted Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is always an element of

overlap across the movies of their respected series. Each one fits on a timeline with the others,

and when put together it puts a series of seemingly unrelated movies into a whole new context,

while still allowing you to watch the movies in any order desired and still not be completely lost

and enjoy the movie. From Captain America (known as the first Avenger) up to the newest
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Business Communications
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(Black Panther), Stan Lee has created such an intricate web of plots and subplots within his

movies, that correlate to other movies on the timeline that seem to take place in different times

and may not seem like they relate. They also allow for the continuation of the franchise, because

at the end of the movies, they project an event or person that give context for events that are too

happen to the character, that they did not place in that movie. These ‘sneak peaks’ and flashbacks

allow for the timeline of movies to overlap and have a sense of coherence at the same time to fit

a larger plot unknown to the views and even the characters at times. Famous scenes such as the

end scene in the movie of Captain America, where Captain America (Steve Rodgers) meets a

man in an eyepatch (Nick Fury) and moves the plot along for ‘The Avengers’ series of movies

by showing the views how they began. This sets Stan Lee and his team apart from rivals such as

DC Comics’ who do provide viewers backstories, but don’t typically show what’s ahead for the

character in the future. Too often, the movies are their own series and that is all, when thrown

together, it makes the movie seem awkward, because they now have to extend it, or take out less

action in the movie to inform the viewers about what is going on and how these hero’s or villains

have come together to be apart of this movie. Stan Lee’s ability to add these bits of details

throughout his movies is one of the reasons his franchise is so successful and why he deserves

his title of ‘great’.

To conclude, Stan Lee’s ability to use his early struggles and, taking current events and

his specific life experiences, and adding it into the movies that so beautifully intertwine is what

makes Stan Lee ‘great’. Not only because he has gone through those events and survived through

the struggles but turning right back around and reaching from them to use as inspiration for his

movies and comics is inspirational to others. Along with using these elements to work with each
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Business Communications
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other and not against themselves throughout his movies is the work of someone ‘great’ and will

be appreciated now, and for decades to come.

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Business Communications
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Bibliography:

Adams, A. M. (2018, November 13). #VeteranOfTheDay Army Veteran Stan Lee. Retrieved

from https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/53991/army-veteran-stan-lee/

Stan Lee. (2019, February 25). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Lee

Stan Lee. (2019, January 16). Retrieved from https://www.biography.com/people/stan-lee-

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