Relaionship with wife

In 1979, Spider-Man creator Stan Lee, then 56, and his wife Joan Boocock,
also 56, had been happily married for over 30 years when they opened up to
PEOPLE about their unique love story—which at first almost didn’t happen.

The couple met in 1947, when Lee, who at the time had already risen the
ranks at Marvel and had a reputation for being a ladies man, went to check
out a “gorgeous redhead” that a cousin had suggested he try and date. Joan
Clayton Boocock, a hat model, answered the door instead. Lee said he took
one Joan and declared “I love you!” The problem? Joan was already married
to someone else.

Still, Joan confessed to PEOPLE that she wasn’t all that into her original
husband. “I had only known him 24 hours when we decided to get married,”
she said. “I many aspects it was a great marriage, but after living with him a
year I was finding him sort of boring…”

However, she found Lee thrilling. “He wore a marvelous floppy had and
scarf and spouted Omar Khayyam when he took me for a hamburger at
Prexy’s,” she said. “He reminded me of that beautiful man, [British
actor]Leslie Howard.” After two weeks of dating and falling head over heels,
Lee proposed to Joan. He said, “But first I had to send her to Reno for a
divorce.”

When Lee heard there was a rich cowboy in Reno who was also interested in
Joan, he went out there and convinced her to choose him. The couple were
married soon after by the same judge who granted Joan’s divorce. Lee told
the Hollywood Reporter in 2016—after 67 years of marriage—that he knew
instantly that he knew Joan was the one, because she exactly resembled the
dream woman he grew up drawing.

“There was one girl I drew,” he said. “One body and face and hair. It was my
idea of what a girl should be. The perfect woman,” Lee said. He added that
when he saw Joan in real life, he decided it was fate. “She was the girl I had
been drawing all my life.”

The couple lived in Long Island for 19 years, raising their daughter Joanie.
(They lost another daughter, Jan, in infancy several days after she was born.)
They later relocated to New York City while Lee toiled at Marvel, co-
creating some of the most iconic comic book characters like Spider-Man,
Doctor Strange and the Incredible Hulk.

Career

 Lee’s entry into the Timely Comics in 1939 proved to be a big step in his career. He
started out by doing menial jobs but soon made his comic-book debut with the text
filler ‘Captain America Foils the Traitor's Revenge’.
 In 1941, Lee started getting opportunities to do actual comics with a backup feature. He
created the ‘Destroyer in Mystic Comics No. 6’, ‘Jack Frost in USA Comic No. 1’ and ‘Father
Time in Captain America Comics No.6’.
 When he was only 19 years old, owing to a conflict in the company and his escalating
creativity, Lee was made interim editor of the company and worked with the company for a
good 31 years, mostly as editor-in-chief.
 In 1942, he joined the United States Army and served stateside in the Signal Corps. He
continued his creative streak there by writing manuals, training films and slogans, which is
why he was classified in the military as ‘playwright’.
 After finishing his stint with the army, Lee joined back the company in 1950s, which was
now known as the ‘Atlas Comics’. He started experimenting with various genres––writing
romantic, sci-fi, horror, humorous stories, etc.
 Around the same time, he produced a newspaper strip with his colleague Dan DeCarlo,
titled ‘My Friend Irma’, which was essentially based on a radio comedy that starred Marie
Wilson. Lee was getting increasingly discontented with his career.
 In the late 1950, in competition with DC Comics, Lee’s publisher, Goodman, asked him
to create a new superhero team. Lee thought to work on the stories that he believed in
since he was getting disgruntled with his monotonous career.

For this assignment, Lee, in association with his colleague Jack Kirby, created a team of
superheroes called ‘Fantastic Four’ with superheroes like, ‘Hulk’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Thor’, ‘Spider-
Man, ‘X-Men’, ‘Doctor Strange’, etc.
 Throughout 1960s, he scripted, art-directed and edited most of Marvel's series while
moderating the letters pages. He was also writing a monthly column, ‘Stan’s Soapbox’. His
job was getting very taxing but Lee, for once, was enjoying it.
 In 1971, Lee was asked to write a story on bad-effects of drugs and he thought of
including it in ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’. The Comics Code Authority was against it
because the portrayal of drugs was against the code.
 Lee and Goodman went ahead with it anyway and published the story in their comics.
The story got really famous and Marvel was appreciated for spreading the responsible
message. The CCA abolished the Code and permitted negative depictions of drugs.
 From 1975, he was more busy and gained popularity as a figurehead and public face for
Marvel Comics. He attended the comic book conventions around America, lectured at
colleges and participated in panel discussions.
 Lee’s role in the company was becoming bigger and bigger as in 1981 he was given the
role to develop Marvel’s TV and movie properties, for which he had to shift to California with
his family.
 He was made the president of the company but Lee found the task to be a little more
technical than he could handle. So to remain closer to the creative processes of the
company he stepped down to become the publisher.

