Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922 in New York City to Celia and Jack Lieber. In 1947 he married his wife, Joan, with whom he had two daughters. His brother, Larry Lieber, went on to work for Marvel Comics himself, scripting some of Lee's creations.
As a young man, Lee took a job at Timely Comics as an assistant to creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby under publisher Martin Goodman. When Simon and Kirby left the company, Goodman promoted Lee to work as the editor, main writer, and art director--all in tandem.
For the following two decades Lee catered to the whims of Goodman, who insisted on following the current comic book trends, publishing numerous westerns, romance, war, crime and horror comics as they became popular. Lee grew displeased with this job and seriously considered quitting by the early 1960s.
By the 1960s Timely Comics became known as Marvel Comics, and Stan Lee was considering quitting the company when Martin Goodman approached Lee about creating a comic book about a group of superheroes to compete with rival publisher National Comics' (now DC Comics) new hit Justice League of America. This, coupled with his wife's suggestion that Lee attempt to create a comic on his own terms, led to the creation of the Fantastic Four with Jack Kirby, which depicted a family of superheroes. The book was a hit, which inspired Lee to continue to work for Marvel Comics and create more characters with Steve Ditko (Spider-Man, Dr. Strange), Bill Everett (Daredevil) Jack Kirby (Hulk, The Avengers, the X-Men) and brother Larry Lieber (Thor, with Kirby). Many of these creations became wildly successful and went on to spawn various cartoons, toys and successful films.
In the early 1970s, Stan Lee was named publisher of Marvel Comics, at which point he became a spokesman for the company by doing interviews and touring to conduct guest lectures at colleges. In the following years was briefly made president before returning to the role of publisher and finally being named chairman emeritus.
At the peak of his writing career, Stan Lee was writing around a dozen books a month. To expedite the process, Lee would give his artists a synopsis that they would have to execute. Once the artwork was complete, Lee would add captions and dialogue to the pages.
Stan Lee's 1960s Marvel Comics characters were known for their complex personalities and inversions of the era's typical superhero themes. For example, with the creation of the Fantastic Four, Lee envisioned superheroes whose identities were not secret but rather known to a public, with a love interest who was not simply someone who did not know the hero's identity, but a superhero herself.
In the 1980s, Stan Lee moved to Los Angeles to set up Marvel's animation studio, which animated such 1980s television properties as Defenders of the Earth and The Muppet Babies. By 1990, the studio had closed, but Lee was working on selling movies and television shows featuring the Marvel characters.
When Marvel filed for bankruptcy in the late 1990s, Stan Lee was free from his contract with Marvel and formed Stan Lee Media, which allowed Lee to create more characters and concepts for adaptation into other media.
Lee later formed POW! Entertainment, which works to develop numerous concepts into a variety of mediums, including major motion pictures, creative ventures with Disney and celebrities like Hugh Hefner and Paris Hilton, and even reality television, like the series "Who Wants to be a Superhero," which was hosted by Lee himself.
Stan Lee's post-Marvel media companies have experienced numerous controversies, such as when Stan Lee Media filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and some of its officers were arrested for attempting to influence the company's stock price. In 2007, Lee sued the company for a variety of damages, including defamation and copyright infringement. In 2009, shareholders of the company sued Lee and Marvel, claiming that they are owed money from Marvel's profits resulting from its recent successful films. Lee himself has also sued Marvel over profits, but the two parties came to a settlement.
There is also some controversy over Stan Lee's creation of his beloved 1960s superhero characters, as many credit Stan Lee as sole creator while ignoring the contributions of the artists. In a 2000 interview with IGN, Lee claimed that he always said he co-created his characters, and attributed any misinformation to newspapers and journalists.