Stanley Martin Lieber got his start in the comic industry in 1939. Pulp publisher Martin Goodman, the husband of Lieber's cousin, hired him to do odd jobs in the offices of Goodman's comic book imprint Timely. By 1941, Lieber was writing comics under the name "Stan Lee" and was editing comics such as Captain America, Sub-Mariner, Human Torch, and an anthology book called Marvel Comics. After World War 2, super hero comics became unpopular and Timely (soon to be known as Atlas) pivoted to monster, war, and romance comics. In the 1950s, Atlas fell on hard times. At it's nadir, Lee was the only remaining full time employee. In the late 50s, Lee oversaw a series of monster and science fiction comics featuring art by freelance artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. Kirby helped invent the visual vocabulary of super hero comics in the 1940s and had worked for every major comic book publisher since. Ditko was known for his idiosyncratic style and nightmarish visuals.

In the late 50s and into 1960, DC Comics had success resurrecting and rebooting 1940s heroes such as the Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman. In 1960, DC teamed their top heroes together as the "Justice League of America." Super heroes were popular again and Martin Goodman told Stan to create a new team of super heroes. Lee worked with Jack Kirby to create the Fantastic Four, a group of heroes partially inspired by the monster and sci-fi comics Lee and Kirby had previously created. Atlas rebranded as Marvel. After the success of the Fantastic Four, Lee and Kirby would also create the Hulk, Marvel's version of the Norse god Thor, Iron Man, and the X-Men. Kirby did concept work for a teenage spider-inspired hero, but Lee felt that Steve Ditko would be a better fit for the book. Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 and quickly became one of Marvel's most popular characters.

Stan Lee's importance to the comics industry cannot be fully separated from Ditko, Kirby and other great artists. The question of authorship of the flagship Marvel titles of 1960s is a subject of debate among comics historians. The comics were created using the "Marvel Method" which entailed Lee providing the artists with loose stories or ideas and the artists plotting them out into full stories. Lee would then script the dialogue based on the art. Because of this method, the fact that these comics were made almost 60 years ago, and the deaths of the main creators involved, it is very difficult to determine who exactly contributed what to the Marvel Universe. Most historians agree that Kirby essentially plotted most of the classic Fantastic Four stories and probably created many of the elements (the Silver Surfer, the Inhumans, and Black Panther among others) that would establish Fantastic Four as the most innovative super hero comic of 1960s. The same can be said of Ditko and The Amazing Spider-Man. Many of Peter Parker's moral quandaries and epic battles were probably the product of Ditko's imagination rather than Lee. Ditko and Lee's other great creation for Marvel was the wizard/superhero Dr. Strange. The kaleidoscopic landscapes of the Dr. Strange stories in Strange Tales made the book a cult favorite among the burgeoning psychedelic movement in the mid 1960s. Once again, however, the bizarre adventures and visuals that made the book a pop culture landmark were mostly the product of the artist and not Lee.

Having said that, Lee was the guiding force in the creation of what we now know as the "Marvel Universe." It was Lee's gift as an editor to see the true potential in the artists. He provided Ditko and Kirby with projects that fully utilized their creative gifts. Even if Stan Lee did not do the lion's share of the creative work in the individual issues, his snappy dialogue and editorial guidance certainly played a key role in establishing the popularity of those early 1960s Marvel Comics. Another key innovation of Lee's was to make it clear that all of the comics took place in the same world, which for Marvel was a fantasy version of New York City. The Manhattan of Stan Lee's Marvel was home to Dr. Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum, the law firm of Murdock and Nelson, and Avenger's mansion. DC Comics had featured regular meetings between heroes since the 1940s, but the world of Marvel emphasized that these heroes lived in an interconnected fictional landscape. When this new fictional reality was paired with Lee's bombastic editorial copy, Marvel became something special. Lee's copy spoke to fans directly. Lee also talked about the people that made the comics, something that none of the other companies did with regularity. Lee created a virtual relationship between the readership and the "Marvel Bullpen" (another fiction of Lee's since none of the freelance artists actually worked in the same office). When one considers today's pop culture environment and its focus on fictional universes and its emphasis on fan/creator dynamics, Stan Lee's influence is considerable.

'Nuff Said True Believers

Sources:
Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe
Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book by Jordan Raphael and Tom Spurgeon