 In 1998, Lee along with Peter Paul started a new Internet-based superhero creation,
production and marketing studio, ‘Stan Lee Media’. The company grew and gained a
considerable success but had to be closed down due to legal implications.
 He got involved with the DC Comics for the first time in his creative career in 2000 when
he launched ‘Just Imagine…’ series for them, in which he re-created DC superheroes Like,
Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.
 In 2001, Lee formed ‘POW! (Purveyors of Wonder) Entertainment’ with Gill Champion
and Arthur Lieberman, in order to create film, television and video game properties. He also
launched the ‘Stan Lee's Sunday Comics’.
 When Lee finished his 65 years with Marvel, it honored him in 2006 with the publication
of a series of one-shot comics in which Lee was shown interacting with his co-creations like
‘Spider-Man’, ‘Doctor Strange’, etc.
 In 2007, at the Comic-Con International, a Stan Lee action figure was launched in order
to honor him. The body used in the making of action figure was a re-used mold of Spider-
Man figure with some minor changes.
 2008 was a busy year for Lee as he published ‘Stan Lee Presents Election Daze: What
Are They Really Saying?’, collaborated with Hiroyuki Takei on ‘Karakuridoji Ultimo’,
Produced CGI film series ‘Legion of 5’ in partnership, etc.
 Lee’s entertainment company partnered with Guardian Media Entertainment in 2010 on
The Guardian Project in creating superhero mascots for the National Hockey League. He
also announced writing a live-action musical, ‘The Yin and Yang Battle of Tao’.

 Lee announced his new YouTube channel, ‘Stan Lee's World of Heroes’, airing
various programs created by him , at San Diego Comic-Con International in 2012.
 He wrote the book, ‘Zodiac’, along with Stuart Moore. The book was released in 2015.

Stan Lee Fun Fact

1. HIS WIFE WAS ALSO HIS BARBER.

As a bit of a throwaway fact, Stanley Martin Lieber (Stan Lee) revealed the secret of his slicked

back mane on the second page of his memoir. “My whole adult life, I’ve never been to a barber,”

he wrote. “Joanie always cuts my hair.”

2. HIS CONFIDENCE CAME FROM HIS MOTHER.

Lee wrote that as a child he loved to read books by Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules

Verne, H.G. Wells, and others, and his mother often watched him read: “I probably got my self-

confidence from the fact that my mother thought everything I did was brilliant.”

3. YOUNG STAN LEE WROTE OBITUARIES.

Before writing about the fantastic lives of fictional characters, Lee wrote obituaries for

celebrities at an undisclosed news office in New York. He said that he eventually quit that job

because it was too “depressing.”

4. CAPTAIN AMERICA WAS HIS FIRST BIG BREAK.

A week into his job at Timely Comics, Lee got the opportunity to write a two-page  Captain

America comic. He wrote it under the pen name Stan Lee (which became his legal name) and

titled it "Captain America Foils the Traitor’s Revenge." His first full comic script would come

in Captain America   Issue 5 , published August 1, 1941.

5. HE WROTE TRAINING FILMS FOR THE ARMY WITH DR. SEUSS.

After being transferred from the army’s Signal Corps in New Jersey, Lee  worked  as a playwright

in the Training Film Division in Queens with eight other men, including a few who went on to be

very famous: Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Saroyan, cartoonist Charles Addams (creator

of The Addams Family), director Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939] andIt’s a

Wonderful Life  [1946]) and Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss .

6. HE DEFIED THE COMICS CODE AUTHORITY WITH AN ANTI-DRUG COMIC.

In 1971, Lee received a letter from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare asking him

to put an anti-drug message in one of his books. He came up with a Spider-Man story that

involved his best friend Harry abusing pills because of a break-up. The CCA would not approve

the story with their seal because of the mention of drugs, but Lee convinced his publisher, Martin

Goodman, to run the comic anyway.

7. AN ISSUE AT THE PRINTERS TURNED THE HULK GREEN.

The character was supposed to be gray, but according to Lee, the printer had a hard time keeping

the color consistent. “So as of issue #2,” Lee wrote, “with no explanation, he turned green.”

8. HIS WIFE DESTROYED HIS PRIZED TYPEWRITER.

According to Lee, during an argument, Joanie destroyed the typewriter he used to write the first

issues for characters including Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four. “This happened before

eBay," he wrote. "Too bad. I could’ve auctioned the parts and made a mint.”
9. A FIRE DESTROYED HIS INTERVIEWS AND LECTURES.

When Lee moved his family to Los Angeles, he set up a studio in Van Nuys where he stored

videotapes of his talks and interviews, along with a commissioned bust of his wife. The building

was lost to a blaze that the fire department believed was arson, but no one was ever charged with

the crime.

10. HIS FAVORITE MARVEL FILM CAMEO WAS BASED ON ONE FROM THE COMICS.

Beginning with the first Spider-Man film in 2002, Stan Lee has made quick cameos in Marvel

films as a service to the fans. He said that his appearance inFantastic Four: Rise of the Silver

Surfer (2007) was inspired by the story of Reed and Sue Richards’ wedding in  Fantastic Four

Annual Volume 1 #3 , in which he and artist/writer Jack Kirby attempt to crash the ceremony but

are thwarted.

Stan Lee Childhood

Stanley Martin Lieber was born on December 28, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City,[2] in
the apartment of his Romanian-born Jewishimmigrant parents, Celia (née Solomon: 1898-
1947) and Jack Lieber (1893-1965), at the corner of West 98th Street and West End
Avenue in Manhattan.[3][4] His father, trained as a dress cutter, worked only sporadically after
the Great Depression,[3] and the family moved further uptown to Fort Washington Avenue,
[5]
 in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Lee had one younger brother named Larry Lieber.
[6]
 He said in 2006 that as a child he was influenced by books and movies, particularly those
with Errol Flynn playing heroic roles.[7] By the time Lee was in his teens, the family was living
in an apartment at 1720 University Avenue in The Bronx. Lee described it as "a third-floor
apartment facing out back". Lee and his brother shared the bedroom, while their parents
slept on a foldout couch.[6]

Lee attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.[8] In his youth, Lee enjoyed writing
and entertained dreams of writing the "Great American Novel" one day.[9] He said that in his
youth he worked such part-time jobs as writing obituaries for a news service and press
releases for the National Tuberculosis Center;[10] delivering sandwiches for the Jack May
pharmacy to offices in Rockefeller Center; working as an office boy for a trouser
manufacturer; ushering at the Rivoli Theater on Broadway;[11] and selling subscriptions to
theNew York Herald Tribune newspaper.[12] At fifteen, Lee entered a high school essay
competition sponsored by the New York Herald Tribune, called "The Biggest News of the
Week Contest." Lee claimed to have won the prize for three straight weeks, goading the
newspaper to write him and ask him to let someone else win. The paper suggested he look
into writing professionally, which Lee claimed "probably changed my life." [13] He graduated
from high school early, aged sixteen and a half, in 1939 and joined the WPA Federal
Theatre Project.[14]

Stan Lee Awards

Year Award Nominated work Result

1974 Inkpot Award[172]

1994 The Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame[173]

1995 Jack Kirby Hall of Fame[174] Won

2002 Saturn Award The Life Career Award

2008 National Medal of Arts[175]

2009 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic

Hugo Award[176] Nominated
Presentation- Iron Man

Scream Awards[177] Comic-Con Icon Award Won

2011 Hollywood Walk of Fame[178]

Visual Effects Society Awards Lifetime Achievement Award

2012
Producers Guild of America[179] Vanguard Award

National Academy of Video Game

2017 Performance in a Comedy, Supporting
Trade Reviewers[180]

 The County of Los Angeles and the City of Long Beach declared October 2, 2009,

"Stan Lee Day".[169]
 On July 14, 2017, Lee and Jack Kirby were named Disney Legends for their creation
of numerous characters that later comprised Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe.[170]
 On July 18, 2017, as part of D23 Disney Legends event, a ceremony was held at
the TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevardwhere Stan Lee imprinted his hands,
feet, and signature in cement.[171]
 Stan Lee is congratulated byPresident George W. Bush on receiving the National Medal of Arts in
2008.